7 February 2008

[Natasha]

I listed all the big events of 2008 in other topics in this forum. Well, I have put some pieces of a puzzle we have been working on over the last year or so together, and it is not looking good. But I have to say, it's not a moment too soon though. If we miss this one, well, god only knows...

Last year we were working on spider cults and something called 'saline' or something with that pronunciation. Katja was helping me and stumbled upon Metatron. These are, if my research is correct, all connected.

It turns out some crazy moon cult is behind this - the details are too complicated (and somewhat classified) to ever really get into at least for the moment, because we don't have a moment to spare if I'm correct.

Actually it is not the moon cult itself; but instead a sect or offshoot of the moon cult; the moon cult is not dangerous and just worships the Moon and the Sun. It is a harmless coven. However, the sect has taken the power that this cult deals with and have evil agenda for it.

We have an upcoming eclipse and a New Moon, which is sometimes called 'The Dark of the Moon'. During the five nights of the Dark of the Moon this guy Metatron (who appears all over the place and with myriad descriptions) joins up with another guy named Sundalfon. This binding unleashes a great deal of power, but it does not surge nexus points, it is much more difficult to tap into (most people do not think of P.P.E. spikes and New Moons). This Moon Cult has figured this out and this offshoot sect is going to use it for some evil purpose. Because the eclipse is also seen has the mating of Selene the Moon goddess and Helios the Sun. We all know that eclipses surge nexus points.

Both of these events are occuring on 7 February 2008. And as it turns out the sect ritualists do not need to be in Antarctica to carry out the ritual; even if they did, as much power as they are likely to tap from Dark of the Moon event could be more than enough to power whatever it is that they have planned.

Which I have to try to determine now.

[GhostSpider]

Well, I know Metatron and Sundalfon (or Sandalphon) are both angels.

Oddly enough, no one seems to have a clear idea of what either of them are supposed to do in the Hierarchy of Heaven. In fact, in some texts, the two are mistaken for one another. Coincidence?

[Ethan Skinner]

Well, I know Metatron and Sundalfon (or Sandalphon) are both angels.

Oddly enough, no one seems to have a clear idea of what either of them are supposed to do in the Hierarchy of Heaven. In fact, in some texts, the two are mistaken for one another. Coincidence?

That right there seems to be an indication that "knowledge" and "facts" need to get their stories straight.

How do you "know" they are angels?

[Kolya]

Define angel.

[Ethan Skinner]

Define angel.

Exactly. To use the term "know" is to assume there are no alternative possibilities

[Kolya]

Define angel.

Exactly. To use the term "know" is to assume there are no alternative possibilities

Yep. I was reinforcing your position.

[concrete_Angel]

Well, hell, this couldn't be MORE vague, could it? I suppose it would kill some of you to take a few things on faith?

[Kolya]

Like what?

[GhostSpider]

Yeah, sure you could take it on faith, or do what I did...Wiki their names.

Though actually I recognized Metatron as the name of an angel, and Sundalfon sounded familiar.

[Kolya]

Sometimes Metatron is referred to as an angel.
Sometimes he is not.

Then there is the issue of nailing down the definition of angel, as I said before, because that keeps changing, too.

[GhostSpider]

Well I'm talking about angels like those referenced in Christian and Muslim works.

[concrete_Angel]

And if we're going to be using GS's methods:

Angel: An angel (from Greek: άγγελος, angelos, "messenger", pl. άγγελοι) is a supernatural being found in many religions. In Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism, angels, as attendants or guardians to man, typically act as messengers from God.

There. Wiki that.

[Kolya]

Let's not use GS's methods.

[concrete_Angel]

Fine. If you've got a problem with Wikipedia:

from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary


Main Entry:
an·gel Listen to the pronunciation of angel
Pronunciation:
\ˈān-jəl\
Function:
noun
Etymology:
Middle English, from Old English engel & Anglo-French angele; both from Late Latin angelus, from Greek angelos, literally, messenger
Date:
before 12th century

1 a: a spiritual being superior to humans in power and intelligence; especially : one in the lowest rank in the celestial hierarchy bplural : an order of angels — see celestial hierarchy2: an attendant spirit or guardian3: a usually white-robed winged figure of human form in fine art4: messenger harbinger <angel of death>5: a person like an angel (as in looks or behavior)6Christian Science : inspiration from God

[Kolya]

I know what the dictionaries say.

