Chapter 6

Acrobatics Check: Chutney – Nat 20

Nutmeg – 16

Klaus – 19

Bundles – 11

Cranberry – 3

Ellory – 13

Arty – 26

Holly – 25

In very dark frigid air the elves plummet, feeling themselves fall to the ground. Chutney lands in a little old man splay like his legs were made out of rubber. Everybody else does hit the ground while Cranberry took the worse out of all of them by falling flat on their chest, knocking the wind out of them.

Holly looks over to Arty with a frown. "Why is it when we are falling or something you somehow manage to grab me?"

"Well what can I say?" Arty groans getting up and smirking at her. "You have a magnetic personality."

Holly deadpans at him shaking her head as she turns around to look at her surroundings. Torch lights shine in the ruins the elves now find themselves in; to the left and to the right on two high broken walls, and beyond that an insane sight awaits.

A huge series of discs made of brass or metal, a gigantic tower stands above them to their horror they can see a large red object on the very top of the tower, it must be Santa!

In the torchlight there is this strange corpulent form staring down at them, its flesh more of a vile, soiled fabric, almost like burlap. Red beady eyes glow from the dark cuts in the face of this thing, and as Holly's eyes scan over it there are rusty hooks and thick coarse string holding this disgusting suit together.

It cackles and something spills out of its mouth, but it is hard to see in this light.

"Well well well, What have we here?" it bellows. "An intrepid band of what, lawn gnomes? Here to take my prize? You're jokin', you gotta be! Well let me tell you something, I'm gonna cut this tomato of a man wide open! I wanna see if his insides are as red as his outsides. Come on then, put your fate in your hands, take a chance roll the dice! If you think you got it in you, but fair warning, the house always wins!"

After the burlap has it says the gigantic mechanical tower comes to life lights up, the giant disc starts to spin, and the different levels of it start to whir and clatter.

Roll for the initiative, motherfuckers!

Arty – 22

Klaus – 20

Holly – 18

Ellory – 18

Chutney – 14

Nutmeg – 9

Cranberry 8

Bundles – 7

Arty takes out his bow and arrow to take a shot at the creepy sack guy who only laughs as the arrow hits him, before dashing towards the staircase behind them. Klaus runs towards the tower of rotating discs and the moment his foot touches the metal ridge of it there is a click as his foot drops an inch and the column at the center moves towards him and there are two tall flat panels that open and a split second he sees this fluid clear bubble in the shape of a cube float out of the column heading right for Klaus. He is engulfed by the gelatinous cube, trapped inside it, though surprised he seemed calm to be suddenly be trapped in it.

Holly takes her own shot, placing Hunter's mark of the burlap mess from Silent Hill and shoots an arrow right at its belly before running towards the disc tower reaching for the base of the disc as Ellory summons her spiritual weapon of a fruit cake and smacks it into the cube to assist Klaus in getting out. Chutney follows after Holly getting his weapon at the ready as they charge towards the disc tower getting ready to grab Holly to dodge whatever comes their way.

Wormsack laughs as he dances away out of view as two wasp-like creatures appear where he stood. While Nutmeg goes invisible and makes her way towards the tower.

Cranberry runs towards the gelatinous cube and looks over to Ellory and grins. "You wanna see what my spiritual weapon looks like?"

Ellory blushes smiling wildly as she answers. "Yeah, I do!"

"Okay!" the crow as they summon an image of the giant head of the brawny man.

A brawny man floats before the cube and whacks at this giant cube and takes off another sluff of this fluid just falls onto the steps and starts to burn the stone and then since it worked so well with the fiend last battle Cranberry tolls the dead with the song of Carol of the bells making the cube vibrates and groan.

Bundlestein gives out a cry and dashes to the tower along with the others.

Arthur now seeing how things are going, foils his plans. "Son of a nutcracker!"

He drops down to the little bit of refuse, running over to the wall in front of him and taking a shot at the cube before going into hiding.

As Klaus's body is burning and numbing all around him and seeing these flashes of divine energy around a kind of obscured by the gelatinous substance, he just angrily, like still focusing up at this Wormsack that is attempting to assault the person he has been working for, for a long time and just goes into a frenzy in the inside of the cube trying to carve his way through from the interior. As he starts carving through it with his candy canes he starts to chewing and biting in the inside of it, numbing his tongue be damned.

