"Well, here I go I guess." Orion murmured.

The hologram that showed him slowly shifted and morphed into another scene, one of a place a couldn't even recognise. It had an endless stretch of a hot, barren landscape with desert sand in every direction you turned. But right in the centre, there was a small village with old, run down wooden shacks.

"What is this?" I murmured, trying to remember everything I'd ever learnt in Humanities about geography.

"This is Ancient Ethiopia," Orions voice told me. "Thousands of years ago this took place, but you could probably guess that from the village."

I nodded. The village did have very old things such as wells. And there were no roads to be seen - even the houses didn't look very stable. They looked more like t-pees which made me wonder how many people they managed to squish into each little shelter. Orions voice brought me back to the story, interrupting my thoughts as his words echoed across the bell towers walls.

"This was a small village in Ethiopia, and at the time, it wasn't viewed as anything important. Until one day, a meteorite landed just next to that village. It was only a small meteorite, but it wasn't like any others people had seen before. Believed to have come from the dwarf planet Ceres, this meteorite glowed with a yellow light that demanded attention, that was powerful."

I looked in awe as the scene changed to show the people from the village finding the stone, and it truly did look magnificent. I couldn't peel my eyes away from it, the way it glowed seemed to pull you in, almost asking you to take it.

"They," Orion continued, "named it the sunstone after its brilliant colour. And it didn't take long for them to figure out that there was something special about this stone, and they found that out the hard way after someone from their village died from touching the stone. You see, the sunstone was beyond anyone's imagination. When someone simply touched it, their mind and thoughts would be linked to the stone and whatever they wanted or asked for in that moment, would be granted. This one stone could alter the foundations of our universe as we know it. It could slowly unravel the threads of this universe, and then replace them anew to however the person touching the stone wanted it to be. The entire universe could be changed with a single touch, a single wisp of a thought. But the power that came from that single touch was enough to kill you - and it did kill a lot of people. But as more kingdoms found out about this stone, they got ambitious. They were power hungry."

I watched in horror as the hologram showed kingdoms, getting ready and allying to take the stone. To kill the entire village.

"They would stop at nothing to get that stone. Allying together, the nations sent armies upon armies to that small village in Ethiopia. And when the people of the village saw the armies on the horizon, they knew there time was over. But they also knew that they couldn't let people take the stone and ruin our world with it. So the people of the village all made a plan together to save the world. They decided that they needed bigger, stronger people to guard the stone for them. Together, the thousands of them held hands and one person touched the sunstone. But they all had the same thought in their mind, they all had the same wish. They all wished for people who were strong enough guard the sunstone - for guardians. Then for each person with that wish, there would be a new guardian. They only got up twelve before the entire village was dead."

I had to force myself not to look away as I saw the entire village on the ground, there eyes staring at nothing. An entire village, dead for the good of humanity. Dead to save humanity. The entire village dead.

"After that, the twelve guardians destroyed the army and saved the sunstone and the world. They then guarded it for years upon years and hid the village from everyone's sight, disguising it is a dark forest where no one would want to go. Then, as they aged millions of years they realised that they were getting weaker and not as powerful. Soon, they might even not be powerful enough to save the sunstone from any dangers. So, as one they decided to turn back into humans with a normal life span but kept their powers that would get pasted down through their ancestors line. Every grandchild of the person who had inherited the Guardians genes would then also get those genes. And then slowly it started to spread and lots more people became guardians. We called these people with guardian genes half-guardians. They protect the sunstone till to this day, but with their powers, the guardians created a way to better conceal the small village from the world before they died from old age. They buried it under ground where no humans could find it and gave the half-guardians a way to still enter that underground place. With a special word, guardians jumping from some high place can teleport to village where the sunstone is. And still to this day, the half-guardians guard the sunstone. And we're still strong as ever."

"We're . . ." My breath caught in my throat. "So your saying . . ."

The projection shifted back into Orion and he look me right in the eyes. "Yes Macy, you're a half-guardian just like me."

~ ፀሓይ ~