“What do we do, Dan!” Croc shrieked.

  I could hear the panic in the mimic’s voice—and see that same panic etched into the lines of Harper’s face. Even Jakob looked mildly concerned, which, for him, was the emotional equivalent of screaming and lighting himself on fire.

  Options quickly cycled through my head. None of them great.

  The forest below was a roiling mass of half-glimpsed movement and the mini-map was crawling with red triangles. I wasn’t sure I wanted to tangle with the incoming Christmas Reindeers, but my gut told me that dropping down into that meat grinder was a one-way ticket to Royally-Fucked, population Us.

  Despite the encroaching Polaris Vora, I still liked our odds better in the air.

  The reindeer were closing in from three sides—flanking hard, attempting to drive us into the waiting tentacles of the Polaris Vora or down into the jaws of whatever horror show waited below. We couldn’t allow that to happen. These antlered fucksticks had home field advantage, so if we let them stipulate the terms of engagement, we were going to end up with a herd of angry Christmas characters tap dancing on our corpses.

  They wanted us to retreat or crash. We weren’t going to do either.

  “Prepare to climb,” I thundered. “Harper—get ready. I’ve got a terrible idea and I’m gonna need your help.”

  She didn’t even hesitate. Just flipped me a thumbs-up, and banked into formation.

  I tightened my grip on Psychic Sovereignty, willing the spell into overdrive. The sleigh bucked as we shot skyward, cutting a vertical path through the frozen air. Wind screamed past, snowflakes slicing like glass.

  My mana dropped like a rock—fifty percent… forty-three… thirty-nine…

  In theory, I could use Psychic Sovereignty to lift anything less than a combined total of two-thousand pounds, but carrying sentient creatures took an extra toll. Even accounting for all my title bonuses and Mana Optimization, just keeping us in the air cost 120 Mana per minute—almost half my total Mana Pool.

  And the faster I pushed us, the more mana the spell siphoned away.

  Harper swerved closer and latched on with Arcane Jumper Cables, dumping raw Mana into my core while I mentally “juggled” several tools to proc Wild Surge. It helped, but not enough. We weren’t going to drop out of the sky, but I didn’t have enough gas in the tank to fly and fight.

  If we were going to get out of this in one piece, I needed to get creative.

  First, I swapped out Echo Aura for my shiniest new Relic, Drone Zone, and summoned a single metallic orb, which zipped along above me. The spell ate through a truly formidable chunk of my remaining Mana Pool, but I already had a Regen Elixir at the ready. I popped the top and slammed it down as we flew.

  Next, I pulled a variety of Spell Cards from my toolbelt and sent them spinning around me in a cyclone. Without wasting a second, I cast a trio of Dopplebangers, who materialized on the already cramped sleigh. Croc groaned under the extra weight and our pace slowed to a crawl, the Polaris Vora creeping closer while the lead reindeer, coated in a nimbus of crimson fire, surged forward to meet us.

  Dweller 0.49446A – Rudolpho the Grippledip (Herd Leader) – Level 46

  Everyone knows about Dasher and Dancer, Prancer and Vixen, Comet and Cupid, Donner and Blitzen. And, of course, Stanta’s team wouldn’t be complete without the most famous Reindeer of all, Rudolph, with his brightly glowing red nose.

  These aren’t those.

  These are the Grippledips—undead nightmares of bone and sinew, forced to pull the slayer sleigh through the frozen night air as Krampus harvests all the unruly little boys and girls who happen to find their way onto the naughty list. Unlike their more jolly, over-commercialized cousins who work retail shifts for Saint Nick, Grippledips don’t fly because of “Christmas Cheer.” No, they are reanimated by dark magic and enslaved to servitude by demonic compact.

  Foremost among them is Rudolpho, a particularly powerful Grippledip who coats his nose in the blood of slain foes like some sort of perverse redcap reindeer. If you see the glow of its unholy light prepare for the fight of your life, because he’s not bringing gifts, he comes bearing glad tidings of slaughter.

  Okay, level forty-six. That was strong, but not impossibly so.

  Not like the Polaris Vora.

  We might actually stand a chance against these things.

  “Harper,” I shouted through the roaring winds, “hit me with Painkiller OD!”

  She nodded and a second later a muddy brown halo wrapped around me, sapping away the bitter sting of the cold. Warm fuzzy tendrils of bliss flowed through my veins, washing away every ache and pain, leaving euphoria in its place.

  It was easy to see how this feeling could become addictive given enough time.

