So spoke the demonic executives, as they met in their room at the top of the tower. On the other end of the vertical spectrum were our heroes, underground but in the open air. It was raining in the troll’s kingdom under the earth, big fat dollops which splashed when they hit you but felt warm on the skin.

It was getting hectic in the troll’s cave, not that he cared - peace is nice, but a bit of noise is good on occasion. At any rate things were getting chaotic, but they weren’t getting loud - and it was the latter the troll couldn’t abide. The Doll was a quiet sort, given to painting, Claireholm was in and out, and though the goblins brought pandemonium, it was not the pandemonium of a thousand demons but of that ancient rhyming poem:

The Spangled Pandemonium

Is missing from the zoo.

He bent the bars the barest bit,

And slithered glibly through.

(Plus, more people gave him more opportunities to try new things: Miranda was a wonderful woman, but even she had her faults, like not liking pumpkin pie.)

Caedes, who didn’t know this, was vaguely mystified as to why Lug kept foisting cheese and strawberry tarts on him, and chokeberry cakes, and other even stranger desserts, but as he was a good guest he made no remark. Yaaroghkh cared even less; as somebody who was used to crunching rocks when no cookies were available, this was on the more boring side of his diet.

They were standing around a table, examining a map of Das Gleiche’s surroundings and talking, when a woman entered the kingdom under the bridge. She was a plain girl, in plaid and a skirt, with her hair in pigtails. She pushed up her glasses as she entered, bowing to Miranda and Lug, and scanned the forest until she saw Caedes.

She then proceeded to take big, galumphing steps towards him, and Yaaroghkh was amused to see that despite the weather she was wearing wellingtons. Caedes looked both delighted and absolutely terrified to see her.

“Ah, Miriam. How wonderful to see y-” and he cut off as she gave him a great wallop across the face.

“That, elder brother, is for imperilling the mistress.” She said, and sniffed.

“Oww,” he pretended to moan, clutching his entirely unaffected cheek. “Is that anyway to talk to your saviour?”

“You saved me; she invested in me. It’s a difference in financial results,” she joked. Then she began rummaging around in a storage ring, looking for something. As she did Caedes introduced her to Yaaroghkh.

“Yaary, this is Miriam. I’ve mentioned her before - she was my mate in childhood, the one with the heavenly something body. Miriam, this is Yaaroghkh - he’s a Christmas elf.”

“It’s the Heavenly Divine Immortal Disco Soufflé Body, not that it’s ever done me a lick of good,” she said curtly, and bowed to Yaary while still rummaging through her ring. “Charmed, I’m sure. It’s an absolute pleasure to meet you.”

“Likewise,” said the elf politely, noshing on a pasta cookie Lug had given him.

Finally, Miriam found everything she was looking for: a beautifully gift-wrapped parcel, and two letters. She handed them unceremoniously to Caedes, then announced she’d wait for his reply and stood stock still, staring at him.

Caedes opened the box, looked at the severed head within, closed the box, and pretended it didn’t exist. He slowly pushed it to the side. Then he opened the letters, reading them slowly.

“Anything important to us?” Yaaroghkh asked, trying to ignore the girl standing and staring beside him. (He knew he didn’t need to blink, but he’d thought it was something humans did and ironically found her very disquieting.)

“Us? Maybe. The first letter is a list of excellent stores at which to buy wedding bands, with advice on her preferred style. This, of course, is absolutely, positively, rootedly-tootedly important to me,” he said, staring Miriam dead in the eye the entire time, “but has no import to us as a group. The other is possibly more important.”

“Possibly?” Miriam asked, tone neutral but deadly. Her body moved not one jot as she said this. (Yaaroghkh was impressed - it was difficult, even for an elf, to freeze your molecules in place. To then speak by only vibrating the molecules outside your mouth was even more impressive.)

“As a group. Obviously it’s a life and death situation for me,” Caedes said nonchalantly, sweat beading on his brow. “It’s an invitation to the city Christmas Ball two days from now.”

“Congratulations,” the elf intoned. Caedes chuckled.

“There’s also a personal note tucked in with the card, mentioning that she has some pertinent documents for me to collect.”

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Yaaroghkh noted the ‘me,’ and not the ‘us.’ “I take it you’re going alone, then?”

“Unless you have some plausible reason to show up uninvited to the most prestigious ball of the year.”

“…Do you? I thought you’d assaulted half these people.”

“I’m suspected of assaulting half these people.”

Yaaroghkh shrugged. “If you say so. Are you sure you’ll be safe, all on your own?”

“If I want to marry the woman of my dreams, I need to be able to do this much. Besides, I won’t be alone - Claireholm should have received an invite, and of course Cindy will be there.”

“I will be there too,” the Doll added unexpectedly. He was sitting on a stump beside them, sipping tea from a straw.

“Claireholm - who’s a real gentleman, and a gentle soul besides - has invited me along. I shall pretend to be an inanimate doll, and as we chat together we’ll scare all the rich people away from him. It's the perfect social deterrent.”

