"Alan, the first Primordial Lion," A genderless voice spoke to him, feeding him the information needed.
He tore his gaze from the old lion to look at the one standing next to him. It was another male lion, albeit younger looking.
His mane was well taken care of and looked like it had been combed to fine perfection. His stance was like a lion frozen in time while walking.
"Bethel, the second Primordial Lion,"
The next was surprisingly a female. A lioness with beautiful golden fur and eyes. There was a look in her eyes that Kael noticed, it was the look he had seen from top corporate executives at his past place of work.
It was a look that said the lioness saw everything in the world beneath her. It was the look of pride. Unmistakenly, all the illusory lions had a look of pride but this particular lioness was different.
Kael almost felt that he was the one the lioness was giving that condescending look to.
Moving on, the fourth primordial lion didn't even have a name. Kael stared at the little golden lion cub. No matter how long he waited, he didn't receive the name of this one like the rest before it.
'Did he…perhaps die before he could grow up and mature?' Kael wondered, but it was just a guess.
Kael didn't waste time on the lion cub and moved to the fifth Primordial Lion. Now this lion was very intriguing.
On the back of this lion were golden wings. His stance was as if he was about to take flight with his two very large wings spread out. A single flap of those powerful wings would have surely taken him beyond the clouds.
"Silax, fifth Primordial Lion. And Jin, the sixth."
The sixth lion looked utterly miserable. A scar ran across his face, crossing his missing eye and ending behind his ear.
His left front paw was missing and replaced with a stump. Across his body were scars he got from savage creatures Kael could not even begin to imagine.
One look at this guy would tell anyone that he didn't have a really great life. Yet despite this, Jin's head was raised high and his snout faced upward. Even when he seemed to be on the brink of death, he refused to lower his head.
As Kael looked up at him, he could feel the blood that flowed through his veins boil, he felt agitated all of a sudden. Quickly shaking his head to remove the violent thoughts.
He turned again to the seventh Primordial Lion who was also a lioness like the third. The most interesting part was that this lioness didn't look like a lioness, rather, she looked human-like.
Kael shook seeing the familiar shape of a human woman. "Derylia, seventh Primordial Lion,"
Derylia didn't look as prideful or as arrogant as the rest, instead, her eyes flickered with a playful glint. One of her hands was on her hips as she stood like she was posing for a camera shot.
And the last lion, the eighth primordial lion, "Noel," His name came to Kael's mind.
Kael instantly recognized him as the golden lion that stood on that silver cloud and declared war against the heavens. Noel was the last known Primordial Lion.
'Then why am I here?' Kael asked himself.
"Because you are the Ninth Primordial Lion." That genderless voice sounded out in his ears again, answering his question.
Kael jumped up in fright, "Who's there?" He asked while looking around.
"I go by many names, but you may know me as the Highest Will," The voice said.
"Where are you? Show yourself?" The hair on Kael's body stood on end.
"Very well then," Then all the colors of the space converged into one spot in front of Kael forming a bright ball of light.
Kael had to close his eyes due to the intensity of the light. When the light finally died down, Kael opened his eyes to see a little lion cub standing on the dark ground in front of him.
Kael had seen himself in puddles of water multiple times before, so he was familiar with how he looked.
The cub standing in front of him looked exactly like him. "Hello Kael," a manly voice that didn't match the small body of the cub came out from its mouth. But Kael recognized the voice to be his from his past life.
Kael opened his mouth to talk, but he couldn't, his vocal chords and mouth were not familiar with forming words at all.
"It's okay. You have thoughts, therefore you speak to me," The Highest Will in the form of Kael spoke, seeing the situation Kael was in.
Maybe it was because he had to be careful with his thoughts now that he knew the Highest Will could hear them, but he was calmer and more restrained. 'Can you please explain what happening?' After some deliberation, he decided to ask the most crucial question.
The Highest Will nodded and sat down, "I shall start from the beginning.
Countless eons ago, the first Primordial Lion, Alan was born. He was also the very first lion to walk the realms.
As the first of his kind, he was formed out of the essence of all creation to fit and embody a certain form. He was born with the Primordial bloodline.
Primordial entities of different races have existed shortly before him and existed after him.
Alan, despite his unique status, was alone. He was the only lion at that time, there was no other like him.
He met creatures of different kinds along his journeys when exploring his home realm. Many of these creatures whom he mated with. Wolves, tigers, bears, reptiles, even dragons. However, none of these creatures ever bore him an offspring.
It was only after spending eons alive as the only lion that he realized his purpose."
When it reached this point of the speech, the scenery around both of them changed.
Kael found himself looking at an exotic world from a new perspective. Looking around, he saw himself towering over trees and hills.
However, the body Kael was in wasn't his, and neither did it respond to his commands.
"Alan was born with extreme power. After being alive for so long, he was just a few steps away from being an existence equal to me." The Highest Will appeared below on the ground. Kael felt like he was looking at an ant.
"But the job of any first Primordial was to be the starting point for a new race."
Kael's consciousness was sucked out of the humongous lion's body. He came to stand beside the Highest Will in his cub form.
Looking at the lion from this perspective, he could see that he had been looking through the eyes of Alan himself.
'What a large lion…'
Suddenly Alan started glowing in a golden light.
"Alan figured that the only way to introduce more lions into the world was to sacrifice himself. Not that he wanted to, but what he wanted to do was create a race just like him, from scratch, it surely had to come at a price.
Alas, this was the life purpose of all first Primordials, to usher in a new life, at the expense of theirs."
Then Kael saw Alan burst into countless moats of light. The light spread out in waveform for kilometers before stopping.
As if drawn by a strong force, the countless moats of light converged back to the place Alan had been.
Alan, the old lion, was nowhere to be seen. In his place stood two figures, one lion and one lioness. Perhaps, because the first Primordial Lion was male, this new male lion looked bigger and stronger than his female counterpart.
"And so from these two, the Lion race was born. It is from these two that the 18 great lion Powers would come from. And it is from these two lineage came the next seven Primordial lions,"