Just a bit frosty.
Krampus soared through the frozen forest of what could be described as too north to be Europe but too west to be Russia.
It was always the routes that he ran in the early years of Christmas that really brought him back.
No extravagant flashing lights for the pride of spending rather than the spirit of the season. No other holidays or celebrations created just to compete just because people think it would be better for themselves. No one changing the legend just because their feelings were hurt. Just a fresh new world with a holiday that only recently involved Santa.
One thing was bothering him a bit.
While there was a ton of snow cover, it didn't have the signature of the being that would usually create them, just average work done by nature naturally.
So he was partially putting in the idea of Krampus into the kids' nightmares and parents' ideas for punishment and partially on the lookout for Jack Frost.
He remembered that the last Christmas he was here he'd bumped into the guy, though he was real lanky and small for someone that he'd think of having so much control over the season.
He really didn't have time for these thoughts though. Or well he did he just wanted to leave sooner. He didn't have to do North and South America which was nice, though he was still waiting on the year that he'd have to start doing the run there in this world.
The town that he decided to end his night with was just about right for him. No real bad guys amongst the villagers, just the dictator in the castle above, and he was set.
It was real sad going through the village though. The tax on the people was so great that they ended up making their own currency out of the icicles. Sure it made everyone happy that they had money, but coming from the guy that watched people in other worlds spend their own here and there just for the heck of it, it really just made Krampus feel pity for the poor people.
He remembered from his last visit to buy some things from the villagers so that they'd have something nice for the holidays. Usually he just ended up returning it to them once they fell asleep but the looks on their faces when they were paid with real money was just something that made Krampus want to do just a bit more.
Sure he had money, he got it every year from the avarice filled windbags that decided to sacrifice their morals to get themselves higher up on the food chain. It was sad to watch, knowing that all these people scrambling to get to a position where they could buy the time back from their lives that the little things took up were doing it to never reach high enough. Krampus knew about the people that were born on the top and stayed on top. Sure there were a few guys that you could say went from scraping the bottom of the bowl to shoving people down in their climb up, but they were just the ones the public knew about. There were clans so rich they could have been royalty that got on top, stayed on top, and controlled who could ever be even close to the possibility of ever posing a challenge to them. Almost all of them got to that place after that Frenchman fell from power, and stayed that way until people either forgot about them or made it so that nobody would ever find out about them.
Just a few gold coins here, a few priceless artifacts there, just the smallest bit of stolen shares and stocks, some repetition over the worlds that he frequented, and Krampus was set anywhere, anytime, and everywhere he went.
Krampus was getting too far into the memories of people too rich to let themselves die and he forgot about his task at hand, but stuff at reasonable rates and then steal from the guy in charge.
He'd almost filled the cart he made from the trees around the town when he saw the man he was looking for.
Emphasis now on man.
The blue spirit that he'd once known was now as human as the villagers around him. He was doing work as a tailor so Krampus ordered a cloak so that he'd not seem suspicious when he asked if he could ask the man a few questions.
The conversation was real quick, as was the revelation that two others had apparently followed Jack from the winter cloud fortress. I mean really? Gypsies?
Krampus was about to spill what he knew when the door opened and the owner of the house's daughter walked in. Sure Krampus decided to ignore her presence a bit, he was getting tailored or whatever it was called, but he noticed that someone else wasn't paying as much attention as they were beforehand.
Krampus had seen that look before. He'd seen it on so many faces of people that were so sure that they were in love with someone, just something held them back from doing so. After a quick look at the girl, and how she was oblivious to the former winter spirit, he almost felt bad for the guy.
He was almost done when he felt the time slowly ticking by, he divided that he'd leave now and come back for his order. As he left he asked if the cloak could be hung outside of the door, just so that he wouldn't disturb the people when he came back to pick it up.
A quick trip around the village again and he was able to hide the cart away out of town and shoot off to rob the king of no Cossacks.
After a small bag of gold that wouldn't be missed that was now in his custody, Krampus was ready to move on.
As he said before all the products that he'd bought was now back in the possession of the villagers that had sold them to him bar one cloak that was left hanging on the door.
Krampus looked into the window of the building to see if anyone inside was still enjoying the holiday. Of coures at this time they all had been done with the celebrations and had gone to sleep.
Krampus didn't need to access his partial omnipotence that Jack's tale was going to end in heartbreak.
By morning the occupants of the house saw that the cloak had been taken and a small pouch of coins had taken its place. All around the village people kept on finding things back in their place, but their wallets showed that it shouldn't have.
Just that the man that they could have sworn had taken those things off their hands was long gone by now, just a puff of smoke in the void of night.