Of Bone and Steel
3rd of December 2006 A.D.
The snow did not fall, it did not even swirl in the storm howling from northern shore it hurtled down upon the world like it hated this place and what was there not to hate about about this lifeless shore adorned with wrecks of ships and ruined lives, the man who walked along it thought with a kind of slow anger at odds with the danger he was in. He cursed once, twice under his breath, the wind snatching up the words in a still heavy Moscow accent that would mark him for almost as much of a stranger as the complexion of his skin. Sanya had little love of his home country still though he tried to see the light, the good among painful memories, but there was precious little of either to be had in Vayda-Guba.
Even though the town was near enough to the border with Norway that you could take a boat over in the summer inside an hour it might as well be on the moon for as far as the four score people left in the old Soviet apartment blocks peeling like rotten apples under the bite of the wind were concerned. There used to be more people here, military men to watch the border between what had once been competing superpowers, now it was just a place to be so you wouldn't freeze to death.
Not the kind of place you would be expecting one of them to be meddling, the traveler, the Knight, thought, hand sliding to the pummel of his sword. Not unless Eschtamidel was trying to get his hands on weapons grade Uranium again. He was nothing if not predictable in his love of fire and what fire could be more deadly than the flames of the sun brought to earth? Whatever else he was undeniably in the right place, he could feel the heat radiating off Esperacchius, almost as though in anticipation... and not so incidentally keeping his ass from freezing.
Not yet, the thought, the surety was his own and something more at the same time.
Slowly the storm abated and as the clouds were being herded east by the sudden change in the wind, a flash of light in the distance, fire, it was too pale for that. Some kind of spotlight? Sanya allowed himself a smile at the absurdity of someone dragging a spotlight all the way out here, but he had seen weirder, that might just be his job description.
As he got closer the knight did his best to stay unseen, which in the flat land of the peninsula meant getting far better acquainted with the lichen colored ground than he would would have liked. Thus as the sound of chanting grew underneath the hiss of the wind and the distant voice of the sea he started arguing with himself. On the one hand it would be very useful to know what he was up against before drawing steel, in case they could be talked out of whatever madness had seen him called here, on the other hand it was rather hard to fight with a sword when you are flopping around on your belly.
Thankfully the figures seemed wholly caught up in their dancing and chanting allowing him to get within thirty feet of the edge of the circle of light, but...
What was that? In the middle of the circle of two dozen dancers there was a perfectly smooth hemisphere of pale stone, brought here by the sea or the ice maybe and it was glowing, a pale off white just strong enough to cast shadows. Most of the people casting those shadows weren't that special to look at, they had that mix of well worn quality that you would find with most of the people hiking or cycling in lonely places.
But the last figure was like something out of a dream, or a nightmare maybe, floating though the motions of the dance like a leaf on the breeze, a gnarled staff tipped with bone at his hand and of bone his mask. It looked almost like a wolf skull if the wolf in question had row upon row of razor sharp teeth, carved with symbols hidden in the dim light save for the beautifully carved flower that bloomed where the wizard's 'third eye' would be. A mane of wild hair grew from the back of the mask, a pair of horns extruding from it.
With every second, every breath the dance grew wilder and more savage, hands twisted like claws feet kicking like wild beasts as though the dancers were competing for the attention of the masked figure. One man was kicked to the ground and trampled as he clutched at the feet of the remaining celebrants, his screams of pain mixing in with the chanting.
"Right, I've seen enough," Sanya muttered to himself as he rose to his feet suddenly, the Sword of Hope already half drawn as he shouted for them to stop first in Russian and then in English, eyes fixed on the masked one.
"Stop?" The masked man laughed, contempt dripping even in that single syllable. "Things are only just beginning!"
A shadow passed between them then that did not touch the eye, but befuddled the mind. Against Esperacchius's edge it availed him not at all. Even as the knight advanced on his foe a hand, thin and spotted with age it seemed reached out from the folds of the cloak and snapped the neck of the woman who had just stumbled next to him, seeming to catch something intangible between their fingers.
The sword flashed lightning swift, shattering his right hand and sending the staff tumbling, but before the knight could continue the swing the magician folded in on himself as though he were little more than bones and tattered rags. A vulture took flight upon a bleeding wing and for all the power of the Swords they could not make men fly.
On the winds the mocking voice called back: "The stars turn again to, the moon rises. Even your Sacrificed God cannot stop what is
coming!"
Sanya was not paying much attention. There is a reason why he learned how to shoot a Kalashnikov left handed and it was not so he could ponder the words of monsters. So the gun barked into the night, the muzzle flash too bright, too real and for a moment he thought he had gotten the fake bird, if swerved, almost as if it were about to fall... but then by will or malice it caught itself.
OOC: Finally get to post this, I rolled up the meeting, though not what would happen in it a long time ago. 
Ironic.
