A teen-aged kid running wild in the field chasing a multi-colored butterfly when she spots a lonely man lying on the field. Being scared she called her brother who was herding the cattle nearby. The brother came running to her hearing her cry and saw the lying man unfazed by the cry of her sister. The boy picked up a stick and poked the man’s cheek anticipating a response. “Oye, old-man are you alive? You don’t look so good.” 

The man sightly opened his eyes and looked towards the kid and turned to the other side and continued with his nap. The old man was wearing a black long coat and with blood-red border, embroidered with silver chains giving him look of the aristocracy. The boy was unhappy with the cold response and poked him again with his stick and this time to his abdomen and said “Oye, don’t take me so lightly. I can perform 3-tier spells, you know and you don’t look to have much strength.” 

As he finished his words, he started incantation of a spell that he had learned recently. A small flame appeared at the tip of the stick and he said “Fire”. The small flame burst into a big flame and then hit the old man. The man without even turning his body raised a finger and the whole of the explosion was sucked into his finger. The boy almost skipped a heartbeat as he looked at the spectacle and was highly amazed. 

Then the boy became all the more enthusiastic and started poking the old man more vigorously and kept asking “Who are you? More importantly, could you teach me how to do that, please.” 

The old man finally woke up irritated, looked towards the kids and said: “First give me something to eat and then I may think about your request.” The boy excitedly turned to his sister and said: “You stay here and I’ll go to grab something to eat for this old man.” He ran away towards their home.

“He looks enthusiastic.”

“He has always been bullied, you know, for being the weakest in his school. But I think my brother is pretty awesome and he is always there for me and he is so kind also.”

“Hmm… Looks nothing special though.”

“Don’t say such things about my brother, you meanie.”

“Well little one, what should we do to pass the time until he returns with some food?”

“Why don’t you tell me about yourself, Mister?”

“Well its a long and dangerously horrific story. I don’t think you have the guts for it kiddo.”

“You are just an old man with too many excuses to avoid the topic,” she said as she made a pout face with wrinkled brows and turned to stare away from him.

 “OK! OK! How about some other story. Do you know about the time when the demon king used to live here among us.”

“Yeah, of course, old man. Every kid in this world knows the story. That’s about 10000 years ago, there lived an evil Demon King who was killed by the heroes with the help of the Gods. I have heard it so many times that I can say it in reverse.”

“I bet you can little one, but the story I am going to tell you, I’m sure, you haven’t heard it ever. So you know 10000 years ago, there was a big war. But what you don’t know is what led to that war…

Before the last war of the races ever happened, this world was what you would like to call barbaric. The chaos ruled over these lands. There were no Gods or Demons or any other races defined for that matter. Their intelligence was limited to that of survival only. Nature was unforgiving and ‘survival of the fittest’ was the rule of the world. There was a single life that was very diligent and inquisitive about the meaning of life. That life-form started to defeat other life-forms and gained supremacy over what all existed and then at the end, it was able to create order in chaos. It nurtured the intelligence of every living being and bought them under his rule and thus gave birth to the first of all civilizations, with him as the King. 

Intelligence is a wonderful thing and it can easily be swayed by emotions, jealousy, ego and hence has the potential to call upon wrath. And, the same happened with the nascent civilization. Wars broke out among the intelligent creatures. The king was deeply sad and hurt by this action of his subjects and so decided to divide them into several tribes and races based on their distinctive qualities and nature and spread them all over the world so that they would never meet and bring upon the chaos again. Only a few of the life forms loyal to the king remained with him. 

Being separated from each other, they developed their skills and knowledge, brought prosperity to themselves and lived with the order as they drove chaos out of their civilizations. 

Slowly, their curiosity and intelligence made them venture out of their comfort zones and started explorations. Again, intelligence has a tricky nature; if you don’t use it well, it will harbor ego and envy. The races in different zones with different abilities were not satisfied with what they had and hence they started to war to snatch other’s prosperity. 

To make themselves more powerful they started creating supernatural entities with their imaginations and faith and they gave birth to the Gods… the Gods of all kinds to make their civilizations united and stronger… elemental Gods, war Gods, and fertility Gods, etc… different for different races. And those egoistic entities made themselves into their own race of Gods. They all went on war with each other. 

Troubled by this untoward development, the King lost his sanity and then with his supreme authority as the Judge, pronounced every intelligent being whom he loved so much to perish. He called upon his loyal followers and bestowed upon them the power of executioners and ordered them towards the warring races. 

The executioners rampaged under the order of the Judge started slaughtering everything that was in their path. The races were terrified by this maddening destruction. They and their Gods called for the truce and later allied themselves against the Judge. By use of trickery and their combined knowledge, they and those whom he believed to be loyal revolted against him and cast him away from the world.”

“So how do you know about all that. Weren’t the Gods created life and gave us everything that we have?” asked the girl with distrust in her eyes towards the man.

“Hmm… Told you. You did not have a stomach for it.” He laughed as he replied. As she was about to figure out the nature of the reason for his laugh, 

BOOM!! BOOM!!

Sound of two huge explosions was heard. The girl stood up looking at the direction of the explosion and uttered feebly with a shiver in her voice “That’s where my house is!” She started running towards the smoke, which was visible on the horizon.

Reaching there, she saw their double-storied house was half in ruins. She went inside and saw her mother’s body blasted to bits and with blood spattered all over the floor. She was not even able to muster the courage to cry and suddenly remembered about her father. She started searching for him. She came out of the house ran towards the backyard. Her vision shifted towards the wall behind her where she saw the body of a man stuck on the wall whom she could barely recognize as her father.

Horror seeped into her eyes and mind and she started crying aloud. She was screaming at the top of her voice when a hand came over her head patting her. She felt warmth in the pat as she turned her head and looked at the man who was patting her.

“Do you feel helpless, my little one? Do you want the power to be strong? Do you wish revenge?”

With a shiver in her voice and tears in her eyes, she said whispered “Yes.”

“Huh! I couldn’t hear you clearly, little one.”

Thousands of thoughts ran through her mind; all screaming POWER!!! POWER!!! Then she screamed at the top of her voice “YES!!!”

H/T Featured image taken from internet

Please read the next eposide

Please also read the prequel: Episode 1