Footsteps pounded down through the rightward stairwell, and our intrepid heroes, hellbent on getting at least one clue, pounded through the left. Anna returned to typing her paperwork, because deadlines are deadlines, and even if the building burnt down if her paperwork was in late management would tear her a new one.

To say the leftward door led to a “basement,” as was pasted upon the door, was to moderately underestimate the sheer size of the facilities underneath Das Gleiche. The caverns of concrete which stretched out before them extended into the distance, beyond the sight of the average human. Caedes, of course, was no average human, and Yaaroghkh comprehended space through ocular faculties unknown to any human, so they could take in the whole fantastical operation at a glance.

It was a military project, of that there was no doubt. Entire storerooms of cultivation supplies were clearly marked out; row after row of cultivators could be seen meditating or performing martial exercises under the careful eyes of corporate executives, or taking a brief rest in designated sleeping tents. All of these - meditators, fighters, and sleepers - were separated by thin walls, somehow managing to combine the image of a camp with a cubicle. In the far distance great arches had been dug into the basement wall, verging on the sewers. Boats floated at dock, armed with strange cultivator weapons and with the equipment needed for an arctic voyage. Mundane workers could be seen swarming over the basement, preparing and assembling all manner of gear and food for a long journey.

They saw all this from the door at the top of the stairwell, which looked down onto a narrow, winding flight of stairs of Seussian design, lacking handrails, and teetering precariously over the masses of troops below. Then they began scrambling down the stairs, tripping in their haste, as over a dozen suited cultivators spilled out through the basement door behind them.

Blasts of demonic qi whistled overheard, wretched streaks of violet light hissing as they hit the stairs or fell across the exercising cultivators below. Caedes' fingers whirled as a black, smokey dagger appeared in his hands, and a cultivator screamed as he fell off the stairwell and onto a sleeping tent below.

The others pressed down the steps, undaunted, chanting financial formulas and hurling aphotic fire. One of them, his throat full of obscure and ancient equations, raised his voice to a fever pitch as a ring of exponents surrounded him, and a moment later a bolt of pure number slammed into Yaaroghkh, turning his reindeer suit into cotton venison. (Concerned readers need not worry, however: the elf sweater was unharmed.)

The two reached the base of the stairs and began to weave between the walls, listening to the commands and calls of the cultivators as they dashed towards the sewers.

“I don’t think we’ll be dealing with the problem quite today,” Caedes muttered, as he manipulated a cultivator into accidentally breaking his own leg.

“We can’t.” Yaaroghkh said categorically, as he oozed over someone blocking their path, turning her bones to frost and shattering them..

Caedes nodded. “Yes; I’m fairly confident in my skills, but taking on the entire corporation all at once is likely beyond me. We’ll have to find some other way.”

“No,” Yaaroghkh said, “that’s not what I meant. Whether we can or cannot fight them all is immaterial. The problem is aesthetic. Say we climb the tower, and die or are victorious. It would be a brutal, bloody fight, followed by a conclusion. And that is it. But how is that inline with the Spirit of Christmas?”

“What?” Caedes swore, as a six and a half foot redhead tried to remove his head with a broadsword. Two daggers appeared in his hand, blocking her sword in a cross moments before it could slam into his chest.

“When Santa sent me to solve the problem, he didn’t merely intend for me to remove it. How I excise the defilers of Christmas is just as important as that I extirpate them. In other words, we can’t just fight them: our fight - as much as our victory - needs to be festive.”

“We can sprinkle confetti on their corpses,” Caedes offered helpfully as he hurled the swordswoman through a wall, and ran off before she could climb back to her feet. Yaaroghkh slipped after him, his adumbral and benighted visage terrifying half the cultivators they met into dropping their weapons.

“It’s not the activity that’s important, it’s the essence,” he said, pouting, “the mood, if you will. If our story is ever written down, then it must serve as a testament to the Spirit of Yule that it chronicles. Nothing less will suffice.”

Caedes grumbled, but if the elf wasn't willing to do it then he couldn't very well do it alone.

"C'est quoi c'est," he murmured under his breath.

***

Merida was not a happy woman. She was not a happy woman normally - aggressive, determined, punctual, and fanatically dedicated, but not happy - but she was especially unhappy now.

“What do those bozos upstairs think they’re doing?” She swore as she climbed out of the rubble, motioning for her troops to refrain from chasing the intruders. They'd never catch them, not unless they all worked together, and they had bigger fish to fry - namely, Santa Claus. The Fat Man must die, and the weight of his death had been laid on her head.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

She caught one of the upstairs staff by the scruff of his neck and, as he choked and struggled, snarled at him. "Why was the door upstairs unlocked?"

He whimpered. "I- I don't know. They struck Hans down, and by the time we were called they had already vanished through the door."

Merida snorted. She had worked her way up through the ranks of Das Gleiche through her fortitude and insight, and was continuously astounded at some of the idiots they allowed to rise because of their skill at cultivation - as if the corporation could be run through absolute strength alone.

"Don't bother chasing them; they're far beyond anyone in the lower ranks."

The cultivator stiffened. She was letting them get away?

"You dare-" he started, before she cuffed him upside the head.

"I don't dare; I think. Release the homunculi." She ordered.

A shiver of fear ran down the man's spine.

