ANGEL'S LANDING | BL

CHAPTER 9 | THEY'RE ALL GONE

A calm, rhythmic swaying softly brought Axel from the brink of darkness. He could not say how long he had been unconscious. His body was still swarming with pain, and he felt weightless, indicating he was being carried. His arm was hanging down by his side limply while his back and knees were being supported by strong arms.

Opening his eyes slightly, Axel was able to make out the silhouette of a man carrying him through the torn city. The man was looking forward, focused on what was ahead of him. Axel wanted to speak up and talk to the man, but his body would not oblige him. He was still dying. His energy had been spent; he still could not lift a finger.

However, through the pain he was suffering, Axel knew he had been saved. He knew the man would bring him from the hell he had been living and rescue him from the darkness that was ever looming. Opening his eyes for those few seconds spent what little strength Axel had regained, and his lids slid closed as he slipped into the darkness once more, the swaying of the man's steps gently ushering him back into the arms of his unconsciousness which Axel knew well.

When he fully woke, Axel was lying on a cot that was low to the ground. A thin but extremely warm blanket was laid over him, and a pillow was nestled beneath his head. A chair had been pulled up next to the cot where a man sat next to him with his head tilted to the side. He was asleep. The man's light green hair hung in his face, covering the view of his closed eyes.

Dressed in blue and silver gear, Axel knew the man was an angel, but he was not the one who had saved him. Shifting his gaze up, Axel looked around to find he was in an abandoned office, presumably in a hidden base or camp. The desk and bookshelves had been pushed against the windows to block as much view into the interior as possible.

Feeling rested but sore, Axel brought his hand up and grabbed the hem of the blanket to pull it off him. Even though the man had appeared to be dead asleep, the moment Axel stirred, his eyes shot open, and he sat up straight. The angel's sudden movements startled Axel, but what surprised him was not the man's sudden awakening. It was the fact that the angel woke up before Axel had even moved that shocked him.

"Oh!" The man exclaimed quite sluggishly as his vision focused. "You're awake!" The angel did not have to see Axel's opened eyes to know he was awake. He had sensed the exact moment Axel had woken. Being an angel of the healer class, Zetha had the ability to monitor a person's vital signs and could hone his senses on continuously surveilling the person's state of health and state of being.

After pulling down the blanket, Axel sat up and swung his legs off the cot to touch the ground. "Where am I?" He inquired while looking down at his body. The gashes and bruises that had once covered him were now gone. He was completely healed. Looking back up at the man in the office chair and seeing his pale face, Axel could guess what had happened.

"Thank you..." Axel said when he realized the man had most likely spent much of his energy healing him over the course of the night. He was close to death, so it would have taken a lot of strength to heal him back to perfection.

The man's green eyes softened at Axel's thanks, and a soft smile tugged at the corners of his lips. "No need to thank me. I would have done it even without the colonel's orders."

Colonel? Axel's heart jumped at the man's words. Is the colonel the one who saved me...?

"You must be hungry," the man assumed correctly. "Follow me, let's find you some food."