For a a while, nobody moved.
None of them dared breathe.
Morgan lay there in the settling dust, a ragged, broken heap.
His clothes were shredded, his leather coat ruined beyond recognition and soaked through with mud and blood.
The skin of his bare arms was a map of deep purple bruises and open lacerations with a coat of barely dried blood.
His right leg sat at an unnatural, sickening angle, clearly broken in multiple places.
Dried blood crusted his chin and trailed from his left ear, and his breathing came in shallow, rattling gasps that made his chest shudder.
He looked like he had been put through a meat grinder and spat back out by the abyss.
Slowly, heavily, the silence stretched on .
Valerius was the first to move . He stepped forward, his heavy boots crunching softly on the gravel, the figure blurred and materialized in front of Morgan's limp body a moment later.
He looked down at the broken young man.
