The building rumbled and roared as the forces fighting within it crashed about, upending tables, splintering walls, and atomising the floorboards. Split pipes spilled water onto the floor as the three cultivators brawled, and loose cables snaked down from the rafters in an attempt to strangle the elf and his demonic colleague.

True to trope, Old Nick’s second form was stronger than his first, and the fight had devolved rapidly following his rebirth. He strode like an ancient god through the wreckage of the building, his elegant and well-muscled form a stark contrast to the petit, if horrid, elf before him. As for the building, it seemed to have increased a realm in strength, and raged with an ever greater vengeance as it sought the lives of those who had dared step foot in its unhallowed precincts.

Caedes wrapped the cables in his hand, snapping them outright as he ignored the building’s attempts at demonically draining his energy. The elf and the demonic cultivator were going back and forth in the middle of the room, the throes of their combat distorting the space about them.

The darkness of quantification ripped through the landscape, flattening the atmosphere and draining its colour. As the building came to life in a desperate fight alongside the man who gave birth to it the very features of the walls turned into pure numerals, denuded even of their forms - their very manner of expression subsumed beneath a murderous mathematical expression.

The elf was radiating a cold so frigid that space slew down around him, the flurry of snowflakes normally associated with his technique frozen in midair. He was abandoning any semblance of a mortal body, his hairy heart beating clearly in his chest as his flesh dropped off, bones of pure crystal remoulding themselves into ever more unfathomable forms.

Caedes was fighting the building.

It was hard work.

Floorboards and ceiling panels crashed down simultaneously, forming a maw which sought to bring Caedes to a chewy end. Electrical wires snaked into the water, arcs of demonic lightning leaping and jumping towards him, and the very building compacted, the concentrated malice gnawing at Caedes’ soul.

Unfortunately, all of Caedes’ techniques were based around skill with weapons or the manipulation of qi, so a fight which would have posed a challenge for one a realm lower than he was for him, well, not awful, but an absolutely brutal slog. He’d created a warhammer the size of his head, and responded to each of the provocations of the building by beating them into a pulp.

Floorboards were flattened, ceiling panels crushed, electrical wires atomised, as he swung and swung, his strikes surgical but furious. The hammer waltzed through the air like a baton, its symphony that of death.

The building groaned and quavered, and then shuddered. There were vibrations under their feet, and then a wrenching sensation as the building began to tumble.

Caedes looked at his wee little warhammer, impressed with himself. “Darn. Didn't know I could do that.”

***

Caedes hadn't been the one to do that, because he couldn’t do that. The actual cause of the building beginning to topple was something far larger, something with horns, and a grudge against the naughty.

Of course it would be a little unfair just to up and blame poor Krampus - it's not like he did it intentionally. At the time he was chasing someone naughty, who had escaped from his sack.

“Aaaaaagh, help!” Merida screamed as she ran at full tilt, qi pumping like mad, even the slightest pretence at dignity forgotten in her sheer haste to get away and escape.

Krampus whistled as he lethargically stepped after her, somehow managing to gain ground in spite of the fact that he was prancing as if on a summertime stroll.

Merida smashed through the front doors of Das Gleiche, vaguely wondering where Anna had gone, then proceeded to smash through the back wall.

***

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“I can so shoot a marble into that hole from two miles away,” Anna said, pouting.

“Nuh uh,” said the goblin, sticking out a blue and purple tongue.

“Yuh uh,” said Anna.

“Do it, do it,” the trumpet section cried like a bunch of six year olds, as Anna lined up the shot.

***

Krampus simply walked into the building, casually shearing through half the floors with his horns. Merida was pretty sure the tune he was whistling was If I Only Had A Brain from the Wizard of Oz, but she didn’t have time to stop and listen as she raced on, still screaming.

As the building began to topple, the fight on its top took on an altogether topsy-turvy hue.

***

Yaaroghkh floated by Caedes, his villose body making awkward contraction motions as space began to fragment into blobs across the inside of the building, the teetering structure’s qi going haywire as it struggled to keep itself upright.

Caedes found himself unable to move, except in diagonal lines. Alas - had he been fighting pawns, being a bishop would be of some use, but as he was fighting a castle the two were still at loggerheads, circling each other in vain.

Old Nick stood stock still in midair, arms outstretched, hair waving as streams of demonic qi struck him like lightning. His body was visibly straining with the struggle of keeping the building standing, his anfractuous demonic qi creating a formation about him as he sought to stabilise the structure.

Yaaroghkh bobbed along, eating a cookie, and waiting for him to finish or perish.

With a heave and a ho, Old Nick righted himself, hovering in midair with the purple formation still swirling around his body. Strange glyphs formed in the lightning, abyssal manifestations of unknown worlds. His lips curled in a sneer.

“Enough of this foolishness.” He declared. The elf popped a Christmas cracker.

“We will end our fight now, in a single blow.”

Yaaroghkh shrugged. He never knew why some cultivators insisted on fighting with half their strength for the entire fight, only to go all in on the last exchange, and frankly he didn't much care. How the man chose to die was his own affair.

He readied himself. Old Nick also readied himself, his body swelling, the purple glow consuming him from within as he began to burn through his meridians. His eyes shone, and light came out of his fingers, while his hair flapped about more and more wildly.

Yaaroghkh bounced on his heels.

Old Nick dove; and then two things happened at once. The building, which had quieted itself as Old Nick began building up his strength for the final fight, suddenly spasmed, and with a great burst of energy grabbed Caedes. The latter called out involuntarily, the merest squeak of agony.

The merest squeak, but it was enough, for the elf turned his head in concern and, in that moment, the demonic cultivator struck. His claws scythed through the elf’s squamous body, a massive explosion ripping the elf apart from head to toe.

Old Nick stood where once the elf was, frozen for a moment in surprise, as if even he hadn’t believed he would win. Then he began to laugh. He laughed and laughed, turning his head to the roof as tears streamed down his cheeks.

“At last! At last, he is slain!” And he pointed at the readers.

“Hahah, all along you thought you were reading a tale of heroism true and bold, but this was subversive fiction, and the hero dies at the end. Hah! Hah!”

And he swung around to point at Caedes, who had extricated himself from the building, but too late to be of any assistance.

“And you! Did you really think you’d see good triumph at last? See pure hearts rewarded, and innocence restored? Oh, don’t make me laugh-”

“But you’re already laughing,” Yaaroghkh said in confusion.

Old Nick froze.

Then slowly, slowly, he turned around, surveilling the sloppy mess on the floor that was the remains of the elf.

“But you- you- how?”

“Non-commutative geometry, mate. I was never really there,” the elf said, waving his claws with the word ‘non-commutative.’ Of course he was really there; but he also wasn’t, as could be clearly seen from the fact that he was waving his claws.

“Oh, and a point of advice.” The elf continued. “Never turn your back on your enemies in the middle of combat. It’s unwise, not to mention bad form. Don’t want to be unsporting, eh?”

Old Nick said nothing, too stunned to speak as the elf stood there totally unharmed, while remaining spattered across the floor.

Yaaroghkh waited a moment and, finding no response shortcoming, looked over Old Nick’s shoulder at Caedes.

“Caedes, my friend, if you could be so good as to share the gift Santa presented to you with Old Nick here: he deserves one last Christmas present.”

Caedes nodded, and pulled out his thermonuclear hampster stuffers. The unfathomable toy growed green for one fateful moment.

And then the building exploded.