When the brass needle punctured into his arm; threading into a vein, it felt nostalgic. Well, no. First it hurt – the gauge of the thing was huge. But pain was temporary, and Rhode had survived worse.

Actually… technically he hadn’t.

“♫Vein, vein, vein, gonna find a veeeeein,♫” Krevinkya hummed, hitching up her sleeves.

She had changed her gloves again, and they were starkly white. Once satisfied, she checked the short rubbery tube that connected the inflexible glassware to Rhode, and splashed half of the [Numb Juice] into the hanging bottle that would feed medication directly into Rhode’s bloodstream.

“And this one’s just to get you started a bit quicker,” the alchemist purred.

Rhode looked into the painted face of his maker as she shoved a tiny shot glass towards his lips. The liquid inside was clouded, blue like the glow of fading lightning, and with a fog of condensation that dripped about its edges. A sharp, paint-thinner smell was tickling the underside of his gag reflex.

Krevinkya shoved the bottom of the glass directly onto his mouth, and then started tipping without warning. Before he’d gotten the chance to consider it, Rhode was gulping down a mixture of potions. Half of the contents spilled down his chin, or down the side of his face. The rest tumbled down his gullet, cool and surprisingly flavorless. Then the smell kicked back in, overwhelmingly.

“That’s probably enough,” she announced, wiping him up clean with a rag. Then she whirled on her heel and whipped the empty glass against a far wall where it shattered.

Sputtering, Rhode became acutely aware of his arm. With such a short length of flexible tubing attaching him to his fluid drip, he couldn’t afford to move. Forcing himself to calm, he smacked his lips as a pins and nettles sensation of numbness began to seep into his body from within.

“Where do you want to start?”

“Let’s do a rib. The chest is most important anyway, and we can make a few mistakes around there. I don’t want to do the legs ‘till I’m ‘in the zone’.”

“Lots of little muscles. You’ll have to wiggle around the tissue sheathing, here and here.”

“I was just going to go through like –”

Rhode’s eyes shot open, his heart skipping a beat as his ‘doctors’ shrieked in unison.

“DON’T!”

The barber stood, holding a long, flat knife. It was like a saw blade, except without a toothed edge. He was holding it flat alongside Rhode’s lowest rib, hovering above the skin.

▯■□■□■□■ snatched the blade out of the barber’s hands and set it down on the cart. “We can’t afford to tear him apart so bad it takes months for him to recover, Goodman barber. Here.”

A bundle of white gauze was unrolled, revealing brass and steel implements of such cruel design that would make a dentist blush. Many or most of the tools had long, protruding shapes or curves, or drill-like extensions.

“We can do a strip burrow technique, drill alongside the inner soft tissue of the bone-”

“Nobody does that! We’d be operating for days on end, and even then! If you don’t do the plating on the outside, you’re twice as likely to end with blood poison.”

Rhode’s head lolled. He began to feel dizzy. The lights in the room began to draw his attention, saturating the baths and making it hard to resolve the goblin-folk around him. Trying to speak, his tongue felt thick, and he bit the inside of his cheek. The taste of blood convinced him to hold his opinion back.

“We could go in from the inside? Up under the edge of the abdominals here? Is there a reason the plating needs to go on the outside?”

“It’d be easier… I don’t see why not.”

“No, you morons! His organs will burst the first time he’s rattled. Soft on the inside, tough out! Haven’t you fools ever designed an organ cavity before?”

Rhode blinked slowly, as goblin arguments blurred into one another. He almost started to think the whole thing was an elaborate joke.

Until a knife slid across his skin, parting his white fat into his meat. Until his purplish ichor beaded like dew along the slice.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

“Hold him down,” barked a voice.

“Are you experiencing any pain, Rhode?” asked another one softly.

“Yes,” whispered Rhode. He squeezed his eyes shut to clear away water. “I’m okay. It’s just taking a little bit to kick in, still.”

“Big guy, you really still can take that nap. Some of this may hurt a bit no matter what we give you.”

“Tell you what. I’ll give you a signal if I need to stop,” Rhode raised his free hand with extreme deliberation. It was hard to feel where it was, relative to the rest of his body. “We can’t stop, can we?”

“No, probably not.”

“Then let’s keep going.”

Noffet raised his head over the obscuring bulk of Rhode’s chest, a little like a sunrise. His face had little violet spatters of Rhode’s blood on it. “See?” the goblin grinned. “We can make him weak, or we can let it hurt. And I say, nothing better for a man to level than to make him scream. That’s just common sense.”

