"Solus?" Morgan said with a distracted nod as he stepped forward, reaching one hand out to hover half an inch from Goliath's chest.
"Don't worry," he said with a reassuring smile. "Believe it or not, I've actually done this sort of work on a gargoyle before. I lived in a pretty weird place for a while."
All the meridians he expected were in place, along with some extra ones he immediately identified as ones related to the wings, and thus academically interesting but irrelevant for his purposes. He half-lidded his eyes, attention split between his vision and his other senses, then tapped a spot on Goliath's chest a couple of inches to the right of his breastbone. Before the sensation of the tap could fade, he quickly and painlessly inserted the first of his acupuncture needles. It was a diversion from his usual methods, but he figured that a patient not expecting acupuncture needed a little extra buffer of tolerance for the procedure.
So on he went, inserting needles down that line of the body for a foot or so before moving to the other side of his chest to complete the symmetry. Through the acupuncture, he manipulated Goliath's chi -- not a transfusion so much as a hyperacceleration of the gargoyle's natural replenishment of blood, with Morgan's own chi taking the place of the matter and energy Goliath's body ought to need to sustain the pace.
While he had that in hand, he also tweaked the meridians to flush out accumulated waste and toxins from the bloodstream, stabilize his cardiopulmonary functions, and generally clean up the resulting mess.
(Of course, if one really wanted to be technical, all Morgan was actually doing was imposing a reality more to his liking over the one everyone else had agreed on through sheer force of will. Everything else, right down to the underlying philosophy, was just trappings and props. But why overcomplicate by thinking in those terms?)
Satisfied at last with his work, he removed the needles swiftly and surely, replacing them in the acupuncture case, which he then flicked a little tab on the outside of so that a bright-red slash now showed when he closed it. A reminder to disinfect.
"I wouldn't advise donating blood for a couple of days, but I think you can safely be sanguine about your chances," he said wickedly.
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"Don't worry," he said with a reassuring smile. "Believe it or not, I've actually done this sort of work on a gargoyle before. I lived in a pretty weird place for a while."
All the meridians he expected were in place, along with some extra ones he immediately identified as ones related to the wings, and thus academically interesting but irrelevant for his purposes. He half-lidded his eyes, attention split between his vision and his other senses, then tapped a spot on Goliath's chest a couple of inches to the right of his breastbone. Before the sensation of the tap could fade, he quickly and painlessly inserted the first of his acupuncture needles. It was a diversion from his usual methods, but he figured that a patient not expecting acupuncture needed a little extra buffer of tolerance for the procedure.
So on he went, inserting needles down that line of the body for a foot or so before moving to the other side of his chest to complete the symmetry. Through the acupuncture, he manipulated Goliath's chi -- not a transfusion so much as a hyperacceleration of the gargoyle's natural replenishment of blood, with Morgan's own chi taking the place of the matter and energy Goliath's body ought to need to sustain the pace.
While he had that in hand, he also tweaked the meridians to flush out accumulated waste and toxins from the bloodstream, stabilize his cardiopulmonary functions, and generally clean up the resulting mess.
(Of course, if one really wanted to be technical, all Morgan was actually doing was imposing a reality more to his liking over the one everyone else had agreed on through sheer force of will. Everything else, right down to the underlying philosophy, was just trappings and props. But why overcomplicate by thinking in those terms?)
Satisfied at last with his work, he removed the needles swiftly and surely, replacing them in the acupuncture case, which he then flicked a little tab on the outside of so that a bright-red slash now showed when he closed it. A reminder to disinfect.
"I wouldn't advise donating blood for a couple of days, but I think you can safely be sanguine about your chances," he said wickedly.