12 Doors of Christmas, year 2: Door #11

 Door #11: The Tavern

JAMPA: Jampa got the present! Open the time hole, beard man! If Jampa gets home now, and runs until he drops dead, he can get to Grandma's just in time for pudding!

NICHOLAS: Just set it on the pile with the old ones, Jampa. Don't worry, you'll no doubt rope me into teleporting you to your grandmother's house again, so she can try to set me up with your aunts.
JAMPA: Heh heh. All Auntie Babs wants for Christmas is beard man.
NICHOLAS: Klaus... It's time for you to go.
KLAUS: Surely, I can help you–
NICHOLAS: No. The spaghetti of the timestream is hanging two feet from our figurative pasta forks already. The last thing we need is for you and I to die simultaneously at two points in our timeline. Walk away now, and the time differential will short; you'll forget about your whole trip to the Lane.
KLAUS: Ah, the time differential, of course! That must be why you look so different to me, as well.
NICHOLAS: Sounds plausible. Off you go.

As his past self reluctantly walks away to safety, Nicholas raises his hands in the air and begins to summon his time arch, his allies bolstering him against whatever attack may come next!

NICHOLAS: This is it, everyone. On your toes. The final golem won't let us return to the present without a fight, and unlike the others, he has no reason not to kill us.

 Nicholas summons his arch, and instantly the Golem of Christmas Past appears beside the lake, ready to defend our heroes' only passage back to their own time!

GOLEM: Nicholas. It's time to give up this pathetic gambit. Haven't you yet learned the lesson we came to teach you? Your hubris will destroy you, however desperately you fight!

TODDY: You know, I'm just about fucking done with speeches. Either we kill this big splintery asshole or he kills us; either way, I finally get some rest on my goddamn vacation days.

 Inspired by Toddy's low-dialogue approach to problem solving, Jampa joins him in charging the golem!

JAMPA: RAAH! FOR VACATION DAYS!
NICHOLAS: Just keep him busy, you two! This snow that's falling is the miracle the angels granted us! This is our window to bind him!

 But Toddy's exasperated rage avails him nothing as a snowglobe trap bubbles up beneath his feet, freezing him in place before he can reach the golem!

GOLEM: The past is mine to command, mortals. It's a simple matter for me to travel back to this battlefield after my victory and commandeer the town's many traps, with the foreknowledge of your every step. Do you not feel that we meet in a moment already past?

Undeterred, Jampa leaps atop the snowglobe to confront the golem face-to-face!

JAMPA: Golem is trying to make Jampa think about how time travel works! But Jampa is too smart for that! NOBODY understands time travel! Jampa has serenity to accept plots Jampa cannot follow!

NICHOLAS: A little longer, Jampa! This gift isn't working... I guess none of us "treasures" the caroler scarf, per se. It was worth a shot.

 With a wave of his silver scepter, the golem turns Jampa's childlike mind against him, de-aging him to a mere cub!

NICHOLAS: Damnation! No luck with the sleigh, either. Er, Kabloo, I know it breaches etiquette to request this of another caster...

KABLOO: But you want me to stand in front of the caster? Gya, fine! But I expect you to remember this some day when one of my unholy creations is coming to kill me!

KABLOO: Speaking of unholy creations... Summon Nature's Ally! Hee hee, this should keep your toy soldier busy for a while!

 No sooner does the vicious giant mushroom appear, though, than a familiar face from last year's adventure emerges from behind the hotel to engage the summoned monster in a wood-on-fungus grudge match!

NICHOLAS: Of course, you loosed the nutcracker sentry and made it hostile! But if I dispel magic... warded. Obviously, otherwise it wouldn't have still been loose last year. I either need to increase my intelligence, or start making stupider golems.

KABLOO: Gyah! You're a lot quicker than you look, aren't you? Nicholas, a little help? Most of my spells are no good against this thing!
GOLEM: I have to grudge against you, goblin, but if you insist on protecting my captor, I have no compunction against killing you, either. Your past is soiled enough to justify whatever I might have to do.

 And so, looking somewhat less regal than it did a moment ago, the golem snatches up Kabloo in its massive wooden maw and begins to crush him!

KABLOO: Nicholas! If the binding won't work, just free the damned spirit! I'm not dying just so you can pat insipid elf children on the head for all eternity! Aagh!

 With a wet thud, Kabloo falls from the crushing mouth of the Golem of Christmas Past. Nicholas alone remains to face his own creation amid the soft, increasingly desolate snowfall: his wasted miracle.

GOLEM: Release us, wizard! Release us, and this ends! How can you cling to this ill-gotten power after witnessing your own grave?

NICHOLAS: You mean visiting my own grave, spirit. For supplies. Even in death, I was making contingency plans. My older self provided my with the lonely grave I needed to bind you. Perhaps he provided me with some wisdom, as well... he sacrificed all those allies, all those innocents....

 Nicholas reaches past previous days' gifts to the one Jampa retrieved from the tavern minutes ago. The air glows crimson with strange and ancient magic.

NICHOLAS: My allies may not treasure wealth on this day, given the fate they're facing, but they treasure their return home for the last of the Long Nights... and only these gifts from the past can power the arch. So take it! I sacrifice this one! A Treasured Gift, a Miraculous Snowfall, and Earth from a Lonely Grave: Spirit, you are mine to command!

With a groan and a creak, the golem stands at attention. Nicholas does not pause to address it, but walks past its rigid form to survey his friends' fallen forms.

GOLEM: I am at your command.

NICHOLAS: Yes. I've won. Twenty-five years from home, lord of an empty town. Immortal. Who dares wins. Who dares wins this.