Prologue
900 years before extinction
In a forest, in a clearing, lay a baby boy. Unaware that the world would end in 900 years and unaware of the role he would play in its demise.
The only thing the boy knew was that he was hungry, cold and alone. The only way he could communicate these feelings was by screaming.
“Are you sure this is a trap?” Thalon whispered.
“No..” Llan shifted in the wet brush; his joints ached. He was far too old for lying in the cold mud with a boy barely old enough to grow facial hair. He himself had lost the last strand of hair a long time ago. Now he was just wrinkles.
Thalon fidgeted beside him, picking at the ground.
“How long are we going to wait? What are we waiting for?” Thalon asked. “The sun is setting. We can’t just lie here all night, we have to do something.”
“Yes..” Llan still scanned the treeline intensely, looking for any sign of trouble. A baby alone in the forest. Even if it was a trap, he had to investigate it.
Thalon sighed. “Should we leave it? We can’t just leave it right?”
“No…” A clever trap this was. Even knowing it was a trap, he couldn’t leave a baby as Skreetcher fodder. But how had the Veatherites timed it so perfectly? If the baby had been here long, the animals would have found it first. And if it was the Veatherites, he would have seen tracks, heard or smelled them by now. He and Thalon had circled the clearing for what felt like hours. Nothing.
“You stay here, if anything happens, don’t try to save me. Run for help. Ok?”
Ok. The young man signed with his hand.
Llan willed his body to stand up, every muscle, joint and bone protesting. No, his body certainly too withered for lying in the cold brush all day.
He crept toward the baby, eyes never stopping their sweep of the surroundings. He knelt and signed back to Thalon: Keep watching.
The infant looked healthy. On his right arm, there was a tattoo of three lines.
“Not a Veatherite then?” Thalon said, no longer whispering.
Llan flinched. He spun to find Thalon standing behind him, looking curiously at the baby.
Llan’s heart pounded. His hearing was getting worse with age, but even so, the young fool moved like a ghost without even trying.
“A normal, human, baby boy. Somehow, that is even weirder.” Thalon remarked.
“Not normal, look at his arm.”
Thalon looked at his arm. “All boys get their arm tattooed after birth,” he said.
“Yes.. But the motif, it’s not something I’ve seen before.” Llan looked troubled.
Thalon crouched beside him, studying the tattoo.
Thalon’s face lit up. “He’s a gift from the gods.”
“He is not a gift from the gods.” Llan answered tiredly, too exhausted to argue.
“So where did he come from? He’s not a Veatherite trap. No one’s missing a baby. His tattoo doesn’t match anything we’ve seen. The only explanation that makes sense is that he is a gift from the gods, and that you and I have been chosen to bring him back to the tribe.”
“Why would the gods send you a baby? You have your own daughter at home.”
Thalon waved away the objection, unable to contain his excitement. “They didn’t send him to me. They sent him to us. To take to the tribe.”
Llan was exhausted; arguing wouldn’t change the outcome. They would take the baby to the tribe, it was the only course of action, whatever the explanation for the baby’s existence.
“Maybe he’ll grow up to be a great hunter,” Thalon continued, as he picked up the baby. “Or a warrior who kills Veatherites and protects the village.”
“Maybe he can fly.” Llan stood, brushing dirt from his knees.
“Ironic, isn’t it? That the gods would send a gift to a man who’s spent a century mocking them.”
Llan stretched his limbs. “He’s not a gift from the gods.” He paused. “And I’m not that old.”