  Ignoring the endorphin rush, I pulled free several Balloon Menagerie Spell Cards and activated them all at once. Squeaky neon animals bubbled out around me in a cloud and when I called out the activation phrase, they exploded right in my fucking face. Bright tongues of fire licked over the surface of my skin and temporarily blinded me from the swirling snow. There should’ve been pain, hot and furious, but instead the gentle ebb of soothing narcotics pulsed stronger, leaving me momentarily woozy.

  This was a risk since I couldn’t see my health bear while Painkiller OD was active, but I knew the clones would absorb the bulk of the damage.

  When the light finally faded, I saw Rudolpho barreling straight toward us like a freight train. The monster let out a roar that echoed across the snow-blasted landscape. It’s glowing red nose pulsed like a bloody firefly and a ring of energy rippled outward, washing over me and the others. A prompt swam across the air.

  You have been afflicted with Gamma Blight and will suffer from increasingly debilitating symptoms until cured!

  Stage 1: Severe nausea, burning skin lesions, and -25% Stamina and Mana Regeneration. Suffer 1% Max HP as damage every 10 seconds.

  Stage 2: Countdown until onset of additional symptoms 10:00 minutes.

  Even through the fog of Painkiller OD, I felt nausea roll through my guts and a searing pain as swollen blisters spread like wildfire along my arms and legs. I couldn’t even imagine how much agony I’d be in without the dulling effects of Harper’s spell. I activated several Health Regen Spell cards, but they did Jack shit against the effects of the Affliction.

  Rudolpho put on a burst of speed, drawing closer, then dipped his massive decaying head. I was half expecting the creature to charge, but instead the Grippledip’s antlers tore free with a sickening crack, launching through the air like javelins fired from a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher.

  I barrel rolled right, avoiding the attack by inches, only to find another pair of airborne antlers were headed toward the sleigh. Jakob didn’t even flinch. The Cendral darted forward in a blur and batted the projectiles away with the blunt face of his shield. Sparks flew, accompanied by the shriek of metal. One antler bounced off the sleigh, skidding past Croc’s googly eyes, while another somersaulted harmlessly into the night.

  Harper retaliated with a pair of Shadow Eagles, which ripped through Rudolpho’s face and chest with cruel efficiency, leaving its flesh in tatters. The Grippledip didn’t seem phased, just pissed. His nose flared again and I braced for another round of reindeer radiation, but instead the flying cockwomble unloaded with energy bolts of burning red Christmas cheer. I swerved and dodged, this time rolling left, before pulling the sleigh around into a broadside, so we were flying parallel with the monster.

  My Drone opened up with a retaliatory barrage of suppressive air support, but Rudolpho was fast and agile, easily dancing away as he avoided every blast.

  “I could use a little more backup here!” I bellowed at the others, my body trembling from the strain of keeping is aloft.

  Jakob was a tank and didn’t have any ranged based Relics, but he did have a bazooka that fired sofas. He pulled the weapon from Storage and let loose with a furious round of love seats, recliners, and sectionals. Rudolpho dodged those too, hooves pounding rhythmically on half-seen platforms of iridescent light. I angled us upward, so the undead bastard couldn’t sideswipe the sleigh.

  Temperance fired off twin balls of Dire Mosquitoes that found their mark. Her spells slammed into the monster’s decomposing side and erupted on impact, enormous bugs scampering across its flesh and digging in with tearing mandibles.

  While the creature was distracted with the writhing dread bugs, Temp leapt from the edge of the sleigh and dashed across the air, landing on the Grippledip with a primal snarl of fury. She hacked and slashed with her cleaver, opening deep gashes in the Dweller’s neck and back. His health plunged even further as a noxious green glow oozed from her weapon and open lesions crawled across the Rudolpho’s body.

  The monster bucked and spun, quickly throwing Temp off. Thankfully, the rope tethering her to Jakob snapped tight and the Cendral reeled her in like a prized fish dangling of the end of a line.

  Temp cackled with manic glee as she scampered back over the railing.

  “I’ve got more where that came from!” she screamed. “I look forward to mounting your head above my fireplace, you fen-sucked whore!”

  The creature veered off course, momentarily slowed as it tried to regain its momentum.