“So there you are. I’ll be perfectly safe: I’ll have a classical conductor and a children’s toy with me. Oh, and Miriam.”

“I’m honoured to have been included,” Miriam said, still staring straight at him. “When can I expect a formal reply for my lady?”

Caedes pulled his fountain pen from out of his coat pocket, and began scritching a message on a spare sheet of paper. This took quite a while - besides giving her a definite answer as to his attending the ball, he also wrote an entire page of apologies for accidentally getting assassins sent after her, and another two pages complimenting her for how lovely she looked today.

Yaaroghkh was confused as to how, exactly, he could do this when he hadn’t seen her, and assumed he simply thought his girlfriend looked lovely all the time. In actual fact Caedes had mastered the complex series of patterns which governed his girlfriend’s dressing habits - in the weather, the day of the week, ongoing events, etcetera - and was entirely correct when he remarked that her polka-dotted turtleneck matched the butterfly clasp in her hair. He was also correct when he predicted that Cindy would applaud this induction of his. (Not that he wrote that down, though Cindy knew he knew - hence her applause.)

After this laborious process was completed, he sealed the letter with a proper seal, and handed it to Miriam. Her hand sprung out, grabbing the letter and tucking it into her storage ring with one smooth move. Then she swung around on one foot, and galumphed straight out of the otherworld in a totally straight line.

“Bit of a strange woman, eh?” Yaaroghkh said, once she had left.

“Some people develop acute trauma from being abused by cultivators, others rise up to the challenge and seek vengeance with vigour and vim. Still others decide to be purposefully and aggressively weird for the singular end of being as annoying as possible without legitimately angering anybody. Even the ‘you dare, you’re courting death’ types find themselves incapable of bringing said death when the offence is randomly standing on your head and crying ‘sku-weeee.’” Caedes casually returned, finishing his squash pound cake.

“Well, that, and the wellingtons are an amazing spot to store poisons. You’d be surprised what you can do with pigtails, too - but I’m getting off track. I should plan for the Ball.”

The next two days passed in a whirl. They finalised their plans to end Das Gleiche (festively), sending out messages to all the pertinent parties, and gathering the materials they’d need for their own assault (which, coincidentally, was to occur on the very day Merida was to leave for north of the north pole, not that either group knew that as of yet).

And Caedes planned for the Ball. He was meticulous - it was Cindy’s favourite day of the year, and he wanted to make it a night she’d remember with fondness forever.

“Should I wear silk brocade, or satin?” He asked, examining several drawings from his tailor (Tommothy, when he wasn't hiding in a bunker, was a man of many skills). The Doll, who couldn’t care less for such things and didn’t even know where to begin with them, continued with his lecture.

“The obvious problem with The Three Billy Goats Gruff is why, exactly, the contradictory forces arrayed in it are both symbolic of the wilderness as wilderness. What differs in terms of goats and trolls that they ought to oppose each other, and what is the commentary to be derived from this masterwork?”

“I’ll have to go with satin: brocade is lovely, but she prefers me in simple designs, and anyways she isn’t overly fond of silk. Which crosses out most satins, too, now that I think more about the matter.”

“But of course, though the goat and the troll symbolise wilderness in general, there are nonetheless severe qualitative differences in terms of the aspect of wilderness they represent. The goat is irreducibly tied to an absolute and consuming materiality - hence the traditional astrological view of Capricorn - whereas the troll is more symbolic of the wilderness in its purely chthonic, which is to say underground, aspect.”

Lug clapped.

“Why am I worrying about the substance of the fabric first, though? It’s not like she can get especially touchy-feely with me at a ball - I should prioritise the design on the coat. An elaborate design on the back is clearly off the table, but maybe something ornate on the sleeves or shoulders? A fancy bit of embroidery, perhaps - little reindeers and snowmen prancing about?”

Yaaroghkh got excited. He’d always wanted to see someone stitch an eighth dimensional monstrosity in embroidered fabric.

“The latter is clearly necessary to the crafting of the soul. The soul stands between Heaven and Earth - the celestial and the chthonic - and must unify both. Pure materiality, however, is more dubious in its relation to us: it has some function in governing the expression of the chthonic, but too much and the chthonic will find itself overwhelmed.”

“But if I’m too distracting, it might jar with the setting of the ball itself. This would ruin the feng shui, creating disjointed memories. The ball is normally decorated in white and silver, so white and gold would be optimum to avoid a clash.”

“Once we articulate this distinction, the motif of the story as a whole is clear: it’s about the conflict between the rectified earthly soul and the materiality with which it interacts, and how when you allow yourself to be drawn into greater and greater forms of materiality what could have been nourishment ends up killing you.”

“Yes, this will do - a pure white suit and shirt, with slight gold embroidery. Perhaps a design of wreaths. Ceremonial, but festive. It’ll be perfect.”

“And that’s the end of the matter,” both men said in unison.