Empire of Fu Manchu

The Enchanted Wood
Earth’s Dreamland
Night between October 21st and 22nd, 1939


Duhrn and Skorzeny had stayed a week in Ulthar, beyond the River Skai, where no man may kill a cat. It was a likeable little country town, with farms and cottages in the outlaying areas and odd-looking stone buildings in the city proper, with peaked roofs and overhanging upper stories. Everywhere in town, large bands of cats roamed, and for some reason Duhrn seemed to take a fancy to one grey and tiger-striped half-grown kitten which he fed daily with the spoils of his own meals and occasionally with a platter of cream.

Skorzeny had come up with a scheme to earn some gold without going to the humiliating lengths Duhrn had proposed: they had agreed with one of the tavern keepers to perform a little show every evening. The tavern patrons, all male and mostly rough-looking if good-natured, were challenged (for a small fee) to try to hit the Austrian with their fists. If they succeeded within a set time, they earned a monetary price. Of course, the odds of a drunk farmer being able to strike a pupil of Chiun, Master of Sinanju were infinitesimal, but Skorzeny had enough understanding of human psychology to occasionally allow himself to be hit, since this inevitably led to the poor bugger spending his earnings on trying again and again. In exchange for attracting large crowds, eager to see the “unhittable man” to the tavern, Duhrn and Skorzeny slept, ate and drank for free, and also got to keep half of their earnings.

After a week, the tavern keeper had made a small fortune, Skorzeny and Duhrn a much smaller one and Otto was beginning to fear for his waistline, which undoubtedly would not be able to absorb much more delicious home cooking without showing evidence of it. While Skorzeny had used most of his free time chasing the more comely girls of Ulthar, Durhn had spent the week at the small Temple of the Gods of the Dreamland which was notable only for keeping the last complete copy of the infamous Pnakotic Mansucripts of supposedly pre-human origin. The Nazi necromancer took full advantage of his stay to delve deeply into their secrets, in exchange for which he told the Temple priest, ancient beyond measure, some things he had learnt in the buried city in the Antarctic waste.

Finally came the day when Duhrn figured they had enough coin to buy what they needed: dried meats and fruits, hard bread, lengths of thick and sturdy rope, a large supply of torches, thick blankets to sleep under, a small hatchet for cutting fire wood, backpacks to carry it all and most bizarrely, a small number of wooden pulleys. Before leaving, Duhrn scooped up the striped kitten and carried it in his arms, patting it all the way across the stone bridge over the River Skai so that it was not alarmed, but purred happily.

‘What’s up with the cat?’ wondered Skorzeny. ‘Our provisions are meagre enough as it is without having to feed that pest. Or where you planning to eat him?’

Duhrn shook his head. ‘Far from it. This young fellow will serve as our bodyguard. You see, the things in the woods, the Zoogs, they won’t dare go anywhere near him. It has to do with a war and a pact, things that happened many years ago as time is measured in our world.’

‘Uh… all right, Günther, whatever you say.’ Otto replied, rolling his eyes. But in fact, the deeper they penetrated into the phosphorescent gloom of the Enchanted Wood, the more it seemed like Duhrn was right. The flutter and rustling grew to become omnipresent, and Duhrn explained they were drawing close to the city of the nightmarish things. Suddenly, the twisting forest path they had been following opened up into an open space, where ever more of the mighty oaks were dead or dying as Skorzeny and Duhrn moved into the clearing. Fallen rotting trunks overgrown with phosphorescent fungi littered the forest floor. The titanic oaks surrounding the clearing were far enough apart that it was only at a dizzying height that their boughs overlapped enough to blot out the sky. Suddenly, the cat meowed piteously, jumped from Duhrn’s lap and ran away through the forest in great leaps.

‘Go, go back to your kin in Ulthar!’ Duhrn shouted after it. ‘And thanks for your help!’

Skorzeny gave his companion an intrigued look. ‘Talking with cats now? You’re one rough and mean customer, that’s for sure.’

‘Be silent, you now nothing, nothing at all! We’ll no longer need it for protection anyway, the Zoogs fear this place’, Duhrn explained, as he led Skorzeny to an enormous stone slab inlaid in the forest floor. An iron ring attached to it gave the impression of a trap door made for giants. ‘The previous inhabitants of this forest were banished below, and while the Zoogs do not remember them, they still have enough sense to fear their return.’

‘Can’t say that that makes much sense, but then I know nothing, nothing at all. So we’re going down below here, uh?’

‘Yes, unfortunately. I’m not going to fool you, Skorzeny, this will be tremendously dangerous, the worst part of our journey. As far as I know, no one has ever got past what lies beneath this stone, ever. Of course, as far as I know, no one has ever tried either.’

‘In any case, how bad can it be? I mean, if the shit really hits the fan, so to speak, we’ll wake up screaming in our beds, right?’

