CreepsMcPasta Creepypasta Radio - "The Northern Fortress, Once Thought Impregnable, of the Snow Cleric Santa Claus" Creepypasta

Episode Date: December 12, 2020

Have you been naughty, or nice?AUTHOR'S SUBREDDIT► https://www.reddit.com/r/Bryceverse/CREEPYPASTA STORY►by WeirdBryceGuy: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comm...Creepypastas are the campfire tales of the internet. Horror stories spread through Reddit r/nosleep, forums and blogs, rather than word of mouth. Whether you believe these scary stories to be true or not is left to your own discretion and imagination. LISTEN TO CREEPYPASTAS ON THE GO-SPOTIFY► https://open.spotify.com/show/7l0iRPd...iTUNES► https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast...CREEPY THUMBNAIL ART BY- Marcus Whinney: ►https://www.artstation.com/artwork/n4a5O►https://www.instagram.com/mlw_creative/SUGGESTED CREEPYPASTA PLAYLISTS-►"Good Places to Start"- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7YCb...►"Personal Favourites"- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEa2R...►"Written by me"- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gX6RA...►"Long Stories"- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list...FOLLOW ME ON-►Twitter: https://twitter.com/Creeps_McPasta►Instagram: https://instagram.com/creepsmcpasta/►Twitch: http://www.twitch.tv/creepsmcpasta►Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CreepsMcPastaCREEPYPASTA MUSIC/ SFX- ►http://bit.ly/Audionic ♪►http://bit.ly/Myuusic ♪►http://bit.ly/incompt ♪►http://bit.ly/EpidemicM ♪-This creepypasta is for entertainment purposes only-

My team had gathered upon a cliff's edge, which overlooked the far-spanning glacial plain and which stood the fog-and-trouted fortress of the famed snow cleric, Santa Claus. We had gone through enough reconnaissance of the frosted land, and had identified several snow-draped emplacements wherein hid elven lookouts and ambushes. Stealthily, with their own southern breed of guile, we had neutralised these creatures who would have either warned their brethren of our encroachment upon their land, or spilled our blood upon the bare snow. The many snow-capped towers of the fortress rose to the sky

And no part of any structure was adorned By a semi-translucent coating of frost As if armoured by the settled ice Every brick of the fortress glimmered In the little light that the sun dared to cast down onto it Along the ramparts which encircled the inner castle Strowed Elven Watchmen Equipped to their unfamiliar yet assuredly deadly weaponry

Ralflemen in ice-wrought armour stood Atop turrets Nearly indistinguishable from the fortifications they warded Their eyes, which could see through the dentist accumulation of the ever-present mist, scan the areas around the castle for intruders. Knowing beforehand of the far-seeing centuries, we'd come dressed in our appropriate camouflage, which not only allowed us to blend in with our environment, but conceal our vital functions from detection as well.

Specialty made contacts allowed us to see each other clearly, as if we hadn't been wearing the cloaking material. There were three of us, myself, my brother, and a person who will only refer to as B. My brother had brought me the job, suggested to him by B for reasons that will be revealed later. As anyone might have done, I laughed in his face.

The mere suggestion of Santa Claus being real, a ridiculous absurdity. But he was patient, and when my laughter had died down, he showed me photographs of the jolly bugger himself and schematics of the fortress, which he said had endured against time and the thieving curiosities of men,

impregnable through countless cycles. The evidence for Santa's existence was excessive and undeniable. I stared, first with wonder, at the images of his reindeer-carried sleigh, and his troops of certifiably inhuman and dwarfish elves, marching along his border and other images of the nigh supernatural. And then a chill came over my heart, just as it had come over and settled in the hearts of anyone who dared venture that land. Because, in one of the images, Santa was not presented as the overly joyful gift-beckyft.

bearer of legend, but as a sinister, blue-eyed sorcerer, casting dark magic over a camp of foolish trespassers. But to assuage my naturally arisen fear, my brother inform me of the loot kept within the vaults of that northernmost hold. Lute, not just of elf-forged items and invaluable gems, but of raw materials and resources alone, worth more than the riches kept in any bank across the world. He said that if we could plunder even a fraction of the total keep, we could live fabulously for centuries, financially unrivaled, sovereignly incontestable. While he had no pictures of the fable lute,

for none had ever made it inside to capture them, he had compiled stories, reports, and reputable conjectures as to the general store within those virgin vaults, all mutually attesting to the immeasurable worth of the contents therein. B, his extremely secretive source, even for our dubious line of profession, had provided us with the necessary equipment and transportation, Really, she had funded the entire venture, and hadn't even so much as bought at any of the more expensive and admittedly unnecessary requests we made for the job.

