- Extraordinary Seasons
- Posts
- Monday, September 15, 2025
Monday, September 15, 2025
Yuletide action adventure!
Zephyr Thomas
September 15, 2025 • Reading Time: 5 minutes
This is the eighty-fifth installment of West Wind, your weekly drop of thoughts, ideas, and info for this Season. As Summer draws to a close, I’ll be showcasing one of my published stories each day, because there are getting to be quite a few! This is the sixth installment, check out last Friday’s if you missed it.
Here we go! Santa Claus vs. The Dread is an idea that I’ve had kicking around for a very long time, as is true with almost all of them. The basic idea is that Santa Claus is an actual person, but rather than being an immortal fairy or something, it’s a title that’s passed down through the generations.
Kind of like The Santa Clause movie, you ask? Yes, like that, except that’s about where it ends. Rather than delivering presents all around the world (the parents do that), Santa’s job is to monitor and control the Dread, spiritual manifestations of negative emotions and feelings that can’t affect physical objects, but can amplify and provoke people to have negative feelings, thereby propagating themselves and continuing the cycle. The Dread is only visible to people with a special spiritual gift, which is good because it would be overwhelming otherwise.
Mysterious beings that seem to have named themselves after Santa’s reindeer follow him around, or maybe the naming is the other way around? Either way, they’re his main task force, and don’t really seem to be people at all, do they?
The story you can read today is just a prequel to a much larger tale, and both take place in the Torchmouth Saga universe, of which Octave is also a part. How are they related? Well, I left a couple of clues…
A young blond boy came out of the bustling toy store, conversing with his bespectacled friend, both nearly swallowed by their baggy winter coats. "My parents are gonna buy me a whole box of Card Knights packs, from the new Lemuria set. I'll get that shining St. George variant for sure!"
"I used to play,” Ash said, “a long time ago. I think I still have all my cards somewhere. Lemurian Arthur was my best deck."
"Lemuria set?" Azalea said, her eyes wide. "That was like, forever ago. There's way cooler stuff out now. Here."
So that means Dreadful Holiday takes place before Octave, right? Well, there’s another clue in there too…
The first preview began with scenes of an idyllic family Christmas; it took her a moment to realize how long ago this movie had been initially released, a testament to its enduring popularity. A montage of holiday scenes quickly grew darker, black shadows stretching across the white snow. From what she could piece together, an evil force was threatening the happiness of the world at Christmastime and the protagonist took on the literal mantle of Santa Claus to defeat it, aided by the spirits of the nine reindeer. It sounded interesting, she wanted to see if it was available on video yet.
Wait, they made a movie about Santa Claus fighting the Dread and Ash and Cascadia watch it? Or is something else entirely going on here??? And let’s not forget that other little reference:
"Good," Albert said, "or as good as can be, I suppose." He passed a store that sold plush animals, a young girl with thin brown hair examined a stuffed griffon with bright green eyes next to a white horse with wings.
Think of it like a web, all connected together with pieces touching one another here and there. Some of it makes sense, some doesn’t. The important part, is that you’ve read this far. Any thoughts about Dreadful Evening, or anything you’ve read so far? Reply or comment and let me know!
Reply