Inside Stalinist Russia, my team had just iced a political kommissar about to send us off on a suicide mission because we were politically unreliable. Guess he was right about that, after all.



Captain Fyodorov, the Gypsy Anya, Lieutenant Goldstein the Cabbalist, and the zombie-raisers Misha, Valentenin, Vladimir, and Gregory joined with me, Taduesz who they called the sorceror for lack of a better name for what I did.



It was not an inaccurate name. I could summon spirits which I had demonstrated against a vampire in another world across the dimensional boundaries. The thing had gone to tears however, and the vengeful revenants turned on me, and killed me. This is how I eventually ended up here. Die, verse-out, in one world, and wake in another. Different rules, different history, maybe even different species.



Here, it was 1955, and America was Brendansland, a colonial area split between Britain and Ireland.

Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were locked in a death struggle for the last almost twenty years. But instead of guns and planes, it was fought with summoning spells that tore trolls loose from their rock, and raised the dead to shamble forth into the world again on a mission to slay the summoner of trolls.



And I landed into this mess, a modern civilized American surrounded by barbarians. But all things considered, I liked the Russians slightly better than the Nazi’s. And I liked the guys in my unit, drunk, poetic, chess-playing, sentimental and all that, but they were some of the best friends I’d ever had.



They called me a sorceror, but what I truly was was a verser. A very long time ago, at least two hundred years ago, I think(I’m suffering from partial amnesia), I was an ordinary guy who sat down to use a new-fangled piece of technology. A “scriff-enabled” computer. Supposed to be the “next great thing” in computing; what it was to me was something far different. While my wife and child were shopping, and I was surfing the Internet, it shorted out. What with the horrible electric wiring I have in my house, this should have come as little surprise.



I became “scriff”-infected, and I died in an electrical shock, or versed-out in our(us versers, no, I am not the only one) favorite euphemism. In another world, and another time, I persevered until bad luck and laziness caught me in a snowstorm in January in Utah on horseback alone. You could add foolishness to that indictment as well, if you like.



Another world, and eventually another world. And my memories blur, and I see myself preparing to kill a trillion strong army by turning a star into a black hole. I think thoughts that even now, it hurts me to try to remember. My guilt is mostly dead. It was a righteous kill, and it seems pathetic, but true that my concerns are not for the dead or my soul right now. On a more personal level, ignoring those hordes I killed, I remember being smart, so smart, super-intelligent even, and now I remember certain things I thought then, and I cannot understand what I meant. And it hurts my brain to remember those things.



But one thought, I do understand. “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Burke’s wisdom has saved millions of lives from tragedy. It had served me well then, and it would serve me here and now.



Here we stood, outlaws in the totalitarian Soviet society ruled by one of the worst monsters ever to bedevil the human race, and we could flee or we could fight. Even though, I loved my unit dearly, I wanted to fight. In ways, because I loved them so. It would dishonor us and our sacrifices for the Rodina to allow Stalin to continue on. Besides, and this was the clincher, it well might be safer to attack than to flee.



We dumped the dead body of the sadistic commissar in a deep hole, and spread about spells to make it harder for his spirit to be summoned up to bear witness against us.



Then I put it to them.

“Unless we flee Russia, we are not safe. Or we can strike the head of the snake, and during the ensuing confusion deal with any records of our deeds.”

They were startled.

“Anarchy is dangerous.” Captain Fyordorov offered. This was the typical Russian fear. A tyrant is better than anarchy to them. They might well be right, but Stalin was different.

“And Stalin isn’t?” Anya asked skeptically.

“If you had a half-decent leader, even Lenin who was a monster himself, I would say let it be, and flee. But Stalin is about as bad as it is possible to get. It would be hard to be worse. Not only is he a tyrant, but he is an incompetent military leader.”

“You can take Stalin? Kill him?” Goldstein asked. It startled me a little bit that they were worried if I had the gumption to kill a madman. The first person I killed was an insane military leader who had helped destroy my America, and replace it with a one-man dictatorship. Stalin was far worse than that former shoe salesman.

“Sure.” I said confidently. They looked at each other, and then nodded. They were in. We were going to Moscow.



We took the commissar’s car back to the nearest town which was about fifteen miles away over roads that once spring came, General Mud would make impassable. To me, they were already impassable with the white snow drifts, and the gaping things that you had to call bathtub-holes, rather than mere potholes. But, we were not planning on using this car any further than the town. It was like extreme mudding, but instead of a nice four-fifty horse American truck driven by some beer-swilling idiots, we had a two-wheel drive Lida which is an underpowered junkheap when it is brand new driven by some vodka chugging idiots.



