Posted this on a few other sites, where it got recommended that I post it here as well. Enjoy!
There are several rules that one should follow if they wish to live in the Moonlit World. Don't invite a Dead Apostle over for a drink. Try to stay beneath Kischur Zelretch's notice. If command seals appear on your arm, cut it off and get yourself a new one. Never cut a deal with a magus.
Rudolf von Sebottendorf knows none of them, and that ignorance will save countless lives.
The Nazi's cut a deal with Jubstacheit von Einzbern. He'd make them an army of snow angels to put the fear of the Reich into the hearts of its enemies. They would lay the resources of Germany at his feet to be used in his unending quest for the Third Magic. Problem is, Old Man Acht finds the title of "Adviser for Occult Activities" insulting, and is fairly sure he could run this whole "Third Reich" shindig more efficiently than this Hitler fellow.
INDEX
The Castle in the Forest: 1, 2,
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December 1st, 1932
Somwhere in the Western Sudetes
The leaves shifted. A good man died.
Drained of blood by the sinewy tendrils that had taken root beneath his skin, it would be wrong to call the eagle-spread husk of bone and skin suspended between the branches a human corpse. The Thompson Gunners who had but moments ago believed this job was easy money did their best to shove the image of the exsanguinated man from their mind, to pretend it did not exist. Not out of contempt for him - he had been a friend to them all, the one who sang loudest when they drank their fill but had no luck with the ladies - but of fear. There would be time to mourn him when they returned to the crackling hearth and raucous laughter of that little tavern in Lomza where that fool Sebottendorf had hired them for this "camping trip". Then and there the corpse was but a pile of dried meat and bones, best ignored and left without contemplation for the time being.
The wind did not blow, but the trees moved regardless. A hundred muzzle flashes spat streams of lead at the phantoms that danced between the branches, branches and vines alike sawed away with each buzzing crack of gunpowder. Half a dozen men armed for bears and bandits was a poor match for a forest hungry for the blood of humans, and their desperation as the circle closed was matched only by the patience of the trees. Dominik, who would be the first of the six remaining men to die, turned towards where he had last seen his employer, and tightened his jaw. No man, no body, simply a trail of blood leading off into a thicket of carnivorous bastards. The Mercenary crossed himself before once again opening fire - dead or fleeing, Rudolf von Sebottendorf was in the hands of God now.
"Well this job is fucked," he shouted, his voice but a whisper over the roar of gunpowder and lead striking wood. "Rudolf is dead and so is Gustav! What say we call it quits and go grab ourselves a drink?"
The humor in Dominik's voice died nearly as quickly as he and all of the other mercenaries would, when the the Forest finally stopped toying with its prey and struck. But it staved off the despair of certain death, and lifted forth a front of steel resolve behind which the men would face their ends with laughter. Valhalla would have six more souls tonight.
"It wouldn't be the same!" Henryk called back. The Forest would kill him second, not out of any particular contempt for the man, but because his ammunition would run out five seconds after Dominik's. "With Gustav gone, the ladies would have to balk at one of us instead!"
"You're right!" Marcus returned with the changing of his magazine. The last one of them to fall, he would face his death with dignity and defiance, earning himself a place at Thor's table. "I'd bet on Albin - his fat Jew-nose has got to be a turn off."
"Go fuck yourself," Albin spat, pulling the pin from a grenade. Third to die, when his ammunition ran out he would grasp his knife in one hand and his rosary in the other, and charge at the forest with Psalms 23:4 upon his lips. "At least I have a nose! Isn't that right, Bartosz?"
"It is, it is," the noseless gunner conceded. Second to last, his death would come as a surprise, before he was given a chance to go out in a blaze of glory.
Dominik's gun clicked, the last of his magazines empty. He stared into the shadows of the forest with fear, and a thousand shapeless and unblinking eyes stared back at him. The banches moved quickly now, birds and smaller fauna impaled upon them in a way that called to mind the tales of Vlad the Impaler. The vines lashed out like serpents, grabbing at the mercenary's wrists, tendrils sinking into his veins.
And then the Forest of Einnashe drank its fill.
