Home for Horny Monsters Ch. 088

"Nobody speaks to me that way!" The woman held out Jack's hand, summoning a massive amount of magic. The air swirled around them, visibility dropping. The kitsune's flames still burned, making each of them an easy target.

"Ugh, I have no idea how Mike puts up with this shit." The kitsune's voice now came from everywhere, bouncing between the flames. "So I guess I'll level with you. That guy you wanna kill? He's done nothing to you. And based on your shitty Gollum impression, nothing I say is going to convince you otherwise."

"I am no golem!" Beneath Jack, the army surged forward, running, flying, and swimming through the snow. It looked as if the ground was boiling, the storm's fury coalescing around the illusionary kitsunes. "This body may be but a pittance of my former beauty, but know now that I am what remains of the goddess of War, Freya!"

"Freya?" Jack's lips twitched as she forced the words out. She used to be Freya? The name sounded so familiar, but this anger? That wasn't who she had been...right? That small voice in the back of her mind was practically screaming now, and she could no longer see out of one of her eyes.

"Freya, huh? I've heard of you." The kitsune growled, summoning a handful of flames. "If you're good, maybe I'll put that name on the other side of your tombstone, you crazy--"

Freya screamed, and the ground exploded. Creatures of ice and fury tore into each of the illusions, shattering themselves on hidden stone pillars as icicles erupted from the ground. None of the illusions left their posts, instead sending out fire and ice to destroy their attackers. The spikes slowed down Jack's larger warriors, the giants she had created from the ocean ice. Massive limbs smashed the icicles into powder while the smaller warriors advanced. These ones were either pierced by more ice, melted with flames, or shattered themselves on the hidden stone beneath the illusions.

"I don't know what you were expecting," Jack snorted as she landed on the ground. Between the storm and all the snow that had been kicked up, visibility was nearly non-existent. "Your power with the ice is nothing compared to my own."

"I will piss on your corpse, little dog." Freya summoned a ball of golden energy and smashed it into the nearest kitsune. She winced and puffed out of existence, leaving a stone pillar behind. "You hide behind cheap tricks, you have no honor."

"And you do?" The kitsune's laugh was high-pitched. "Tell me, Freya, if that's even your real name..."

"I AM FREYA!" When the goddess screamed, that golden light radiated outward, suffusing dozens of Jack's minions with divine magic. The creatures affected stumbled as if disoriented, then went into a blind rage, attacking those who were unaffected.

"No, stop!" Jack cried, but Freya bit down on their shared tongue, filling their mouth with blood. She tried to press back against Freya's control, but her presence was now too strong to resist.

"Thilenth! I'm thick of your weakneth!" Freya lashed out with their staff, smashing it into a nearby kitsune. The illusion shattered, leaving behind another stone monolith. "Now where are you? I will make you beg for your life, you thtupid animal!"

Jack's blood boiled, the golden cracks on her body widening to reveal molten flows that spilled onto the ground, melting the snow away. Rays of light emerged from her body, blasting away the storm as Freya's rage took over. In a moment of revelation, Jack saw that this wouldn't bring the love, recognition, or adoration that she sought.

It was simply madness. Freya was casting magic at random, sending pillars of light into their phantom attackers, and screaming in pain. Their shared body was building up heat, and Jack's cold hands tingled as the light burnt her flesh away. As more of Freya emerged, Jack realized that the goddess was fractured in a way she couldn't comprehend. It was as if only the angry part of her had been able to manifest, the one desperate for survival and revenge. Was this really who she had been?

Because if it was, it definitely wasn't who she wanted to be.

"DIE!" Freya threw their staff at the last remaining kitsune, who widened her eyes in fright. When the staff struck, the kitsune exploded outward, transforming into the stony remains of yet another monolith.

"COWARD!" Freya lifted their hands, golden light coalescing between her fingers. "I WILL BURN THIS PLACE DOWN TO FIND YOU!"

As they passed a nearby monolith, it blurred, the air distorting as the kitsune emerged, a single card in her hands. She was fast, her hand slapping Jack in the chest so hard that Jack fell backward into the snow.

"HOW DARE YOU, YOU FUCKING--"

"My name is Yuki." The kitsune winked as a ball of sparkling light appeared just over her chest. Jack stared at it in wonder as it expanded, creating a haze between them. The haze solidified into a tendril of light that reached for Jack. She followed the line, surprised to see a card depicting an angel pouring water from one cup to another tucked into the bosom of her gown. "And I'm the goddess of kicking your ass."

