The electricity hanging off of Sister Cross’ fingers vanished as she brought her hands up to her mouth. Her fingers pried at the liquid clinging to her face.
As Sister Cross’ ungainly fingernails started to dig their way into the seams between her lips and the blood, Eva dug the blood
Finding her efforts stifled, she tried a similar tactic at the blood blocking her nose.
This time, Eva unblocked a single nostril.
Sister Cross drew in a deep breath as fast as she could with only half a nose.
The moment she finished inhaling, Eva blocked it again.
“Now,” Eva said, “you–”
A lightning bolt hit Eva in the hip, spinning her around and knocking her to the ground.
Eva’s efforts to get up were interrupted by a weight landing on her back. A punch against the back of her head had her eating dirt.
“Killing me won’t make it stop,” Eva groaned out as she spat out a mouthful of grass. “Even if you cut an air-hole in your throat, you won’t see Shalise again without me.”
The pressure on her back increased, but there was no actual attack. Through her blood sight, Eva could see the woman’s heart beating faster as she attempted to heave in more air.
“If you get off of me right now,
That only sent a jolt of pain through Eva’s body. Taking a look at her own body through her blood sight revealed quite the disaster around her midsection. About an inch of meat was missing entirely from the edge of her hip inwards. Based on how the blood was flowing, part of the bone was missing as well as some of the carapace from her legs.
Not a good sight to see. Too big of an injury to heal away as she often did with smaller cuts. Warm blood was pooling on the forest floor, soaking into her clothes, and smearing over Sister Cross’ thighs.
It took almost a full five minutes before Sister Cross finally got off of Eva. It was less ‘got off’ and more like she slumped off to one side, but the end effect was the same.
Gritting her teeth in preparation for the pain, Eva withdrew her dagger and jammed it into her side. She carefully kept herself from bleeding out using her control over her own blood. A small portion flew over to reinforce the blood around Sister Cross’ mouth.
Though the nun didn’t need it. Her eyes were closed and her heart rate, while still elevated, had dropped.
Eva moved the blood from her nose. It hung off of her face like a mustache, but cleared her nose entirely.
After a heart-wrenching moment of fear that she would have to perform mouth-to-mouth on the woman just to get her breathing again, Sister Cross’ body took over with a sudden lurch of fresh air.
With a small sigh of relief, Eva kept a careful eye on the woman. No sign of her being conscious surfaced. If she was awake, she was doing a very good job of playing possum.
Unfortunately, if she was unconscious, that left an injured Eva with a full-grown woman to lug around.
And she was injured in both her hand and her waist.
For the moment, Eva tended to herself. She couldn’t do much about the missing bone, but she could at least complete her veins and arteries with hardened blood so as to keep her from bleeding out if she let her concentration slip.
It took more than a few minutes of strengthening the passageways to her satisfaction. They needed to be able to survive a moderate jostle while still being flexible enough to move in. As it was, she would have to keep her hip straightened out for the most part.
Fixing her blood vessels did nothing for the pain.
Still, with as much self-maintenance as she could do completed, Eva turned to the probably unconscious nun.
“Now,” Eva said to herself through grit teeth, “what do we do with you?”
After a few minutes of deliberation, Eva made her decision. She propped up the nun, slung an arm around her shoulder, and started dragging.
Every so often, Eva suffered through the debilitating headache and lurch of the world as her teleport failed. It wasn’t quite so bad on repeated attempts as it had been the first time. Either the wards were weakening with distance or with the brute force of her teleport attempts.
Ten minutes into dragging Sister Cross through the woods and Eva was starting to get nervous. The nun’s heart rate and breathing showed signs of her waking up. She still hadn’t moved significantly on her own, but she could wake up at any moment.
Eva’s next teleport attempt nearly got through the barrier. She could feel it; both in that it caused very little mental pain and that it tainted the air around her with the pungent scent of brimstone.
She lugged Sister Cross’ unconscious carcass another ten feet, built up her magic, and teleported.
