With a meaty thwack, the sword hit Res’s abdomen instead of his heart. Then his body impacted the muddy sewage waters. Air … Air is such a wonderful thing. Res realized then and there that he had underestimated the uses of air. Right now, he had no air and he definitely would go back to having air. His limbs flail around and his feet touch something solid and he pushed off of it.

That precious good named air came to him again, and he didn’t care a bit that it stank like shit and piss. The grime hurt his eyes as he opened them, but he endured it because he knew he needed to see and adapt to the dim lighting. Once again, Res found steps carved into the walls of the river of shit and managed to grab onto them. With slow, deliberate movements, he crawled out of the sewage. He gasped when his bloody and now filthy abdomen came into view.

“Bro, you will die if you don’t get help within two hours.”, Jason drained voice resounded through Res’s head.

Res dragged himself in the opposite direction from where he had come. He pulled his limp body onwards with his arms. The burning and stabbing pain forced him to rest once in a while, but he never stopped. In a pain-induced delirium, he passed the body of a child, cowering in an alcove. The street child had been sleeping and was already turning to run.

“Wait”, Res croaked out.

“I can give you food and money if you give me directions.”

The boy turned back to him with a suspicious frown. “Who is your district boss? I bet it is Bryan.”

Despite the suspicion in the boy’s voice, he was interested. “I am a worker who fell down a manhole and impaled myself on a metal rod. I want to go back to my wife, but I have not much experience with the sewers.”

In the young boy’s intelligent eyes, Res could see how he weighed the risks against the rewards. “You can’t even walk.”

For the first time within ages, Jason spoke. “Bro, you can use aether now, can you? You will die like this. We can’t fly around outside, but within the sewers – no problem.”

“Thanks … Brother.”

“That is what brothers are for.”

With painful steps, Res crawled up to the boy, who turned with a disgusted face. “Sir, you are stinking.”

“Sorry, have you ever wanted to fly?”

The boy withdrew several steps. “I have …”

Res began to hover above the ground. “We will have to fly from now on.”

The boy’s eyes widened to that of saucers. “Are you … An elite palace guard?”

“No. Hold on to me and lead me towards the ...”

The boy gave him a wink and babbled about ‘Of course, you can’t tell me‘. Res felt his strength sapping away, so he played along. He opened up his arms in a princess carry and said: “You can see this as your first test.”

“Where do you live?”

Res recalled Orson’s hideout flat. “Warehouse District. Addison Street 48. Apartment 30.”

With complete faith, the boy made himself comfortable in Res’s arms. As if they knew each other for ages, he gave through the directions. After five minutes of flying, white liquid began to ooze out of the wound. After an extra ten minutes, the white liquid turned green. Res tried to keep his exhaustion from showing and asked: “When will we be there?”

“Sir, we started in the colosseum district. Even at your speed, it will take a quarter-hour to travel to the warehouse district. I know a boy who is living in the apartment across from yours and there is a sewer’s entrance.”

Res cursed his poor luck but supposed that dying in the sewers after killing someone was a mild sentence. The endless stretches of tunnel zipped by and the boy screeched in excitement. Res didn’t have such a good time though. He had come close to smashing his brains on the tunnel walls several times. One time, the boy’s hands had been about to get sheared off when he stretched them out wide.

Controlling aether became more and more difficult as the delirium progressed to hallucinations. Res was sweating and close to passing out. Finally, they arrived at an unassuming-looking sewer’s entrance. With a last burst of aether, Res shot out of another manhole cover. With a soft crunch of his broken limbs, he landed in an alley opposite of Orson’s apartment. When he craned his neck to see that he hadn’t crushed the boy, all the energy that had fueled his mad escape left his body. The boy shook his limb body and told him to stand up, but Res only hoped that if he would open them, everything would be fine.

Luckily, the boy got the hint and ran over to Orson’s apartment. Res was getting annoyed as the blissful black abyss of unconsciousness wouldn’t take him. It was like his body was mad at him for not treating it well and wanted him to feel the pain. Some form of liquid had entered his lungs, and he was rasping and gurgling shallow breaths. He heard aggravated shouts and was picked up by strong sturdy hands. In a trance, he could see Orson’s face in an emotion he had never seen before – Fear. With a last mental goodbye to all the people he loved, which weren’t many, he accepted his death.

Sudden coldness washing through his entire body interrupted his self-pitying thoughts. With his limp hands, he tried to ward off the uncomfortable feeling, but only got more of the coldness on his face. Through the cold, he could feel something picking at his wounds. Like a chicken, it picked at pieces of torn off flesh and reached deeper into his wound. He arched his back in pain, but the insistent picking at his flesh continued. Through his stupor, he opened one of his lids and was greeted by the sight of blood and white goo. In his normal state of mind, he would have wretched at the sight, but now he only watched with fascination.

Behind the bulky arms stood the boy from earlier with a water hose and Res hissed at the boy to stop. His warnings only made the boy steel his face even more. When Res felt the darkness take him, the sturdy hands poured a greenish liquid on the wound. Res fainted from the pain that his shifting bones caused. His body was tearing away pieces of fat and muscle to supply the needed nutrients. His new biceps was torn apart to fill out the hole in his gut.

Only after his voice was lost on him, did he realize that he had been screaming the entire time. He was turned and another potion was applied to the wound which only managed to intensify the pain. Three other grassy-tasting potions were forced down his mouth. Res tried to spit them out, but the sturdy hands forced them down. After the hands made Res drink the three last potions, he finally passed out.