Art of Flesh and Flame
Twenty First Day of the Eleventh Month 293 AC
Although Elaheh Marita was no stranger to heat, it was the stale dry heat of Heaven's Shore, pungent with the scent of brimstone that wafted from the bodies of devils, both living and dead, to seep into the ancient stones, not the yeasty humid miasma that hung low beneath the green leaves of Gogossos. Three sets of tracheal membranes opened in pleasure at the sensation as she stretched, rising from her night's meditations. Something made a strange wet creak...
Damn, that joint needs some work, it's not supposed to pivot that way... though hmm maybe it could... perhaps with mithral now that I have a steady supply.
With such thoughts of self-improvement merrily humming at the back of her mind, the flesh-smith glided through her foyer, taking a moment to admire the mural of local serpentine art depicting twin nagas being born from the same egg coiling and twisting, almost but not quite one. No matter how many times one looked upon the work, it was impossible to tell if they were fighting or mating, dancing or spell-weaving. So it was with spirit and with flesh, ever-turned against itself in the ultimate goal of self-perfection, pain and pleasure both but steps upon the path. Elaheh had been tempted to include a plaque of some sort under it about the Quest for Knowledge and Self-Perfection, but she could not bring herself to be so gauche as to explain art.
Even if so few of her guests and patrons took the time to gaze upon the mural, eyes lingering instead upon the various anatomical and arcane plaques framed between the coils: metal sutures and infusions of stone, living flame poured into veins, and delicate spores re-molding flesh. Perhaps they were simply fascinated by the surfeit of noble metals, given their relative scarcity and use as a medium of exchange.
You are overthinking it again, Elaheh, the Apostle of Chains shook her head with an accompaniment of pleasantly musical clinks. They are just being practical. Not every customer is going to be looking into the art of change from the start.
Some just want a metal hand the better to slice the grasping vines from around their throats even where air-slits would be the more elegant solution.
Thankfully, there were some whose eyes were slowly opening to the beauty of the ever-changing form, the ones most ill at ease with the bodies that fickle chance had bestowed upon them, like Gretel whose form was already enhanced with the exotic energies of the Far Realm, but who so disliked their manifestation, or Vaelor and his desire to transcend the common phenotype of the Dragon-blooded. He had been disappointed when Elaheh explained that she would not work with draconic flesh lest the Lord of the Land take it ill, but the leaf-wings served him well, and the way they flushed red with blood when he was in the throes of strong emotion certainly hinted at his heritage.
Perhaps a bit of fire would not go amiss to add the the effect...
The thought cut off abruptly as she had to swerve aside to avoid a pair a Ledge Runners carrying another of their kind between them, rushing to the healer. From the rhythm of the spasms it was likely a neurotoxin of some sort.
Would he be willing to share the experience once he was capable of speaking again? The flesh-crafter wondered. The sheer variety of fascinating substances to be found in the southern jungles had been one of the reasons she had chosen to settle here rather than in Sorcerer's Deep, the heart of the growing realm, at least for the moment, or in Lys near the other more limited flesh-forge.
It would have been practically impossible to enact her current royal commission there. The adamant bones of the Hadhayosh had to be independently forged by azer mage-smiths and carved with runes of fire using awls dipped in devil's blood then blessed by priests of the Serpent God to remove unwanted affinity, before one could even begin growing the flesh, from a basis of ember lichen. Even better, the sheer scope of the forge's facilities meant that one could, to a degree, automate the process of cultivating the correct strain, leaving Elaheh with enough time on her hands to tinker.
So it was that that when she approached the Garden of Renewal, where convalescent patients and newborn creations lingered for observation, she was able to ask complex questions about range of motion, balance, and even elemental attunement which would have been difficult or impossible to answer with the bull's original primal awareness. It had not even been necessary to increase the size of the brain case, merely to allow neural tissue to colonize the inside of its horns. A pity Tanura was not interested in further enhancements for the moment.
Reforging the Brass Bull Progress 12/12: Complete
Hadhayosh Intelligence Heightened: +5 INT (Total 8)
"Plenty of new things to see and to do in this new world without trying to figure out lightning horns, with me a creature of fire," the flame-bull had proclaimed and no amount of explications about volcanic lightning had been enough to sway him, but Elaheh did not regret the attempt. It had been fascinating to converse with a mind so ancient yet so new.
OOC: I'm going to need a vote on where you guys want to ask Tanura to go. He's a little adrift right now since it has been so long since he was free and the enhancements to his intelligence have made for quite a shift in perspective. Not yet edited. 
