Anna heard the banging coming upstairs, and sighed. She knew her co-workers didn't share her appreciation of classical music, but did they have to get that upset? It’s not like throwing a temper tantrum would change anything.
The empty main hall of Das Gleiche was still just that - empty. No goblins were there to cause chaos; there was merely paperwork. Unable to escape her responsibilities any longer, Anna had cracked the door open, and moved her chair as near it as she could. She was now doing the filing, copying out labels to the sweet but ephemeral tunes of the orchestra.
Outside she could hear the policeman telling them that they really must pack up and get going, or he'd have to start getting unpleasant.
DUN DUN DUN DUN, went the orchestra, their expert performance of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony (Op. 67: I. Allegro con brio) totally outside of the policeman's aesthetic appreciation.
Anna chortled as she fixed the spelling on a folder, trying to ignore the banging from upstairs. Really, what did they think they were doing up there?
Two people who weren't ignoring the banging were Caedes and Yaaroghkh, by now halfway up the building. (Crawling through an air vent does not become easier merely because one has superpowers.)
The second act had started, and it was time for them to begin the third. Caedes crawled to the edge of the vent and began to unscrew the nails from the inside. This took some time - he was still using the Cute and Fuzzy Disguise Technique, which does not help with dexterous finger movements - but he was good at this sort of thing in more normal circumstances, and being a stuffed toy didn't delay him too much.
Judy stopped descending the stairs as she heard the clatter of a vent cover hitting the floor behind her. She'd been going to check out what all that ruckus on the second floor was - Old Nick had called her to complain about the noise - when she heard the tinny bang. She spun around, wary, already forming a blade of demonic qi.
There, lying prone upon the landing, was an adorable stuffed toy.
A wave of disgust filled her at the sight. Who would dare to bring that soft and fuzzy garbage into such an unhallowed location of pure evil? Whoever they were, they must have hid it in the vents hoping to escape her notice. But the building had betrayed them (enough blood had been watered on its roots that it was basically alive, and had agency), and she'd find the offender.
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She bent down to pick it up when something within her twitched. She dashed backwards, back down the stairs, as the toy grew and leapt forwards, a blade piercing the air where her throat had been a second prior.
The young man on the landing eyed her warily. He was crouching like a hunting tiger, his shortsword held facing towards her, his other hand holding some sort of wickedly curving knife by his side.
She recognised who he was immediately, of course, and matched the wickedness of his blade with that of her grin.
“My oh my, aren't I the lucky one? To think, I'd get to be the one to kill you - you, and Santa's master.”
Caedes had no idea who Santa's master was - though the elf had told much of his home, none of it included one even greater than Santa - and frankly doubted anyone alive could kill such a person, since they would all but certainly be an immortal. He had no time to argue with this weird lady, however - he needed to find, and kill, the building's executives - so he simply answered this taunt with a charge.
To fight on the stairs of a building is no mean feat. Even cultivators, with their superior reflexes, often struggle moving up, down, or side to side on such sharply irregular steps.
Confounding matters was that Judy was a master of the poison arts, and so it was that as they leapt and spun and wove up and down the stairs Caedes found himself on an increasingly unpredictable battlefield. His whirling blade had knocked whatever poisonous balls she was hurling out of the air, splashing them across the floor. There they burnt and smouldered, pitting the already inhospitable battlefield and weakening the steps.
Judy, for her part, was not having an easier time of it. Caedes was precisely the worst type of opponent for an assassin trained in poison arts - an assassin trained in poison arts. He knew precisely how far away he had to stay from her toxins, and even if she managed to hit him she wasn't sure it would even do anything.
Unfortunately for her, in such a battle the swordsman is the sure victor, and it wasn't long until she screamed as his blade bit at her flesh.
She moved back, clutching her right arm, and tripped on the stairs. The tumble did not hurt, and she landed on her back on the next landing only feeling winded.
She tried to move, but her panic faded as she saw Caedes lean against the wall, coughing. Apparently a sufficiently large volume of toxic smoke had some effect on him after all.
“Blegh, sorry about that. Give me a minute and I'll be right as rain.” He remarked, as he steadied himself.
Judy had no clue why he was telling her that - it’s not like she was waiting for him. She climbed unsteadily to her feet, prepared to flee or fight, but was slammed violently back onto the ground. A sticky, splayed hand, halfway between a frog's foot and a lion's paw, crushed her chest. Far too many joints in its arm flexed as the hand's owner responded to Caedes.
“Oh, no, take your time. I'll handle matters here,” a sibilant voice hissed.
A gelatinous, squamous head with dozens of lidless eyes gazed down at her, its mandibles clicking. The head split apart, revealing a mouthful of teeth.
Judy screamed.