by Sean Shake
“It won’t get impounded.” Getting stuck in another realm on the other hand…
I’d decided to go further in debt and rent a boat again because despite what I had told Alexa, I really did think I would get lost if I tried to use a different portal.
If only Rue had put maps in instead of leaving it as a TODO.
Couldn’t blame her, she couldn’t have been expecting this. It was nice that I had the contacts at all, even if they were a beta product.
I got Scarlett from the truck and we walked down the empty dock to the boat.
I saw the proprietor watching us.
Well, it didn’t matter. What was he gonna do, call the police because I had a really tall girl with me?
Besides, I was glad I had brought her with me. Her size, teeth, aggressiveness, and trollish desire to destroy might come in handy if something really was wrong.
Which I got the feeling that it was. Though I couldn't think what it would be that Alexa wouldn’t tell me over comms. Did she think they’d been hacked? If so, by who?
Had Grýla come back? I couldn’t see why she wouldn’t just tell me that.
Scarlett and I took off in the boat and headed out into the Atlantic.
We came through into Lake Superior, several hundred feet out from the dock.
Erica’s boat was there, but it was empty.
The whole place seemed empty.
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” I said. Looking at Scarlett, I asked, “Can you swim?”
“What kind of question’s that? I live in Florida. Of course I can swim.”
“No, I mean now that you’re a… troll.”
She scrunched her nose. Despite being several inches taller than me, she was still very cute when she did this.
“I can swim.”
I dipped a hand into the water. It felt cold, though I wasn’t sure how cold exactly.
At this thought, a notification popped up telling me the temperature of the water.
Twelve degrees. Unfortunately this was in Celsius.
Was that cold? I didn’t know.
“All right, you get in the water and swim to the docks—” I stopped myself, getting a better idea. “No. I’ll swim to the docks. You wait out here until I call you.”
“How will you call me?”
Right. She didn’t have a comm.
“I’ll either wave you down from that hill over there if everything’s okay, or I’ll scream. If I scream, it means—”
“Destroy time?” She punched her fist.
“Um, sure. Just don’t destroy me. Only the bad guys.”
She nodded, and I slipped into the water.
My entire suit glowed a very, very dim red in my heads-up display, but I felt just fine, not cold at all.
As I swam silently to shore, another number appeared below the temperature: one indicating my speed. Unfortunately this was in nautical miles per hour. And I had no idea how knots translated to miles per hour.
Stupid metric units.
Were knots metric?
I reached the dock and climbed up onto it next to Erica’s boat, the water dripping off me strangely.
I stayed low in a crouch as I approached the embankment and felt myself drying off rather quickly as I moved.
Also feeling déjà vu from when I’d done this not so long ago when I’d come here to deal with Grýla.
I reached the bottom of the embankment and stopped. Unfortunately, there was no place for me to hide, just the hill, and then open ground until the compound.
I could see the workshops were now all completed, but I still didn’t see any people.
I wasn’t liking this.
I made my way up the embankment until I was at the very top, then pressed myself low to the ground, scanning the area.
Empty.
No, I didn’t like this one bit.
I moved my hand to the place on my thigh the North Pole rested, and it popped out. I clutched it, getting some comfort from its heft. But I didn’t activate it. Not yet.
What I did activate, was Track.
65
The place was full of spectral paths.
Going further into point debt, I identified them as demon.
Crap.
Maybe they were old? I’d never used Track here before.
That’s when I heard a shriek.
Is was high-pitched, almost too high to hear.
Suddenly I was surrounded by demons.
First twenty, then fifty. Then hundreds.
Double crap.
“Well look who it is,” one of the demons said. “Thought you could trick us by coming through a different portal, did you?” It was my old friend Gastly, the Pokémon demon.
Not that this demon was a Pokémon, just that he, or it, looked like one.
And to my dismay, standing next to him was the female clothes-stealing demon.
I tried to remember her name. Ova-something.
She was no longer smooth like a mannequin, but had nipples now, and I saw that they were both erect. And pierced. The right with a silver bar, the left with a golden nipple ring.
She also wasn’t naked, or not exactly, now having on a pair of tiny panties that pressed into her folds, showing she was no longer like a mannequin down there either.
Her folds glistened, the fabric hardly—
I shook my head, pulling my attention away.
No, she wasn’t going to seduce me this time.
“It looks like he’s gotten stronger,” the succubus demon said. Her voice was high and lilting. Hadn’t it been deeper before? There was also something familiar about it.
“Won’t matter,” my friend Gastly said. “Hand over that North Pole and we can be done with this silliness.”
I had half a mind to extend the Pole and attack, but there were too many of them.
Still, I wasn’t just going to give them the North Pole.
How had they gotten through? We’d protected the realm with the replica. The werewolves had proved that. So they shouldn’t have been able to.
But they had, somehow.
“Where is everyone else?” I demanded.
The demon laughed. “Everyone else? You hear that?” He looked around at his fellow demons. “He wants to fight more of us.”
