The Sceptre of Fanseni
3 Million years before the G.O.D
¶Deep in the underground cavern, Xennol, resplendent in vestments shimmering with the eternal virtuous colours of alternating emerald green, white and gold, stood at the Altar of Frawldo, staring down at the intent, expectant but silent audience looking upwards from the golden sandstone floor fifty feet below.
On either side of the clean cold flowing stream they sat, the men powerful and bare-chested, the women with the perfect beauty of Greek Goddesses be-robed in the white luminescence of virtue and love.
Xennol spoke up, gentle in delivery but powerful in meaning and impact!
“This is indeed the place. The time has come for the power of the Sceptre to be put to great and noble use, and for us to return to our own constellation of Practickel in the universe of Steadenglowofsag. This universe we have come to and surveyed is now ready for the wonder of life; one that is self-sustaining but that will not have the flaws of our own self-inflicted manifestation. In this instance of the multiverse, there will be no Argrens. They will not pollute the glory of intelligence and the search for the answers to the mystery of how and why, with their constant base motives of destructive greed and degenerate dishonesty.
“Here the inheritors of the Fanseni’s legacy will search and speculate in wonder about this day, learn eternally in amazement, and live for an ever more rewarding future of harmony as they discover the meaning of everything around them and realise their own oneness with the one true fabric woven from an infinity of realities.”
Durmoch, probably the most talented but modest of the Fanseni, turned to his friends and directed them to prepare the site for The Sceptre, powerless on its own but unstoppable once infused with the essence of the Fanseni and omnipotent when carved with the magic words of their absent patriarch, Nesti.
Larck and Ladu carried the stone sceptre to the base of the Altar and placed it in its prepared receptacle.
Xennol raised his right hand across his chest and pointed with his left at the dull grey stone rock. A brilliant silver green stream of beautiful incandescence beamed upon the rock and as it was absorbed, Xennol intoned the ancient incantation of Nesti.
“Cethcilet thrisdeso knotrinsh otftifireonropeslyra”!
Lemmeg and Stenjhono, between them picked up the sealing rock and placed it over the recess opening within which The Sceptre lay.. Now the power with which it had been infused would do its magic and the seeds of intelligence, culture, love and hope would soon sprout their buds protecting and developing not only this world, but also one day this Universe, and perhaps giving rise to life-forms that would approach the maturity of the Fanseni and transmigrate the inter-universal miasma.
Xennol continued,
“Let everyone here be witness to both the deed and the principles behind it. We have struck the spark of consciousness, but we have not decreed how it will grow or advance. We have not altered the conditions within which it will need to flourish. The only thing that we have ensured by sealing this soul of life in this place is that the power of the Sceptre will continuously communicate across the dimensionless passage back to our own existence, and keep us aware of the developments that we all hope will take place.
“The Sceptre is untainted by the mark of the Argrens and as such the evil that they brought to our own evolution will not hinder our future companions in the multiverse. This Sceptre is now of this place, a life giver, a bringer of bountiful futures. Now let us prepare to depart.”
Pimsnos, the father of the group called Nemcli and Malchres together.
“The journey is over and our work is done. This place where we have planted the Sceptre will now flourish as surely He who conceived us would have wished. Perhaps this day we have righted the fallen wrong that condemned us to the eternal battle against evil”
Under the watchful eye of Xennol they held each other in the ritual Fanseni Dhuled, utilising their combined power to conjure up the quantum gate and the path of light leading back to their own universe.
And then lepton after lepton, quark after quark, photon following photon their forms dissolved into a singularity with the ether, merging with and migrating through the universal divide leaving no visible trace of their ever having been there.
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In the vast sun-kissed plains and bountiful forests of the lands surrounding the cavern, ignorant of any rational self-awareness, the flora and fauna teemed in an ever more variegated and extensive cycle of predator, quarry, predator as they strived to be the fittest and bequeath survival upon their gene pool.
High in the equatorial canopies the primates of the age instinctively followed their biological imperatives as they fed, slept, fought, and reproduced. They shared only when their own survival demanded it.
One large and magnificent specimen was in a fight to the death over a cache of fruit. No holds were barred as he ripped his teeth into the female of the species and she in turn gouged and kicked to protect the product of her week’s foraging.
The female slipped and the larger male swung forward to complete his kill, when the branches below his huge bulk gave way and he landed in agony on damp sun-starved earth below the tree canopy. Stunned at first he lay there and then with a roar that shook the trunks and vibrated the pools of freshly fallen rain, he furiously tried to clamber back to wreak his revenge on the female.
He couldn’t move his leg.
It was stuck in a sprung corner of the tree roots and undergrowth. The more he pulled, the tighter the grip became. He roared and ripped at the wood and ground but even his strength was no match for a tree that was a hundred times bigger, a thousand years older and whose roots held the very foundations of the jungle together against the assault of an ever changing climate.
He was now at a major disadvantage in the survival stakes. He was trapped unable to prise the wooden snare open. Unable to reach the sanctuary of his natural habitat in the roof of the trees, and almost immobile he was exposed to the huge carnivorous stalkers that inhabited the jungle floor.
