Merida first became aware that something was very, very wrong when her hose attempted to snakecharm itself. As it contorted midway in the air, musically hypnotising its own rubbery body, she did not waste time wondering why. She turned on her heel, and broadcasting her voice at the top of her qi-infused lungs, yelled out:
“We are under attack. All troops to your battle stations.”
Her divisions, boarding the boats that would take them to Santa’s workshop, immediately about-faced. She had prepared for this since day one. The others might have trusted to their plans, certain that their cultivation would prevent or stop any problems that might arise, but she wasn’t that naive. Plans upon plans upon plans, training upon training upon training, that was her motto, and it was one she had drilled into the thousands of demonic cultivators under her direct command until they could repeat it in their sleep.
She had expected that there might be something someone would try to pull on the day of her assault on Santa’s workshop, and had designed several constituent plans for various surprises. The hose coming alive was not among them, but her men had been prepared for the unexpected.
The legions formed up on the docks and began to march back towards the basement door, but they didn’t make it far. Swarms of goblins came through the ceiling, swinging in midair, jiving to invisible tunes, and making all sorts of shrieks, gibbers, and ululations.
They met the demonic cultivators in the middle of the floor. Quadratics flew through the air, formations glowed luridly on the floor, and pikes turned to bundles of skinned bananas as the two forces charged each other.
The demonic cultivators of the basement were neither caught by surprise like the demonic cultivators upstairs, nor were they as easy to split up as the employees had been. There were dozens of times more of them than there were goblins, and as they fought in formation they proved impossible to splinter or dislodge.
Not that this bothered the goblins. They didn’t even behave as if they were in a combat, so far as the demonic cultivators were concerned, doing a Scottish reel in the middle of enemy ranks. They teased the artillery divisions and twisted the cannons on the boats into odd and unnatural angles, played hopscotch amid the long range specialists, and danced a cotillion in the command tent.
Their jocularity infuriated Merida - it was one thing to oppose her, but she would not be insulted - who batted at them uselessly. They flew through the air, squawking, as if they were pins and she a bowling ball. And then they came back, hurling awful rhymes and begging for more.
One and three and hoopty hee!
Don’t you want to count with me?
A high a doo, a high a dee dee,
Callie, call in a half a tree!
“Why- won’t- you- just- die!” Merida swore, as she slammed her axe into the head of one of the steaming blighters. His skull caved in, then bounced back with a boing.
“Happy Lammastide!” The goblin remarked inanely, and offered her a loaf of bread.
“Aargh,” she cried, kicking him aside. He ricocheted off the walls like a kid’s rubber ball. In the background another goblin did ballet, while playing sweet sultry tunes on his flute.
Of course throwing bolts of demonic energy were not the only things Merida’s troops could do. Like Ilsa they knew a variety of other techniques, and were currently trying to cage the goblins, or expel them. Neither technique was proving particularly effective. Goblins sent flying simply caromed through the basement making ‘wheeee’ noises, while those caged either multiplied themselves out of the cage or took the opportunity to tweet like a bird. A few reeled through the solid bars of demonic qi, bowing to the stupefied cultivators as if they were dance partners.
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Merida barked a command, ordering her legions to retreat and her specialist forces to step into the fore. These looked barely human, hulking forms of muscle with black claws and protruding spines, and slavered as they formed ranks in front of the weaker cultivators, fish eyes spinning crazily in their heads.
The goblins also took the opportunity to reform their own ranks… if ranks you could call them. Basically they milled around in a bundle, singing crude drinking songs and bouncing up and down. Their commander, an exceptionally short, squat goblin in a jester’s hat (the goblin king was presently indisposed on chapter thirty-seven), was waving some sort of egg whisk and yelling at his men in a hideous mix of Gaelic and Dutch. Merida wasn’t sure if they weren’t listening or if his commands or if his orders were just ineffectual, but whatever it was none of what he said had any effect. (Not that she knew this, but it was because his men spoke neither Gaelic nor Dutch, and hadn’t the foggiest clue what he was saying.)
She addressed her men in the clerical shorthand they used for the administration of the army, delivering precise orders. The regular forces reformed and began treating their (mostly self-sustained) injuries. With them out of the way, her specialist forces were free to take action, and revealed precisely what was so special about them.
Streams of qi poured out…from the goblin ranks, and flew into the mouths of the demonic cultivators. Merida cackled maniacally, gloating that this, this was what it meant to fight demonic cultivators. One slowly watched themself die as their energy was drained and absorbed by their enemy, who grew stronger over the fight. Oh, it was delicious. She wanted to see the goblins suffer as they felt their life force leaving their bodies, saw their limbs wither and their muscles slowly collapse, felt…
The goblins began square dancing, bobbing up and down in coordinated timing.
Hoopty!
Hey hey!
Hoopty!
Hey hey!
Tiny hats whizzed overhead as the goblins’ excitement took control of them, and they started to enter ecstatic pleasantries. Flowers bloomed all over the concrete floor, birds twittered, a hipporhinostricow waltzed glibly by.
“What.” Merida said, and was about to ask her specialists what they thought they were doing when she heard the division commander give a great hic. He put his clawed hands up to his lips, then began laughing and wheeling about.
He wasn’t alone. Merida had assumed that the attackers were some sort of orthodox cultivator, or possibly rival demonic cultivators, but she now realised with a spark of annoyance (she never let herself feel terror) that this couldn’t possibly be the case. The goblins’ qi was making her men drunk.
She swore, and was about to order her men to switch techniques (there was a form of qi draining that simply dispersed the qi) when she realised that not all the goblins were dancing.
At the centre of their square dance was a square of a very different sort. A dozen goblins, presided over by the goblin jester, were proceeding solemnly around a geometrical sign they’d carved into the floor. They were chanting lowly, under their breath, but the candles and the chalk and the singing told Merida all she needed to know.
“Quick,” she cried, voice piercing, “somebody stop them - they’re attempting to summon something.”
Attempting to? No, they were successful. With a roar and a rumble the floor gave way, smoke and ash pouring into the sky. A huge shape moved amidst the smoke, massive clawed hands slamming into the ground (the goblins who’d been there went flying off like bouncing beans, making ‘fwee’ noises). Glowing red eyes pierced through the fog, and she saw the impressions of immense horns.
The creature pushed up against the roof, its smokey body filling the entirety of the basement. The goblins shimmied around its arms, bobbing and jigging, entirely unconcerned with its presence. The scent of woodsmoke and peppermint drifted down with the smoke, the normally warming smells failing to provide any comfort.
It couldn’t even fit its upper body in the basement. Merida shivered as she felt the cold breeze of winter blow over her body, the icy air of the portal it had come through and the uncomfortable warmth of the creature itself combining to make her feel like hurling.
“It’s… it’s…” She tried to get out, body going slack with terror.
“It’s Krampus,” a deep voice intoned, “and you’ve all been very naughty.”