Author's Notes:
Many thanks, as usual, to my lady love for inspiration and last-minute transmogrifications and bikoukumori, for an editing job rivaling any gladiator's finishing blow.
All participants in sexual activities are adults.
***
Awareness crept back, gently and stealthily like a cheating lover returning from a midnight tryst. At first, his entire universe was dark and devoid of anything but, one by one, his senses returned. Something cold and unyielding pressed against his naked back. As a curious contrast, sticky and warm liquid clung to parts of his body. The smells came next, the coppery odor of spilled blood and another; pungent, bitter, sickening. Dorgon couldn't place it. A wet, bubbling wheezing reached his ears, in time with each heave of his chest.
Am I dying? Or is this already the afterlife?
The thoughts sparked through his brain like incandescent shooting stars. Or did he say them aloud? His ears only picked up a weak moan.
There was more, though. A low, raspy murmuring. Ritualistic inflections butchering the trade tongue into obscurity. Sibilant hisses.
"Suture, suture, disinfect.
Sow shut the gash.
Suture, suture, disinfect.
Bury deep the mesh.
Mend the bone and knit the flesh."
Then a hideous, dry laugh. Fluttering touches, soft pinches and more wet, fleshy noises.
Was it inside my body? By the gods, why can't I see anything?
Moving his hand proved to be futile, for his limbs were fastened to the metal slab he was on, held in place by unmoving metal clasps and braces.
"Shh, shh, lie still," the voice hissed. Scaly fingers, tipped with short, pointy claws patted his head, leaving behind more traces of warm liquid. The stench of blood and of acids and herbs intensified tenfold and Dorgon fought not to retch.
"It should be dead, with a broken spear in its lung," the voice chittered on. "Good thing God-Emperor does not want it dead. Good specimen for arena combat, God-Emperor said."
Dorgon again tried to speak but there was only more weak moaning and horrible wheezing.
With titanic effort, Dorgon forced his eyes to open. Hair by torturous hair the lids moved and his vision returned. At once he dearly wished it hadn't. He could see his chest, folded open like a grotesque pair of skin-wings. Only, instead of the fair skin he once had, it now was a weird, metallic grey. The ribs had been folded out as well and a bizarre armature, whirring arms made out of metal, with clicking claws and pointy things and glowing things was dipping into the gaping cavity, plucking bloody splinters free and dropping them into a metal bowl near his hip. His arms and legs had indeed been fastened to a metal table and he could see tubes and hoses disappearing under his skin, which threw off odd reflections caused by the dozens and dozens of candles arrayed around the butcher's table.
Presiding over this horrendous operation was a tall, wizened being wrapped into a green, blood-spattered robe; clawed, four-fingered hands gently caressing his tortured flesh and guiding the metal arms to do their butcher's work. A triangular snout protruded from under a hood inscribed with protective runes. Short, pointy teeth glinted in the candle light and orange eyes, slitted like a serpent's, darted this way and that.
My impending death is playing tricks on me,
Dorgon thought, fighting the first gentle twinges of madness.
"We will make it better even," the being chirped, a long, forked tongue tasting the air between words. "More muscle mass. Tensile strength. Harder skin. Stamina. It will amuse the God-Emperor and we will be rewarded with more test subjects. Ah, here it is."
The being turned away from him as a second robed figure, as malformed as his torturer, entered his field of view, carrying a large metal container coated in frost. Through a round, glass-covered hole Dorgon could see something red and fleshy inside. Gently, as not to damage anything, the newcomer pulled the lid off the container and lifted the fleshy thing from inside. It was a new pair of lungs.
"Make sure it does not move," the being holding the lungs ordered. The other one nodded and picked up a long, menacing syringe which it swiftly plunged into Dorgon's right arm. What few sensations he could feel were washed away by a tide of cool nothingness.
* * * *
Dorgon awoke with a scream. His hands flew to his chest. Rough, scaly skin greeted his questing fingertips. Agitated, he clawed at his face. A hood, made from coarse fabric, covered it. It was very hot around him.