“No you idiot,” the succubus demon said. Ovariea! That was her name. Not like it gave me any power over her. I had no use for her soul, and wouldn’t know how to take it even if I did. “That’s not what he means. He’s asking about his friends. The little deer and his daughter.”
Her voice was so familiar. It almost sounded like…
Alexa?
Gastly looked at me. “Which is it? More demons or your friends?
“My friends.”
He hissed, and a smug expression crossed over Ovariea’s dangerously pretty face. “We have them hostage. Give us the North Pole, or we’ll do very nasty things to them.”
Well crap. Could I fight all of them off?
I had managed to fight off— How many was it before? Nine?
And I hadn’t even killed all of them. One had gotten away.
What I needed to do was find out where Alexa, Rue, Erica, and all the others were.
But I couldn’t give these demons the North Pole. Who knew what would happen then.
I tried calling up Rue or Alexa on comms, but there was no reply, and no ringing or buzzing phone alerting me to their location.
That was one downside of everything being piped straight into your brain.
I could yell, call Scarlett here, but I wasn’t sure that would be enough.
And the demons might follow through on their threat to do nasty things to my friends.
I needed to make sure they were safe before I tried fighting.
“How’d you get here?” I asked, stalling for time. “You shouldn’t have been able to enter this realm.”
Ghastly scoffed. “Ha, that pathetic pole the creature made? That couldn’t keep us out.”
“No,” Ovariea agreed, drawing my attention to her again. That was definitely Alexa’s voice. Different somehow, but…
She was playing with the piercing in her left nipple, spinning the ring around and around endlessly.
I looked at her lips as she began to speak in Alexa’s voice. “When the Lads came to—”
A ghastly fist slammed into the pretty demon’s stomach, silencing her.
I blinked, dazed.
I shook my head.
“What’s your problem!” Ovariea gasped, “I almost had him.”
“You were about to tell him about the Lads.”
“It wouldn’t have mattered!”
The lads?
The Yule Lads?
I had forgotten about them. They’d done this?
I felt anger rise up in me.
They’d kidnapped my women again.
This time I wasn’t going to let them get away.
This time it was their heads.
And not the ones attached to their necks.
“You want this?” I held up the Pole to the bickering demons.
They immediately stopped and turned their attention to me.
Gastly looked uncertain. His big eyes and features were easy to read.
Unless that was a deception.
“Why… yes, we do.” His eyes squinted.
“Then show me my friends are okay.”
Gastly looked at the other demons around him.
Next to him was one a thought I recognized. A birdlike demon. The one that had gotten away?
I activated Track and scanned the area while the demons whispered to each other about my offer.
There were spectral paths everywhere, too many for me to isolate the Yule Lads.
And besides, they had fooled me before somehow, making me think they were beasts. Maybe they could make their spectral residue look like that of a demon’s.
I didn’t see I saw a path from Alexa, but it faded out.
That didn’t mean much. My range was only a few hundred yards, and I was about that from the nearest workshop.
Where would they be keeping them? In the house?
In one of the workshops?
I just didn’t know.
And I couldn’t risk guessing wrong.
Gastly had said something about coming through a different portal, and they hadn’t been here when I’d first arrived, so they might not even have them in one of the buildings.
“That is possible,” Gastly finally said, coming out from the huddle.
“Good. I’ll wait here.”
We stared at one another.
Finally he looked away. “Bring out the meatbags!” he yelled, not exactly over his shoulder, as he was just a floating head with claws.
A few moments later, four demons came out of the woods surrounding the compound.
Good thing I hadn’t assumed they were in one of the buildings.
Behind the demons were Alexa, Rue—whose antlers were huge now—Erica, and a gaggle of elves.
There were also eight other girls who had antlers.
Rue must have made reindeer while I was gone.
I couldn’t tell if all of the elves were there, and I apparently wasn’t close enough for my HUD to either, as it only identified some of them, but couldn’t lock on to the ones farther back.
I was close enough for it to lock onto something Erica was wearing.
BINDING
Bad juju.
TODO: Add more of what this does so next Santa doesn’t get himself killed.
I’d have to have a talk with Rue—once I rescued her—about leaving TODOs in my interface. Especially ominous ones like that.
Following behind them, filling me with an almost overwhelming desire to destroy, were the Yule Lads.
I tamped down my rising temper.
I needed to stay in control.
Alexa and Rue were both now wearing long gowns, like they’d been to some formal event.
A dinner in a cave, perhaps.
They stopped, still far enough away that my HUD couldn’t get a read on the elves behind them, though I could see they were all gagged with something red.
“There,” Gastly said. “Now you’ve seen them. Hand over the Pole.”
I shook my head. “I need to see them up close.”
“Why?”
“The Yule Lads aren’t exactly known for playing by the rules. This might be a trick.”
“They do like tricks,” Ovariea said.
