Author's Note: Hey, there! Thanks for reading! I'd like to take a moment to better explain what exactly this story is- "original continuity" sounds pretty nebulous, I know. The basic idea is that this isn't any existing, pre-established Transformers universe (Not G1, not Movie, not Prime, et cetera), but rather, is its own creation. Like most Transformers continuities, you'll see many familiar elements and characters, but many will have a completely new spin. I've tried my best to have the differences seem logical within the text, but if there's anything that I didn't get across very well, ask away in the comments! I actually have a large "encyclopedia" of lore built up for this story, so if you'd like I could post it as a thread somewhere. Also, the prologue chapters are not optional. I think that's all I have to cover for now. Enjoy!

Primitive Ruins

Southern Kalis

2 Stellar Cycles Ago

“C’mon, Glyph. Don’t you think we’ve seen enough here?”

Ignoring his suggestions, the smaller bot ahead of Tap-Out raised a hand to stop him. In front of her, the narrow pathway they had been following stopped.

“See, look! There’s nothing more we can do. Let’s head back. You’ll have time to find something at site B- and it’s just a couple kliks down the ridge. We can get there and even do some excavation, but only if we leave now.”

“No,” replied Glyph sternly, adjusting the settings on her visor. “There’s something about this place, I can feel it. The big answers… we’re so close.”

“I’d say it’s more likely that you’re feeling the bad Energon they served us back in town. I told you, you can’t get the cubes. They’re not clean.”

Glyph switched her holo-torch to its lantern mode, and set it on the dust-covered floor.

“Oh, Tap-Out. If it weren’t for you smothering me, I’d have gotten myself killed.”

“It’s my job to smother you,” sighed the larger robot. “Now, let me do my job, and get you out of here. It’s too dangerous to snoop around in a cave like this without a full team to get us out.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Glyph replied. “But sometimes, smothered things need to breathe.”

With a rapid sweep of her leg, Glyph knocked the holo-torch off of the edge, causing it to tumble into the darkness below. She followed the light’s descent, tipping backwards into the abyss. Tap-Out lunged forward as fast as he could, but failed to catch her in time- her foot, upside down, just above the drop-off, slipped through his fingers. In horror, he pressed his face against the dusty ground and waited for the crunch of her frame being shattered on distant rocks below. The sound was a great deal more delayed than Tap-Out expected, and as the silence dragged on, he began to doubt that he would ever hear it. Eventually, something did echo out of the pit, but not what he expected.

“Are you still up there?”

Tap-Out crawled forward and peered over the edge, finding Glyph’s smiling face a few mechanometers below. The holo-torch that had fallen with her now illuminated another passageway, perpendicular to the one they had been following.

“Y-you’re still alive,” gasped Tap-Out in relief. “You planned all of that.”

“Mmm-hmm. There’s a big room just down this corridor. I think you should stick around to protect me.”

“Oh, for the love of Primus.”

Tap-Out reluctantly swung himself over the edge, landing just as easily as Glyph must have. The archaeometrist picked up the holo-torch and took off down the passage, with a grumbling bodyguard just behind.

The room Glyph had seen was indeed large, and circular in its design. A single shaft of light fell through the ceiling and into a raised pedestal in the center of the room. Tap-Out looked up and found the source of the light.

“A skylight?” wondered Tap-Out alound.

“An oculus,” corrected Glyph. “A skylight has something in between. That’s open-air.”

She moved towards the pedestal, and found its surface covered in dirt. Glyph tapped a button on her add-on gauntlet to engage her debris-clearing fan, which softly blew the detritus away. Beneath the dirt was a smooth, mirrored surface, perfectly reflecting the stars above them.

“Oh, wow,” she whispered. “This must have been some sort of early observatory.” She toggled through the settings on her visor and activated her camera, but the darkness of the room was ruining the picture. She tossed the holo-torch to Tap-Out. “Turn up the brightness. We need some documentation.”

“Right,” mumbled her bodyguard, clumsily snapping the holo-torch to full power with his optics open. “Ow! Ow- aw, that’s going to take a second to clear up.”

“Tap-Out… are you seeing this?”

“No! I can’t see anything right now!”

“You… you need to see this.”

After a few blinks, Tap-Out’s optics reset themselves. At first, he couldn’t tell what Glyph was talking about. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary- no bizarre creature had risen out of the floor, the ceiling was not collapsing. What was new, so far as he could tell, was that the light had revealed an intricate series of markings along the walls. Hundreds of tangled lines wove their way between circular shapes, forming a web-like pattern. Glyph had moved further across the room, and was examining some larger circles closely.

“It’s a star map,” she giggled with glee. “No one’s ever found a star map this old. Except us!”

“So it’s got everything in the wrong place, right? All the stars revolve around Cybertron?”

“No… that’s what’s so fascinating. Star maps just a few hundred stellar-cycles newer than this one are all wrong. But this one… it’s right! All the planets, they’re all in the right place… the stars, too… in fact, this has got everything modern star maps do! It’s got all the sectors.”

“That’s… kind of scary,” murmured Tap-Out.

“Oh, it’s very strange,” Glyph agreed. “Look- here’s Velox 12- Velocitron. And Promet 2- Animatron. And here’s Gigantion, and Nebulos,” she said, pointing towards each respective sphere. “All the colony worlds. And Cybertron has both moons, and… oh- what’s this?”

Tap-Out figured that if he lent her a little support, she might get done faster, and let them head back to the camp. He moved closer, and found her pointing at the world she had identified as Cybertron. Around the edges of the sphere, two simple figures stood, their arms raised over their heads.

“Um, they’re Cybertronian figures, right? Look, they’re not on any of the colony worlds- we hadn’t colonized them yet.”

“Yes, they obviously are… but what’s this?”

She pointed at a tiny square of reflective material- similar to the mirror on the pedestal- embedded in the center of Cybertron’s little circle.

“Some kinda square. A religious symbol?”

“It’s possible. But I wonder…” She gently removed the holo-torch from Tap-Out’s hands and switched it back into beam mode, darkening the room once more.

“Shine it right onto that square. As directly as you can,” Glyph instructed, handing the torch back to Tap-Out. Her bodyguard nodded an affirmative and set about the task, hoping that it would convince her to call it a day. Tap-Out aimed the light carefully, knowing he couldn’t get it fully on-center with the holo-torch’s body in the way. As soon as he began, Glyph scampered back across the room, like an excited coeurl- pawing at the light, attempting to trace it to where it was meant to be.

“Oh! There- there it is! I’ve got it! It’s… turn that light back. I think…”

Tap-Out, more than a little annoyed, stomped his way back across the room, making sure to look away from the holo-torch as he changed its mode and increased the brightness. Glyph pointed at another circle- another planet. It too had a reflective square in its center, and two figures stood around its edge as well.

“So they believed there was a second Cybertron?”

“No. It can’t be that. These sections of wall- they’re split into sectors… the markings label them. This one’s in an entirely different sector, and it’s only got one moon. And it’s straight across the room- on the other side of the galaxy. Look, the squares in the middle? Under the right conditions, light would come down from the oculus, bounce off of the reflecting pedestal, and hit one of these… and from there, it’d go straight across the room. They believed that our world and this one were connected.”

“But by what? We’re on the other side of the galaxy, right?”

Glyph let an index finger slide across one of the crude figures.

“Life. They’re connected by life.”