by Sean Shake
“You got drunk. And lost. In Miami. Which is probably the worst place you could’ve ended up. I think it’s like the hottest place on Earth.”
“Well I found us him didn’t I?”
Rue looked to me. “We’ve yet to see whether that’s a good thing.” Before I could protest, she went on. “In any case, as I was saying,” she glared at me as though waiting for another interruption.
I put up my hands.
“Nick, Veronica, all the elves, the other eight reindeer, all the workshops—least what was inside them—the sleigh, the vehicles, and just about everything else was taken. All that’s left are the emptied-out warehouses and workshops. And the Claus home. And one broken-down vehicle.”
“What about the North Pole?” I asked, uncertainly moving my hand to the spot on my thigh where it had disappeared into.
Like before, the holster popped out, making it seem as though my leg was hollow. I pulled the saber out and examined it.
It really did look like a lightsaber. The only difference was instead of being metal, it was made out of… well I didn’t know. Ice? It didn’t feel cold though.
It was smooth, almost translucent white with a gold cap on the end, a squared-off ball.
And of course there was the fact that the beam of light was actually two beams spiraling around each other. Red and white, a lot like a candy cane.
“Rue stole that—”
“I did not steal it,” Rue interrupted. “I took it to make a backup.” She looked down at her hands, like Alexa had done a minute ago. “I just didn’t expect anyone to come.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Would you have been able to fight them off with this?”
Alexa shook her head, answering for Rue. “Not either of us. Maybe Mom or Dad could have. That’s not what she means.” She looked over at Rue sadly, who was still looking down. She wouldn’t meet either of our gazes.
“The Pole protected us, kept us safe and hidden. But with that gone there was nothing preventing anyone from entering into the Northern Realm.”
“I was making another one,” Rue mumbled, uncharacteristically sounding guilty. “It’s almost ready.”
“It’s not your fault Rue. You were trying to help.”
Rue looked up, finally meeting Alexa’s eyes. Despite their cold blue, Rue’s eyes were somehow fiery.
And wet with tears. “If I hadn’t taken it, none of this would’ve happened. Why can I just never leave good enough alone? It protected the realms for ages, but no, that wasn’t good enough for me. I had to make a backup.”
“You made a backup?” I asked, trying to make her feel better.
“It’s not done. And I don’t know if it would protect the realm.”
“But it works?” I asked. “As a weapon?”
“Somewhat,” Alexa replied, tilting her hand back and forth in front of her. “Kind of fragile.”
“Okay, so your parents were taken, along with all your workshops and the reindeer and the sleigh and the elves. But we have this.” I held up the North Pole. “And now I’m the Santa Claus. And I have his powers?”
“In theory,” Alexa said. “We need to develop them. It’s like if someone gives you a sword, you’re not going to know how to use it right away, even though if you did, you could chop someone’s head off, or disembowel them.”
I grimaced at the gruesome examples. “So, like just because someone gives you a snowboard, doesn’t mean you can ride it and do backflips.”
“Huh?” Alexa asked. “Snowboard? Is that some kind of weapon?”
“It’s another Earth thing,” Rue said.
“Okay, so I need to get better at using my powers. I saw that there’s a Christmas Miracle, and the ability to morph my body and organs? There were some restrictions on that one.” I looked at Rue at this, but she wasn’t meeting my eyes. “But the other ones were unknown. It said that I had to unlock them.”
“We could tell you,” Alexa said. “Just explain to you what they are. But Dad always said that it wasn’t a good idea.”
“He’s been preparing her for this since she was a little kid,” Rue put in.
“He knew he was gonna get kidnapped?” I asked.
“Not kidnapped, but that eventually he would pass on the mantle of the Santa Claus. Retire to somewhere warm, like Canada.”
“Right, okay. So you could tell me, but you won’t because I will be more powerful if I discover them myself?”
“Pretty much,” Alexa said.
“You know better than I would. This is all new to me. So what’s the plan? We go to the North Pole and investigate?”
“Northern Realm,” Rue corrected. “And we will do that. At some point. But first, we need to make sure you know what you’re doing. First we need to test out your powers.”
“Test them out how?”
“Remember earlier how you were asking about demons?”
16
“I’m not so sure about this,” I said, looking at the swirling void before me.
We were no longer in Alexa’s secret-layer-realm, but in a different one entirely.
We were on a small hill in a sort of crossroads, surrounded by strange darkness and plants that looked nothing like anything I was familiar with.
There were also two moons, if I needed any more convincing that I was no longer on earth. A full one, and a slightly less full one, though not quite a crescent.
“You need to learn your powers,” Rue said, “and this is the best way to do that.”
“Really? It’s the best way?”
“Unless you want to fight the nuckelavee.”
“What’s the nu… whatever you just said.”
“You don’t want to know,” Alexa said, shaking her head. “Dad was the first Santa to not punish naughty children. And so that obviated many of the mythics who had been part of the tradition before Dad. This didn’t make him many friends.”