Gastly did a little spiral in the air and slammed a fist into her stomach again.
She heaved over, her large breasts dangling and drawing my attention.
She looked up and saw me watching. “Are you just going to let him treat me like that?” she asked in Alexa’s voice.
“Huh?”
“Aren’t you going to defend me?” She reached down and with one swift movement cut through her panties with her fingernail.
They fell to the ground and her glistening sex was laid bare. “I’m naked and defenseless. You’ve got to save me.”
I felt my anger rising again, and that wasn’t all.
I locked onto Gastly. “Hit her again and I’ll make you regret it.”
“Oh yeah?” he asked. “And what are you gonna do?”
I marched toward him, hand tight on my saber, ready to deploy it and skewer it through his ghastly head.
Then something punched me in my head, knocking me to the ground, and I watched in confusion as my penis slipped out of Ovariea’s sex.
Yells arose from around me and I heard Ovariea scream in Alexa’s voice, except now it vacillated between this, and that lower, huskier one I’d heard before.
I realized I was naked.
What the hell had—
‘That’s what she does.’ Krampus had said. ‘Steals men’s clothes.’
“Dammit,” I muttered. I’d been seduced. I didn’t know how Scarlett knew I needed her—maybe she simply got impatient—but I was grateful to her for snapping me out of it.
Even if it was by socking me in the head.
Getting to my feet I saw that I was still clutching the North Pole.
I had no idea how, but I was grateful for it.
Then I saw Scarlett, yelling and fighting all the demons around me.
She was losing.
I activated my saber and got to my bare feet.
The little ragdoll in my HUD was now grayed out with a line through it.
Guess that meant pain would have to be my guide to how injured I was.
Shouldn’t be a problem.
I joined the fray, slashing the head off a demon who had been latched onto Scarlett’s shoulder.
Our eyes met and she nodded at me.
“Thanks for—” I began, but then we were swarmed again.
A gargoyle-demon rushed at me, quickly threw up my hand to cast Frozen Touch at it.
But the ice hit it and instantly melted.
It skidded to a stop in front of me, laughing at my confusion.
“What the—”
“You like that? Little early Christmas gift from the Yule Lads. Your ice can’t chill us anymore. Should never have crossed the Yule Lads. Thanks for—”
I slashed, shutting him up, but he managed to dodge, and I only managed to slice off a bit of his wing.
I heard a needling cry from far off, and then someone shouting, “Get back here!”
I wanted to look, but the gargoyle was coming at me again.
This time I feinted, making to slash, and when it dodged I angled my saber at its head and it rammed itself right onto it like a shish kabob.
I yanked it free and laughed a joyous laugh. “I don’t need magic to—”
Teeth sunk into my calf.
I slashed wildly, and heard Scarlett curse at me.
I’d almost hit her.
Whoops.
A little ankle-biting demon was latched onto my calf. I could feel it sucking my blood out. It had a tiny body and a huge head. Or
just a tiny body, and a head the size of a human’s. Its mouth however was larger and going by feel, felt to be lined with razor sharp teeth like a shark’s.
I stabbed down with my saber, but it disintegrated just before I made contact and then flew up as a cloud of dust.
It rematerialized above me as something that wasn’t quite a bat.
Neat trick.
Remembering my first encounter with the demons before I’d met Krampus, how one had flown into the sky and I’d almost thrown my saber at it, I ignored this and focused my attention on the demons on the ground.
I wasn’t sure where the rest of them had gone while I was blacked out, but there were only about twenty now around us.
I looked to Scarlett to see if she needed help just in time to see her bite a hand off a demon that looked like a little kid.
I grimaced and looked away. We were surrounded, but they weren’t’ attacking.
Were they afraid?
I charged the closest demon to me, one with a dragon’s face and furry legs ending in hooves. The torso appeared to be female, with small, surprisingly soft-looking breasts.
I went for a decapitation, but the creature ducked, and swung a tail I hadn’t seen right into my unprotected balls.
My breath left me and I nearly dropped the North Pole, but I made myself grip it tighter, gritting my teeth at the sickening pain spreading through me.
Then the tail wrapped around my manhood. Both parts of it.
And squeezed.
Pain so intense that I thought I might vomit running through me, I nonetheless fought through it and focused, locating the tail, then adding a very healthy margin of error and slicing down.
This time I hit my target and severed it from its owner.
My bits dangled, briefly greatly elongated, then the tail slid off with the sickening slick feel of a vagina.
This brought me over the edge, and I puked up the pancakes Scarlett had made me earlier.
Then I threw up again as several demons leapt for the pile of sick and began lapping it up.
They were worse than dogs.
Something bit into my buttocks and I whirled, slashing.
Scarlett was several feet away and so not in any danger of being hit this time.
But neither was my attacker, who was still latched onto my butt.
I reached behind me with my left hand, saber gripped firmly in my right, grabbing for whatever it was that had me.
There was a roar, and I felt something graze my fingers, then the thing let go.