Lore Drops and Kink Flops

“Hey Zin,” I cut my lore drop off mid-sentence, directing my attention instead towards the sweat atop her forehead. “Looks like someone’s been hitting the Tennessee Fried Chicken too hard.”

Ignoring my comment, Sharzin scanned the room before finally looking to me, quietly locking eyes and giving a knowing nod. I watched as she reached into her bottomless bag, withdrawing a worn, pocket-sized booklet. At a distance, I could immediately tell that the leather cover was exceptionally old, with its edges frayed and surface wrinkled and torn. Beneath the protective flap, peeking from the top and bottom of the book were weathered pages, torn, burnt, and otherwise tattered.

“No way,” I sat up from my reading corner, my heart beating excitedly as I knew exactly what she had found. “You got it?”

“Is that what I think it is?” Rionriv asked, standing from her seat."Is that it?!"

With lightning-fast steps, she stood before the rogue in an instant. Taking the book from her hands, the sorceress rubbed at the cover, freeing the thin leather cord that bound the protective flap tightly to it. Rionriv quickly opened it, flipping through the pages, glancing over the words that we all hoped would give her the answers we had been searching for. But with every passing second, I watched her face begin to drop as her excitement shifted into confusion.

“This is supposed to help me? Sharzin, did you get the right thing?"

"Yeah," She replied, pointing towards the booklet. "Old leather book, flap over the front, a gold 'SR' on the spine, weird text and heavily redacted. This is what Phyllis was talking about without a doubt."

"It just looks like some weird arcanotech manual!” Rionriv grumbled while I approached her side, catching her gaze as she turned towards me. “What am I supposed to do with this?”

Handing me the tome, I inspected it. The object was more than simply old. It was very specifically over three thousand years old, having existed pre-Great Cataclysm based on the golden ink transcribed atop the well-made parchment alone. The magic that had protected the object, another telltale sign of important literature of the time, had long since faded, allowing the elements to wear down the leather and parchment. But even with numerous sections having been clearly ripped from the binding, other portions weathered beyond comprehension, and several words-to-sentences per page redacted and indecipherable, I knew exactly what I was looking at.

Holy shit! I quietly gasped to myself. There's no way...

“Th-this is amazing,” I mumbled, looking over a divine document that very well may have been the only one of its kind remaining on this plane of existence. “It-it couldn't be. Could it? Is this—no, is this really documentation for the E-S-Ark-Dot-One-Nine-Seven-Three? Holy crap, do you know what this is?!”

“Obviously not,” Rionriv replied, placing a hand to her hip while using the other to give me a shove. “So, go on, oracle…divine it for us. What an E-S-Ark—or whatever?”

I shot Rionriv a dumbfounded glance before flipping back to the first page of the tome. There, I saw it, the very basic description that detailed the title and purpose of this documentation. I rubbed my fingers against it, fighting the urge to scream out with excitement. It was exactly what I had thought it would be. So, handing it over, I pointed to the page and waited for Rionriv to read it.

"What does it say?" She replied, looking at me with a shake of her head. "I can't read that. It looks Ancient Seraphic? Can you actually read it?"

"Huh?" I replied to her, looking down at the page that read to me as easily as English. "You can't read that?"

"Obviously not! So, if it's so important to us, what does it say? What's this about?"

“This design log for the Ark section of the Emerald Limerick.”

“The what of the huh?” Aesandoral asked, sitting up from the edge of the bed and listening intently.

“The Emerald Limerick?" I repeated, pausing to inspect my peers' confused faces.

Oh shit, right. It isn't called that in this age. The story of the Emerald Limerick was mostly lost by the time the world reached this age. How am I going to explain this?

Then, with a snap of my fingers, I knew what to say.

"You know, the green star fixed in the sky where the Emerald Pantheon lives?” I began, loosely pointing to the ceiling of my room. "That? The Emerald Star? That's the Emerald Limerick."

All three stared at me, dumbfounded. Apparently, the information I dropped was even more insane than I had thought it would be. Everyone was silently observing me, waiting for more to pass between my lips. So, without hesitation, I provided

“Okay, so, the Emerald Star, which watches over Esseria, was once a ship made by mortals, known as the Emerald Limerick. It was also colloquially called 'The God Killer' for a few hundred years. It’s relatively stationary now, protecting this world from a whole bunch of celestial threats, only moving a bit as a result of the seasons. This is why it’s at its height at the summer solstice, and we refer to this time as the Emerald Rising Solstice. It's also why it disappears beneath the horizon for the duration of the winter solstice, and that time is referred to as the Emerald Setting Solstice.”

