Tribes Are Formed

EPISODE 7

Time stood still in the First Realm.

It needed no counting there. No seasons were measured, no wrinkles carved themselves into faces, no children outgrew the arms that held them. All was harmony and good blessing, and every breath folded neatly into the next like waves that never broke.

Aelynn had agreed to leave that stillness.

Her brother’s rebellion had torn a wound between worlds, and the earth bled confusion through it. She had come with the younger fae, not to rule, but to guard—standing between the Forgotten One’s wiles and the fragile humans who did not yet know how easily they could be turned.

Here, however, time existed.

In earthly terms, the battle with the now Forgotten One had stretched across thousands of years. During those ages, the earth had been quiet but busy, populating with humans the way forests populate with trees—one at first, then another, then so many they become one shadow.

First came the people of Mesopotamia, a river-fed land called the heartbeat of the world. They lived together, sharing one culture and one language. Their words fit into each other like joined hands. For a time, they were one people.

One of their great men was visited by the Forgotten One.

He was promised greatness—power, dominion, glory—if he obeyed the whispering voice. He gathered his people, repeating those words as if they were his own. He stirred their hearts, inflamed their pride, and urged them to build a tower unlike anything the world had seen.

A tower that would pierce the sky.

A tower meant to join heaven and earth on their terms.

And so, construction began.

Stone upon stone, brick upon brick, the structure climbed into the low-hung clouds. Some said it reached over five thousand four hundred cubits—more than a mile into the air. Men strained against the weight of mud and stone. Their muscles thickened, their hands hardened. They learned what it meant to move weight that should not be moved.

Far to the west, Aelynn watched that labor with a strange ache in her chest.

That strength would not be lost when the tower fell.

Strength never is.

It would show itself again in ages to come—in the rising of earthworks and stone circles, in mounds aligned to solstice light, in monoliths that pierced the sky without reaching for the throne behind it.

But the tower’s pride could not stand.

One morning, the builders found speech slipping sideways. A man called for straw and received clay. Another asked for water and was brought stone. Voices tangled, meanings fractured, tongues bent out of shape. Only small bands could understand one another, and even they soon drifted apart.

The tower did not fall to fire or storm.

It fell to confusion.

The work stopped. The unity shattered. Panic rippled through the people, and something in them knew they could no longer remain gathered. Without knowing why, they turned away from the unfinished tower and from one another, scattering like seeds in a hard wind.

They carried their tools, their stories, their fears, and their strange new tongues.

The population spread across the land and beyond it, fanning into mountains, plains, forests, and coasts—fingers of humanity reaching for the edges of the earth.

Years later, Babel became a great city. Renamed Babylon the Great, it never again attempted to touch the heavens. The lesson lingered in its stones.

There, King Nebuchadnezzar received a dream—a dream that moved through the First Realm like the shudder of a deep drum.

Aelynn felt it before she saw it.

In the vision, a statue rose:

a head of gold, chest of silver, belly of bronze, legs of iron,

feet mixed of iron and clay.

Four great empires would rise and fall beneath it:

Babylonia under Nebuchadnezzar,

Medo-Persia under Cyrus the Great,

Greece under Alexander,

Rome under Augustus.

Aelynn watched the vision unfold with quiet dread.

She knew the iron and clay would not hold.

She knew the statue’s feet would fracture.

From those broken toes, ten tribes would ripple outward:

Visigoths — Spain and southern France

Ostrogoths — Italy

Vandals — North Africa

Suebi — Portugal and Galicia

Burgundians — Burgundy region of France

Lombards — Northern Italy

Franks — France and Germany

Anglo-Saxons — England

Heruli — Scandinavia and Eastern Europe

Alemanni — Southern Germany and Switzerland

Each fragment carried an echo of the tower’s ambition and strength.

But one place remained untouched.

The Emerald Isle was Aelynn’s charge.

While empires shook and fell, she watched the green island at the edge of the known world. Hunter-gatherers came and went, wandering through her forests, drinking from her rivers, chasing game across her hills. But they did not root. They did not stay.

Free will was sacred. She would not drag anyone there. She would not hold anyone against their will.

She would prepare the land instead.

She whispered to rivers, teaching them where to bend.

She coaxed trees to deepen their roots.

She spoke to stones, and some listened

rising into circles and cairns that would one day guide those who remembered the age when strength could lift mountains.

When the right people came, she thought,

they would find a home already listening for them.

And slowly, they did.

Bands of wanderers appeared more often now. They crossed from distant coasts in crude boats, explored, hunted, and moved on. The island knew their footfalls, but not their names.

But change was coming.

The ages were turning.

The tribes were forming.

And the ancestors had begun their long journey toward the land that would one day remember them.