The female looked down through the branches, screaming and mocking in triumph, and bearing her teeth in derision and no little relief.
A monstrous pachycrocuta approached the stricken primate. Unable to escape and handicapped as he was, unable to defend himself, he waved his arms in vain as the salivating nemesis approached.
Sensing the distressed actions and calls of the injured primate and knowing that the tree-ridden female was no danger, the prospect of easy meat seemed a foregone conclusion.
In the far away universe of steadenglowofsag through the power of the sceptre, Xennol and his fellow Fanseni watched the scene of butchery begin to unfold. It was then that the main essence of The Sceptre and the influence of the invocation sowed its first seed.
The female primate ceased her squealing and victorious posturing. She looked down at the stranded male who looked pleadingly back up at her. The sensation of something new flowed through her. She could see herself, and she could see what was about to happen. Now she knew that he was the same as her and she could save him from suffering. The male could also see himself and could see his fate.
The female sprung from the branches landing full weight on the back of the pachycrocuta. It drove the breath from its lungs, its aggression from its intention, and escape into its plans.
The female rose on her hind limbs and drew herself to an intimidating height. The pachycrocuta retreated in spiteful spitting dudgeon not about to meddle with the huge tree-creature which shouldn’t have been anywhere near the ground.
The erstwhile hunter turned and accelerated in panic off into the relative safety of the forest interior.
The female turned to the male and searching around the ground for a sturdy branch, she levered back the sprung roots that had caught his leg. They eyed each other suspiciously at first, unfamiliar but not uncomfortable with their embryonic consciousness.
Unsteadily, warily but positively with the beginnings of a sense of adventure, the female primate showed off to the male her newly discovered erect stance, ideal for moving quickly around on the ground and exploring for new sources of food and shelter. The male aped her posture.
Then, helping each other, they ascended back into the canopy of the trees and shared some of the fruit!
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In the suffocating silence following the transportation of the Fanseni, from the shadows high above the now deserted altar place, a figure, originally pressed into the anonymous darkness, emerged to survey the empty cavern.
The Argren who went by the name of Bethgu Brea looked around and thought to itself
“The masters of Xorbi were indeed right. The Fanseni have not only discovered the secrets of Trans Interuniverse Materialisation, but here they have come to this strange land in an even stranger universe where no intelligence exists and movement is frustratingly limited by some primitive natural law that prevents anything exceeding the speed of archaic light?
“Typical fools. They have transferred the essence of their pathetically sad culture of weak-kneed virtue and the blunt sword of their white incantation into a Sceptre and have left it here to presumably infect some chosen life-forms with consciousness and rationality. Well being the latest in a long family line of Argrens, I’m not about to admit defeat.
“Not this
Disguising himself as a Fanseni for the journey across the great divide had been a real problem. After all, walking upright for any length of time was never comfortable; regularly shaving hands and face to keep the pretence going, speaking in sentences with more than four words, each of which had more than 3 syllables seemed no more than a waste of belly scratching time, and as for that wiping the bum with paper lark, that was a no-no. However, most of all that sickening memory of being polite and considerate was one that would long haunt his memory or it would have if his long term memory had exceeded 3 earth seconds.
Of course not having gone back with them, he was now stranded in this warped three-dimensional existence, and this was where the short term memory came in handy. He forgot who he was and where he came from. Fortunately, for him and unfortunately for the universe, his mother had tattooed his name and the glorious history of the Argrens of Xorbi into his mittens. Refreshing his randomly accessed memory, he became quickly resigned to his fate, planned a dignified course of action and wrote it down in pictures so as he wouldn’t forget.
First, he had to compromise the plans of the Fanseni. The Sceptre was probably already doing its work and he wouldn’t be able to reverse it, but he could distort it. Only then could he sit back and enjoy the outcome of the greed, hatred, deceit, selfishness and corruption that he would graciously confer on his soon to be loyal followers.
After all corruption and vice were surely what made existence worth experiencing; and the lucky inhabitants of this new world, his self-appointed fiefdom, were about to experience them in magnificent abundance and abandon.
He approached the stone slab that covered the recess to The Sceptre. He couldn’t look at such an item of sickly benevolence without feeling his insides start to decay, and he definitely couldn’t touch it. However, he could breathe on it, and as all who had had the misfortune to encounter the breath of the Argrens had discovered, the malevolence carried by the fetid stench and the evil intent would be enough to infect even the Sceptre of the Fanseni and damage its purpose.
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As the Argren left his vaporous visiting card and re-closed the recess, somewhere out in the unsuspecting world, for the first time a Primate killed not for food, not for survival but for perverted pleasure.
Good versus evil, God versus the devil, Right versus wrong, Justice versus injustice…..Fanseni versus Argrens;…….the flash of the gleaming bladed sword of heroism against the dull heavy shield of cowardly disinterest in the battle for the soul of the future and eternity had begun!
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