Steel

Chapter 46

Slowly, I rose to my feet, raising a hand up to block the orange glow that radiated from the horizon ahead. Everything was hazy. I could barely see a few feet in front of me. A few feet was all I needed, however, to be able to make out the devastation. Bodies littered the ground in front of me, dark blood splayed across the earth as if the ground was deliberately painted with it.

Angels and Demons alike, it seemed, had been claimed by Death. I just prayed that Death himself had managed to survive.

I glanced back down the edge of the crater, and you could faintly make out a dark trail of blood depicting my entire path up the rim. I hoped I would make it to Grey before I passed out from blood loss. I hoped I could move through the pain, despite how agonizing it was.

I set my sights back towards the horizon and began shuffling forwards, groaning as the screaming in my muscles grew louder. That last push over the rim had scraped up my knees even more, and I could feel that I'd likely torn one of my quad muscles in my right leg. My ankle on that leg, I could hardly put pressure on anyway, however, so I could try to limp my way through the battlefield. The only caveat was, my gash was on the opposite leg, and the more pressure I put on that leg, the more I bled. I needed to wrap that leg if I was going to make it anywhere.

I glanced at the bodies around me, grimacing at the metallic smell of blood that hung in the air as thickly as the smoke. Various organs and shreds of sinewy muscle were splattered about the bodies. Despite once wanting to be a doctor, I felt sick to my stomach at the gore. Now was not the time to let any emotional reaction get to me, so I swallowed the rising bile in my throat and reached down to the nearest body and tore off a large strip of fabric.

I quickly turned away so I wouldn't have to look anymore, and tightly wrapped the shredded cloth around my thigh. I knotted it several times, burning tears stinging my eyes as I tied it as tightly as I could.  The pressure on the wound burned like acid, but when I tried to stand on that leg, I now felt like I could. Progress.

I turned back towards the horizon and began haphazardly stumbling around the bodies that were scattered across the ground. Beneath them, I could faintly make out the yellow dotted lines of a road. Maybe it would lead closer to the city, where I suspected the carnage would be much worse, and where I hoped I could find my soulmate. If he was anywhere, it'd be where he'd thought he could make the most impact.

Still, I didn't think it would hurt to call out his name in case he were nearby. So, I raised my bloodstained hands to my lips and screamed out his name, ignoring the scalding sensation as my raw throat had the dusty air forced through it.

I waited a moment. Nothing.

So I shuffled onwards. Every now and again I would glance down at the bodies that had white wings and grey wings. There were several faces I recognized, but not well enough to recall their names. That made me feel even worse, seeing as they had given their lives for a battle I'd enacted and yet here I was, still somehow alive.

I fought the guilty tears that threatened to rise at the tightening of my throat. Every name of every innocent soul lost today I would memorize. I would never let their names be forgotten, not when they had given everything for me, for the world I might get to see. If I was to live, then so would they.

I passed by one of the Angels that had sparred with me in Heaven, a huge guy who had probably stood several feet above me. One of his wings had been severed in half, but he was surrounded with the bodies of obliterated Demons, so it seemed like he'd gone down fighting. Most of them had, if not all.

How was I supposed to live with this? The fact that a war that I'd incited had resulted in the deaths of thousands upon thousands of innocent souls, while I was able to keep my life? How was that fair? All of these people had dreams, people who loved and cherished them. All of them hoped to see a day where the earth lived on in an era of peace and prosperity, and yet their eyes were now as hazy as the sky. I should've died. It should've been me who'd given my life. I had been ready, why wasn't it me?