From outside looking in there is a little spinning neutron in the middle of the cube and this thing is just wobbling on the outside.

Holly jumps over the meddle edge she had seen where Klaus has stepped and runs over to the chains before turning around and aiming a shot at the cube then turning back to the chain and grabbing it

Ellory's fruitcake hovers through the air as she cheers to it acting like a big scoop and hits it taking a big glomp away and Klaus's face is inches away from the outside and the cube is losing its consistency, losing its shape. She throws sacred flame on the cube and see Klaus's face and at the near end of this big mean cube Ellory puffs her cheeks and takes her fruitcake singing to it, and have the fruitcake cover the cube with all of the fruit until all of the fruit just poisons the whole thing, because it lacks the Christmas spirit inside.

Pretty much the fruitcake destroys the cube setting Klaus free.

"Thanks Ellory!" He calls out with a thumbs up.

"Sure thing, thanks fruitcake!" She says to her weapon.

Klaus looks nervously around and says quietly. "Thanks, fruit cake... Christmas spirit"

Wormsack, seeing what is going down below merely laughs in amusement as he continues to climb to the top where he was keeping Santa tied up.

Nutmeg seeing how close he is to Santa Claus casts hastes on herself and books it to the base of the tower finally reaching the others as the invisibility goes away in her haste and tries to grab the chain though it slips through her hands. Holly, Klaus, and Chutney grabs for the chain but only Holly seemed to get a tight grip on one of them and begins the disc from hell.

Cranberry, seeing the cube went and Klaus safe, heads for the tower to get a look at Wormsack and casts guiding bolt at him, but with the moving discs and Wormsack himself dancing around it merely flew by his head. With a silent Christmas curse Cranberry gets their spiritual weapon to move up a level grumbling as they eyed the chains.

Bundles himself grabs a chain that passes him by and begins to climb the chain and be the first elf to get to the second level. Before he could do his victory dance though, a little trap door goes poof sees a large spiked D20 coming out. Thankfully Bundles did a sort of a ballet whoop and flies right past him and there is a loud crashing noise as the gigantic iron D20 strikes into some piece of stone ruins.

"Watch out for balls!" he warns the others.

"No shit Bundlestein!" Holly shouts staring at the Iron D20 balls with wide eyes.

"Where? In your face, or where?" Chutney shouts up to him.

Bundles sighs. "Yeah, yeah they're just flying right at your face!"

"Okay." The elder nods.

"Now do you mean that in a positive or negative sense?" Klaus asks with a grin on his face as he watches Holly who was still hanging from a chain passes by with a frown on her face. "Like are we excited about that or avoiding it?"

"It was exciting." Bundles says.

"Sounds like Miami 1984." Chutney comments.

Before Bundles could say anything else he hears brittle, stiff little wings and down from the disc above came two nasty looking wasps with long pincers coming out of the tail and two little mandibles snapping as they come.

"Oh no." he whimpers taking out his wrench.

Back down to Arty, takes aim at one of the wasps but unfortunately, the erector set arrow goes flying through the air and misses. "Aww nuts!."

With that fail, Arty moves towards the disks right behind Cranberry.

Klaus after his fun with Bundles, looks up at this tower realizing it is a dangerous and difficult climb, as it's spinning and grinding and also the warning for balls.

He looks over and shouts. "Hey, Nut!"

"Yeah?" She snaps her head to him.

"You still, remember that trick back in the day?" He asks.

She smirks. "Oh, I never forget it!"

"Alright!"

"Get your ass over here!" She commands.

With that Klaus moves over to Nutmeg as the two begin planning their next attack. Holly pays more attention to the chain and climbs her way up, happily getting up on the second disk and just barely dodging the iron D20 that came flying at her.

"Whew that was exciting!" She exclaims as she takes out her bow and arrow as the wasps turn towards her.

"Told you!" Bundles says with a laugh.

Ellory sees the wasps going for her comrades and moves her fruitcake up a level towards the wasps and tries to throw sacred flame at the wasps only for her to miss and she stands there pouting at them.

"You big meanies!" she yells that them. "I'll get you next time!"

"I don't need any magic!" He scoffs as pretty much all the magic users are suddenly missing their targets. "In my day, we pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps and did things with our hands!"

