[Salone]

The ritual had ended with little ceremony. Silence gripped the room in a stranglehold, swallowing anything audible. To the mundane eye nothing seemed to have happened. But to the flesh, the temperature had dropped several degrees, and was continuing to plummet. A light sheen of frost began to materialize over everything in the room, hanging as delicately as a fringe of lace from all surfaces.

The silence was shattered with a draft that would have merely stirred a candle. Upon its breath, a movement carried from the shadows, stepping from nothing but darkness. The tall form of a ragged man, head down and obscured by hood removed itself from their vague blackness, standing in a very real and material form.

The figure breathed in deeply, and the room began to warm. It wasn't exactly a rising of heat as it was a removal of the frost. His sucking breath lifted the ice from the room, drawing it upon the air and in to his lungs. The temperature returned shortly as the ice was drawn away. With a whisper like slowly crushed snow, it spoke without raising its head.

"Rasputin answers your call. Do as you will."

The last sentence was touched off with a hint of malice, as if the four words held the meanings of several different sentences altogether. The illusion of an upturned lip passed over his mouth before disappearing in to the shadows from which he had emerged. Grigori Rasputin walked the earth once more.