A Door - Part 1 (Commission for Kalendil)

TAGS: Growth, Transformation, Virility/Fertility, Ascension/God, Transdimensional Fuckery

---===---

Normally, inventory day at the museum was one of the most boring experiences one could go through, usually reserved only for when it couldn’t possibly be postponed any longer, and absence from which was fiercely fought over between everyone who happened to work there. It was something that, technically speaking, everyone had to help with in some form or another, barring the subcontractors they hired to clean the floors after hours; everyone from the lowliest clerk to the most well-paid researcher had to show up and had to help catalogue the endless cavalcade of useless trinkets, artifacts and whatever else happened to be lying around that no one had bothered to file properly, and everything else that was registered and whose continued presence within the museum’s archives (or lack thereof) had to be confirmed yet again. It was a process that usually took several days even in the best of times, and seeing as no one enjoyed doing it, it wasn’t altogether surprising that most of the lead-up to it consisted of everyone trying to shirk their responsibilities if they could get away with it. Everyone but Kal.

Kal was probably the one person who didn’t mind the arduous work of making sure the inventory was up to date, if only because it gave him an opportunity to dive into the archives and find new and exciting things to dedicate his endless curiosity towards; no matter how well they took care of their collection, there was always something in there that they hadn’t accounted for, be it from a random donation from a not-so-wealthy patron, a curiosity that someone had stumbled upon and didn’t bother to write down, or even just the occasional artifact that slipped through the cracks when a team returned from an archaeological dig. Most of these finds would be properly catalogued and placed in the correct spot, but sometimes, just sometimes, Kal found it within himself to ask his supervisors if they wouldn’t mind him taking a little something to spruce up his own office, usually something of low worth that just happened to look nice with the “adventurer archaeologist” aesthetic he was shamelessly trying to impose upon his workspace. As such, while everyone else fought a low-scale bureaucratic war to be allowed to sit out the next round of inventory check-ups, Kal gleefully dove into it ahead of time, hoping to find something interesting that he could take back to his office.

Most of the stuff was just as bland and boring as it usually was though: broken pieces of pottery, the occasional plastic bag with a fingerbone in it, maybe an excerpt from a clay tablet that would remain untranslatable until someone stumbled onto its Rosetta equivalent, all of which belonged either in a random drawer in the backroom, on the back of a truck to be transported to off-site storage, or, very rarely, on an empty space in the museum displays themselves, for a whole new crowd to look at and pretend to understand the significance of. Still, it was good work to be done, work that required a keen mind if one wanted to do it properly, and work that always promised at least something new and curious if one allowed themselves to remain open to new experiences. As far as Kal cared, his colleagues may very well consider those things “useless trinkets”; to him, these were priceless artifacts, evidence of an age long-gone and whose effects, while still occasionally visible in their modern world, were dreadfully few and far between.

A renewed interest in archaeology in the past couple of decades had been kickstarted by a chance and entirely unexpected finding somewhere in the Fertile Crescent, something that was unmistakably metallic, had moving parts that could help it function as some kind of mechanical gear, and was possessed of what was, without the shadow of a doubt, a battery port. The discovery made the rounds when it was first announced, with the team in question having had their credibility shot to pieces until further investigation revealed that what they had dug up wasn’t just an abandon piece of machinery left in the middle of the desert, but something new entirely, evidence of a civilization from ages past that had somehow, against all odds, achieved the same degree of technological innovation that the modern world had. There were always stories, tales told of ancient precursors who wielded great powers beyond mortal ken, but these were just stories, oral tradition passed down as rumor turned to myth. And yet, there it was: concrete, irrevocable proof that such civilizations existed.

The frenzy that this spawned led to one of the greatest gold rushes in recorded history, with archaeology teams from all across the planet dispatched to the Levant in order to be the first to make the next big breakthrough. It had been just over twenty years since the first machine was found, and in that time, the modern understanding of the world’s past was turned on its head as history books had to be effectively rewritten in order to account for what was discovered, entire narratives erased and brand new ones drafted to replace them once it became very clear that, against all expectations, those “mad ramblings” of con artists who had once been so easily ignored turned out to be completely correct. Not only that, but brand new discoveries brought to light the existence of forces that, much to the chagrin of scientists everywhere, the public came to call magic, the presence of which was reported on by various ancient sources and whose absence in the modern world was nothing if not a tantalizing enigma. On occasion, an artifact would be found that would contain small vestiges of this “power”, such as the ability to transmute any material into gold or make their wielder fly like a bird, but these were inevitably short-lived, running out of whatever powered them and becoming inert at best a couple of hours after first being activated.

