12 Doors of Christmas, year 2: Door #6

Door #6: The Hotel

Long Nights gift in hand, Kabloo and Toddy leave the ruins of the charred hotel. Skipping their uneventful journey though the blackened interior to retrieve the gift, we join their mid-Long Nights bitching already in progress:

KABLOO: Gya, I want my Long Nights back! I should be back in Gobstop blowing my half of our fat penguin-snuffing paycheck on cockfights and pixie dust. If I wanted to spend the holidays looting a burned-out shambles, I would've joined the Gobstop FD.
TODDY: Yeah, I don't know what this is about. I don't even know why Nick wants these presents; doesn't seem like the golems are after 'em. He must have some kind of plan, though.
KABLOO: You and the yeti keep going on about this big plan Nicholas must have! But where was he the other day during that insufferable Idiot Festival the gingerbread men held for us? Where is he now? How, exactly, are we supposed to be fighting these golems from 25 years after they attacked?
TODDY: Look, I don't have a goddamn clue what this is about, but we trusted you last year, and I say it's Nick's turn, even if it seems like he's off his infallible wizard game.
KABLOO: Precisely! You trusted me last year, and I would have killed you all if I hadn't decided that I hated my boss more than I hated you! I hope Nicholas is just confused or stupid, because if he is keeping some kind of secret plan from us, it can't be anything good.

Meanwhile, on a grim hill overlooking the ruined lane, Nicholas finds the object of his solitary journey: the gnarled tree that marks his own neglected grave. The mighty wizard swallows hard as he makes out the letters of his name upon the eroded stone.

NICHOLAS: I guess they were right, eh, Nicholas? Not even magic beats fate. I suppose it was hubris to think that we could harness deep magic like the Long Nights to pull a cheap trick like cheating death. That's not what the Long Nights are for.

NICHOLAS: Still, we had a good run. Top of our class at the Academy, 3rd-level spells by 25, immortality by 30... When the spirits came for us, I thought that would be the end of it all, but we even outfoxed them and bought a few more decades. Of course, we did have the benefit of others' experience; seems like every bitter old man in history has had those three come knocking sooner or later. It's almost as though the gods themselves have no better ideas than to rehash the same tired fates year after year....

NICHOLAS: This stone's in bad shape. It doesn't appear that you've had many visitors. It's not surprising, I suppose, given that most of the elves were killed, and the survivors probably didn't have much fondness for you after that debacle of a plan. What could you have been thinking, using massed elves like that? What made you think they'd be good soldiers: their perpetual drunkenness, or the fact that they react to violence by crying and shrieking? Or maybe the fact that their corpses are a fire hazard?

Kneeling, Nicholas takes a handful of earth from the lonely grave.

NICHOLAS: In any case, I came to take a little something that I need and to leave a marker of my own. A fair exchange, I hope. I've got this plan, you see–as always. Only, I happen to have made some friends, something we've never been good at. Remember the Wizard Prom? Talk about a bloody disaster. I'm an immortal ruler of a mythical kingdom now, and I still can't look those guys in the face at the reunions.

NICHOLAS: I got this staff in the afterlife last year while I was temporarily deceased. It seems appropriate to leave it here now that you're– now that I'm gone for good. Hopefully, my friends and I will rewrite this whole timeline, mind you, and this grave will never be. I doubt it, though, if I may be honest. I've cheated fate before, but never a fate that I brought on myself. I ordered those golems built, and when I did, I knew this day might come.

NICHOLAS: Jampa, Toddy, even Kabloo... they've joined me in cleaning up our mess without any inkling of what they're doing and what they're risking. But then, every path leads at last to the grave. If I get my friends killed fighting these golems, though, the way that you got those elves killed... we'll both deserve a lonely grave.

With that bummer of a closing line, Nicholas departs, heedless of the traumatic tonal whiplash he has inflicted upon the hapless reader! What is Nicholas's plan? What dark deed has he committed to deserve death-by-golem? Tomorrow, we'll ignore these questions for a Jampa-heavy entry with a monster fight and some cursing!