Aesandoral looked at me with a blank face, mimicking Moose's cocked head with her elven ears poking out from beneath her short hair.

“Huh?” She muttered confusedly

Crap! How am I going to dumb this down for Aes? Sweet, dumb Aes.

Clearing my throat, I briefly explained to the group that over three thousand years ago, during the height of the Grand Mortal Wars between the Continental Nations of Moal’aw and Esseria, the natural world was horribly ravaged. Many creatures were eradicated, and many more were on the verge of extinction. As part of their plan to save reality, the crew of the Emerald Limerick created a section of their ship to house two of every plant and animal species. This was insurance meant to guarantee that if anything were to happen to the world, they could fix things.

Man, I was really just kind of phoning in this section of the lore of my world. I thought as I cringed at the retelling. I had every intention to go back and make it more…original—I swear it. Let's not even talk about the fact that Nineteen-Seventy-Three had to do with the Endangered Species Act. I'll just add it to the pile of cringe I’m working with here.

After too long a deep dive into pre-Great Cataclysm lore, I got to the point in my story where the Ark capsule needed to be jettisoned from the Emerald Limerick. This was meant to provide the arcane power necessary to save the ship from a catastrophic failure that would have doomed it and reality in the face of the Caering Pantheon. With that, I flashed forward roughly a thousand years to the point when the Ark crashed back down to the continent of Sact'fal, creating a massive crater later known as the Emerald Sanctuary. 

"And that," I took a deep breath, looking towards Rionriv. "Is the very place that I had predicted to be the birthplace of you, Rionriv Singlemoon. So was I right?"

"Yeah?" Rionriv asked, taking hold of the book once more and examining it. “Wait, so does Phyllis think my condition has to do with this Ark-thingy?”

“Maybe?” I said, thumbing through the manual to find the beastiary section."I'm pretty sure werebeasts were included."

"Why would they include a cursed creature?" Sharzin asked from her seat beside Aesandoral. "What, were ancient people stupid?"

"I mean, they were living creatures too, right? And even if they didn't categorically include them, there was still a chance the viral curse would have made it aboard without anyone knowing."

Flipping through the pages, I began to realize that exploring the documentation was much easier said than done. As I searched the small booklet, it appeared that once the crew of the Emerald Limerick rose to divine prominence, becoming the Emerald Pantheon, certain texts were scrubbed of pertinent information concerning their lives and creations. As such, many of the helpful sections on the Ark's purpose and functionality were redacted with divine protections. But, after a bit of searching, I did find what I was looking for.

“Yeah, okay, ummm—" I spoke up, as I pointed to a section to show a confused Rionriv. "This section here talks about what werebeasts are included. So we’re going to have to read through this to get a better understanding. It'll be tough, though, because a lot of the words seem to be redacted due to divine bullshittery. But that word right there is definitely lycanthropy. I'm sure of it!”

I touched the word that stood at the front of an entire sentence that had been turned into indecipherable gibberish. My heart sank at the sight of the heavy redactions that read closer to a released version of the Jepstine List, wondering if I'd ever be able to get any facts from the booklet. Even though I knew plenty about the creation of Ark.Nineteen-Seventy-Three, this seemed like a real-world issue that was outside my story, which made me wonder what additions had been made and hidden. The Caering Pantheon, or maybe even the Emerald Pantheon, seemed to have been pretty keen on keeping most of the information on the development of the Emerald Limerick a secret.

“Speaking of lycanthropy, how are you feeling?” Sharzin asked, directing this question towards Rionriv. "You doing okay?"

“What do you mean?” She replied quickly, cocking her head to the side. "I'm fine?"

“Well, the sun was setting when I returned. Shouldn’t you be in your cage?”

I glanced over at the digital clock on my nightstand, realizing that it still read two in the afternoon.

That fugging lich! I immediately thought. She grümlin’d us!

“Phyllis!” I cried out frustratedly as I turned my attention back to Rionriv. "Hey Ri, just breathe—"

But it was too late. As though our questions had awakened the beastly curse, the sorceress had already begun to transform. Glancing immediately at Sharzin and Aesandoral, I looked into their terrified expressions as they watched their friend transforming into the weretiger.

“Crap,” I sighed, quickly directing the two towards the small door at the edge of the space. “Get yourselves and the pets in the bathroom. She wants me after all, so I’ll lure her away.”

