The most beautiful flute

I lie sprawled on the ground like a discarded puppet, limbs bent at wrong angles and blood pooling beneath me. Through half-lidded eyes, I watch the goblins approaching, their movements unhurried and self-assured. Their chattering is sharp and nasal, like particularly annoying birds.

Despite the dizziness, I manage a half-smile. Cocky little bastards, aren't they?

Even dazed, I have enough presence of mind to deal with my bleeding stump. With the faintest thread of concentration, I seal and reroute the radial artery, halting the blood flow. The work is crude—more slapdash than a child's macaroni art. Muscles twitch beneath the makeshift patch job, misaligned and tense.

Definitely not getting a surgeon's license anytime soon, huh?

I shift my attention to the smaller gashes crisscrossing my shredded body. My legs? Broken in four places—and that's the better-looking one. Fixing those would need finesse, time, and two good hands. I've got none of those.

Instead, I settle for another slapdash attempt at stitching together some tendons and nerves, the biological equivalent of duct tape. It's crude, messy, and probably a terrible idea, but it's enough to make movement a theoretical possibility.

I didn't exactly have time to practice working on myself beforehand—something I deeply regret as I fumble around inside my own tissues. Still, it looks like I can feel my flesh much more clearly than I could feel the wolf's earlier. That's...something, I guess.

The goblin shaman doesn't even glance at me. It's too busy standing over the corpse of the one I shot, muttering guttural nonsense at the body. Its staff glows faintly with an unpleasant green light, and for a moment, I wonder if I should be worried. After all, I'm around 90% sure he was the one who fucked me up.

The other eight goblins aren't exactly grieving their fallen comrade. Their chittering sounds almost gleeful, like they've already written me off as a non-threat.

Really? Just because I'm lying here looking like roadkill doesn't mean I'm out of the game. Show some respect for your elders...

Actually, while they might be looking like 12-year-olds, they could actually be much older, no?

They all look the same to me though...

Even the one of them that decides it's time to finish me off. It steps closer, brandishing a jagged rock knife that looks like it's seen better days—or maybe not, considering it's made of literal stone.

The creature's clothing is little more than patchwork leather scraps covering its waist and chest. Its skin is marked with swirling light blue patterns, deliberate and uniform.

"Nice tattoos, little guy" I wheeze as it crouches beside me.

"Are you the chef of the bunch?" I croak, amused as the goblin kneels in front of me, stone knife poised.

It doesn't answer—how rude. Instead, it jabs the knife into my calf, clearly intending to carve me up like wild game. I grimace but manage a weak smirk, shifting my mangled stump just enough to nudge its side.

"Fine. I'll take that as a yes,"

Channeling my will, I grab hold of its flesh—not the skin, but the tangled network beneath. The connection feels slippery, maybe because I was used to fleshcrafting with my arms. It's a bit like groping through a viscous pool, but it works, the flesh obeys, and that's all that matters.

The goblin stiffens as something inside of it breaks. It slumps forward, collapsing against me, but its eyes dart wildly in their sockets.

"Oh, good," I murmur, raising my good hand to prop it up. "You can still move those. That'll keep your buddies off me for a bit." I whisper.

What exactly did I just do? Who knows? Maybe I ruptured his spinal chord, and I'm sure I cut more than a few nerves. The sensation is hard to parse like always, but something essential is gone now, melted into something useless...to him at least.

I push deeper, reaching further into its body with a will that feels both alien and mine. Its organs—liver, kidneys, intestines—begin to rupture and collapse like overripe fruit. Blood vessels burst, and its cartilage softens to a gelatin.

The creature's breathing grows shallow, a rattling sound that doesn't quite escape its lips.

Its skin remains pristine though, save for a few unnatural bulges and sloshes beneath.

The chittering of the other goblins fades into a distant buzz as I focus, the rest of the world shrinking to this one task. A notification pings faintly in my mind. I shove it aside.

I'm too busy.

The goblin's insides have become a slurry. Brownish-green blood oozes from small tears in its body, pooling over me in sticky rivulets. My control is far from perfect, and the lacerations spread like cracks in fragile porcelain.

Then, my nausea surges. I feel vomit rising, hot and bitter, but I force it back down. My vision blurs further, the effort taking more out of me than I expected.

Still, I don't stop. The goblin slumps further, its form collapsing inward as its bodily structure turns to sludge.

The other goblins turn out to be more distracted than I expected yet far less than I hoped. Barely thirty seconds since I began working, they start shouting and scrambling toward me. One hurls a spear that sails through the air, embedding itself in my shoulder. Not too deep though, maybe because of my high constitution.

I try to laugh—it's funny, really—but blood and bile surge up my throat, cutting the sound short. I choke, gag, and spit onto the ground.

But it's done.

The goblin corpse slumped over me collapses entirely, its sagging skin splitting open like an overfilled sack. Entrails spill onto me in a wet, steaming heap.

The world narrows, quiets, then detonates into a blinding rush of adrenaline. Pain fades to a distant hum, drowned out by a single, furious mantra repeating in my skull.

Good job, motherfuckers. Good. Fucking. Job.

You just made me skip the testing phase.

With my good hand, I push against the ground. The newly-melded bones in my legs groan in protest, some even splintering again, but the crucial ones hold—for now.

The goblin's insides cling to me as I rise. Its guts and flesh slide down my body in ribbons, tangling. Sticky veins coil like serpents around my arms, dripping blood onto the grass. Bones, jagged and shattered, meld with my skin—makeshift casts locking my limbs in place. A brain fragment dangles precariously from what might be a tendon. An eyeball squelches as it presses against my cheek as bits and pieces of what was once a goblin fall to the ground.

The stench is unbearable.

The horror is unimaginable.

I step forward, my movements jerky and uneven. The disgusting, pulsating armor constricts around me, goblin muscles tightening against my own. My legs threaten to buckle, the fragile bones inside crying out with every agonized step.

But I smile.

Oh, I smile.

My gaze snaps to the closest goblin, frozen in place, terror etched across its malformed face. I lunge toward it, unsteady but relentless, and reach out. My fingers brush its flesh, and with a thought—a pull—it rips away in a wave of shrieking agony.

"One..." The word drips from my lips.

A growl follows, low and feral. It could've been a goblin—or maybe it was me.

The next goblin isn't so paralyzed. A dagger stabs into my back, piercing the flesh-cloak but stopping just short of my spine. My arm twitches as I kick backward, grazing the goblin's leg. Even the slightest contact is enough. Half its thigh tears apart, a bloom of shredded meat. Its scream is so shrill it could hurt one's eardrums, but to me, it sounds like the most beautiful flute.