Lexicon/Zekrit

Zekrit

Tepeth Seiyuri, in her Journal of the Fivefold Pillar Crusades:

Today, of all things, I saw a Zekrit, deep in the eastern forests. I believe we are nearing the place the guide spoke of, and hopefully we have not far to go now. Even so, the presence of what was presumed to be an extinct animal, lost since the First Age, is surprising. It is unheard of in this age, and I only recognized it because of the notes in the margin of my copy of the annals of Flawless Mirror in his discourse on Chopakta of Rabishu.

Anyway. To alleviate the boredom of this constant travel, and to make use of my time, I shall describe the long lost creature fully.

The adult zekrit stands roughly four and a half feet high at the shoulder, and stands on two legs, like some of the larger hunting lizards to be found in the south-east. It has a snout roughly like that of a pig, but with no tusks on either sex, and a look of disturbing intelligence in its eyes. However, while I have described it like this, the sleek fur coating its body gives it a much more predatory and less vulgarly imposing visage than you might think. Its habit of moving very slowly, head languorously shifting from side to side, and the three feet of cat-like tail coiling and uncoiling slowly in the breeze, do nothing to oppose this, and every movement it makes is a study in measured threat.

For a week or so, I asked myself why the forest creatures treat the Zekrit with such caution, and why it carries itself like an Exalt amongst the chaff of mortality, but then I saw it hunt for the first time, and my questions were answered. The Zekrit moves with a speed that cannot truly be described. Even as I watched, it ran across a small pool so fast the surface barely rippled, and crossed all of sixty yards in less than a second before it bit into the throat of a buck-ogre, and was still once again. I can only assume that it is a crafted creature, for it wields essence in such a directed and defined manner that I cannot think it a creature of the wyld. After seeing this, I examined it in more detail, using the techniques I originally learned so many lives ago working for the Council of Magical Constructs, and discovered that it is extremely similar in nature and hunting behavior to the Xenovore, which of course was more interesting and disturbing still, as I believed that the listings in the Guide to Magical Creatures listed the phenotypes of every Xenovore breed created. The Zekrit is not even mentioned in a side note! As such, I suspect these are either a secret project, created by an extremely skilled sorcerer to protect something long lost to history, or the first occurance of a naturally occuring and true-breeding xenovoracious animal, from which the magical construct that takes that name derives. If I have time, I shall undertake more research into the matter, but, as always these days, there are more pressing matters to attend to.

Lexicon/Zekrit

Zekrit

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