Shaula observes near the stairwell entrance as the air in the hallway is collected towards a point just above the tip of the man's staff. Naturally, the flames flow towards that point as well but without materials to combust with, namely the material making up the walls, they dissipate almost instantly.

A core of bright light is collected and concentrated over a period of forty seconds. Once the light wanes, a light gray ball of air remains at the tip of the staff, both pressurized air and smoke mixed together. The burly man whistles at the sight of the spinning ball. Magic is always so interesting. The mage clears his throat.

"I can't really do anything to this ball of air with the mana I have left, so just prepare for the sudden wind pressure! I’m letting go now!" He strains.

In one second, the mage releases the air spell and is blown back into the arms of his coworker. A wave of air passes out through the hallway in a brief instant of cyclone-like force.

The mage breathes heavily while his coworker prevents him from falling over. All of the flames in the hallway are gone without a trace. The walls are charred and there seems to be a great deal of (at least) superficial damage, but the two men don't have the expertise to figure out the extent of it. That's something they'll have to talk to the building's owner about.

"Good work. But, I think we have another problem…" The large man tells his companion while blankly staring at a gruesome sight in the middle of the hallway.

The mage lifts his head while still breathing heavily before his breath gets caught in his throat. He sees the body of a human man who was maimed and tormented prior to his demise.

"Oh my god…" The mage wants to vomit, but he stops himself. His friend is less offended by the sight. He is, however, wary of his surroundings.

"The loud girl… Did you see anything through all that fire and smoke? Even a face?" He asks.

"No, no, it wasn't even the fire and smoke, it was the goggles. I mean, I'm glad I'm not blinded by the fires, but fuck, we just… we basically missed a real fucked up murderer, didn't we… A serial killer? Or was this a hit?"

"I'm gonna carry you out of here and downstairs. We have to report this to the owner. He'll know how to handle this."

"...I don't know if that's the right thing to do. Knowing him, he'll try to cover it all up. He wouldn't want a record of a murder on his property, the values would go down."

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The larger man scoffs.

"What a fucking idiot, doesn't he know which part of the city this shit hole is in? With all the mongrels around here, what does he care about property values?"

"Tch. Come on, come on, be civil. Still… Whatever, I'm not going to get fired. Let's go talk to him about it."

While the two men figure out how to handle this situation, Shaula is already long gone. Without much issue, she flees the scene. All she has to do right now is find a safe place for Ajax to properly heal. The only place she can think to go are the abandoned slums.

She sticks to the darker alleyways and is luckily hidden under the cover of night. There were some who saw her carrying a headless corpse and a head, but rather than do anything about her, they simply minded their own business. It was one of the benefits of living in a less well-off neighborhood of this corrupt city.

Or perhaps they were intimidated by the girl who could run around without a care while holding a full-grown headless man as if he were a soft pillow.

Eventually, she and Ajax find their way to the slums. She goes into one of the buildings and places his headless body onto the floor while keeping his head in her arms. She's going to have to find a way to deal with the body. She still has use of it and burying it would take a lot of time.

She could find some needle and thread to reattach his head to his body. But, the more she thinks about it, she has no idea how to properly do that kind of surgery. She looks at Ajax’s head and can see that it has already regenerated more of his neck. As a result, the connection between his head and the neck of his body looks asymmetrical and improper.

This isn’t like reattaching a finger or something, and by the time she could scrounge up some thread and needle by leaving the slums to look for it, his head will have grown back more of its neck. So rather than waste time on that, she does the simpler thing. She holds his head over the neck stump of his body, pushing and aligning them into their proper connection.

So long as the flesh of Ajax’s head is connected to the flesh of his neck at the right alignment, the result should be, ideally, some sort of magically empowered reattachment. Hopefully. All she has to do is wait for the flesh to knit together or melt together or whatever it normally does.

After all, neither Ajax nor she have experimented with reattaching disconnected body parts back to their main bodies. They’ve always regenerated fast enough that it was never a viable option.

So, Shaula waits while holding Ajax’s head firmly to his body. She is careful not to move it out of place, push the connection too hard, or otherwise do anything that would jeopardize the reattachment. She waits perfectly still in position for about fifteen minutes before her worries are confirmed.

Rather than reattaching himself to his lower body during the past fifteen minutes, Ajax’s head regrows more of his neck. Shaula sighs. Maybe it would simply be wasting more time, but she should confirm whether this option is still a waste of time. As a result, she waits another half hour while unmoving and positioned properly

While she waits, she can feel Ajax’s head and body ever so slowly become more and more mismatched due to how his head is trying to regenerate an entire body rather than reconnect to a (relatively) good, actually existing body. It’s frustrating that this is how their powers work, yet being able to regenerate a lower body is more than she could ever reasonably ask for as a human being.