Lucky he kept moving; lucky his blood makes his reaction time even faster than he has, as yet, even begun to understand —
And it's still something of a close call.
If this were Mercymorn she was facing down, it would almost inevitably have been the kidneys that Joy would have targeted — wherever they might have migrated to; she would have found them, easily enough, because they were her favorite means of turning off anyone God would have complained about her killing —
Augustine is a spirit generalist, not an anatomist. He's not anything close to as combat-focused as the Second House, in his specialties — but he hasn't been on the front lines of a five-thousand-plus-year-old war the whole damnable time and not learned a few good tricks for shutting down an opponent fast.
The soul longs for the body; the body longs for the soul — and fucking John fucking Gaius, going around acting like his name is every bit as much of a divine and forgotten secret here as in the Nine Houses, is not the only one capable of yanking someone's soul (most of the way) out of their body without a bloody word of warning.
He isn't putting her soul anywhere else — not jamming it into the River to get an extra battery charge, since it isn't like he needs it and also isn't like the River is where it should be, here in Trench; not breaking off pieces to stash in other bodies, like he remembers doing (like he's never done) in Nephele-that-Wasn't, to make the dead rise again — no, it's a lot more like what John did to him when he first arrived on the Farthest Shores and God didn't feel like indulging his tentacle kink when they could continue a religious debate instead.
Calling it painful is both an understatement and misses the point; a body without a soul is just a corpse, after all. The shock of becoming 95% corpse for about five seconds, and then being snapped back to life, is also the sort of psychosomatic shock that tends to result in self-protective unconsciousness.
Something of a problem for someone springing at high velocity (and low accuracy) into a bunch of tree branches, yes, but all things considered, Augustine's only going so far as to make sure she doesn't end up with any permanent injuries to skull or spine.
"Any time now, John," he mutters, finally drawing his rapier. Just in case.
But:
Nope.
No John — unsurprising, it isn't like Alfred's even had long enough to get his attention, necessarily, much less explain what the hell is going on, or where; the girl-turned-monster, or whatever is going on with her, does indeed seem to be out as cold as he could like. Good. Well. Probably he can actually sheathe his rapier again after all, then; he does, too cautious about the claws and fangs and rotten-flower scent of that vile blood on her neck to feel foolish about it.
He turns his attention to the Beast that had had her attention, and — it's still dressed in a scrap of tunic, only moderately bloodstained, and some of that blood even seems to be human, to his senses. Easy enough for him to dissolve it into its constituent atoms, accelerating entropy in every Beasthood-infected cell, until there's nothing but powdered ash (and if this still adds to the blood pollution endemic around all of Trench, well, he can't tell, and wonders if maybe it doesn't, if nothing liquid spills into the earth) and dust and a scrap of, well, less-stained tunic.
Given that he promptly wraps it around her neck and head and arms, the better to contain her if necessary and keep any of her Vileblood from damaging his clothing — or him — well, the fact it's only less stained and not unstained might be incredibly gross, if she does wake up while still swaddled in it.
Then again, given the rest of the hog-tying and hoisting-over-his-shoulder to haul her back to God, maybe waking up in someone else's nasty shirt is the least of her concerns.
«What? Oh! There you are, just ahead — we're almost to you,» Alfred tells him, somewhere between fretful and relieved (and maybe a little bit horrified that he wasn't there, to protect Augustine, when she sprang at him).
no subject
Lucky he kept moving; lucky his blood makes his reaction time even faster than he has, as yet, even begun to understand —
And it's still something of a close call.
If this were Mercymorn she was facing down, it would almost inevitably have been the kidneys that Joy would have targeted — wherever they might have migrated to; she would have found them, easily enough, because they were her favorite means of turning off anyone God would have complained about her killing —
Augustine is a spirit generalist, not an anatomist. He's not anything close to as combat-focused as the Second House, in his specialties — but he hasn't been on the front lines of a five-thousand-plus-year-old war the whole damnable time and not learned a few good tricks for shutting down an opponent fast.
The soul longs for the body; the body longs for the soul — and fucking John fucking Gaius, going around acting like his name is every bit as much of a divine and forgotten secret here as in the Nine Houses, is not the only one capable of yanking someone's soul (most of the way) out of their body without a bloody word of warning.
He isn't putting her soul anywhere else — not jamming it into the River to get an extra battery charge, since it isn't like he needs it and also isn't like the River is where it should be, here in Trench; not breaking off pieces to stash in other bodies, like he remembers doing (like he's never done) in Nephele-that-Wasn't, to make the dead rise again — no, it's a lot more like what John did to him when he first arrived on the Farthest Shores and God didn't feel like indulging his tentacle kink when they could continue a religious debate instead.
Calling it painful is both an understatement and misses the point; a body without a soul is just a corpse, after all. The shock of becoming 95% corpse for about five seconds, and then being snapped back to life, is also the sort of psychosomatic shock that tends to result in self-protective unconsciousness.
Something of a problem for someone springing at high velocity (and low accuracy) into a bunch of tree branches, yes, but all things considered, Augustine's only going so far as to make sure she doesn't end up with any permanent injuries to skull or spine.
"Any time now, John," he mutters, finally drawing his rapier. Just in case.
But:
Nope.
No John — unsurprising, it isn't like Alfred's even had long enough to get his attention, necessarily, much less explain what the hell is going on, or where; the girl-turned-monster, or whatever is going on with her, does indeed seem to be out as cold as he could like. Good. Well. Probably he can actually sheathe his rapier again after all, then; he does, too cautious about the claws and fangs and rotten-flower scent of that vile blood on her neck to feel foolish about it.
He turns his attention to the Beast that had had her attention, and — it's still dressed in a scrap of tunic, only moderately bloodstained, and some of that blood even seems to be human, to his senses. Easy enough for him to dissolve it into its constituent atoms, accelerating entropy in every Beasthood-infected cell, until there's nothing but powdered ash (and if this still adds to the blood pollution endemic around all of Trench, well, he can't tell, and wonders if maybe it doesn't, if nothing liquid spills into the earth) and dust and a scrap of, well, less-stained tunic.
Given that he promptly wraps it around her neck and head and arms, the better to contain her if necessary and keep any of her Vileblood from damaging his clothing — or him — well, the fact it's only less stained and not unstained might be incredibly gross, if she does wake up while still swaddled in it.
Then again, given the rest of the hog-tying and hoisting-over-his-shoulder to haul her back to God, maybe waking up in someone else's nasty shirt is the least of her concerns.
«What? Oh! There you are, just ahead — we're almost to you,» Alfred tells him, somewhere between fretful and relieved (and maybe a little bit horrified that he wasn't there, to protect Augustine, when she sprang at him).