Santa Claus Is Missing: A Christmas Harem Gamelit

by Sean Shake

  “Perfect. Then use that.”

  “How?” I asked, growing more nervous as we grew closer to the stream.

  We also weren’t slowing down, my feet feeling like they were moving on their own.

  I didn’t want to miss the jump and get left behind here.

  This made me wonder if he was actually going to go with me.

  Frighteningly, I found myself hoping he would.

  The stream was maybe five hundred yards away from us now, and unless it behaved like his castle, I was going to need to jump exactly—more or less—seven rex in the next minute if we were running as fast as it felt we were.

  “I don’t know, I’ve never been the Santa Claus. Didn’t you learn how to use it?”

  “Kind of.”

  “And this is why I keep saying, humans should not be Santa Claus.”

  “How about you stop being negative and try to help for once?”

  He grumbled at me but said nothing.

  I brought up the display, frantically scanning through it looking for any way to enter a conversion, but I went all the way around the cog twice and didn’t see anything like that.

  “I need to stop for a second and figure this out.”

  “We can’t stop. It was only a few hundred years ago that we got the portal out of here that they knew about closed up. If they find this one and get free, all hell will break loose. I mean that in a very literal sense.”

  “But I don’t know how large seven rex is!” Now it was less than a hundred yards away. “Shiiit!” I cried, approaching the river, unable to stop.

  “I hate you,” my demon companion said, then scooped me up into his arms just as we reached the bank, and leapt over the river of blood.

  22

  We landed in an insane alien world.

  But before I could ask where we were, we were already traveling through another portal, this one taking us back to the crossroads.

  Where Alexa and Rue weren’t.

  “Oh thank Nick we made it.”

  “If it was that easy why didn’t you do it from the beginning?” I asked.

  “Because I had just set you down and was tired of carrying you.” He pointed with his free hand at a portal. “Is that how you got to my realm?”

  It looked like the one I’d jumped through earlier. “Looks like it. And you can put me down now.”

  “Oh. You’re so light I didn’t notice you.” He set me down on the ground.

  “I thought you said I was too heavy?”

  “Did I?”

  “Yes you did.”

  “That was a rhetorical question.”

  Sighing I shook my head and called out, “Alexa?” Before I could call out Rue’s name, a large demonic hand slapped over my mouth.

  “Shh. This isn’t the kind of place you want to be drawing attention to yourself.”

  The thought that there was something out there that this hideous demon was afraid of made me shiver.

  “How are we going to find them?” I said quietly when he withdrew his hand.

  The large monster was quiet for a moment as he looked around the area. “Whatever took them would’ve left traces.” He fixed his gaze on me. “Traces that only you, as the Santa Claus, ruler of all realms, can see.”

  Ruler of all realms? Just how powerful was Santa?

  Or the Santa mantle. Was it like being a Green Lantern?

  I didn’t get a ring, but I did get a lightsaber.

  A candy cane lightsaber, but still.

  And a badass suit of armor.

  That I wasn’t entirely sure how to work.

  “How do I do that?”

  “Use the spirit of Christmas. You do know how to use the spirit of Christmas, right?”

  “Yeah of course.” I opened my interface and scanned through it until I came to the spirits list.

  But I didn’t seem to be able to interact with that part.

  The demon crossed his arms and tapped one long-nailed finger on his fur.

  “I don’t see anything.”

  “You don’t know how to use the spirit of Christmas.”

  “Is that a rhetorical question?”

  The demon sighed. “Great. I’m training Santa Claus. What would all the others think? They’d call me a scab, that’s what they’d do.”

  “Is there some kind of protest going on? Is that why Santa Claus was kidnapped?”

  “I don’t know why he was kidnapped. Or even if he was kidnapped. He may have been killed. Or had his soul stolen by some other foreign entity. It wouldn’t be the first time an outsider had infiltrated our realms.

  “But that’s not what we need to focus on right now. We need to find Alexa, so that means you need to see who took her. What took her. Have you used any of the spirits yet?”

  “Fire and ice,” I replied proudly.

  “That’s it?”

  “Well yeah, I’ve been Santa Claus for not even a day.”

  The demon put his hand to his forehead and shook his head, like that image of Captain Picard.

  It was such a close match that it made me wonder if he’d seen it.

  So far everyone I’d met in these other realms—other than the aggressive demons, but maybe even them—had known at least something about Earth and our entertainment output. Course, I’d only met three.

  “The traditional way is to have you discover your powers on your own.” He sighed and stared at me.

  Long enough to make me wonder if this was a really unobvious, unrhetorical, question.

  Then finally he said, “I suppose I could just tell you how to use at least this one. It will make you weaker, at least at first, but we need to find Alexa.

  “Ultimately the choice is yours,” he finished halfheartedly, and without much enthusiasm.

  “How much weaker?” I asked, not sure if this was something I wanted to sacrifice.

  I wanted to find Alexa, but I also needed to save Christmas, and I had a feeling I would need my powers for that. I needed to be cautious here and think things through. Really weigh out the options, the ups and downsides.

  “I can’t be sure.”