He grabs one of the chains and starts climbing.

"We didn't have stair!" Bundles mocks the old man. "We just climbed chains!"

With little to no effort he gets himself up to where Bundles and Holly panting before squeaking as a giant spiked ball goes clanking towards him and leaps and feel the giant spike just graze the sack as it flies under his legs and goes crashing to the ground thankfully not hitting anyone.

"Only got one those left, gotta be careful." He mutters adjusting his tights before hiding behind the pillar.

Holly and Bundles face synchronizes with a look that says 'TMI old man, Tmi!'

Wormsack snarls at the lot of them. "Oh, you think I'm just fuckin' around?"

He climbs the rest of the way up before turning his back to everyone and for those who can see him they watch as he raises his arm to the sky and there's a large black spike coming up out of it, its' oily, it looks like a carapace, and a cry of sorrow, hate, and horror as it then bends down and stabs into Santa.

"Haha the power is mine." Chutney says quietly with a smirk.

"HOLY NIGHT!" Bundles exclaims grabbing his hat.

"It'll be a silent night if you don't hurry up!" Klaus snarls looking up at Wormsack with rage.

"This is not what I expected for my first Christmas." Ellory cries.

"Klaus." Nutmeg sighs before grabbing his shoulder to look at him. "I think it's time we do like old times, yeah?"

"Yeah, the one, two?" He asks.

"Yep." she agrees.

"Following suit." He says readying his candy canes with a fierce look in his eyes.

Nutmeg casts dimension door; and the two of them appear at the top of the tower with the two of them on each side of Wormsack and Santa and without further delay, Klaus goes berserk on the bastard!

First he slams into his legs with one of the candy canes, shoves the other into his belly and the sack flesh just dents in, and it just sort of roil and move.

Cranberry moves their Brawny man over to the wasps. "Fuckin' nature's assholes these wasps, trying to think you're bees but we know better!"

Brawny man misses the hit-making Cranberry growls before they grab the chain passing by and climbs it no sweat and finds themselves face to face with one of the wasps, they were just bad-mouthing and tries to whack it away with their weapon but misses once more.

Seeing Cranberry has a bad time Bundles goes over and bangs one of the wasps with his wrench like a boss as the bug smear onto the ground without a sound before heading for the ladder and scurry up. The other wasp heads straight for Cranberry and clasps on the back of their neck and the stinger just stab into the body as the wasp's wings wrap around the sides of her neck like a backward facehugger.

At that moment everyone hears a voice ring out from the ruins behind them, adjacent to a large outcropping of stone. "Enough! This has all gone too far! Release him!"

Holly and everyone turns and sees a pale, gaunt, figure crawling over the broken stone of this ruined tower. It's lithe, it's fast, this being's skin, as Holly looks at it is translucent and slick, and she can see a skeleton frame and large, misshapen Skull sitting there within the rind that is this creature's head, but the eyes are black, two round, wet orbs that are lidless and unnerving.

"I started this mess, and now we will finish it!" He roars as the muscles in his jaws which are like strips of ribbon candy sliding through milky water, stretch and unfold and its mouth splits at the chin, unfolding horrifically, and a long, writhing tongue spills out.

"Wicked." Holly mutters.

"Holly, your Arty is showing." Bundles says to her making her face go red.

"Yeah that was a lot." He says to himself and heads towards the chains.

With no effort he climbs up the chain and reaches the platform and lands right next to Holly, seeing the wasp in front of her he takes out the shortsword and takes a slice at it. The blade lets out a low hum and it just splits the wasp in two and falls onto the metal disk that they stood on.

"I love this place." he says smirking at Holly who smiles back,

Bundles rolls his eyes at his comrade as he turns back to focus on getting up the ladder.

Not a moment later another ball comes flying out of the trap door, smacking into Arty and is flung from the platform and crashes to the ground.

"Arthur!" Holly screams as he lays prone on the ground.

"Arty, no!" Ellory whimpers.

The hallow king bends down low to the ground, and his elbows and hips rise above his back even, and he springs and leaps. He lands on the second platform on the other side of Cranberry snarling as he looks up at Wormsack. Though Holly was paying no attention to him as she has her eyes on Arty who is just starting to move his head a bit, shaking the dirt from his hair.

Klaus looks over to Santa to see that there are two huge puncture wounds on the side of his red coat and they are bleeding.

