Prologue

Date: Unknown date, Early morning, year 0 NWE 

The tribe awoke on coarse dirt, golden yellow grass reflecting the similar hue of the sky in the steadily rising sun. The crescent moon trailed closely behind, just barely visible as a faint white curve in the steadily brightening sky. There was around twenty of them, and they could all notice right away that something was slightly off, but none of them could pinpoint it. Perhaps the smell of the air was different for this time of year. Looking around, the first thing they noticed was the mountain, looming on the opposite side of the valley. That certainly was not there the night before. They were the same, however. They still woke up in the same old jackal rags they slept in, although none of their tools were anywhere to be found.  

As the sun rose higher in the sky, they began to explore their surroundings. They first headed to the river, which cut a shallow, wide channel along the valley. One of the women called out in astonishment as a fish-like creature swam upstream right in front of her. It was at least two meters long, minus a long tail which tapered off to a thin point, which added another meter to its length. Spines of keratin along the creature's back supported a large, leathery dorsal fin that emitted its own faint purple light, visible even in the light of the sun.  

“Z’har!” She gasped and prodded the woman beside her, the sound of her voice caused the creature to quickly recoil and bolt deeper into the silty water, “Did you see it?” 

“See what?” Z’har replied, following her companion’s glare. “What did you see, N’sha?” 

“Big fish! With a glowing fin!” She replied, recounting the creature’s appearance to the rest of the tribe. “It got scared by my voice, I think.” 

Despite the brief, unexplained interruption, the rest of the tribe went ahead with the rest of their day. Two of them remained close to the water to fish, while Z’har was assigned to a group tasked with gathering food for the night, along with other resources. Everything was different here. In the sky, flocks of reptilian-looking birds drifted lazily on the air currents around a hundred metres up, with four wings fully outstretched. Occasionally, they’d hear guttural chirps or growls of their vocalisations. By the early afternoon, they came across a large bramble, vines ended in clusters of bright yellow fruit roughly the size of an apple each. They all watched carefully as a dog-sized bovine creature approached the plant and began to delicately nibble at the fruits, revealing a bright red fleshy interior. Satisfied that the fruit appeared edible, they each took one and secured them in a leather pouch. The creature, however, didn’t seem to take much notice of them as it happily grazed on the fruit, eventually leaving a small carpet of seeds on the ground.  

As they each continued to explore, more oddities turned up. One of which being a large, purple mushroom, big enough to fit one of them underneath its gills, which dangled like loose ropes. The stem of the giant fungus was covered in rough bark and was naturally warm to the touch.  

As the late afternoon sun began to drop, the moon began to rise, a large gibbous shape emerged from behind the horizon, drifting upwards into the sky. The markings on the moon were completely different from what they were used to, dark patches had been shuffled over their surface, and there was a large circular feature, a massive impression left on its surface. 

Z’har had to do a double take as she noticed the sight of the moon rising, quickly looking towards the sun, where the smaller crescent still lingered in the sky. 

“Two!” She shouted, one hand each pointing at a different moon. They all saw this one now. Not a single one of them had seen a second moon before. They all knew now that something wasn’t just slightly different, but everything had been altered in some way. 

 The sun dipped lower as they began to retreat to the area they had woken up, painting the sky in a gorgeous shade of orange. The first few wandering stars began to fade into view. Three of them hung close to the sun in different positions, one of which was virtually indistinguishable from the glare of the sun until after it had disappeared behind the mountain to the west. As they got back, they saw that the rest of the tribe had been busy. A simple A-frame shelter built out of sticks and leaves now dominated the clearing. One large leaf was being used as a mat to sit on as one of them was knapping flint tools, while another was being used for storage. A central communal fire sat in the centre, with several already lounging nearby. 

The group sat down to join the others, recounting the bizarre encounters that they had, which the current group had their own rebuttals to. One group told a story of their encounter with a giant bird, their arms stretching as wide as they could to demonstrate its immense size, while another told of the small woodland that they had found with leaves the size of entire animal hides stretched out. Occasionally they would stare at the foreign starscape hanging above them.  

“Something’s different here.” Z’har said. “That much is true. Perhaps what we experienced before was some kind of dream, one that we all remember. We all remember a sky with one moon. We all remember the stars we used to look up at, but now I can’t recognize a single group of them.”  

She took a discarded stick, charred one end in the fire and dotted out a slightly distorted rendition of Orion, to which they all murmured in agreement.  