We arrived somewhat bruised, and laughing our heads off at a river a mile short of town. Gregory raised a zombie, and compelled it to drive the car very fast into the frozen river. Luckily we cracked the ice enough for it to sink through. Hopefully, the superiors of the kommissar would be fooled into thinking he had crashed here. All we needed was a few days.



Walking around the small town brought us to the railhead and we jumped on as the cargo train puffed slowly up hill. It was cold, but we had plenty of vodka, and lots of stories. They particularly liked my stories of warm climates. They made me tell them six times about a deserted tropical island that a friend of mine, the Firechild, had been marooned on for about six

months.



A day and a half later, we were approaching the edge of the combat zone. Vladimir saw troops coming out to check over the train. Paranoia is another one of those Russian character traits. A simple spell of Improved Invisibility(r) shielded us as we sat still and quiet while a couple guards smoked some cardboard tubes they considered cigarettes in our very boxcar.



Another hundred miles, and we ran into a problem. We were parked at a railhouse, and put to the side.



So we kept very still all day, until night fell. Then we slipped out into the badly lit(The rail guards could not spare the electricity or the lights to really guard themselves.) railyard. Misha warned that there would be dogs, big dogs, German shepherds, and half-wolves trained to kill.



The Cabbalist did some computations with numbers to find the best time for us to sneak across the yard. He redid it a number of times, but with an unhappy whisper to the Captain, suggested a five minute and thirty-two second wait.



It was a nervous group while we crouched in the dirty snow alongside the stranded boxcar. The time came, and we moved as one. The last month had welded us together. As an effective combat unit I would put us up against five times as many newbies, and expect us to win.



No dogs seemed to be about, and we almost got to the gate where a rail car waited on the outside since it had come in to late for the yard operators to bother taking it in. There had been no high-ranking officer about to threaten to shoot them to get them to do their job.



A rustle of feet behind us, and we turned to see whining with eagerness, German shepherds charging in a pack across the snow toward us. They did not bark which probably meant their vocal cords had been cut by some ham-handed surgeon.



I chose Speak with Animals(r) courtesy of Waterdeep, and Wildsmell which a Native American shaman taught me, and in my mind I readied Doom’s Cloak which I had learned myself. The first was a tossing of a figurine on the ground, and a magic word, the second was a howl raised in honor of the wild spirits in the land, and the last was a simple mental focus, and a pantomime of putting on a cloak.



I whimpered in friendship, and the pack skidded to a halt in confusion. The alpha male growled at me, and I put on the mental cloak which made me terrifying to myself and others.



Instead of succeeding, the magic infuriated the alpha wolf, and he dove at me with flashing jaws and massive weight that bore me to ground.



A scuffling behind me, and then Misha dove on the wolf with his dagger flashing. Misha won and lost. The wolf staggered, and died with black blood spurting out of it as it fell apart. Spooked, the other wolves ran from their erstwhile leader.



Fyodorov cursed.



“A Frankenwolf. Very dark, very bad magic.” He said crossing himself. Then Misha moaned, and in the darkness we crowded about to see his wounds. The blood and guts of the Frankenwolf had splattered him, and now it ate away at him with astonishing speed. There was nothing we could do. I could see his thigh bones dissolving.



“I’m scared Captain, I don’t want to die.” The Cabbalist and Anya and I looked at each other to see if we had any such spells that could restore a man who was already half-dead. The only reason he was not already was that it went so fast and so smooth.



Fyodorov came over to him to helplessly stand by.

“What will happen to me?”

“You’ll, you’ll …” The Captain sputtered since he knew Misha was an unbeliever in anything but the Power of the State. And the State said nothing about his fears except for granting award medals.



I had a choice to make, but it was no choice.

A quick flick of my pocket knife on the palm of my hand, and I held a palmful of blood.



“Drink, Misha.” I said as I put my closed hand above his mouth. “And you too will walk worlds in which you can find the faith you need to find the end, but it will be a long time coming if you but drink.”



So he did, and I sensed him in front of me with that sense for scriff that we versers have. He sagged and before the goo could finish disintegrating him, he was gone leaving goo, and a small pile of dust on the snow. His backpack was gone as well.