"Better take it slow," a male voice nearby cautioned. "You don't want to hurt yourself again."
Dorgon worked his mouth until he could move his tongue. Even then, his voice was hoarse and raspy from disuse.
"Again?"
"I saw your bleeding carcass carried past the Pits, towards the witch's abode," the voice said. Dorgon clearly heard the deep-seated disgust from the stranger's words.
"Why the hood?"
"To protect your eyes from the sun. It's very bright out here."
Dorgon closed his eyes then pulled the hood off his head. He could feel the sun on his face. It burned much, much hotter than in his homeland of Nothria. Careful, as not to strain his eyes, he squinted through half-closed lids. He sat in a circular pit, the walls towering a good twenty feet above his head, broken up only by a wide portcullis recessed into the wall. A small rivulet of water dripped from a spout next to it and drained into a floor grate. He wasn't alone. Five other men, most of them bronze-skinned, with short, curly black hair, sat in what paltry shade the walls offered. They all were stark naked and each of them looked like a capable fighter with well-toned muscles and barely an ounce of fat.
Dorgon looked along his own body, as if seeing it for the first time. His skin was of an odd grey hue and hard to the touch, not unlike a coat of scales. The sun threw an odd reflection off the skin, as if tiny metal slivers were embedded in it. Despite the unsettling dream he had, there was no visible scar along his chest. How could that be? He pulled a fistful of hair in front of his eyes. It was an inky black, long and thick, his black fingernails blending in. Where were his golden tresses? His beard? There was nary a hair below his eyebrows. What had happened to him?
"Where am I?" Dorgon asked, looking at the men. One of them, a bald, scrawny fighter with a criss-crossing set of tattoos all over his face and upper chest, bared a set of pointed teeth.
"You're in the Fighting Pit of Atlantis. Ring a bell?"
Dorgon opened his mouth to answer. Atlantis? But then his memories stirred, like a turgid leviathan in primeval sludge. He had been on a ship, hired as a guard for a Huan trader. Then there was a storm. Sharp cliffs, outlined by maddening strobes of lightning. A world-shattering crash as the ship impaled itself on the rocks. The sensation of weightlessness as his body was borne by the icy sea. Then-
The beach. The looters. Or were they soldiers? He remembered an armored giant trying to ram a spear into his chest. He had fought that giant.
"Did I win?" he asked aloud.
"Dunno," the tattooed fighter said, grinning viciously. "You got dragged into the witch's abode while a couple of dead guards got dumped into the beast pens. A few days later and they dropped you in here. What happened?"
Dorgon shook his head. How could he articulate what he himself barely could comprehend? They had... changed him. Somehow they had turned him from a tall, lanky Nothrian warrior with blonde hair and beard into a smooth-shaven, black-haired, scale-plated... abomination. He could feel the added weight on his limbs and his shadow told him his shoulders were broader too.
Dorgon got on hands and knees and tried to stand. His balance was off and he dropped into the sand again, to the mirth of the other men. He tried again and managed to stand, unsteadily, by the third try.
"He's not much good in a fight," a shaggy-haired man, broad and heavy, remarked. "Not much good standing either." The men around him snickered.
Another, with a bushy beard going to his navel, clicked his tongue and caressed his dick. "Maybe he should be face down, ass up in the sand for our amusement, eh?" Raucous laughter erupted. Only the tattooed fighter kept quiet and eyed Dorgon intently, gauging his reaction. When none came, he joined Dorgon and led him towards the water dripping down the wall. "Drink. Maybe you'll feel better after."
"How could you see me get carried around from down here?" Dorgon asked, cupping his hands and splashing water into his face. It smelled metallic but at least it was cool. He drank greedily.
Silently, the tattooed fighter pointed upwards. Shading his eyes against the glaring sun, Dorgon followed his pointing finger. High above, he could see cages dangling from skeletal-looking contraptions.
"The arena proper. And the place where the miscreants go to dry out. I had a spectacular view." Again he flashed his pointy teeth. Then he jabbed a finger at his chest. "Karas."
"Dorgon."
