Purified Rivalry (OC Purification) (Patreon)

Patron commission for ForbiddenArchive, in which their author avatar and mine continue their little rivalry. Inspired by some art by CorruptiveSpirit that I got off a roulette. 

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The Arcane Sanctuary was quiet as ever. The massive shelves of books and the occasional magical artifact stretching out beyond sight and probably through a few different alternate dimensions were simply too large for most random visitros to encounter each other, if it weren’t for the strange and possibly actively intelligent will of the location. Any given section made up only a fraction of a fraction of the Sanctuary’s total books.

It’s keeper, the supernatural wolf-girl known as Luna Lupa (or Lulu to her friends), was innately linked to the Sanctuary. She made sure it kept running, and it made sure she kept functioning. A mutually beneficial arrangement to be certain, as both parties quite liked the fact that they existed. Lulu was, however, also a writer. It was a core part of her being; if she did not write, she would simply not be Lulu anymore. And in the Arcane Sanctuary, this was reflected as a small section dedicated to her works.

The stories contained within were nearly as important a part of Lulu as her own body. She may have been embarassed by a number of them, but she’d still written them and enjoyed them. And so had a surprising number of other people - across worlds and sometimes between. She liked to think that in her little niche, she was at least a little bit popular.

She was not the only writer serving that niche, however. Hato, keeper of the Forbidden Archive - another space where fiction and fact got befuddled and melded akin to the Arcane Sanctuary - was also a writer, and also had her share of fans. In fact, there was considerable overlap between the two and their respective homes, which was why they could visit each other so freely. And it was also why in addition to friends, there was something of a rivalry, as they shared similar numbers of viewers and readers.

At the present, Lulu was ahead. She had been so for quite a while now, breaking away from the usual back-and-forth for who was slightly over the other. And that fact had begun to irk Hato. It wasn’t enough that there was an impromptu, transformative prank-war between her and Luna (one of Lulu’s halves), but she had to act so superior? Well that simply could not do, now could it?

So as she discreetly visited the Arcane Sanctuary once again, she came stealthily, avoiding the notice of Lulu or her assisting dog-golem-girl, and wandered into the small section that was dedicated to Lulu’s many stories. She scoffed; her works in the Forbidden Archive completely dwarfed the wolf girl’s, in size, scale, and number of individual stories. By all metrics she should have been the more successful. And yet.

It was for the best that the collection was not huge - it would have made Hato’s plan considerably harder to pull off! For now, she began by taking a book from the shelf. It was a lurid tome to be sure, the sort that Lulu would have put a lot of effort into just to be able to write it without taking ‘private breaks’. She smiled - she’d read it later - but for now, her job was to replace it. She slid a book of her own into it’s place, a different kind of story…

—————

Luna Lupa, caretaker of the Arcane Sanctuary, was in a pretty decent mood. For once she wasn’t super behind on her stories! She had certain responsibilities to certain people, and that usually meant she had a backlog of things she had to write for them. In the last few months she’d been struggling with a seemingly endless Writer’s Block, but it seemed she’d at last overcome it, at least for the moment, and was pumping out stories fast enough she even had time for the occasional personal writing! That was genuinely rare enough that it kinda bothered her.

It was a nice time without too much in the way of impeding deadlines and dreadful responsibility weighing on her, and she was enjoying herself. Gabriella, assistant / pet to the caretaker, snoozed away on a cushion behind her. There hadn’t been too many guests lately.

She was so focused on her writing that she didn’t realize subtle changes at first. It wasn’t super visible of course. It was more subdued than that. Just a little change in her inflection as she wrote, the way she described certain things. Her characters began to swear less and there was less focus on the lurid aspects of a transformation and more on their responses to it. It had been planned to be a sexy story, the sort she’d write while blushing and planning alone time later. But instead it was turning fluffy, wholeseome even - a character confessing they’d always wanted to experience something like that so it was actually consensual! The villain turning out to be just misguided and trying to help!

Lulu wrote this with a peaceful smile, until she finished a paragraph and took a moment to read what she’d done so far. Ah, it was so cute! She was happy to make something like that… although, wasn’t something odd? She checked against the outline she’d sketched out on a notepad, realizing the story had taken a surprisingly fluffy turn that she had not planned. It felt right as she wrote it, and sometimes, that was just how stories developed. But it was odd she hadn’t even thought to adjust the outline…

She adjusted her glasses a bit. Something felt wrong inside of her, specifically in how strangely right she felt - moreso than she ever did by nature. It was almost as if something was trying to draw attention away from whatever she was actually supposed to be noticing. She stood up to stretch a bit, and rest her hands a little, but as she did some of her lengthy hair waved in front of her. She noticed that the twintails had lost some of their metallic shine.

By nature, Lulu had a few oddities to her that marked her as supernatural. Her mixed silver and bronze hair, her two different eye colors, and the metallic nature of her lupine features like her ears and tail along with her hair, taken in their entirety indicated she was not a natural creature. But now her hair just looked like hair, and the silver and bronze colors were shifting. She was being transformed!? She had no idea how she was being transformed, either in terms of mechanics or target result, but she had seen enough transformation in person and in stories to understand that she was being changed.

“Gabriella, does something seem… weird, to you?” she asked aloud. The dog-girl sat up from her nap, blinking.