Entire journals were set up from nothing in order to deal with this one, singular discovery, to uncover the true extent of this “magic” and just how prevalent it had once been. Clearly, if it was a force that existed within the universe, then it should be available for study, it should be measurable, observable, pokeable with a scientific stick… and yet no matter how hard anyone looked, or how much the equations that explained the natural world were mangled in order to account for this brand new force, no evidence was ever found outside the existence of these sparse and isolated artifacts that all died down and refused to work right after someone picked them up for the first time in thousands of years. It was as if it was on purpose, like some cosmic force was toying with modern civilization by dangling the existence of magic in front of them on a string, only to pull on it to just out of reach any time anyone got close enough to grab onto it; it gave rise to what was eventually called the “Farewell Hypothesis”, which posited that, through whatever unknown process, the force known colloquially as magic had somehow been removed from existence or simply ceased functioning altogether, at least on a local level. It broke every known law of physics, but then again, so did transmuting objects into gold by touching them with a statuette, so who really knew at that point?

It was for this reason that Kal always found it within himself to enjoy the inventory days, even if, by all accounts, they should be one of the most hated experiences of his entire life. There was always that tiny hope, that distant longshot that maybe one day he would run into one of these artifacts and get to see for himself what it was like to gaze into a past that was not only mostly forgotten, but that every day seemed to slip further and further away from them and their ability to chronicle. Even in his many expeditions he had never been able to find anything remotely magical; plenty of old machines, yes, enough that he had several articles published under his name in almost as many reputable publications, but never that something extra, that something special that would let him peer into the abyss of the ages and extract from it a tiny nugget of information on how the old ones led their daily lives.

But the hope was still there, and remained there no matter how many times he had to go through the process of checking those lists, to the point that, when everyone else in the museum began doing it, Kal had already finished about half of his allotted section of the inventory, already reeling from the sheer lack of anything remotely interesting in that particular batch. It took until a couple of days later, when he was rummaging through a few unclaimed boxes and resolved to take on the extra burden, before something interesting happened.

In one box, right at the bottom and wrapped up in newspapers from several years prior, was a piece of ornately-carved stone with a jewel inlaid in the center of it. From the jagged edges, it was clear that it had once belonged to something larger, and from the thickness of it, this “something” was clearly very big, or at least sturdy enough to be thrown around without breaking into pieces; this went a long way to explain why the jewel itself, a sapphire of a blue so deep that it was enough to leave him mesmerized for several seconds, seemed perfectly smooth and untouched by the ravages of time, just as glorious and ready to be placed on display as it had been the day it was first set into the stone object itself. The carvings were known to him, belonging to one of the several pre-Sumerian civilizations identified over the previous years; the carvings on this particular artifact belonged to one designated as P-12, speculated to have inhabited Sub-Saharan Africa somewhere between twelve thousand to fifteen thousand years prior… which was incredibly confusing, seeing as everything else in that box had been retrieved during an expedition to central Kazakhstan, and belonged to either P-2, a pre-Sovereigns Chinese dynasty, or P-4, a Central Asian semi-nomadic civilization from whom ethnic Mongols were believed to be descended from. Then why, exactly, was P-12 there?

This was the sort of question that Kal lived for, and almost immediately after making sure that this particular object wasn’t anywhere on the inventory list for the box that it was found in, nor for any other anywhere else in the building, he took it, beelined for the director’s office, and spent the better part of half an hour arguing for why he should be allowed to study it, all while the poor man tried to stop the tiger in his tracks to let him know that he had convinced them after the first handful of words. Elated beyond belief, and so giddy that he couldn’t even conceal it, Kal went straight back to his workspace and locked the door behind him, placing the small stone object on his examination table and neatly laying out all of the instruments he would use to analyze it… the day after. It was already late, most of his work was done and the victory for the day had been scored and safely stored where no one would think to look for it, so all that remained was going back home, having a good night’s sleep and then showing up to work the following morning with a smile on his face and the will to uncover the secrets of ages past.