A beam of silver light connected the women, and Jack screamed as the golden energy was sucked from her body, spiraling along that connecting thread and entering Yuki. The smug look on the kitsune's face faltered as a third line appeared, diverting the energy to someone hiding beneath the snow.

Yuki let out a groan of agony, doubling over in pain.

"NO! THAT'S MINE!" Freya's shrill cry became a sob. "Give it back, please!"

"Eat...my...ass!" Yuki barked out a single laugh, and then screamed in agony. All around them, Jack's surviving minions fled into the village, disappearing from sight as the storm finally died.

❄️❄️❄️

Mike was in the middle of one of the Tom Clancy novels when Mrs. Claus appeared above the stairwell. She looked tired, and several more wrinkles lined her face.

"You two look comfortable." A wistful smile appeared on her face as she looked down at Mike. Holly had snuggled in next to him, her head on his lap. She was asleep, letting out tiny moans as she dreamed about sugar plums fairies, or whatever it was that elves dreamt of.

"She wanted to stay close in case the ghost who shall not be named arrives." Though his tone was light, he felt a certain level of dread knowing that the ghost of Christmas Future was lingering somewhere, potentially ready to pounce. The first two ghosts had found him quickly, and he didn't dare attribute it to dumb luck that the third hadn't.

"I see." A few strands of hair had come loose, framing Mrs. Claus' face. "If I were to make an assumption, my guess is that a spirit who can see the future is waiting for the perfect moment to strike."

"I hate that assumption." Mike jostled Holly, who bolted upright as if an alarm had gone off.

"Nutmeg!" She yelled, then blinked her eyes and looked up at Mike. "Hey, there," she purred, then noticed Mrs. Claus. As if a bucket of ice water had struck her, she was all business again. "Are the maps done?"

"They are." Mrs. Claus waved them up.

Mike and Holly ascended the stairs, then walked down a long corridor that smelled like fresh cut cedar. The oaken double doors at the end were heavy, and when he walked inside, the smell of wood shavings took him back to the one semester of high school woodshop. He had been an average student, his birdhouse sufficient enough for the finch that had moved in. It only took one harsh winter for the structure to fall apart.

Santa's personal workshop was the size of a three-car garage. Tools hung in carefully labeled places along a back wall, and a massive clamp at the end of a workbench held an alphabet block together the size of Mike's head. A large letter M was carved in the visible side. Half completed projects had been pushed to the side, and a large sheet of drafting paper had been spread on one of the benches. Tink and Kisa were sitting at another table with smaller sheets of paper, the goblin using a pencil to make notes on it.

"Here it is." Mrs. Claus tapped the larger sheet, then sat on a nearby stool. "This is about as accurate as I could make it. I don't think there's anything I missed."

Mike stared at the map in awe. It looked like something that had been drawn up by an engineer, each of the buildings clearly labeled.

"You did this from memory?" he asked.

"I did. When you live somewhere for hundreds of years, you get to know the place."

"Wait, hundreds?" He turned to Mrs. Claus. "I didn't think you were that old."

"You have to remember that time flows differently here," she said, adjusting her negligee. "When you go to sleep on Christmas Eve, it can be months or even years for me here. Also, I wasn't born an old woman, but created with years of pseudo-memories from around the North Pole, otherwise I would have been like a child. You keep forgetting I'm an extension of Santa's magic."

"I forget a lot of things," he admitted.

"Maybe you should stop." She chuckled, then slid the map toward him. "You're going to want to keep this safe. I don't have it in me to make another copy."

Curious, Mike examined Mrs. Claus' magic again. What had once been a bright light of energy was now just a dim glow, with dozens of massive threads unraveling from her body.

"Are...are you okay?"

"I'm not." Mrs. Claus opened her mouth to say something, then slumped forward on the table.

"Mother!" Holly ran to Mrs. Claus while Kisa and Tink abandoned their work to come over as well. Mike moved to the other side of the table and easily picked the woman up in his arms. She was much lighter than she should have been, definitely less than a hundred pounds.

"Let's get her to the bedroom," he said. He carried the frail woman to her room, and Holly adjusted the pillows while Kisa pulled the blankets back. Once she was properly tucked in, Mike watched in horror as the woman briefly flickered out of existence like a faulty light.

