Life Omake: Rigal’s Merry Christmas III: A Christmas Miracle (Patreon)

Rigal’s Merry Christmas III: A Christmas Miracle

Rigal Phenex

We stood outside Santa’s underground city, not that anyone could tell normally. It looked more or less like a part of the glacier and though there were subtle tells now that I looked carefully, I suspected Zatanna would never have noticed had there not been the telltale hum of wards.

“Let’s go knock,” Clark said, then put a hand on my shoulder, tugging me back. “Without the hellfire. We’re going to be neighborly and ask them nicely if Santa’s home.”

“I wasn’t going to,” I lied, feigning the victim. “Don’t you have any faith in me? After all I’ve done? I’ve saved the world by your side, Clark. More than once!”

“You also started a fire in Atlantis just to prove to Aquaman that hellfire would burn underwater,” he replied dryly.

“I mean… It ignited, so the experiment was a success. And it’s not like I burned down anything important.”

“You torched half of Queen Mera’s garden. They’re still upset with you.”

“That’s okay. I make it a point to only annoy people when it’s funny.”

“That’s called bullying. What you’re doing is called bullying.”

We continued to bicker as we waited for Santa to answer his door. The girls had a variety of reactions to our verbal jousting. Kitten was shocked that the one and only Superman could be on good terms with a devil, while Lois looked amused by it all. Zatanna, for her part, let out a long-suffering sigh, far too used to my antics.

I felt several spell matrices scan us to discern our intentions. They were extremely subtle, so much so that I would not have noticed a few months ago. I’d improved a great deal after having practiced on the detection wards around Shadowcrest Manor.

Finally, when it became clear that we would not simply leave and our visit was no accident, the ice slid apart to reveal a large corridor. Or perhaps an antechamber would have been a better description. It was massive, easily as large as the interior of a parking structure or a grand cathedral. There were ice pillars on either side that held up the superstructure, no doubt enchanted with magic.

There, we found a pair of trolls. Each was nine feet tall and dressed in composite leather and steel armor that looked like it hadn’t been updated since the late Roman era. Then again, that might have been accurate. The armor was, of course, green and red and enchanted heavily to be far more durable than appearances would suggest.

“Who goes there?” one grunted with surprising eloquence for a troll.

Seeing how I promised I’d help Kitten with negotiations as well, I stepped forward. I dipped my head in a shallow bow. “Hello, my name is Rigal Phenex, a devil of the Underworld. I am looking for Santa Claus. He has a soul that I would like to bargain for.”

“You–! A devil? Here? Begone, creature! Your kind is not welcome here!” he barked, pounding his fist into his palm.

“Now that’s rude. I believe a soul was sent to you by mistake and would like to discuss the matter with the lord of your underground city.”

“It’ll be a sunny day in winter before we allow you to step foot here, demon!”

“Devil, not demon. You’re not the first to make the mistake, but you being a magical creature yourself, I expected better of you. I hope you realize how racist that is,” I complained. I clearly wasn’t getting anywhere with them.

“Rigal? What are they saying?” Lois asked. Her curiosity could’t stand for her to be left out of the loop.

“Hmm? Oh, right. They’re probably speaking a funny dialect of Byzantine Greek if my suspicions about Santa’s origins are right. I wonder how much their language has diverged over the years… Anyway, they’re being racist jerks and calling me a demon. I sometimes forget that not everyone has an automatic translator in their heads.”

“Do they know Superman? Maybe they’ll let us in if we throw his name around.”

It was as good an idea as any. I thumbed the big guy. “This is Superman, the foremost hero of the world. I am here on a mission of goodwill, as can be vouched for by his presence. Can you please go get Santa?”

“You have enthralled the world’s champion? You fiend! Does your depravity know no bounds?” the chatty troll shouted. His partner had yet to say a word but was doing a decent job of looming over us threateningly.

“Now he’s saying I must have brain-fucked him into being my meat puppet,” I translated. “I haven’t done any fucking lately… hint hint, Zatanna?”

“Not with that attitude, buster,” she scoffed. She nudged me aside. “Let me try. Ahem, Mr. Troll, I am Zatanna Zatara, of the mage line of Zatara. I can personally confirm that Rigal Phenex is here to–”

“We recognize no mage line by that name, wench,” he growled. “I grow weary of your prattling. Begone.”

