He could feel the rough, rusty rebar scraping its ragged way along his ribs and ripping at his skin as he flew off the end. He tumbled through the air before thudding unconscious far below.

  He woke up some time later in the grim black and white of night. Heavy rain was falling around him and starting to pool as he lay crumpled in the pebbly crater in the pavement caused by the explosion from earlier. Underneath him, he could feel something hard and unyielding digging into his hip. He groaned as he slowly rose to his hands and knees. As if in a trance, he sat back on his heels and greedily scooped up handfuls of the puddled rainwater and brought it frantically to his lips. It was gritty and had an oily texture as he slurped it, but it was wet. It soothed the parched, aching feeling he had deep in his throat. After three handfuls, he forced himself to stop.

  He noticed the object at the bottom of the crater. The broken spear, about two and a half feet of blade, a dark, tattered wrap of ribbon, and two feet of wooden haft lay at the very bottom. The blade was different up close. It was almost translucent and much larger than he had thought when he had fought the ogre. The part that he had been able to see was only about three inches wide and a foot long. The blade was actually twice that. It shimmered and called to him like nothing he had ever seen before. The blade was beautiful and wicked. It was double-sided and tapered to a razor point at the end.

  ::Broken Fang - Epic - Material: Obsidian Steel - Weight: 3lbs. Properties: Wounding, Zone of Silence, Midnight Edge::

  Morgan exclaimed.

  Morgan held the blade flat in his palm, his other hand barely able to fit around the thick haft. It was heavy and overbalanced into the blade, but the metal felt cool and refreshing. The end of the haft was a clean slice where the Godslayer’s blade ability had sliced through without any resistance. He thought about bonding as hard as he could, but nothing happened. He was about to set the blade down and get out of the crater to try again when the blade shimmered and disappeared in an instant.

  ::Bond with Broken Fang?::

  ::Bond Initiated::

  Morgan began. Then he was cut off as a small river of blood poured out of his nose and mouth. It was painful, but nothing remotely close to what he had just put himself through. It was a thick, viscous black in his night vision as it pooled in the air in a tight ball. It turned into a mist in front of his eyes. The cloud of his blood began to spin faster and faster until it was all a blur. Without any warning or hesitation, the spinning cloud slammed down onto Morgan’s right forearm, stinging and leaving a dark, raised welt in the shape of a long fang with a split down the middle. A section of his stamina bar, indicating 10%, at the top of his vision turned gray with hash marks.

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  ::Bond Complete::

  He thought of having the weapon, and it materialized in his right hand. The color on his forearm was still there, but it wasn’t a raised welt anymore. With a thought, the blade vanished, and his welt was back. He spent a few minutes summoning and dismissing the blade. It didn't have a cool-down or cost anything. He could think about having it appear in any hand, and it would. It was awesome, and he thought the fang was pretty cool looking.

  After spending some time looking down at his emaciated forearm, he was reminded that he was starving. His pouch should have a canteen of fresh water and at least two or three ration packs. He leapt up to the roof that had been his prison for the last how many days?

  Morgan said, forcing himself to be optimistic.

  The pouch was where it had been lying the whole time. The pouch was undamaged, but the straps that had held it in place were gone, apparently vaporized along with the front half of Morgan. Looking down, Morgan saw that he was once again wearing tatters of cloth that were more blood and other nasty things than cloth. Glancing down, he saw his wallet section of the HUD. 931CT, 82UT, 56RT, and now 6 ET.

  Just as he was getting ready to leave, he remembered the corpse of the ogre. He went over to inspect the creature. It was a mess. There were marks around its body showing that it had tried to move, but had only made it about four feet. It was missing its eyes, most of the skin on one arm below the elbow, and its ribs were visible on the side where the arm was pulped.

  There was a large pouch strapped to the back of the ogre’s belt. In it was a collection of glowing stones and various teeth. Morgan took the stones, left the teeth. He wasn't sure what market would welcome trade in teeth, but he was sure he didn’t ever want to be there. After putting the glowing stones, which Sophia told him were like mana batteries, in his pouch, he set off to the river.

  The water was frigid and shallow, but Morgan stripped off his tattered, soiled rags and let them float away in the current. He washed quickly, scrubbing hard to remove the caked and hardened scales of blood on his sides. After he was finished, he pulled some clean cloths and a ration from his pack. The clean, warm cloths became instantly soaked by the rain, but just having something cover his skin felt comforting.

  He would like to say that the ration pack was delicious and he savored it, but it was not. It still tasted like cardboard and went down thick and dry, even with cupfuls of river water. It did, however, sit like a rock in his empty pit of a stomach and fill him up. The rain petered out as he was sitting on the bank of the biting off pieces of the thick bar. The pre-dawn gray haze had just started to peak over the tops of the trees when Morgan stood ready to go. The morning air was crisp and had a biting cold that was a stern warning of the coming winter.

  He topped off his canteen and took stock. He had two more rations packs, two more changes of clothes, and a canteen. He had lost his swords, dagger, and the faceless bastion was cracked, useless, and wouldn’t stay on his face. One of his bracers was damaged and missing half of its metal. Everything else was just peachy.

  He had spent days unconscious, but after eating and losing the adrenaline of finally being free, he could feel exhaustion sinking into his muscles. He had lost a lot of weight and was weaker than he had been before the integration. He was heading into town and passed a small farm. The barn was well built, cozy, and the haymow was stocked with thick bales of sweet-smelling alfalfa. Morgan curled up and was asleep before his head hit the hay.