II Slayer
A thick cloud of peppermint smoke billowed between the doors as she reached the exit to the Archive. In the shrouded hallway beyond she could hear the panicked screams. She dashed away to the right trying to recall the quickest pathway that would take her down into the icy catacombs. It was there, according to the ancient map that Harold had given her, that she would find a relic of great power to help her.
The lights above flickered, smoke smoldered, and all around her she could feel the shadows moving. She heard a blood curdling scream just ahead and rushed toward the corner. She turned at the intersection to see an elf being torn limb from limb by other elves. No, not elves she realized, demons. Their bodies were distorted, their postures unnatural, their strength and brutality beyond imagining as they tore bone and flesh until there was almost nothing left.
One by one the demons turned toward Pepper. They had finished their prey faster than a feeding frenzy of piranha, now they sought a fresh kill. Instead the first demon got a powerful right hook to the jaw. Pepper let out a rage filled scream shattering the first demon's jaw and then rolling into an uppercut on the second that sent the former elf flying across the room. Energy from the gauntlets shuddered through the air after each impact.
From her kneeling position she shattered the leg of the next demon listening as the sickening crack brought the creature down, as it fell she battered it's head repeatedly. Still it growled, still it chomped at her with wicked teeth, still she punched it until there was nothing left of it's face but bloody pulp. The final demon lumbered haphazardly toward her as if completely unawares of the brutalization of its companions.
Her punch to the demon's chest lifted it clear off the ground, the energy wave from her gauntlets shattering the already bruised sternum before her follow up hook left the demon's head internally decapitated. The demon's head lolled over as its body was still twitching. Pepper pressed on into the facility.
She wondered how many of her friends had been transformed in this way. There were something like twelve thousand elves living here at the North Pole and that was just those who could be accounted for, there were likely more than two hundred living in the caves below the facility.
Ten minutes passed without seeing another soul. Pepper began to hope that perhaps the Hellwave hadn't propagated through the entire facility after all. A sudden shockwave of energy ahead of her stole her away from her hopes into the stark reality of what was happening as a shuddering wave of hell energy opened a portal in front of her. This wasn't a malformed elf that had been changed, this was an invader, a demon from beyond, though it was roughly the size of an elf. She had heard Oliver refer to them as imps, orange-brown skin that seemed translucent at places, beneath which the skeletal structure and fiery energy that powered their attacks could be seen.
The demon shrieked at her and glowered with malevolent pupil-less eyes. In its left hand it held a glowing spark that began to grow, the orange flame expanding into a raging fire ball. Pepper was pressing her shoulder against a nearby door as hard as she could. It wouldn't budge. The demon let out another howl this time hurling the ball of fire. Pepper had no choice but to duck beneath it.
As she slid on her belly she could feel the heat of the fire passing directly over her head. She stood then and ran as the projectile detonated behind her. Shrouded from behind in flame and smoke she smote the demon directly in the face with one of her gauntlets. It clawed forward toward her raking its bone-like nails against her cheek as she let out a barrage of punches that were pushing the creature backward. Rage fueled Pepper as she pressed in, even as the demon fell to its hands and knees out of breath and trying to recuperate. She smashed the back of its head with one punch after another until it was no longer a threat.
Ahead of her in the distance she heard the sound of weapons firing – OF COURSE, the armory was nearby and that meant her friends might still be alive!
She zigzagged her way through the labyrinthine tunnels until she could see the armory door ahead of her. Her heart sank when she saw that it was open and very much surrounded by demons. Her heart sank even lower when she saw who the leader of those demons was. Sadness gave way to the rising tides of anger, rage. She bashed the first few demons aside with ease, cracking skulls, fracturing ribs, inverting knees. Rage wasn't strong enough, it was hatred.
"PATRICK!" she shouted and the lead demon turned as if it still recognized the name.
Pepper felt a demonic hand slap her clear across the face, she ignored it, a demon clawed at her ankles, she twisted for a moment and stamped on the hand leaving the fingers hopelessly broken. Patrick was lifting his weapon still apparently cognizant enough to wield a candy-cane. Pepper froze their in the hallway for a moment looking at the twisted face of her former friend remade in the image of hell. Could she really kill him? It wasn't his fault he was like this. It wasn't even the fault of the ritual circle they'd found, not really. There was only one jolly old elf to blame in this situation.
