The noises Joy is able to muster in her outrage would make the whirling seagulls above sick with envy if they weren't shunning the welter of Corruption that she has slicked this patch of the beach in. She scrapes at her eyes and spits hot, gritty gobs of muck from her unfortunately open mouth as she stumbles backwards, and in a further indignity that causes her to shriek like metal being twisted, she trips.

She never trips. Her cavalier's grace married to her necromancer's art always catches her, her balance as perfected as anyone's balance can be, and she trips to land flat on her sacred cheeks anyway.

No one has ever said the Saint of Joy wasn't petty. She kicks out, sightless but not needing it to guide her towards the lovely curve of his liver, and when her heel connects she triggers an impulsive, furious cascade of synthesis and dumping into the bloodstream, a convulsive surge of activity that will cramp and burn and scour him with the worst hangover she can manufacture on short notice.