The Oncoming Storm

The Oncoming Storm:
(A camera clicks on overlooking a desk cluttered with papers, a open bottle of whiskey and a window looking out on the forest and night sky. Obscuring the view is a brown leather chair with its back turned to the camera.)
Connar: Guess it's time for the end of the story now. I dropped the Imker twins in Switzerland in October of 1939, when I returned to Moscow, I showed the translation of the note to Dr. Pikus and he in turn gave it to the KGB’s “black” division. They told me they could probably find the drop point but they would need me to deal with a threat first, and that is when I learned of a new terror that was stalking the polish countryside. Today Vampire Nazis are a cliché, most of the agents watching this will have been to Transylvania and seen Mara's handy work (apparently the commanders decided to keep the old uniforms), but before she gave samples to the red hand, she had given (or more accurately had them taken from her) genetic samples to the Thule society. The Thule society in turn unleashed partially mutated troops into Warsaw as a weapon against the resistance. I spent the better part of a year protecting agents from these “woods men” as they were called by the Reich, given the amount of occult talent that Hitler had access to you would expect these Woods men to exhibit a higher degree of vampiric properties but these soldier's only had moderately enhanced speed and strength, in addition to night vision. Still this made them ideal for hunting suspected agents of the resistance at night, but beyond that it was not much of a challenge, but as the year went on they became more and more vampiric, and eventually they were joined by lycanthropes and anti-anima users. I eventually had to evacuate the agents who were helping the resistance from Warsaw and then in the summer of 1941, the Germans attacked the Russians.
    As you might guess the rest of the world only know about the mundane troops that were in the eastern front. The history books leave out the parts about the Lebensenergiekern burning entire villages to the ground or the mountains of cryptids that they left in their wake. They don't tell you about Hunde des Krieges and how SS officers would feed children to them for fun, or about “improved” Woods men and how they were allowed to feed on any one that crossed their path and of course on top of all of this, Third Sunday unleashed, the 47th paladin battalion formerly known as “God’s Wrath” in the Templar and now known as the Apostles. Hidden villages that had stood since before the Roman Empire, monasteries full of arcane knowledge, witches covenants that were so old they had no written records all wiped out in a matter of months. All of the members of division 911-16 did their best to save as many as they could, but more than a few fell into the hands of the enemy and even more were mowed down by the 47th. When they finally made it to Stalingrad (St. Petersburg today) it seemed like all was lost, but that is when the first bit of good news I had in a while came.
    The KBG had located the camp mentioned in Nicodemus’s note, it was Sobibór and it was the source of the horrors that we were facing on the battlefield now. At this point the 911-16 was being mobilized, magi were being taught to fire guns in addition to using anima charges, Vampires, Lycanthropes, village witches, the people who hunted them all came from across the country to push back the Germans. among all of this, I received a letter a Stalin himself, saying, “I have spoken with your benefactors Dr. Green, they have told me of your past encounters with this man called Nicodemus and they say you will do anything to kill this man. I can grant you that wish Dr. Green, slaughter the pigs that have run amok across of Russia and I will give you the location of his base.” The treaty of Venice places limits on how much power we can use in a mundane conflict, and lays out harsh penalties for those who violate the treaty. This letter was all the reason I needed to disregard those limits, Some will say that in hindsight I should have restrained myself, now I have many regrets about the war, but I have no regrets about unleashing my full power against the Germans, If I hadn't there was a good chance that Nicodemus forces would have been victorious and world history would look a lot different.
