Krampus and the snowy landscape vanished, replaced by an endless stretch of sand and hardpacked road. I looked down and found that my bathrobe was gone and in its place was a set of dust-stained desert camies with a tan Flack jacket strapped over the top.

  I was in Iraq again.

  Dust whipped against my face while ungodly heat beat down on me from above. Behind me was the bulky shape of a 7-Ton, loaded down with pallets of bottled water, boxes of MREs, and enough crates of ammo to resupply a battalion—which is exactly what we were doing. Trucks and Humvees stretched out behind me, all stopped in the blistering heat as we waited for the EOD techs to clear the improvised explosives planted in the roadway.

  I stood outside my truck, since the interior was sweltering, and watched as Sergeant Martin and the rest of his team triggered the bomb in the road. Martin moved with a casual ease and despite the danger, he looked almost bored. I was too. The novelty of watching EOD set off ordinance had worn off about twenty-bombs ago.

  Now, I mostly considered them a nuisance.

  Still, I grinned when Martin depressed a button on a handheld controller and the IED went up in a column of fire. Giant fiery explosions were never not cool. The explosion rattled my teeth and shook the world as the rest of the EOD techs watched on from a safe distance in approval. Another bomb found, another insurgent attack stopped dead in its tracks, another victory to mark down in the logs.

  Same shit, different day.

  Except, I knew what was about to happen.

  Knew that this day was not like any of the ones that had come before it.

  In less than three minutes Sergeant Martin would be dead. So would Reyes and Garcia. And there wasn’t a damned thing I could do to stop any of it.

  “All clear,” I heard over the radio as Martin stepped away from the smoking crater where the first IED had been, not realizing there was a second IED just a few feet away. He didn’t see it until his foot came down on the pressure plate, concealed beneath a fine layer of dirt, which we all called Moon Dust. Time seemed to crawl to a slow and I watched his eyes go wide in shock a millisecond before the ground erupted in a burst of fire and earth.

  Clouds of brown dust billowed up as Martin’s body flipped and spun like a ragdoll, landing with a thud less than twenty feet from where I was standing. He lay there, partially on one side. His legs were gone just below the knees and blood leaked out like a busted faucet, mixing into a thick pasty mud beneath him. A loop of intestine protruded from a ragged hole in his stomach.

  He should’ve been dead. No one could survive that. But somehow, against all odds, Martin was still alive, which wasn’t a blessing but a curse.

  A quick death would’ve been far more merciful.

  The sharp report of gunfire erupted all around me as insurgents opened fire from a set of nearby hovels, which looked derelict and long abandoned. Bullets whined and ricocheted off the armored truck, chewing into the dirt not far from where Martin lay dying. Our machine gunners, perched in steel-ringed turrets on top of the trucks, swiveled and unleashed hell with a deafening cacophony of 240s and .50 Cals.

  Despite the resistance, the insurgents continued laying down suppressive fire.

  I ducked beneath the truck and dropped into the prone, bringing my M16 up, sliding the buttstock tight into my shoulder pocket. I caught a glimpse of enemy muzzle flashes in the distance, but I didn’t have a clean target, and they were too far away for me to do jack shit. The 240s and .50 Cals were made for this type of fire fight. Which meant all I could actually do was lay and look at Martin, who was slowly bleeding out in the dirt.

  He was less than twenty feet away, and I couldn’t get to him.

  Bullets ripped into the ground nearby, though none hit the Sergeant. That was by design. He was bait, meant to lure first responders out into the open where the insurgents could pick them off from a distance. There was likely a sniper covering the spot.

  Going out there was as good as a death sentence. And even if the enemy rifle fire didn’t kill me—which it almost certainly would—there was a good chance there would be another IED nearby, tied to a remote detonator. It was a common insurgent tactic, used to kill Corpsmen and other first responders. They would wait for a Doc to get close to a wounded Marine, then trigger the second explosion creating a mass casualty event.

  In my head, I knew the smart thing to do was to hold my position and return fire.

  In my heart, I felt like a coward as I lay there beneath the truck and watch the light fade from Martin’s eyes and his pale face went slack.

