It says something about John Gaius, that he reaches this sudden impasse of gore and relaxes like he's just come home. There is a sudden release of tension in his shoulders, in that first blind moment he realizes he stands before the dead.

It's only the thing behind them— the realization that the greater shape of the monster is here, fully instantiated— that quiets him into something else, worry and something like reverence scrunching his brow. He reaches up to wipe a speckle of stinging Vileblood from his cheek with the back of a wrist.

"Even me," he agrees, and while it's meant to sound rueful, it's not meant to sound so nakedly exhausted. "It's a real party, apparently."

He steps forward, the whole of his attention upon the feathered horror behind the corpses.

"You too, huh."