New Rourke Unmasked
The Diary of Noor
Displaced Nocturne | Living Reflections | Mutants & Mysteries
While I was walking the streets yesterday evening, looking for food, I found something curious in an alley. Lying beside a trash can was the partially eaten corpse of a merle rat. Normally, I would have ignored something like this, but my eye was drawn to an odd growth just behind its ears. Upon closer inspection this turned out to be a fully formed third eye.
I brought it back to my lab for study, and though I have limited experience in zoology, I found that the eye was not the least of this creature’s abnormalities. Its robust body indicated it was an offshoot of the Norway rat breed but with more developed musculature in its paws; exterior digits being nearly opposable. The skull and brain were enlarged to accommodate the extra eye, as well as additional nodules I couldn’t identify. My autopsy concluded that the rat had not died from these mutations, or disease, but rather had broken its neck in a fall. Whatever had been eating the rat had begun so postmortem then changed its mind.
I was so caught up in my work that, by the time I looked at the clock, I found it was nearly eleven in the morning. I wasn’t even tired! Normally, I am unconscious around six! The solar cycle of this world obviously affects me differently, but while this is an exciting prospect, I must remain cautious. The nightly decay of my body continued unabated, sleep throughout the day is still the only thing that manages to restore me.
This evening, I consulted Peligro about the rat. He was intrigued and asked several intelligent questions, but when I asked him about how he thought something like this could happen, his only reply was “These things should be expected.” I pressed him as to why. He changed the subject.