Fooled You

5

I was hugging the ground. Bal hung above me, unmoving, a stark contrast to the sharp movement of arrows bellowing around us.

I noticed two things, then.

One, Bal was red.

Two, my legs were red.

A scream ripped from my throat as I registered the wooden shafts that stuck out from the back of my friend, as if he were growing bloody, splintered wings.

"Bal!"

My chest heaved, painfully, as I watched the red flood the ground, pooling at our feet, arrowheads burying themselves into the ground near our bodies.

Bal, Bal, Bal-

I reached up, too disoriented to tell if my hands were shaking as I lifted his face, touched his torso.

"-'m okay."

I heard him mutter. Just barely.

My fingers came away with a fresh shade of red. My breath was fast filling with the horribly tangible metallic rust of his blood.

I tried to sit up, tried to stand up, tried to lift him, tried to get us away, away, but my legs.

My legs.

I craned my neck to see a gash cut deep into my left calf, an arrowhead shining into my round eyes.

I lost breath. I wanted to choke on the bile rising in my chest.

I wanted desperately to choke.

"-Anouk."

His sudden clarion voice swallowed the nausea and I inhaled sharply, starved.

Bal murmured quietly to me, alternating between "it's okay" and "I'm okay", hushing me as if I were a child and hugging me to him with an arm. He breathed heavily, chest falling. His hand cradled my head gently and something in me collapsed; a solemn structure crumbling to nothing. 

Amidst that hail of death, I felt the burn of tears at the back of my eyelids. 

Amidst that storm of terrible mortality, I felt the strength of his arms dwindle and diminish.

I opened my mouth to scream-

-And tasted rust and salt. 

  A/N: im a douche