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PROLOGUE - AZRAK'S STORY With these words, Quest 3 opens the doors of its magical journey. From the very first moment, the Prologue introduces the reader to a whole new world. It's different from Quest 2, closer to Quest for Freedom, but still far away from anything that has been written before. The Prologue seems a fable. It has this ancient and mystic flavor, it is a legend. The reader knows from the beginning that this story is not going to be like the others. He feels like needing to pay attention to the smallest details, since there's this mysterious atmosphere in the air, where everything is possible. It is a short Chapter, but, as Evi says, "It was NOT easy to write. Not easy at all. Mainly because I wanted to write it in the style it'd be written if it was part of the Royal Chronicles. So I had to write it not in my 'common style', but in a different, more serious one..." Since the original project, Quest 3 would have been a more "magical" adventure, with sorcerers and spells. Of course the biggest sources of inspiration for the magical parts have been the Arabian Nights. But this was just the start. Once begun, the making of the story has been like a "giant snowball", and totally original ideas were mixed with an ancient Mexican legend to offer an extraordinary plot. The first inspiration came to Evi during November 1999, but it wasn't still a clear idea at those times. It was more a blurred image of how Quest 3 would have completed the tale begun in Quest for Freedom. Only two things were already planned: the high presence of magic and, most of all, the main meaning of the story. In fact, among the journeys and adventures, both for Ali and Azul, and with new characters around, the reader could have been easily taken away from the main point of all, lost into the maze of events. Thus, Quest 3's main theme has been kept in focus the whole time, till the last and final moments when it reaches its fulfilment. Don Hahn, producer of Disney movies, such as Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King, says: "In a Disney animated feature characters are vital, and so is a strong theme. In fact those two things are inseparable because the main characters - both the heroes and the villians - are expressions of the theme. Aladdin, for example, is about learning to be yourself; Beauty and the Beast's theme is 'Don't judge a book by its cover'. In The Lion King the theme is responsibility." Quest 3 had its main theme from the beginning. The theme was important and powerful and required a proper structure to be expressed and emphasized. "This is not just a journey," says Evi, "this is not about a girl trapped in a magical city, this is not about a powerful (and yet charming) wizard planning to conquer the world... this is about love. And a lot of things are happening around but it's love the center, the whole reason of all the mess. It's love, love and just love. It's about a boy who loves his girl so much that he's willing to give his life for her... about a girl who loves her boy so much that she is willing to sacrifice everything for him. The rest of the story are just casualities, things that happen... but the main theme is love at its deepest. A burning love." We can consider Azrak's story as the first appearance of the magic material. The Prologue happens to be an introduction, obviously, to this magical quest. At first it may appear out of the story, apart from what is going to happen. But the author here tried to foreshadow as much as it was possible, to set the basis, the atmosphere, the cultural backgrounds... even the characters who are going to accompany Ali and Azul in their quest. "It's complex," Evi says, "but I think this is the way it works."
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