nihil
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJbqplkBBv8
The hortium swelled and pulsated, a living thing encompassing a small vestibule of the grashal devoted to the shapers of the Legion Yun'Do. The Nuhlrokka landed in a whip of air, kicking the debris of the fields free from their wind rows. Upon it's back, the Warmaster stepped free from the insect and landed upon the ground in a thump. Coiling the Tall-Yor back into it's wrap, he placed it upon the back of the beast and patted a singular time with his left hand. The stump of his right arm, still freshly burned from the cauterization of the Chom-Huun, he felt the phantom tingling of fingers. The pain had subsided, despite his desire to prolong it, as he approached the grashal and entered quietly. He had contacted them ahead of time, through miniature villip, and time had been spent prior to the act in preparation for it's inevitable date. Either way, his footsteps clapped against the mirrored floor of the organic building, as he was greeted by Master Shapers of the Legion.
At one time had thought that the Legion was merely an off shoot of the Hrosha-Gul, a sub set defined by their participation while remaining isolated. But now, staring into the tattooed silence that stared back at his lone crimson eye - these Vong were the next step in evolution, he could feel it. No longer tethered to the notion of pure war and violence, they were a methodical and compromising and capable of seeing the bigger picture. Not like the show he had seen in the grashal far removed from this place, mislead and simple individuals seeking independence for the sake of it without knowing the cost. They were naive, he thought, petulant and incapable of forward facing thought. Hydrastaffs and amphistaffs and couffee were all they knew, yet denied the wash of blood and it's fragrance to their people so vehemently. Mentally shrugging for the willful stubbornness, he nodded to the shapers and they turned from him, silent, as they led him into the hortium. Larger than most, leaders of the warrior caste watched in anticipation as he approached the organic table and laid upon the slab.
Meat already cut and maimed, they would repair the damage done, or complete the ticket. It all depended on how they felt towards him, his life being entirely in their shaper hands now. To elevate or to cast down, it was their choice now. The arm had been developed for this purpose, a mixture of his own DNA and that of the Voxyn. It shook in it's carapace, held for storage for the time and purpose it would now serve. Without looking towards it, he exhaled and looked towards the ceiling, thinking back to this particularly gruesome time in his life, strapped to a leather chair and peeled like an apple, in slow methodical strips. A father then, a father now, always a man respected by the Warmaster for the sacrifices he pulled from a boy so long ago. To get at what was inside, a soul intertwined with another was bent and twisted until it unraveled, fraying at the seams and piled back together in something not remotely resembling what it started as. Countless experiments, countless allotments of pain, to get at the gooey inside. He ticked, a mental shudder, as the cauterized flesh was yanked free, another shaper holding his body still to act as leverage against the tearing free of wounded flesh. The sounds, like the cleaning of fish before cooking, made him unnaturally hungry
More pain! He wouldn't dare presume to order them into any position, they were a caste of their own. He would as soon command an intendants tongue, though he would likely do that even sooner, as his life would rarely hang in the balance over politics so directly. He recalled a moment, the flash of pain as the pressure was relieved and the arm was placed against the slab next to him. Being nearly swallowed by a bull rancor, he traced the stimuli back to fingers cutting through soft palate and swimming deep within a dying cranium. His phantom fingers ticked in recollection, drawing a sharp pain across his shoulder as the shapers pushed the arm against stump and worked to connect the biot to the host. Not an ounce of pain would flash against the face that so favored it, not for the euphoria of the moment and the singular sensation. As he smelled the flesh burned back, acid reverted to consecrate the union, his crimson eye pinned and he felt the coarse abrasion of animality of the Voxyn al'Do as the instincts of the biot and host were tied together. The sudden immersion into stereoscopic viewing, albeit displaced, was almost jarring. The room was black and white for the exception of his own force aura, the hue of darkness causing a faded interpretation of himself. The ring, around the scaled deltoid, was activated with a touch from the shaper, as the surge of pain overcame the Sith Lord, almost to the point of screaming. His lips might as well have been stitched closed, his teeth clenched and locked, as he looked towards the ceiling and towards the wall, three different eyes working together, as the pain of the masquer flushed his nervous system with serpentine cascading of agony: as it worked it's way down his arm.
Black scales, lizard like in appearance, transitioned into the appearance of tattoos and scars and wind swept skin, mimicking the appearance of his natural left arm, as the secondary biot shifted across the flesh. The fingers moved in resistance to the pain, not of his own control at first, as the Warmaster felt the flow of energy and strength not entirely his own. And the hunger nearly crippled him as the shapers backed away, their work complete for the purposes of this escalation. No misstep, no misplacement of nerves or tendons or muscles. A perfect grafting, as they had done time and time before, an act he had witnessed in numerous incantations. It was quicker than he had imagined, the desire for it's elongation apparent to him and the Voxyn al'Do that now resisted the control of it's master. The shapers gave their blessing and a nod, completing their ceremony and ritual to Yun-Ne'Shel and Yun-Yuuzhan. With that, they departed, as this was the only escalation for this day.
The Warmaster lifted himself to a sitting position, the room silent for breathing of his warrior brothers. Or whom he considered brothers. The questioning of his claim, the claims of heresy, had shaken his foundation but left it unbroken except for the uncertainty in how his caste and Legion viewed him. If the success of the operation weren't enough, he would test the water with a lifted arm, just as those who had done so before him. They weren't here to grovel, to whine about the pain in a dark corner and snivel for the forced surgery. This was the Legion Yun'Do, of the Shai Domain, forever glorified in the pain and the sacrifice it represented. And as he raised the sharpened nails of his new hand into the air, the fist forcing the face of the biot into the recesses of his palm, the gesture was met with an uproar of filed teeth and grashal shaking roars. For Yun-Yammka, he remained non-verbose, except for the exhale and roar to echo the sentiments of his caste - for the completion of his escalation.