  “Fuck it,” I said. “Let’s do it.”

  23

  I looked at the portal I’d jumped through the last time I’d seen Alexa and Rue, the portal to the demon dimension.

  Now that my companion had explained to me how the power I needed worked, it was quite easy to use it to track ephemeral beings.

  In addition, I’d gotten a notification when I’d used it, and a new power had appeared under POWERS in my HUD.

  Track

  Obtained by ALL previous Santas

  Spirit: Christmas

  Cost: 1 point per Earth hour

  Hey look, you’re not so blind anymore.

  Allows a Santa to see the spectral paths of most entities.

  With this power activated, the area was a mess of glowing trails, but I somehow knew which were which now.

  In a general sense, anyway. I couldn’t tell who exactly had left what trail, but I could single out the one that went near the portal I had gone through to the demon realm.

  I even thought I could identify a scuffle, though this could have been wishful thinking.

  I was somehow able to tell that it wasn’t a demon, and at this realization, I received another notification.

  You’ve just unlocked another power. This helpful device—the one showing this message—can analyze and store the outputs from it if you wish, to make things easier to keep track of.

  Human memory isn’t the best, and this way you won’t have to rely on it.

  I checked my powers again, and saw I had indeed unlocked another one.

  Identify Spectral Residue

  Obtained by ALL previous Santas

  Spirit: Christmas

  Cost: 4 points

  Hey look, you’re not so oblivious anymore.

  Allows a Santa to analyze a given spectral path to determine the type of entity that created it.

  With
this power, I could tell that not only was the trail not from a demon, it wasn’t from one of the, for lack of a better word, “mythical” beings either. Those beings who’d worked with Santa in times past.

  Whatever left this was something more… beastly.

  “A beast? Are you sure?” my companion asked when I relayed this information. “That doesn’t leave many possibilities. The only ones I can think of would be the werewolves.”

  “Whoa, wait. Werewolves?”

  “Yes. They are creatures who are half-man half-werewolf.”

  I frowned at him.

  “Uh, no, that doesn’t make any sense. Half-man half-wolf?”

  “No, I know what you mean. There are werewolves?” I shouldn’t have been surprised—I had just fought off, then ran away from, then been nearly raped by demons after all—but I was.

  “Yes. I thought you had werewolves in your world.”

  “We have… not real werewolves.”

  “Oh. Well we have real werewolves. What are fake werewolves?”

  “Men dressed up in werewolf costumes.”

  “How very odd. Why would anyone want to be a werewolf? They’re so ugly.”

  I didn’t think he was one to talk, but didn’t say that out loud.

  For one, I don’t want to be eaten. For two, I still needed his help and didn’t want to offend him. “So where do we find these werewolves?”

  “Why? Do you want to go slash them with your North Pole?”

  “Yes.”

  He looked thoughtful, then shrugged. “I guess that’s as good a plan as any.”

  I disagreed actually, but I couldn’t think of a better one. Apparently neither could he.

  “Let’s go then.”

  He nodded, but didn’t move.

  “Are you going to go?”

  “You’re the one who can see the trail. I’ll follow you.”

  Oh, I thought. Right. That would be the easy way to find them.

  So I followed the trail, and the giant demon followed me, and we finally came to a portal.

  “Do we just… go through?”

  “Yes.”

  Succinct.

  And annoying.

  “So it’s, what, the werewolf realm?”

  “I don’t think so. I’m not sure they have their own realm.”

  “Then what does this one lead to?”

  “How should I know? There’s a lot of portals. I didn’t memorize them all.”

  “But then… how do you know what’s on the other side of one?”

  He stared blankly at me.

  “That wasn’t rhetorical.”

  “No, it was just stupid. How do I know what’s on the other side? I go through it and look.”

  Sure, that was one way. Dangerous way, it seemed, but I didn’t have any better options, and my HUD was no help, not that I could figure out, so I walked through the portal, and into the unknown.

  24

  Which looked a lot like the known.

  We were near some trees that looked like Christmas trees, pine and fir I thought, and ahead was a snowy mountain.

  It looked very cold, but it didn’t feel cold.

  I wasn’t sure how much of that was my Santa suit, and how much was my inherent cold resistance now that I was the Santa Claus.

  “I thought we were looking for werewolves, not yetis.”

  “We don’t have any yetis in any of our realms. They’re only on earth. And I think they’re all dead now anyway.”

  “You recognize this place now?”

  “Sure. It’s a mountain. And there’s snow. Biiig surprise. Rare thing. Most realms are tropical paradises.”

  “Sarcasm?”

  “No. Never.”

  The trail continued up the snowy mountain, and we followed it, eventually being led to the mouth of a cave.

  We snuck inside—it was where the trail led after all, so there was probably something in here—to get a better look at what was going on.

  But the trail ended abruptly inside the cave, and when I told my companion this, he said it was odd. Suspicious, even.

  He also made a comment about my ineptitude as a new Santa, and speculated that I had been duped.

  As we got deeper into the cave we could hear voices.

  Rowdy, boisterous voices.

  Which was not what I’d expected to find.

  Even so, I was still worried I was going to find Alexa eaten.

