The Shasta Caper, Chapter Forty-One is now posted on ImagineNatinon.

Chapter Forty-One

Al stood to the right of the group, with Marilyn on his right, admiring the view.

"Imagine, Samuel, all this beauty has existed here since the dawn of time. All beneath your feet, beneath the feet of everyone. No one knowing, or having the slightest idea that Paradise was not in the heavens, but at their feet." Al said gently, his eyes moist.

Samuel smiled. "Being a bit dramatic, are we?"

Al laughed, then spun in a whirl, his hair flying every which direction. "I feel like a child again."

Samuel looked over at Marilyn and she shrugged. "He has these bouts of mania from time to time. 

Probably helps relieve the boredom of always being right."

Al stopped and gave her a stern stare. 

"Just saying, sweetie.  Just because we're angels now, doesn't mean we know everything."

Al sighed and looked at Samuel with the appearance of a sad puppy dog.

"See what I get, Samuel. No respect. Neither from humans, nor from angels."

Marilyn laughed. "If you ask me, you're way over rated."

Al laughed. "I agree!"

He and Marilyn vanished.

Samuel looked back at his friends, who hadn't heard a word of the conversations. Samuel had been speaking with his friends through his mind, not his lips. "I suspect we'll be getting a tour of the place soon."

"By whom?" Jimbo asked. "The local Trolls?"

Nanny puffed up. "Jimmie, it's not Trolls who live underground. It's dwarves."

Samuel stepped to the edge of the balcony landing and looked down.  A stairway wound down from the right side into the valley of flowers below. As he stared he could see teams of humans working through fruit orchards, plucking huge beautiful purple colored fruits and placing them on floating baskets.

"Looks good to me." Jimbo said, his stomach growling. "It'd be nice to eat something that wasn't beans for awhile."

"Or Twinkies." Groaned Nanny.

Samuel nodded and went to the right side of the balcony and placed his right palm about half way up the wall of the exit there. The railing melted back into the wall, revealing the top of the flight of stairs. No railing on its sides. 

Jimbo looked at that and shook his head. "Why. Oh why, never any railings? Do they have wings?"

"Not exactly." Samuel said, then pointed.

Jimbo and Nancy gasped as they saw some of the fruit pickers launch into the air like Supermen and fly off.

"Man." Jimbo sighed. "What I wouldn't give to be able to do that."

"Then what?" Nanny asked.

"What do you mean then what?" He wailed. "I wouldn't have to spend so damned much money on gas for my car!"

Samuel ignored his two friend's squabble and stepped onto the top step of the flight of stairs, and began descending. 

Jimbo nodded to Nanny. "Age before beauty."

"Don't you have that backwards, wise guy?" Nanny shot back.

"Nah. Not really."

Nanny slugged his right shoulder.

Jimbo cried out in pain.

Samuel almost broke into laughter as he was descending. He knew exactly what had just happened. 

Jimbo was lucky she hadn't pushed him off the balcony. He sighed. He liked her a lot, but it was obvious, as usual, that he was not going to get the girl. Maybe he never would, he thought sadly for a moment, then he shook it off. His life was so fully, maybe God was doing him a favor. His woman would probably never see him except on the holidays anyway.

With that thought in mind, he missed a step that just wasn't there.

He flung his arms out to try and recover his balance.

Jimbo and Nancy screamed as he tumbled from the flight of stairs and plunged towards the ground below, which was hundreds of feet down.

Before he could strike the surface two men swooped into the air and caught him by his arms and  retrieved him to safety. They dropped him safely to the ground, then stood next to him, looking him over. They were giants!

Each one stood over eight feet tall. They wore a light cloth that was almost transparent that wrapped around their muscular figures like Indian dhottis. Their hair was pure white, their eyes purple and their skin bronze. They were beautiful like angels. In that very thought of how much he appreciated them, they both smiled.

The taller one, who was almost nine feet tall, dropped to his knees so Samuel didn't have to look up and reached a large hand out. "I am Meegal. I am pleased to finally meet you, Samuel of the Light."

The other one, also dropped own and extended his hand. "And I am his brother Darrel. I am also pleased to meet you." He grinned. "And in this case to stop you from prematurely fertilizing our orchards."