‘I’m afraid not. What happens here is real! Hurt yourself here, and you’ll bleed in the waking world. Die here… and you’ll never wake up. We can wake up if we choose to, but I won’t be easy nor quick, so it’s useless to get us out of most difficult situations.’

Otto considered this for a few seconds, then shrugged. ‘Well, even in my ignorance, I can surmise that the pulleys and ropes are for lifting this thing. It looks like it could weigh as much as a Panzer III, one wonders why they bothered to put an iron ring in it.’

‘There are things that might not find that to be an excessive weight to lift.’

With these troubling words in mind, Skorzeny set to cutting some stout poles with the hatchet in order to build an improvised crane over the moss-covered stone slab. They worked all through the night.​

The Tower of Koth
Earth’s Dreamland
Night between October 21st and 22nd, 1939


When the titanic stone slab finally began to move with a ponderous groan, an exhalation of air so foul-smelling that both Duhrn and Skorzeny gagged was let out of the subterranean darkness. Beyond the small opening, a giant-sized stairwell could be seen leading down into the Abyss.

‘Gott im Himmel!’ whispered Skorzeny. ’What is that smell!?’

‘I suppose we’ll find out soon enough. But first…’

Quickly, Duhrn cut four lengths of soft thick cloth from their blankets with his razor-sharp dagger and handed two to Skorzeny. ‘Here, tie these around your feet, we cannot risk waking up the Banished Ones by booting around, and their hearing is excellent even if they are totally dumb themselves.’

‘The Banished Ones!’ Skorzeny spat. ‘Damn it, Günther, I’m beginning to think that you’re having the time of your life with this hinting obscurely at horrors to come! How about you level with me: what can we expect down there?’

Duhrn considered that for a few seconds. ‘Very well, I guess it can’t hurt. Unless all what I learnt is wrong, the former inhabitants of the Enchanted Wood were banished below ground by the Gods called the Great or Elder Ones, for worshiping the Other Gods – terrible fiends from the void outside of the world. These inhabitants were enormous and terrible, and legend says they still tell stories about how good our kind tastes. Now they’re constricted to a less wholesome fare…’

Skorzeny sighed. ‘There you go again. OK, big, hungry… about how big are we talking about? And how can they tell stories if they are dumb?’

Duhrn looked annoyed. ‘Look, I’ve told all I know. The old manuscripts that mention them are quite vague. All that is said is that they’re big and ate people. Ah, and they were nocturnal so I assume they will be asleep now - better walk carefully. If we wake one of them up while we’re anywhere near their city, we’re probably done for.’

‘Their city!?’

‘Yes, they’ve apparently built a city right at the foot of these stairs. And if we make it through there, we might still have to deal with their food. Now let’s get going!’

Down, down the colossal stairwell the two SS-men climbed. Each step was nearly a meter in height, making it a difficult descent. Not willing to come upon any unseen dangers, they lit a torch which Duhrn carried since Skorzeny had drawn the Rune Sword, mostly for comfort.

Finally, after several exhausting hours that felt as an eternity, the smell grew stronger. They had reached the bottom of the stairs and could watch out through a huge doorway, easily more than ten metres high and four or five wide. Beyond the doorway, in a cavern so vast that its limits were lost in the distance was a conglomeration of large stone towers, looking slender because each was so high that its upper regions faded into the abyssal darkness far above. An eerie kind of half-light with no apparent source allowed Duhrn and Skorzeny to see their way so they quickly put out the torch.

From yawning doors in those towers came a soul-sickening rumbling sound that it took the horrified SS-men a few seconds to identify as the snoring of some kind of enormous creatures. Above the door, on the outside, a strange sign was carved, one that Duhrn identified as the Sign of Koth, a symbol of power to keep gates and doors closed.



Walking ever so carefully, Duhrn and Skorzeny began to negotiate the roughly cobbled streets of that overwhelming city, feeling like ants in a fossilised forest. Skorzeny’s heart was beating so hard he had trouble breathing, and looking at Duhrn’s grey and clammy face, he had a strong suspicion he was seeing the reflection of his own terrified visage. Gritting his teeth to stop them from clattering, he wiped of his forehead with a black-gloved left hand before grabbing the hilt of the Rune Sword two-handedly. Scared or not, he was not going to go down without a fight.

Suddenly, they had left the city and were walking over open, mossy ground. To one side the gargantuan cave ended in a sheer rock wall with a prodigious cave opening, inside which impenetrable shadows reigned. Instinct, rather than knowledge made the two Germans avoid that opening like the plague. A ways ahead they saw a great many towering monoliths of lichen-overgrown stone standing in neatly arranged rows. Knowing they were leaving the tower city behind made them feel greatly relieved, but it proved premature.