Seeing as he cannot do much in the healing department he turns back to Wormsack. "Ahhh that's my boss, asshole!"

With both candy canes out he tears into the sack, swinging the candy cane he flips it mid-spin and the hook catches the blade, Klaus feels it pull and give and rips the need out and sees a bug come along with it; a long sort of like pupus just flies out and this half living bug flies and lands with a slurping sounding thud as more bugs come falling out of the hole.

The second attack aims for the face making the Sack bastard groans as he backs up a little.

"Make the snow red!"Chutney cheers. "Make the snow red!"

Klaus goes in for another attack to the face and was planning to kick the sword away from the sack only to see it is nowhere to be found.

"Oh, never mind!" Klaus shouts as he attacks.

With smacks to the face twice Klaus leaps up and hooks his two candy canes jammed into his mouth and pulls the mouth open a bit growls. "Say ah, motherfucker."

The smile stretches and Klaus just sees beetles just spilling and vomiting out the wider he gets, and he is grunting and laughing menacingly at the same time.

Without a second thought Holly leaps off the platform.

Acrobatics check: Holly – Holy shit NATURAL 20!

She lands with a tumble without a bruise on her body and runs towards Arty makes eye contact with her and crawls a bit towards her as she readies a healing touch spell.

Ellory seeing that Holly is covering for Arty turns to the wasp that is hurting her idol and uses her fruitcake to get rid of it. The fruitcake flies over and just hovers and hesitates for a moment and then tries to go to try and hit this thing that is attached to the back of Cranberry's neck.

"Oh fruitcake!" Cranberry says feeling a bit lucid with all the blood the wasps has been sucking.

Just like doing a bank shot playing pool, the fruitcake takes aim and smacks the wasp. Cranberry feels the force of the tap and it hurts a little bit, but they also feel their own blood starts seeping down their neck from inside the insect that just got burst open.

Chutney is getting a little exhausted but he continues to climb the tower still. Getting over to the ladder he makes his way up and far as he can, what he plans to do when he gets up there who can say?

Wormsack tries to punch Klaus but keeps missing making Klaus laugh.

"That's right! what's wrong, poor baby? can't hit nothing can ya?" he sneers at the sack.

Getting out the hooks out of the mouth, Wormsack slips away from Klaus and makes it to the ladder but not before getting hit by Klaus and slides down.

Nutmeg peeks over the side and throws chromatic orb at the guy but misses, huffs and takes out her ribbon and tries hitting him with that but simply rat tails by his neck.

Cranberry, getting a little impatient with the climbing turns to the hallowed king and says cheerfully. "Hey, you know you seem super athletic, you take gymnastics, ya?"

Bundles could imagine Holly giving Cranberry the look of 'The fuck are you making conversation at a time like this?!' and funny enough even the hallowed king, snarling and looking intimidating as fuck had a look of 'the hell?'

"Okay if you take me with you when you get up there we'll do a little one-two combo punch, you know together if you'll carry me, yeah?" They say to the pale one.

The hallow king just stares at the bearded elf.

"I feel like you are giving me consent so." Without further delay Cranberry takes hold of the pale creature's waist, trying to ignore the peeled grape feeling as they hold on.

Bundlestein, having enough of Cranberry's schemes meets halfway with Wormsack. "Nya! Ho ho ho, motherfucker!"

Bundles just starts wailing on the bastard with his wrench across the head and watches as the sack-like dent in, seeing it moving underneath and then he brings the wrench underneath and just jams it as hard as he can into his naval area. The wrench and Bundles hand disappear through a crack in it and he can just feel things sliding and crawling over his hand that is in there, but Wormsack is just hemorrhaging at this point.

Taking his hand and wrench away before running as far away from the creature as he can.

Arty slowly gets up from the ground to tag team with Holly who brings him into a tight hug and casts cure wounds. All of then suddenly he could smell gingerbread, potpourri, and Holly, he feels better, he feels firm again and he has a purpose.

Holly pulls away and looks up at him with a curious look. "Are you okay Arty?"

With determination Holly has never seen before Arty pulls out his shortsword, looks to her, and says. "Let's go save Christmas."

With a kiss on her lips he runs back to the disk tower and grabs the chain leaving a shocked and bewildered Holly blinking at the space he was at.