“His Majesty has arrived!” A scholarly woman announced from outside of an expensively furnished room. A deep purple wooden crescent-shaped table with five matching chairs in the center, four chairs around the outside and a larger and more ornate chair on the inside. Gilded drapery fluttered from the breeze, flowing through the open balcony doors. The room overlooked the castle town sprawled below. The walls were adorned with the portraits of various beings that had once ruled over the kingdom.

The double doors slowly swung open as a man strode in confidently, his importance is emphasized by the superfluous amount of gilded apparel. “Let’s begin, I really do detest this kind of situation but do explain how some of the prisoners I personally sent to the prisons lowest level escaped.” the king said as draped his cape over the center chair and sat down.

“Your majesty, what happened was a series of complete coincidences. One of the summoned individuals out ran our trainee guards and happened to find someone inside the jail with knowledge of how the prison was organized. From there they probably planned to let the worst convicts out as a distraction and get out.” a rugged heavyset man explains. Smashing his open hand down on the table the king shouted, ”Eldin, I already understand that! What I want to know is why that thing even made it out of my audience chamber and how the blasted wall was broken!”

Shifting his eyes to the woman beside him he replied, “That is best explained by Fiona your majesty.” taking the cue Fiona abruptly starts to explain, “It seemed that the subject was either instructed on what his surroundings would be right after being summoned or was mentally unstable. The latter is easier to believe but less likely considering the events that followed. His escape process shows at least some form of intelligence if not premeditated intent on escaping.”

Taking a breather while letting her words sink in she continues while nervously fiddling with her staff, “The wall was broken with the aid of Mr.Cedric, the previous king's murderer. He imbued the subject which appears to be some sort of neutral attributed construct with a magic nullifying ability. The scale of the ability alone should leave Mr.Cedric weakened for weeks but with his companion, he should be quite far by now.”

The king furrowed his eyebrows and asked, “What companion? Who‘s accompanying him?.” From the side, a timid looking man fixed his posture before opening his notebook and saying, “Three from the bottom level made it out with him, all from the same breach so anyone of them could be his companion. We can rule out the spy since they have never had any interaction but that leaves two he knows. One is a beastman, he originated from the wolfman tribes and had been imprisoned by the last Queen. The other is the former jester, he-” The king interrupts with another bang on the table as his face distorts in rage, “She! The jester back then was a she.”

Fiona, the timid man who was just speaking and another woman wearing a crisp and well-fitting suit gulped audibly as silence prevailed the room. “Catch her, go to the divination master. Find her and kill her this time! I have no time to deal with another mess. Report to me when this is over, I have many other things to accomplish yet.”

Quietly at first but firmly to the end, Fiona responds, “I’m afraid we can’t do that your majesty. The divination masters, as well as their best students, have left.”

“What do you mean it can’t be done? I want you to know you are here to carry out all of my whims. Not to tell me what’s possible and what isn’t. Explain yourself!”

Taking a deep breath Fiona slowly explains herself, “All of the divination masters left into hiding. Reports say that they kept uttering about the end being near. They were almost identical to the doomsayers in the slums, incoherent rambling and all. Grandmaster Olsen was said to have stopped talking completely, always seen glancing over his shoulder and quickening his pace. It’s as if someone or something is supposed to be hunting him. Without competent divination, we have no way to track down individuals with their strength efficiently. We can at best estimate their location by a few hundred kilometers.”

The merchant spoke up at this moment, “Your majesty. We of the merchant’s guild can help with this. Every town has our people and using the latest magic we can easily communicate information. We may not know where the jester is but tracking a hulking man with his distinctive features should be easy enough. As for the construct, I’ve already had a rough sketch of him from the trainee guards description. By now, any and all towns on a conventional map have our people keeping an eye out. It can’t have gone far, at most a few kilometers in a given direction by now.”

“Good, good Montrelle. I’ll leave the pursuit of the convicts to you Eldin. Don’t fail me, you know the consequences.” The king says as he gets up, pushing his chair back. “One more thing, the trainee guards involved in the incident have one chance to redeem themselves. As it stands, all of them are due for a visit to the gallows. Since I’m their benevolent ruler I’ll give them an option. They can accept their punishment or they can stake their family on the line and hunt the construct. The only anomaly is the construct and it may have something to do with what has spooked the divination master. If they shall accomplish bringing the whole construct back then all of them live. If half of it makes it back I’ll spare half of them. If it is confirmed dead I’ll spare one on whimsy and if they fail those who opted to take the chance shall be hung along with their entire family. Don’t let them know of this in advance, take their families as they decide and release them after finding their families. No family equates to a swift death.” Turning around, he happily skips out of the room leaving a dour atmosphere in the room.