  Harper launched another round of Shadow Eagles as I unleashed a whirling barrage of spell cards. They flew like shuriken, propelled by the force of my physic power, and exploded the moment they made contact. A bright bloom of flame enveloped Rudolpho, and its health dipped below fifty percent.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  More of the Yuletide nightmares were closing in on the left and right, but instead of trying to engage them directly, I pulled us into another steep climb then banked hard right, pushing us even faster. The timer on my doppelgangers finally lapsed and I watched as my clones lurched to life and promptly hurled themselves from the sleigh, flying through the air like skydivers without a parachute.

  The malformed clones weren’t exactly the epitome of grace and had no fundamental understanding of aerodynamics, so I wrapped them in thin strands of telekinesis and gave them a nudge in the right direction. One landed right on Rudolpho’s mangy back before detonating, knocking another ten percent HP off the Grippledip’s already flagging health.

  The other two flopped onto one of the lesser Grippledips and exploded in a shower of meat and gore, knocking the creature from its flight path. They didn’t deal as much raw damage as I’d been hoping for, but the murder reindeer tumbled from the air, its limbs thrashing madly as it fought to regain its balance.

  And that’s when Polaris Vora made its move.

  I watched with grim satisfaction as a snaking tendril shot out from the hovering light-blob and coiled around the flailing Grippledip. The creature kicked and bucked, teeth gnashing as it tried to free itself—but there was no escaping the Polaris Vora.

  It was hunger. It was death. It was inevitable.

  The sentient lights pulled the creature in with implacable strength. A high, keening wail split the air as the creature’s flesh liquefied, its limbs methodically torn away one by one in a gruesome display of raw power.

  If I needed a reminder not to fall into that glowing death cloud, that was it.

  The other Grippledips were closing in around us and even though the Polaris Vora had slowed to eat its meal, I didn’t think we’d be able to outrun it indefinitely. Not with the Gamma Blight Affliction chewing through my already dwindling Mana Reserves. Much as I hated to admit it, we needed to land.

  I was reasonably sure the Polaris Vora wouldn’t follow us once we touched down. At least, I hoped so. From my elevated vantage point, I scanned the barren landscape until I found what I was looking for: A snow-choked clearing surrounded by trees, a jagged mountain to the right rearing up like a broken tooth.

  Problem was, the circling Grippledips still stood between us and safety.

  We only had one option. One chance at escape.

  While the others kept pressure on Rudolpho, I rummaged through my Spatial Storage and yanked out several sticks of dynamite along with a particularly nasty firework labeled Uncle Larry’s Divorce Finale.

  It had a warning label that just said “DON’T.”

  Without Woodstock to help with the fuses, I hastily swapped StainSlayer Maelstrom for Erlenmeyer’s Molotov Cocktail and summoned a small, flickering ball of flame above one palm. I lit several sticks of dynamite all at once, hurled the explosives out in a wide ring, then hastily lit the fuse for Uncle Larry’s Divorce Finale. As the wick sparked and spit, I flipped the box over, pointing the cylindrical tubes downward at the remaining Grippledips.

  While I waited—praying fervently that I wasn’t going to blow us all to pieces—the sticks of dynamite detonated, a deafening cacophony of explosions ripping through the night.

  I hadn’t really aimed, and the dynamite was meant to serve as a distraction, but I’d managed to clip one of the antlered monstrosities by sheer luck. The creature tumbled from the air and disappeared in the tree line below. A moment later, the showstopper in my hands vomited out screaming orbs of light that detonated in a symphony of sparks, illusion-charged glitter clouds, and disorienting strobe pulses.

  “Everyone hang on tight—that includes you, Harper!” I thundered at the healer, still buzzing along beside the sleigh. The moment she grabbed ahold of the railing, I pulled us into a dive, cutting straight through the heart of the dazzling fireworks display.

  The Grippledips retreated at the sudden onslaught of light and heat.

  That wasn’t an option for us.

  I fixed the clearing in my mind’s eye and cast Unerring Arrow. Blue light blazed outward, carving a chaotic, zigzagging path through the raging firestorm. I grit my teeth and followed the blue beam, narrowly avoiding the concussive force of blast after blast as we sliced between the converging reindeer. Clouds of glittering psychedelic light obscured our position as we spiraled toward a narrow opening in their formation.

  My teeth rattled in my skull and heat from the fireworks singed my skin, but I stayed the course—knowing that even a moment of hesitation meant certain death.

  The second we cleared the lower edge of the fireworks display, I pulled us up from the dive and propelled us forward, straight toward the clearing. Mana screamed through my veins, and the sleigh jerked into a glide—skimming just above the treetops. A particularly tall pine caught the edge of Croc’s skid and sent us into a death wobble that I knew we wouldn’t be able to recover from.