Suddenly, with a shocking lack of sound, a leviathan shape moved out of these shadows and moved towards the city on powerful tree-trunk like legs. A dirty-white thing the size of a small horse with limply dangling arms and misshaped legs hung from one of its four enormous paws dripping dark blood. The monster itself was some 7-8 metres tall and mostly humanoid in shape, except that its arms split at the elbow into four powerfully clawed extremities. The whole thing was covered in a dark thick hide studded with coarse black hairs but most loathsome of all was the barrel-like head which had great bulbous eyes at the ends like a hammerhead shark, because the slavering fanged mouth was vertical, rather than horizontal, giving the creature a wholly alien and unnatural appearance.

Fearing for his very sanity, Skorzeny held a hand over his mouth to prevent himself from screaming, and he heard a whimper of stark terror from Duhrn. Unfortunately, so did the monster and the hideous head swiveled towards them while those nightmare yaws parted in detestable anticipation. As quickly as humanly possible, Skorzeny pushed himself and his shocked companion behind the nearest monolith, but he knew that it was already to late by far. Although not a sound could be heard, he knew the four-pawed abomination was moving towards their hiding place with deceptively soft steps…

With shocking suddenness, one of the enormous clawed paws crept around the edge of the monolith, searching for prey. Skorzeny acted without conscious thought and struck a mighty blow with the Rune Sword that cleanly severed one of the clawed fingers. There was no roar of pain, but the paw was pulled back, spurting black blood and a tremendous racket of stone against stone indicated the thing had stumbled into and toppled one of the monoliths as it drew back in pain.

‘Run!’ the Austrian screamed, and Duhrn was not late to follow his advice. The two SS-men bounded like fleeing hares in the labyrinth of monoliths, hearing behind them at last the thumps of heavy steps as the beast discarded all attempt at stealth and ran after them as quickly as its powerful legs could carry it. From time to time, its mighty shoulder would bump into one of the monoliths, tilting it or even felling it with a deafening crash, and only by such accidents were the fleeing men able to maintain their lead.

Suddenly, they came upon a new horror. At the foot of one of the monoliths, the hard ground had been excavated, revealing the body of another of the enormous four-pawed creatures laying in a shallow grave. The coarse leathery hide had been torn in many places, and from these wounds, a great swarm of repulsive man-sized beings of a slightly canine appearance were feeding with ghoulish appetite. When the two SS-officers entered the charnel tableau they stopped, suddenly forgetful of the lumbering thing following in their tracks and the hound-like carrion-feeders turned their red-smeared snouts in their direction, observing the intruders with bared teeth.

The impasse lasted only for a fraction of a second before a heavy pounding of giant feet behind them reminded Duhrn and Skorzeny what was coming after them, so they resumed their mad dash, with only a small detour to clear the open grave. But the reaction of the monstrous pursuer when it came within sight of the feasting was wholly unexpected. It stopped dead, turned tail and fled back the way it had come. Apparently the hulking things had an irrational fear of the carrion-feeding creatures and it wasn’t long before the pounding of its feet had become inaudible. Duhrn gestured to Skorzeny to follow him back to the grave.

‘Are you insane, Günther? Have you seen their teeth? Those things will tear us apart, and I can’t fight that many of them!’

‘No, no. I know their kind, they’re called Ghouls, and they are interested only in those already dead. They’re the reason we’re down here. Come, I will speak with them.’

‘What do you mean, the reason we’re here?’

‘The land of the Ghouls lies between the worlds, you see. Where ever in the waking world that there is a burial site, a graveyard or such, the land of the Ghouls touches it, so that they can move to and fro from the Dreamland to the waking world. After all, we bury our dead in the waking world, so it could not be otherwise.’

‘But you said you knew only of one gate between the worlds, in Central Asia?’

‘Only one two-way gate. But the Ghoul-gates are not two-way, when you visit a graveyard in the waking world there’s no risk that you’ll stray into the Dreamland – but from the Dreamland, you may make a short foray into the waking world, provided that you do not wake up.’

‘And you think that there is a graveyard in the basement of Lubyanka?’ Skorzeny asked, arching an eyebrow.

‘It would make sense, according to Abwehr reports I’ve read, hundreds of people have gone into that place and have not come out. My guess is that there is a mass grave under the building, a place where they can get rid of corpses without the need to take them for a “walk”. And the Ghouls can hardly have failed to notice such an abundant supply of flesh… so I’m going to talk to them, maybe one of them can lead us to their gate into Lubyanka!’

With disgust etched into every line of his face, Skorzeny watched as SS-Sturmbannführer Günther Duhrn stood with one polished boot casually leaning on the rotting knee of the monstrous unearthed corpse and made polite conversation in the guttural language of the grave-robbing Ghouls of the Dreamland.​