Empire of Fu Manchu

Panthéon, Paris
Republic of France
March 22nd, 1940


‘Here? Of all places in Paris, it had to be here?’ Skorzeny whined.

Günther Duhrn sighed heavily for only reply.

The three men standing in the middle of the cour d’honneur of the Panthéon were dressed as civilians, Duhrn and Xaltotun (going under the alias of “Herr Xavier Salter”) wore dark grey trench coats and hats over fairly nondescript black striped suits and white shirts while Skorzeny had broken out some of the costly clothes given to him by Fah Lo Suee – an all black combination of suit, shirt and tie under an alpacka coat and felt fedora of the same colour. According to Duhrn, he looked like a pimp.

‘I never saw the Temple of Mitra of Tarantia, but I doubt it could have been this grand. Even the Great Temple of Set in Python pales in comparison!’ Xaltotun muttered, impressed. ‘Your culture has achieved things I would never have believed possible in my days.’ Google-eyed by the wonders of modern technology, the High Priest of Set had become markedly less arrogant since leaving Wevelsburg. The dizzying speed of the Cologne-Paris Express had made him pale and clench his fists, and the size and prosperity of Paris, even in the throes of post-war depression, had left him stunned.

‘It actually makes some sense, you know.’ Duhrn replied. ‘Roman Lutetia was built on the high ground of the south bank of the Seine, and Panthéon was built over the ruins of a Medieval church, which in turn might well have been on the location of an earlier pagan temple.’

‘Roman?’ Skorzeny made a dismissive snort. ‘That was literally yesterday compared to the age of the crypt we’re looking for.

‘Oh, I know that.’ Duhrn agreed. ‘Roman Lutetia was more or less built from scratch. But the Gauls used to build their Oppida on high ground, and the heights of Saint Genevieve are it around here. It would stand to reason that the Parisi tribe would have had their Oppidum somewhere in the vicinity, and most likely at least one temple was part of it. And the Romans never interfered with local religion. All I’m saying is that it is quite feasible that pagan worship in some form continued on the spot where the Temple of Mitra had stood – first, after the cataclysm, in the ruins of the temple. Later the stone might have been reused for a smaller cruder temple, and so on. After a few hundred generations, a score of such rebuilds and a dozen migrations and resettlements, who would remember what God was initially worshipped here, and what traces would remain of the original temple?’

‘None. None at all,’ Xaltotun whispered. ‘The Black Lotus never gave me dreams as strange as this time that I have awoken to. Understand that for me, not two years have passed since I went to bed in my house in Stygia and inhaled the fumes of the poisoned Lotus. After Orestes resuscitated me three thousand years later, I lived for little more than a year before Hell reclaimed me. It… it will take some time getting used to.’

Skorzeny sighed. ‘And you’re absolutely sure? You didn’t make any mistakes when you…’ Skorzeny’s voice drifted of and he made some gestures in the air with both hands, alluding to the incantations and spells Xaltotun had performed in different places of Paris, until finally homing in on the Pantheon.

‘No. The Heart of Ahriman calls to me from the depths below. It’s song is unmistakeable.’

‘Well hu-fucking-rah!’ Skorzeny said, rolling his eyes. ‘Look, getting into the crypts below here will be harder than snatching Eva Braun’s panties from under her dress, and not even half as fun. But I could do it if I have to, with a few good men, Brandenburgers and the like. What I can’t do is set up an archaeological dig in the basement of the Panthéon without anyone noticing – not even the frogs are that stupid!’

Duhrn stroked his chin, thinking. ‘I fear Otto is right. I just cannot see how it could be possible, no matter whom, short of Marshall Pétain we managed to bribe. The place is just too high profile, and the crypt of the Heart just lies too deep.’

‘I WILL have the Heart of Ahriman!’ Xaltotun said in a menacing tone of voice.

‘Of course you will!’ Duhrn hurried to assure the revenant. ‘All I’m saying is that it will take a lot of preparations. We’ll have to set up some sort of front with native French personnel, make up a plausible excuse for digging there, bribe and extort our way through all the necessary red tape… it could well take years.’

The dark eyes of the High Priest of Set glittered with repressed anger. ‘I can wait if needs be. I don’t actually need the Heart to work my magic – I never did in the old days, I just kept it safe so that no one else used it against me.’

