The Amulet
By: Theodore T. Bear
MssrTheodoreBear@gmail.com
PROLOGUE
Many have speculated through the centuries about ancient civilizations. In many civilizations that man knows of, there is in most cases a curious jump in knowledge somewhere in their ancient history. In most of these civilizations, the leap in knowledge is typically of a more advanced nature than should be possible for them at that time. For example, within the Egyptian’s First Dynasty, there is a fully formed system of writing and counting, almost as if it is or at least based on a pre-existing system. No archeologist has been able to adequately explain yet how the Chinese of old suddenly developed the means to create gunpowder. Anthropologists are at a similar loss to explain the development of Astronomy and Calendars (and accurate representation of the solar system and the length of a true year, not to mention the hyper accurate scheduling of eclipses) by the Mayans, the Aztecs and other ancient peoples of South America. There has to be some explanation they all agree, but little do they know of the actual truth.
In the long forgotten past, before the rise of the Greeks and the Romans. Before dawn of the Chinese Dynasties, or the rise of the Aztecs, the Toltecs or the Mayans, long even before there was a first Pharaoh of what would be Egypt’s First Dynasty, there was already a species of man that had grown into their golden age. Recent scholars – and a more than a few nut cases – have labeled this fabled race as the Atlanteans, whose continent sunk to the bottom of the ocean long, long ago. These scholars, researchers and nut cases are right and they are wrong, both often at the same time.
In the long forgotten past, the Pfimenios Potos as they called themselves (roughly translated into modern tongues as ‘The First People’), were wise in the ways of the world and of those more arcane. When the bulk of humanity was thinking that banging a couple of rocks together might be a good idea, the Pfimenios were writing grand works of literature and philosophizing about the meaning of life. When humanity first learned how to make shelter from the hides of animals, the Pfimenios were charting the solar system.
The Pfimenios owe a large portion of their rapid rise, and subsequent fall, to having learned early on in their history to harness the power of the magic inherent in the world around them. While magic as a real power has been largely lost to us in modern times, at the time of the Pfimenios it was a very real thing. The biggest cause to being able to harness and use magic for anything more than a party game is first the belief that it actually exists. In ancient times, most of the sentient beings living on the planet Earth believed in magic, which increased the power of it. As humanity ‘grew-up’, fewer and fewer believed in magic, weakening its power and eventually causing the ability to harness it to become lost.
The Pfimenios harnessed the power of magic into their everyday life and used it without a second thought. If someone needed to go from point A to point B, they had merely to invoke the spell for levitation and float there or see their local Magi to be teleported there. If a child fell ill, most parents knew the wards to make them well again or could call on their local apothecary to use his more powerful wards and spell books. Hardly a household in their budding empire had fewer than one or two spell books residing on a shelf within.
The Pfimenios used their magic to appear as gods to the as yet primitive mankind, inspiring the tales of today of Quetzalcoatl, Zeus, Shiva and Thor. And with all of their knowledge they didn’t seek war and domination; after all they were an enlightened people. They sought instead for knowledge of the world around them and the universe it resided in. The magi of the Pfimenios realized early on in their own lengthy history that in order to focus more of their efforts and abilities to gaining that knowledge they shouldn’t use them frivolously on common tasks. But the tasks still needed to be done, so several of the Magi set to making artifacts of power do the tasks for them.
Rather than using magic to light a candle or lamp to provide light, they made coins charged with the ability to light every lamp in a room when slapped against a hard surface. Rather than using precious energy to fly to work each morning they made amulets that simply needed to be warmed in the hands and held in front of them.
And despite their great abilities in magic, they still had a variety of menial tasks that needed to be done on a daily basis. In order to accomplish these tasks it often became necessary to ‘hire’ workers from the primitive tribes of man. The trouble with that however was that man was – and is – exceedingly primitive and difficult to control. So the Magi came together again to create artifacts to make this task easier as well. They created necklaces that couldn’t be removed that would tame the primitive beasts of man. The Magi created ‘bombs’ filled with magic energies to pacify and sedate unruly mobs. They made helms to instill fear and awe in the primitives, gauntlets of strength to do hand to hand battle with them or create a shield to protect an entire army. And of course they created rings, circlets, amulets and other objects with which to direct and control their workforce.
For many centuries, the arrangement worked well for the Pfimenios. Primitive man was kept tame and docile, working hard to improve the standard of living for the Pfimenios by building new homes and shops and sewers. And the Magi were able to return to their task of gaining knowledge and understanding.
