The Servants of Lulungalor

Atu Sevenon sat as he often did: reclined against the mossy hillside, staring up at the night sky. Tonight he was thinking about the Legend. Everyone on Lulungalor knew it through and through, as it was ingrained in their memories as part of Standard Initialization.

It went like this: In the time before the First Initialization, Lulungalor was a lonely, barren rock of a world. From across the void, on their own world the Progenitors saw Lulugalor and desired it, barren as it was. But it was not perfect yet, and so the Progenitors created the First Lulungalians, and stretched across space to set them upon the world. The new race had a singular purpose: to transform Lulungalor into a green and lush paradise for the Progenitors, who would one day come to live there when all was right.

At least, that was the gist of it. Sevenon was part of the fifty-first generation of Lulungalians. It was generally believed that Generation 51 would see the coming of the Progenitors, but then again every generation believed this of themselves. Besides, one of the grittier specifications of the Legend was the requirement of approximately 78 percent of the planet’s atmosphere being composed of Nitrogen. The current level was closer to 75 percent.

Then again, there was always that last clause that allowed the Progenitors to come whenever they pleased. And this was what captivated Sevenon’s mind tonight as he stared, enrapt, at the stars. How could these mysterious Progenitors come from a world out there, all the way to Lulungalor? According to his knowledge, the next nearest star was 41.5 trillion kilometers away. What power did they possess that allowed them to travel such a distance?

This brought up another question, perhaps the most intriguing of all to Sevenon: What kind of beings were these Progenitors? They must be quite different from his kind, more akin to the plants they tended here perhaps. Almost certainly they were organic, or else there would be no need for an exact atmospheric composition.

The ruddy third moon Avenadim was rising in the sky now. Atu stood up and gazed down the hill towards his dwelling sector. The low, rounded buildings looked almost as if they were great pebbles tossed by the current of a forgotten river and left scattered down in the valley there.

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