Confusion

Author: Seth

"Me? I'm just a boy with a few family matters to take care of."

The rage… was gone.

Slowly, he became aware of his ragged gasping. The harsh sounds of battle started to override the roar of blood that had been pounding in his ears for so long he'd forgotten that any other sound existed. Bit by bit, the red haze that had clouded his sight bled from his eyes.

And the pain, let's not forget about the pain. It was as if his entire body, his entire being was made of the malevolent feeling.

'Shit, but I'll never get used to that.' Halo thought weakly to himself as he used his butcher's sword to push himself back to his feet. Just because it felt as if he'd be better off dead didn't give him the right to lie down and go through with it. There was still a battle to fight.

Dull footsteps rang out behind him, almost completely obscured by the crashes of the raging battle. Through a supreme effort of will, the spent drakonian heaved himself around, bringing up his cleaver just in time to intercept the forceful jab of a spear.

'There goes my bet with Marten.' Halo though wryly as he crashed to the ground. Oh well, losing, if it came to that, took second seat to other, more important matters. Like death.

Shakily, the orange haired man pulled his giant hunk of steel on a stick in front of his chest in a weak defence. The stony faced gryphane barely even acknowledged the effort, marching up towards the fallen drake and raising his spear for the final blow.

Wasn't it just typical, Halo mused as the enemy soldier blocked out what faint grey light there was on the battlefield. Of all the times he'd thrown himself into the hearts of enemy platoons, of all the other deaths he might have died and here he was, in the one position he'd promised himself he'd never end up in; lying on his back as he waited for the reaper.

A sharp whistling sound cut the air as the spear came down, and the gryphane was literally blown off his feet before the polearm could make contact. Halo was left blinking slowly, staring at the space his would be killer had occupied not half a second ago.

Turning his head to the left, Halo made out the two halves of what had once been a proud gryphane, savagely bisected by a gigantic circular weapon of some sort which lay embedded in the ground right in the middle of the two halves.

"You should take better care of yourself." A faintly amused voice sounded beside Halo. "One might get the impression that you don't care whether you live or die."

Weakly, Halo sat up and watched as a peculiar boy walked past him and uprooted the oversized implement of death, retracting the blades that jutted out of it. The boy (or was it a young man; he couldn't tell), obviously a drake by the way he so easily handled the heavy weapon, slung the now make-shift shield over his back.

"I stopped caring a long time ago." Halo replied tiredly, laboriously pulling himself to his feet. "But thanks for saving my life all the same."

"Are you so eager to venture to the other side?" The boy's entire face smiled calmly, his floppy yellow hat adding to the aura of queer cheerfulness that sat at complete odds with the nature of his words, not to mention the horror of the battlefield they found themselves in.

Something about the brown haired young man jiggled at Halo's memory, but he couldn't tell what.

"Maybe I am." Halo admitted as he strode forward painfully and retrieved his second cleaver from the place he'd dropped it earlier, slotting the two great butcher's knives together to form one enormous double-bladed sword.

"Only fools venture to the land of phantasms in pursuit of shadow dreams." The boy looked at Halo with something akin to nostalgia in his bright blue eyes.

 "That sounds like a quote of some sort." Halo said, his tone questioning.

"They're the words of a little boy who wished very dearly to return to his parents, though I suppose he wasn't so little when he said them." The youth sighed before turning his back on Halo.

"So which one is it, the land of phantasms?" Halo asked, staring at the dead gryphane. "This life or the next?"

"I'd like to know that myself." Ihe young man laughed without turning around, an odd melancholy tinging his voice.

Shaking himself from his stupor, Halo turned around.

"Wait a second." The jaded drakonian called out after the boy's retreating back. "I'd at least like to know the name of the person who saved my life."

The mysterious teen froze, and then slowly pivoted towards Halo.

"No you don't." He smiled the saddest smile the red eyed draconian had ever seen, and then whirled around and fled as if an army of ghosts were upon his heels.