After more than 100 centuries of peace and prosperity the Pfimenios reveled in their own superiority. Their confidence quickly turned to overconfidence and arrogance. They didn’t think there was anything that they couldn’t do. They had already mapped the planet, the solar system and other star systems so the Magi turned their attention to alternate dimensions. Their most powerful Magi gathered at their central temple, prepared for their penultimate victory. The lesser Magi crowded the balconies, lending their energies to the masters gathered in a circle in the amphitheater below. The full moon shone brightly directly overhead as they began their ritual to open the portal into the next reality.
Magic coursed through the temple and the arena in the middle as bolts of green lightning surged from the stands above and around them to the Magi below and into the rune work in the center. The runes glowed with a curious shade of green beneath a purple fire as bolts of the darkest crimson and orange shot skyward and formed a ring above it and filling with an image of electrified water. A hushed silence filled the temple followed by a raucous cheer as the assembled masses realized that they had succeeded.
They were still celebrating half an hour later when the portal started to behave strangely. The lightning edges changed from a luminescent blue to an angry mix of yellow and orange and the image of the water shifted towards black and started getting as riled as the sea in a heavy storm. The circle of Magi and their spectators reformed with alacrity, focusing once again on the spell at hand but this time trying to close the portal. But everything they did was just a bit too little, a bit too late.
The portal reacted to the combined energies of the Pfimenios Magi… badly. It sent bolts of pure energy back along their lines of power, frying them were they stood and where the spectators sat – draining not only their lives but sucking every drop of mystic energy from their charring bodies. The ground under their empire shook and heaved, collapsing buildings and killing thousands at a time. They sky clouded over and the moon turned a sickening shade of red, the very air of the island continent felt electrified and corrupt. The energies released from the portal shot out in visible waves and bolts, striking anything and everything around it. Buildings that weren’t toppled by the quakes were sent flying as they exploded from the impact of the discharges. The air started swirling, drawing everything towards the portal by a trio of giant inverted tornadoes from the rift.
An hour after the portal opened, the island capitol of the empire had been laid to waste. Nothing was left standing, no blade of grass undisturbed and no being left alive. The last action of the portal before it closed seemingly of its own accord was to strike one final, spiteful blow to the ravaged homeland of the Pfimenios. With a sound barely louder than the pop of a soda can and a ripple of power across the decimated landscape, every last trace of their ancient empire on the island continent disappeared. The island didn’t sink, nor did it explode. No trace of the great city will ever be found in deep space since that isn’t where it went either, every trace was simply… erased.
Most of the Pfimenios had come back to their homeland for the ceremony marking the culmination of the eons of history, but the business of running an empire is an ongoing task so many were still away when their homeland ceased to exist. The few survivors, numbering little more than a thousand or so all together were scattered across the many corners of the globe when they felt the surge of magic energies washing outward from their home. Few of them were deluded enough to think that what their shipboard Magi told them wasn’t true, but those that did try to sail home were able only to confirm that nothing remained of their home. Eventually they too gave up on searching for their lost brethren and set to the task of survival. Settling at many points around the world, they blended in with the still primitive yet developing human beings, disappearing into their masses since they weren’t really all that different in appearance.
They shared their ample knowledge with the peoples they settled with, creating the leaps in knowledge that anthropologists are still struggling to explain today. They used their few remaining magic artifacts to better their lives and those of their children, passing them from generation to generation. But the surviving artifacts weren’t enough to ensure their survival on their own so they turned back to their hard earned knowledge.
With the near complete destruction of the Pfimenios and their homeland, magic no longer had a true ally in this world. The magic energies ebbed away, and by the time the last great-great-great-grandchild of the surviving Pfimenios passed away, magic as a practical application was little more than a faded memory already bordering on legend. The artifacts that survived with the sailors weren’t dependent on the waning magic, having been infused with all they would need at their creation.
As wars spread over and across the lands, some artifacts were lost in the mists of time to be discovered – or not – at a later time. Some were destroyed in sacks and looting while others were melted down and used to fashion the instruments of war. Very few managed to stay in the families of their original owners and to this day remain a closely guarded secret in the EXTREAMLY few cases in which their attributes are actually known. And of those, even fewer of those with known attributes or abilities are even used since the knowledge of how to do that has even been lost to the fog of myth and legend.
The following story is a tale of one of those artifacts lost in the mists of time only to be found, but not understood many centuries later…