Casting
You go up; once inside this spell-testing chamber, you extract the Spelle By Whych A Familliare Maye Open a Potion Bottel from your saddlebags, then find a stand to put it on, and you begin reading. The archaic language is strange, even with the new knowledge you acquired when you put your sphinxtaur costume on, but you still manage to make sense of it: The spell transmutes one appendage of the target into a state wherein said appendage becomes capable of fine manipulatory tasks. Why couldn't the author have just said "it gives hands to a creature which didn't used to have them"? you think, wondering about the necessary thought processes.
You start the incantation. At first you're worried about the gestures --- you don't have hands yet, after all! --- but it seems that your talons are dexterous enough to make the necessary gestures, and you feel the arcane power build up in you. Your tail seems to be getting most of the attention, though.
As you finish the spell you feal a tingle in your tail and turn to see it growing but not into a hand like you hoped. It seems to have changed into a long tentacle!
Written by Catprog & Cubist on 17 September 2010