The first Defender no remembered had been Llewellyn Fawr, who'd led the children of Arrawn from the land of the dead to the world of the living and created tears in the veil between worlds that had allowed magic into the world of the living.
The second had been Bastian Valient. The daughter of the first generation of those born outside the land of the dead. She'd been a sailor, one of the first explorers of the Far Waters and the first person to map the entirety of the rock from the Silence at the End of the World to the Wind at the End of the World. All her original maps were lost by the time Eirian was born, but they were still the basis for every map produced since. They're the only reason most people even know there are lands west of the Spine or that the Wasteland exists far to the south.
Then it had been Ceres.
And there were more after him.
One of the most powerful wizards in Song and Snow, the one who killed a god was universally believed to be a Defender, but he'd disappeared after his victory and there was no way to confirm a mark from any reliable source.
Malbec had followed him a few hundred years later and there were reputable sources that confirmed he was one.
There was even a man in the Wasteland, two hundred years before Eirian had been born, who'd made significant progress in uniting the nomadic tribes that dominated the endless desert. He'd built twelve magnificent towers using his magic, designed to serve as guards over the desert where the Age of Warfare never really ended. Some kind of shaman-wizard who died at the hands of his twelfth wife.
Now it was Eirian's time, though she didn't know that yet. She still had plenty to do before she ready to claim that title herself.
But there would be others that came after her. A warrior born from lightning. A hero who would be betrayed by the entire rock and yet return to defend it one last time. A wandering Princess. A priestess so clever she would trick the gods themselves. Twin stars that would hold off the greatest storm the rock would ever see. A conqueror from the wild lands west of the Spine.
And a few others so unknown to themselves that they were still unknown to the universe.
The Followers of the Sun told the story of the world's creation by Ceres, the one true god. The tribes in the Wasteland generally attributed it to a small group of gods based around the elements, while the civilizations that occupied the Land of Song and Snow believed the gods were warriors and scholars of such skill that they'd transcended their mortal forms and taken up residence in the heavens.
There were as many religions on the rock as there were civilizations and they seemed to change just as often. Eirian had never been a fan of any religion, though she usually left it alone unless someone was pushing it in her face.
But that's not important.
Well, it is, but not right now.
Later.
What's important now, is to know that there were religions on the rock and like everything else on the rock it changed and evolved depending on the times. Granted, it wasn't always for the best, there were a few times it had definitely been for the worst.
The other point is that all these religions and civilizations had their own stories about how the world came to be.
They all lived on the same rock. They all looked up at the same sky. They flourished under the same sun and feared the same monsters, although they all called them by different names.
People loved to put themselves in categories, didn't they?
The Defender's roll in all these stories was always long after creation and no one was sure where it started. Most didn't even know they were all connected, and they wouldn't until a long time after Eirian was gone.
The true story of creation had long been lost to the world, but since Eirian and Chenzhou were both unconscious, their bodies healing, their minds locked away, there's a bit of time to tell it.
~ tbc