Saved By Angels

• Derek Hely, Grade 11
• Short Story
• 2013

The battlefield was a solemn place. Long since have died; the sound of guns firing and shockwaves from explosions, along with the countless soldiers who witnessed carnage. Only the sound of heavy rain could be heard, and the growl of distant thunder as the tears fell from the darkening skies that hid the sun away.

Amongst the dripping and drenched aftermath of casualties of war and ruined war machines, a figure slowly emerged. Bloodied and beaten, an anthropomorphic black dragon, a Terran, dragged himself up from the filthy mud that pooled around his form beneath the pelting rain.

With a groan or two, he pulled his weak body up from the shadow of the Cannon Colossus behind him and into grey light of overcast skies, his hand gripping a jutting machine part, a cylindrical barrel around a few metres long, lodged upright into the ground. The dull light illuminated this Terran’s scars of battle and wounds of combat, his uniform torn to shreds and tatters, revealing his injuries to the rain that poured from above.

By all accounts, it was not necessarily a miracle that this Terran emerged from this battle alive, but rather more his escape from death from his grievous wounds. His exposed body showed still-bleeding cuts from fencer blades, caked with dirty blood; a mix of brown and red. His legs and arms showed signs of bruises and grazes, sores of running and being thrown across the field that continued to ache. The worst of all these injuries were his bullet and shrapnel wounds, bestowed by the combat crossfire that baptized him with pain.

By all reasoning, he should’ve died. But even so filled with weakness and frailty, excruciating agony at every slight moment of breath in his lungs, surrounded by the traditional ending of war’s game, the Terran walked on through the sombre valley that so held the shadow of death and anguish.

“If you can pull your own weight, I can use you. Everybody else is just deadweight.” A voice echoed in the Terran’s mind.

The Terran’s eyes were empty as he walked on, shambling hopelessly as he clutched his injured shoulder with shallow breaths. His foot got caught all of a sudden, and the Terran’s legs betrayed him by giving away under his weight, he fell onto a mass of corpses piled one upon the other.

Gasping in pain as he landed upon the bed of death, he rolled over and curled up in pain as his body contorted violently.

“What the hell is that thing!?” Another voice shouted out.

Suddenly visions of nightmares began to haunt the emptiness in the Terran’s eyes, and for the first time since waking from his own nightmare did he look fearful. It was then as he stiffened slightly and cast his gaze to the sky, he saw salvation in the glow of heaven light through the canopy of sorrow.

“Just as there are demons… Know… That there are also… Angels…” A voice whispered.