  The world flickered and when I blinked, I once again I found myself standing back outside the truck, the sun beating down on me as Sergeant Martin made his way toward the first IED once more, preparing to trigger the bomb.

  Fuck me, I realized with a start, I was in a memory loop.

  And not just any memory—one that still haunted my nightmares to this day.

  I pushed back against the mental incursion with my fortified will and Martin seemed to slow, time creeping to a stand-still with him frozen in mid-step. This isn’t real, this isn’t real, I told myself over and over again, chanting it like a mantra. The colors drained from the world, everything becoming shades of black and gray before the images began to bleed away entirely.

  Then the world tilted and dissolved as the memory of Iraq faded and vanished.

  But I still wasn’t back in the winter blighted lands of the 49th floor.

  Honestly, I didn’t know where in the hell I was.

  I found myself standing on the edge of a forest at the beginning of autumn, looking into a clearing that bordered a small town with a single dusty road that meandered its way through a series of wooden houses. A mob had assembled, many of them holding flickering torches or ol’ timey lanterns that cast odd yellow halos in the twilight. In the center of the clearing stood a large wooden pyre, with a thick pole jutting straight up from its middle.

  “Please, have mercy,” a woman shrieked. “Please, Jonathan, for the love of the Lord, for the love of everything we’ve shared, don’t let them do this! You know I would never consort with devils! You must know that. Please say that you do?” She sobbed between pleas, her voice ragged and desperate. The crowd parted, revealing a pair of grim-faced men dragging a young woman forward, her arms bound in iron shackles.

  My breath caught as I saw Temperance.

  It was her, but different.

  She looked younger, almost unrecognizable in her archaic Puritan garb. She wore a black dress flared at the waist, cinched by a plain bodice. A stark white apron hung down the front, and a bonnet of the same bleached cloth covered her hair. Her eyes were huge with fear, tear stains cut through the grime on her face, and it was impossible to miss the terror etched into the lines of her face.

  Since I’d relived one of my worst memories, it was safe to say this was one of Temp’s—though why I was seeing it, I couldn’t say. I certainly didn’t want to see it, though. I felt like a Peeping-Tom, watching her undress through a window. This was never meant for my eyes. A series of words floated through my head, each one landing like a judge’s gavel.

  Dirty. Unclean. Naughty. So very, very naughty.

  A potent wave of shame washed over me, but despite the guilt I suddenly felt, I couldn’t turn away. I was rooted to the spot, unable to move or act. Unable to intervene.

  “Please, Jonathan, you know me,” Temperance cried again, locking eyes with a man among the crowd. His jaw clenched, and he turned away. “You’ve known me since I was a little girl. We grew up together. Even as a girl, I stitched your clothes. I… I tended your mother when she fell ill. I have served you with all my heart. I am not a witch. You mustn’t listen to them. I have done nothing wrong.”

  “Lies.” Jonathan spoke the word with unwavering certainty, his face hard as a stone.

  A gaunt man in preacher’s robes stepped forward, his voice rising with righteous fervor. “Goodie Temperance,” he intoned, his voice deep and harsh, dripping with scorn and condemnation. “You stand accused of witchcraft, of trafficking with demons and consorting with the Devil himself. We have seen you picking herbs beneath the moonlight and reading books unsanctioned by the church. There are witnesses who claim they saw you communing with a familiar and vanishing into smoke and shadow.”

  “No!” she shouted, the word cracking through the clearing. “I would never. I am a God-fearing woman! Yes, I picked herbs, but not for potion making or other forms of sorcery. They were simple spices for cooking. You hurl false accusations—a sin worthy of condemnation in its own right—for I have done no such things!”

  Her cries fell on deaf ears.

  The preacher turned to the crowd, his back ramrod straight with righteous indignation. “She speaks falsehoods, as all witches do. We must purify her soul through fire. As the good book says, ‘You shall not permit a sorceress to live’. And as the Malleus Maleficarum tells us, ‘burn the witch amongst you.’ That is the only way we may purify this community and purge her soul, so that she may yet have a chance at salvation to come.”