“Okay… That hellfire plan is starting to sound better and better…”

Clark gently pulled Zatanna back before she hexed the trolls. “Let’s not be hasty. Is there any way you two can use some kind of translation magic? I can’t understand them.”

“How did you talk to Santa last time then?” Lois asked.

“The same way we’re talking to the trolls. Powerful mages and supernatural creatures mostly all figure out translation spells of some sort eventually. I assume a globe-trotter like Santa has that one down pat,” Zatanna answered with a shrug. “Us devils get it for free. It’s pretty great; it’s really expanded the shows I can binge.”

“Begone or perish, intruders,” the trolls demanded. “This is your final warning.”

I let out a dejected sigh. Today was Christmas Eve. Granted, I was a devil so the religiosity was a bit of a miss for me, but it was still supposed to be a happy day. If nothing else, the sheer commercialization of what was supposed to be a sacred day tickled me pink.

“I didn’t want to get violent,” I told the trolls, “but I’ve got a contract to fulfill and you’re in the way. Remember, this could have ended with a quick conversation.”

They got ready to fight. Trolls weren’t known for using sophisticated weapons, but their Roman-esque armor came with sturdy-looking gauntlets with metal studs that rang faintly of mana. The two didn’t let me charge a spell. One immediately rushed me while the other pulled out a horn and blew, alerting the defenders below.

That was already far better trained than any other troll I’d known before. Back in my old world, the ones that still lived in the Black Forest of Central Europe were brutes. They had fantastic regeneration and strength that made them about fifteen times as strong as a grown human man, but neither were all that meaningful with them being as dumb as they were. If nothing else, I was impressed with Santa’s ability to train these things.

I leaned out of the way of his punch and used the momentum as a counterweight to kick outward. A blazing construct of a bird’s talons formed around my foot. The ambient temperature around the antechamber skyrocketed and a layer of water and steam formed around its walls.

“Hellfire Cassowary,” I called.

The troll stumbled past me, his punch turning into an ungainly flailing. Hellfire, being the corrosive substance it was, scorched clean through the troll’s thigh, leaving his left leg attached by a sliver of flesh.

Trolls had impressive healing factors; everyone knew that. But that was only true when there was something to heal. Hellfire not only turned most things to carbon dust; its absurd heat cauterized what bits it left behind, inhibiting most forms of healing.

The guard troll collapsed on one leg, howling in agony. Kitten’s screams weren’t far behind; she was a sheltered girl who’d never been in a fight before, never mind a devil’s brand of violence. I had to give Lois props; for a civilian, she looked thoroughly unbothered by the sudden violence. A journalist of her caliber was made of sterner stuff.

“Rigal!” Clark shouted. The boy scout never did like me fighting to maim. Even when I healed everyone afterwards, he’d always taken issue with my “excessive bloodlust.”

“Guard the civvies, Clark. I’ll stick to nonlethal means for now,” I drawled as I leapt towards the second troll. Already, hidden doors in the ice opened up, spilling a horde of defenders.

The reinforcements were an impressive mix of trolls, elves, and reindeer. Some trolls wore gauntlets that were extra-wide, as if bucklers had been fused into the backs of their hands. Others carried clubs like they typically would.

The elves were as diverse as humans and far more organized than their troll allies. They were only waist-height, but they formed up with spears that looked like they’d been made from sharpened candy canes. A few of them were even on the backs of reindeer, extra-long canes wielded like lances. Behind them were a group of elves that began chanting in gnomish.

Their leader was also mounted. He was an elf with a snow-white beard so long that he had to tuck it in his belt. He radiated magic and I pegged him at roughly the peer of a competent knight or bishop. Judging by the glowing nose on his steed, I had a feeling I knew his steed by name.

I let out a bark of laughter. We were, quite literally, up against a fantasy raid party. Green and red were their predominant colors and, aside from the Christmas theme, they could have come straight out of a Warcraft screenshot. I felt like the Witch King assaulting Minas Tirith or something.

“Mrof a llaw dnuora su!” Zatanna called. The ice answered. The columns of ice that had supported the chamber now expanded from either side, closing off the reinforcements and creating a chokepoint.

“Fuck yes!” I whooped, rushing forward to meet the oncoming army. “Z, support me!”

“You could just take their air!” she yelled back, exasperated.

“How many chances am I gonna have to say I kicked Rudolph’s ass?”

“My boyfriend is an idiot!”

“Love you too, dear!”

