ANGEL'S LANDING | BL

CHAPTER 8 | THE ANGEL

Silence welcomed Axel back into the realm of consciousness. Opening his eyes, Axel sat up to find himself surrounded by ashes and bodies. The camp had been burned to the ground. Any tent that was still standing was engulfed in flames and would soon join the other tents in becoming piles of ash.

Dismembered bodies lay strewn across the ground and were evidence of the violent raid that had taken place just hours before. The sun was rising, and Axel was alone. Utterly and completely alone. Hakken and Eryx were nowhere to be found, and Callon...

Axel's heart hurt as he remembered Callon being trapped within the electrified net and taken by the forces of Hades. Axel's head swooned as he rose to his feet. The lump on his where he had made contact with the hard ground when he was thrown aside by the explosion thumped with pain.

Grimacing, Axel studied his surroundings once more before slowly walking through the remains of the camp. The gun of a human soldier lay between a female's limp fingers, and Axel closed his eyes in a moment of silence for the fallen soldier before collecting the gun and checking how many bullets it had according to Callon's instructions.

After checking that the gun had three shots left, Axel continued through the camp scavenging for more bullets and supplies. He was lucky enough to collect five more bullets from other discarded guns lying about. By the time he had filled the gun's magazine, he had made his way toward the entrance to the camp where he saw the extent of the attack. The military base had been evacuated, and not a single living soldier remained. Only lifeless bodies now resided in the burning base.

As he approached the end of the camp and neared the entrance to the base, a hand sticking out from under a pile of ash caught Axel's attention. Axel's eyes widened when he recognized the ring on the male's hand. It was his father's wedding ring!

Racing to the ash-covered hand, Axel began to frantically dig through the dark dust until he uncovered the rest of the body. Sure enough, to Axel's terror, he had found his father.

"Dad!" Axel cried out as he lifted his father's head into his lap and cradled his dad. "Why are you here? Why...why?! Why did I have to lose you, too?"

Axel's father had woken from his drunken sleep at the sounds of explosions filling the city the evening of the invasion. Sobered from a whole day's rest, his father had raced out of the apartment in search of his son. Finding Axel's cram school to be blown to bits, his father searched for an emergency relief sight in hopes that his son had made it to a safe zone.

Axel's father had arrived at the camp the night before Axel and the three students from Dawning High had made it there and had frantically searched the entire camp for his missing son. When the camp had been attacked, his father helped get as many people out of the camp as possible and died saving a young girl from being taken.

"Why??!" Axel's cry filled the grey morning as he mourned for his father. Why had he lost everyone he cared about? Why had Hades taken everything good in his life from him? When was this endless suffering going to end? Would it ever end? Could it...ever end?

Tears streamed down Axel's face as he cried over his father's ash-covered body. Rustling from a nearby pile of tattered, burning tents caught Axel's attention as a rabid demon emerged from the rubble. Seeing the demon sparked a deep rage within Axel.

At first thought, he wanted revenge. He wanted to make Hades suffer just as he was suffering at that moment. He wanted to burn Hades to the ground and rid the universe of its murderous demons. However, when he blinked and looked at the rabid being again, Axel realized that the demon walking toward him was a regular citizen of Earth. She was just as much a victim of Hade's evil as he was.

Shot with a bullet infused with Hades' essence, she had been forced to turn rabid and was robbed of her sanity. She was now a monster. However, she was a monster that Axel must eliminate in order to survive. Although he had lost those most precious to him, Axel still burned with a desire for justice. And he needed to find Hakken and Eryx.