“We were raised under these stars, yes? Our mothers knew them and all before them knew them, and now they’re completely different. Everything is strange. The animals, the river, even the food we eat. If we run into other tribes, we should show this sign to them too, perhaps it’ll jog their memories like it did ours.” 

“A dream? Surely you can’t be serious,” One of the older men replied, his voice taking on an almost amused laugh. “Do you expect me to believe that every moment before today wasn’t real?” 

“Do you have a better idea, T’lar?” 

“Well, no, but to imply that every lion I’ve evaded, every wildebeest we chased down, to imply all those things were just a figment of a sleeping mind...” He trailed off, lost in thought. “And what about memories from before this ‘dream’ of ours? Why don’t we have those?” 

“He’s right, Z’har,” N’sha noted. “If this was just a dream, we would have memories from before. Memories of this life spent here. Perhaps this is an entirely different world.” 

Z’har scoffed. “A different world... Perhaps you’re right, it would explain everything we’ve seen today. But how do you propose we got here?” 

The tribe was eerily silent as each of their minds rushed to find an explanation, whatever it was, something told them that this was something they would all have to piece together themselves. 

As they continued to speculate about their predicament, one by one they began to withdraw to their self-designated resting area, a few of them used the large leaves from before to provide some comfort against the dry dirt beneath them. 

The next morning, they rose as they had before. It certainly wasn’t a dream, they noted as the same mountain peak still loomed opposite the river, and the same crescent moon was now on its first quarter. A herd of large mammalian creatures were drinking peacefully from the waters of the river. These animals wore golden brown stripes on leathery hides, some of which had heads adorned with bright green antlers, while others were smooth.  

As the tribe repeated their morning routine, they were joined by these magnificent creatures. Up close, they measured at least four meters in height and eight in length. Each of them paused briefly to inspect the newcomers with large, beady eyes, assessing whether they were a threat. There was a considerable amount of intelligence in them, even the tribe members could notice. Their calm, docile demeanour made the moment feel special as they joined them in the water. 

Afterwards, they split up into their respective groups, Z’har was tasked with not only gathering food, but scouting the area that they found themselves in, leading a group of four who all agreed to follow the river downstream. They all saw the same species of fish that N’sha had seen. Some of which had dorsal fins that did not emit their own light. One of them stopped to pluck a golden flower from a blade of long grass. They separated the seeds from the rest of the flower and shared them among the group. It had a dusty, slightly nutty flavour to it.  

“Gather more of them, Ac’kor” Z’har said, “They’re not much on their own but there’s so much of them that they could be useful.”  

Ac’kor immediately got to work, picking several dozen ears of the plants scattered around and filling his pouch to the brim. A few loose seeds dropped and immediately scattered into the ground, but most of them remained. As the sun rose higher, Z’har gathered more of the yellow fruit from yesterday, filling most of her own pouch before making their way downstream, eventually coming into a small, forested area by noon. 

Abruptly, one of them stopped, frantically pointing at the ground. 

“What is it, Oren?” Ac’kor asked, following his index finger. Beneath them, fresh prints were in the ground, padded paws with deep gouges indicated long, sharp claws. Whatever made these was designed to chase, kill, and rend flesh from bone.  

Before they could, however, a new contender suddenly lunged from the cover of a shrub. The closest of them jumped out of the way, crying out in pain as a claw still managed to tear a bloody gash across his chest. They all bolted in the opposite direction, hoping to outrun the massive beast. In their haste, none of them stopped to get a good look at it. In the initial encounter, it was large, with claws at least six inches in length when extended, and razor-sharp. It was covered in dark brown fur with occasional golden spots and had an elongated snout.  

They ran for a solid five seconds before the creature re-oriented itself and charged after them, eating up the distance they had made with ease. They could hear its frustrated grunts, the hungry pants as it exerted itself in its quest to get its lunch. One of them managed to bend down while running, seamlessly hefting a large stone before throwing it at full strength at the creature. It crashed against the predator’s cranium with a crack, drawing a bead of dark red blood. It paused for a second to billow in pain and anger before once again restarting its pursuit, however it lost a large amount of ground and was already losing stamina, but so were its prey. Oren paused to heft a particularly heavy boulder of his own. 

“Go!” He roared to the rest of the group.  “I’ll just slow you down in my weakened state!” 

“...But-” Z’har began to protest. 

“GO!” He shouted unwaveringly. 