Samuel shook each of the hands, grinning from ear to ear. "I feel like I've known you two forever and better yet..."

"You don't go WHAM when you touch us."

"I know." Darrell said, standing back up. "It's because we have no past. Yet."

Meegal stood also and gave Samuel a grin when he gave Darrel a surprised look. "We're not as young as we seem. Most who live here in Agharta are not."

"But then you didn't come here to find out how old were are, did you, Samuel?" Darrell asked.

They both turned and looked as Jimbo and Nanny came running up.

"Oh thank God you're safe, Sammie!" Jimbo cried out and flung his arms around his friend and hugged him tight. His eyes were brimming with tears. "I thought for sure we had lost you. I had lost you."

Then he realized who Samuel was standing next to. 

Nanny stood between the two giants, doing her best not to scream. Finally, she screamed.

Darrell and Meegal both broke into laughter.

Nanny screamed several more seconds, then her fear turned to anger. "How dare you laugh at a frightened lady?"

"From what we've been hearing on your way down to us." Meegal said. "You don't sound like a lady at all!"

Nanny balled a fist. "I don't care if you are nine feet tall. The taller they are..."

"The harder they fall." Darrell said, then floated off the ground above her. "Give it your best shot. If you can!"

After Nanny calmed down, Jimbo was introduced, and even Nanny eventually allowed herself to shake hands with the giants, but both made sure they were out of range of her knee and feet, a judgment made wiser by the fact that they knew exactly what she had been thinking.

The Adventures of Captain Marvel, Chapter Eight is now posted on ImagineNation.

The Shasta Caper, Chapter Forty is now posted on ImagineNation

               Chapter Forty

"Hurry!" Samuel cried out to his friends. They turned back to look and the door was open.

"How'd you do that?" Nanny asked, then when Samuel started to answer, she looked at Jimbo, who shook his head.

She and Jimbo ran for the open door.

Samuel waited until they entered, then ran after them.

They entered a hallway that was made of a rough stone, with heavily carved walls with symbols of another world and time that ran up and down the walls and ceiling. Interspersed in the carvings were little dragon mouths that held some kind of glowing light that shone steadily without any sputtering like an oil or fueled lamp might. 

The door slammed shut behind them.

They stopped and looked back.

"Will it hold?" Nanny asked, breathlessly.

Samuel said nothing. He just waited.

Nanny clutched Jimbo's right arm so tightly in anticipation that he almost screamed in pain, then it happened.

BOOM!

An explosion of some kind outside the door, but the door held.

Samuel looked at Nanny. 

"Right." She answered the unspoken question in her eyes. 

Samuel turned around and began hurrying along the rough floor. As he did further dragon mouths would spout to life ahead of them. At one point as they moved hurriedly along, a side corridor opened up. Jimbo and Nanny thought Samuel would stop to look, but he kept on going.

"It's a trap." Samuel said without looking back.

"I thought no one could get in?" Nanny asked.

"Who said that?" Samuel replied, his eyes lit with mirth.

A second and louder explosion was heard from behind them.

"Oh." She said. "Run?"

Samuel nodded, and they all ran.

Behind them they could hear the sound of soldiers rushing inside, firing without checking for an enemy to dispatch. They were taking no chances.

Samuel saw a new side corridor on the right and one on the left. He took the left one, and they followed. He stopped and his right hand lit up. He pressed it against the right wall and it glowed brightly a moment and the wall seemed to shiver, then it began to extrude, like some 3D program pushing out more and more rock until the corridor was sealed off.

"That's some technology!" Jimbo muttered in astonishment.

"Al tells me we ain't seen nothing yet." Samuel replied.

Samuel looked next to him where Al was standing, holding Marilyn's right hand. "Will this hold them?"

Al nodded. "Big surprise when they try."

Samuel grinned. "Al says they're in for a nasty surprise if they try to come this direction."

"I didn't say that." Al denied.

Samuel grinned. "They don't know that!"

"We don't  know what?" Jimbo asked, stumped at the conversation with an invisible man.

