Atlantis: Bermuda Triangle

PRELUDE

Like a thousand mile long crimson snake winding its way across the middle of the ocean floor, a line of magna boiled up from the inner Earth, met the cool water and, in that fiery intersection, built a ridge higher and higher.

In a contradictory way, the mid-Atlantic Ridge grew because the tectonic plates that intersected beneath it were pulling away from each other. Like blood from a wound in the very planet, molten rock boiled forth the wider the planet-long split between the North/South American plates and the Eurasian/African plates grew. This process had been going on for millions of years, since Pangea had split into the separate continents.

In the center of the Atlantic, about 20 degrees north latitude, the split was even more pronounced because there was an intersection of four plates pulling away from each other, both east/west and north/south. This widening process- no more than a couple of inches a year, but multiplied over millennia- had pushed so much magna through that the hardening lava had actually risen above the surface of the water, producing a cross-shaped string of islands, which over more time, rose high enough to connect to each other and produce a land mass almost worthy of being a continent itself.

But it was a continent built over a crack in the Earth’s crust with no firm attachment to the planet other than the line of magna that still boiled through many miles under the surface. This made it very different from the other six continents which were anchored on top of one hundred kilometers of cold rock that made up the tectonic plates.

Between the extremely fertile volcanic soil that covered the land mass, and the bountiful ocean that surrounded it, the pieces were in place for species that could reap the food supplied by both sources to develop quickly. On that central Atlantic land mass, the first civilization of mankind arose. From packs of hunter-gatherers and fishers, to villages to cities, generations of humans slowly gained dominance over their land.

But after civilization was well established a strange darkness appeared in the ocean to the west, devouring any ships that sailed into it.

Other gates’ opened around the planet bringing their own patches of darkness, but the main thrust was through the gate in the western Atlantic. It soon became clear that there was something in the darkness, a Shadow that sought to expand and conquer.

A war was fought that the ancient ones of mankind didn’t understand against an enemy no one survived seeing. The enemy came in the darkness, through the sky, from the water and under the Earth.

And others came out of the gates to help the ancient ones defend themselves against the Shadow. These others called themselves the Ones Before. They gave the people weapons to fight the Shadow with.

The ancient ones of mankind fought a war that spread around the globe until the very existence of life was threatened. And in the climactic battle the ancient ones and the Ones Before stopped the Shadow but the price was high.

The continent in the middle of the Atlantic was destroyed in a cataclysm of fire and earthquake. The resulting tsunamis from that destruction touched every shore on the planet with such devastation that the legend of the Great Flood was written of both in the Tibetan Book of the Dead and the Old Testament of the Jewish people on the other side of the world.

The survivors of the ancient ones, a handful of ships, scattered to the four winds and planted the seeds for future civilizations to arise thousands years later.

But the Shadow that came out of the gates was stopped.

For the time being.