With a nod of finality, the rest of them bolted, leaving the man to fend for himself. Behind them, they heard the sickening crack of the rock connecting to a skull, A yelp in pain, however that didn’t stop them from hearing the blood-curdling scream, the sound of flesh tearing and bones crushing as the beast tore into him, and then... nothing. That was the worst part. Not the scream, but the surrender of life to a force beyond their control, the feeling of wanting to help, to do something, but knowing that it’s already over. 

The others didn’t look back. They simply ran, ran until they could taste blood in their mouths, they ran until their loins burned and sweat dripped openly onto the grass. They ran until they couldn’t, then kept running from sheer adrenaline until they finally burst into the camp. 

“What’s going on here, I thought you-” T’lar began to question, but was swiftly cut off. 

“Predator. Big predator attacked us!” Ac’kor screamed, collapsing to the floor. 

“We were foraging for food and scouting, until we were ambushed by some kind of... beast!” Z’har continued. “It’s massive... We can’t outrun them! It came out of nowhere, we ran, but we weren’t fast enough!” 

“Where’s Oren?” T’lar asked. 

“He’s...” Z’har began, choking up as she recounted the story. “He sacrificed himself for us, T’lar. That’s how we got away. It managed to land a hit on him early on, tore a massive gash across his chest, he could run, but he was weakened. He picked up a boulder and bought us the time needed to escape at the cost of his own life.” 

“Damnit, he always did look out for his group.” T’lar sighed heavily, although his word choice was one of grief rather than containing any malice. “We’re going to have to be more careful. I know you’re just gathering but you’ll need more than just pouches the next time you’re out there. This may indeed be a new world, but death is still one constant that we’ll still have to defy whenever we can. I’ll have the toolmakers focus on some spears. Seems not only the hunters are going to need them if we’re going to survive here. Just...” He pauses, collecting himself with another heavy sigh. “Get some rest for tonight. You’ve gathered more than enough to earn it. And find a way to make it so that Oren is remembered.” 

“We’ll see what we can do.” Z’har replied, her voice a quietened sob of what it was before the trip. All three of them did just that, simply staring into the flames to reflect upon the past hour or so. 

Around them, the day continued, T’lar directed some tribe members to build some standing torches, fuelling them with oil and rags or dried leaves, this way they’d have some warning before another attack. Others kneaded flint and attached them using strong vines to perfectly straight wooden shafts.  

As the rest of the tribe successfully made it back to the camp without injury, T’lar took it upon himself to inform the group of Oren’s death. Giving them the space to process the information and grieve on their own terms while giving Oren a final, fitting eulogy. He opted to stand as a lookout, watching over the group as they slept tonight, announcing that from now on, they would be rotating the duty to ensure that no more of them would fall victim to any other predators.  

The third day started with a collective sombre mood. Each of the scouts were outfitted with a flint spear for their own safety. They moved more slowly today, watching every vector for danger. This time, they agreed to cross the river. It was shallow enough to wade across, although they kept their spears trained on the water just in case, they came across any underwater predators. They made their way to the foothills of the mountain, exploring the gently sloping forest that surrounded it. They collected samples of berries, nuts and seeds. 

As they made their way over one of the foothills, they noticed something: Another group of people. Their camp was at the end of a box canyon, walled off on three sides. There was around thirty of them in the valley. Z’har gave the order to trail behind her as she retrieved a piece of tree bark with the stars of Orion that she had drawn the other day. 

At first, two of them spotted her, levelling their spears towards her.  

“Who?” One of them asked in a shared tongue. 

“Z’har.” She replied, pointing towards herself. 

“Why you here?” He pressed on, stepping closer but this time not overtly threateningly. 

“Scouting for food.” Z’har responded, keeping her own language simplified to maintain understanding. Slowly, she laid her spear on the ground and instead displayed the bark tablet to the two. “Familiar?”  

Both of their spears clattered to the floor as they looked on in astonishment.  

“Yes!” Both said in unison. They rushed towards Z’har, not to attack, but out of sheer excitement. Slowly, cautiously, N’sha and Ac’kor emerged from the brush, joining them. 

Throughout the afternoon, the two groups shared stories from home, and this new world, gradually learning enough of each other’s languages to more clearly understand one-another. They all knew that allies in this new, unpredictable world might be key to their survival in it and took comfort in the fact that neither of them was alone.  

After trading resources, some of their yellow fruit for some dark purple clusters of berries, the two parted ways, but not before sharing the location of their own camp. 

As the years went on, more tribes begun to emerge, most peaceful, while others were suspicious, others still were outright hostile. Still, it wouldn’t be long until the first humans were born in this world, having never known anything of the one that came before.