  “Father, Mother,” Temperance pleaded, this time turning to look toward a pair loitering near the back of the crowd. “Please don’t let this happen. I’ve been a good daughter, haven’t I? Always did as you asked. Quiet, meek, respectful, faithful? Were these not the virtues you instilled in me? If I had sinned, I will repent.” Her voice broke. “I swear it so. Just please don’t let them do this.”

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  Temperance’s mother, a woman with sunken eyes and silver hair, shot a silent but pleading look at her husband. The man ignored her completely.

  “The Good Book teaches that even devils may disguise themselves as servants of the light,” her father declared coldly, “all the better to fool the righteous and lead them unto crooked paths. So far as I’m concerned, my daughter is no more.” His eyes were hard as flint, his jaw set in unwavering resolve. “She is dead and gone. I renounce this vile creature before me and any fatherly affection I may have once held for her, for the righteous cannot dwell in the house of the wicked.” He lifted a torch. “We shall burn the witch, and it shall be by my hand that the fires are kindled.”

  Temperance’s mother wilted in sorrow, her eyes growing glassy at the terrible declaration. But she didn’t speak up. Didn’t try to defend her daughter.

  Temperance reeled like she’d been slapped. A new wave of tears welled up and spilled over as the two men dragged her an inch at a time toward the waiting pyre.

  But then something seemed to harden inside her.

  She dug in her heels, bucking wildly, and lashed out with a fierce cry. For the first time, I caught a glimpse of the Temperance I knew—wild and angry, a fighter to the bitter end. One captor staggered back with a gasp as she cracked her shackled wrists across his nose. The other tried to hold tight, but she twisted, biting at him like a feral animal, and slipped free. Her bonnet fell to the dirt, revealing her tousled hair, whipping around her face as she turned on them.

  “You want a witch, do you!” she bellowed, face red with rage. “Then fine, I will be your witch. If you dare touch me again,” she hissed, her voice low and venomous, “I’ll… I’ll curse your crops. I’ll rot your teeth right from your skulls. I’ll hex your cows with blindness and dry their milk! I’ll cackle in glee as this village starves. Just see if I won’t.”

  Fear flashed in the eyes of the onlookers, and they took an instinctive step back.

  Even the preacher hesitated, suddenly uncertain in his faith or perhaps his conviction.

  I knew Temperance wasn’t a witch, but the crowd didn’t. They’d already made up their minds, and now she stood before them confirming their deepest suspicions and fears.

  “She threatens us with sorcery!” someone cried. “We must burn her before she can consummate her dark pack with Satan!”

  Despite the words, no one moved.

  The disgust, the fear, the condemnation—they all radiated from the ring of onlookers, but fear held them in place.

  Temperance saw the opening and bolted, darting past the pyre, past the edge of the crowd, and into the waiting shadows of the trees.

  I watched her go, unable to say a word.

  Torches turned. Voices called out. But the forest swallowed her whole.

  And then the vision shimmered and broke. The dark woods faded.

  I felt the loop try to start back up again, but then something caught—like a gear that refused to shift. Resistance built and then, just as suddenly as the vision had come, it disappeared, returning me to the snowy battlefield as words swam across my vision.

  Nope.exe has activated!

  You have successfully resisted Naughty List!

  You have successfully resisted Ghosts of Christmas Past!

  It felt like a month had passed but, in reality, only a few seconds had ticked by—the exact five-second duration of Neural Slipstream. The Relic had stretched time, warping each heartbeat into an eternity. But the countdown had finally expired, and with it, my partial intangibility faded. Which meant I was no longer suspectable to telepathic attacks.

  The sickly green glow emanating from the chains wrapped around me faded as they fell away and clattered to the ground, suddenly lifeless. But then I noticed there was another set of chains encircling me, anchoring me in place. These weren’t physical, but conjured from ghostly blue light.

  Temp’s Puritanical Chains.

  When I looked at Temp, I saw the same haunted and horrified expression plastered across her face that I was sure was on mine. It was the look of someone who’d just been forced to relieve once of their most painful memories in excoriating detail. Which meant everything I’d just seen was true. Her experience had been just as real as my own. I wasn’t sure what spell Krampus had used, or how exactly it worked, but clearly the arcane wires had gotten mixed up at some point.

