However the golden armored Cherub by my bedside did.
As my fist raced towards Merlyn’s rather prominent nose, something happened that had never happened before. It was stopped. Stopped with such force that my shoulder was nearly dislocated from it’s socket. through the haze of pain and stunned surprise I also felt a soreness in my right wrist, caused, I discovered, by the grip of a golden armored hand. I followed the hand to it’s golden armored arm and, finally, to the grinning face in charge of it all.
“Bad idea. Please don’t hit my master. It wouldn’t go well for me if you did.”
The satyr face in the (what else) golden helm smiled from ear to ear, reminding me of something from the Netherworld. Gently he released my thoroughly bruised wrist and stood to his full height. The guy was at least seven feet two inches tall and by his looks, not quit human. I knew what he was of course, thanks to my ever present crystalline companion. A Cherubim. One of a cadre of elite warriors sworn to the House of Ra. Artificially created super humans born and bred for protection and, if necessary, the kind of warfare beyond the capabilities of the very formidable Seraphim.
During all of this, Merlyn, who had jumped back from my assault, had regained his composure and was watching the tableau with a bemused expression.
“Nasty punch you have there Varus. I hope Lucifer didn’t injure you with his rather quick defense.”
Tent pegging once again dominated my thoughts as, massaging my wrist, I glared at my host, sudden death in my eyes. Meanwhile Lucifer stayed by the bed in a relaxed but ‘jump to immediate attack’ stance. He was definitely intimidating so I controlled my immediate urge to throttle Merlyn. However, I was going to get answers to this latest series of events and said so.
“I’m getting’ kinda’ tired of all this #@%^$. What in Hades did I just dream, who are you really, – ‘cus you aren’t just a damned paper pusher to be sure – and what’s really going on around here?! Answers NOW or me and my boys are pullin’ up stakes and findin’ our own way home!”
I think at that moment that Merlyn knew the cat was out of the bag. Sitting there, he had the look of a little kid who’s been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. With a deep sigh he nodded his head and proceeded to explain.
“First of all you can’t leave. Now hold on and let me explain! You’re right. my name isn’t Merlyn. That’s just a title for what I do here. I’m Seth, second son of Amon-Ra, and little brother to Abraxus, cursed be his name. I’m eighty seven thousand years old and one of the few Eldethi survivors of the ‘Day of Fire’ which decimated this planet and ended our rule.”
Well, I’d wanted answers and he’d given me quick satisfaction. But, there was a lot more coming. Seth continued.
“Your crystal could give you all you need to know, but your brain is still learning how to fully utilize it. I can explain much more quickly. You may as well relax. This is a pretty long story.
Your people, the Humans of your surface world, are not the first Human race to evolve on this world. There is now nothing left of us or what we built on, or in, the surface. The firestorm that swept across this planet so long ago ensured that, so don’t go looking. Our people came into existence some forty million years ago. We owe our existence to Someone from the stars. A master scientist and biologist named Eldethis and his assistant Lilith. They were from an even earlier Humanity newly come to this world.”
Despite my little information buddy my eyes must’ve started to glaze a little, because Seth stopped and looked at me with concern. I told him to continue. We’d catch up as he went along.
“Eldethis and Lilith’s People had come from a larger world than Terra, sorry, Earth and they were having a tough time surviving in this planet’s lighter gravity and thinner atmosphere. In short, they were dying out. A colony of thousands had slowly but surely been reduced to hundreds. The only option left to them was to leave or perish. They chose to leave. Eldethis and Lilith chose otherwise. At the time, they were experimenting with the planet’s fauna to try and produce a Human type that could survive on this world. In secret, the two scientists had discovered a way to keep their own biology running indefinitely. No one knows precisely what they did or why they didn’t pass their discovery onto their fellows. Some believe that it was Lilith who dissuaded Eldethis from revealing their research. However it happened, their people left for the stars while they stayed behind to continue their grand quest. After an eon of endless failures and tragedy, they succeeded.”
During all of this my little crystal buddy had caught up and begun to fill in the gaps in Seth’s story. The more it told me, the more appalled I became. According to Seth and my crystal friend, Men were not first in the world after the Gods, but rather the latest in a series of would be planetary rulers. In fact, it seemed that the so called ‘Gods’ had gone underground and had been hiding here all the long years. So much for the histories of the sages and priests of my time. All this flashed through my mind while Seth continued his oration.
“Finally, after long years of trial and error, failure after failure, the two scientists stumbled into success. Multiple attempts to mix their DNA with different local animal species had met with continued failure. it was Lilith who discovered the a certain group of great apes were compatible and able to produce a fertile species of mutant apes. These simians, it turned out, were not apes at all but rather a new family of Humans later to be known as the Eldethi. My people Varus. So it was that the career of the first Terran Human race had begun. If Eldethis had been able to see the future and the consequences of his and Lilith’s action, he might have aborted the experiment and prevented our existence. If he had though, your people would never had been born. No one could have known the tragic fate of his creations and of the races who followed us. Of the Terrans who were created in the image of their ‘masters’ and the Humans who were born out of one day of absolute hell on Earth.”
The cold chill that had been growing during Seth’s narrative got colder still.
The Roman View 
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