I don't think religion was ever for me.

I simply never believed in the Supernatural.

Honestly, even now I've found myself using physics and chemistry to try and explain it all. It seems to all work by some sort of logic, and if that's the case, you could analyze it, until magic itself is just another branch of science.

That's often a setting in fiction, isn't it?

Clark's 3rd law even states that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Thus the reverse—any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science—must also be true.

Well, I also have quite a bit of self-worth, so I could never bring myself to worship a being who hid behind stories of his own greatness, but never truly showed himself.

So even if one of the religions of my world turned out to be true, I wouldn't suddenly convert, considering the 4 billion years of Earth's existence where this god never made its existence clear—in fact you could say they went out of their way to disprove themselves—nor did they gave me any reason to worship them.

After all, can worship—of all things—be so cheap?

I would much rather give my praise to true saints, and great benefactors to humankind.

If it's just about "creating me", there are my parents.

Ah, but then there are cults.

There's nothing wrong with cults in of themselves. But there are plenty of stories in my old world, about cults formed by people who merely wanted to set themselves up as a god, or child of god. Some supernatural creature that is meant to be worshiped.

More often than not, these cults are created from people who are mentally unstable. Not that they're sick or inferior, but they are depressed, or unsure of themselves, and thus easy to take advantage of.

Worship to those undeserving of such praise and misguided love.

However, what if there was a being who could answer ones prayers? All they asked was for your love and acceptance, and in return they offer you their gifts. Well, it wouldn't be so simple; even a being of such power needs something of value in return.

But what if?

After all, I live in a world of magic now. Beings called Spirits are regarded as divine entities, and many cults have shown up with a Spirit as their core.

Entire countries run by a being with enough power to end cities.

Take Lein, for example.

Not the country—but the Spirit.

Lein is a spirit who has lived for at least two hundred years. In that time, he gained immense power, and various human followers. He was of a rare class of Spirit, named Bijkarru. The more literal phrasing of their name in the Azurian language, would be "Spirit who herds beasts."

You could call them Beast Tamers or something, but I guess it's weird to use a class name to call a species.

Their race looks almost entirely human, save for the fact that they live into their prime for hundreds of years. What's more, their name comes from the fact that they are able to tame any beast.

I thought maybe they could also brainwash humans, but it seems their mental abilities don't quite work well on rational creatures.

Even so, that was enough for Lein, who was able to quell the flood of monsters which harassed the humans in his area for ages.

With that, he was able to obtain some measure of fellowship, and it wasn't long before he grew to King-like status, and was worshiped as something like a god. Thus, the country Lein is a thearchy—a nation ruled by a god.

Thinking back on it, it makes sense that Lein would have Dragon Riders, when their leader is the tamer of all beasts, and the dragons of this world are hardly sentient.

What's more, if Lein himself were to come to a battle field, all beasts in the area, including the enemies own horses, would become his ally.

Still, there is a downside. They are a rare breed, for a very particular reason.

While Kitsune are considered rare because of their elusive nature, Bijkarru are rare because of their nearly sterile fertility.

In fact, there's a story about one who had great riches and a kingdom to himself, and how he spent hundreds of years trying to pass on his legacy, but eventually died without a single heir.

Well anyways, Lein has named his country after himself, so he at least has some kind of legacy if he decides to kick the bucket. On top of that, he gets to be the first in history to command a Blitzkrieg in this world.

With DRAGON RIDERS.

Hmm? What was I getting at?

Ah, there's still this woman in front of me...

"Oh, I'm sorry, I sort of dozed off. What were you saying?"

Ah, she's angry.

"I could tell," She said in a serious tone, with a glare that could melt ice.

Moments ago, this woman confronted me by shooting a bolt of white light. I didn't get a clear look at it, but I can assume that it was this woman's ability.

What's more, she's a Kitsune like myself.

Behind her, I can see 4 flowing black-tipped silver tails, which served as a reminder that this woman clearly had quite a bit more power than myself.

However, she didn't smell much like me. When I found traces of her scent in the forest, I thought maybe we were related, but her scent was quite different from my own. Any thought that she could be my mother was quickly dashed.

On top of that, she appeared in the forest only recently, leading me to conclude what her reason for being here was.

"Where are you hiding Princess Aire?" She asked. Right, she also asked that earlier.

If I had to guess, she is an agent of Lein. Sending a Fox to hunt a Fox, huh?

What's more, she is adamant in her suspicion that I have sided with the Princess.

I imagine she's had trouble tracking my scent, so how could she have known?

No, if she could track my scent properly, she would have already found Aire, so what's her evidence based on?

Or is she the hot-headed type that makes assertions without bothering to back them up?

No, she doesn't seem like that type.

"I'll tell you what I told the armored uncle; I don't know where they are," I said—a blatant lie.

She merely huffed out some air in annoyance, but before I could do much more, I noticed that I was flying through the air.

—What?!