  “Brace for impact!” I hollered, as I lost control.

  We rocketed into the snowy clearing and came down like a falling meteor. Snow exploded in all directions as we skidded, bounced, and rolled. For a long beat, I lost all sense of direction—up was down, left was right, my spine was sideways, and someone’s elbow hit me square in the face. Possibly mine.

  It was hard to tell in the chaos and confusion.

  Eventually, I slid to a stop in a deep snowdrift, the freshly fallen powder doing next to nothing to cushion my landing. I was bleeding from countless cuts and lacerations, though I still couldn’t feel anything or see my HP bar, leaving me clueless about how bad the damage really was. All I knew was that I felt woozy.

  I tried to stand, driven by a deep seated need to look for the others. But I couldn’t move. My legs didn’t seem to be cooperating. When I glanced down, I saw the problem.

  A pine branch, nearly as thick as my wrist, was protruding through my belly. I grimaced when I realized it ran all the way through and jutted out of my lower back. Blood dribbled down, pooling beneath me, painting the snow an astounding shade of dark maroon. That was the worst of the damage, though not all of it. One of my ankles was facing the wrong direction entirely, and my left wrist was mangled—hanging at an unnatural angle, a jagged chunk of bone popping through the skin.

  That probably wasn’t a good thing.

  I tore my gaze away from my battered hand and glanced up. The Polaris Vora still filled the sky above the clearing. It hovered low but didn’t seem to be actively descending any further. The remaining Grippledips dotted the skyline, circling above and bellowing in impotent rage. I half-expected them to come crashing down on us in a wave of metallic antlers and crushing hooves, but they didn’t. They seemed to be hesitant to get any closer to the colorful sky amoeba—not that I could blame them.

  If I’d seen one of my friends ripped to shreds, I’d be a little gun shy, too.

  Rudolpho, however, had attempted to pursue us through the storm of fireworks, but hadn’t been quite so lucky. The creature had crash-landed not far from me. There was a smoking crater in the Grippledip’s side, one leg was entirely gone, and the others were twisted and broken. Rudolpho was still alive, but his HP was below ten percent—health bar strobing red in warning. Still, despite the myriad of injuries, the creature was fighting to stand.

  I couldn’t let that thing get back on its feet.

  Still wrapped in the fading dregs of Painkiller OD, I used Physic Sovereignty to pull myself from the snowbank, then floated drunkenly across the snowpack as I summoned my hammer with a thought. It zipped through the air and into my outstretched hand.

  The nightmare reindeer looked up at me with hate filled eyes and I knew he would love nothing more than to disembowel me and wear my guts like tinsel.

  “Better luck next time,” I growled.

  I brought my hammer down as I activated Gavel of Get Fuck. The blunt head landed with a crunch, obliterating the creature’s skull and dropping the monster’s health to zero. Rudolpho let out one last shuddering twitch before collapsing as Experience rolled in.

  [Level Up! x 1]

  I didn’t want the Grippledip’s corpse to go to waste—he would make an excellent Horror—but my friends were likely injured, and I needed to make sure they’d be okay. So instead of looting the monster, I pulled his entire body into Spatial Storage for later.

  That was when the hazy brown nimbus clinging to me like a second skin vanished and the effects of Painkiller OD finally lapsed. A white-hot burst of agony exploded from my gut and every inch of my body started screaming at me. The legion of lacerations burned like fire, my broken wrist throbbed with every heartbeat, my skin felt raw and tender, and I was pretty sure my skull was going to split open at any moment. I caught a glimpse of my HP bar as I fell to my knees then promptly pitched over onto one side, landing in the snow with a thud.

  Twelve percent and dropping fast.

  Trembling hands searched for a Regen Elixir or Spell Cards, but my fingers were numb from the cold and when I glanced at them, I noticed the tips were shiny and black. Son of a bitch. During my time in the Corps, I’d done a stint at Bridgeport for Arctic Warfare Training, so I knew the early stages of frostbite when I saw it.

  After a few more frantic seconds of fumbling, I found a Zima but couldn’t get my hands to cooperate. It didn’t help that one wrist was still pulped meat. I attempted to use Psychic Sovereignty instead, but the spell wasn’t made for this degree of fine motor dexterity. No matter how much I tried to pry the bottle cap off, it felt like performing surgery while wearing a pair of oven mitts.

