Paladin 4: Christmas Special (Patreon)

“Asuriel, what are you wearing?” Darren asked when he saw his lover dressed in an oversized outfit of fluffy red and white fuzz. She had a silly looking conical hate that flopped in front of her face, where she blew it aside only for it to flop in front of her again.

“I’m Santa Claus!” Asuriel said, holding her arms wide. The wind caught her floppy sleeves, and she had to bring her wings shimmering into existence behind her to steady herself.

“What?”

“Santa Claus. He’s a mythological figure and the spirit of Christmas! That’s a holiday we celebrate every winter in the Heavens,” Asuriel explained.

“So, the seraphim celebrate a guy in a puffy red suit?” Morgana raised a brow skeptically. “What’s so special about him?”

“He sneaks around in the middle of the night, creeping down chimneys into people’s houses--“

Morgana’s look turned into a grin. “Alright, I think I can get on board with this holiday.”

It was Sasha’s turn to scowl.

“--And leaves presents for people underneath their Christmas trees!”

“Trees... inside their houses?” Sasha looked skeptical, but Morgana was excited.

“I want in! Can I be Santa Claus too?”

Asuriel shook her head. “No, but you can be one of Santa’s elves. They make all of Santa’s toys for him.”

Cassandra looked up from her pile of paperwork. “I suppose you ladies can go have fun if you want. I’ve got to get these shipping manifests done. Trade good sales have dropped by half a percent over the winter months...” She let out a loud sigh.

“That’s a shame. Usually, in the heavens, Christmas is the best month of the year for every business. Everybody is ready to spend in the spirit of giving!” Asuriel replied.

Cassandra’s eyes lit up. “The best month of the year, you say? Maybe I should get involved in this Christmas thing after all. Darren, let’s declare today a holiday!”

***

The people of Limedeep were unsure of what to make of Darren’s strange proclamation. It was the cold of winter, and there was little to celebrate. Why have a holiday in the snow and frigid chill?

But their king had given an order, so in small groups, the people of the city tried to celebrate this Christmas as they’d been commanded. But their spirits weren’t in it. It would take more than a royal decree to bring the joy of Christmas to every home.

“Come one, come all! The Silver Sword Merchant company is providing gifts to all citizens of Limedeep!” Cassandra yelled.

“Free gifts?” A few of Cassandra’s assistants glanced at her out-of-character charitable mood.

As the day wore on, word of the gifts Cassandra was handing out spread throughout the city. She had warm blankets, toys, silverware, and other useful trinkets aplenty. Most of it came from Darren’s Inventory, but some were brand-new items Cassandra put up herself, investing in the spirit of Christmas.

But while Cassandra was handing out gifts, Darren and Asuriel were decorating the city.

They flew from building to building, tossing down ribbons and lovely green wreaths and scattering them in all directions. Asuriel laughed playfully as she and Darren danced through the air.

Between the two of them, they coated the entire town with decorations.

“It looks like the entire town is decorated,” Darren said.

“Not quite!” Asuriel replied. “We need to get a tree!”

“A tree?”

“Yeah, a giant one for the entire city! And then one little one for the mansion.”

Darren nodded. “Alright, we’ll find a tree.”

Finding a little tree was easy. Darren just hunted down the largest tree in the area, tore it out of the ground as carefully as he could, and then hauled it home with Asuriel’s help. Darren cut a small hole in the second and third floors of the manor to get it to fit, but soon enough, they had their very own Christmas Tree that Asuriel could fly around to drop off the last of her decorations.

Trouble came when they went out looking for a full-sized tree. They needed something big enough for the entire city of Limedeep to see. Darren and Asuriel flew up as high as they could, searching far and wide for the tallest tree they could find.

Eventually, they spotted something in the wilderness to the Northwest of Limedeep, far from the westernmost city of the Northern Trade Union. These desolate wildlands weren’t part of the Sacred Seas, for they lay even further than demons would dare venture.

“We should be careful about this,” Asuriel warned. “We’re outside of the territory the heavens chart, and my GPS will stop working if we go much further.”

The air did indeed feel strange in this distant land. The Divine Aura and Demonic Aura blended together, as they must have in ancient days. Laura had told Darren a little about what that was like, but he hadn’t expected to experience it so soon.

“There it is!” Asuriel shouted. “The forest of giant trees we spotted from above!”

