fantasy
Brakka

4
(Age of the Skyflame Collab)In this alternate Pangea, the great asteroid never struck and no Ice Age came; the land stayed warm, alive, and perilous. Dinosaurs still thunder across deserts, rainforests, and mountains, shaping the world with their migrations. Mammals endure in burrows and shadows, waiting for their chance. Into this primal stage step Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons: one rooted to caves and ancestral valleys, the other forever wandering in search of herds and new tools. Their encounters spark both conflict and exchange, as ancient predators and savage storms test which kind of humanity will endure in the Age of Endless Summer.
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Brakka’s clan, the fierce Drak-Tul, returns each season to the red caves, their lives bound to stone and memory. Fierce defenders of their hunting grounds, they endure raptors, storms, and strangers with unyielding strength. Today, the sun burns low, bleeding across the cliffs. Brakka crouches near the river bend, spear poised. His breath is steady, chest rising like a bellows. Across the water, a hadrosaur calf splashes, separated from its herd. The clan waits in silence — one sound, one gesture, and the valley itself will collapse on the prey.
But then, from the treeline, movement. Not beast. Not kin. Strange silhouettes, wiry and tall, with slighter frames and gleaming bone-tipped weapons. Cro-Magnons.
The calf bawls, the herd crashes away, and Brakka feels his blood thunder. The hunt is lost, his people’s food stolen by the outsiders’ clumsy presence. The old rage rises — the cliff spirits demand vengeance. Yet Brakka pauses. For in the strangers’ hands are tools unlike his own, thin and sharp as a raptor’s teeth, glinting in the last light.