"Oh nothing. Al's just being a bit worrisome is all."

Al pulled on his wild hair a moment in frustration. "You mortals!" Then he and Marilyn vanished.

Samuel smiled. "I guess even angels sometimes don't have a sense of humor."

Then something materialized over Samuel's  head and spattered it. Egg. It dripped down his face onto his chin.

Jimbo laughed. "Sez who?"

Samuel wiped it away and grinning continued plunging down the corridor he had chosen. 

"Do you know where we're heading?" Nanny asked.

"Nope." Samuel answered. "But anywere that 's heading away from the goons behind us...is good in my mind."

"Oh." She replied, giving Jimbo a look.

"Don't look at me. I've known him for a long time and I still don't know him." Jimbo, said his face showing frustration and amusement at the same time.

Finally, the corridor began to narrow and as it did, the rough stone floor began to take on a glittery look, then a highly polished look, then it sounded like metal as they paced upon it.

"Metal?" Nanny asked. "Down here?"

"As Al said earlier, we haven't seen anything yet." Samuel said.

He paused before a panel set in the wall on the right and pressed his hand to it. His hand and the panel lit up and then the floor began to drop beneath them with them on it. Jimbo and Nanny huddled together, frightened at first, but when Samuel stood still as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, they regained their footing and watched. 

Jimbo looked up and saw that they must have descended a good thousand yards already.

"I thought we were already in the center of the earth." Jimbo commented, puzzled by the descension.

"Not really. We're still inside the base of Mount Shasta. The Hollow Earth is much deeper. You don't think the Ancients would have let the Nazis get into their world, do you?"

"You know more than you're telling." Jimbo accused, then relaxed. "Nothing new there, but still."

"Jimbo. When I lost consciousness this last time I lived inside a man whose entire village had inhabited the world above us, then descended the way we had into the interior of Mount Shasta's base. "

"He died?"

"And when have they not?" Samuel commented drily. "Okay, sometimes I get readings from live people, but usually it's the connections to the dead ones that's the strongest. I've been following this clue since we met Nanny. I got my first inkling of it when Lady Marantha and I touched, and then more so, when I saw her again at the Ranger's hotel."

Nanny turned to look at him. "Why didn't you tell us sooner?"

"Not time.  I like to make sure that what I'm going to say is the right thing at the right time. Not always possible, but I try. Karmic balances."

Jimbo snorted. "Don't let him feed you that bull, Nanny. He just doesn't want you to think that he cocks up some times."

Samuel laughed, but said nothing more after that.

The elevator floor slowed and soon they stopped before a wider corridor, lit with huge sconces of blue and violet light that danced like living fire.

"I think we're almost there." Samuel said, stepping off the elevator.

"What about those ones behind us?" Nanny asked.

Samuel looked at her.

"Right. The elevator will probably drop them, instead of bringing them down."

Samuel looked over at Jimbo and winked.

They stepped into the new corridor. The flooring was highly polished and looked to be made of semi-precious stones, highly polished and smoothed without seams. The walls were a bit rougher, so you could touch them and feel where the stones intermingled and were joined, but it was also very highly polished.

They walked about a dozen yards and the lights began to dim and a new light began to grow. They reached the end of the corridor and stepped out onto a wide balcony type landing that overlooked where they had come.

It was Paradise!

The Adventures of Captain Marvel, Chatper Seven: Human Target posted o n ImagineNation.

The Shasta Caper, Chapter Thirty Nine is now posted on ImagineNation.

Chapter Thirty Nine

They were insistent, if not else, on having their way. The invaders were tall, over seven feet tall and wore skins for clothing with sharp blades that they carried at their back and their side. They were men from the Upper Regions who had found their way through the tunnels above. They called themselves explorers, but he knew better. Their leader, Sgulf Andersen, was a tall scruffy man with a beard that threatened to drag on the ground. His eyes were a fierce blue and his lips pouty and bloated, not the sign of a man used to obliging others, but rather having his way...at any cost.

"You will let me in, or my men will hack this door to pieces, and then they'll hack you to pieces!" Sgulf had declared in his usual gruff manner.