Everything requested had been procured without hesitation. This, more than the knowledge of our skill, had assured us that we would be successful in our heist of Santa's fortress. We were, of course, disastrously wrong, and nomads of planning or high-tech equipment would have allowed us to escape the fortress, with even a single coin of that nightmarish Castellan's treasury. The team, hidden by our camouflage, approached the walls. Blind to our advances, the elven watchman only saw the flows of mist upon the flat, icy expanse as we crept across the main bridge. The battlements loomed over, ordinarily indomitable, flames flickered in the small walls.

Santa, it seemed, relied on torches rather than modern electricity, at least for the outer fortifications. B observed the watchmen as they appeared at intervals through the crenellated tops of the wall while my brother and I stood silently in front of the port-collis before the main door. Above, the barbekin appeared unmanned. The soldiers upon the wall apparently deemed sufficient enough. We'd brought breaching equipment and waited for B-signaled to proceed.

When she was satisfied we hadn't been detected, she signalled for us to begin. My brother affixed the thermal charges to the gate and we huddled to the stony sides while the devices did their work. Quickly, noiselessly, they ate away the metal until a small hole was made

in the frost-blasted gate. We crawled on a bellies through this and performed the same action against the heavy wooden door. Santa, according to Bees' intel, had gone away for the day on Samarand, leaving Mrs. Claus, the warden of his keep,

and she, busy with their own business, had allegedly confined herself to the dungeon within the topmost tower. In his absence, he had naturally increased security within the walls, with Christmas not far away. The Bailey, a massive courtyard in which several smaller buildings were housed, was a swarm with ice-armid elves who patrolled through the space while sparing their strange weaponry.

In and out they went, entering through the various thresholds and supplemental gates of the wall. The main door, however, was never entered, the strict rule being that it would remain closed whenever Santa was not of the castle. Due to the silence with which we had breached the door, the two-card stations, directly beyond it, hadn't noticed our entry, and we quickly dealt with them before they could raise the alarm. While these elven warriors are formidable in battle, they're still diminutive compared to humans, and we managed to neutralize them more through our sheer size advantage than combative prowess. Once the bodies, just rendered unconscious, were buried in the snow,

we armed ourselves with their peculiar weapons. We left them with her armor, even though by the looks of it, it was far superior to her own. We hadn't planned on outright killing any of the same. We hadn't planned on outright killing anyone, and knew that even these cold-blooded, winter-tempered creatures could eventually succumb to the fatal effects of the harrowing cold if left unprotected. My brother and I took the strange blue-steal carbines, which had some sort of self-replenishing or never-exhaustive crystals as its ammunition, while B took a short crystal sabre, the hilt of which showing curling runes of some ancient European language. Once our adaptive camouflage had extended itself over the weapons, we set out towards the main keep,

wherein lied the treasure we sought. The main keep sat up a small elevation of the land, with two massive towers at its sides. On each tower, aimed beyond the outer wall with massive watcher, although, from what I could see from below, the artillery which these deadly machines fired was a crystallized composition, rather than the woodwork's standard arrows. Several rows of ice-wrought javelins reposed in their banks,

their tips lethally sharp, their bodies the size of small trees. Within the javelins pulls the dark blue leaf, liquid, which I suspected transformed the poles into proper explosive artillery upon impact of the target. Operators of the watcher, two each, stood behind their machines and seemed to endure the open air and blasting winds with superhuman resilience as they awaited a call to action. B regarded these interior fortifications with little interest. These guards appeared no different from those on the outer wall, and those had already proven themselves incapable of detecting

our camouflaged presences. We continued on, until we had reached the main door of the inner keep. We couldn't use our charges here. This door saw frequent use and any kind of damage would be reported immediately and the alarm would be raised. Instead, we went around the structure, passing by the leftward tower

behind which sat the stables. We paused and clung to the keep's wall as we sighted several reindeer stabled within. The stablemaster, a stocky elf, encumbered by armour, but nonetheless insulated against the cold by his bulk, tended to the massive, crimson-eyed beast. B. Castor looked towards us that said she wasn't sure if we could avoid

