Allistor turned his head toward the titan’s corpse.  It was indeed glowing, indicating he needed to loot it. The foot was only a dozen or so feet away, but there was no way he was getting to his feet.    Michael and Ramon stepped over and touched the corpse, receiving their share of the loot.  Michael’s eyes widened.  “Holy shit.  I got two hundred klax!”

Ramon said, “Yeah, me too.  And something called void crystals.”

Seeing that Allistor was struggling to rise, the two men returned and lifted him up.  Together they carried him over to the corpse and let him touch it with his good hand.  Allistor’s interface filled up again, but he mentally waved away all the notifications.  As they carried him back to the group, he begged, “Please… anyone have any water?  I... got some of that black shit in my mouth.”

“And everywhere else,” Meg added, handing him a water bottle.  “You’re not coming inside like that.  Stink the place up for a week.  We’re going to have to hose you down out here or dunk you in the river or something.” The look on her face spoke volumes.   She included Nancy, Amanda, Ramon and Michael in her condemnation, all of them now slathered in the stuff from helping Allistor.

Allistor emptied the bottle one mouthful at a time, swishing the water around before spitting it out and taking another.  The taste lingered, but he swallowed the last few mouthfuls, needing the water.

After a quick discussion, Ramon and Michael lifted Allistor and carried him toward the tree line.  There was a creek close by that fed into the river.  Nancy and Amanda followed as Lilly took charge of Chloe.

The hundred yards or so they had to walk past the tree line were pure torture for Allistor.  Each jostle sent pain spiking up his arm.  When they reached the creek, the two men just walked right into it, wading out to the center where it was maybe four feet deep.  They lowered Allistor so that his feet touched bottom, and held him steady while the two women scooped up sand from the bottom and scrubbed at him.

When he was reasonably clean, they all moved him to the shallows and left him there as they cleaned themselves.  Allistor dunked his head into the water several times, blinking his eyes and taking in big mouthfuls of water for further rinsing.   Eventually, the smell faded.

When everyone was reasonably clean, they helped Allistor to his feet.  He was feeling stronger now, his body having had some time to recover.  He was able to walk along with them.