"So, you really are one of them… one of the servants of the fox god, one of the pilgrims, the blood of the first king."
The rabbit looked with reverence at the boy standing before him.
"Finally someone noticed! damn it, I lived my whole life without hiding my surname and not once did anyone catch on."
Azriel said indignantly, while the rabbit recoiled under the accusation.
"Well… humans forgot about that a long time ago, and even the memory of the spirits has grown faint after so many centuries."
He said defensively.
"I myself don't remember the tales of the kings."
"Could you refresh the memory of this young crazy rabbit?" The rabbit asked reverently, as if he had nearly regained his sanity.
"Of course, just take me to the temple while we talk." The rabbit smiled happily.
It had been a long time since he last heard that story, those stories, the tales of the kings and the first men.
Azriel remembered vividly the first time he read KingsRoad.A compendium of various pieces of knowledge necessary for a king.
As well as the tales contained within.
And from there, he read for the very first time.
…
At the dawn of time, beasts roamed the earth.
Dragons, phoenixes, and every glorious creature with scales, feathers, or fur ruled over the land and all living beings.
Ordinary animals only bowed before the glory of these feared beings.
Humans appeared in those perilous days as common animals.A variant of apes, often called naked apes.
At that time, they were far too weak to survive on the surface and often hid beneath rocks and inside caves.
Among the common animals, they were the weakest.
Even the insects of that era were larger and more powerful than they.
Then, among the naked apes, a mystical event occurred, giving rise to what would later be called the first human.
The Primordial, the first man and father of humanity, impregnated a woman of his tribe.
This woman was strong and vigorous, her skin like bronze, her muscles like steel. Her curly, flowing hair reached down to her waist, like an Amazon.
Yet her pregnancy was strange.
While carrying the child, she craved meat more and more, and even after eating endlessly, she was never satisfied.
Not only that, she grew thinner and weaker with each passing day.
After months of agonizing hunger, the woman gave birth to the child.
Unfortunately, she died during labor, but when the father held the newborn in his arms, he heard a whisper from the child's mother naming her son.
Obeying the maternal voice, the Primordial named the boy Aura.
And he was the most powerful human ever born upon the earth.
The youth grew with an insatiable hunger, and in his quest for satisfaction, he challenged dragons and phoenixes to feast upon their flesh.
He was the first to challenge the beasts and the first to defeat them, and his name was written into history.
The Primordial, now widowed, decided to marry again and impregnated his second wife.
This second wife, a woman with blue eyes and black hair, was above all else intelligent like no other.
During her pregnancy, for some reason, she became even more inquisitive than usual.
She would walk for hours through the forests, observing nature, often breaking and destroying stones and branches just to see what lay inside.
When asked why she did that, she said that her son wanted to see what it was like inside, he was curious.
At some point she reported hearing voices growing louder and louder about her son asking her for things.
His curiosity seemed limitless, while his mother seemed to go mad more and more quickly, her mind deteriorating each day until she finally gave birth.
She died in childbirth, but the Primordial said he heard her voice and declared that the child would be named Mana.
And this was the most intelligent human ever to walk the face of the earth;
He was the first to build and to wield magic, which had been the exclusive domain of the beasts, and his name was written into history.
Mana and Aura were brothers, but they argued constantly from childhood.
One believed in subduing the beasts by force and the other wanted to dominate them through intellect.
From an early age they debated how they would divide the world between them, for they would be the true rulers of the land.
The Primordial, however, did not stop having children.
Each of his offspring had stories as extraordinary as the first two, but none of them cared to seize the world or reign over the beasts, and so they were erased by history.
Except for one, and he was called Qi.
Qi didn't care about much, but he was extremely friendly with Mana and Aura, often the one to placate them both.
In the morning Qi would go to Aura's house and eat at his table while they bad-mouthed Mana.
At night he would go to Mana's house to speak ill of Aura.
And in both cases he ate until he was full.
While the two divided the world between them, Qi connected both as he traversed both territories.
The tribes of Aura and Mana grew ever larger, and dominion over the world was handed to them.
The two banners divided the world.
On one side were Aura's barbarians.
On the other, Mana's learned mages.
They met one day and finally decided that owning only half the world was not enough.
They wanted the entire world for themselves.
So they asked Qi and their other younger siblings to choose a side and fight in the war for the final sovereignty of the world.
Qi, however, looked at them and laughed.
"Are you still playing this game?" He said between laughs. "Divide the world as much as you like, I don't care."
"I am a traveler and I will continue to travel through the entire physical world."
"Not even spiritual borders stopped me in the past, are physical borders going to stop me now?"
He proclaimed, and none of them understood.
Little did they know, while everyone argued, Qi had traveled the spiritual realms and met a fox in his journeys.
This fox, the fox-goddess as he called her, he took as his wife in the spiritual world.
And with her…
Qi learned the secrets of higher planes.
When his two brothers confronted him no longer with words but with fists and lightning, Qi did not need to lift a finger to defeat them.
His magic was undetectable to them, and soon he froze them.
"You are fortunate to be my brothers," Qi said before teleporting among them. Or at least that's how it seemed, actually he had only taken an ordinary step.
"Otherwise, you would not leave alive today."
"From this day forward I declare: the world will be mine to travel and to do with as I please."
"And to you, my foolish brothers, I bequeath the task of being my caretakers."
"Divide the world as you prefer, but know that you, kings and emperors, are merely my gardeners."
…
"That's what my ancestor Qi said." Azriel said.