Without hesitation, the two girls and accompanying wolves squeezed themselves into a bathroom not meant to house that many bodies. It was comedic watching the dance they pulled as they tried to fit into the space before closing the door to a sliver to watch me. Blitz, seeing the confined quarters, decided not to join them and, after a long feline-like stretch, disappeared in a cloud of smoke. This left me officially locked in my room with the weretiger.

“Where are you going to go?” Aesandoral asked from behind the crack in the bathroom door.

“I’m just going to lure her to the cage,” I replied, backing myself towards the stairs. “I should be able to make it.”

There was a thunderous roar as Rionriv entered her weretiger form. The tiger-striped fur with shocks of electric blue stood before me, as her piercing feline eyes stared with intent to pounce.

Must start running. The words came to my mind as I turned to flee. Shit. Shit. Shit!

Sprinting down the stairwell, there was no question of whether Rionriv was following me. I listened as she tore through my room, crashing against the half-open door, and then the wooden wall at the top of the stairs. With quick steps, I descended the narrow passage without hesitation, once again thankful that her weretiger form wasn’t as lightning fast as her sorceress capabilities. If it had been, I’d already be dead or, potentially, a werebeast sextoy. 

I tried not to think about the second one too much, nervous it would slow down my flight just enough to be caught. Battling these thoughts, I eventually reached the bottom step where I flung open the door at the base of the spiral staircase and peeked over my shoulder. That was when I noticed that Rionriv was right behind me.

“Ahhh!” I screamed a shrill cry, dropping to my knees as a heavy swipe of razor-sharp claws struck where my head had been moments before.

Not a sex craving! NOT A SEX CRAVING!

“Why are you faster!?” I yelped, stumbling to my feet before sprinting past the door and diving into the nearest circular clothing rack.

Thanks to our regular usage of the food court, Phyllis had installed a portal directly to her mall outside my apartment. It was convenient to gather food, especially since I was Sharzin’s personal mall meal dasher for the foreseeable future. And it had become even more helpful when trying to escape angry weretigers.

Immediately teleported to Phyllis’ Mall Dimension, I slid across the tile concourse, looking back towards the faintly glowing entrance to the Dwindlefyre shoppe. In an attempt to calm my racing heart and panicked breathing, I took a single deep breath. Unfortunately, midway through exhaling, a flash of electrified fur lunged through the open doors, jaw agape.

“Fug!” I cried, rolling out of the way and sprinting from the storefront. “Phyllis! Phyllis, help!”

But, being typical of her, the lich was silent as my footfalls echoed through the empty, vapourwave mall. Behind me, Rionriv was gaining fast as somehow her innate magical aura had begun to infuse the weretiger form, supercharging it further. It dawned on me that her Druidry classes had indeed helped her maintain better control of her faculties when in weretiger form. Though ultimately, this shift was hurting me more than helping her.

Fugging, fantastic! Hellish Kitty Lightning Adventurer strikes again!

“Why can’t you just be a normal, cute cat-girl!” I cried, taking a sharp turn into the food court and narrowly dodging another swipe of her massive murder mitts, before yelling for the absent lich once again. “Phyllis, help me!”

Rushing between the tables, I slid into another turn down the hallway leading to the washrooms and Rionriv’s cage. It was at the end of the dead-end hall, in the 'family' restroom, where I'd find the conclusion to this game of tag. And, reaching the last door, I took hold of the doorknob to the cage and rattled it.

LOCKED?!

A small sign immediately appeared at eye level, reading ‘OUT OF ORDER.’

“Why is it out of service, though? Phyllis! Phyllis!” I yelled loud enough to wake the dead while turning to see the weretiger as she slowly stalked down the corridor, turned prison cell. “Phyllis, now or never.”

The tiger pounced towards me, mouth open, ready to snap down—

“Mwaaahahaha.” Phyllis was standing before me back in the Dwindlefyre shoppe. "That was great!"

“Took you long enough.” I angrily grumbled, standing and brushing myself off. "What was all that about?!"

"Meh, I was bored. Didn't you have fun? Must have been kinda kinky being chased by your fetish, right?"

“No! No, it wasn't, Phyllis! Also, if I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a hundred times, stop fugging with my clock! My room is not a casino! I need to know the time! Especially now!”

Phyllis waved off my remark as she slowly walked away from me with a cackle. Standing there a moment longer, I watched her casually departing before shaking my head in disbelief and yelling after her.