being scented by those creatures, who, judging by their great size and body-length antlers, were clearly of a more refined breed compared to their slightly southern counterparts. It was impossible to tell if their almost-nightmarish giganticism was owed to some pitritority or some dark breed of northern magic. My brother raised the carbine he'd been cradling, but B quickly shook ahead. We had known that the elves would be armed prior to beginning the mission, but we hadn't any intel as to the weapons themselves. We couldn't risk being detected by the sounds of our gunfire, even though the wind echoed loudly throughout the castle's interior. Also, we had only minimal data regarding elven anatomy, and none of us truly

trusted ourselves enough to land what could be described as a non-mortal shot. The thief can be forgotten, if not forgiven. Murderers, regardless of the landing question, are almost always hunted, even across the world. B, crouched low, something my brother told me she did when she was in deep thought. A few moments passed, the cold seemed to deepen, and the patrolling elves continued their rounds oblivious to our intrusion. Finally, B rose to her feet, snatching my carbine from her hands, and aimed the rich sights. She scanned the ground below for a few seconds, then handed the weapon back, and pointed at a spot just beside the keep a few meters ahead. Quietly, I crept at the spot, now in full view of the stables, which sat about 30 months.

meters off to my left. One reindeer stirred, this seemed to be a response to a powerful gust of wind rather than my movement. The spot to the naked eye was completely unremarkable. I stood on a snow-dusted sheet of ice, stonework had been reserved for buildings without any markings or indications. But, doing as be it done, I peered through the scope of the carbine and saw through its thermal imaging a substructure beneath the ice, a lower floor or basement of the keep to my right. I motioned for my brother to take a look through his weapon, and upon doing so, he nodded his head, understanding bees' train of thought. We retrieved two thermal charges from our pack and waited for the next surge of wind, which had always carried along a visually obscuring flurry of snow. Thankfully, the charges were scentless in addition to the silence.

We burned a hole through the ice, just small enough for us to slip inside, one by one. The gigantic reindeer neither scented nor sensed that breach of the icy floor, and we burned. quickly entered. Once B had landed, she again took my weapon from her hands. Despite having not wielded one for more than a few moments, she had apparently arrived at the comfortable understanding of its construction. She removed

the crystal core from its chamber, grimacing as the fragility of the stone was felt through her gloves. She held the crystal up to the hole we made, squeezed it, and miraculously sealed the aperture. From within, the icy ceiling was inconguous with the stonework of the low ceiling, but outside it would have looked nearly indisting

distinguishable from the ice floor. The room into which we had descended was fairly ordinary and housed various crates and barrels, obviously provisions for the castle. Sconsors lined the walls, with torches flaring in each, illuminating the interior and warming us. The urge to hover by these welcome sources of heat was strong, but the desire to quickly escape the battlements with our riches was stronger. We progressed down the corridor, passing by vacant rooms, until we eventually reached a set of dark stone steps.

Of these we climbed silently, invisibly, until we reached the hall at the far end of which sat a throne, seemingly wrought of crystals, and set upon a similarly forged dais. Tapestries hung from the walls, the scenes of northern expanses, images of Santa's territory and other boreal scenery were stitched into their fabrics. Massive pillars lined the halls, three on each side, and despite the stonework of the building, these were made of crystal. inside each rested a dark blue liquid similar to the substance I'd spotted within the javelins of the watcher. This worried me, but I did not bring it up to my companions. Behind the throne sat a large oaken door, taller than even the great chair upon its platform. With our carbines leveled waist high, my brother and I strode through the threshold after B had pushed the door open before us. Our barrels swept to the interior, but our sights found nobody in which the rest.

immediately ahead was a great hearth, an inviting fire blazing therein, and tall bookcases sat against the left and right walls. A table, sized to accommodate an ordinary person rather than an elf, stood to the side, with one chair pulled out before it. Atop the table's surface sat several thick volumes, each with spines titled by some language I only dimly recognized as being some flavor of Germanic. To the right, near the front right corner of the room, was another door, this one much smaller than the one through which we had passed.

Wasting no time for further examination of the fire-warm study, we approached this door, and silently breached it as we had done the last. We had now entered into a torch-lit corridor, and, at the end of this, set yet another door. Be halted halfway through the corridor and crouched low, although this was not the contemplative rest she exhibited before. My brother and I mimicked a posture, and we listened intently for signs of activity. We heard nothing from either wall, but from my head, softly, came the sounds of machinery of some sort.

