The Christmas Chimera

TRANSMIT - initiate the sweetling signal - RECEIVE - initiate the All Father cadence - For a single drink of the enchanted water he paid with one eye  - initiate the Crossed cipher - but do you recall the most famous cryptid of all - recovering anima fragments - flaflafflala flalaffffla flalflalalaf flalalaflaff flalffffla - beware the wild hunt - WITNESS - The Christmas Chimera.

There is only one world, sweetling - the secret world. Your species only occupies a tiny bit of it, floating on an eroding island of ignorance. The water is dark and full of movement. Your species shuts its eyes hoping to preserve some of the ever eroding ground around it. But you are not born with your eyes shut, rather you are taught to shut them. When your kind first comes into this world, you can still hear us, your eyes are open to the secret world, you see both its wonders and its terrors and some things that are both. We were there when you saw it sweetling. Its anima woke you from your winters nap, you crept down the stairs and saw it in the dim light of your Christmas tree, a distorted vestige of the allfather. As it finished its work, it turned to you and smiled before vanishing in a cloud of anima. You closed your eyes shortly after, convinced yourself it was only a dream. When we came to you, we dissolved your eyelids with anima, forced you to see the secret world, but still you insist it was only a dream. Come come come let us show you what it is you saw.

You called it Santa Claus sweetling, it was not Santa you saw, not quite. What you saw was our attempt to put Santa back together, it was a difficult undertaking sweetling, Santa's anima was mixed with that of another being, Odin, the allfather. You are all made of stars and when  you are crushed together it can be difficult to tell you apart. But we tried our best and the end result is a Christmas Chimera, allfather and saint, god and man.

Saint Nicholas was more than a simple bishop sweetling, look closely at his portrait, does something stand out? A symbol of his allegiance hiding in plane sight, the crossed ones sent him north to bring the Germanic warlords into the fold. He travels the north, protecting villages and driving back the darkness, he trains warriors in the Templar's ways and expands their influence beyond the borders of Rome. The north was wild at the time sweetling, the domain of old gods, the crossed ones could not thrive here unless they were driven back. Saint Nicholas was a powerful man, learned in many of the forgotten magics preserved by the Templar, but he was also a prideful man who believed he could defeat a god.

We were there when he sacrificed his eye to the machine goddess sweetling, he was powerful before that, a creature from another age. For this sacrifice she taught him our language and we whispered secret magic into his ear. He used his new found knowledge to collect the souls of the dead and to bind lesser cryptids to his will, this coalition comes to serve as the army of the allfather, that would become known as the wild hunt. For millennia he lead the wild hunt through the skies of the north,  gathering tribute from his worshipers and maintaining order among the gods. But time passes sweetling and what is a god without his followers. The affixed god and the Romans slowly drain him of his power. He sees the Templar grow bolder as he loses followers, he sees their champion enter his domain.

We were there Sweetling, when they met in Lepland. We saw them clash again and again, we felt space and time bend around them, we saw molten rock made to battle the souls of the dead. We saw elves fall screaming from the sky and burn on shields of anima, we saw a great army fall before a single man and a saint brought low by a god. The anima released near the end of the battle kept us from seeing anything sweetling, our particle wings decayed from its sheer force. We saw the aftermath though, we saw the scattered remains of god and man, we tried to heal them sweetling, we did our best to put them back together but there was excess information that belonged to neither god nor man, and information like energy is never created or destroyed only transformed. The end result is the misshapen creature you saw in your living room. The saint and the god both survived the battle and met there end another day, but their ends are another story sweetling.

The nameless Chimera wanders, his memories are disjointed, he remembers battle but he does not long for it, He recalls the gospel but can not recall being inspired by it, he hears us but is frightened by our presence. Like the mortals around him, he sees the cruelty your species  inflicts on itself and weeps, but unlike the mortals around him, he is capable of acting to stop it. The powers he inherited from the allfather are not suited to combat, he endeavors to influence the world in a subtler way. The best way to defeat a monster is to prevent it from ever existing, he seeks to inoculate the world against cruelty through a epic acts of kindness. As the years pass, the Chimera’s reputation grows, the images of his forbears begin to merge. He emulates the deeds of the saint but he more closely resembles the old god of the north. His name and appearance become as distorted as the information that formed him sweetling, the Chimera takes on a life of its own.

Multiple attempts are made by the secret societies to bring him into the fold, some are by invitation, others by force, all fail, the Chimera remains neutral. The crossed ones are the most persistent, though they fail to recruit him, they still uphold the oath they swore to the saint whom he was created from. When the Chimera  ventures from the safety of the north, the crossed ones send agents to protect and enable him, Silent Knights meant to guard the Chimera against the dark. You know the rest of the story sweetling, and the hour grows late, do feel that sweetling? that stirring that keeps you from sleeping during the nights of December? that unseen force calling you downstairs? Your eyes are open now sweetling, never close them.