“We need to talk.” Captain Fyodorov said, and then he turned to the remainder. “Let’s go.”



We slipped out the gate with the open lock which Misha had picked while the Cabbalist cried to himself.

“I was the one who was supposed to die. He shoved me out of the way.”



Now we could not hide aboard the engine that waited outside the gate because they would search everything most thoroughly in the morning. Or so I said. The remaining zombie raisers smiled grimly, and working together, they raised something inside the gate. The Frankenwolf lived again. We hid in a cold boxcar all the rest of the night, and well into the morning until the half-drunk engineer came out to get his engine started.



Once we were on the way, the Captain quizzed me in front of everyone. So I explained in detail what I had only brushed on before. If they had not just seen their friend become a verser I think they would not have believed me.



I offered to make them versers, and they just sat there and thought about it. The air of distrust hurt me.



It turned out they were mad about two things. One that I had this wondrous gift, and I had not offered it before. Two, that I was not risking my life like they were. But they understood to a degree why I did not gift them before this, and they all had seen me in the thick of battle. So relations underwent a detente, but their was still some coolness.



A wandering Cheka officer gave us a fright, and then we gave him a gift. I spoke words of nonsense syllables into his ear for five minutes, and his memory of the day, of finding us and determining to slip away to warn others faded under my spell.



I used his clothes and gear as a prototype for summoning more clothes. It was like reaching into a closet in another space, and my hand would come back with the desired item. This was a more precise version of my normal clothing spell, and more trying on the energy level as well.



So I slept until we reached the outskirts of Moscow. We dressed in our Chekist uniforms, and wandered off at the guardpoint outside Moscow. A too attentive guard challenged us, and a Charm(r) spell, plus some nasty bluster from Captain Fyodorov got us past and into the city.



People were naturally wary of us as we walked in a group down the street to a subway station. The dreaded Cheka, ancestor in my world to the KGB, made generals quake in their boots. Normal citizens just froze, and looked down, and prayed for deliverance as we walked past.



We arrived in Red Square, and instantly I could see a problem. The Kremlin had ancient runes dating back to Viking runecasters dotting its walls. The spells looked like the type that accumulated power so that they only got stronger as the centuries wound onward.



We walked around a crowd of schoolchildren chanting their devotion to the Great Leader. They sounded sincere.



“Little brown-nosing brats; they get a day off from school for kissing up to the political officers. I always hated them in school.” Vladimir murmured.

“How many of them do you think turned a relative in to the Cheka to get here?” Gregory asked. At first I thought he was making gallows humor, but he seemed serious.

“Probably about five to ten percent of them, say forty of them.” Goldstein replied in ill-concealed distaste.



An idea occurred to me, and I signalled a huddle.

“Last chance, fellow soldiers. I have a plan. You want to be a verser, drink this cup.”



Gregory, Vladimir, and Goldstein did. The others refused. I had Vladimir drink again, and again until I could sense him. For some people, it does not take very well.



Then I led a walk up to the reviewing stand where the children’s teachers and local Communist Party officials stood directing the idolatry. They smiled to see us because these were the True Believers in Communism. A bigger bunch of drips, lackwits, nerds, and pompous nutcakes would be hard to find.



I hushed the children, and they stood staring up at me, the Big Bad Chekist with sappy adoring looks on their mind-numbed faces. It was creepy.



“All right, Children,” I said in my best imitation of the Barney voice, “You want the Great Leader to come out here, right now, so you can see him, and talk to him, and give him a great big hug?”

They nodded, and so I instructed them to wish for it with all their hearts,and close their eyes and chant “Come Stalin, Come Now.”



They did, and we gave the slightly worried teachers lying grins that said “Yes we know what we are doing.”



Then as they chanted in a booming cry, I began to work a magic that I thought would work. It tapped me into the energy of their wishes, and then another spell to summon the monster himself.



The defenses of the Kremlin were strong, but so was the abused faith in the heart of five hundred children.



Stalin appeared before us. The crowd went wild, and I fished out a prepared dagger from my sleeve while Stalin blinked in shock.



It had been the one Valentenin used on the commissar, and an hour long ceremony had converted it to something magic that would seek the heart of this madness from which the commissar sprang.



I thrust it into his back, but before it could land, it spun out of my hand, and was lost. Of course, I intuited, a paranoiac would have serious personal protection spells.



He turned, and I put my hand on his heart.