Rising up only slightly from a crouch position, B crept forward, and my brother and I followed suit. We reached the door, and rather than open it, as we had done to the previous two, we raised our weapons closely to the wood. The thermal imaging of the scopes penetrated the door

and showed us a massive room, filled with towering mounds over which crawled large spider-like figures. I handed my weapon to be, and she scanned the room, then handed my weapon back to me. She nodded at our guns, indicating that we were free to fire upon the animate things within. She then gripped the brass handle, loose the saber in her belt, and pushed open the door. Guns raised, my brother and I entered the room, but neither of us fired a shot. within the room, stacked in great heaps that nearly touched the ceiling, with piles and piles of glimmering gems, shining coins,

and strange, yet no less beautiful artifacts. The sheer collective luster of the loot was almost blinding, and the flames of the torches across the walls seemed dim and innocuous in comparison. Crawling upon the treasured heaps, polishing coins and dusting gems, were aachnoid automator, constructed of ice and metal, roughly the size of small dogs. Delicately. Effilessly, they mounted and dismounted every mound and precipice, going about their custodial work with finally programmed efficiency.

Despite having been clear to engage by B, neither of us wanted the fire upon these mechanical creatures, not due to any recognition of innocence, for they were quite abhorrent, but out of worry for the gems. To mar the service of even a single one was tantam out of blasphemy in our avaricious minds. The batteries that powered our camouflage suit had a projected lifespan of six years. hours before needing to be recharged, and we'd been on the castle grounds for only an hour. I intimated this to be, gesturing at the suits on our weapons, and she nodded. We could gather our loot and make a camouflage escape without needlessly engaging hostiles. The mechanical custodials paid no attention to us as we approached, assuring us of our invisible shielding.

We set our bags before the central mound and began piling gyms, trophies, and coins indiscriminately into the bag. As each object passed from its nestling in that mountain to our bags he was incorporated into the cloaking and seemed to blink out of existence. Our fingers snatched dexterously, our heart beat with barely contained elation,

our eyes flickered with fire-heated and frost and salt stones. When our bags had been filled at the point of bulging, we hoist them over our shoulders and turned to leave. We had prided ourselves on our undetected intrusion upon Santa's Castle and with the plunded treasure

weighing each of us down, our pride flourished. Even B, who was at all other time solid, had a wide grin upon her face as she strode towards the door, leaving those brainless, abidutival arachnids behind. We back traced through the corridor, crossed the study, past the tapestry-draped wall

of the throne room, and re-ented that storage area, into which we descended only an hour before. Not wanting to risk unforeseen structural collapse, we made yet another hole in the same spot as the last one, and climbed up through the ceiling. It took a bit longer as we now had to push our heavy bags up to the surface, but we escaped the interior without drawing attention to ourselves.

Before Beaker disarm me, I dislodged the crystal from my weapon and applied the ice seal into the floor, closing the hole we'd made. She smiled and nodded, and I returned the expression. My brother rolled his eyes and gestured for us to come on. We then made our way back around the keep, planning to return to the main gate just as we'd entered it. But we suddenly stopped short, in the open courtyard before it,

as we saw a patrol of elves suddenly divert from their path and march towards the gate. There, emerging from their snowy burial were the two elves we had subdued and disarmed. They shook themselves off and were immediately interrogated by the patrol's leader.

Only a moment later, the leader called out in his unintelligible elven tongue and an alarm was raised, issuing from seemingly everywhere at once, blared, and the battlements came alive. Before even Beak come up with a planet, of action, a burst of some blue-tinged energy shot through the castle grounds. It hit us,

and I expected the wave to singed my flesh, or at least rattle my bones, but the impact against my body was physically imperceptible. The impact, however, was not without effect. Immediately, blue sparks flared across my body, and the cloaking effect of our gear was disengaged. We were left, standing completely exposed, surrounded by a veritable army of elves. B, prior to the mission, had informed us that these elves defenders took no prisoners, Santa's grim orders in regards to the treatment of trespasses. When we flicked into visibility and their blue eyes turned towards us, we knew there would be no quarter given.