Arian had learned their bluffs and tirades the hard way, as had many of his people. They were a simple civilization who had been granted sanctuary when the world above had been flooded horribly by the imbalances in nature created by the civilizations of that time. He was their leader. He was now over a thousand years old, and his youngest members were now nearing five hundred. They had no more children. After a time they had learned that no one grew older, and no one ever got sick. When they realized the import of that, they stopped having children. 

That sounds simple enough, but it wasn't. They didn't decide to do that, they just lost the desire to procreate. There seemed no need for it, and his people never were a lust-bound peoples, as the Vikings were. They lived in harmony with the earth, much like the Indians of their time, who had once communed frequently  with the Ancient Ones, who had taken them in.

The Indians, much like themselves, had found the entrance through visions and led their people, being harassed by the dark souls above from Europe and elsewhere. They had been given sanctuary, but many of the braver ones would journey back, the long and treacherous journey to the top world again to spread the news of their salvation in hopes of persuading more of their red-skinned brothers to join them in the paradise they had found.

But the Indian tribes had been soured by the intrusion of first the Spanish, then the French and the Germans and the British and began to fight amongst each other for control of what little land they still were able to hold onto.

So eventually, Arian's friends in the surrounding tribes had less and less frequently gone to the surface to befriend the lost ones above.

They called them lost ones, because even the Indians had lost their roots in the sacred Earth they used to worship and hold dear. They had lost contact with the Gods of Within in surrender to the God of without, the  harsh driven economics of the nations invading the Americas.

"I will not surrender this door to your foul nature, Sgurd." He hollered through the door. He dropped back when a heavy smashing sound echoed from it.

The Ancients had said that the door was constructed of living materials. They could not die, nor ever be broken or defiled.

He hadn't understood the technology of it, but some of his younger villagers did now, as they trained in the Higher Sciences to take their place in the enlightened society of Agharta, the nation of the Hollow Earth.

While their society dwelled mostly below what was called the "Ako-Yet ," or the Sacred Spiritual Mountain, which others called the Mountain of Shasta, or Shasta Mountain, they were not disconnected from Agharta. 

Arian, who was not a very tall man, stood about a foot shorter than most of his villagers. The air here, the vibrations as the Ancients called it, nurtured both spirit and body. The Ancients themselves were not short at all, many of them standing as tall as sixteen feet. They were giants compared to most of the world and they were the ones who gave the legends of giants on the earth their start.

For they had once inhabited the upper crust of the earth, but when man fell from the worship of the One Light and began worshipping metal objects and false gods, they withdrew slowly into the interior of the earth, guided by the spirit of Earth...Gaia, who taught them the ways of harmony and peace that they had already been on the path of, but at a higher level. Soon they were able to build devices that did not harm the world, but could fly anywhere. They learned how to communicate with their minds and to build objects with thoughts.

The Ancients were powerful, but wise. But one thing they did not tolerate was negativity. They constructed barriers to stop the dark souls from above discovering their world. Sometimes the barriers were lowered according to the will of Gaia, but only for those who entered to learn lessons...sometimes hard ones, sometimes not.

And so over the thousands of years legends of the Hollow Earth had grown, many fueled by direct contat, but most by whispering and gossip, without a clue of the might or majesty of the empire below.

The door smashed loudly again. "You will open!" Sgurd threatened. "Or I will personallly sew your eyeballs to my shield and eat your heart for breakfast."

Arian was silent. An Ancient had appeared next to him, as they sometimes did. He had to stoop so as not to bang his head on the lower ceiling of the passage.

"You must let them in!" He ordered.

Arian was dismayed. Terrified. "But..."

The Ancient, whose name was legend, looked into Arian's eyes and he melted like butter. This Ancient was the most ancient of all and second only to Gaia. "It is written that they must learn a lesson. And you shall teach it to them, dear Arian. But whatever happens after you open the door, you must not turn around, your must not look back and you must not touch one of them in a harmful way!"

Arian nodded. Tears wet his eyes. "They will soil your world."

The Ancient touched Arian on both shoulders with his gentle, but giant hands. "Have you no faith after all this time, my young friend?"