And what they don't say.

[concrete_Angel]

And what, pray tell, would they not say about angels that wouldn't be covered by anyone's basic study of religion?

[Kolya]

That angels exist outside of religion.

[concrete_Angel]

Actually, the dictionary definition included what an angel is not specifically related to religion. There's only one, maybe two references in a list of six that are there. There was more, but I thought you'd kind of get the gist of the point. Or maybe not.

[Ron Caliburn]

Well, hell, this couldn't be MORE vague, could it? I suppose it would kill some of you to take a few things on faith?

Faith is sometimes all we have to go on.

Faith is also a leading cause of death in our field.

[concrete_Angel]

Well, then, I guess you've got to take the good with the bad, or get out, then.

[Ron Caliburn]

Getting out does have a certain appeal . . . I'm almost envious of KT at the momment.

[Kolya]

Actually, the dictionary definition included what an angel is not specifically related to religion. There's only one, maybe two references in a list of six that are there. There was more, but I thought you'd kind of get the gist of the point. Or maybe not.

I got the point years ago, actually.

[Kolya]

Well, then, I guess you've got to take the good with the bad, or get out, then.

I take what I'm given. If you want to cut that into smaller blocks, that's fine with me. But I don't.

[concrete_Angel]

Well, gee, Kol, you just have something to say about everything, now don't you?

[Kolya]

No.
But I do have things to say about good and bad.

[Kolya]

Working on some information from Natasha and Katja we were able to determine a few things, but we had to move fast. The guys knew we were on to them, but fortunately for us, they did not know we knew as much as we did. We decided not to wait to 7 February; we were following them and they knew it, so we figured they would drop off the radar sooner than later and then I'd be left holding my nuts.

There had been a rash of grave robberies in some small towns west of Moscow. And by rash I mean five or six over the course of a couple of weeks. If there is a cemetery related story, Katja catches wind of it. I really do not know how that works.

In any case, we sent her to investigate, giving her a day or so lead time. Not only does she catch wind of these things, she also solves them. It's beyond the supernatural.

Either road, as Bert is fond of reminding us, the plan is often times the first casualty. I had not heard from Katja. She missed two check ins. She had left her route and itinerary. The last I heard from her was a mobile phone call from Highway M-9 before losing signal. I grabbed those ready to roll. Sasha was in the seat next me, responsible for navigation. Lyosha and Vanya sat in the back. It was about 2300 when we set out.

As we rolled through the night, the fog was thick and swirled. The blue flashing LEDs on top created a sort of hypnotic affect in the swirl. The fog was getting thicker as we got further out of the city and into the countryside. Mobile phones had no signal. Conditions were poor for satphone usage. I had the accelerator buried. As we cut through the forest along the poorly maintained highway my mind was going as fast as the engine, ticking through various scenarios of what had happened to Katya. I was trying to pay attention to the road, but my ind was racing. What had she stumbled upon?

Grave robbers and the arcanists we had been following... not the kind of combination that calms one down.

"Slow down," Sasha said.

The swirl started to look gaping maws, twisted and broken bodies, faces of the people that died in my arms, silent screams of the worst agony, men wailing for their mothers, their wives, and other shapes and forms which I realised were causing me to sort of screw up my face. But then I was ripped back to reality, "fuck!" Sasha exclaimed. "Stop!"

But the road was empty. I pulled the Tiger to the side of road and we dismounted and set out investigating the site. We found three shotgun shells, presumably from the same weapon, only two 7.62mm casings apparently from the same weapon.

"What?" I asked.

Both Sasha and Lyosha were on to something.

"What?" I repeated.

Lyosha held up his hand, and looked across the street. He motioned ever so slightly with head. "Across the street," he said. He brought his weapon up and I peered through my goggles; being upwind I had not picked up anything. I thought I saw something in the flashing lights from the jeep but could not be sure. I made my way to the front of the jeep and peered intently into the woods on the other side. My nightvision goggles penetrated the darkness but I was unable to see anything definitive. I switched to thermal and there a bright white figure appeared in the slight haze coming up from the road. And then the bright object moved and I saw something that barely registered in the thermal imager, something on the ground.