“Do not pass ‘Go’.” I said in English as I projected my ectoplasmic self, my aura through my hand. It knocked me down on the rebound, but I got up expecting to see him with a hole in his chest.



His jacket was mussed, but he stood unharmed. He starting looking around, and I prayed for the strength of Samson.



“Guards, kill this man.” He ordered the Chekists. They pretended not to hear him, and started ushering the children out of the way.

“What is this treachery?” He asked one of the teachers who babbled witlessly. Crushing her skull to shut her up served notice to me; Stalin was a lot stronger than he looked. Well so was I if the Lord Jehovah chose to grant me a miracle of superhuman strength.



I strode forward, and grabbed him about the neck. It felt slimy over a hardness. He laughed, and then I lifted him, and shook him like a rat. Hopefully his neck broke, I thought.



Then he smashed his hand down on my right arm, and when I dropped him, he booted me off the stage so that I landed ten feet away on the cold, hard ground.



The kids and even the teachers were out of the way. Hundreds of feet away some guards were rushing toward me. I had plenty of space.



So I pulled out the sulphur, and I chanted words. A small ball of flame arced past him, and then the fireball bloomed. It knocked him down, and set his clothing on fire.



He laughed. Then he leaped off the stage and began to walk toward me.



“I will find out the source of this treachery if I have to kill half the people in the High Command, but I must admit, you are proving enjoyable with your weakling spells. Where are you from? You will teach these to me, or I will have you served to my pet in bite-sized pieces.”



I did not say anything. The sheer evil evident in his face and his aura made his death or mine the only two choices.



Lady Winterblest had taught me words that were terribly dangerous. But I needed more space for them to say them all. So I ripped up a chunk of Red Square, about five hundred pounds worth and chunked it at him. My right arm where he had pounded me nearly seized up.



It crashed into him, and knocked him down and back a few feet. And then he started pulling it off him.



“I am Stalin, you filthy German assasin. Man of Steel.” His voice and aura were terrifying, but worse was my realization of what he really was. Stalin was a golem of osmium steel. I could see his shirt and jacket ripped, and the makeup falling in shreds from his face. Whatever spell had held it together was failing.



But he did not seem worried as he stripped his coat and shirt and wiped the pancake makeup off his gleaming face.



This was my time. I spoke the words of power. Shockwaves reverbrated in the air at every syllable, and then the ground started to shake. He looked fearful, and I grinned. Tired, I continued. The ground started to steam, and the Kremlin Guards across the square stopped, and then faded to dust before the impact of my words.



I nodded in cheerful malice as he saw that.



“Your turn, now.” I said in Russian, and he responded with an incredibly crude suggestion. Then at the appropriate moment, I said the last syllable.



A wave of dust popped from the ground, and a shudder shook the city ever so lightly. Thunder and lightning flashed across the sky. But this was all preparation, side effects even.



Absolute destruction arrived in the Square. I saw the end of a chunk of the universe about fifty feet across. Blazing lights in colors not meant for the human mind to understand assaulted me, and I fell to the ground while I felt the smell of strawberries, and heard black light.



Finally, after the gravitational field of the planet restabilized, I stood to my feet. My team, and the children were staring at me from across the square in the safe zone with a collective set of gaping mouths. It was almost comical if I had been in any mood to laugh to see over five hundred mouths hanging open.



Weak, and tired, but not as badly done in as I expected, I stood there and regained my breath.



“Is…that…the…best…you…can…do?” A strained voice said from the crater, and in pure disbelief and terror I saw a bloodied and mangled creature of steel and dark magic pull itself over the edge of the pit in the midst of Red Square.



He was missing three fingers on his left hand, and a thumb on his right, and he had a great amount of other wounds that would have killed a man.



I backed up, and he started to stagger toward me. His turned into a run, and mine into a sprint away from him. Again it would have been almost comical if it had not been so terrifying. And the spectacle of what he would visit on his poor nation in vengeance for my attacking him hurt me.



Crossing my fingers, I took out my Mac-10, and unleashed it to no effect other than to amuse and interest him. I spent half the rounds before it jammed. In this reality I could probably fix it. I considered my plasma cannon. But if Destruction could not kill him, then what would several million degrees of plasma do. And I had not a clue how to fix it if it went critical and exploded which it was more likely to do in this universe because it was way past the technical level of the universe.



“Tell me what you are. This magic you work I have not seen before.”