"Whoa!" He examined her magic again, a cold chill going through his body. In the time it had taken him to carry her up, most of her magic had unraveled like a massive ball of yarn. Out of protective instinct, he summoned his magic and went to work, tucking the threads back in.

His legs went numb beneath him, but Kisa was there, pushing him into a seated position on the bed before he could fall. Tink yanked the goggles off her head and slid them over his eyes, and he went from blindly working to suddenly understanding what was needed. He paused, his spectral fingers now weaving the frayed edges of Mrs. Claus' magic back together, forming a technicolor rope that he wove back into place.

"Will she be okay?" Holly asked.

"I don't know," he muttered, sweat pouring down his forehead. His magic, sensing his determination, had formed into motes of light that tugged and pulled Mrs. Claus' magic back into place before popping out of existence and leaving him drained. Groaning, he slid the goggles up to his forehead.

Everyone watched as the color came back to Mrs. Claus' face, and she let out a sigh of relief, then opened her eyes and looked at Mike.

"I don't have much time," she said.

"But you should have more," he replied. "You're unraveling faster than before, I don't understand."

"I don't either." She turned to Holly. "But it can only mean that belief is weakening."

"That's bullshit," Kisa growled. "The world is frozen, remember? It's not like people can stop believing when they're just sitting there, doing nothing."

Mrs. Claus took a deep breath, then closed her eyes. When she spoke, her eyes remained closed. "Time is a fickle thing," she whispered. "You have to stop thinking of it as a line, especially here at the North Pole. Whatever is happening now means that the outcome will be bad once the spell ends. Change the outcome, change my fate."

"Like Back to the Future." Mike snapped his fingers in revelation, then looked at the others. "We're operating outside of time right now, which means everything is in flux until we rejoin the timestream."

"Ugh." Tink shook her head and moved away from the bed, checking her toolbelt. "Husband still catching up, maybe figure out eventually."

"What, like you properly understand?" Kisa rolled her eyes at the goblin.

"Tink understand perfectly. North Pole like big box. Santa like cat. Until open box, Santa both dead and alive." Tink pulled her map out, refolded it so that it fit better in one of her pockets, then retrieved a cookie she had tucked between her breasts. "Tink fix furnace, help keep cat alive."

Holly frowned at Tink. "Are you talking about...?" Her eyes flitted over to Kisa, then back.

"No. Tink have no time, maybe explain quantum shit later." She climbed onto the bed and grabbed Mike by the face before planting her lips against his. She tasted of chocolate and gingerbread. With a grin, she pulled the goggles off his head and put them on her own. "Help save Christmas, get big present from Santa. Husband keep everybody safe."

"Be careful," he told her, then wrapped his arms around her. "I love you."

She hugged him back, pausing just long enough to bite him before breaking away.

"I'll check in every couple of hours," Kisa said. "Or try to, at least. Try to stay out of trouble."

Mike looked at Holly, then back at Mrs. Claus. "Yuki will be back soon," he offered. "I'll let her know she's in charge."

"Good." Kisa smoothed some of the hair away from his face and gave him a kiss as well. "There's a vent in the pantry behind the kitchen just big enough for us to squeeze through. Tink is going to get me into one of the other buildings, and then I'm going to try and figure out what that...jerk is up to. That and find the elves. I'll let you know before I make any big decisions."

"Good." He pulled her in for a hug.

"Try not to fuck Santa's wife," she whispered, so he alone could hear. "Santa might shove lumps of coal up your ass, or something."

"You have my word," he replied, dropping his hand to her lower back and scratching. He felt her shiver in delight before stepping away. Her eyes held a certain intensity to them, and he instinctively knew that she wasn't just going out to spy on the Krampus. "Just promise me that whatever you're looking for, you'll remember the most important thing is that you make it back to us."

Kisa opened her mouth as if to argue with him, then changed her mind when she realized that he had essentially given her permission to do her own thing.

"I will," she said, then bid farewell to Holly before moving away from the bed. Tink was already at the bedroom door, but she blew Holly a kiss before she and Kisa left.

"I hope they'll be okay," Holly muttered, then looked back at Mike. Her eyes moved up and down his body, and a grin appeared on her face. It occurred to him that it was essentially just the two of them now, and Holly was looking at him like he was the last present under the tree.