That is, of course, after he ran over to Carla’s office and tried so hard to get everything out of his mind that the leopardess had to hold up both hands and tell him to shut up and repeat it at half the speed. Ten minutes later, the two had decided for her to head to Kal’s place for a celebratory round of beers and a toast to a bright new future, right before the tiger called ahead to let William know what had happened so he could get the drinks ready and finagle up some snacks so the three of them could be so loud the neighbors would have to tell them to quiet down.

The look on Kal’s face when he left the museum late that afternoon was one that redefined the very concept of joy, and if not for everyone around him being so stuffy by default, it probably would’ve been infectious as well. Unfortunately for him, very few people shared his outward effusiveness, much preferring to maintain this ridiculous sense of decorum and propriety that made the tiger’s everyday life as munda as it was; were it for him, everyone in that street would be making their joy as known as it could possibly be, preferably with plenty of undignified noises to go along with it as well. It was difficult to be the only one he knew who apparently had a functional libido that didn’t just shut off the moment he was outside the privacy of his own home, though to be fair, what he had wasn’t really normal either; to call the tiger’s sex drive “active” would be one hell of an understatement, and if not for his self-control keeping him in check, it was more than likely he’d have committed some manner of indiscretion that would’ve ruined his career already, such as, heavens forbid, kissing his roomie outdoors where someone could see them. Honestly, how exactly a society as prudish as the one he lived in produced someone like him was a mystery he would never solve, but at least William was more than happy to keep up with his ridiculous stamina once the front door was locked.

These were the thoughts that occupied him while he drove back home, the stupidest, widest smile stamped on his face the whole way into his garage and up the stairs to his apartment, where the bull was already waiting for him wearing an apron and absolutely nothing else. Having someone like William there to take the edge off of things and unwind was something that Kal thanked his lucky stars for every day of his life, as meeting that man had been the absolute best thing that could’ve happened to him; if it weren’t for Carla being at best half an hour behind him, Kal would’ve absolutely jumped on the opportunity to get frisky with that gorgeous hunk of a man right there and then, but for the sake of decorum, chose to simply slap his ass once, call him a whole slew of undignified things which shall remain unrecorded, and then gently remind the bull that they were supposed to have guests over.

“It’s Carla, she’s seen worse,” was William’s reply, followed by a hearty chortle, “what, do you think she’s going to cover her face and avert her gaze because of how sinfully I’ve decided to dress up?”

“No, but I think I’d rather be ready for work next morning rather than limping,” Kal replied, trying hard to hide the growing blush on his cheeks, “besides, we’re supposed to be celebrating something, not fucking one another’s brains out.”

“We can do both!”

The tiger lightly punched his mate on the shoulder, both of them exchanging a laugh as Kal went to their bedroom in order to change into something more comfortable. He couldn’t really argue with what William had just said; truth be told, Carla had seen them in far worse circumstances, and given the amount of cheap beer that he saw waiting on the dining table, Kal was all-but certain that the night wouldn’t end until at least one of them got groped by someone else. Hell, he was feeling quite frisky himself, though he couldn’t quite put his finger on why that was; usually he managed to keep himself under control quite well, but there was something about that day in particular that left him feeling… energized. It was most certainly the archaeological find, of that he had no doubt, but he wasn’t convinced it was its mere existence; after all, he’d found plenty of interesting things he thought to be magical artifacts before and they never provoked such a reaction out of him, and this happened during field work, where he could afford to be a bit looser around cultures that were more open with one’s sexuality. No, there was something different about this night in particular, and the thought of what it might be left Kal feeling even better than before.

In all actuality, there was very little recorded evidence of what these bits of ancient magic actually did beyond eyewitness accounts and the very rare video; the objects that produced these effects were universally indistinguishable from whatever else they were buried with, making it prohibitively expensive to set up proper recording equipment for whenever anyone went out into a dig. Take that and mix it together with the simple fact that no pattern had ever been found, and Kal suddenly began wondering if maybe what he was feeling wasn’t some sort of magic power rushing through him; perhaps the object he had acquired was a fertility idol (or part of one, at least), designed to give its holder the stamina they needed to truly live up to their breeding potential or something as ridiculous as that. It was impossible to truly know, especially now that the museum was closed and Kal himself had changed into a novelty t-shirt and some sweatpants, but one thing was for certain: him and William were going to have a lot of fun later that night.

