https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ku1Lhpt_BsM

Floating, the endless ocean surrounding her once again, yet now it was no longer empty. Shadows of creatures large and small swam within, giving false life to the world of water around her.

No eyes, no discernible appearance was visible upon them, just a shape, just a shadow.

Erika felt drowsy as she floated, without the strength to move, barely enough to keep out the water which she felt fill her lungs.

She felt herself drowning, yet again was not.

The endless ocean above and below beckoned no change as before, darkness filling either direction as she aimlessly floating through the middle.

No voice filled her mind, no words appeared, but a shadow did.

Many hundreds of them floated all around her, but one shadow hovered in place, standing out also in different ways.

Unlike the very fish or serpentine-like creatures that filled this sea, this one shadow was humanoid.

A dozen tails of fur out of its back, whilst long fox-like pointed ears lay upon its head.

Having been noticed, the creature turned to face her, face-less just like the others, except for a brief moment everything flashed into light.

Erika saw long snow-white hair with fox ears and tails, a strand of greenish hair coming down the side of his face. Silver eyes with a tinge of emerald at the pupil, weary gentle eyes of a strange old man who looked on at her with the weight of the world upon his shoulders and maybe more.

A sadness filled his expression, one Erika could not explain, but she saw it clear as day.

Then the flash of light faded, bringing her back to the ocean, no longer loomed over by shadows…

Instead, life flourished around her.

Schools of fish swarmed by as large stone-shelled turtles swam below, strange glowing creatures floating further down whilst suddenly a pack of monstrously large serpentine beings flowed up above her.

“Incredible, aren’t they?” The fox asked as they both gazed at the serpentine creatures, long bodies of glimmering scales with beautiful multicolored fins along the way, taking from a very long and trailing tail of glittering greens and blues, over to a long-snouted head with draconic appearance.

“They are the first” The fox added.

“The first…of what?” Erika asked as she lay staring up in absolute awe.

“The first of many things.” The fox replied, flowing to align himself with her, both of them now floating aimlessly amongst it all as his long cloak and all too long sleeves trailed with the water. “The first guardians. The first devourers. The first conscious and the first Dragons. They are the beginning of your kind, the ones who brought it to its greatness which your father desperately struggles to uphold.”

“You know my father?” Erika asked too, turning now to face the fox.

Who simply continued to stare up at the majestic ocean, “I know all too many people, mortal and not. It matters not for this meeting, young one. I am not even myself, nothing but a fragment left behind alongside many others to keep this reality from tearing itself asunder. Each with their own other specific purpose and…it seems mine, is to meet you.”

“Meet me?...Why me?” Erika repeated in question, befuddled by this oddness.

“Why not you?” The fox asked back with a playful elderly smile, “Well, to show you, of course. To show you your origins, to show you what you may well never see.” He gestured at the Serpents as they swam off into the distance. “But they are not… your only origin. Are they?” He then mused, turning himself upside down then to gaze at the ocean’s depths.

Erika struggled, but did the same, following his eyes.

Deep down below them, she then saw it.

With a body that glowed oddly blue, humanoid yet…not entirely. The creature seemed large, much taller and bulkier than a human and with a body that one could almost see-through.

“Don’t use your eyes child. Use your soul.” The fox said, lightly pinching her forehead then as he suddenly appeared in her view, before her very sight changed.

Erika’s eyesight flashed forward, coming face to face with the being. A body that not just glowed but radiated a strange kind of mana…An Aura.

Female in appearance, she swam down into the dark abyss, and Erika’s sight followed, sticking to her like an onlooker from another world.

Her short fluorescent blue hair, less like hairs and more like thick tendrils trailing with the water whilst her hands and feet trailed blueish energy through wherever she swam.

Her clothing was simple, a dark green leather held together with cloth and thickly strung together seaweed. At her side, a sphere of the same strange ocean weed lay strung to her belt, contained small glowing herbs of yellow.

