Battle of the Masters
Prologue
by Shadou-sama
Dedicated To: My English Teacher, who made us do creation stories.

Before the beginning, Universe painted the galaxies and molded the planets. Then she created our world, the only one suitable for living creatures to inhabit. Universe wanted our world to be the most beautiful, peaceful, perfect world now and forever.

She fashioned the perfect creatures to live on the perfect world, giving each species different appearances, different skills, different weapons, and different ways of life. Universe believed that diversity would bring peace and happiness.

It would have all been perfect forever, except Universe, in her devotion to beauty, skimped on the foundation for her artwork. Without a proper foundation, chaos ensued. Space suddenly lengthened, ripping up ground, or disappeared altogether, destroying villages and nature. Dimensional portals opened on our world, bringing new creatures, diseases and weapons, or took our world's inhabitants and possessions into other dimensions. Time ran rampant, running backgrounds, jumping some places into the future, or stopping completely. Minds would go insane, killing and destroying everything in their path to reach imaginary goals.

Universe was frantic. Her perfect world was getting destroyed. All because she had focused on the surface rather then in the core. She watched for months, trying desperately to think up a solution. Then it came to her. What if she created four souls to be living foundations?

She quickly went to work, designing powerful creatures. Human-like, but with animal features such as wings and tails and claws. The strongest, most powerful creatures Universe had ever created.

This was the true beginning of our world. Universe gave these four creatures, Masters she called them, key-shaped staffs that gave the holder the power over what it supports. She also gave them servants; animal shaped creatures that were made completely of magic. Being around such large amounts of magic kept the Masters young and immortal, which Universe wanted.

The Masters ruled our world, even over animals and humans. Universe did not mind, as they kept the world's creatures in line. For many millenniums, our world was perfect.

But it did not last. One day, the magical servants were stolen from the Masters and given freedom with humans. The Masters lost their immortality and died. Universe, in one last hope of the perfect world, captured the Masters' fleeing souls and placed them inside specially selected humans. Thousands of years after that event, this story begins…