“Huh? Oh, uh, I dunno. You look cuter than usual?” she said. She paused, sniffing the air.

“What is it?” Lulu asked. “Is there something I didn’t notice.”

Gabriella sniffed a bit more, frowning. “Huh… that’s weird. It smells like your friend. She hasn’t been here in a while though, since we made friends while she was watching the place for you.” She sniffed again.

“Are you sure? Hato didn’t say she was visiting and the usual entrance didn’t feel anything off.” Lulu asked, rubbing at her strange not-quite metallic and not-quite-natural hair.

“Mmhm! After that fun time I’d know her smell anywhere!” Gabriella insisted.

She was clearly confident that Hato was present somewhere in the Arcane Sanctuary. And knowing that woman, if something weird was happening with Lulu it was probably Hato’s fault. “Can you sniff her out then? I need to find her.” Lulu asked.

“Yep~! Of course, what kind of dog do you think I am?” Gabriella giggled.

—————

The path they followed towards Hato was winding and far from a straight line. The Arcane Sanctuary was not a space that tended to abide physical laws of where things had to be in relation to each other, shifting and changing with it’s own enigmatic whims and those of it’s occupants. Rarely was there a straight path between one spot and another.

All the same, Lulu had an innate sense of navigation in the environment, as did Gabriella. So she knew she was approaching a quite specific location even with the nonsensical path. Specifically, she and her attendant were closing in on the space in which Luna Lupa stored copies of her stories.

Thinking about Hato reading them, Lulu found herself blushing. Oh gosh, was she really going to read such dirty things as she’d written? What would she think of her then!?  And really, were they truly of such a quality to be worth the read? She did always think her readers were simply too nice to point out the significant flaws in the work…

Lulu shook her head. It was getting worse. Better? It was hard for her to articulate what she was feeling besides that she was changing more intensely by the second. Her hair had lost most of it’s metallic luster, and even her clothes were changing - the green and purple dress that showed off her figure becoming a notably more modest affair, and subdued in color.

She felt embarrassment just thinking about what she wrote. That wasn’t so unusual, as she wasn’t actually as confident as she usually acted. But this was different - she was embarrassed more about their content than anything. She hemmed and hawed over what Hato might think of her as she walked, her heels shortening into sedate dress shoes, her dress splitting into a top and the skirt. The material and cut shifted as well, as it tended down towards soft beige tones. She adjusted her glasses as she walked.

The wolf-girl knew her mental hang ups here were because of the magic, but that didn’t make them any less strong! Honestly at this point, it wasn’t even so much that Hato was reading her smut that bothered her, but that she had written such dirty things in the first place. That was more embarrassing than anything! What had she been thinking, accepting such requests!? She much preferred light, fluffy romances to that filth. She was wearing a soft beige top with a brown vest over it, now, and her coloring had shifted even further - light brown hair and fur, now, and not a hint of metal in it. Her color scheme had become more unified as the snarky, lewd, and generally gremlin-ish side that made up “Luna” was subdued and integrated with her more demure and nervous side.

Lulu turned a corner, and saw Hato placing one more story onto the shelf. She knew through her connection to the object that it had been completely cleared of it’s dirty contents, and replaced with softer works, nicer stories where the highest drama was a love triangle and the lewdest content was passionate kisses.

It was time to confront her about what she had done! To make her put Lulu back to the way she was! But as Lulu opened her mouthto speak, her voice hitched. “H-Hello, uh, welcome to the, mm, Arcane S-Sanctuary,” she stammered instead, unable to make herself speak without persistent stuttering. Why was Hato so pretty? Who had decided that it was okay for her to be that pretty? It made her blush like a tomato! “D-D-Do you need help with anything?”

Hato turned to see the new arrival, and blinked as she processed the sight. It was Lulu - now in a picture perfect librarian getup, a vest and cardigan and long skirt, with her hair tied into two tight buns instead of flowing in twintails. She looked younger, her chest not as big and her figure not so developed. It took her a few moments to even recognize her as Lulu.

“…Lulu?” Hato asked after a while. This wasn’t, like, Lulu’s little sister or something was it?

The wolf-girl nodded nervously. “Mmhm. Y-Yes, I’m Lulu, Hato. Are you looking for something specific? D-Do you need help finding, the, uh, romance s-section?” she asked. She couldn’t really remember why she’d been coming to talk to her anymore, except to help her find what she wanted to pick up.

Cute. Too cute. How could something be so cute, that was illegal. Hato was trying hard not to just snatch Lulu up into a hug. She wasn’t succeeding, and the purified young lady yelped in surprise as she was given a face-full of oversized boobs when Hato dragged her into a hug. “Cute! Cute! Cute! I can’t help myself, I just need to hug and cuddle you and-“

Gabriella coughed. “Hi, Hato! Did you come to play with me again!?” she giggled.

Hato flushed red and tried to compose herself, releasing Lulu - who was a stammering, blushing mess, clearly in need of a reboot. “Ahem. I was wondering when you’d show up.” Hato said, trying to sound calm again, and not entirely succeeding. “Would you like to catch up over tea?”

She was laying it on too thick, but Lulu wasn’t the kind of person who looked beyond face value anymore. She nodded fervently. “Okay! I’ll go make some!” she said, running off.

Her tail was wagging so fast it looked like she’d lift off. Hato made a choking noise. Too cute. `