>>5215829>19…IT is a labour which takes all your energy—all of the energy of EVERY Reptilian in attendance, and which commands all of Henzlr’s remotely-accessed intelligence and focus. She barks commands at you with fierceness that, conveyed to the Fleshweavers, makes even these noble beings flinch and jump to attention. The Dragonborn roars and shakes, lashing out only to be restrained by tightening of skin and ligaments, binding of bone…
And then the real work begins.
You had perhaps imagined a labour of one night, but how could it be? The Great Green Dragon’s warped and deformed progeny was the product of DECADES of Henzler’s research and labour. Even with the breakthrough which your genetics provided her, even with the distinct traditions and separate studies of seven Serpent priests to aid the two of you, even with Irinnile helping to calm and reshape the self-perception of the twisted soul trapped in the deformed body before you, it take you the better part of a WEEK of such nights to fix the damage done…
>and 20!But you do it. You cut away shrunken and misshapen arm, reopen cauterized wing-stump, snap and mend neck and spine, remould muscles. You stroke the Dragonborn’s long face, comforting him even as you reshape his misaligned jaw and sooth out tumorous flesh where you find it. You BLEED for this enterprise, sacrificing buckets of your own blood to be pumped into or slathered onto the Dragonborn, and magically woven into his flesh.
“And it is working?” Alhazred asked of you, once, when you stopped your great labour to eat and to drink, by chance even to rest.
You could only nod.
In the mess hall, your red cloak—worn openly, with the blessing of ever-more-impressed Fleshweavers, frightened away even the boldest bullies. You sense even now that Alhazred has come to regard you with a startlement, a disbelief, an abject AWE which eclipses his jealousy.
By the end of that week, the Dragonborn is just as great a Greeat One… But he now can stand straight, and tall. He does not go about on all fours like his forebear, for your blood courses through him, and human (and ‘humanoid’ Reptilian) blood and flesh has shored up his weaknesses and replaced his lesser, animalistic portions. No, he stands twenty, twenty-five feet tall, man-like, unhunched, TITANIC. His arms are equal now, his wings an eclipse of the light wherever he spreads them—shockingly similar to Irinnile’s. His horns, too, curl with demonic influence, like that of a ram. His splotched scales are not an iridescent, jade-and-emerald milieu… Except around his chest, his armpits, his groan, where they carry your mother’s brassy hue.