"They'll be fine." He turned his attention to Mrs. Claus and brushed a stray hair from her face. She flinched, then let out a sigh.

"I knew that this day would come," she whispered.

"What do you mean?" He asked.

"The end of Christmas." A weak smile appeared, and she opened her eyes. "Everything is inevitable, Caretaker. There would come a day where mankind would become extinct, and their gods and traditions would go with them. I thought it would be much farther into the future than this."

"Christmas isn't over," he told her, then took her by the hand. "Not yet. No matter what happens today, my family will celebrate it every year, no matter what."

"One family's faith won't be enough to sustain a tradition." She squeezed his hand. "But I appreciate the thought."

"Nonsense," Mike told her. "If there's one thing I believe, it's that every miracle begins with a single person. You just watch, everything is going to be all right when this is over."

Mrs. Claus smiled, then closed her eyes. "Perhaps you are right, Caretaker. Holly?"

"Ma'am?" The elf moved to her side.

"No matter what happens next, never lose faith." She patted Holly's hand. "As long as you survive, everything can be made right. But you have to keep believing."

"I..." Holly looked at Mike. "Of course I will, why would I stop?"

Mrs. Claus didn't respond. She had slipped into a deep sleep, her chest rising and falling with a slow rhythm that was unnerving to watch. Mike inspected her again, horrified to see that her magic was even smaller than before.

"I don't understand," he muttered. Where was her magic going? Determined to get an answer, he sat with the old woman and scrutinized her magic with a determined intensity. He didn't have the goggles anymore, but what he had learned earlier had been enough for him to understand the basics. It was like digging through a website's code for the first time to learn how it functioned. That was a skill from his old life with sudden relevance, which surprised him a little bit.

He had come so far. The timid man content to live alone and run websites for people was long gone, so it was interesting to delve into his old skillset once again. Examining magic wasn't as simple as lines of code, because they were constantly changing as he watched them. Still, he got general ideas from them, and he did his best to tuck a few more back into place.

"Will she be okay?" Holly asked as she took Mrs. Claus' glasses off and set them on the nightstand.

"I don't know," Mike admitted, then turned his gaze onto the elf. Where Mrs. Claus' magic looked like a bundle of unraveling threads, Holly's looked like the star one would put on top of a Christmas tree. When she looked at him, he saw strange colors insert themselves into her magic, then radiate outward in playful loops that caressed his body before vanishing like smoke.

"Oh, shi--shoot," he whispered, realizing the truth of what he was seeing. What he was seeing wasn't just magic, but the very essence of who Holly was as a person. In hindsight, it made so much sense, but he marveled at the sheer beauty of her soul, and how the magic that had created her bound the whole thing together in beautiful red ribbons with silver bells on the end.

"You're staring," she said with concern. "And...crying?"

"Yeah, I'm having a moment, sorry." He wiped the tears from his eyes, and blinked a few times to chase the image away. Was this what it was like for Cecilia? The banshee could only see souls, for the most part. Holly's had been uniquely beautiful, and he felt like he could stare at it all day without getting bored.

Holly seemed dubious of his answer, then grinned mischievously. "Maybe we could arrange for a different kind of moment?" she asked, her tone hopeful.

He looked at Mrs. Claus. "Now probably isn't the time," he whispered, suddenly afraid the old woman would sit up in bed and strangle him. "C'mon, let's head back to the main room and give her some peace and quiet."

Holly licked her lips and stepped away from the bed, her hips swaying as she walked toward the door.

"Ah, geez." Mike followed her into the hallway. After closing the door behind him, he turned to see Holly leaning against the opposite wall, her fingers tugging playfully at the fabric of her skirt.

"I don't suppose--" she began.

He chuckled, then rubbed his stomach when it growled. "I won't say no, but I will say that I'm starving."

Holly reached into her pouch, but he stopped her. "If there's anything else to eat here, we should probably save the magic cookies for later," he told her. He didn't know where Mrs. Claus got her food from, but had a sneaking suspicion that there wouldn't be any more coming in. That, and he was tired of baked goods.

The elf nodded her agreement, closing the flap of her pouch. "I can make sandwiches," she said, then moved close to him. She wrapped her arms around his waist, pulling him in close. "There's always some leftover roast or something in the fridge. You'd be surprised how much meat I can pack in between a couple of buns with the right amount of mayonnaise. How many would you like?"