Old Nick and the building screamed as one, their bodies vibrating at unimaginable speeds as they contracted in pain. The cultivator leaned over, vomiting, and a fluid of a similarly putrid sort poured out from the ceiling.

Yaaroghkh withdrew his hand from the splintered remnants of the altar, dragging its resisting heart with him. The altar squirmed in his claws, but he was outside of space and there was therefore no way for it to escape.

Its flesh pulsed with a lurid glow, and yet it had no flesh and could not be. One vacant eyelid opened and fixated with terror upon the elf, and then with a mewl and a cry it burst in foetid splatters on the floor as Yaaroghkh tightened his hand.

He shook his many-jointed digits off as the last of its translucent polyps flopped onto the floor, its remnants dissolving in a repulsive mess, and turned to gaze at the still retching Old Nick.

The latter finally got a hold of himself, standing back up. There was blood dripping from his eyes and his mouth was stained with a bile whose red colour bespoke a darker origin than mere food, but he was smiling with unrestrained glee.

“Hahahah, yes, you must be near or even past immortality. No surprise - I would expect nothing less from one of your exalted calibre,” Old Nick declared, to Yaaroghkh’s confusion. There was, so far as he knew, nothing particularly special about him.

To Old Nick, however, this was the fight of the century. To think, he’d had the chance to go toe to toe with the master who trained Santa Claus - even if he died today, his reputation among the scions of wickedness was assured.

***

Arius paused in the middle of giving directions to the elves. His father was looking worried, and that worried him.

“What is it, father? Is there a problem with our Christmas planning? Something I left undone?”

Santa was shaken out of his stupor. “Oh, no, it’s not that. Nothing to do with that - everything for Christmas is right as rain. It’s Yaaroghkh - I’m worried about him.”

Arius nodded, sipping at his hot chocolate as he watched the elves wrap the last of the Christmas presents. It was quiet, peaceful, barring the sound of Nicholas screaming in rage as he caught Mary’s little lamb trying to sneak copies of How to Commune with Satyrs into the stocking stuffer pile.

“He’ll be fine. He’s been away from home plenty of times.”

“True. He has the experience. But he’s still the smallest and youngest of the elves, so I can’t help but worry.”

Arius activated the Office Administration Secret Technique, checking his calendar. “We have some free time scheduled shortly. Should we pop in on him, see how he’s doing?”

Santa nodded. He really ought to check in on the little guy.

***

“Ahahah, yes! This is it - this is what it is to live!” Old Nick screamed, scimitar in one hand and shamshir in the other as he deflected the blows of both elf and man.

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“By all that is power-hungry, why did I send the fools under my purview against you, when I could have fought you myself?”

His blades glanced off Caedes’ polearm, the force of the blow causing the latter to stumble back six feet. Spirals of algebraic symbols were circling around Old Nick’s form, as the wily old cultivator leapt in and out of nothing.

The building roared, ceiling beams crashing down on top of Caedes and Yaaroghkh as the walls pulsed towards them. Caedes’ puppetry technique crashed back, and the floor heaved as the two fought it out.

Old Nick’s blades forged into one, a massive two-handed sword that swung for Yaaroghkh. The table behind was pulverised into sawdust as the elf caught the blade, not even bothering to try to mitigate the blow, and slammed the blade onto the floor.

He oozed onto the sword, pinning it in place, and before Old Nick could dissipate and reforge it whacked the latter with a headbutt.

Old Nick hit the wall, the building cushioning the blow, and coughed out blood.

The windows refracted, beams of fire spitting towards the elf. These the elf danced around, spinning his pointy elf cap in his hand as he demonstrated how Santa was able to slink through the teensiest of chimneys.

“You’ll have to do better than that,” the elf parroted, and Old Nick shivered as he heard his own voice coming from lipless maws.

Yaaroghkh slammed both of his hands together, his form for once consistent with that of a human's… yet the sight of him assuming normal anatomy, far from being comforting, chilled Old Nick to the bone.

“You see, you made one fatal mistake when you critiqued my swordsmanship: I’m not a swordsman - like all elves, I’m a berserker, and my weapon is the fists God gave me.”

Old Nick was momentarily distracted as he wondered why his foe was still pretending to be a Christmas elf when he’d already confessed to being the ancient immortal Mithras, and in that moment said ancient immortal struck.

Fists slammed into him, each hammer blow as if it was a thousand fists, the elf’s noncommutative geometry acausally making his hands the hands of a thousand inexplicable dimensions. Blood and bone spattered the walls, limbs twisting into unrecognisable shapes, and the screams of Old Nick vanished under the mad laughter of an elder god.

Caedes watched as the elf punched with such speed he exceeded the sound barrier, feeling glad the two of them were friends. The building no longer struggled under him, trying its best to shield its rapidly sinking master.

It was a vain attempt. Old Nick collapsed to the floor, gums moving limply, and keeled over, dead. Caedes had a mad moment where he wondered if there was more blood leaking out of his smashed and tortured body than there was the altar, until he looked back at the altar and realised he was being stupid.

Still, it was undeniable that what was on the ground was more pulp than corpse, and had Caedes not heard those dreadful screams from the altar ten minutes earlier he would likely have felt some sympathy.

Thank Heavens the man was gone.

“I’m glad that’s over,” he said, a sigh of relief escaping his lips.

Yaaroghkh, who was cleaning the blood from off his hands as he walked towards the centre of the room, looked at Caedes askance.

“Over? What are you talking about?”

“Is there anyone else we have to kill?” Caedes asked, prompting yet more confusion on the part of the elf.

“Anyone else? But we haven’t killed him yet.”

And as Caedes was going to respond that of course the demonic cultivator was dead, because his corpse was in five hundred thousand pieces on the floor, he heard a long, low laugh behind him.

There, rising from the mess of his own putrid corpse, was Old Nick.

He looked as if he had gained sixty pounds or more of pure muscle, his bulging form barely fitting in its black suit. He stroked his bushy black beard, raising one perfectly manicured eyebrow. His fox-like eyes twinkled in a clear face.

“Indeed - did you forget? I’m the final boss, so of course I'm not dead.”

“I have two forms.”