Fisher Gesha let out a breath. “Good. Now, normally we would add scripts at this point, but it will be attached to your body. Your own spirit will do the maintenance, protecting it from decay. It seems stable, but for a while you'll have to...prepare for...”

Her words drifted off as she watched the arm.

Lindon was staring at it too.

It had gone wild, twisting and writhing as it pushed its hand at the edge of the boundary field. He could almost hear a snarling in his head, as it sought to devour...something.

An instant later, the boundary field vanished.

The hand lunged for Lindon's head. No...not for his head. The link he shared with the arm gave him an instinctive understanding, and rather than ducking, he threw himself to the side.

It wasn't after him. It was after the Sylvan Riverseed.

Little Blue scurried down the side of his head, hiding in his robe, peeking her sapphire head out of his collar and trembling. Lindon reached out with his power again, but the arm wouldn't respond to him anymore. All he could sense from it was a boundless hunger.

“What now?” he asked, his voice creaking from disuse.

“It's out of control,” Gesha said sourly, pulling the goldsteel hook from her back. Sharp on the inside and as big as her torso, it was more of a sickle than a hook, and it gleamed white in the light of the room. “This is why you don't use unique parts, hm? Something goes wrong, and you can't learn from it and try again. You have to give up all your wasted time.”

She stepped forward, preparing to swing her weapon, but the arm was still scurrying across the floor on its fingertips. Toward Lindon.

Lindon kept his attention on the limb. There had to be something he could do to salvage this—it would be a waste of not only irreplaceable materials, but also far too much time. And a unique opportunity.

He held out a hand to Fisher Gesha, begging for restraint, even as he studied the arm. What he called hunger wasn't just that. It felt similar to hunger, but it was more textured, with deeper layers. He felt ambition, greed, gluttony, an endless desire to reach for more and more.

The hand lunged at him, but he caught it by the wrist. It burned his palm, as though he'd grabbed onto solid ice, but he kept his attention on it.

Without context, the arm was out of control. It needed a mind to control it. A will to keep it in check.

And it fit him. There was a little of this hunger in him already.

He focused on that, stoking his desire for power, the feelings of envy and awe he'd felt when Suriel had demonstrated absolute authority, the aching helplessness of living as Unsouled and his desire to get stronger. As strong as he could.

The arm stiffened, like a dog catching a new scent.

Lindon threw more at it. His feelings as he looked over the Heaven's Glory School's treasures: he wanted it all, but even that wouldn't be enough. He remembered the sensation of Blackflame, the desire of a dragon to conquer and to destroy.

Then he shoved the end of the arm onto his stump.

The construct didn't resist him, but pain blacked out his memory for a moment. When he came back to himself, he was on the floor, his back propped up against a cool wall. Fisher Gesha was muttering, her hook on the ground next to her, holding her wrinkled hands over his elbow.

Where flesh met pure white madra.

“Dangerous,” she muttered. “Too dangerous. Could have devoured you, you know that? Hm? And you made me Forge it on, so that will hurt your compatibility. An impulsive Soulsmith is a dead Soulsmith, I can say that much for certain.”

He forced a smile. “Forgiveness, and thank you. I can only tell you that I thought it would work. I felt...like it would,” he finished, though it sounded limp when he put it that way.

She grunted and thwacked him on the forehead with her knuckles. “You have to stay open to your instincts when you're Forging a construct. That's important. But don't go sticking things on your body just because you feel like it, hm?”

Full of expectation, Lindon flexed his new white arm.

It twisted backwards, fingers twitching, reaching for Fisher Gesha's face.

She stepped back, sighing. “It will take you some time to adjust so that you can control it naturally. Scripts could speed the process up, but they would eventually restrict you, so it's better to adapt over time.”

Lindon nodded, focusing on his spirit. The arm's madra wasn't flowing into his body, but his power was flowing into it, and it was quite a burden. It took more madra to maintain his arm than to Enforce the rest of his body together.

“Don't try to use the binding yet,” she warned him, sticking a finger in his face. “Lindon? I could not be more serious. Your madra channels are having enough trouble with the load of a Remnant's arm. If you try to use the binding, your spirit might tear itself apart. You have to get used to your new arm, and preferably strengthen your channels, yes? You should really wait as long as possible before you try to use the technique. At least four to six weeks.”

Lindon nodded attentively, but his mind was focused on controlling his new arm. Finally, he got it to run its white fingers over the floor.

Sensation was...odd, through the new limb...as though the arm were talking directly to his brain and spirit instead of his body. Like he knew the floor was rough and cold, rather than feeling it as he would through a hand of flesh and blood.

But at least he could tell if something was hot or cold, smooth or rough. He would take it.

Forcing the arm to move as he wanted it to was stressing his spirit, and Little Blue seemed to react to that. She reached up from his collar, slapping her tiny hand on his chin. A cold spark traveled through him, soothing his channels and giving relief to his spirit. When the spark reached his arm, it shuddered and stilled for a moment.

“That's better, thank you,” he said, smiling down at little blue. She dipped her head in respect and then gave him a broad grin. Where had she learned that?

No matter how much trouble it caused him, he had an arm. He could be careful for a few weeks if it meant having two hands again.

He leaned his head back against the wall, exhausted, and met Fisher Gesha's face. She seemed concerned.

“Gratitude, Fisher Gesha. I'm excited to see what I can do with this.”

Gesha watched him quietly for a few seconds before folding her arms and addressing him with the look of a strict grandmother. “What is wrong with you, boy?”

That wasn't the first thing he had expected her to say. “Honored Fisher, I humbly apologize for anything that I—”

“You've been running at a full sprint for more than a year. Well, I guess I can understand it at first, considering your fight with the Jai boy. Afterwards, I thought you'd settle into a routine, hm? No, it's adventure after adventure with you. You're going to burn yourself down to ash if you keep this up.”

Lindon held his hands out in a pacifying gesture, trying to reassure her. Well, he held one hand out. The other squeezed into a fist and shook itself aggressively.

“I have a lot farther to go,” Lindon said reasonably. “If my goal was only Jai Long, then certainly, I could have given up and gone home by now.”

“You think you hike up a mountain by sprinting all the way, do you?” she snapped. “You need a place to rest as much as anyone, if you don't want to crack like bad steel.”