The reindeer-elf cavalry met my charge. That was how I learned what sort of magic these elves specialized in: candy magic. I’d thought they would have preferred ice magic, but no; these fuckers went balls deep on the Christmas spirit. Unlike the trolls’ armor, everything the elves used, including the armor worn by their reindeer mounts, was made of hardened sugar.

Two giant woodpeckers formed over my fists, their oversized beaks acting like punch-daggers. I crossed them, catching a candy lance and burning straight through. Sugar burned. I was sure these weren’t normal candy canes, but my fire wasn’t normal fire either and after so long in this world, I was nearing ultimate-class.

I hadn’t started out as a brawler. Back home, dad trained me as most kings were trained: commanders first, artillery mages second, and close-range combatants a distant third.

It was the natural course for the king of a peerage. Not only did the downfall of the king signal the end of a rating game, a commander ought to be able to see the whole battlefield to make the most informed decisions possible. So though a Phenex could stand in the frontlines with no hesitation, I was taught to favor the rear if possible.

That was a pragmatic choice, but it simply wasn’t how things were done here. Here, everyone fought, and usually up close and personal. It was a part of the superhero appeal, that simplistic, “Everything can be resolved with righteous hearts and clenched fists,” mentality. 

Was Batman the greatest strategist alive? Sure, even I’d bow my head in that regard. But did he insist on punching people in the face? Yes, yes he did.

Was Aquaman the ruler of an entire empire with the armies to match? Yes. But did he decide to leave his undersea empire behind to personally represent Atlantis on the surface? Also yes. And did this “diplomatic endeavor” involve a whole lot of face-punching? As a matter of fact, it did.

All that to say, these guys were a terrible influence on me. There was a simple, pure joy to be found in an old-fashioned slugfest. It was an inexplicable fulfillment of manly desires, a true man’s romance.

Now, an army of elves and trolls? Rudolph and his Christmas jingle herd? How could I possibly resist? Sure, I had attacks that could level mountains, as I’d done to Yellowstone a few months ago, but this looked like far too much fun for me to end it so quickly.

I cackled as I punched a troll so hard he left a crater in the wall five elves tall and two deep. I picked up a candy lancer by his pointy boot and used him to club down his reindeer mount. I dropkicked another mounted elf and rode his reindeer like a skateboard as it tried to recover from its charge.

I could barely tell what anyone else was doing. Zatanna had taken a spot behind Clark and was tying up the ones that got past me. Clark was being a good wall and occasionally zapping an overeager troll with his eyeballs.

It was chaos. Bedlam. A glorious mosh pit of flailing limbs and candy-themed weapons. I lost myself in the song of battle until I met the captain of Santa’s guard, the old elf who rode Rudolph into battle.

We crossed blades, candy-lance to flame-daggers. Even as the candy burned, it grew, sprouting multi-pronged branches that threatened to skewer me. I kicked the spine of the lance with a Hellfire Cassowary, shattering it into so many sugary splinters.

The pair withdrew swiftly, Rudolph cantering back with finely honed instincts. The pair were almost as mobile as I was. Rudolph seemed to have a handle on ice magic and could gallop across the air on snowflakes. As they circled around, I could see another candy lance  taking shape in his hand.

How could I not answer? An excited shout left my lips as a ball of fire formed in my hands. I morphed and shaped it with the wind until it formed a long, pointed beak and a graceful, serpentine neck. Wings bloomed around it, large enough for me to ride had I been so inclined.

“Hellfire Heron!”

We clashed again and again. Though he was strong, his candy weapons were no match for my family magic. They shattered as many times as we crossed, only for him to remake another by the next turn.

I wondered if he enjoyed our joust as much as I did. Then, I heard Zatanna shout in alarm.

I looked down and saw what the grounded elves had been preparing. Staying on-brand, they’d formed golems out of gingerbread. Each gingerbread man was nearly eighteen feet tall, twice as tall as the trolls. They were armed with gingerbread shields and shortbread swords and lumbered forth to reinforce their organic allies.

I couldn’t have that. Zatanna wasn’t in any true danger there, neither was Clark obviously, but Lois and Kitten made fighting troublesome. Zatanna for one had little experience in combat while protecting someone else.

“Esiar eht negyxo level!” my lovely girlfriend shouted. And I immediately felt her mana saturate the air. It was a blessing, a gift to me and no one else. It was also tacit permission to stop holding back, if only for a moment.