“Let’s grab it.”

Darren touched down near the tree. It was truly an enormous giant of the forest. It looked more like a mountain than a tree, and its girth was such that it could fit an entire keep inside of it. The trunk of this tree would be vast enough to carve an entire ship out of a single piece of wood. The branches alone would fill every hearth in Limedeep and keep them warm throughout the winter. It was almost a shame to cut it down.

But this was far from the only tree of its kind. In all directions, there were hundreds of such trees. They blanketed the area, leaving the soil beneath them barren and shrouded in eternal darkness. Perhaps felling this sickly older tree would give new life a chance to grow.

So Darren took Melancholy out and used it as an axe to hack at the trunk. Each swing of his sword took chips from the tree, and through hard work and much toil, eventually, he felled it. Before the tree stuck to the ground, Darren pulled it into his Inventory and took it home to Limedeep.

Asuriel was ecstatic with the new tree, and she decorated it from top to bottom.

“This is Limedeep’s first Christmas! We have to make it count!”

Already, people were gawking in awe at the massive tree Darren was erecting in the center of the city. It cast half the city in shadow with its tremendous girth.

It took Asuriel nearly an hour to finish decorating it, and when she was done, she stood proudly beside it.

“There’s only one thing left to do!” Asuriel said. “We have to light the star at the top of the tree!”

Darren handed Asuriel a torch and waited at the bottom with the rest of the crowded city, all of them eager to see exactly what Asuriel was doing with this forest giant. Why had she brought such an enormous tree to Limedeep, and why had she decorated it so?

“Merry... Christmas!” Asuriel shouted as she touched the torch to the massive star-shaped pyre at the top of the tree.

But when Asuriel tried to light the tree, something terrible happened.

The earth trembled as the ground quaked. From the earth, a massive wyrm arose.

Its body was covered in thick brown scales, and it was every bit as wide as the tree Darren and Asuriel had cut down. It has six sets of eyes on its head and a pair of enormous horns curling backward like those of a ram. Fire glowed in its eyes and its ferocious maw, and as it spoke the earth rumbled.

“Who dares steal a tree from my territory!” the massive beast said.

Darren examined the creature, unsure if he saw a seraphim or demon. It turned out he was faced with neither.

Absolute Analysis: Entity Analysis

Kram’patus, the Hungering Wyrm of the Desolate Wilds (Sixth-Order)

Alignment: Neutral (Chaos Diety.)

Kram’patus is a giant wilderness serpent born from the wild thoughts of the barbaric race of men who dwell in the Desolate Wilds. He can conjure earthquakes and has incredible defensive abilities.

“We didn’t know this tree was claimed,” Darren replied. He was prepared to offer this creature compensation for the tree.

But Kram’patus would hear none of it. The Hungering Wyrm’s monstrous face scrunched up in a scowl, and in one great breath, he swallowed the tree he and Asuriel had worked so hard to find and decorate. The massive gust of wind that followed tore all of Asuriel’s decorations down from around the city, ruining the past few hours of work.

“The decorations!” Asuriel cried.

“I, Kram’patus, will destroy this city in retribution for your foolishness, mortals!” the massive monster declared.

“No,” Darren replied.

The battle that followed was long and fierce, and it might have felled half the city if Darren was fighting alone. But he wasn’t alone. He had Asuriel, Cassandra, Morgana, Sasha, Ashe, and every other sigil wielder in the entire city to help him. Everyone poured their all into slaying this interloper, and with such power, even this sixth-order giant monster was slain.

“How can it be... how could there be so many powerful mortals here? What is this place?” Kram’patus groaned as he fought to break free and burrow into the ground for escape. But Darren would have none of that. He buried Melancholy deep in Kram’patus side to put an end to the monster once and for all.

“This is Limedeep,” Darren replied. Those were the last words the ferocious monster heard as Darren put the chaos deity down.

He dusted his hands and slid off the giant corpse, and gave Asuriel a pat on the back. She returned his smile with a dull look.

“What’s wrong, Asuriel?” Darren asked.

“Kram’patus ruined Christmas...” Asuriel groaned. “A good chunk of the city has been destroyed, and all the decorations are gone... I worked all week on those.”

“I see...” Darren muttered. “Go home a while. Rest. I will see if I can save Christmas. But there is one thing I’ll need from you.”