B withdrew a sabre, and, without any announcement or diplomatic preamble, she charged towards the nearby group of elves. I heard a blade sing a song of icy lethality as it sought through the air and saw it sheer through the arm of an elf that had defensively thrown out the limb. She then danced through her opponents, slicing and thrusting with the salarity and dexterity of a practiced swordsman. Her movements were mesmerising when they could be seen, and I might have stood there all day and watched without regards for my own peril, if my brother hadn't turned me around.

Upon the towers that bordered the keep, the watcher had turned to face the bailey. The crystalline spears were aimed directly at us, and the operators stood behind the artillery, igniting the charges. The higher thoughts of my forebrain receded, and, in their place, arose the autonomous and practiced functions of survival. My carpine was raised towards the frontlight tower and my finger to press the trigger. Finally honed shards of ice shot out of the barrel, just as the first folly of javelins were launched.

My brother had also fired his weapon, and through some nigh telepathic intuition of siblinghood, he had fired upon the other harcher. We both had considerable practice in the firearm of mankind, and the usage of the elven weaponry required no adjustments on our part. Our aims were true, and all of the water operators were felled by the crystalline shards that spat forth from our weapons. But at least a dozen javelins had already fired, and, in the next instant, after arching majestically through the air, they crashed upon the ground with cataclysmic effect.

It felt as if the entire world had been shaken as its great poles of ice detonated upon impact, causing the land to heave and turning shrapnel of ice shards through the air and throwing up a frosty mist that blanketed the grounds. I was violently thrown to the ground in the terrestrial quake. I heard voices cry out in pain, elven and human, and, after a few moments, my own voice joined that chorus of agony as I struggled to dislodge a large chunk of eyes from my side. No longer needing to worry about detection, I called out to my brother. Thankfully, he answered, albeit with a voice steeped in pain.

I then called out to B, who didn't immediately answer? I heard further moans of pain, and these seemed to be in response to some newer harm, rather than crystalline bombardment. A moment later, hand seized my shoulder, and I was pulled away from where I laid. After a few minutes, I was left alone in an open space bereft of that obfuscating mist. Bees stood over me, covered in splotches of steaming blue slime that I knew to be elven blood. Her saber dripped with the same stuff. Nearby, kneeling with her hands pressed to their stomachs, with several elven warriors.

They cried out in agony, and I realized that these had been the fresh noises I'd heard her. earlier. B, unimpeded by the crashing of the spears, had gone on to disembowl and disorientate the warriors. She was truly a warrior in her own right, much more skilled than her companions. B knelt over me and began tending to my wounds, but I waved her off and pointed towards the diminishing mist, where my brother still remained. She immediately darted into the haze, her sabre streaking blue-plud as she went. I opened the pouch of my belt and removed the field medical supplies and tended to my wound as best I could. By the time I'd patched it, B and my brother had stumbled through the mist and were rejoining me.

My brother had a few small shards embedded throughout his body, but none looked fatal. B held to me stand, and before the elven army could regroup, we hobbled towards the front gate. We passed several stumbling soldiers, and B expertly cut down any who got in our way. My weapon had been damaged during the bombardment and could no longer fire. I carried it with me anyway, thinking it worthwhile to hold onto the undamaged cruise. crystal source. My brother had either lost his carbine or thrown it away at some point. We reached

the front gate, crawled through the blasted hole, and, having recovered a bit of stamina, jogged across the bridge towards the icy pain. We heard shouting atop the rampant, but none of us turned back to see what doom was being prepared for us. Atop the hill in the distance set our snowmobiles. Despite the weight of our

invaluable burdens, we ran on, tirelessly, filled with renewed resolve and having survived a direct engagement with the castle's defenses. Halfway across the ice field, we heard a sharp, whistle-like noise. B, held it in place, a motion for us to do the same. My brother and I turned around, expecting to see a volley of javelins arcing through the sky towards us. But B, for the first time since the start of the heist, spoke. No, we're all out of range of the watcher, and this isn't coming from the castle anyway. It's coming from directly above us. All three of us looked up, and at first nothing was visible through the gloom of the cloud coverage.