“It made him enemies,” Rue said. “Lots of powerful enemies.”
“He still has friends,” Alexa countered.
“Go on,” Rue urged. “We’ll be right behind you. Just remember to use your contacts, and you’ll be fine. These are weak demons, they aren’t going to be able to hurt you.” She frowned. “Much. They won’t kill you anyway.
“I don’t think.
“They wouldn’t be able to kill the real Santa…”
“So I’m not the real Santa?” I asked her.
She shook her head quickly. “No, you are. You are the Santa Claus. You’ll be fine.” She patted my back. “Now come on, it’s not safe to be standing around at a portal all day. You never know what’s gonna come through, or show up to go through.”
“I thought you were going to train me before I faced demons.”
“No time.” She patted my back again, this time harder, urging me on, enough that the little ragdoll spun around and showed a pale red mark on its back in the shape of a hand.
Good resolution, I thought.
Wanting to ask more, but realizing it probably wouldn’t help, I shook my head and looked down at the swirling vortex beneath me.
We’d come through four portals to get here to these crossroads, and this final one was apparently to a demon realm.
Or at least one where demons roamed free.
And now, I was going to fight them.
Santa Claus, the demon slayer.
Hey, actually, that didn’t sound half bad.
So with that wonderful thought, I jumped, and slid through the portal into the demon realm.
17
Before I even hit the ground in this new realm, I already had what could only be demons swarming me.
The ragdoll status display of my suit in my HUD lit up in bright red as the demons assaulted me, spinning wildly to show me all the places that were being hit.
Something liquid slid up my neck and over my face, and it took me a second to realize it was coming from the suit. It puffed out, forming into a helmet.
My vision changed, and now I ha
d two HUDs.
This was confusing.
I saw the same thing was happening all over the suit, the liquid oozing out of the fabric and forming hard plate armor. It looked metal, but was red and black.
I struggled to break free from the demons, scanning through the HUD—the one from the contacts as I didn’t know how to use the suit’s—as I did, trying to figure out what to use.
“A little help!” I called out.
But there was no answer. And when I managed to get turned around enough to look—the demons trying to rip me limb from limb making this more difficult than it should have been—I saw that I was alone.
Not only that, I couldn’t see the portal that I had come through.
It should have been right above me, but all I saw was a strange sky.
Like that starry night painting by that famous artist. Everything was a swirl of colors and… were those faces?
In the sky, it looked as though there were screaming faces, bodies of the lingering dead.
I moved my now-armored hand to my thigh, hoping I could still access the North Pole.
Thankfully it popped open, but a demon latched onto my arm before I could grab the saber.
I looked down at the creature, which looked like a cross between Gengar, that Pokémon, and a goat.
Its sharp, shark-like rows of teeth were locked onto my forearm, but didn’t seem able to pierce my newly formed armor.
Though in my HUD that spot glowed a bright angry red.
I was surprised I was still standing with all the demons piling on me. There had to be at least eight of them.
I yanked my left arm free and used the momentum to punch into the Gengar-goat-demon biting my wrist.
It made a horrible little huffing sound, but didn’t let go.
I punched it again and again, the action feeling good, my armored fist feeling strong, and finally it did let go.
And then bit onto my left hand.
“You done fucked up now you little discount Pokémon,” I said, and drew the North Pole with my now free right.
I activated it, and the twirling, intertwining beams leapt out from its base and through Gengar’s skull.
It instantly went limp, and before it even fell completely to the ground, dissolved into ashes that flew away up into the sky.
But I didn’t have time to enjoy the sight, as I still had several other demons trying to rend me to pieces.
None seemed to have been able to get through my armor yet.
Either that, or I was in so much shock and I had so much adrenaline running through me that I couldn’t feel the pain. Possible, as I felt oddly exhilarated. Giddy, even.
In either case, I had one goal: Kill them all.
I stabbed with my North Pole at a demon that was gnawing on my neck.
It screamed and then fell silent as it too dissolved and began to float up into the sky as ashes.
This destruction of their allies seemed to get the other demons’ attention and distract them, as I was able to swirl and spin them off of me.
The reprieve didn’t last long however, and four of the remaining seven—I had been wrong, there hadn’t been eight, but nine—charged me.
I swept my North Pole saber through the one that was the closest, a demon that ran on long birdlike legs and had huge horns growing from its round puffy skull. It was the color of bruises, and my saber’s twin beams split it down the middle, its two halves dissolving before they could even touch the ground.
While I had been distracted with this one, the remaining three of the four that had charged me had surrounded me.
The other three demons still stood a ways back, and I wondered what they were doing.
But then the three closer ones all charged at once and I couldn’t worry about the others standing idly around.
I swept my saber again, but this time they had learned. Two of them grabbed onto my arm with their scaly long bony fingers, the long sharp nails trying to pierce my armor as they dug in and pulled my arm down, pointing the North Pole’s beam harmlessly into the black ashen soil of this realm.
