The door creaked open, the elf and Caedes slowly slinking into the darkened hall.
The candles flickered softly, their half light insufficient to reveal much of the room, but sufficient to give Caedes nightmares for weeks.
It was the blood. There were rivers of it - much of it fresh - dripping down and around that vile, blasphemous stone in the middle of the room.
Caedes had seen demonic altars before, but none like this. Its sheer malevolence - the aura of absolute obscenity - which radiated from it sickened him to his soul and made him want to hurl. The screams of the innocent which wafted from its surface reverberated in the room’s stale air, the lack of any windows confining them to stagnate and rot all that entered that devilish abode.
On its own this would have been horrifying enough, but it was surrounded by a conventional office’s meeting room. People had met here, had eaten in this room, possibly while the bodies were still cooling upon the altar.
(Caedes would later learn from Anna that her superiors had sometimes eaten here while the bodies were still wriggling in terror - in today’s fast-paced, ever-changing world, adaptability and flexibility are the keys to success - and any doubts about the rightfulness of what he’d done would vanish from his mind.)
Behind the altar, descending from the throne, was the party responsible for this masterwork of villainy. His fox-like eyes scanned the room ceaselessly, as he stroked a fiery red beard which reached down to his chest. His appearance was otherwise old and decrepit, his body stooped with age and his skin lined and coated in liver spots. His crimson robes were made of silk and were the epitome of all that was fashionable, fluttering about him even though there was no breeze. A business suit could be vaguely seen underneath.
He placed a crystal orb on a tray to the side as he completed his descent, circling around the altar towards the intruders.
“So, it has come to this.” He murmured.
“So, it has,” Yaaroghkh concurred.
“I will refrain from bothering you with some grandiose, villainous speech - I find such braggadocio uncouth and vulgar, unfitting for the truly evil. I will only ask for the honour of knowing the name of Santa’s master.”
Caedes froze. Why were they asking about Santa’s master again? Why did he matter? Was there even such a person? And if there was, who cared? He had no relevance to the novel!
Yaaroghkh blinked. He thought much the same as Caedes, but it was the right thing to do to consider a condemned man’s wish, even if it was nonsensical.
“Mithras Lykaios.”
The demonic cultivator looked surprised at this name, but then his expression became one of relief.
“I see, Mithras Lykaios. Let’s fight.” (Or, from another perspective, “I see. Mithras Lykaios, let’s fight,” though obviously it couldn’t be that other form, because why would he confuse Yaaroghkh with Mithras? After all, he was wearing a pointy elf hat. Clearly this made him an elf, multidimensional protuberances notwithstanding.)
And the room filled with a burst of light.
Caedes stepped back in surprise, squeezing his eyes shut, and then hit the floor. The demonic businessman - his entire body aglow with a brilliant light - had taken advantage of Caedes’ discombobulation to leap towards him. He landed on his chest, hands pulsing with frenzied energy.
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Caedes tried to move or meld into the shadows, but found himself incapable of doing so. The demonic cultivator was far and above his superior in cultivation and skill.
He felt his meridians burning up and arched his back to scream, when all of a sudden the demonic cultivator disappeared. A many-sided flagellum flew through where the latter’s chest had been, acid splashing into the floor beyond them.
Free at last, Caedes rolled to his feet and began expunging the demonic qi from his meridians. Yaaroghkh was spread out, eyes examining every corner of the room (and several corners beyond anything that might be a ‘room’), tentacles searching across the ground.
Then he spun about, ice sword meeting demonic claw with a clang. The demonic cultivator gave a nasty smile as he stepped out of thin air, robe melding into nothingness.
“A worthy move. Yes, you deserve to die at the hands of Old Nick.”
And he got a tricky look in his eye, as his body fused in and out of the room, a series of claw blows going for the elf’s head. Yaaroghkh ducked and blocked, before his echinodermic form launched itself backwards, jumping towards the altar.
A swarm of crimson hands came from the altar’s profane surface, crawling over each other in their haste to drain the elf of his innocence and wonder. Without turning away from Old Nick, the elf’s body underwent a peristaltic convulsion. Space warped as he glared at the altar, blade swinging from the side in a brutal overhand blow.
The altar caught it, a storm of blood pouring out of the hands as they wrapped around the sword, shattering it effortlessly.
“You’ll have to do better than that,” Old Nick sneered, as he floated over the throne. His hands moved as if directing a symphony, though what he produced was no music.
More arms poured out, a whirlwind of hands and fingers and claws spinning towards the elf. Yaaroghkh spit, burning a hole in the floorboards, and flowed towards the arms.
There was an explosion as the two met, which expanded outwards for a moment before collapsing in on itself. The building flickered, the very walls seeming to bend towards the combatants as the candles blazed wildly. The roof descended, beams widening like a maw.
The air fragmented as Old Nick burst out from behind it, a stream of algebraic functions forming a scimitar in his hands. The machete of mathematical murder swung towards the elf’s second head, slamming against Caedes’ broadsword.
The younger demonic cultivator also spit, doing nothing to the floor, a ring of weapons forming around him like a fatal halo.
He pushed forward, executing an irregular series of feints and slashes with his weapons. Old Nick glided backwards, his scimitar blocking the blows as he went, adjusting his position only slightly.
He took a swing for Caedes’ head. The latter leapt up and over the blade, using one of his own floating daggers as a springboard to execute a backflip onto a sword. He landed on bent knees, arms outstretched, and then brought them together as the scimitar went for his chest.
The blow was deflected and pushed past him, and a knife went for Old Nick’s arm. The demonic cultivator stepped to the side, letting his sword dissipate. His face was expressionless as he examined Caedes.
“You must be what, in the middle of the Seventh Circuit? Late Seventh? Very impressive, for one so young. But not, I’m afraid, impressive enough.”
And with that, a cycle of alphanumeric symbols appeared in his hands, blasting Caedes backwards. The latter rebounded, letting the force harmlessly pass by him, as he readied his weapons once more. Old Nick began to walk towards him.
“I did not merely architect the plot against Santa to further the interests of all that is evil. For decades now I’ve been stuck half a step from completing the Ninth Circuit, and ascending to immortality. And oh, what a wall! I’ve poured out rives of the blood of the innocent, yet no matter how much blood I shed, never was it enough.”
A second blast rocketed towards Caedes, who waltzed through the shadows to avoid it, coming out on the other side of Old Nick. Another exchange of blades followed.
“Then one day I realised that it wasn’t that I hadn’t spilled enough blood, but how I had spilt the blood - the problem was not scale, but magnitude. I needed to achieve a feat fitting a demonic immortal.”
“So, why didn’t you instruct children?” Caedes deadpanned.
“Thus I conceived of my master pla- I beg your pardon?” Old Nick interrupted himself, a shamshir of his own demonic conception ricocheting off Caedes longsword.
“The first demonic immortal I met was big on instructing children. The second gave me hot chocolate, and the third and fourth weren’t much different in character. Why did you never try what they did? Why think it was the magnitude of your acts, and not their nature?”
“Of all the preposterous-” Old Nick said, and would doubtless have said more of a deprecatory sort had there not then been a shattering boom.