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No matter how hard he ran, the branches shifted all the same. A persistence hunter, the Forest stalked him patiently, waiting for the moment when he would collapse from exhaustion. For all the pure Aryan blood that flowed through his veins, Rudolf von Sebottendorf was no athlete. Even now, but half an hour into his panicked flight, his legs weighed him down like sacks of leaden jelly, his muscles searing with the white hot irons of over-exertion. Anemia took his strength, perhaps - he knew he left behind him a crimson trail painting the underbrush, the whipping branches of this living woods killing him slowly with a thousand lashes. No longer did he care for the rumors that had brought him here; Flamel could keep his Philosopher's Stone! The mysteries of Alchemy, the future of the Motherland, the fate of the Aryan race - none of those mattered now to his monkey brain. A howling chimp it screamed at him, Run! Flee! Escape! Do all that is in your power to keep yourself from becoming this creature's prey!
The gunshots stopped. Rudolf's mind barely recognized this, he had all but forgotten that those foolish men chose fight over flight, their instincts demand they face this predator swinging. Brave, he might have called them, exemplars of the Germanic peoples, but wrapped in fear and choking against the cloudy haze of blood-loss he could hardly think at all. Just one foot in front of the other, as fast as his legs could manage - the pain in his muscles, the pain from his wounds, he used it to temper his fear and remind himself to keep moving and never stop. Sprains, tears, cuts, infections, anything was better than the certain death that awaited him if he stopped.
Anything.
But all too soon he misstepped. A root caught his foot, and he tumbled down like Atlas, the burden of all his aches and wounds and fears crashing down upon his soul. Crushed beneath the weight of certain death he somehow felt calm, as if his mother had embraced him. Fifty seven years was a good life, was it not? His youth had fled him three decades back - not a tragedy, then, like those brave young souls who met the Forest with their guns. He hung his head, and prayed one last time - for their salvation, and his own.
The Forest closed in. It moved not unlike the beasts described by the works of a certain author in the American penny-dreadfuls, roots ripping from the dirt like the tentacles of a cephalopod. The trees slowly lumbered forward, the earth groaning a low roar in strain as their prehensile limbs dragged the bodies forward. Rudolf could almost hear a low chuckle, as he had as a boy imagined filled the back-alley streets of London at the height of Jack the Ripper. He wished that he could live, to see the Nazi Party and the Aryan race rise from the ashes of the Weimar Republic, and guide the world towards a shining future. But if this was the fate which the gods had laid before him, then he would accept it, lest he incur their wrath.
As the tendrils lashed out, ready to relieve him of his life's blood, a thought crossed his mind. Perhaps Flamel had made this creature as a protector, to keep the fear of the darker places of the world in the hearts of Man. To keep nosy Occultists who pretended to his Craft from seeking him out, and begging him for a drop of his secrets.
The wind did not blow. The leaves rustled regardless. The Forest of Einnashe prepared to drink its fill...
Of course, it never got the chance.
A steel crescent passed over Rudolf's head, heralded by an ear-splitting crack of thunder and carrying with it all the winds that howl between the mountain valleys. Okay, perhaps that is just putting it in poetic terms, but the spinning arc is followed swiftly by a roar of thunder, before it strikes one of the trees with all the force of a 105mm Howitzer. It is a testament to the fortitude inherent to even the most fragile of the Dead Apostle ancestors that the Vampiric Tree was simply split through, and not shattered into a thousand splinters. A second whirling blade follows, and soon after that a third, each one striking another of the trees with more force than the last. Like a weapon from the Australian Outback, the blades return to the hands of their owners with near the speed they had struck out at the Forest, each of them taking a protective stance around the fallen man.
Rudolf's mind struggled to comprehend this change. A trinity of girlish angels draped in snow white robes - each no doubt of Michael's get - come to save the wretched life of a lifelong sinner and heretic with blades wrought of silver fire. Truly they were divine, for with sword and axe and halberd they accomplished what men with gun and grenade could not, driving the wretched living forest back into the depths of the woods. They were war cloaked in flesh, Valkyries or Virtues - whatever name you would give them, they moved with grace and aptitude far beyond what could be called human. Cracking thunder joined each swing of their blades even as one hefted him over his shoulder and fled with her sisters from the scene with all alacrity. They spoke with each other in a worried tongue which he could not understand; perhaps a divine speech long lost to Man, or perhaps just a side effect of his exsanguination.
In either case, he let the blackness take him. He was safe in these angels' hands.
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Originally Posted by Rosencrantz14
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