‘And yet it was stolen from you, not once but twice!’ Duhrn retorted. ‘All in all, isn’t it safer where it is than anywhere where you could hide it?’

Xaltotun stroked his silky black beard between his thumb and his index. ‘You might be right… it’s very inaccessibility is a boon of sorts. Maybe we should just leave it where it is. For now.’

‘I’m happy I’m not the only one here with some common sense!’ Skorzeny muttered. ‘Now can we get back to Berlin? The Kampfabetilung Traumland has a lot of training left to do before it’s combat ready, and little time left to do it in. I can’t waste time sight-seeing in Paris!’ In truth the Austrian had lost little time; he would bring home a plentiful supply of French perfumes and some articles of lingerie, which he was certain would fit a certain Oriental Lady perfectly next time they met, which unfortunately given the present circumstances was probably none too soon.

‘You’re rash, warrior, but I suppose that is to be expected of your ilk. But you’re right,’ the revenant sorcerer conceded, ‘we should waste no more time with this. As soon as we return to your capital, I will begin the opening of a permanent portal into the Dreamland!’​

Grünewald, Berlin
Greater German Reich
March 25th, 1940


The spot for the portal, a forest clearing in the Grünewald, had been chosen a long time ago. Being close to Berlin meant that a minimum of railway extension had to be built to connect the portal with existing lines. And being a forested area, the Grünwald was ideally suited for limiting line of sight to the gate and the fortifications around it.

The fortifications, ah yes. Clad like his men in a thick padded winter uniform dyed black to match the shiny armour of black painted steel plates he wore over it, SS-Sturmbannführer Otto Skorzeny, commanding officer of Kampfabteilung Traumland inspected them with an apprehensive eye. Half a dozen big concrete bunkers formed a half circle surrounding the intended point of the portal. From each one, the long barrel of an 88mm anti-tank gun and two short stubby 150mm infantry support cannons protruded from gun ports, and there were also four slits four MG-34 tripod-mounted machine guns. The bunkers were connected with log-reinforced trenches, now bristling with rifles and machineguns all pointing towards the two figures in black in the centre of the forest clearing. The balance of the SS-Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler, all but Skorzeny’s III Abteilung were packed into those trenches. And in front of the trenches, a double line of barbed wire with a sprinkling anti-personnel mines in between. And further back, Duhrn had told him, an entire regiment of 105mm howitzers stood ready to saturate the area with fire. They had zeroed in their guns on the clearing with aiming salvoes before construction began and hadn’t moved ever since. Anything coming out of the portal with hostile intent would find itself on the most lethal bit of turf on the planet – barring perhaps the crater of an active volcano. And yet even that had not been considered enough. As his anachronistic host had been trucked from the barracks through the woods, he had seen boxy grey shapes among the trees; Panzerkampfwagen IIIs of SS-Panzerabteilung 101 spread out in an outer ring to deal with whatever might be able to fight itself out of the immediate containment zone.

What the HELL was Duhrn expecting to come out of that portal? Given the amount of Waffen-SS firepower allotted to contain it, Skorzeny’s previous confidence in the effectiveness of the halberds, crossbows and swords of his men suddenly felt optimistic at best.

Behind the bunker and trench line, a wooden podium draped in black SS-rune banners held a host of top dignitaries of the SS, including Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, director of the RSHA, SS-Gruppenführer Walter Wüst, director of the Ahnenerbe (the SS institute of historical, anthropological, cosmological and occult research) and his division leaders; among them SS-Standartenführer Prof. Dieter Scheel, head of the occult division of which Sonderkommando Hexen formed the core. SS-Standartenführer Joseph "Sepp" Dietriech, commander of the Leibstandarte was also there, supervising the deployment of his regiment. From the podium these notables had a commanding view of the forest clearing, while behind it, a group of SdKfz-251 halftracks stood ready to haul them out of harms way should the need arise.

As for the real protagonist of the event, he stood flanked by SS-Sturmbannführer Günther Duhrn by a granite slab set up as an altar for the ceremony in the middle of the clearing. Xaltotun, High Priest of Set had discarded modern clothes and donned a foot-long black robe that Duhrn felt would make a more dramatic impression on the Reichsführer-SS.

