Lance Purple <lpurple@fnord.io.com> wrote:

POD: Sunday, September 22, 1940, Veirville, Occupied France.

Theron Ware ordered his Tanists to take their positions within the warding circles. It was the Hour of Saturn, just before sunset of the Autumn Solstice. All of the necessary goëtic preparations were in place. The beach was deserted for two miles in all directions. Ware lit the pyre of driftwood, sealed the great circle with drops from a goblet of his own blood, and began the dangerous invocation.

Marshal Rommel watched the proceedings uncomfortably, through field glasses from outside the cleared zone. This was ridiculous; but he had seen the man conjure a real demon from the netherworld, in the darkened hall of an Italian palazzo. It had been Marshal Gariboldi who first located Ware, and who had suggested the current operation; but Rommel was the one responsible for carrying it out. And now his career and the future of the Reich depended on an old man in a gown.

But Ware did not disappoint. The bonfire suddenly grew high, higher, into a vast column of whirling fire. A land breeze sprang up, then grew to a howling gale as Rommel struggled to stay on his feet. As in a dream, he saw the English Channel parting; foam-green walls of water driven off like the British at Dunkirk, retreating miles away to the north and south. For the next twelve hours, there would be a land passage twenty-five miles wide between France and Britain.

No time for amazement! Quickly, nine divisions were ordered into motion across the eerie sandbanks. Overhead, the Luftwaffe fought valiantly against the RAF; below, his 7th Panzer Division circled and destroyed a dozen confused and beached Royal Navy vessels. By three AM, the German invasion forces were across the Channel; and Ware had given them until dawn before the waters closed again.

Rommel had a beach-head, thanks to Ware's demons. Now all he must do was keep himself and his army from being sent to join them in Hell...

His Grace of Cantorbery, Archbishop Cosmo Lang, turned towards his colleague of York and says : But when the celestial armies will attack the Germans, that damned odor..."

"That blessed odor, would you say, the Archdeacon of Old Sarum smell of roses...",

"Yes, yes, we have seen saint George take his soul in his hands. have you reflected to the theological problems..."

"Sure, but for the first part of your query, I think the Prime Minister has one hand in this."

"What?"

"But don't you have remarked that he us has commanded to include the phrase "as to has made to the armies of Pharaoh purchasing your elect people?"

"Oh, I see."