scorpiodragon
Five Thousand Club
CHAPTER ONE: CURSED ONES
The cold was nothing they weren't used to nor the snow that fell lightly from the sky. It was the first snowfall of Dimsun and this only bespoke of colder times and long winter nights to come. The time of cold snow had come to the lands, making these ice-covered lands even colder and it would only get worse as the season progressed. The planet was in an ice age, an ice age that would last several thousand years, several centuries in fact, though none knew it. To the early humans, all that mattered was surviving day to day. Hunting and gathering food, moving in their small various clans and trying to survive both other groups, the changing seasons and of course predators. Thirty-percent of the earth's surface was covered in ice and megafauna roamed the lands. The ice sheets underfoot were so thick in Eurasia that they created a rain shadow effect, turning what in time would become western Russia and Siberia into a frozen desert and halting the spread of glaciers in the east due to the lack of precipitation. The earth itself was warped from the ice which made changes to the coastline and further south what would be known as the Caspian Sea was larger than in modern times, the Black Sea bleeding into the Mediterranean. But such knowledge was unknown to the early humans of the frozen marble. They knew not how long the ice age would last or that the Neanderthals would go into extinction as early humans competed with them for food and resources. They knew nothing of how the world would change through the years, dead and unseeing, forgotten. None but those who had been cursed who might get the chance to see the world change and their own race begin to grow and spread.
The cold was nothing to two wolves that made their way south from the frozen desert of Siberia for they lived on the edge of land and sea, or had done so before they'd been chased out of their clan by the elders when the older brother had turned on a seal hunt and the younger had turned to defend their older brother, mauling a clan elder and resulting in them being chased out and away from their home, their own family even rejecting them. It was said they'd been cursed, bearing the mark of Amarok. That had been but a half moon ago and since then the brothers had continued south, confused and trying to get used to the fact that they were cursed and why Amarok, the great wolf of their mythology that hunted at night, had cursed them so. They were not alone though for as they descended from the borders of the frozen desert, they came across a female who roamed alone the primitive forests and steppe, injured and frightened. It was his younger brother that had begged Auckaneck to allow the female to join them, a female they learned was called Rosario and since then the three had been wandering together. Rosario proved to have good senses and observation skills for a female and the brothers found from her that she would sometimes follow the men on hunts and learn by watching them and learning to hide from their sight. She, though, had no idea either why she had been cursed or what was happening to her. Were there others out there? As Rosario said she had a different god to the brothers, it got the oldest wondering of why this had happened though he could not fathom an answer to his burning questions.
"It seems colder than normal," spoke the adolescent as he walked along beside his brother, the older in wolf form as was the female. Through trial and error, they discovered something. They could be human or wolf most of the time but the strange middle form, the one between wolf and human, they didn't seem able to access that form willingly. In time, they would discover the third form could be revealed under the light of the moon and the day before as well as being brought out as a last sign of defense or under heightened emotions but the monsters they would become every full moon would remain concealed within their bodies and minds. His older brother made a huffing sound in response, but otherwise the adolescent's statement went unanswered as they walked across the land, feet and paws carrying them across the earth into the light snow.
stennie
