Chapter 5

Stealth check:

Ellory – 2

Bundles – 5

Cranberry – 5

Klaus – 16

Holly – 13

(They don't say for Chutney Nutmeg or Arty so I assume in the 20s)

Once again everyone starts going up the stairs, however, Bundlestein's little pointy shoes are slick with gore and he slips on the steps taking Cranberry and Ellory with him sprawling on the landing once more.

"You know." Holly speaks up getting the others' attention. "If this were like sneaking into a castle or something, we would be fucked."

"Not gonna lie." Klaus winces as the three get back on their feet. "We would be dead in a millisecond."

Once everyone is back together they head up another flight of stairs where they reach another landing that has yet another door. This time Arty takes a turn at the door while everyone else braces themselves for whatever horrors lay behind the door.

"Alright Arthur, get to it." Bundles encourages.

Arty checks for locks and traps and found nothing and so with a nod to the others he pushes the door open. There is a big pine box sitting in the middle of a very empty dry room, and it's dusty. Taking a closer look the box appears to be a coffin but thankfully didn't look to be a size worthy of Santa... unless he was chopped into little pieces in the other room and placed here but Holly prefers to have the hope that Santa was still alive somewhere in this hell.

As Arty enters the room he sees the claw marks on the wall, just raked but it is the only defining feature other than the box. He creeps tot the coffin, nudging it with his foot to see a reaction but saw nothing, gently he lifts the just an inch and tried to look inside. At first, he thought it was empty but at the bottom of the box, there was a dark-colored blade.

Seeing this blade he looks back at the group before very gently take the blade from the coffin. In his hand lays a black, barbed shortsword with a dark iron grip, it is wrapped in a ratty black leather. On the bottom, the shape of a woman's face adorns the hilt, with eyes wide and a mouth gaping in horror as he holds it looking at him.

He takes a long look at it before looking over at Holly with a grin. "This is my destiny."

Holly rolls her eyes shaking her head.

"What is that?" Chutney asks.

"It's Christmas for me." he says smiling as he attaches the shortsword to his belt.

"It's not very holly jolly." Bundles comments looking at it nervously.

"Oh, it's licorice." Chutney realizes with a nod.

There was a silence for a while before Arty smirks. "Whatever you need to say."

"Alright Arthur got his present." Holly turns around. "Once more onto the bridge Klaus let's get moving."

"On it Snowflake." He agrees following her.

Once more a few flights of stairs and finally, they reach a landing with once again a door on the left but to the right, there is a ladder that leads to a square hole in the ceiling.

Klaus looks over to Arty. "You wanna get a look at this Arthur?"

Arty shrugs. "Ya, why not. All right."

Holly steps up, moving past Arty, and opens the door. "Let's just get this over with."

There are two lanterns in the room, the room itself has a greenish tint to it, there is a large cast-iron cauldron sitting in the middle of the room with one table that is full of glass bottles and a little Bunsen burner and the second identical table but smashed on the ground and there's stuff strewn all over the place.

"... Okay guys I just had a thought." Holly says looking back to the others. "You remember those creatures we fought back at the workshop?"

"Yeah." Klaus nods along with the others.

"Well the witch said they worked for this Worm sack, could it be possible that the rooms we have been in, are theirs? Like the bloody room is the fiend's, the coffin for the dead guy and this room is the witch's?" She explains.

Everyone's eyes widen in realization. "Oh my god."

"That explains so much." Nutmeg says rubbing her face.

Holly shook her head. "This is insane you guys do what you got to do I will stay out here and see what I can do with this ladder and door."

With that Holly does just that, though she didn't touch it she did try to investigate.

Investigation check: Holly – 7

Holly sees nothing but the door on the ceiling and nothing dangerous so she waits for a minute before everyone came out of the witch's room and follows her up the ladder. Holly finds herself on top of this treehouse and there is a wall on one side and it's broken away on three others, and off in the distance in one direction Holly can see the ring of trees standing.

