Many are the myths and tales which assert that Santa's name is Nicholas. These are all wrong. Nicholas is the name of his second son (his firstborn being Arius). In actual fact his name was Cole. He had never quite understood why, exactly, so many people persisted in confusing him for his middle child and had tried to fix his bewilderment by giving to mankind a simple poem, describing himself. The poem went as such:
Old King Cole was a Merry Old Soul,
And a Merry Old Soul was he.
He called for his pipe, and he called for his bowl,
And he called for his fiddlers three.
(The ‘fiddlers three’ were his elves Winky, Splinky, and Zf’zhk’fareyegn.)
But unfortunately it is an ironclad law that if a poem is good, society will declare it a 'nursery rhyme' fit only for children (adults prefer reading illegible, choppy hogwash), and will bury it in the recesses of their minds when they grow up. Consequently it had never caught on that his name was Cole - not Nicholas. But you, my dear reader, are an intelligent and sensitive soul, with a mind capable of fathoming the deepest mysteries of the universe and the heart of a child, and hence I can rest assured that when I say 'Nicholas' you will know I mean not the man but his son.
What the myths and tales do assert that is true is that Santa, and his sons, spend all year long making presents for all the good little children and glabrous horrors, save on Christmas Eve when they deliver them. (Santa had vaguely wondered if perhaps his son’s activities on Christmas Eve were to blame for all and sundry thinking he was named ‘Nicholas,’ but then why did nobody honour ‘Old Saint Arius’? Some things, alas, must remain a mystery.)
His wife, Mrs. Claus, was in charge of baking the elves cookies. This could have been the cause of disaster, but fortunately Mrs. Claus was the snazziest dancer in the Arctic and at the time of the assault was off teaching the Hokey Pokey to yetis.
He also had a daughter. Her name was Mary. She often helped out in the kitchens, which may cause our readers some worry, but they need not fear. You see, Mary had a little lamb. Its fleece was white as snow, and Nicholas had just banned it from helping in the workshop because it kept turning the boys' action figurines into death mechs. (Nicholas regretted letting it go to cultivation school.)
This had led to no end of contrariness between the two siblings, but the Clauses had raised their children right and instead of settling their disputes with violence they settled them through aggressively impolite gardening. Hence, at the time of the assault, Mary was planting silverbells and cockleshells and pretty maids all in a row outside of Nicholas’ door, which he tripped over when he went to answer the alarm.
And thus it was that Tiana’s sacrifice did no more than damage some kitchen equipment and leave a number of elves with booboos (which needed to be kissed better).
Tiana and her crew had been tragically wrong about the purpose of the kitchen, but they were quite right about the purpose of the larger log cabin to which it was attached. Santa’s home was a comfy, cosy abode, generously attired, with a proper hearth and couches surrounding it, an extensive library, Mrs. Claus’ private kitchen, and a room for cultivation.
Where it differed from the norm was the fact that it did not, strictly speaking, exist in conventional space. None of Santa’s workshop did - it is a matter of logic, after all, that Santa cannot reach all the world’s children in a single night flying at normal speeds. He would be unusually lucky if he could reach Brazil from Japan westwards without stopping; add in the additional constraint of giving presents to tens of millions of children, and it becomes impossible. Consequently Santa’s workshop needed to exist outside of the space-time continuum, in the aspect of eternity (as did his sleigh, pulled by eight-dimensional reindeer whose contours were defined by an unfathomable geometry and a hellish multiplicity of angles).
It therefore flickered, on occasion, as it passed through planes unknown and planets unimaginable, and as the elves came in and out of the tunnels which connected to Santa’s basement (from whence that nightmare horde came forth for cookies, in more normal circumstances).
It was flickering now as elves came in and out and Santa’s children - who lived separately from their parents, in warm and welcoming abodes tucked into secret otherworlds - directed repairs. The kitchen needed to be doused and repaired posthaste, new cookies needed to be baked, and reports needed to be filed.
It was at the conclusion of one of these reports that we leave our extended digression and return to the plot proper, for Arius had just finished enumerating a recapitulation of the events and a recount of the financial damage (which was quite boring, and need not be recapitulated or recounted here), and Santa - sitting gloriously atop his throne (which looked suspiciously like an old wingback chair) - was looking jolly.