But then, second by second, something took form until we discerned a large shape barreling down towards us. Galvanized by a sudden panic, sensing the approach of some greater doom, I sprinted towards the hill ahead, with my companions close behind. Before we could reach its base, the hill's crown was suddenly set ablaze as some kind of ordnance struck it. The snowmobiles were instantly and utterly destroyed. I slid to my knees.

and my brother stumbled to a stop beside me. B stopped with slightly more grace, but defeat had quickly entered the hearts of all of us at the destruction of our only means of escape. Behind us, the vehicle that had launched the missile landed heavily upon the ice. Slowly, dreading this newly arrived terror, I turned to face the enemy.

From a great crimson sleigh disembarked a veritable giant. He stepped upon the ice with thick leather boots and stood towering over the man-high vehicle in a posture of sovereignty and contempt. A black-mitted hand patted the heads of a few monstrous reindeer who snorted out plumes of vaporous ice from their barrel-like nostrils.

Their eyes, reddened by sheer malice, if not by some innate power, glared at us as the master caressed his scalps. The giant wore a red coat with fluffs of white around the collar and the cuffs and trousers similarly colored and fluffed. A great white beard draped from the chin to the breast,

but the uncovered head was bald. Fierce blue eyes, almost black, stared hateful. towards us, and the pale skin that bordered them seemed to glow with some tightened vitality. The white-rimmed mouth scald, the reddened cheeks puffed, the bulbous nose irritably twitched. You dare trespass among Castle Warden, home of Clan Claus. The voice boomed across the expanse, and the clouds above seemed to briefly recoil in response

to the thunderously bellowed accusation. Utterly stunned by the arrival and fearsome appearance of Santa, none of us answered. The legendary gift-bearer's mitts curled into massive, block-like fists, and an icy aura of blue began to swirl around his gargantuan figure. B, for the first time that day, looked truly afraid, and my brother, clinging to my arm, started to audibly whimper. A terror unthought of filled my heart, and I could do nothing but stare at the enraged Castellan

as he mustered his power in preparation for some horrible attack. The reindeer neighed, callously, mocking, as if knowing what dark fate awaited us, at the hands of their sorceress master. I closed my eyes then, not wanting to look upon the means of my destruction. A sudden impact against my chest simply sprawling onto my back, and I initially thought that I'd been painlessly struck

by some hyper-lethal projectile. But upon opening my eyes, I saw bees standing above me, her back to the fuming giant. My brother lay on his back beside me, having also been pushed. Before either of us could question her, she said in a grave,

unquestionable tone, Go. While I admired her skills in combat and her ability to adapt to truly unusual scenarios, I hadn't any real sense of camaraderie to water. Still, I send her a gaze that said, you're sure?

And she nodded somberly in response. My brother and I then scrambled up the hill towards the blazing wreckage, leaving B to fend for herself against the dreaded claws. My brother and I summited the hill, still bearing our portions of the treasure, and navigated around the conflagration

We ran as men had never run before Our feet crunched upon the snow Slid across the ice And trampled rocky admixtures of the two We never stopped Never looked back But continued on until we reached the hut We'd used as a way station in our travels towards the castle

Five kilometres away Once inside we threw ourselves upon the floor Not bothering to unfasten our gear or our packs I passed out and awoke with a start Almost three hours later I shook my brother awake and he emerged from sleep grogly, drooled trailing from his mouth. Together we open our packs to behold the bounty we'd plundered.

Our thoughts hadn't yet turned to the woman we'd left behind. But our eyes did not come to rest on glimmering gems and sparkling coins. Inside both packs sat great heaps of coal. Neither of us looked up from our packs for a while, perhaps thinking that maybe our eyes hadn't yet adjusted to the lighting of the hut, or that some sort of illusionary magic was at play. But when I plunged my hands into the pile and soot fell between my fingers

and my hands were blackened, I accept the grim, so chilling reality of the situation. Virtually penniless, we left the North Pole and returned to our Midwestern home. We had waited six hours for the arrival of B before departing from the hut.

We didn't dare wait any longer unless Santa owes outriders come for us. Going back, hadn't been something even considered. What became of B is presently unknowable. And yet it wasn't until after a flight had landed back in the States that I remember the absence of an item. The small crystalline engine of the elven weaponry

which I'd salvaged from my broken carbine was missing from my belongings. I traced it back through my memory and didn't recall having it at the hut either. A kernel of hope emerged in my mind as I consider the possibility of B snatching that small, yet a surely volatile trinket from my possession before

sending us away. I tense the great power within the confines of its small structure, and are now confident that if its raw power could be harnessed by a human in battle, B would have been able to do it.