Before I could try to free myself, the third demon and the three looky-loos all leapt at me at once.
Instinctively I threw out my left hand, palm open, and was shocked when a blastwave of fire shot out of my open palm and hit the three demons in midair, knocking them back.
I looked at my open palm in shock, then was distracted by a notification in my contacts’ HUD.
Congratulations newb, you’ve discovered how to harness the power of the Spirit of Fire.
Sort of.
But you’ve got a lot more to learn. So don’t let it go to your head.
And since you’re probably in battle, you probably shouldn’t be reading this notification, because likely something is about to kill you. No more notifications will display for the next twenty Earth minutes.
I unfocused on the notification and back on my surroundings, and sure enough the demons hadn’t been destroyed by my blast of flame, and were now almost upon me once more.
Something about fighting demons with fire didn’t sit well with me, and so, thinking back to the list of spirits, I put out my left arm again, concentrating on what I wanted to happen.
This time a blast of ice radiated out from my palm and saturated them, freezing them into statues.
I looked down at the two demons still holding my arm, still gnawing and clawing at it, trying to rip my saber from my grasp.
In fact, they seemed rather intent on taking the North Pole.
Something Rue had said about others wanting it, about it keeping things out of the Northern Realm flashed in my mind, and I realized that this might’ve been their target all along.
Not me, but the Pole.
I placed my palm on one of the demons’ heads and expelled a blast of ice into its brain—if it had one.
But nothing happened.
What the hell? I thought. I tried again.
And again, nothing happened.
Cursing, feeling them trying to pry my fingers open, confirming my worry that they were indeed after the North Pole, I resorted to plain old physical violence, and started punching them.
It took a good ten punches before the one I was working on tore its attention away from trying to pry my fingers open and at the hand that punched it.
Now distracted, I was able to pull my arm up away from the grasp of the remaining demon and angle the beam of the North Pole so it sheared off one of its scaly legs.
It squawked and howled as a gruesome bluish-brown sludge poured from the wound.
The remaining uninjured demon, a feathered one with claws and fangs, flapped its shredded wings and floated up into the sky.
I raised the North Pole and slashed at it, but it was too high.
I pulled my arm back to launch the Pole at it, but caught myself just as I was about to release it.
Whoa, what the hell was I thinking?
The demon hovered there for another second, apparently waiting for me to release the Pole.
Then it cawed, in what seemed a rather annoyed tone, and flapped off.
I turned the North Pole over in my hand, so the beam faced downward, my thumb over the hilt, and stabbed down into the flailing, now one-legged demon.
It turned to ashes which flew into the sky and seemed to chase after its compatriot that I’d almost lost the North Pole to.
Then I turned my attention to the four frozen demons.
They were glowing and the ice around them was starting to melt.
“Oh hell no.” Approaching them swiftly, I raised the North Pole and slashed through all four at once with one swift stroke of the dual beams.
It cut through them like… well, like fire through ice. As they dissolved, they left big chunks of demon-shaped ice behind them.
Then they were gone into the sky and I was all alone in this new, even stranger, realm.
18
I looked around this perplexing place, looking for Rue and Alexa.
But I saw no one.
Both the ground and the sky were dark, but the ground itself was black with specks of white, looking like nothing so much as ashes. The sky was still that dark swirl of colors and faces.
There were black mountains off in the distance that might’ve been volcanoes. Closer by there were trees thick enough to maybe call a forest. But they were gnarled and twisted, and looked malevolent. Sentient.
Alive.
I didn’t dare go there.
I looked back to the sky. That was the direction I’d come from when I’d fallen through the portal. But there was nothing, no swirling vortex, just empty air.
My helmet was still covering my face, but I wanted to get a better sense of sound, and so I went through the interface looking for a way to control it.
But I found nothing. I tried tapping—in case it was a touch-controlled interface—and pulling at the helmet, but nothing seemed to make it retreat.
Perhaps the air here wasn’t breathable, and it had detected that?
But when I’d first arrived, it hadn’t been deployed, and I’d been able to breathe fine then.
I still couldn’t figure out how to access the second HUD of the helmet. I could see some numbers and weird text on that one, but had no way to interact with it.
Or get this stupid helmet off.
A helmet that might have saved your life, I thought.
Maybe not stupid then. Annoying.
Thinking of the notification I’d gotten in battle, I went to the POWERS cog in the HUD I could interact with and selected it.
I had two new abilities.
Breath of Fire
Obtained by 2 previous Santas
Spirit: Fire
Cost: N/A
No, this doesn’t come from your mouth. Don’t look at me, I didn’t name it.
You can create fire with your hands. May you never need a match again.
Frozen Touch
Obtained by ALL previous Santas
Spirit: Ice
Cost: N/A
You seem like the kind of guy to drink your scotch with ice, so this is for you. And no, you don’t have to touch what you want to freeze. I didn’t name these things, so don’t blame me.