Deeper and deeper she swam, until suddenly the darkness began giving way…to lights.

Erika gasped at the sight, as before her the abyss gave way to an entire kingdom.

Gigantic barriers riddled the ocean floor, within there lay entire cities built from tough coral, sandstone and some metal.

The city was alive, bustling with sound and light, the beings mounting strange hovering devices which they rode about at great speed. Machinery very reminiscent to dwarven engineering, yet at the same time very different from the bulky creations the stoutmen made. Many sea creatures filled the cities too, beings of all shapes and sizes, working with or for the blue beings.

Erika’s sight then unstuck from the girl, as she swam down into one bubble of her society, finding herself floating above it all and with the old fox next to her, Erika could only stare.

“While your draconic ancestor ruled the ocean sky. Your other ancestors had a more…humble growth. Not monstrous beings of order and chaos who ruled above everything else, destined from birth for greatness. No, the Aurei were at first nothing more than a small race who struggled from the ocean depths into a grand society.” The fox explained.

Then he sighed, “At first.”

As before them both another being appeared.

A beautiful man with light green skin, a scaly black tail, draconic green wings with black limbs, perfectly straight black hair and large beady blue eyes.

“Alas, this was a time when even Gods walked freely.” The fox then grumbled.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AWYSS7IODE

Erika’s sight changed once more, filling with darkness which was quickly set aside as bouts of flame and lightning filled her view.

The ocean before her was now filled with battle, screams and bellows thundering through the water as the Serpents lay to dust the Aurei people.

“One of the Dragon Gods, Ryujin, saw the Aurei as a perversion of the ocean. Their progress and growth, was an abomination to life in his eyes.” The fox said, gesturing then up above them, where two beings clashed mercilessly.

A massive serpentine dragon of black, gold and green faced off with two bright blue humanoid beings. One male with short white hair and the other female with long trailing blue.

The man was enraged, glancing down at the Aurei’s destruction, his many hands wielded each a wicked weapon that grew harsher and more monstrous with each passing moment.

“The creators of the Aurei, the being Jinn and his mate, the once Goddess Bahamut. They fought an endless war, far too long. So long such that even after it had ended…” As the fox spoke, the scene changed.

Ryujin now stood over Bahamut’s limp corpse, a long draconic sabre piercing down into her chest, as Jinn looked over with raw hatred whilst keeping at bay the blazing breaths of a hundred Serpents.

“You see, Ryujin did not give birth to Dragons alone, but instead with Bahamut. But seeing his cruel and unrelenting ways, Bahamut left Ryujin, finding then the lone Jinn and giving birth to many other children. Amongst them, were both the Aurei your people and…The Spirit Beasts, my people.” The fox told. “And Spiritbeasts…feel far more than any other creature. Jinn was our father…as such.”

Erika watched as Jinn’s very existence…cracked.

“Watching his love, killed before his eyes by one who also claimed to love her. The being Jinn, broke.”

Pure darkness exited out of Jinn’s cracks, engulfing him whole as out of it formed a humungous black lion which lay waste to the hundred Serpents in a single bout of pure black breath, removing their very existence from before itself.

All around the beast, cracks in reality began to form, rifts tore open and grew.

“In his rage, in his cracking existence, Jinn became the first Void.” The fox explained as Jinn’s form then suddenly burst, engulfing everything in darkness. “A being of pure chaos, he became one with this world as at the same time flipping it over. The oceans became fiery lands of fire, the skies ashen clouds of raining death, and the creatures?”

The fox showed her as the surviving Aurei escaped into rifts, away from the quickly approaching darkness, and whichever other beings that weren’t devoured by it did the same, even many a Serpent.

“Hell was born.” The fox said, as now a fiery landscape surrounded them. “A realm broken off from reality itself, it became its own. Breathing life, into the first Demons, and then corrupting otherworldly beings, into the second Devils. But none remain as cruel and warped, as the first.”

