"I know the feeling," she responds to Jade, as she takes a position to start lifting with her legs. "At times like this, I would gladly trade your blood magic for my cognitive..."

But she's not helpless. Not merely because she's in outstanding physical shape, either — but because of her secondary magic, which she's charged up in fighting off earlier monsters, and which now tingles and burns as it pulses through her muscle tissue and reinforces it.

Perhaps there's similar ways in which blood magic can be applied. Something to talk about when this is all over.

"On your signal, we lift."