I sang a chorus of a Black Spiritual, “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” And a fiery chariot with an angelic driver and a similar horse appeared for me to leap on. It bore me across the square to my team.



“What should I do? What should I do?” I asked them and the angel.



“Appeal to the Nation.” He or was it she, said before vanishing. I looked at the crowd of kids who stared at me with a mixture of awe and hate. It seemed hopeless, but I spoke to them.

“He, Stalin, is a monster. He kills millions. He is crazy.” They hissed at me, and covered their ears not wanting to know what anyone with half a brain could see. It was hopeless.

“I failed, guys. I’m so sorry.”

“Why sorry?” Fyodorov asked me with a grin as he raised me back to my feet. “Of course, we were going to fail. God hates us for our crimes, even as He loves us for our poetry. Of course, you were going to fail. You are in Russia now. Nothing good ever happens to us. But we endure.”

The others nodded in agreement, and I for my part was awed by their stoic courage.

I wished I had that kind of bravery.

And then I felt it welling up inside me, a mocking, depressing, we are all going to die horribly, but let’s smell the tea and play a game a chess while we wait anyways kind of attitude.



“Come on boys, let’s do it one more time for Mother Russia.” I said, and without a word except for a cheer they got up and followed me to their deaths I supposed across the square toward Stalin who was marching toward us. He slowed and stopped. Perhaps he was afraid, or hurt worse than I knew, or he simply felt that the peasants should come to him.



Zombies rose, and mudshapes slipped from between the bricks of the square to march forward. More and more came, and I noticed that these were more than I had ever seen my friends raise before. With excited grins they kept raising and shaping as an inexhaustible energy supply filled them.



Stalin laughed at the pitiful force, and then the mudshapes attacked him. He plowed them under with bored ease. And then the zombies piled on, and those he destroyed as well. It was obvious that they were not hurting him at all.



But soon he was in a pile of greasy mud and zombie bones and zombie goo, and he fell to his back, and with zombies thronging him, he could not find the traction to get up. My team laughed as they summoned more and more, and I studied the situation.



I wondered what to do.

*Wait* I heard a woman’s voice in my head. *Wait*. It was calm and soothing.



Finally, Stalin roared to us.



“My personal wizards will come and slay you for this insult.” And he called their names, and each of the thirteen appeared before us clothed in power and majesty.



Oops. We stopped out attack.



And then words came to my lips, and in a female tone which was pretty icky.



“Stalin, mad dog, you have afflicted me, and tortured my children. Let me show you what I have seen, and I see.”



Stalin, I, and the female shared a moment of vision. We saw my enchanted dagger that would strike the heart of the evil fly from my hand, and soar across the ground searching for something. We saw a spirit of a nation reach out, and tease the dagger into a false path. We saw Stalin summon his greatest magicians including the one that held fast the spells to guard his heart in the jar where he kept it. We saw the spirit blow the spells done since no will opposed her, and we saw my dagger turn onto the true path once more.

*You cast a better spell than you knew*

“With your help, I assume.” I replied, and the spirit just grinned in my mind like a young girl in mischief.

As Stalin screamed denial, we saw the dagger pierce the jar, and his living heart. The monster was dead.



I came back to myself facing a sticky situation. Thirteen high wizards wanted to kill us.



“Two points, mighty wizards, if I may?” They paused to give me a chance to speak before they killed us all.

“One, you see that hole in the ground and the universe. That was me.” They looked a bit worried at that.

“Two, who is going to stab you in the back while you are trying to kill me?” With that the wizards started backing off from each other trying to keep their eyes on everyone, and their backs to none.



We backed up, and I summoned the chariot once more. As I was flying away with my team, I thought to the girl, I’ll call Rhodie.

*Used by a god again.*

*I, I am not a god. Far from it. I am bound in time as you are, and far weaker. No, I am simply the spirit of a nation created by the magic of dreams as the centuries rode onward.*



We landed, and found a place to sleep the night. I fell asleep, and sheer exhaustion took me to the next world. I had cast most of my mightiest spells, and been used by the Rodina as a power source, and I simply did not have enough energy to keep alive.



So I woke in another world.



Taduesz







Add to that, some usage of charm spells which my opponents were not expecting since most of their native magic seemed to be summoning monsters, and the brutal willingness of my comrades to slice throats as needed, and we got to Moscow in one piece.



We surveyed our target, and as I looked at the glyphs inscribed in the wall about the Kremlin, my stomach sank.



Taduesz