Growing Flesh [9/2] Heart Dev

[00:43] Ardith watches the two from her notes, observing them tinkering as she sets up her workspace. She watches Loretta, she watches Lam work their fingers to the bone alongside her. The finish line is near.

As the metal cools she continues to make sure all her goods are in place, in reach. The work must be swift and precise.

No pressure. It's only her husband's life on the line, her greatest light and joy in this world.

Yeah. No pressure.

"...The two of ya can rest some. I'm sorry to work ya so hard...but it's almost through. Take cots if ya need 'em."
(Ardith Hirai)
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[00:50] Laddie blinks.
(Laddie)
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[00:51] Ardith Hirai says, "..."
[00:51] Ardith Hirai says, "Can't say I was expectin' guests..."
[00:53] Laddie shrugs.
(Laddie)
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[00:53] Ardith Hirai asks, "...Can I help ya?"
[00:53] Rest.
That's certainly a word.

"I don't think I have the choice to get up and move right now. The ceiling's spinning, a little bit."

She rolls as far away from the forge area as possible, thumping against the side of the table, and resting with her face against the floor. This is fine.

"Just, uh... fit, the pieces together. I can seal it all shut - the, Illyothium doesn't need me to bond it especially, or anything."
(Lam)
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[00:53] Ardith Hirai says, "We're a lil' busy."
[00:54] Laddie shakes his head. He waves and walks away!
(Laddie)
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[00:58] It's all come down to this. The last fateful steps in a race against time, against fate, to heal the man who's passing left a void in her life. She steps up to the plate- there is nothing else to do for it. Anything less is to stand idle and let cruel fortune take control for her.

Never.

The runes have all been lined up, prepared, along with her special bottles of ink. The sample of muscle from Elyon, his twin, waits nearby in the jar. If she botches this she'll never live it down. Not now. Not ever.

Once the slices of Illyothim cool she takes them, one by one, and lays the sheets into the casing's interior. She pilfers some of the exhausted Lam's tools to press it into all the nooks and crevices of the prosthetic. No surface goes uncovered in the sheets of exotic green.

With the interior of the casing lined with Illyothium she begins to draw the runes onto the malleable, mystical metal. They take to the ink well, which she was sure to test before hand. If it's beneath the flesh, and the blood, there will be no risk of poison running through his system. These things have been calculated and accounted for. Given the short time they've worked in, so much has been done and so many facets considered.

Ardith draws the curving lines, the jagged edges, and sets the twin runestones into place in their designated circles. The Illyothium accepts them without even any prompting- they are Illyothian in design, after all, retrieved from deep caverns and meant for her own use. But right now her own use can wait. She can't even consider it.

The metal eats away at them, absorbing them until only their surface is barely clear beneath a thin veneer of the alien mineral. Then the drawing out of the accessory runes continues. Runes to control the electrical impulses in the prosthetic and the flesh to be, to regulate the flow of blood, to create energy into movement. Ardith has her prodigious set of notes to consult in the mater and all the work done upon the other iterations of the prototypes.

It's a labor of love she undertakes, in the most literal sense of the word.

Next...the jar. The muscle tissue that's been waiting since it had been carved from Elyon's chest. With a pair of forceps she takes it from the glass container and lays it neatly across the Illyothium lined interior.

Nothing happens, except for the latent properties of the metal trying to fuse with the flesh on initial response. It needs a push, a spark, and Ardith has just the spark to ignite that fuse and power the runes beneath it.

The pact ring on her hand, the mana in her circuits that responds so famously well. It's worked in all her other studies on mutations. Here should be no different. With a pulse of energy she passes her gnarled hand and its embedded spireshard jewelry over the symbols.

Beneath the green metal there's a dull glow. The flesh fuses fully into the prosthetic's interior, guided by the symbols she'd drawn and the natural properties of Illyothium. It pulses and throbs as it spreads to follow the written instructions in their native tongue, growth and change fueled not only by the stones themselves but by the energy of her pacting ring.
(Ardith Hirai)