  Since I’d seen her memories, I idly wondered if that meant she’d experienced mine in a similar fashion.

  “You okay?” I called down to her.

  She staggered and slashed a hand through the air, dismissing the chains with a flash of light. “Fine,” she said, though she didn’t sound fine. “Just kill this, gibbering cock whore.” She paused, a hazy look in her eyes. “And make it hurt.”

  Now that was the Temperance I knew.

  “Got it,” I replied, as I shot forward toward Krampus.

  Drumbo and a nameless Yeti had made their way to the enormous sack by the velvet throne and were in the process of trying to rip the damned thing apart while ever more Yule Elves crawled out. They weren’t having much luck with the sack itself, but they’d successfully managed to stem the flow of Jultomten. Without constant reinforcements, Jakob, Harper, Croc, and the rest of my Horrors were finally starting to gain the upper hand.

  As for Krampus, he was now elbow deep in battle with Nikoli, who threw himself at the creature with murderous fury and reckless abandon. Nikoli’s automated turret guns continued to pepper the Christmas demon, chewing through his health a millimeter at a time. Nikoli fought with his sword in one hand and wielded a strange steampunk pistol in the other.

  With a shout, Nikoli lopped off several of Krampus’s fingers with his sword, then leapt back, turned a dial on the side of the gun, and pulled the trigger. A trio of rune-engraved saw blades screamed from the barrel, slicing through the air as they spun, before biting deep into Krampus’s chest.

  The gun’s barrel didn’t look nearly large enough to launch saw blades, and there didn’t appear to be any place to store ammo, but I’d also seen a bazooka that could shoot an infinite supply of sofas, so it didn’t really surprise me.

  One of the saw blades exploded on impact, blowing a hole in the demon’s side. Another one lit up with bright blue arcs of lightning, and Krampus began to sizzle, his body convulsing as electricity surged through him. This time, my mouth fell open in genuine shock. Those were trap wards, not so different from the ones I had engraved into my playing cards. It made perfect sense that I wasn’t the only one who would use traps like that, but seeing it in the wild was still disorienting.

  That gave me an idea.

  I pulled free ten Balloon Menagerie Spell Cards and sent them flying forward on invisible strings of telepathic power. I didn’t direct them at Krampus, though. Instead, I carefully slipped them into the Nikoli’s belt. The man was so absorbed with his battle against Krampus, that he didn’t even notice.

  As the third saw blade triggered, a small brightly colored box appeared in the air and tumbled toward the ground. It landed in the snow with a discordant jangle and the lid popped open. A disfigured jester puppet with a bulbous nose sprang out as an eerie rendition of ‘Pop goes the Weasel’ played in the background.

  I started at the strange object and a Codex entry appeared.

  Jester’s Rebalancing Act

  Spell Totem – Level 1

  Duration: 90 seconds

  Every kingdom has a fool, but only the most dangerous ones give him a stage and a spotlight. Normally, the lowly court Jester is always the butt of the joke, but not this time. This time the joke’s on you as the Jester Spell Totem upends the natural order of things by forcibly reshuffling reality’s deck. All enemies within range have their two highest stats swapped with their two lowest. Athleticism for Perception? Grit for Resonance?

  It’s all fun and games, until it isn’t.

  In a flash, tanky bruisers turn into wet paper towels and glass-cannon mages transform into hilariously overbuilt linebackers. It’s disorienting. It’s humiliating. It’s statistically upsetting. Honestly, it’s like a funhouse mirror, except now you have chlamydia. Say goodbye to optimization and hello to chaos. Enemies with enough Grit may resist the effect, though even those who do are still left feeling vaguely unsettled and emotionally unbalanced for reasons they can’t quite name.

  “Do not waste time standing around, twiddling thumbs” Nikoli barked. “Let us finish him together.”

  Nikoli darted forward and his sword danced through the air, leaving burning trails, while dozens of micro-machines buzzed around his body—projecting shields, firing lances of light, and releasing pulses of energy that knocked Krampus back with each strike.

  I hit the ground running, circling wide as Nikoli kept Krampus occupied. The demon swung his burning cat-o-nine tails in a punishing sweep, but Nikoli effortlessly slipped inside the arc, shoulder checking Krampus in the ribs, then carving a deep gash across the monster’s belly.