Erika suddenly found herself in a cavernous hall of carved black stone with glowing red streaks of magma slowly flowing through the sides like rivers. Before her, a throne of darkness lay, and upon it a dark figure of black and red gazed onwards…

“Ryujin, the first Devil King, or as he is now called…” As the fox spoke, the Devil’s gaze befell onto Erika as if…As if he could sense her there.

“Xokith.”

The vision faded immediately after the name was spoken, Erika suddenly finding herself once again in the ever-endless ocean, once again empty, floating alongside the old fox who lay silent.

“What…what happened to them?” Erika then asked.

“The Aurei? Oh, that is a long story for another day, but to tell you the finer points of it…Jinn’s corruption began what we call in immortal history as the War of Gods. And one neutral pantheon, took on the Aurei as powerful guardians.” The fox replied.

“And the Dragons?” Erika also asked.

“They made their own pantheon, prideful as Dragons are, they took hold to no god ever again but…forever declared their own personal and eternal war upon Hell.” The fox added, “They scattered themselves amongst the many realms, taking to the hermit’s life and keeping distance from their neighbors. They slumbered, lying in wait, for where they could not go to the enemy, they waited for it to come to them.”

Erika was at a loss for words, and more questions, both of them now floating off in silence as she processed everything she had just witnessed.

Long moments later, “Why show me all this?” she asked.

The fox laughed, “Because child, just like Ryujin and Bahamut with Jinn in the middle, who do you think is in the greatest pain? The Humans? A fallen race in this realm, debauchery and evil having brought them down to the lowest pedestal of their own making. The Vampires? The outcome of human insanity, greed and lust. The outcome of their desperation to survive their God’s cleansing before the Gods were locked away. No, the Lycans, they are the most in pain. Created by a cruel and tyrannical God who was too lazy to fix his previous creations and instead decided to make something to clean it up for himself.”

The fox sighed, “This is why I made sure Xokith’s plans to kidnap you failed. This is why I bent and altered your appearance to their domain. I did not send you here child, but I did make it so he inadvertently would!” he laughed once more. “Because I hope that you, and your caretaker, will bring peace to this realm. A short enough peace to prepare…for the true war that is to come. A war that Ryujin began, and Jinn continues to this day.”

“Then I guess…I should thank you?” Erika mused, “Wait, what caretaker?”

The fox chuckled, “Go child, enough questions now, they will all be answered in due time. Go, the world awaits you.” He said, floating off while Erika had stopped, she watched him drift off into the endless ocean, becoming a small dot before disappearing entirely.

Confused, Erika was at first unsure how she’d exit this place, when she then looked up.

Finding herself being pulled out of the rainwater where she had collapsed from exhaustion, a masked and cloaked man stood over her, holding her head above the water.

Silver eyes narrowed as they gazed down at her through the wolf mask, “You met him.” Lano mused in a whisper, as Erika then glanced about to see many warriors at the ready and surrounding her.

Giving her their back, they were all having a silent face off with the unmoving Draem that then surrounded them, calmly watching on.

“My, what a time to come back to us, miss Draconia.” Zarkon mused as he glanced from beast to beast, “We’re a bit out of the loop at the moment, mind…filling us in?...” He asked, then looking about at the bloody and muddy waters that surrounded them, bits and pieces of Imp laying within.

Sitting up, Erika took several deep breathes, glancing around at the Draem herself. “Imps-Demons, they attacked me and…Thorn, where’s Thorn?” She asked, quickly pulling herself up only to stumble back into Lano.

The warriors who had been glancing her way, now fully stared on towards the Draem, all but Zarkon who fully turned to her. “Trainee Thorn Ragtail’s corpse was found butchered and dead alongside his half eaten mount a few steps outside camp on the opposite side. Many of our night watch were also found in the same state, if not at all.”

Erika’s eyes widened at his words, her mouth laying agape as her gaze then fell to the bloody water.

That fool…he ran for it.