The Element Guardians are creatures made of tralaticon and animated with the spirit of an elf or dwarf who link the physical and element planes. In the material world, they work in exactly the same way proteins work in the membranes of cells: allowing elements to move in and out based on dynamic feedback loops and maintaining the barrier between the planes. Any substance or living thing in the world that is inhabited by the essence of one of their fellow elves or dwarves is accounted for in this system. In the spirit world, they maintain the Lighted Path, a conduit between life and death that is the road human souls travel when leaving or entering life.
There are three Element Guardians, one for each element of Air, Earth, and Water. Before the Apocalypse, when the element planes overlapped the physical, they slumbered and performed their regulatory task to perfection. The balance has been so upset that they are awake now and roam the continent, performing tasks according to their instincts and with a wisdom unaccessible by mortal minds. They are not aggressive or violent creatures, their work is to connect and balance. As such, despite their incredible size and destructive potential, they do not attack unless provoked. All of them also have large, black eyes that seem to penetrate to the heart of any matter or living thing. The few mortals who are known to have looked directly into the eyes of a Guardian have gone insane or died instantly.
The Air Guardian is a dragon of immense size, estimated at 100 meters from head to tail, but is the smallest of the three. Its tralaticon scales are hollow and blue-ish grey in color. Despite its size and weight, it can fly to any height within the atmosphere due to its command of the Air element. It awoke in a cave in the far northeast of the continent. Its emergence was heralded as a fulfillment of the prophecies of a reclusive people who lived near and guarded its cave for generations; shielded from the outside world by the Great Glacier and inhospitable arctic waters surrounding them.
The Earth Guardian is a worm over 200 meters in length and 30 meters in diameter. Its outside is covered in thick mottled scales of tralaticon and granite. The entirety of its body from end to end is a canal of progressively finer tralaticon and diamond teeth that grinds any solid it moves through into a fine powder. It "swims" through solids like fish move through water and can achieve great speeds. Its eyes are almost always covered by its scales as it does not need sight to move through the earth. It slept in the heart of the central mountain range of the continent.
The last is the Water Guardian. This enormous sea serpent slept for millenia in the southwest of the continent, just off the coast near the Water Conduit City. Mortals thought that its coiled body was an island and they mined tralaticon with difficulty from its basalt-laced scales. The beast is mostly hollow, allowing water to pass through and move with tremendous speed. Its maw is large enough to swallow any ship yet built whole.