Arian sighed, then moved to open the door. It was held closed by a secret combination of vibrations that had to be activated by touch in the right sequence. As he touched a number, it would light up and a new series of numbers would appear. He completed the last number, then stepped back as the door began to slowly open.

Sgurd stood with his massed warriors behind him, all with axes, hammers and spears ready to act.

"Because you have opened the door, I shall let you live to see my glory, miserable one!" Sgurd exclaimed, his eyes glowing with the taste of victory.

Then the Ancient stepped in front of Arian and outside the door.

Sgurd and the other Vikings dropped their weapons in terror as he stood before them.

"You dare to defy the All Father!" The Ancient cried out. "Be gone while your miserable souls yet burn in your bodies."

Sgurd gathered his strength, and unslung his great sword. He hefted it. "I dare!" He shouted and rushed the Ancient. 

He stabbed the sword into the Ancient's heart. 

The Ancient stood there, looking down at the sword a moment, then at Sgurd. "Your loss weighs upon my soul. I will see you yet again, but not in this life!"

Sgurd kicked the Ancient in his chest and he tumbled backwards, almost taking Arian down with him, but Arian managed to step aside. As he did he grabbed the Ancient and tried to set him down without dropping him.

"Let me go!" The Ancient whispered with his drying breath. "I have done what the One Light has desired. Remember what you...promised....me!"

He collapsed to the floor and the other Vikings rushed in and began hacking on him. As they did his body spattered the walls with a kind of golden blood. Where the droplets struck the wall, the wall sprouted flowers.

The Vikings again fell back in terror, but not Sgurd. He raised his might sword to take off the Ancient's head. "I shall mount your head on my ship when we return home!"

He raised his sword to swing downwards, then Arian rushed forward to stop him. "Have you no sense of dignity. You've slain him. Isn't that enough?"

Sigurd grabbed Arian by the throat with one hand, then before his eyes swung the sword down with the other hand, severing the Ancient's head from his body, allowing it to join the mutilated pieces of skin and bone that were scattered about the floor.

Arian felt his vision growing dark.

Sigurd looked into his face. "You really should have listened to him better."

WHAM!

Samuel felt a massive fist strike his heart, then he gasped for air and sat up, his chest hurting like it had been broken.

Jimbo stood next to him, scared to death.

Nanny was pale as a ghost.

"Sammie, you're one stubborn sonuva bitch, but one of these days your hearts going to stop and never start again."

Samuel clutched at his chest a moment, then slowly rose from the ground where he had been laying. "That day hasn't come."

A clattering sounded from above, then loose stones began tumbling down the path onto the landing. Nanny ran over and looked up.

"They've found us!" She cried out.

Samuel joined her to look up. A horde of men dressed in black and red with gold helmets shaped like Nazi helmets and the symbol of the Swastika on it were rushing down the path. They clutched powerful looking rifles in their hands. When they saw Jimbo peek out too, they cried out and began firing.

The landing was spattered with intensely bright spears of energy that burned holes several inches deep in it, and caused other areas to begin to melt.

CGI Animated Short HD: "The Future Forms of Life" by David Lance now posted on ImagineNation

A little something different to watch.

An experimental animation based on real life sculptures.

--John--

A very COOL and unique CGI short film called The Future Forms of Life. The story is based on Theo Jansen's kinetic sculptures. If we work really hard on our dreams sooner or later we will reach our goals. But what if one day our dreams go too far? For more information please visit: www.lancin.co.uk

Software used:
3Dsmax, Zbrush, After Effects, Mocha, MatchMover, Vray, MD2. 
Rendered in Full HD.
Shot with 5D Mark II

Credits:
Modeling | Rigging | Animation | Post Production David Lance
Music Tomas Dobrovolskis 
Sound Design | Music Eugenijus Konstantinovas [Genys]
Matte Painting Laurent Shen 
Camera man Steve Teare illustrator | Designer | 
creative doodler Justas Cekauskas Voice over Jonny Cox 
Sound R&D Vytautas Jundulas
Music R&D Audrius Vaitiekunas [Ijo]
Dovydas Augaitis

info@lancin.co.uk | +447427149368 | SW11 3TS | London