The Sun below, the Ground above
Prologue 1
About 2,000 im’ep South of the city Pelombis was a little frukt’ep farm. It may be small compared to the vast plains around it, but 4 to 5 farmers would still be needed to properly work all the available space. Looking closer, one would find a house, more like 5 interconnected rooms, right in the middle of the fields. 4 small round buildings placed in half a circle around a bigger one in the center, about trice the size. Those 5 rooms were painted in the image of the 5 Kolor’ep: Lign’ep, Fajr’ep, Sabl’ep, Metal’ep and Aer’ep. Respectively yellow, dark red, dark purple, blue and green, starting from the biggest building and then following the circle from left to right.
Inside the fourth, was a light yellow, almost green figure, suspended by a couple of vines as if it was laying in a hammock, but without the hammock. This figure wasn’t just a random piece of lign’ep trying to look like an Im’ep, no, it was art. With a single glance, anyone would be overwhelmed by its presence and being left to guess the impossible amount of time needed to create all the carvings showing landscapes of places far away. Only the better observers would realize that within those same frozen images covering the statue from head to toe, were even more drawings of stories and people long lost to time.
History itself had been engraved on this sculpture.
Actually ‘this person’ would be a better description, difficult to see it as anything else when slowly, but surely it started to move a bit, like an old engine finally being ignited again. While the joints, even more precise than the smallest of the carvings, revealed themselves, the vines lowered the figure to a standing position. Then, with a lot of creaking, like an old door finally being opened again, they took their first step.
Salentep was feeling so damn old.
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Their dark blue eyes, containing a touch of purple, slowly opened. With Salentep’s head being one of the many paralyzed parts of their body, they had to directly manipulate the lign’ep skin covering their sabl’ep essence to move the eyelids up. During this slow process, Salentep felt their skin tingling, as if it would start to randomly grow if they let their control slip. Many disliked it, but Salentep just found it a good way to determine it was currently Hor’ep-lign’ep.
To be precise, Late-hor’ep-lign’ep, Thanks to their rich experience, Salentep had become pretty accurate with this kind of feelings, that most just found annoying. Which isn't all that surprising when you are 8350 jar’ep old, or was it 8550? Salentep wasn’t really sure any more. But their eyelids finishing their ascension made them put those thoughts aside, instead they looked around the room they had used to sleep for the last 213 jar’ep. Which is pretty long now that Salentep took the time to think about it, it was almost half the life of most people. Sure, Salentep wasn’t ‘most people’, but it was definitely long enough for them to start feeling bored.
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At first, when taking their retirement here on the farm, Salentep was in a pretty bad state. Actually, close to death door would be more accurate, at least if other people would have had to describe Salentep back then. Personally, Salentep knew that as long as they would simply relax, it would still take at least 60 jar'ep before they would pass away - the last wisp of their Essence completely freezing. Which didn’t happen… It would seem that this new still, easy, boring life had indeed stopped the metal’ep poisoning of their essence, which had been a pretty big gamble that they had luckily won. Mostly won. At the moment, Salentep couldn’t move their head and their 4 limbs, all they managed to keep under their control were the shoulders and the lower torso. Like this, Salentep wobbled a bit to move around, and they could turn their arms around in circles…
Yes life sucked.
The saving grace for Salentep was that they could just fly themselves to where they needed to be with aer’ep bending, the key word being 'could'. The noble art of Aer’ep Bending wasn’t supposed to be used to move around old, statue like people! No, it was to be used to fight the great monsters of the wilderness, defend Pelombis against any abomination that dared to threaten it!! Just like that gigantic white thing, staining the horizon with its mere presence, the greatest foe that they, self proclaimed Guardian of the great city Pelombis, Salentep, had ever faced! It was the greatest in almost every sense of the term, the monster was covering the entire horizon as far as Salentep could see, they also knew it so strong they didn’t expect to be able to last against this opponent for much more than 3 jar’ep, even by burning up their own heart.
Salentep chuckled at their own future stupidity: Who in their right mind would try to kill something that was not only so big it was the horizon, but also entirely made up of metal'ep -normal people would simply drop dead on contact with metal'ep without realizing what happened, even Salentep needed to be careful or they might worsen their ever present sickness.
At least they would leave their last imprint on history with this epic, no, legendary battle. Salentep felt proud for a moment about this fitting end for the Great Guardian Salentep. Sadly enough, only for a moment.
The problem lay with the greatest foe in ‘almost every sense’… Sure by just waiting, the ground under Salentep’s house moved at a staggering speed of 8 im’ep and a half per day, towards the white sea visible far away, a distance you could cross with 17 normal steps. Not even tacking into account that this speed could more than double when one of the mountains far up North toppled over. But even then anyone would realize you could just stand up and walk away.
In other words, no one would be there to watch Salentep’s last fight against the world itself, which also meant no one to protect…
Salentep felt like patting themselves on the shoulder for bursting their own dream bubble, the same one they kept creating for the last 7 jar’ep, 2 seasons and 17 days, which was the moment that the sea had showed its presence for the first time, peaking through the green aer’ep haze you get with great distances.
While their farm, slowly but surely, was drifting ever closer to its end, Salentep was pondering over one word: Protect... Just one single word, but it had always felt big enough to perfectly described Salentep's previous life. Now? It held so little meaning.
At least Matilep and Joshep, the two lign’ep trees next to the front door, should be grateful for Salentep’s future heroic deed...
That was mostly Salentep’s wishful thinking.