It's that time of the year again, when everyone is thinking about Christmas. No matter where you are in the world, there's no escaping the festive spirit. The moment Thanksgiving is over, all the decorations are replaced with Christmas ones. In most realms, it is of a festive nature. In fact, within most realms, people want for Christmas to last for as long as possible.
But in this realm I fell into, people wished that Christmas could be as short as possible if not totally removed. There is a sense of emptiness and sadness about it, the realm's inhabitants long for the days when it was just another day.
It was not known when the tragedy started, or why it did. Every year during the 12th month, grotesque beasts would pour out from a tear in the void. They have been steadily growing stronger every year, while humanity is getting weaker.
There were some ancient records found by archeologists, records of great beasts who were banished to the outer realms hundreds of thousands of years ago. Clearly their return was to seek vengeance upon those who banished them in the first place.
Every season, they infiltrate the human world and wreak havoc on everyone and everything around the tears. They destroy villages, towns and even cities, killing thousands if not millions of people in the process.
On the 25th day of the 12th month, every year without fail, the climax of the beast tide would occur. The beasts would conduct a brutal ritual for an unknown purpose, this night was named - The Nightmare of Christmas. By the survivors of the beast tide. At least, that was what the history books indicated when I got sent straight into boot camp.
The very first of the beasts to come, would appear from a tear in the void nearest to cities the moment the clock strikes 12 on the very first day of the 12th month.
Once the tears in the void were opened, more and more of the beast would begin to spill out into the human world, the immediate vicinity would become uninhabitable for anyone who lived there. There was no warning, no precursor to where a tear would occur. Those who had yet to arrive at the many human fortresses would not have their lives to keep, because by the 15th day, there would be thousands of beasts roaming outside the fortresses. Lurking out in broad daylight, ready to pounce on anyone and anything in their path. There was no escape.
All hope was lost for a long time, until someone started to stand up for humanity. Before their appearance, every Christmas season was destined to be a season of death and destruction. Humans harvested by the beast for their sick ritual.
These people who stood up for humanity, were of a different kind, at least that is what the majority of humanity thought. But then most of us are just as human as the rest of them, we weren't mutants or beings with higher power, we just rained hard and by studying records, pictures and videos of the beasts we were able to come up with counter measures that could protect us.
Our battle gear was forged from the hides of the beasts, it helped to mask our human scent. Our various blades are made from the claws or fangs from the beasts. The brave men and women who stood at the front lines to study and fight the beasts.
It took roughly 20 generations before we began to understand how to deal with these beasts and to protect ourselves from them. Those who stood up for humanity and helped defeat them were called guardians and we were thankful for their service.
While the Guardians could protect some of the cities and fortresses, the Nightmare of Christmas didn't stop, try as they might, on the eve of the 25th, the mightiest beasts would appear and with their appearance, even the most fortified cities would have to fight tooth and nail to just barely be able to protect themselves by the skin of their teeth.
Last year a level 8 beast was recorded for the first time in a few cycles. It had appeared over the City Hope in the Southern Hemisphere. The stronghold of the Guardians with the most fortified fortress the world had, was wiped out and removed from the face of the planet, forever confined to the annals of history.
The loss of City Hope was a huge setback and tragedy to the world. As the stronghold of the Guardians, it was one of the largest training facilities the world had and over 1 million souls were living there. All of them silenced forever in just one night, those of us not near enough to provide assistance, could only hear in horror over the radio frequencies as our comrades cried for help and then silence.
That night was different from any of the past seasons, upon completing the brutal yet mysterious ritual, all the beasts began to leave via the tears. No further attacks were recorded after the completion of the ritual. Previously, the beasts would continue to rain terror on the human world, up until the last day of the 12th month just before the tears in the void closed up again. The beasts that could not leave in time, died by the next sunrise of the 1st month of the following year.
That year, all of the outposts in the Southern Hemisphere survived the Nightmare of Christmas. Only City Hope lied in absolute ruin. For 11 months of the year, humanity had peace and were able to regrow from the ashes like a phoenix.
My team was one of the many who arrived in the first wave of Guardians. We had made our way to the ruins of City Hope, in hopes that we could learn anything which might help us tide the next season.
The scene at the fortress city was horrible. Bodies strewn all over the place, not one body intact. Some didn't even have anything more than a couple of fingers, there would probably not be a mass grave, in other massacres such as this, our superiors had commanded that once all information had been collected, that we burn the bodies to release their souls into the afterlife. Some prayed that there would be survivors, but the scanners indicated that there were no signs of life, not even a blade of grass or weed remained. Only an eerie silence and the strong stench of blood in the air. A few of the younger, fresher members on my team even threw up their breakfast when they saw the carnage. Who could blame them, it was a tragedy.
Technically I would have counted as new, but this wasn't my first rodeo into another realm via the falling dreamscape. Wars like these were nothing new.
Leading the team, we headed straight for the academy. If the other guardians put up a fight, their last stand would most definitely be at the academy. We got there in less than 15 minutes, there were some other senior teams already on site. We just nodded at each other then continued with our own investigations. Everything we found and learned would be shared anyway once we submitted our reports back at our respective bases. Humanity in this realm was way more united than most others I've seen.
After some time removing the rubble and some parts of our comrades as well as the bodies of the beasts, we found ourselves in the server room of the academy. Thankfully many of the drives were still intact.
With our devices we scanned every drive we could extract, the few I scanned contained recordings of the ritual that some brave soul had managed to get. While it was a distance away and the quality rather grainy, I could make out the ritual. I've seen that formation before, it was a node setting ritual!
A node setting formation basically allowed the castors to return to this place, no matter how far away they were. By sacrificing lots of blood to the formation, it would continuously corrode the world's protective layer against the harshness of space or the void in this case. As far as I could tell, as long as the beasts continuously succeeded in completing the ritual, this realm would never escape their fate.
Even if I had this information, who would believe a mere soldier? The best I could do was note down what I could before my time was up. Maybe disguise the information as ancient texts. Perhaps one day not too late, they would decipher the text.
Thus the last conscious memory I had in that realm was inserting the information of the ritual that I knew into the drives my team was sent to recover. I included some "translated" texts to give hints to the next person who read it.
Just before fading away as my time in the realm was up, my body collapsed into a heap causing my teammates to panic. My only hope is that they learn of the ritual and perhaps, one day if I ever manage to connect to the realm, the treat of the beasts from the void would be over.