“Urghh” A groan almost lost in the noise of the city, heralded the end of Kael's sleep. Blinking his eyes, trying to rid them of their sleep encrusted prison, a piercing pain caused him to slam them shut again, keeping the bright light of the Arkund summer sun out. Kael sat up slowly while getting his bearings, shading his squeezed eyes in the process to avoid a repeat performance. Rubbing his eyes after they had acclimated to the daylight, he looked around. The destruction all around him brought with it the memories of the events that had transpired here just a few hours ago.

“Can't say it was a dream now, huh?” Last night still felt unreal to Kael, yet he knew they were anything but. The hole in the wall, the concrete rubble everywhere, and the destroyed piles of materials made that clear as day. Slowly and very carefully Kael stood up, only to quickly drop back down again. His legs had simply collapsed under him, their muscles apparently not strong enough to carry his weight. Now that he was paying attention to his body, he noticed that it was not just his legs that were affected. His whole body was feeling much like he had just received the workout of a lifetime... For a few hours... without stopping.

Carefully, he crawled to a nearby wall and used it to prop himself up, trying to regain some control over his limbs with it as support. Over the next few minutes, Kael managed to first stand and then walk without the need for support. “Haa... What do I do now?” Quietly talking to himself, Kael tried to understand what had happened after the old man had started to weave his strange symbols of -maybe? properly?- mana. His memories of that part of the night were spotty at best, making it almost impossible to piece it together. He knew that the old man had spoken to him, that what he said was important, but Kael could not remember what it was the archmage had said. Trying to force himself to remember only made his head hurt, leaving him without an answer to his questions.

In the process of trying to piece his memories together again, he noticed something else. There was something wrong with the area around him. Looking over it once again Kael failed to find what was bothering him. He quickly went through his mental checklist of things he could remember from last night. Destroyed stuff from the impact and that strange gale, giant fireball hole in the wall, rubble everywhere, the corpse of the... He halted. Where was the corpse?

Like ice, a cold shower ran down Kael's back as he realized what had been making him feel on edge. The archmage, presumably on his deathbed, should be somewhere here. Or at least his body should. This meant that either, the corpse just disappeared somehow - because of magic and all that - or that someone had taken it, leaving him lying out there in the open all night. Neither possibility seemed like good news to Kael.

Did someone come and take the body? Did they see me? Take me for a corpse too? Maybe they know that the old man did something before he died? Are they going to come after me? That group of asshats must have heard or seen me somehow! What do I do now?

Questions overwhelmed Kael and he staggered back to the wall he had originally propped himself up against as panic set in. With his mind already close to a breakdown from the stress and fear of last night, rational thought was replaced by his fight or flight reflex. Panicked eyes darted left and right, expecting to see men in black suits, ready to draw their guns. The idea of facing guns made the fight part of the reflex impossible and he started to run.

The conscious part of his mind had taken a back seat and his body was moving on instinct alone. Quickly scaling down the unfinished building via piles of boxes and improvised, unfinished ledges, Kael soon found himself on the ground floor of the building. The entrance to the construction site was just around the corner, promising safety. There he could disappear into the complex net of streets and alleys of the capital.

The large wooden fence that surrounded the construction site was quickly bypassed. Someone had forgotten to lock the makeshift door, or someone had broken in to rob the place and not bothered to clean up after themselves, who knew. Shoving the heavy steel rod out from its position, blocking the opening of the door, Kael finally made his way onto the streets. Time passed as he ran, the experience only a blur of exhaustion, pain, and terror. The next thing that Kael remembered was when he broke down next to a dumpster in some random alley, muscles screaming for release.

Whatever had fueled his brutal escape seemed to be used up, and with it went some of his fear as exhaustion overpowered it. Adrenalin was still holding his brain hostage, but the simple fact that he could not move anymore even if he wanted, robbed it of most of its power. Minutes ticked by as he calmed down, and whatever had dulled his pain as he ran was disappearing with it. That is how he came to sit on the dirty floor of a dark and damp alley, exhausted, lost, and in pain, with nothing but his ability to think left for entertainment.

His reaction had been irrational, he knew, but the feeling of utter powerlessness he had experienced last night, had dominated his every thought. Here he was, a useless teen of not even 16 years, hiding from fireball slinging archmages, and arrogant thugs that had enough power to fucking kill said archmage in combat. Any one of them could have roasted him alive and there would have been nothing he could do to stop them.

Not to mention the fact that magic was real. MAGIC WAS REAL! FUCK! “Hahahahaha... there are people binding the forces of nature to their will, and I can't even straighten my FUCKING LEG!” As if to express his anger at the world he screamed at his leg. His own... straight fucking leg.