"Stop!" I shouted from the front of the jeep. The others has fanned out in a formation. Carefully we made our way across the street. Switching over to nightvision I was able to see the head of this thing on the other side of the road hiding in some shrubbery. "Stand up, hands up!" I shouted. The head just sort of went from side to side as if it were trying to get a better look at us. It did not comply with my orders, so I double tapped the thing and it jumped up like a lightning bolt and ran back into forest.

We poked around the area and found among the a human body, it was that which was barely registering on the thermal imaging; it was warm but cooling fast, but still recently dead. A cursory once over with my flashlight revealed some serious damage to the chest and right shoulder; the right arm was attached by a fairly narrow swath of flesh. "Looks like that thing was eating him," I said, pointing at the innards and jacked up flesh. I looked over a Vanya as he knelt down next to the corpse. His hand slowly and deliberately extended outwards and he lowered his palm over the corpse's forehead.

He pulled his hand off quickly as if he had touched something hot and inhaled sharply. "No matter how many times, every time as the first time," he said, shaking his head slightly. I let him do some more investigation of the site. The residual energy was strong, the impressions were still in sharp detail, and things were clear to him. He was lost in a sort of trance as he did his thing.

Sasha whispered to me, "it's gone, whatever it was," he motioned with his head over his shoulder in the direction that thing I shot at ran off.

"Alright," Vanya said, getting to his feet.

"Well?"

"Katja hit this one," he started.

I interrupted, "Katja?"

"Yea, shotgun."

"Get anything off those shotgun shells she left behind?" I asked to Lyosha.

He looked grim. "Yea, she's still with us."

The fog was dissipating as we mounted up and head on down the road based on information gained from Vanya that she made it back into her car and managed to drive away from the scene at a high speed. The part about a humanoid ripping the door off, however, had me quite concerned.

"Same thing we saw in the forest?" I asked.

"Likely, unless there's more than one," he said.

We never came across her car, however. Sasha was jabbing the touch screen. He explained some information and data that we had on what was going on earlier in the evening when we figured by the coolness of the corpse the shit hit the fan.

When we rolled upon the scene we found plenty of evidence of an automobile accident, except the one thing that you'd expect to find at a scene like this: the car. Somehow it had been removed from the scene. Somehow Katja had survived it, unless Lyosh got confused, which does not really ever happen.

There was glass and fluids all over the road, some various plastic bits strewn about here and there, and then there was the obvious path of a rolling vehicle bowling over some small trees and shrubbery. Something had gone off with both Katja and her car. We decided to press on further and make our way down the road hoping for another break in the investigation.

And then it happened. The stuttering of automatic fire riddled the side of the Tiger jeep from the passenger side of the road. I jammed the brakes and the vehicle came to a hard stop. "Lyosh, Sasha, anything?"

"No," they replied.

"We could go in Unseen," Lyosha added.

I hesitated for a brief moment. The Unseen is the last place I want to be found but the fact is that it allows for unsafe passage through more unsafe areas. Think of the Astral just a hell of a lot more gritty and dangerous; no time for details at this time. "Go," I said. Lyosha opened the portal and we filed out of the Tiger from my side and into the Unseen. We hauled ass through the forest towards the muzzle flashes we were seeing. As we were trucking I saw the blurry image of someone leaping through the air and then a flash of a metal as the figure landed and the metal sliced into the chest of a humanoid shaped figure.

"Here," I heard Sasha explain.

"I see it," Vanya replied.

"There she is," Lyosha added.

"I count two bad guys," Sasha said.

We all agreed.

"Go!" I said and we popped out of the Unseen into a battlefield where Katja had chopped several armed men in half or damn near in half. In standard issue style for Katja, "oi, I'm glad to see you guys," with a smile and a wink.

"Glad to be seen," Sasha replied, with a smile and a wink.

"There are at least two zombies wandering around a tectonic. You'll recognise him; he took my car," she sounded quite cheerful, despite all the dried blood and mud covering her face. "I hope you got fire," she said with a wink. She looked at Lyosha. "You got anything?" said before catching her breath.