  I called my hammer to me, and pumped mana into the handle. It swelled to the size of a medieval axe and burned with otherworldly blue fire as I propelled myself forward. I had no idea what Krampus’s two highest stats were, but at a guess, I’d say either Athleticism or Toughness was at the top of the pecking order, while Perception and Resonance were probably close to the bottom.

  There wasn’t a way to check, but it seemed like a safe bet since Krampus was moving with an uncharacteristic sluggishness, his footwork slow, his blows sloppy—hell, even his HP seemed to have taken a pretty nasty hit.

  Now that momentum was on our side, Nikoli didn’t let up. He carved off pieces of fur and meat like slabs of Christmas ham, then swung low, aiming for the tendons. His sword caught the demon’s ankle with a crunch and a spray of gore.

  The demon couldn’t respond, so instead he took a swing at me. But between his drastically reduced speed and the whispered word of warning I received from Persistent Cognitive Overlay, I easily sidestepped the nine-tails then smashed my hammer into his ribs as I triggered Gavel of Get Fucked.

  He was above 10% total health, so it didn’t execute him on the spot—though it did knock him below twenty percent. I twisted at the waist and brought the hammer crashing into his knee, shattering the bone, then twirling the tool around and smashing the blunt head into the monster’s wrist. Krampus howled and dropped the whip, unable to hold the weapon in its ruined hand.

  Krampus reeled and stumbled, unsteady on his cloven hooves.

  He opened his maw and exhaled a wave of artic breath that rolled over me, knocking the hammer from my hand but dealing only a minute amount of damage, thanks to the Chillblister Core Sigil I had attached to my undershirt. I dropped to a knee and plunged my hand into the snow, then used a burst of Hydrokensis to form the moisture into something useable. When I pulled my hand free, ice covered my fist and footlong crystalline claws extended from my knuckles like a bad Wolverine impersonation.

  I ducked in tight and stabbed up and under Krampus’s ribcage.

  Blood sprayed, thick and black.

  Krampus retreated a few paces as chains snapped out again—a writhing wall of metal links meant to deflect incoming blows and keep me at range. One of the chains caught Nikoli around the midsection, dragging him off his feet. I moved fast, clamping down on the chain with a burst of telekinetic force. Nikoli grunted, found his footing, and wrenched himself free with a snarl.

  “Spasibo,” Nikoli muttered, not missing a beat as he planted a boot on Krampus’s thigh, leaped up, and brought his sword straight down in a vicious chop—the weapon burning with a furious red aura. The blade carved through part of the demon’s neck and downward through his chest, before finally coming to a stop in the creature’s thick gut.

  Any harder and Nikoli would’ve cleaved the demon in two.

  Despite the devastating wound, Krampus was still alive—though only just. Enraged, he lashed out with the back of his fist and caught Nikoli in the chest, sending him flying through the air before crash-landing in a nearby snowdrift. Then he reached down, pulled the sword free, and hurled it through the air.

  My eyes widened in surprise, and I knew this was the chance I’d been waiting for.

  A chance to get one up on Nikoli. Instead of attacking directly, I pulled the Etheric Walkie Talkie from my belt and radioed Croc.

  “Croc,” I hissed. “Get to Nikoli’s sword. Make it disappear, then mimic it.”

  I stashed the walkie and said a silent prayer that the dog would understand. With that done, I turned my attention back to Krampus.

  The monster stalked toward me, though he moved with no small amount of difficulty.

  Before, the Yule demon could close the distance, I raised a hand and blasted the fucker right in his big stupid face with Hydro Fracking Beam.

  But this time, I paired it with Hydrokensis.

  Instead of punching through the back of Krampus’s head, the beam of water swelled into a ball of burning liquid. With a thought, I reached out toward the orb of water and commanded steam. In an instant, the water expanded all at once and what remained of Krampus’s head exploded, chunks of bone and blood spraying out. The demon’s knees gave out and his body folded, toppling to the ground with a thunderous thud.

  [Level Up! x 1]

  Research Achievement Unlocked!...