She found herself hesitating. Patrick cocked the candy-cane. Out from the room she heard a war cry and watched as Patrick turned the candy-cane and fired. The sound of the shot shook Pepper from her complacency and reminded her that if she was going to make it through this she was going to have to let go. Her armored fists met Patrick's face head on, his grotesquely deformed skull was even harder to look at as his skull caved in and his brain swelled. Pepper pulverized him repeatedly before she turned her anger on the rest of the horde around her.
Pepper stood catching her breath in a hallway full of corpses. Only then did she look inside the armory and remember that she had an ally within. Only now did she see Oliver bleeding from a dozen wounds, propping himself painfully against a table with a peppermint pistol in his shaking old hand. Oliver had been the one to encourage her to join the academy. Enforcing the law, ensuring the security of the North Pole, it wasn't exactly what most female elves aspired to.
"Jesus," she exclaimed rushing to put pressure on one of the more critical wounds, "You're bleeding."
"You too," Oliver joked gesturing weakly toward her face.
"Just a scratch," she told him.
"Yeah," he laughed spitting blood into his beard as he did, "Ditto."
Pepper grabbed the man's old callous hand and pressed it against the wound as she rushed across the room toward a first aid kit hanging on the wall.
"We don't have time for this kid," Oliver implored her, "You've got to get to the surface and protect the big man."
"It's worse than you think," Pepper explained trying to clean the elf's wounds as best she could, she lowered her voice, "Oliver, Krampus is here."
The old elf's eyes widened with horror. Pepper dressed and bandaged his wounds as best she could with the limited supplies and then returned the gauntlets where she had left them on the table. She felt a twinge of hypocrisy using them. They seemed to amplify her anger and that anger seemed in turn to amplify the impact of each punch but knowing that they were powered by hell magic made her more than a little uncomfortable. She grabbed a nearby satchel and set them inside. She looked down at herself, splattered in demon blood and still in her pajamas, and quickly changed into her tactical uniform completely with body armor. She grabbed a tactical candy-cane, a peppermint pistol and several snowglobe grenades.
"It's not hopeless," she said trying to convince herself more than Oliver, "There is a relic in the catacombs that can help us."
"Help us do what, save Santa, save Christmas, kill Krampus?" Oliver asked feeling a rush from the adrenaline shot Pepper had just given him.
Pepper cocked her candy-cane, "Something like that."
The caves beneath stretched on for miles but it was here that the map came in very handy. Luckily they encountered very little resistance despite stopping every few minutes to allow Oliver to rest. Finally they reached the chamber at the center of the map marked as the relic room. Candles lit the way along the corridor wall before giving way to a sprawling ice cave that seemed to stretch on above them forever. Down a flight of icy steps they saw the demons bowing before two stone sarcophagi. Behind them was a throbbing fleshy mass of gore and blood that seemed rooted to the floor of the cave through a series of thick veins.
"A gore nest," Oliver gasped and Pepper reminded herself to one day have a chat with the elf about why he knew so much about demons, "they build them out of their victims, I've only ever heard stories, supposedly it serves as a diffuse portal and energy disruption device."
Pepper had already stopped listening, she was down the stairs and in the chamber blasting away with her candy-cane leaving demon-elves limbless. One now inch-wormed toward her with no arms and half a leg letting out pitiful cries before she pressed the cane against it's head and pulled the trigger.
She studied the runes on the sarcophagi. One was large, human sized by her estimation or perhaps a little bigger while the other seemed more appropriate for an elf. Both were impossibly ancient and clearly had been moved here from some other site. She studied the scrap of paper Harold had given her hoping it might offer her some clues as to the identity of the man buried here but aside from a single fragmentary incantation there was nothing.
"Magic words," she huffed running her finger along the edge of the parchment where the spell was cut off, "I guess to save us all from demons we're supposed to summon a zombie. The spell is incomplete."
"Try it anyway," Oliver advised.
Pepper cleared her throat, "Kl-"
"That's quite enough!" a voice resounded in the cavern making ice spikes above reverberate like chimes. Oliver and Pepper turned toward a red glow that had begun coming closer in the distance.
"Rudolph?" Oliver asked in confusion as the legendary reindeer stepped into view, "Shouldn't you be helping Santa? Why are you hiding here?"