"No," he replied.

"Got water?" she asked me.

"Yea," I replied.

"Great. I'll trade everything I know for it," she said.

We made our way back to the jeep. Lyosha started to clean her up a little bit. Most of the gore seemed to be that of her victims. "I slashed three, shot one," she proclaimed. "He's back there," and she pointed down the road.

Sasha nodded. "Yea, we found him, looks like someone was interested in the body," he started to say tapping the back of Tiger.

"Yea, that's right. Potential zombie material. I was probably supposed to be some 7 Feb blood sacrifice or something like that," she said, shrugged her shoulders, and continued to tell about the fight, the car crash, and all those other charming bits that make Katja Katja. She drank the water down and looked disappointedly at the empty bottle. And then more story telling. And then I brought her back on topic. "Yea, there's been five bodies stolen from the cemetery recently. Krilova thinks there is a summoning going on and that might be true; but I would consider that these guys building up some zombie henchmen to carry out their sinister agenda." She tossed the bottle on the seat. "Maybe both," she shrugged.

"Ride just got a little more crowded," Sasha said.

Katja screwed up her face.

"Well we couldn't leave it behind," he explained.

"Mount up," I said, and we headed on to the little town where Katja was headed for and got in touch with the local morgue and Moscow ordering a helicopter and the rest of my team. "I'll stay here until our guys can pick him up," I said as the morgue guys carted off the mangled remains left over from Katja's gun battle. "Shouldn't be much longer," I added.

A bit of paperwork later and the waiting game started.

After a brief period of time I heard the helicopter approaching before anyone else. I called everyone together. "After the helo takes off we'll go back into the woods," I said. Natasha, Vlad, and Roma dismounted the helo and Ilya came along for the fun as well.

Along with the team I ordered up some specifically for killing zombies. They are tough to kill but not if you have a lot of fire, Katja, and Ilya around. So I was not very worried about that. I was, however, worried about Katja's car roaming around somewhere.

Everyone was ramped for a fight, so it was not long before our quarry was found. We set a hasty L-shaped ambush on two zombies and a human. "Stop!" I shouted. "Hands up!" The human shouted to his zombie minions to attack. That was all I needed. I opened fire along with Roma. As they scrambled backwards the other leg of the ambush opened up. The human went down pretty fast, which was fine with me, but the zombies fared much better, obviously, but we were prepared for them. So it was only a matter of time before the fury of Perun, Katja, and Natasha destroyed the zombies.

And then there was a loud explosion next to me and I was flung into a tree. I could not very well and I felt a lot of pain in my lower back and then I felt something grab on to me by my neck and lift me up slamming me into the tree again. I had dropped my rifle but managed to kick whatever was ahold of me and it dropped me to the ground. Still blind I reached out and got a hold of something, a leg, I thought, and I bit down as hard as I could ripping a mouthful of flesh and muscle off whatever it was. I heard an infernal howl of pain after spitting out the biomass and what felt like a hammer smash down on my back. I could not reach my pistol but managed to get my knife out and I stabbed repeatedly, poking a few new assholes into the fucker, and more howling. It stumbled backwards falling to the ground. Next to me I heard automatic fire erupt and saw some splashes of crimson mist track up the torso area of the monster. To my right Roma had arrived. He motioned with his head on the ground where my rifle was on the ground. By the time I picked it up, thousands of some sort of little creatures were scampering off into the forest, disappearing one way or another.

My ears were still ringing but my vision had come back 100%. We regrouped and redistributed ammo. Vlad attended to my wounds. Lyosha had some bandaging on his head and, of course, Natasha was unscathed. Still not sure how she does that.

Oh yea, and we never did find Katja's car. Actually it was her neighbour's car.

[Ron Caliburn]

7.62 M1943 or 7.62x54R?

[Kolya]

7.62 M1943 or 7.62x54R?

7.62 M1943

[Ron Caliburn]

These situations you really need someone standing off with an SVD or a PK to cover you.

At least you have that option.

[Kolya]

Yea. That would have been a little more comforting, but there just was not any high ground to facilitate observation.