Artwork: Tiefling Mystic (Warm and Cold)

Another tiefling/demoness drawing to bring in the new year—and get myself back into drawing after a fallow month.

They found her lounging on some cushions on the upper level of the souk, out on a gallery overlooking the city below where a cool breeze provided relief from the stifling heat. There was no question that she was one of the Unveiled: the large leathery wings that hung from her shoulders, spread about her like a cloak, could not be mistaken—nor the horns that sprouted from her temples. Nor, Talin noted belatedly when he saw it's tip peeking out behind the woman, the sinuous, vaguely reptilian tail. He suppressed a shiver.

A tiefling mystic, offering prophecies and divinations—for the right price.

"You have not seen my kind often, have you?" the woman observed with a faint smile that didn't quite reach her golden eyes. Those golden eyes—or eyes very much like them—were all too familiar to Talin, exotic as they might otherwise be. He drew no comfort from this fact.

"Not before arriving in Kysla," Talin admitted. He hesitated, then remembered his manners. "Talin Severine, formerly of Drynnoria." He indicated himself with a vague wave of his hand.

The winged woman's smile widened fractionally. Her golden eyes flashed momentarily. "Then welcome to Kysla, Talin Severine. I am Adlata. To what do I owe the honour of this visit?"

Talin hesitated a second time as he regarded the woman sat before him. Back in the Reclamations, a being such as her would be named an aberration, with all the attendant revulsion such a term carried. Since he'd left Drynnoria he'd become more familiar with such things, but honestly he'd been given little cause to become more relaxed about them. He might no longer consider them necessarily evil, or monstrous, but he still considered them to be dangerous. Even the beautiful ones.

Especially the beautiful ones.

Oddly though, he found himself not dwelling so much on Adlata's monstrous nature, as on the physiological constraints of her 'aberrant' body. The wings, he quickly decided with a medic's eye, were far too heavy—as was the rest of her for that matter. Unless she was considerably lighter than she looked—hollow-boned even—then there was no possibility of such wings being adequate for unassisted flight. Gliding perhaps—but not flight.

Unless, of course, the attempt to fly was assisted by some form of anima manipulation to provide the necessary lift.

Talin studied Adlata a moment longer as he lowered himself down on a spare cushion in front of her. There was no question that she was a mystic of some kind—that was the very reason he'd sought her out in the first place.

He decided that he'd very much like to see Adlata fly.

Added 5th January: A variant 'cold' colouring to contrast with the 'warmer' feel of the original.

A tiefling mystic, somewhere much colder.