Chronicles of Yugure: Plummeting into Uncharted Depths

Day One

Tap tap tap, tap tap tap...

"Enoki, Enoki!" The rhythmic tapping continues to advance from the front room to my bedroom. I groggily awake, grabbing for my wooden clock sitting on my handcrafted night stand. It's carved gears tick at five-forty in the morning.

'Who in the world is at m'door at this time of day?' I try to roll over, pretending that I'm not there.

Rap tap tap, rap tap tap... Boom boom!

"Enooooki!" The voice lingers by my doorway, still knocking. I can feel the fibers of my wooden home vibrating at the pounding it is receiving from my visitor.

Sighing, I realize that this person will not leave until I make an appearance, or wake up the entire neighborhood trying. I pull off my roughly sewn buck skin blanket and wander out of my bedroom. In front of me and my bedroom doorway is my kitchen. I ward off any desires to ignore the caller and raid my cabinets and continue to the next room. The decently sized recreation room, in its usual state of shambles, is the last room I must endure until I reach the front door. I try my best not to step on one of the mine fields of antiquities I have scattered across the floor.

Part of my business as of late is restoring old artifacts for our local museum. I also enjoy working for private owners, including my own self, polishing and fixing any worn down artifacts of ancient beauty. One of my bad habits is to work on the floor, rather than using the workshop table that my mother got me as a present. This leaves me with a dangerously high risk of damaging my projects.

I reach the dark brown oval door. The details are in an off black metal. I switch the latch lock off and turn the lock that sits above the door knob. The cold metal handle makes my whole arm shiver as I turn the knob and open the door.

"There you are! What took you so long?" A falcon head pokes through the door eagerly. What follows is a maroon tiger striped feline body with the forelegs of a bird.

Yes, dear readers, my guest is a gryphon. But what would you expect in Yugure? Humans? Not likely.

"Erick, do ye know what time 'tis?" I ask the over zealous bird brain with an unamused tone. Although he is one of my good friends, he can be overbearing at times. On the IQ scale, he doesn't have much to show for; luckily his good looks save him from being a complete debacle in the society we call home. Now, I don't care for the fancy feathers and stuff- just the character. Even if said character involves waking me up extremely early in the morning.

He nods quickly and trots in place with excitement. "Oh, I know it's early and all, but the Professor wants to see you right away! He said something about a new assignment for you, and it's a big one." I can almost hear him squeal with enthusiasm.

The Professor, meaning Achilles Blacktalon, is the pride of our realm. He solely invented a machine that could mimic the natural portals strung throughout Yugure. The portals to our world dissipated during the hard times of the Twilight Wars, which were long and grueling battles between the opposing dragon clans of Hikari and Kurai. We still don't know for sure why our portals disappeared, but thanks to Professor Blacktalon, we don't have to worry about that happening again.

Professor Blacktalon doesn't normally teach a class, but he made an exception for me and one other student who just graduated from his teachings recently. I've been mostly learning botany, the study of plants. It's been a breeze for the most part, but Blacktalon says that the rest of my classes won't be as easy for me since I have a head start in my botany studies.

I snap back to reality, "An assignment, at this hour? Seriously? Does it 'ave something to do with studying the nocturnal?" I try to laugh but yawn instead.