This was it. The finale of the global television phenomenon Dance Planet Earth. The dance team from France had finished, to thunderous applause. Now, it was the Russians' turn to perform for the largest audience in history, predicted to include over one-point-three billion people watching live. Dancers took their places, struck their opening poses in the dark, and the light came up on movement. They moved in perfect time and rhythm, marking out flawless geometric shapes — concepts, even — with their choreography. Across the world, viewers shuddered as they felt like the temperature had dropped twenty degrees.

Without any foreshadowing, the dancers broke from geometric perfection and shifted into something that looked like utter chaos, beautiful in motion but unrestrained. The dance looked unplannable, yet somehow they stayed in time and their movements still complemented each other.

Around the world, people shivered and hugged themselves or their loved ones tight, eager for heat but unwilling to leave their televisions before the dance was complete. People in places that had never needed heating found themselves in the middle of an emergency.

From their sanctum in the the motherland, Russian sorcerers celebrated, and plotted their conquest over a world of ice.