***

Caedes and Yaaroghkh had reached the sewers. They climbed down the docks, and proceeded into the sewer itself - a spacious, easily accessible tunnel from the city's glory days, half a century or more ago. No one was chasing them, a fact singularly more insidious than if everyone was chasing them.

They didn't stop to catch their breath - in the elf's case, he couldn't, for he didn't breathe, and the nemoral organs with which he might have had ossified aeons in the past - but ran straight down the service platforms to either side of the sewer proper.

There was no longer any need for evidence - they had seen the buildup of arms, and of gear fit for arctican temperature, and with their superior cultivator eyes had seen plans and dockets scattered around on the tables and pinned to walls. Das Gleiche was attempting to destroy Christmas.

To destroy Christmas, and to destroy them. They could hear things scritching against the walls behind them, clicking and clacking on mechanical joints as they scuttled towards the two. Scritching, clambering, and then a plop plop plop as whatever it was crawled into the sewers.

Blue snowflakes bloomed on the walls as Yaaroghkh muttered a charm, lighting up the empty sewer. The pathways were empty, barring the occasional rat; below, the filthy waters burbled as they ran viscously by, but nothing was obviously amiss. The elf felt his fur rise as he watched the streaming garbage flow past.

"They're in the water," Yaaroghkh reported calmly, flexing his fists. A ring of daggers and swords shimmered around Caedes as he acknowledged the warning, leaping ten feet to the side to give the elf space.

Suddenly there was an explosion of filth as a raging, clanking machine came roaring from the waters towards the elf. A hulking monstrosity of polymers and alchemically-forged garbage, the robot climbed gracefully onto the service path, taking a swing at Yaaroghkh's head.

The elf didn't move as his head was annihilated, spewing acidic fluids across the walls. There was a moment of silence during which Caedes stared at his compatriot in horror, and the thing stared at his kill in confusion, before the headless corpse began to speak.

"Fascinating. Absolutely fascinating - you're no automaton at all, are you? You're a homunculus - an alamort creature, crafted through alchemical magic. But what an impressive specimen! They used no natural materials when they made you, eh? No, you were birthed from the very sewers you attacked us from - two hundred years of toxic sewage, refined through dread processes into an awful semblance of life. I'd like to get my rugose claws on the alchemist who created you."

The homunculus backed up nervously as the corpse spoke, prompting a wicked grin to manifest above the corpse's neck, where the head should be. "Be not afraid - I won't hurt you; I simply want to see how you were made."

And the elf leapt for the panicking contraption, his forepaws and gleaming eyes lending truth to that ancient dictum, 'tiger, tiger, burning bright, in the forests of the night.'

He had landed on the device's chest and was rending it in half, cats eyes shining with a daemoniac light, when the rest of the homunculi arrived. One with an axe emerged from the sewer to Yaaroghkh's right, another with a longsword propelled itself up beside Caedes, taking a swing at his head, and three more appeared on the other side of the sewer tunnel. These had guns, but not the useless guns of normal humanity - these were proper cultivator weapons, carved of a strange golden brown resin and with spirit stones in the magazine. They crackled and sparked as the homunculi aimed, sending bolts of putrid green light slamming into the wall near our heroes' heads.

Caedes danced gracefully across the thin service path, deflecting the sword strikes with his own sword, or blocking the blade outright. Yaaroghkh, he was moderately annoyed to see, was having an easier time than he. The elf was cackling as he confronted his opponents, his form swimming and swelling to Cyclopean proportions, until he seemed to fill the very sewers.

The three gunmen trained their rifles on him, but bullets of qi did no better than bullets of iron, losing themselves in the endless chasms of his pitted body or disapparating as they hit strange angles which no earthly physics could handle. Ooze flowed freely as he crushed the first homunculus under a polyp and, with a screech that hurt even Caedes' ears, hurled himself on the axeman.

(The sweater was fine, however: Mary had been in the Girl Guides, and she knew how to prepare for these sorts of things.)

Caedes finally managed to use his qi puppetry to cause the contraption to extend itself to its utmost, then chopped it in twain with a broadsword of Stygian pitch. He turned around to check out the situation.

Of the homunculus with the axe only the lower half remained, and that melted and emitting a bizarre smell of toasted cheese. The air over the sewer proper was wrong: it glimmered and twisted before Caedes in arcane and cryptic patterns, and oscillated in painful fashion.

One of the gunmen was simply missing. It was still, somehow, there: Caedes could hear its endless screaming. But it was nonetheless missing. Another had been neatly bisected, alchemical organs spilling onto the floor and into the sewer waters.

The third floated in the air, shimmering unwholesomely as it struggled feebly to escape. Yaaroghkh was circling around it, stalking on hooked feet as he gibbered inanely about long lost mechanical methods and immense structural designs birthed aeons before man crawled out of the mud.

Caedes tapped him on the shoulder, prompting the elf to jump. "We're on a schedule, eh?"

Yaaroghkh blinked, a manoeuvre which was vaguely loathsome in effect, to see dozens of eyes snap closed and open as if in a human's face. "Oh, yes, pardon me."

And he idly crumpled the last homunculus up like a ball of tissues.

Crossing back to the other side of the sewer, he picked up his pointy elf cap, dusted it off, and carefully put it back on his head. Then he turned one of his faces to Caedes.

"Well, shall we be off?"