LogFAQs > #911683872

yeah I know what you're talking about. as far as I know, that's just what happens when you archive gamefaqs pages. not much I can do about it.

I'm thinking about how best to manage/advertise and archive my next writing project so I might come up with a better solution by then.

Crooked Epilogue

There was an immeasurable pain in Kidd's head as he made his way back down the crooked steps. He found Jamison, unconscious, laying on the ground. The Angel seemed to have partially exploded from the inside. Her outer layer was intact and looked oddly pristine, but there were chunks of her flesh that had exploded from out of her mouth and were laying all over the ground around them.

Due to the lack of oxygen in the room, Kidd was struggling. He was already very sore all over his body and in a lot of pain. Not being able to breathe made him feel like he was having difficulty exerting himself. Yet... still... if Jamison had been willing to risk it all in order to save them, Kidd had to be willing to risk it all in order to save Jamison.

Jamison's eyes flickered as he was grabbed and shaken, but he wouldn't stir.

Kidd noticed that there were still shards of the Alchemy Stone stuck in the other man's palm. The first thing he did was put Jamison's knuckles flat against the ground. Then, with the hilt of his utility knife, he bashed Jamison's hand and pried the chunks of stone free.

Broken bits of red jewelry scattered to the ground along with droplets of blood. Even the pain and shock hadn't been enough to wake Jamison back up. He was that far gone. Kidd could barely keep his own eyes open.

With the stone destroyed, low amounts of oxygen should have started to filter back into the room... but... for those who had been deprived of vital air for so long, it was hard to say if it was too little and too late.

He remembered a winding trail back up the crooked stairs, dragging a heavy weight with him along that deadly climb.

"Make a tourniquet," Kidd remembered wanting to say. "Bind his arm. Cut the blood free... you need to drain the mana out of him..." He remembered wanting to say it, but he also couldn't remember actually saying it. All he could recall was passing down face first in the upper chamber and dropping what felt like a corpse behind him.

He was laying on his back and trembling underneath a covered sheet. He wasn't dead. He wasn't dead... was he? No. Every jolt and bump caused his body to stir ever so slightly. He couldn't muster the energy to get back up to his feet. His head hurt so badly, too. Even worse than before.

Was it the lack of oxygen that had put him in this bad of a state? Or was it because he had pushed himself too hard for several days in a row? All of that adrenaline was probably catching up to him now. Some of his wounds were so bad that he couldn't even feel them. That was worse than the pain.

He was left with the imagination that it might be gone for good.

Did he lose his fingers or just the feeling in them?

Would the sensation ever come back...?

Kidd didn't even remember hitting his head on the way back up the stairs until he woke up several days later. He was laying in the back of the wagon. Apparently he had appeared in the narrow corridor with blood streaming down his skull in a crooked trail. Now wouldn't that have been a pathetic way to die? To get through everything else and then bump his head on the rock wall...?

Jamison seemed to be in slightly better condition than him overall, which seemed ironic, but the man was very ill and had some localized damage to specific parts of his body. They had never drained the mana out of his bloodstream. That could have killed him, but he got away with mere permanent consequences instead.

For as bad as that was, it seemed better than death.

They were all probably thinking that one some level.
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~* and now I only see your dull imposter ~*
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