Page 185 of A Soul to Touch

Whenever she’d seen Faunus heal, it’d always been in a matter of seconds. This took far longer.

His skull began to lift as a body rose underneath it, and her lips parted as they curled.

“It worked,” she gasped, her smile growing. She even laughed as she bounced on her feet with fists clenched. “It fucking worked! I can’t believe it!”

Eventually, he towered over her as that familiar, soft glossy fur began to grow. Claws tipped his human-like hands and feline-pawed feet just as his tail swished to the side.

Faunus turned his head down to her once the sands began to fade, showing her the process was nearing completion. Her heart was almost bashfully stammering in her chest.

Mayumi stepped forward with her hand reaching up, waiting for the last piece of him to form. She continued to smile at his empty, shadowed eye sockets.

“Show me those pretty yellow glowing orbs of yours.”

He cocked his head, hearing her before he leaned forward while sniffing only inches from her fingertips. She could feel his warm breath dancing over them, could smell his mind-tingling lemongrass and lime scent.

I wonder if I’ll be able to touch his face freely from now on.

The roar that followed his parting fangs was beastly, inhuman, and the wrongness of it sent her blood-curdling.

His orbs never formed, even when he lowered himself onto all fours and sprinted for her. With her eyes wide, a gasp tore from her and she dived to the side just in time to avoid being clawed.

She rolled before getting to her feet in a crouched position with one hand on the ground. Faunus turned, a constant snarl emitting from him. His body was tense, his fur and spikes puffing higher than she’d ever seen them go before.

Something’s wrong.

He shot for her again, and Mayumi dived between his arms to avoid him and slid against the snow, having nowhere else to go. When she was back to her crouched position, she unhooked and pulled her whip into her free hand.

She started to back up, her hand rising from the ground. “Faunus, it’s me.”

His fangs clinked and clacked as he opened and closed them, his orbless head shaking one way and then the other. When he roared once more and sprinted in her direction, Mayumi ran.

Whatever she’d brought back, it was no longer her sweet, funny Duskwalker. And it was gaining on her.

When he was right behind her, she turned, flicked her whip forward, and caught it around his snout to close it. The horns on his head rammed into her when she jumped, and Mayumi found herself flipping through the air until she was behind him.

A wheeze was torn from her when she hit the ground.

Then she was dragged as he ran around sporadically, trying to remove her whip from his face. With grunting groans comingfrom her, she climbed the line until she could grab a fistful of fur on his behind.

Faunus bucked to remove her.

She held strong, even when he then began bashing the side of his body against tree trunks. He turned his head, so it was facing down his back, and she stayed out of reach of his quickly swiping claws.

There was only one thing she could do if she didn’t want to die. She let go at the last second when he was close to one of the thickest trees surrounding her home and threw herself to the other side.

She slipped when he kept going forward but managed to coil the whip around itself and lock him to the tree.

It groaned and creaked against the strength of this mindless, crazed Duskwalker. She let the whip go with her hands ready to grab it, assessing if it would hold long enough for her to do what she needed to next.

Her heart was racing and threatening to come up her throat. Her lungs were sawing in and out of her like she’d swallowed a hacksaw and was being severed by the very blade.

She waited with her hands out, and it held.

Mayumi unlooped her enchanted roped, braved the possibly Demon-filled forest, and threaded the rope around a tight collection of three trees, looping the rope together so it was stronger. She tied the other end into a lasso and waited for the open opportunity to catch it around his throat.

She failed the first three times, Faunus moving so wildly and erratically that it was nearly impossible to predict where he would go.

On the fourth try, she climbed up the side of one of the three trees. She only managed to get it around his neck because she jumped onto his back from a low hanging branch and threaded it around him from behind. He reared back on his paws.

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