‘This is beneath Xaltotun the Great!’ he whispered. ‘A magician should work in majestic solitude. I feel like a fair performer with this crowd watching!’

‘Don’t worry about it, Master!’ Duhrn whispered back. ‘I thought it best to allow my superiors to witness the power we command. They should be suitably impressed.’

‘Yes, let them fear that power as they make use of it!’ the revenant agreed.

At the podium, Himmler consulted his watch and rose from his chair, standing behind a great microphone. ‘Let the ceremony commence!’ he announced grandly, his thin nasal voice acquiring a metallic tinge through the loudspeaker.

Xaltotun made a derisive face, before turning away from the altar to face the podium and bow deeply and ceremoniously. ‘Watch and wonder, Oh Great One!’ he said in a normal tone of voice, and yet his rich, deep baritone boomed through the clearing, being heard in even the deepest corner of every bunker. He then turned back towards the altar and raised his arms, causing his wide sleeves to fall back and reveal a flint dagger in his right hand. Duhrn took a step back, giving Xaltotun room to cast his spell.

Always in that mighty, booming voice, the revenant sorcerer began to chant in a strange, guttural language, unwieldy with consonants and diphthongs and entirely incomprehensible to his audience. Then he swiftly sliced across his left palm with the flint knife and dripped a few drops of blood on the altar, where the blood began to sizzle and generate noxious grey smoke while Xaltotun shouted the words

’NG’AU KR’TAH H’LE RHUDRU KFLG’N NYARLATHOTEP UAAAH!’

And then, amid a collective intake of breath from the thousands of onlookers, it happened. Something, perhaps the whole world or even time itself somehow shifted and a half-circular section of air in front of the altar, just were the narrow railway track leading to the Leibstandarte barracks ended, shimmered as if superheated. After an instant it began to take on gradually more opaqueness until three heartbeats later, the disc of air had become a window to a dreadfully still, snow-cowered plain. Immediately, right next to the portal the humid spring air began to smoke like breath in winter.

‘What- what was that… that change?’ Duhrn whispered, his eyes shining like those of a maniac.

‘The universe itself adjusted to match the dimensions in space AND time!’ Xaltotun said, panting as if recovering from some great effort. ‘Never have I performed magic this powerful – or dangerous! Today I have rocked the very foundations of creation, and chained the World of Dreams and Earth to each other.’

‘You mean… time on Earth and in the Dreamland now run at the same speed? So now, going there in your dreams gives you just a few hours of time until you wake up?’

‘It had to be so!’ Xaltotun claimed. ‘The gate is like a bridge, and were the worlds not chained together in the sea of time, that bridge would be torn to pieces by the force of it’s tides. And while the portal remains, chained together they must stay!’

‘But… what of all the Ghoul gates, what of the natural Dreamgates?’ Duhrn protested.

‘They’re all gradual, a slow transition from Earth to Dreamland time or vice-versa. This is a sharp cut in the fabric of space. But let’s not waste more time on idle chatter. Send in your host and let the construction of your iron road begin – the work of Xaltotun of Python is done!’

Duhrn nodded and turning towards the podium peformed a textbook Nazi salute. Himmler, tearing his eyes from the miracle before him nodded and again spoke into the microphone, although now in a tremulous voice:

‘Men of Kampfabteilung Tramuland! You march under the banners of National Socialism and carry it’s ideals next to your hearts! Now, in the name of our saviour and Führer Adolf Hitler, go forth into this strange new world to uphold them with sword and spear!’

Picking up his cue, Skorzeny turned towards his men, 900 Leibstandarte armoured footmen with halberds or crossbows and swords, and 200 riders with sabres and lances pressed into service from the Waffen-SS cavalry regiment. A forest of halberds interspersed with national and SS banners rose over their straight and true files and ranks, ranged up next to the railroad track leading up to the gate.

‘Attention! Forwaaaaard…. march!’

Immediately, the Leibstandarte orchestra stationed beneath the podium began playing the “Horst Wessel Lied” and the marching soldiers took up the song:

Die fane hoch,
die reihen fest geschlossen,
SA marschiert mit ruhig festem schritt...

Otto Skorzeny, riding a black stallion trotted at the head of his small army as rank after singing rank, their boots pounding the ground in unison, they marched through the Gate and out of this world.​