  My teeth chattered and I flopped back into the snow, breathing heavily from the effort. My health was still plummeting and my head felt foggy. A deep, comforting numbness was invading my limbs.

  I should’ve cared, but I didn’t.

  The sharp bite of the cold helped leech away the pain.

  I blinked heavily and laid my head back, letting the powder cradle my aching skull.

  “Here!” A voice called out, though it sounded a million miles away. “He’s over here, Harper.” It was Croc. “Hurry, he’s doesn’t look so good. I’m pretty sure there’s a tree growing out of his stomach.”

  The dog’s rubbery blue face filled my vision blocking out the night sky, still painted by the enchanting swirl of hungry lights.

  “We’re here, Dan,” the dog said soothingly. “Jakob and Temperance are fine, and you’re going to be fine too. Just hang on a little longer.” The dog turned its neck. “Harper! Please! Hurry!”

  “Coming, coming,” she called.

  I blinked again, but for some reason everything stayed black. My eyes were closed and I couldn’t muster the strength to open them. I heard voices, muffled and distant, but they washed over me like the gentle ebb of lowtide.

  The cold was gone entirely now, replaced by a blissful heat that filled my chest.

  “Clear!” I heard someone scream, the sound sharp enough to cut through the fog.

  Then, all at once, a jolt of electricity surged through my chest and raced along my limbs in what felt like a never-ending loop. When I’d been a kid—too curious for my own good and too dumb to know any better—I’d shoved a fork into a light socket just to see what would happen. Although I didn’t have many memories from the early days of my childhood, that one had been seared into brain with 120 volts of raw, fuck-you power.

  I remembered the pain in my hand, skin searing from the heat, right before the discharge mule kicked me in the chest and knocked me back from the wall.

  This felt like that, but a dozen times worse.

  Like having my entire body hooked up to a fleet of car batteries.

  I shot up with a ragged gasp, my eyes wide, my body convulsing from the shock.

  “Jesus H. Chris!” I gasped as the furious surge of power vanished and the cold returned with a vengeance. Croc was sitting beside me, one paw on my shoulder, its googly eyes brimming with a mixture of fear and concern. Harper was kneeling in front of me, brow furrowed, lips a thin slash of concern as she gave me a once over.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  “No, I’m not okay,” I shouted, reaching down with trembling hands, hastily searching for the giant piece of wood sticking out of my abdomen. “Holy fuck, I got impaled.” There was a jagged tear in my wife beater, and the skin beneath was still raw and bleeding. But the stick was gone. The gnarled branch lay beside me, the bark coated with gore and flecked with bits of skin.

  My skin.

  “Yeah,” Harper said with a nod. “Had to pull it out before I could give you this.” She thrust an open Zima into my hands. “Drink up.” She frowned and glanced over one shoulder. “And do it quick.”

  “Everything alright?” I asked, noticing that Croc was also looking at something behind me, just out of view.

  “Yeah, just fine,” she said with a feigned smile that never reached her eyes.

  I grimaced and drained the bottle, feeling a wild surge of healing power coarse through me, wounds mending, broken bones realigning, skin knitting itself closed with frightful efficiency. I let out a shudder of pure relief as the pain faded and feeling returned to my fingers and toes. I stole a look at my hand—the wrist was no longer a mangled mess, and the early dusting of frostbite was gone—and my twisted foot was now back where it belonged.

  “Did… Did you electrocute me?” I asked.

  She shrugged apologetically, “Sorry about that. “I’m pretty sure you were technically dead there for a few seconds. I used Shock Therapy to restart your heart. It deals lightning damage to enemies, but I can also use it to temporarily stabilize any ally who’s health has fallen below five percent. It doesn’t fix the damage, but it keeps their HP from falling any further for thirty seconds. Sort of a latch ditch effort.”

  “Thanks,” I said stifling a burp with one hand then tossing the bottle away.

  “Dan,” Croc said, licking its nips nervously with a bright purple tongue, “I know you just had an extremely close near-death encounter, so I hate to rush this along, but we’ve got a few more issues to take care of.”

  “What kind of issues?” I asked as Harper thrust out a hand and helped me to my feet.

  “Them,” Croc said, googly eyes darting toward the treeline.

  I turned, a feeling of dread already rising inside me.

  Jakob and Temp barred the way, their weapons up and at the ready. Beyond them were dozens of glowing red eyes staring at us from the shadows of the pine forest.

  “Well shit,” I said flatly, realizing we were still in trouble. “Out of the frying pan and into the fire.”