In front of everyone though there is a gigantic iron pipe coming up out of the floor, about ten feet away from the ladder and it is wide. The one wall that hasn't been ripped away, there is a door in the middle of it, and there is a moon carved into the door, and though is was quiet against the wind blowing through Holly's hair she could hear something on the other side of the door.

"Pretty sure that's the shitter." Chutney informs the group. "So maybe we should-"

He was interrupted by the noise behind the door again, the elves look at one another nervously before Chutney put on a brave face and says. "I'll check it out, you stay here."

Putting up an ear against the door, Chutney realizes that it is not entirely closed and he could smell the shit wafting from the door.

"Shitter," he tells the others before looking back to the door. "This guy had something that did not agree with him."

"Maybe the same thing that took the workshop out these past few weeks." Klaus suggests looking to Nutmeg.

"You know what's important?" Chutney asks them as he narrows his eyes at the door. "The element of SURPRISE!"

With that he pulls the door wide open and everyone freezes at what was on the other side. It was a clawed bathtub on its side, snoring away with its tongue and teeth out with his legs twitching like a dog in sleep. Everyone stood in silence, frozen on what to do until Klaus slowly reaches for the door and gently closes it before looking over to Arty and nodding to the door.

Arty nods and locks the door swiftly.

"Well that's one possible problem taken care of, let's look down the periscope looking thing." Klaus says hoping to forget the whole situation.

"Agreed." Chutney says weakly.

Klaus holds the lantern over of the edge to see if the light can illuminate this below. It shows about thirty feet down, but it just gets swallowed up into the darkness further down.

"Maybe we oughta send somebody down with the lantern." Arty proposes looking to the others.

"I have a lantern." Ellory informs them.

Klaus nods. "Alright, you wanna tie a rope around you and lower you down?"

"Very brave Ellory very brave." Chutney praises with a smile.

"I just said I had a lantern I didn't say I was gonna go someplace with it!" Ellory frowns at the guys.

Klaus paid no mind as he puts the rope around her waist and began tying it at the back securely. Once everything is secured and ready, Ellory included Klaus pushes her into the hole, holding the rope tight.

Ellory holding her lamp she is lowered slowly down, the smell is really filthy, but there is just a hint of peppermint.

"Anything yet?" Klaus calls down to her.

"I smell peppermint!" She reports back.

"That's a good sign, that's a good sign." He says nodding with the others. "Is there a floor, any sort of end in sight currently?"

"Peppermint!" is all they got back.

Klaus deadpans shaking his head.

"Doesn't Santa wears peppermint?" Nutmeg asks.

"I think he does." Cranberry concurs.

"It's his favorite cologne in fact!" Holly adds.

"How do you know the old man's favorite cologne?" Arty asks looking at Holly.

"Mrs. Claus told me." She answers with a shrug. "She wanted to get her hubby a bottle before we sent it out to the sleigh for Christmas."

Arty blinks at how nonchalant Holly's reply was that she chats with the first lady of the North Pole like she is talking to her neighbor and returns to staring at the hole.

As Ellory gets lowered thirty feet straight down but suddenly her butt is kind of hitting a curve as it starts to go down a bit at an angle and just more darkness.

"Is it still dropping?" Klaus calls down again.

"Um, I'm sort of at a curve." she says.

"So like a slide?" Klaus guesses.

"Kind of." is her reply.

"Great we're coming in!" he says.

"Wait what?" Holly questions.

In a heart attack Klaus lets go of the rope.

"Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!" They hear Ellory scream as it fades, everyone stares slackjawed at Klaus.

Arty grabs Holly and dives down the hole. "Let's go!"

"What are yo- ahhhhh!" Holly screams follow Ellory.

All together Goonie style everyone goes down the hole and begin spiraling down the tube, up, down, side ways, loop the loop, eight little elves go flying into the air then suddenly they were a free falling.