"I'm not hiding you misfit," Rudolph scoffed, "I'm stopping the two of you."
A beam of energy shot from the reindeer's red nose burning a hole in the ice where Pepper and Oliver used to be. Had they not jumped they would have been melted. The smell of the sea water below filled their nostrils as the steam cleared.
"Surrender now and perhaps there will be a place for you in the new Kingdom."
"Krampus' Kingdom?" Oliver spat, "No thank you!"
"Why would you do this?" Pepper pleaded, "You were his favorite, you are the leader Rudolph, you were chosen to lead the sleigh team. Why turn against Christmas?"
"Do you know what I was chosen for?" Rudolph asked and Pepper's expression told him everything, "Initially I was chosen for disposal. The genetic mutation that causes my particular, defect, was found in me very early. That red-suited bastard leaves nothing to chance. The prognosis was the last thing my Father wanted to hear but, rest her soul, my Mother convinced him to forgo the procedure."
"I don't understand," Pepper shook her head.
"An abortion," Rudolph explained, "I was defective, unwanted. Even after I was born I was a misfit, though I'm sure that part of the story you've already heard. These caves are where I would have been hidden, scraping out an existence as part of this society's undesirables. I grew up here unloved and unwanted until by chance my defect proved useful. It doesn't matter now, I'm done being used, I will usher in the Kingdom of-"
Oliver fired his peppermint pistol then.
"Say the words Pepper, I'll keep him distra-" Oliver didn't even finish the sentence before the beam of red-nose energy hit him, the heat caused skin to bubble and bone to melt, a flash of intense light lit the entire cavern until all that was left was a shadow on the ground, a spray of ashes where a bearded elf once stood.
"Klaatu barada necktie," she tried dodging out of the way of a bolt of heat from the red-nosed reindeer, "Klaatu barada, ninja. Goddamn, it's definitely an n word."
The next beam of heat nearly struck her but instead carved a hole in the cave wall and filled the cave with steam. If this barrage of beams continued Rudolph would bring the entire cave down on their heads and kill the both of them, or at the very least usher in the ocean and flood the whole thing. Pepper turned toward the gore nest and got a wonderful awful idea. As the next beam fired she jumped behind the nest letting Rudolph's energy follow her, it struck the nest causing the fleshy exterior to bubble. Demonic howls filled the chamber as the nest exploded covering Pepper and the surrounding area in an afterbirth of blood and gore.
A wave of energy teleported in a dozen demons, Imps, soldier demons, and even something that looked like a giant meatball with menacing teeth. The room was swarming with them and this meant that Rudolph now had far more targets to contend with. Pepper slipped into the shadows and tucked herself behind the large sarcophagus trying to avoid the demons as she attempted to parse out what the next word might be in the sequence. She ran her finger over runes on the large sarcophagus. She'd seen a few of them before when skimming through the tome Harold had given her.
"I'm your ally you stupid curs," Rudolph shouted as he contended with the demonic horde, "We have the same goal here, stop attacking me!"
Pepper tried to replay the pages of the book in her mind. Suddenly the sound of demons fell away and the cavern was silent.
"They're all dead Pepper!" Rudolph shouted galloping into view with his nose so bright, "That just leaves you!"
"Klaatu barada nikto!"
Rudolph's eyes went wide as a bolt of lightning descended from somewhere above cascading through the ice to energize the coffin's stone surface. The runes were glowing now and with a thundering boom the stone lid of the sarcophagus split in two. An armored fist was the first thing to appear. Rudolph turned away but Pepper pulled her tactical candy-cane and shot the deer directly in the hoof.
Rudolph stared up at the towering armored behemoth of a man with tears in his eyes as the super-shotgun rested right between his eyes.
"Please, I made a mistake, just let me guide the sleigh one last ti-"
Rudolph's brain matter sprayed the already blood-stained walls of the cave. Pepper stared up at the intricate green armor interconnected like the scales of a dragon. He must have been some soldier from the ancient past to be spoken of in ancient texts and buried in so old a tomb and yet his armor and aspect seemed more like he was from some far-flung future. He glanced down at her silently and the mark on his helmet was one she'd seen in the redacted passage of the grimoire.
"The Doom Slayer."