And so, bit by bit, and moment by moment, it got worse. Rhode stilled a tremor as a short incision was made along his sternum, and a tiny clamp held his skin apart as a wriggling, living sponge was applied to wick away his blood. Goblins huddled over him as they gripped a mechanical bone augur, a brutal looking drill which they used to bore another little hole into his skeleton.

With tweezers, his surgeons produced a tiny sliver of alchemical metal. Like a filling a tooth, the barber applied the silver substance carefully into the hollow.

Nerves were firing, his muscles were clenching. Rhode felt like he was being disassembled. He forced himself to watch as the scalpel traced across his body, and he could only hope that someone here was going to be able to put him back together once they were done. In a way, listening to the eager, childlike enthusiasm of the butcher was reassuring. The man talked about the homunculus’ body in the same words he might describe a choice flank of roast, and it was obscene. But he also knew exactly where to trace the blood vessels, tendons and muscles of his flesh. His advice was invaluable, steering their knives in the same way a lighthouse warded ships from rocky coasts.

White garments began to stain with purple, it speckled, then it spattered, then it stained. [Vigorous Ichor] pumped, keeping him vital and healthy. The rise and fall of [Bellows] made every effort more difficult. Repulsed and enraptured, his mind retreated back into a hazy daydream with [Hibernate]’s help.

It helped to pretend that what was happening to him was not real.

However, only a simpleton would expect a straightforward and professional experience from goblin medicine. As blood began to flow, his surgeons grew more excited. Their voices became shrill, interrupting more often, jabbering ever faster as they conferred.

Just as Rhode began to ponder the idea of blood-loss, and to ask himself if his minders had forgotten the risk of exsanguination, the door creaked open yet again.

It was the Goodwife Chyrna, her dyed red hair tied up in a net, and a heavy white bakers apron over practical work clothes. She carried a carpeted sewing case in one hand and steered directly towards Alchemist Krevinkya. Having barely acknowledging anyone else in the room, her boots clomped to a halt.

“Anesthetic?” she demanded.

The alchemist handed the tailor a bottle. The tailor threw her head back and took a generous swig.

“Anti-nausea?” she insisted.

She drank the second concoction as well, no questions or hesitation either.

“Amnesia tonic?” she suppressed a retch, clawing for the third tincture. It had a little glass dropper, and the woman licked clear fluid directly off of it with her tongue. Her square pupils grew wide.

The sewing mistress took her place alongside Rhode’s body. Her words slurred as her drooping smile deformed her syllables, but her advice and her mind were sharp. A gleaming needle appeared, and a shimmering length of gut thread. Tiny stitches stemmed Rhode’s bleeding with impressive speed, though the neat embroidery was likely out of place inside of a living creature.

Rhode retreated to a place beyond fear. It was tranquil, accepting you were already likely doomed, and so then survival would be a lovely surprise. Dissociating from the pain became easier, though as the mineral sheath of his bone was stripped, and punctured, the feeling was more than simply pain. The vulnerable coring of his deepest parts sent paroxysms, and shuddering twinges running through the rest of him.

Btiobhan kept telling him to stay still, and he tried so very hard to comply.

Rhode didn’t even notice as even more goblins began to arrive. There was a clock-maker goblin who hefted an apparatus of mechanical lenses and tiny drills. There was a white-smith who brought a thick, canvas-bound tome, and wove cunning [Lead] and [Quicksilver] runes into Rhode’s body to reduce the initial toxicity.

There was a carpenter, who briefly insisted that light engraving should be applied to Rhode’s spinal column. Thankfully, she was quickly kicked out of the room.

Mad cackles rose as goblin experts shared their secrets with one another, refining their methods. Gleefully, they experimented with techniques to make their cuts smaller, to more carefully part muscle. The thick iron plates which had initially been laid out for the Hero were thrown out. Thinner, wire-like strips of iron-adamant alloy were bolted along Rhode’s longer bones with tiny watch-sized screws.

Krevinkya was shoved aside by a cake decorator, who wielded a pipette of the alchemist’s restorative potions with a steadier hand, and perfect, efficient droplets to seal his flesh shut alongside a spiderweb of stitching.

“The [Numb] is wearing off,” Rhode gasped. He was pale and shaking. Someone wicked sweat away from his forehead before it could drip into the incision at his brow.

More intravenous fluid was necessary, and was fetched. A soldier who should have been kept outside was spectating and chewing on puffed oats.