As I soared, my back collided against a tree trunk—the air inside my lungs seemed to vanish with that crash, and I found myself unable to focus or think.

I let out a fit of coughs, as I tried to return my stolen air, but I found my arms were already bound by that point!

Quickly scanning my body, I realized that vines and tree bark had made their way around my arms and legs, and that they stiffly held me in place.

"You're a real pain to pin down, you know?" the strange woman said as she walked over to me. Hah... even with this pain in my chest, she really is pretty, huh?

"How about you go find her yourself, you little bit—" Before I could finish my insult, a white streak of light shattered against my leg. It produced only a shallow cut, but was still painful enough to interrupt me, and produce a groan.

"Just so you know, I was holding back," She said with an irritated voice. Looking up at her, I couldn't quite tell if she were telling the truth or not, but at the very least it didn't seem like she intended to kill me.

Still, what was that? It certainly wasn't a laser—I wouldn't even see it if that was the case. It was the same as before too. Well, it's one of her abilities is all I can tell.

I've confirmed the usage of two different magics used by this girl. Those light beams, and this plant controlling ability. If my hunch is right, she should have two more.

"Well child? Where is the Princess?" She asked with a stern expression. Ah, breaking her sounds like it would be nice...

If I wasn't tied like this, escape would be trivial. Heck, I might even be able to beat her up a bit.

Ah, this girl probably knows I have some kind of movement ability. After all, she did look for my scent quite diligently, so she likely observed something like my moving very fast, or even blinking in and out of existence.

The fact she hasn't found Aire's cave just east of the village is probably a miracle.

"I see," She said, as she narrowed her eyes.

I see? You see what...

... No...

She couldn't be, could she?

However, she merely looked down at me. Ah fuck...

Is she a mind-reader? Damn bitch...

"I heard you were raised by humans," she began to speak. "I guess it makes sense that you'd be as vulgar as them," She commented, as if to confirm my suspicion. "However, I don't quite understand why you'd choose to live with them, and form so many chains around yourself."

Chains? The way she said that—it sounded like it had more significance than just disliking humans.

"Hmm? You don't know?" She asked, in genuine surprise, as she looked at me with a bit of shock. "No, I suppose it makes sense to have some level of ignorance. But to think you never noticed,"

"Then? Are you going to tell me, or not?"—She's a mind reader, but it seems she can't see too deeply into my mind. Maybe just what pops to the surface, like these thoughts of mine, or what I'm about to say.

"... No," She said. Looks like she knows all I want it to see how far her powers go. "I'll confine you here until everything is over. Then, I'll have to... re-educate you."

That doesn't sound nice.

Well, I've heard enough.

Before anything more can happen, I quickly shut off the flow of time.

Thinking about it, it seems she didn't quite understand my ability even up till now. Perhaps because this culture doesn't really have a solid grasp of time and how it flows? Or maybe she didn't quite catch the stray thoughts regarding my own ability. My powers have limitations, so I imagine hers do to.

With time frozen, I look at my arms and legs, locked in place by hard wood and vines.

Tugging on my arms a bit, the vines move with my body like any normal vine might. At least it's not stiff and hard, but it's still a pain to get out of these bindings.

My yukata has a knife in the pockets I've had stitched to the inner sleeves, but when I'm bound like this, it's too difficult to grab it.

Well, I had all the time in the world, so I spent quite a lot of it trying to reach for the pocket, by twisting my wrist, and tugging on my own sleeve. But it was too far.

I realized for a moment that I could just scratched through the sleeves with my claws, but...

But... my nails, you know? I've put a lot of effort into making them nice and sharp. Well, guess I'll have to use them eventually.

In just a few minutes, I managed to cut a hole into the pocket of my inner sleeves, and like that, the knife was in my grasp.

Getting free after that was a breeze... Well it still took hours, but time was frozen, so fuck it. The knife looked like it had lost its edge quite a while ago and was practically unusable by this point, so I merely tossed it away once I was free.

I had a spare.

Now then, I think it's time for a little bit of punishment—

I'll even out my nails later.

Author Notes:

Huh... People were pretty off the mark about our newcomer.

Well, I guess I didn't really hint at the idea that some Spirits might work for a kingdom or other spirit.

On another note, I think I'll be constructing up a bit of Azurian language, to make naming things more consistent. For now, there's only a handful of words, and I'm pretty much going to have most all character and place names be one or more Azurian names. I've mentioned the "Azurian" language a lot, and I'll probably give some background on it eventually, but basically there are a large cluster of countries which speak Azurian, in one dialect or another.

Kiitland is not one of those countries, so its name is not in Azurian.

Lisya is not from a country that speaks Azurian, so her name isn't either.

Toyaru's name... well, I'll cover what that means in a later chapter.

For now, Feedback and Suggestions are appreciated and encouraged!

PS. Azurian "r"s are rolled, and "n"s that are surrounded by vowel sounds should make an "ng" sound, (Like "Aniel") but it'd probably be subtle anyways.