A comedic AST/GiS crossover short.
Pure As The Driven Fucking Snow
It was Christmas at the Raven's Arcana, a relatively joyous affair for its workers.
In order to better arrange things, the interior of the Arcana had shifted into its wide space module A-72 configuration, providing a shopping chamber the size of a warehouse with over two thousand square meters of interior space with a ceiling of over two kilometers.
It was utter ridicule to make space this expansive for a simple Christmas tree, but Kodbromaal was adamant to challenge himself this year. He leaped around the tree with assiduous and massively hypersonic motions, shearing away chunks of pine with the swipes of his sword, and leaving startlingly ostentatious decorations on its branches - shining diamond orbs the size of human heads, icicles forged out of the bodies of primordial winter elementals, the teardrops of ancient gods, glittering orichalcum tinsel and garland, lights made out of soul-infused mineral crystals shining with a rainbow of anima colors, and an actual star they'd shrunk and folded spatially as a topping. It was, of course, a tree from the realm of Jotunheim, much bigger than a skyscraper would be in a world of casual modernity.
At the same time, Xylzrilyn, Emily, and Raum were wrapping gifts for one another. It was Alexiel's turn to be Santa Claus this year, or as she liked to call it, 'Mommy Christmas.'
It was, of course, an utter waste of time to do any of this. All of them were the apprentices of Faust Windfallow - even if none of them had the merest fraction of their patron's raw magical strength and overall existential puissance, most of them nonetheless had near-unrestricted access to the Raven's Arcana Not-For-Clients section. There were artifacts and magic items within sufficiently powerful that, if deployed independently, the conquest of countless ontologies was nearly assured given time.
It was done because, in Emily's own words, such was the spirit of Christmas.
Naturally, Faust didn't believe in Christmas. He'd said as much, prompting Alexiel to regale the others with a charming vignette of how he used to be bullied during Christmas as a child, where his contemporaries would call him, 'Joust Cockswallow.' It was completely made-up; Alexiel didn't even know what he was like in his hundreds because he'd never bothered to share, let alone in his long-passed childhood, but the others merely laughed at her story and accepted it as 'presumably true,' irritating him endlessly.
As such, the elder lich had consigned himself to his personal study, where he, out of boredom, created a new unbound phylactery that had an entire microverse stored within as a mana battery. A microverse whose inhabitants were scarily reminiscent of Naruto characters.
As he boredly worked, weaving and folding spatial blind eternities, he felt a proverbial disturbance in the Force as some vast entity brushed its tendrils over his locality - a fraction's fraction of a yoctosecond later, the flow of time arrested its onward march, and Faust stood from his chair, scythe already in hand.
He stopped instead, kind of confused.
"What."
In front of him stood a man, unlike anything Faust had ever seen before. Around his eyes were dark circles of sleep deprivation, and yet he stared on with a kind of inexhaustible determination and appreciation for what was in front of him. His eyes were blue like an infinite sky, and on his back rested a sword of peerless gold. At once, Faust noticed the abnormal level of dislike he felt for this individual and, consequently, noticed a curse wrapped around his personality aspect equivalent composed of 'not a number' elements that made his soul analysis spell glitch out and melt even when he poured enough mana into it to overthrow a small South American government.
"Wow," Faust finally said, a moment's analysis later. He kept analyzing, even as he spoke, "You're an outer emanation of something bigger, I guess, though I can't tell for sure, and yet you're probably strong enough to overthrow... basically everything. External to the Perfect Diamond? Yep, must be. And literally beyond reason. I'm supposing-"
The man interrupted him, raising a hand. "Faust Windfallow, I come here with an offer."
"I don't think you're here to buy anything, which means you're selling something."
"Correct," said the man. He closed his eyes, a look of satisfaction visible in the creases of his lips. "Faust Windfallow, son of the unknown and son of the infinite, you are, to put it simply, the perfect candidate."
As the man opened his eyes, there were tears in them - tears of indescribable joy.
"Not only have you remained pure in body - you have done so for the equivalent of an infinity of sidereal years. Although some of your aspects are lacking, other factors warp your suitability into the extreme ranges. Never have you been stained by a woman's touch and never will you feel anything like it. Yes, to put it simply..."
Faust's hands felt weak.
"You are..."
No, no... I can't believe this...
"The ultimate virgin."
It felt like being shot with a rifle, in the heart.
"Faust Windfallow, heed me. I offer you a power unlike any other - that of infinite progression transcending any reason or logic. My offer is that of a simple transaction. Take up a portion of my burdens, and in exchange receive a fraction of my power! You are, should you choose to be, the ultimate Cursebearer."
He was bleeding internally and this man wanted something from him?
He'd dropped his scythe and folded into something between a crouch and a fetal position, hands resting on top of his head, pressing down with a physical pressure that seemed close to the emotional pressure he was under. All the while, he muttered in broken Japanese, "Iada... Yamete kure... G-guresu..."
After a couple of minutes of recovery, Faust meekly murmured, "I-I accept... please don't bully me anymore."
There was a bright smile on the Accursed's face, all of a sudden, and tears of stained appreciation danced in his eyes.
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Wordcount: 1k
