Prologue

Old Lilith was known in the little town of Arisgore as a storyteller. She knew how to weave stories from the life of people and tell them to an enraptured audience who would listen to her with their eyes wide open and their breath held with suspense. She had a small shop in the middle of town where she sold herbal mixtures to sick people and tended to broken bones.

She told stories about the beginning of the world and how the world was created, and her shop was always filled with children, who would listen to her as she mixed up her potions.

It was a fine evening, with the sun retiring into the horizon in the west, making the sky a bright pink and orange. The town of Arisgore was busy as people returned from their jobs and children came back from schools. Some young children hurried into Old Lilith's shop to listen to her stories. They sat on a handwoven mat in the center of the shop surrounded by shelves with herbal mixtures contained in jars. The shop smelt of incense and other bittersweet herbs which Old Lilith burned in a small pot filled with coal; this was to ward off any evil spirit that came out in the night.

Old Lilith sat on a rocking chair in front of the children who looked at her with such excitement in their hearts. She was a plump woman and her brown skin was wrinkled but the wrinkles on her face was more prominent, and it made her look older than time itself. Her small nose sat on her face with her shrunken lips which were once full and plump but her eyes were bright and shiny, and it sparkled with so much vigor and strength that only young people seemed to possess but could be seen in Old Lilith. This made it that although, Old Lilith as her name implied was wrinkled and old, her soul seemed young and never aging.

"Good evening, children," she began after clearing her throat and her voice was soft and a little bit raspy. "Today, I would be telling the story about the world when it was still young. Long, long time ago, humans could, at the beginning of the world touch the magic emitting from the earth's core. This magic was the essence that men breathed and lived and because of this magic, men could take any form of animal that they wish to.

This made men to understand the earth better and they lived with nature, and nature was them and they were nature but then, men began to evolve, they changed and started to drift away from nature. They could no longer tap into the earth's essence, and they lost the ability to shape shift and as time went on, the world forgot about magic. Because of this, nature suffered a great deal and mankind with her.

But there were some men who never forgot, they were called Azulas and they held on to the power of shape shifting. These men could transform into any animal at will- a snake, a wolf, a tiger, a lion, whatever animal. They kept the earth's magic alive and like men of past, live with nature and nature."

The children had listened to her story, amazed at her extraordinary skill of making up stories, but there was a child among these children, a boy who believed with all his heart that Old Lilith's stories were true, and that it had happened one time in history and so he listened to every word that came out of her mouth.

"Where are the shifters now, Old Lilith?" a boy asked her.

"They lived far, far away from humans who had forgotten about the magic of the earth, hidden from mankind."