>>5822824Zith-Zi hovered nervously at your side throughout the procedure. The Archmage, whose own biological and magical signature were necessary to borrow each of the necessary organs and a half-pint of precious reddish fluid, like one might check out a rare tome only with a librarian, lingered nearby, but not quite so close. You doubted this was out of politeness, but rather noticed she seemed to prefer a distance from anyone she was not accosting or experimenting upon—most especially Zith-Zi. This seemed understandable upon her arrival, but with how little the goblin had gotten out, and how busy she had been, she was quite possibly the cleanest and clearest of complexion that you had ever seen her.
(okay, maybe she was still a LITTLE grungy, and at least SOME of her musk seemed to be produced by some oily goblinoid gland...)
“You really think it will work?” Zith-Zi asked, and in her worried eyes you saw her only ailment—a lack of sleep, an abundance of fear.
“Yes,” you said, and poured just a LITTLE more magic into your <Calm> spell upon the drake, as if the excess might flow into his owner.
Seeing the little creature yawn and settle comfortable atop the table where he had previously been pacing and plotting escape at least drew a small snigger from your green-skinned assistant.
“Now,” you said, “hand me the scalpel and the clamp.”
To her credit, Zith-Zi was steady of hand and steely of visage all through the procedure. You supposed that’s he’d seen far worse in her time in the Wastes… As had you, fi it came to it. You wished you could cast a <Calm> upon yourself without impeding your function, in that moment, or that you could be more like the pint-sized terror of the steppe playing the role of your nurse. Your own stomach turned and heart fluttered as—by magic, but also by pipette and syringe and organ-constructed tubule—you transferred blood from beaker to bloodstream, and transplanted the essence of tremendous and shriveled ancient organs into Hershy’s younger, yet so much frailer, body.
Failure would, of course, mean death… Hershy’s and, if you couldn’t break Zith-Zi’s magic resistance with your spellcraft, quite possibly someone else’s!
>19But of course, you needn’t have worried. For all your squeamishness, and the novelty of the raw materials, this was your SPECIALTY. The Archmage might have centuries (?) of experience and far more raw power, plus the fuller spellbook, but you could see it in her eyes when you caught them that even SHE was impressed by your skill. The life of an animal was on the line, and just as with the jackalopes, you were driven with a purpose beyond even that hollow hunger which drove you to seek secret truth: the love for life which had made you reject Izzy’s aspirations to abandon the material realm. Your elven heart reached out to Hershy and guided your mage’s hands with a surgeon’s precision and a cleric’s devotion…