  But that was not what I found at all.

  Instead I found Alexa eating. Along with Rue.

  And they seemed to be enjoying themselves.

  They were on a level fifteen-or-so-feet below us, one I couldn’t see how to get to without climbing down from where we were, and there weren’t any obvious handholds. I wondered how they’d gotten the table they sat at down there. It looked like a heavy thing, the top made of wood a few inches thick, and it was long, enough to comfortably fit the many people that—

  The number fifteen suddenly appeared in my HUD, along with targets around each person sitting at the table.

  “The Yule Lads,” my companion said disgustedly as we huddled in the dark, watching them.

  “Who are the Yule Lads?” I asked quietly.

  Belatedly, names that looked like they’d sound like someone vomiting appeared by each of them, answering my question.

  But so did my companion. “Grýla’s brood. A nasty lot. I can’t say I was sad to see them kicked out of the Christmas tradition. The Santa before Alexa’s father had tried to reform them, turn them into helpers. It didn’t go that well.

  “I wouldn’t put too much stock in Alexa’s apparent joy. The Yule Brothers have lots of tricks, and they might’ve given her one of those tricks.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “That’s because you’re a puny-brained human.”

  “I’m the Santa Claus, and you need to respect that.”

  He put a hand up to me in a stop gesture, strange chuffings coming from his mouth. “Don’t make me laugh, we don’t want to draw attention to ourselves.”

  “I disagree. I very much want to draw attention to ourselves, and save my wife.

  “I’m going to go down and take them out. Are you just gonna stay up here, or are you going to help?”

  “You can’t just ‘take out’ the Yule Lads. Especially not as a new Santa Claus. You don’t have that kind of power. You haven’t even been voted in. Although I don’t know if we’re doing that anymore, since Alexa’s father kicked all of us out. I suppose he was the one to make all the decisions from then on in.

  “Which would make sense that passed on to you.

  “And again, this is why humans should not be Santa Claus. They always turn into dictators.”

  I stood up and drew my North Pole. “I’m going down there.”

  The demon grabbed my arm and tried to pull me down, but before he could, I yelled out. “Release her!”

  To my own shock my voice was thunderous, and the cave shook with the intensity of it.

  For a moment everything was silent, all conversation having ceased.

  Even my demonic companion just stared up at me, hand limply wrapped around my arm, ragged maw agape.

  All thirteen of the Yule lads looked up at me.

  “Sa… Sa… Santa?” one of the lads asked, Hurðaskellir, my HUD ID’d him as.

  “It’s— it’s the Santa,” another one said, Stúfur. He looked smaller than the others.

  I jumped off the ledge, landing fifteen feet below like a fucking superhero, North Pole drawn at the ready, and then rose to my feet.

  “Alexa, Rue. Come here,” I called to the two women.

  They pushed out of their seats hurriedly and ran over to me, indicating that indeed their joyous, boisterous appearance hadn’t been authentic.

  “We were just having fun Your Majesty,” one of the Lads said. Kertasníkir, this one was.

  “Yes… yes Your Majesty.” Stúfur said. “We… we didn’t know th—”

  “Si
lence,” I said. I wasn’t sure why I was so mad with them, but it was taking all the willpower I had not to go and decapitate each and every one of them for daring to take Alexa from me. “If you ever do anything like this again, if you ever so much as think of taking who I care about or what is mine, I will come after you, and I will catch you, and then I will torture you for as long as you can stay alive.”

  “We’re practically immortal,” one of the Lad’s—Ketrókur—said confidently.

  I nodded slowly. “Exactly.”

  His confident look dropped from his face. “Oh…”

  I looked to the girls. “Are you two okay?”

  “I am now,” Alexa replied, hugging me, heedless of the lightsaber that nearly sliced into her and that I had to quickly retract as I moved it out of the way so that it didn’t hit Rue.

  “Those bastards,” Rue spat as Alexa hugged me tightly. “They wanted to have a go at us. All of them. At once. Even for mythical beings, that’s simply not possible.”

  “We were just joking, my lady.”

  “My name is Rue. If you’re going to address me—” She stopped herself and shook her head. “Don’t.”

  “But you’re okay?” I asked her.

  “As okay as you can be after getting kidnapped by the Yule Lads. I’m mostly disappointed in myself for letting it happen. But they took us by surprise.”

  “How’d you find us?” Alexa asked.

  “I followed the trail. They left a spectral trail that I thought was from a beast. Thought they were werewolves.”

  “So you figured out how to use your powers?”

  “Some of them. I had to be told one of them. I know that might make me weaker, but it was a worthwhile trade-off to save you.”

  “Told?” Rue asked. “By who?”

  I realized my demonic companion was not at my side. I looked up to where I’d jumped down from and saw him watching us.

  It was probably the creepiest sight I’d ever seen.

  Looking up, and seeing a demonic face hiding in the shadows, peering down at you, wearing a very uncomfortable-looking expression.

  I almost cried out, but managed to get hold of myself.

  I pointed, and then had to look away from the face. “He told me.”

  The girls followed where I pointed, and Alexa cried out, “Crampy!”