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This was not particularly unusual, for Santa always looked jolly. Unlike his awful assistants, he was the very picture of a mall Santa, with a rotund body, a curly white beard, and a crimson red suit (red being the colour of magic, after all). The only parts of his person which hinted at a more-than-human nature were his ears, which stuck out just a titch too far for what was normal, and his grey eyes, which twinkled with elfin merriment. It was the latter which sparkled as Santa leaned forward, and addressed his son.
“Hohoho, so I see we’re in for the usual November fun. At least this time the regular interlopers didn’t wait until after American Thanksgiving. Any survivors?”
Arius, a thin, serious young man with black hair and a triangular beard, flipped through the report he’d been handed and scowled. “Unfortunately, they were all slaughtered horribly outright, barring one survivor.”
“And yet I sense bad news.”
Arius knelt down, his forehead sweeping towards the floor. “Forgive me, father - the elves got their hands on her before I did.”
Santa sighed, but waved away his apology. The elves always showed their enthusiasm at the worst times. “Water under the ice floe. Did the elves at least get anything useful out of our unlucky survivor?”
Arius kept kneeling. “After discoursing with the elves in question, I discovered that they intended to uncover who she was, who sent her, and why, but regrettably they decided to play a practical joke first, and pulled out the belt sander. Between the pain and the terror the shock proved too much, and the poor girl died of a heart attack.”
“They don’t make cultivators like they used to, huh?”
Arius snorted. “Too much time spent cultivating the qi, and not enough cultivating the spirit. At least that was the conclusion of Nicholas, when he examined the corpse.”
(Nicholas, the reader will remember, is Santa’s son, not Santa himself.)
“And did he find anything, or have we been left with a wonderful puzzle to amuse ourselves with as we enter the Christmas season?”
“The situation is bad, but not quite that bad. Trying to see into her past revealed that it’s been occluded - all but certainly intentionally - but he was able to track her footsteps, back to the city from which she was sent.”
Santa said nothing. He was drinking his hot chocolate. Arius remained quiet for a moment, ruminating over something.
“Father, please let me hunt down the person responsible, and ensure they never trouble us again.”
Santa stood up, descending majestically from his throne (which may or may not have been a wingback), and laid a hand on Arius’ shoulder. “And if you are not back by Christmas? The days grow bleaker, the nights more deadly. I need you, my son.”
He picked up his hot chocolate mug (it was shaped like a snowman), taking a sip as he looked out the window. The elves were having a snowball fight.
“The problem is not if, or even when, they will trouble us again. The problem is what they’re doing that makes them think we’re a problem - what crimes, what monstrosities, are they perpetrating upon Innocence and Childhood? What evils do they plan to unleash? These questions need answers, else we may see more lost than a day’s cookies.”
Outside the window, Mary’s lamb had joined in the snowball fight. It was launching devastating surprise attacks against the elves, using its snow white fleece as camo. (Alas for the elves, their colouration had come from out of space and was instantly noticeable on the albescent slopes.) Santa watched them play with a melancholic smile, but his voice was stern as he delivered his verdict.
“Send… the janitor.”
Arius did not argue. He bowed, and descended into the basement and the bowels of the earth, passing through cyclopean halls for what felt like an age until at last he saw before him a cleft in the rock, twisted in blasphemous patterns, and entered a small cavern.
The scent of cleaning vinegar and monstrosities older than time assailed his nostrils, and Arius adjusted his robe as he stepped over non-euclidean brooms. (His robes were black, and - tragically - made not of silk but of warm and thick cotton. Evidently nobody had told him to dress appropriately to the genre.)
Something shuddered in the caliginous gloom, lumbering up from its desk to face him. “For what have you called me?”
"Santa has need of you."
There was a clatter, and the click of chitinous joints.
"Has Rudolph gotten into the moonshine again?"
Arius snorted, and explained what had happened. When he finished there was a wobbling, as if the thing was trying to shake its head.
"Alas, that the Christmas cookies should be targeted like that."
"I think it is more likely that the workshop was targeted, and the cookies merely ended up in the crossfire."
A long, thin pretarsus with three wicked claws reached out for Arius, and patted him on the shoulder.
"You just don't appreciate the magic of your mother's cooking."
Arius said nothing. The janitor was wrong about the assault, but he was correct that Arius couldn't appreciate the magic of his mother's cooking - he didn't know alchemy, after all.
The darkness paused, considering, and then-
"So what would you have me do?"
Arius' reply was perfunctory: "Clean up the mess."