PRELUDE

Yan and Askar

Driven by hunger, six lumbering woolly mammoths were traversing a barren wasteland of ice, snow, and rock. As they immersed through a dense snow squall, their mighty feet pounded hard over the loch’s frozen ice sheet.

The eldest matriarch, a behemoth animal bearing heavy curved ivory tusks and a long shaggy brownish-red coat draped across her head and torso, threw her trunk skyward trumpeting hard against the bitter snowfelled winter air. Carried on another forceful wind, her blow echoed across the desolate Nordic highland landscape splayed all around her. Her mighty tambred shriek, soon lost to the swirling frigidity of the ferocious whiteout, the herd’s ancient leader led the way, with her clan plodding hard behind. The desolate land they roamed was a place of a virtual half light—one that saw millennia of their species live, roam, and die while trying to procure minimal sustenance against the horrifically brutal elements.

This day, the herd’s leader could trudge no more…and in three final steps, fell sideways to her death. Simply too old and weak to carry on, her massive body collapsed as her trunk fell…her large eyes, once so full of wisdom and pocked with ice, turned to lifeless onyx stones.

Standing high over her, a strong young male, just a foot shorter in size, approached his fallen mother, and in that very moment, became the herd's new leader and protector.

Intelligent above most beasts their size, the giant Mammoths accepted their mother’s fate—and saddened, left her to be consumed by the elements and the stalking predators ready to devour. Without time to pause their forward trek, they trudged away holding their deep collective sadness…deep as the frozen loch beneath them.

It was in the midst of the dim light that a man named Askar, and his wolfdog Yan, set out from their protective cave dwelling in search of food.

Situated among snow and ice covered dwarf evergreens, tangled dead shrubs, and neolithic green lichen outcroppings, their home was a meager one, but served to protect them well.

In protection from the cold, Askar’s head flowed with long amber locks that were tied and braided to keep it from his eyes. Bearing an equally long flowing ginger beard combed down the entirety of his face, upon his muscular frame he wore a long, heavy, mammoth fur coat sewn with a wolf fur hood, and underneath, a fur-lined elk skin suit that insulated his upper body. His trousers, also elkskin, protected his lower half, as did his wolf and seal leather gloves and the sealskin-mountain goat fur