Still, for the time being, they had something to celebrate, and as soon as Carla showed up and revealed that she stopped along the way for some of their favorite take-out, that’s when things began to go… blurry. The beers hadn’t even been cracked open and already the atmosphere inside the apartment was intoxicating, enough that the leopardess didn’t even comment on the fact that William was pretty much entirely naked and fully on display whenever he sat down and allowed his legs to splay to each side of him, much less ask for him to cover up or try to act halfway decent about it. The passage of time seemed to be affected, with minutes seemingly taking hours to pass, their minds focused on discussing whatever random non-topic came up that they could entertain themselves with, and within a few short moments, or perhaps a couple of hours, all three of them were thoroughly inebriated… without a single beer having been drunk.

As soon as the alcohol was poured out, then reality decided to take one look at what was going on inside that house, turn around and then just leave without a single word. Everything was a blur of motion, so much so that Kal, William and Carla all collectively decided that the best way to navigate around that place was to feel their way through it, which inevitably led to quite a bit of physical contact that only contributed to the rising heat all three of them were feeling, not all of it purely physical. From there was a very short hop towards the first outward grope, and from there on things just couldn’t keep themselves decent; two very sexually active men and one… presumably active woman (Carla kept to herself to an almost absurd degree) all together in a very tight, cramped spot while under the influence of copious amounts of alcohol and some kind of supernaturally mind-warping unknown effect, there was only one way that things could really go. Not that any of them could really tell where it was going; as much as Kal had earlier been convinced that his mind was being affected by the object he recovered, at that point in time he was simply too far gone to really care about anything other than finding the next bit of soft pudge to hold onto, or the next part of himself, William or Carla that could get them to moan out for his name. Coincidentally, this was the same motivation that the other two had been gripped by, leading them down a path that could only really end somewhere that was so loud the neighbors considered calling the police several times due to how frankly indecent it was.

They all woke up… some time later, it was hard to tell. Was it night, was it day? Had they skipped ahead to the point where they were late for work, or was there still some time left before they had to go to bed and actually rest properly? Their heads were dizzy, their minds confused and dazed, unable to process any information beyond a vague sense of physical tiredness that permeated their bodies. Opening their eyes didn’t really do much either; either sunlight or a light bulb were making it impossible for them to keep them open for more than just a few seconds, at least without having to groan in complaint at how much it was hurting them to see, and soon enough the living room was filled with the quiet grumblings of two very hungover felines and one absolutely smashed bull, none of which were capable of putting words together into coherent sentences, let alone what time it was or what they did the “previous” night. It took until several minutes and a few retching noises later before Kal managed to keep his eyes open for long enough to look out the window and notice it was still pitch-black, then drag himself over to the light switch and turn it off, prompting everyone in the living room to breathe a sigh of relief and immediately fall flat on their back.

No one said a single thing, but they were all thinking the exact same thought: why were they naked? Or rather, they were reasonably certain they understood why they were naked, seeing as their bodies were sweaty and dotted with other fluids of a more intimate persuasion, but them having spontaneously devolved into animals and fucking one another in the middle of the living room was highly unbecoming of them, even when considering William and Kal’s incredibly hyperactive sex drive; throw Carla into the mix and it was downright bizarre that it had happened, though given the sheer strength of the hangover, which somehow managed to show up several hours ahead of schedule, they could probably blame that on the beer… most of which had remained unopened, but still.

What followed were a very confusing ten or so minutes where all three of them tried to get back up and start moving around again, tripping over themselves and tumbling around as their hand-eye coordination and general balance had been shot to pieces. Carla in particular was incredibly moody, seeing as she had to wake up extra early the morning after and didn’t even know how late it was; with her mind in the state that it was, driving back home was just not possible, leading her to bemoan the fact that she’d have to sleep on the ground somewhere, given that the couch was… not in a fit state to be used thanks to their rather energetic lovemaking. William and Kal had to come to grips with whatever had happened as well, taking stock of any damages that had happened around the room, wincing as they found out they managed to tip over and break the television (though the game console was still intact, thankfully), in addition to plenty of gashes on the wallpaper, chairs tipped over wherever they looked and even spurts of cum dangling from the ceiling somehow. Their living room was more akin to a used set for an extreme porn flick rather than anywhere liveable, and they didn’t like how ok they were with that.