(Scars do not appear to be cause of death –shock ... - Bad Request

wreath, slowly burning the last remnants of flesh from it, like a sculptor
working clay, until only the fused bone was left. He gave a long, low hssssss
and then flung his 'creation' back to me; I managed to catch it in my
remaining hand. The flesh of my severed hand was re-knitting itself, slowly,
painfully... it looked like it was regrowing.
"What did... you do..." I mewled to myself. The hand looked like it was truly
dead: the flesh had been scoured clean, leaving only stark white bones
behind dusted gray with ash. Though the tendons and ligaments were gone,
the bones of the hand had been fused together in the heat. Something
about it, though, seemed to pulse with an inner light like the lurid yellow
heart of a dying coal, glowing beneath an ash-gray carapace.
It took a little doing to reattach the hand, some wiggling and pushing to get
the heat-warped bones to fit back into the joints. I sighed then, leaning back
as the regenerating flesh crawled along the enchanted bone like lichen
populating new rock. When the joints began to loosen I knew I had learned
more of the Art.
"I... wish... to learn... more..."
"Ssssss..." Ignus hurled himself into the air, leaving a hissing flame trail as he
rises. "No more! Piecesssss of sssself are burnnned away... sssss... Ignusss...
yet no more of ssssharing will Ignusss teach..."
"You need pieces of me in order to teach me? What about my eyeball?" I
pointed to the eye I had removed and replaced earlier.
Ignus lashed out again, his finger like a spear... but he didn't strike for the
eye that I pointed to; instead, he impaled my OTHER eye. There was no pain
for a moment, only surprise, then I screamed as Ignus let lose a stream of
flames into my socket. It seemed to eat into my skull and boil my brains...
the hiss of burning flesh filled my nostrils and smoke clouded my vision...
I forced my eyes open through my bloodied vision - yet only ONE eye
opened - I could barely make out Ignus, hovering in the air in front of me, his
hands cupping a small orb of flame in his hands - my eye, seemingly
untouched by the heat. As I watched, his hands covered the pearly orb,
flecked with blood, and I felt a second burning pain in my eye socket in
sympathy to the one he held in his hands...
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