Oxygen was the key to fire. It wasn’t strictly necessary for magical fire, which fed on mana, but it certainly didn’t hurt. Now that I had it in abundance, I could make one attack to clean them all out.

I hovered between the lumbering gingerbread giants and my friends. Wings spread out, I formed one last construct of the night. “Hellfire Condor!”

Named for the mundane birds with the largest wingspan, my construct let out a deafening screech. It grew and grew until its crimson flight feathers touched each edge of the antechamber. Then, with a mighty flap, a torrent of scorching air blasted them all backwards.

All the oxygen that Zatanna generated combusted as well. There was an earth-shattering explosion in front of us. The fireball was brief but intense, instantly baking the gingerbread giants to so much charcoal. Any backlash was absorbed by my condor, sparing the two humans from the heat. And when the smoke cleared, the Christmas-themed army had been thoroughly routed.

Battle won, I went about the tedious task of healing the injured. It was the only way to keep the good guys off my back, especially since I’d started dating one of them.

Finally, I came to Rudolph and his rider.

“Santa. Where is he?” I demanded.

“Gone,” he wheezed, coughing up smoke with each word. “He’s not here, intruder.”

“What? Why? Rudolph is still here obviously so he hasn’t started his annual flight yet.”

“I was making a special delivery,” came a stern but elderly voice behind us. “I see now that there are even more who deserve coals in their stockings this year.”

We whirled to find ol’ Saint Nick himself, though he didn’t look all too jolly at the moment. He was as the stories portrayed him, with one key difference: He radiated magic. It was not the magic of mages, or even devils, but of gods, the magic of faith. Here and now, in this time of year, he was a rival to some of the greatest spellcasters in this reality.

He looked around at the entrance to his city and frowned. Even that gesture felt oddly wholesome, like a grandfather ready to lecture rowdy children. Clark especially looked like a boy who’d gotten caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

“Even more? Special delivery?” I asked. Then, I was reminded of an old story. It was one I’d read years ago, but one I’d dismissed as being too ridiculous, even for this wacky setting. “D-Did you go to Apokolips?”

“Why yes, young Rigal. Who else deserves a special delivery of coal? Hohoho!”

“I… I have no words…”

“Rigal?” Lois voiced hesitantly. “Care to fill us in?”

“I cannot, Lois. All I can say is: Game recognize game. Here stands before us the greatest troll of them all.” I did the only thing I could. I knelt, dropping to one knee in awe of this man, nay, this god.

“What? Who is Apokolips? What is Apokolips?”

“Wrong question. Apokolips is a place, and its ruler is…” Zatanna, my lovely girlfriend and Bishop, said. As a fellow lover of mayhem, albeit to a more moderate scale, she too knelt by my side. “ Well, as Rigal said: Game recognize game.”

“Oh, that explains absolutely nothing, lovely. Have you two forgotten why you came here?”

“To blueball Big Blue?” I said innocently,

“Ahem!” Kitten coughed insistently. She’d finally recovered her nerve now that the danger had passed. “My soul?”

“Right!” I turned to the thoroughly amused Santa and said, “Oh, mightiest of trolls, I, your humble admirer, have come to beseech you. Please release the soul of this most colossal of imbeciles so that I might fulfill my contract and be rid of her from my side.”

“Well, why didn’t you say so? You could have waited for me to come back, you know.”

“Your servants did not tell us you were off on this most noble of quests. Had I known, I would have waited patiently.”

“Very well, let’s see what we can do about this young lady’s soul.”

“A pair of devils quests for the soul of a girl, only to bow to Father Christmas,” Lois muttered. “This really is the season of miracles…”

“You still can’t write about any of this, dear,” Clark reminded her gently.

“Pft, yeah right. Who’s going to believe me?”

Author’s Note

This concludes my Christmas omake series. Hope you enjoyed it. What Rigal’s referencing is an old comic in which it is revealed that Santa specifically visits Apokolips each year to give Darkseid a stocking full of coals. For those who are unaware, Darkseid is a New God and one of the strongest villains in the setting.

Third day? I guess it’s time for three jokes:

Q: Why doesn’t Santa have any kids?
A: Because he only comes down the chimney.

Q: Why is Santa’s sack so big?
A: He only comes once a year.

Q: Why is Santa so jolly this time of year?
A: He knows where all the naughty girls live.