“What’s that?”

“Your hat.”

So Darren took Asuriel’s floppy red hat. He conjured many spare bodies for himself, and together they roamed the city putting everything back together and healing the wounded at phenomenal speed. Meanwhile, his main body crawled into Kram’patus’ stomach and cut out all of Asuriel’s stolen decorations, along with a few heaping piles of gold and treasure.

He took it all into his Inventory, and with the help of his other body, he set about restoring the decorations and handing out new gifts to everyone he found. Usually, these gifts came in the form of hammers and spare planks of wood, but the city folk were thankful nonetheless.

“Bless you, your majesty! My wife was already complaining about the draft!” A man chuckled as Darren helped him repair his roof.

“Merry Christmas,” Darren replied when the job was done.

Not only was the city repaired, but Kram’patus proved to be rather tasty as well. Cassandra and Sasha were responsible for cutting the chaos diety up and making a nice big stew out of him, and the free food was very popular on this cold winter day with so many people up and about.

“I think I’m beginning to like this Christmas holiday...” a man muttered. “We should do this every year!”

“Yeah!” a child cheered.

“It will be good to celebrate the day the city was almost destroyed and how we all came together to save it,” a woman added.

“Then so shall it be? We shall have Christmas on this day every year,” Darren declared.

And so it was that Limedeep’s first Christmas came to pass.

***

After handing out presents to all the people of Limedeep, Darren felt deeply satisfied. Knowing everyone would have warm hearths, full bellies, and happy smiles on this cold winter day warmed his heart.

“It looks like Limedeep really likes the idea of Christmas, Asuriel,” Darren said. “It was a good idea.”

Asuriel blushed. “Well... it wouldn’t have happened without you. I was ready to give up.”

Darren gave her a pat on the head. "I wouldn't have even started if not for you. The credit is yours."

“Everyone is positively thrilled, Darren! Admiration for you has never been higher! Now, absolutely everyone will want to work for the Silver Sword Merchant company!” Cassandra smiled.

“I bet you could go up to someone on the street and ask them to give you all their money, and they’d do it! With your reputation, robbing people would be that damn easy!” Morgana added.

“I have forty more recruits for the Order of the Rose just from today!” Sasha said.

Darren turned to all the others, reaching into his Inventory as he did so. “I’m not done yet. There are three good girls who deserve a present as well.”

“Only three?” Morgana sighed.

“And one naughty girl who will get a present too.”

From his Inventory, Darren withdrew his gifts, each neatly wrapped.

For Cassandra, he brought out a silver tray heavy with the finest incense Limedeep’s markets had to offer. For Morgana, he had a map he’d discovered in Hell that listed the location of a long-dead demon’s buried treasure. For Sasha, Darren had a pillow made of angel feathers. And for Asuriel, he had a length of velvet rope, both soft and strong, woven from the mane of a powerful demon lord.

“This is wonderful, Darren!” Cassandra beamed. “How can we possibly thank you?”

“I just wish I’d gotten you something in return,” Sasha blushed.

“Maybe there’s something in here I can nab really quick to give you...” Morgana eyed the heaping pile of swords and armor from his Inventory Darren had been sorting through the previous day.

But Darren shook his head. “Seeing all of you smile is gift enough for me.”

“I know!” Asuriel said as she held up her velvet rope. “I have the perfect present idea for Darren! But I’m going to need all of your help to give it to him!”

Asuriel ushered Darren to relax by the fire for a while, and his women whispered among themselves. Time passed as they all headed to the bedroom, and eventually, Darren heard Asuriel’s voice calling to him again.

“Alright, Darren! Your presents are ready!” Asuriel shouted.

Darren stood and made his way to the door. He swung it wide and was greeted by a sight that would give any man a very merry Christmas.

Asuriel had tied Cassandra, Morgana, Sasha, and herself together with her velvet rope, adorning each of them in ribbons. All except Asuriel held lovely gold bobbles for decorations clutched in their mouths, and each had a wreath interwoven with flowers wrapped around them.

“Merry Christmas!” Asuriel grinned. “Now, come open your presents!”

After that, Darren had a very merry Christmas indeed.

<Note>

I had to gloss over the giant epic battle, since that isn't in the spirit of Christmas. Maybe I'll flesh that part out someday. But for now...

Merry Christmas!