The Guardians

Chapter One

I stared up at the glass front of the college, watching all the students milling in and around the building. I never understood the whole glass walls thing, it made me feel like I was in a giant fishbowl with the world watching me. I breathed a heavy sigh and pushed myself away from the bike stands.

I always laughed at the silly things Humans did to save energy, to save the planet. What they didn't know was that Earth was already dead, the only reason it was still liveable was due to people like me. We were named the Guardians. We are an evolved race of humans, which just kind of appeared around three hundred years ago, when Earth started to die. With the Earth's population growing rapidly the planet slowly started to die, due to the overuse of resources. The last straw was when the humans started the stupid world wars. That's when the guardians happened. We appeared when the earth first started to fade. We were able to control the elements in order to help the earth sustain itself, such as fire to help keep the core warm, Air to keep the atmosphere and ozone intact. Each guardian is born with one element and at most three extra powers to protect earth. We are tattooed at the age of eighteen when all our powers have settled. The tattoo is to represent the element we control and a line to represent each extra power we have, for example three thin lines going around the wrist under the element, which fully surfaces by the age of fourteen, it is placed on our left wrist. We use the alchemy symbols to represent the elements. The most common element among Guardians is fire.

I twirled my pen through my fingers trying to drown out my politics teacher, who was droning on about some politician who was apparently 'single handedly' saving the planet. The bell pierced through the dead air, stopping the teacher in his tracks, I closed my laptop and tucked it away in my bag with my notebook and pen, quickly lifting the bag to my shoulder, being the first to slip through the door. I weaved through the busy hallway ignoring the stares and muttering around me.

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I wasn't well liked within the guardian community, in my opinion they had every right to dislike me, but the majority of the dislike came from jealousy. As I said before all guardians are born with one element and at most three powers. As for me, I was born with all four elements and every power the guardians have come across in the past three hundred years. But at the age of twenty I am still discovering new ones. That's why when I look at my wrist, I have all four symbols and an inch thick black band. My name is Alexis Snowden, Alex for short.

The thing about being a guardian is that we all have the responsibility to care for the earth, so our parents whether they are guardians or human, they need to make the choice of whether to let the child stay with their parents or for them to stay at the boarding school. This is usually decided at the age of eleven, when our element has surfaced. The young guardians are still able to see and stay weekends with parents if they make the choice to live in the school. I was not lucky enough to have that choice, I never knew my father, I still don't know if he was even a guardian or not, my mother was apparently a low grade water guardian who was frightened of me and abandoned me, leaving me at the doors of the guardians headquarters at six months old and disappearing. I slightly understand her reasons but still resent her, according to my step parents i had already developed water and telekinesis. I was classed as dangerous and put into the care of my step parents, Alec and River, who were the strongest of their elements, who were also lucky enough to be married. I was under constant supervision and investigation, having weekly tests to see if any new powers have surfaced. By age six I had three elements. At eleven I was moved to the boarding school with the other guardians my age with permission to stay weekends if I behaved myself. At eighteen I was moved to my own flat, within the school grounds. The school was a whole block on the outside and was enormously bigger on the inside, to accommodate everyone who lived there. Another perk of guardians is the ability to enter other dimensions, we mainly use it to have safe spaces to live and learn, to not draw any attention from the humans.