    In November of 1942 we advanced outward, 5 magi (all agents of the dragon) were chosen to brake the Germans occult forces of which I was one, each of these agents were assigned a unit to bring down, my first assignment was to neutralize the Hunde des Krieges, the Germans lycanthrope units. Up until then, they had only been praying on terrified conscripts who were not equipped to deal with them, but they were no match for Tuk or myself. When you read the councils  accounts of the Thule society's creations(vampires, lycanthropes, artificial anima/anti anima users) they make it sound like they were overwhelming juggernauts of destruction, but the truth is the Germans had no idea what they were doing. Nicodemus had given them access to Third Sundays library and *some* of their experts otherwise Hitler was on his own with people who had little to no prior knowledge of the occult and it showed in their creations. The Hunde des Krieges were undersized for werewolves, probably about half the size of the ones you find in the shadowy forest, so needless to say between Tuk and myself, they posed little challenge, once they had been exterminated, the mundane troops were unable to advance further into Stalingrad and we began pushing them back. The woods men were next, one of the benefits of fighting in a war zone is you don't have to worry about collateral damage, I cut down entire buildings where they were camped out and buried hundreds maybe thousands of them alive, those that managed to escape realized that their comrades were the lucky ones. As the woods men retreated back to the occupied territories, the Germans lost their artillery support, finally we came to the Lebensenergiekern, the life force core, these were the Thule society’s artificial anima and anti-anima users. They were a select group of SS officers who had had captured bees artificially implanted, they were supposed to be the pride of the Aryan race, the pinnacle of human genetics, able to harness their own life force to work miracles, against them no army could stand. I and the 4 other agents who had been chosen to repel the invaders confronted them in the heart of their base, we were outnumbered 20 to 1, the battle lasted less than 30 minutes and there were no survivors.
    The destruction of the Lebensenergiekern broke the Reiches momentum in Russia, the conventional forces of the red army were able to drive out the conventional German forces. We then began to advance outwards into the occupied territories….up until this point everything I had seen had been the conventional horrors of war, young people dying for a cause many of them didn't understand, the destruction of cities, the death of loved ones, but as we entered the occupied territories, we began to see what the Germans had been up to... I had seen death before, but I had never seen anything like this, these people weren't just enslaved and tortured because of who they were, they were drained of their humanity and then denied even the release of death because of it, they were kept alive purely so they could be beaten down in the name of some imagined hierarchy. I think I passed out the first time I saw a camp, I remember falling to my knees and the world going black...when I woke up, I felt my face and...I had been crying. As I saw more of the camp and its inhabitants, the more my shock and sadness soon turned to anger and when I discovered that they had tried to kill the remaining prisoners in order to keep them from being liberated, that's when I lost it. The camp was at the edge of a village that the Germans still held, even though there were no occult troops in the area, I still attacked the village. I cut down every soldier I could find, I can still see the look of surprise and terror on their faces as I seemed to appear from nowhere and cut them in half, I remember their screams when I cut the tank guarding the bridge in half and still remember running after those that fled and bringing their severed heads back to the village and dropping them at the feet of their commander whom I strangled with my bare hands. This wouldn't be the mundane encampment I attacked either, the more of the camps I saw the meaner I got, I went from simply using anima to overpower the mundane troops to using it to terrify them. As a result I began acquiring a reputation among the mundane troops, stories spread of a single man and a wolf who brought entire battalions to their knees, some said he was the devil come to punish the Germans for turning their backs on Christ, other that he was a soviet super soldier, more said he was simply a ghost who foretold the downfall of an occupied city. The name for this figure was always the same though, they called him Der anstehende Sturm, the oncoming storm, not a bad name I grant you but a little unoriginal if you ask me.
    I would finally arrive at Sobibór in the spring of 1943, I watched the camp for about a month getting to know the comings and goings of the guards, the suffering of the prisoners and the layout of the camp. From the outside this looked no different than any other camp but near the rear of the compound, there was a series of concrete bunkers that people seemed to go into but never come out of. The camp was also staffed by 4 of the apostles, you would think this would be normal for a concentration camp, but the crematoriums were on the other side of the camp, the bunkers were not for incinerating bodies. I did not begin to suspect what they were doing in those bunkers until one day when the guards began looking for kabbalist among the prisoners. Each time they found one, they would separate them out from the group along with any family they had and then take them to the bunkers. Only the kabbalist would emerge from the bunker (usually about 2-4 hours later) looking utterly devoid of any emotion. Some of them would simply stand in front of the bunker until one of the guards either brought them back or shot them, others would simply try and walk out the front gates only to be gunned down. This particular camp had no telephone line or radio tower I could eavesdrop on and all letters going into or coming out of the camp were encrypted, so I had no choice but to try and infiltrate the bunkers to find out what was going on.