First to leave is Montrelle, the head of the merchant’s guild. Next is the royal scholar, Niche followed by Eldin, a retired general serving as the king’s military advisor. Fiona, the kingdom’s strongest combat mage, stays behind staring into her crystal embedded in her staff. “Just a bit more. Just a little bit longer. If I can help this construct, it may be able to buy me time. If only the void dragon or the chaos mage escaped instead.” she mutters before teleporting away with a sigh.

*****

“Hey! Hey Mortimer. Isn’t today a festival?” Helios asks. “No, the closest festival would be the day of beginnings, about 7 days from now. Why?” Mortimer replies. “Nope! I’m sure today’s a holiday. Remember when I went around giving people gifts? It was a few hundred thousand years ago but I remember a certain Jason told me about it.”

Mortimer cross-legged and thinks for a while as Helios tries to display his memory through an opaque floating glass shard. “Hmmm, try the elven territories during the last purge, you did personally visit them didn’t you?”

Helios immediately adjusts his spell with his left hand and moves his right counterclockwise to see further into the past. After a few minutes of staring into the flickering shard of glass, the image stabilizes and shows Helios dressed in red. “Hey! Hey, Mortimer. I got it! Its gift giving day! Remember, there was that one Jason that told me that people in his world receive gifts from a fat red guy?”

Mortimer walks behind helios and peaks into the glass, “Yeah. Now I remember, the only problem was that you threw gifts at them and most of them didn’t even see you before your gift smeared them into the ground.” Helios mumbles discontentedly while watching himself destroying the former elven country, “I mean, there was no other way. How does one person give each and every person something personally within one night? Didn’t that Jason say his world’s population was around 6 billion? The red guy in his world has to be a god.”

“Well, if anything he just has the gifts appear, he probably doesn’t go into every house. It might as well be the mortals making legends to explain how he does it.” Mortimer reasoned. Helios dismissed the glass shard and stared at Mortimer in shock, “Of course! No god would be stupid enough to actually try that right? I got this, tonight I’ll just have a gift appear for each and every elf.”

*****

“Happy gift day! I, bringer of calamity have decided to give each and every one of you elven a present!” Helios announced excitedly over every elven community. With a clap, he willed gifts into existence, exactly above each being. “I don’t have the time to figure out what each of you want so I made sure everyone got the same thing, half a ton of coal! My champion Jason told me that it’s very useful so be grateful and worship me!”

“Hey, Helios. Did you really give everyone half a ton of coal exactly above them?” Mortimer asked in fear. Helios nonchalantly answers while eagerly watching the consequences of his actions, “Yea, I can’t let them mix up their presents right?” Mortimer immediately starts ripping space and dashing away, “You half wit! You just killed 83% of the elven population. You wiped 13 species out completely. She's probably already on the way here, don’t you dare tell that witch I had anything to do with it!”

“Don’t worry about it, all she can do is curse you. Last time she made your face disappear and It’ll be back in a few thousand years. What else can she do? Turn you into a tree?” Helios wheezes while laughing.

Turning around, Helios notices that Mortimer was long gone and mutters, “What a coward.” Turning back to his entertainment he continues to examine the outcome, “I might have made it easier for the new Jason but depending on how the different species react to the new power vacuum, it might just make it harder in the long-” Suddenly feeling a tiny cold hand on his shoulder he freezes. Slowly glancing backwards he sees a tiny light blue fairy floating behind him. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about why my children are buried in coal would you, bringer of calamity,” it said sarcastically.

Helios awkwardly tries to look appeasing while turning his body, “Diana, my favorite witch. Just who I was looking for, you know it's time for the purge right.?” Hiding his hands behind his broad back, Helios frantically works on isolating the space around him. “Yea, I figured that out when you dropped giant bags of coal on top of my children you retard.” Diana screeches raising her hand and quickly chanting away. “You fat lump of slag for brains, enjoy the makeover.” She screams as she hurls a curse. At the same time, Helios completes the preparations and separates the space around him.

Once sealed Helios looks himself over and sighs, “I still got hit huh.” grunting in frustration he summons Mortimer to the private pocket dimension. “You ran huh? I told you it’s not a good idea to mess with her creations, she went around for weeks trying to find me last time” Mortimer rants while trying to find Helios. “Hey! Hey, Mortimer down here. Do I really look fat?” Helios asked.