The Isles - Book One: Awakening

Chapter One: After the End

Things should have been easier. His situation was anything but easy, by all intents. Around him, bullets whizzed, zipping into the tree line behind him towards the direction of the helicopter that had been the only one to take the almost impossible rescue mission he volunteered for. He was a combat medic. And while it was a war crime to shoot a combat medic, that did not stop a bullet from tearing into his arm as he ran forward, completely unarmed.

It was not like the axis he fought against in this bloody war cared at all for the rules of war. In their jungle of jingoism, whatever depleted the enemy forces was the choice that was made. Including committing war crimes such as knowingly shooting combat medics with the intent to kill. The enemy was overpowering their unit, and there was only one soldier left to retrieve on this mission. One last soldier's life that was capable of being saved.

He thought back on the things that lead him to being here as he loaded the second-to-last injured soldier. He remembered what he was before this war drafted him into combat. He had always sworn himself to helping people, it was the only way he could find his own happiness after he lost his parents. He would not ever call himself a great man. He would not say he ever lived a noble life, either. He had never experienced love. He had no family to return home to, and his achievements were lost to the blood spilled by war.

Nothing had any significance to him except his mission. His mission to serve a cause bigger than him. An oath he swore himself to twice in his life. Once as an oath to a military and once more to himself.

"So that others may live." He mumbled to himself, looking at the bloodied face of the soldier he just loaded. There was a moment where he felt fear, a moment where he thought of what could have been instead of what was.

He could have been home right now. Drinking his life away in hopes his misfortunes would magically go away while staring at the nametag on his gear: 'Dagon.'

But he volunteered for this without a second thought or a shred of regret. Something inside him clicked in that moment when he red-balled his way onto the helicopter. He shook his head. He could have complained, he could have been upset. But life never was so simple: no, life was fair.

At the doors of death, he knew what purpose he served. His legs moved, running towards the final soldier of the squadron that had called for rescue only an hour ago.

One more bullet zipped into his side. The adrenaline he felt in the moment made the pain bearable, even when the bullet failed to cleanly pass through him. It was a pain he had not experienced, but something he had mentally prepared himself for.

Just as he made it to the downed soldier, an explosion shattered his balance, forcing him away and to the ground with a force that sucked the breath from his lungs. In his dazed state of mind and confusion, he could only see the misplaced, mangled arm that had landed away from the body of the owner. As his ears rung, and his eyes wandered weakly before landing on the target he was searching for. The soldier he tried to save.

The arm he used to hold his gun was blown off, and the body of his fallen brother was what took the brunt of the damage... ineffectively saving his life, but only briefly. But still, Dagon pressed on. He stumbled weakly onto his feet and began to move as fast as his spinning head would allow him as his ears rung. The man's yelling fell on deaf ears as Dagon pulled the last tourniquet from his pack.

He tied the tourniquet two inches above the amputation sight of the man's arm and twisted the tightening rod almost like it was clockwork. He had done it hundreds of times. As messy as it was... it saved lives. And sometimes, that was all that was needed. His mind shut down as he worked on the man's arm to stop the bleeding by any means, which meant tightening the tourniquet tight enough to make his arm looks like a sausage roll. Thankfully, the bleeding stopped.