  Infiltrating a mundane military facility is a relatively easy task when you have anima, so getting into the camp was not a problem, getting into the bunkers was another matter though. The doors were warded and thus I was unable to pass through and there were no windows, but there was a vent on the roof I was able to squeeze through. The vent on the roof was bolted and easy to remove but the vent inside was sealed so all I could do was watch them from the vents. Inside I found a group of scientist working on a type of tank based on the custodians in Agartha, they were powering these machines using a forbidden kabbalist spell in which the anima of the summoners loved ones is bound to the machine in order to bring it to life. A similar spell is used in the creation of golems but in that case the life force belongs to the summoner and not another person. These tanks were also not meant to be autonomous but rather they were to be piloted by German forces and watching them create these things was every bit as unpleasant as you would imagine, but strangely enough it's not the screams of the sacrificed or the tears of the summoner that have stuck with me but rather it was the laughter of the Germans as the whole process unfolded and the nonchalantnes they showed as they tossed the kabbalist aside. I also found out what happened to the kabbalist that were brought back in, apparently if the “proto-custodian” did not go berserk or explode, they would bring the kabbalist back in to test out the tanks weapons...again there was more laughter. In hindsight I should have taken a moment to collect myself before making a plan but at the moment was too angry to think straight, on a intellectual level I knew I had to destroy those tanks in order to keep the Germans from pushing us back, on a emotional level I simply wanted to destroy the tanks to spite the Germans.
If it had only been mundane soldiers I could have simply stormed the camp or if it had been the tank and the apostles, I could have lured them into a trap, but since they were all in the same place, I could only deal with one at a time, so I needed a distraction. A few days later the fates would provide this in the form of a Jewish POW from the eastern front, who happened to be one of the dragons agents. Originally he was headed for Berlin with the rest of the “selected” inmates (again this meant vivisection or death) but by damaging the train tracks, I kept him their longer then he should have been and gave him an opportunity to do what dragons do best, cause chaos. About a month after he arrived, he did just that, our agent and a handful of inmates jump a couple of the guards and were able to take control of the camps armory, this lead to the liberation of almost 600 inmates, while the remaining guards were busy trying to recapture the escaped inmates, I had a chance to blow open the doors to the bunker and destroy the tanks. I said earlier that the Germans had a quality problem with their preternatural troops, this deficiency did not apply to their weapons though, as they had apparently done an excellent job of replicating the abilities of the custodians in Agartha, the fight took the better part of 2 hours and pushed me pretty hard but in the end I was able to drive my blade through its power source and stop it, I then summoned a torrent of flames amd set the remain power sources a light, thus guaranteeing an explosion that would level the bunkers. As I was fleeing I could see hordes of a inmates were being herded back into the camp, I knew what was going to happen to them, I knew they were being taken outback to be executed. As I began moving to help, the bunker blew up behind me and I knew it was only a matter of time before the apostles returned, I could take 1 or 2 of them but not all 4. So I had a choice to make, I could stay behind try and save the prisoners and probably be captured or I could run and continue to fight. If I had thought my plan through more thoroughly I might have been able to do both but as it was...I made the selfish choice and I ran. Of all the things I have done in my life, this is the thing I regret the most.
    After fleeing the aftermath of Sobibór I resumed my camping against the Germans with a vengeance, the closer I got to Berlin the more preternatural troops I encountered and the more fierce the fighting became, this intense fighting made the hunt easier though as it caused Third Sundays apostles to come to me, there were 12 of them if I recall each taking the name of one of the apostles. Most of these “apostles” were part of the Templar that had defected with Nicodemus 11 of the 12 were anima users, but one among them was not, a nasty piece of work by the name of Oskar Dirlewanger. Dirlewangers preferred method of mass execution was to herd the local population inside a barn, set it on fire, and then shoot anyone who tried to escape, Nicodemus must have told Dirlewanger about why I hunted Third Sunday and why I was working with the soviets because he and 2 other apostles sought me out and managed to corner me and another agent. This other agent a woman named Natasha was captured by the apostles and...on second thought I don't want to revisit that memory….All I feel comfortable saying on the matter is she ultimately hung herself and when I finally found Dirlewanger near the end of the war I had intended to hand him over to the allies for trial but ended up beating him to death in his cell...Third Sunday always did have a uncanny ability to find the worst people on the planet.
We arrived In Berlin in April of 1945, by this time 11 of the 12 apostles were dead and Stalin had made good on his promis and given me the location of Nicodemus's base, we were ready to face Third Sunday in their stronghold. Nicodemus had spilled too much blood to be allowed to surrender, so the elite of the secret world had gathered to finish him off once and for all. Among the assembled were several Templar Grand Masters from London, who had been elected by the conclave to deal with their rogue brother. Three of the members of the Illuminati leadership committee, and the head of the dragon who had come all the way from Nepal. The plan was relatively simple as the red army fought their way through the city above, we would fight our way to the underground temple they were using as a base. The initial guard fell quickly and we managed to breach the base within an hour and that's when they started throwing everything they had at us, 2 grand masters, a committee member, the head of the dragon and myself were barely able to hold the troops at bay. As the battle unfolded I noticed the closed stone gate near the back of the temple and felt the anti-anima being gathered there, in a moment of horror I realized what was happening, Nicodemus was attempting to awaken a dreamer that had been sealed beneath the city. We lost a lot of people that day among the dead were two Templar grand masters, 1 member of the committee and the head of the dragon, who for reasons I still can't comprehend walked directly into the anti-anima charge and killed himself, the release of his anima accelerated the awakening of the dreamer. This fight went on for hours and pushed me to my absolute limit and just as I was at the breaking point, the gate began to open, and the final phase of the awakening had begun. I can still remember the smile on Nicodemus face as he thought he had won. But in those few seconds I summoned all of my remaining strength and slashed him across his face with enough force to push him back into the clutches of the dreaming one,. Nicodemus was pulled back through the doorway as he struggled to free himself he cursed the other Templar as cowards and the Illuminati as weak, but his most venomous words were reserved for myself. “Do you have any idea how much I despise you? You are all that is wrong with this world your compassion for lesser creatures and disregard for order have doomed us all to a never ending dark age. I will have my revenge, if it takes me a thousand years I will find you and destroy everything you hold dear.” Once consumed his anima was enough to halt the dreaming one from awaking and venturing out to into the world.
    Shortly after the fall of Berlin I help the red army mop up the remaining Third Sunday sympathizers and did what little I could for the civilians. After I read about the bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I surrendered myself to the council for trial, I had violated the treaty of Venice numerous times and the Templar had lost half of Europe because of it, they (and my own conscience) demanded I be held accountable for all the destruction I had unleashed. However I did have my supporters, the dragon had already found a new head and reformed in Seoul and the Illuminati supported me simply to anger the Templar, several soviets generals also voiced their support for my release as well as general Eisenhower and Patton, it was a close vote but ultimately I was released, even though we had killed the bulk of his supporters underneath Berlin, I still knew there were still double agents among the Templar in London, I dedicated myself for the next 70 years to hunting down his remaining supporters...I guess it helps me sleep at night knowing that I helped stomp out the ideas that almost brought the world to its end...and then we went and brought those same ideas back (burying his eyes in his right hand. Before the camera clicks off)
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