not a creature was stirring | round iii

[Arka]

his perfect kingdom of killing, suffering & pain
demands devotion, atrocities done in his name

And there is was – that face from a dozen stories Arka had been forced to read his children as they fell asleep, the man who gleefully stole cookies and milk that Arka spent his own money on under the guise of bringing presents. He may have had the rest of the world fooled, but not Arka…never. The hard expression in the usually jovial man’s eyes might have been unnerving – unnatural – but to Arka it was just a revelation of the truth.

The Grinch’s instructions floated through one ear and out the other, an idle explanation for something that seemed to require a more in-depth divulging. How exactly was he supposed to get from Richmond, Virginia all the way to the North Pole in time to keep up with Santa’s ugly, glorified pets?

But – as with most things that night – he had little say.

Within moments he was swept up in a tide of pitch-black bodies, for the first time putting a sensation to that oil-slick skin. It was as disgusting as he’d imagined, soaking in to his sweatpants, squelching against his skin. They leapt through windows, blasted through drywall and brick, flooded out of the open front door to escape the house and start their journey towards the holy grail of Santa’s workshop. After a moment Arka did not need their cajoling – he was as eager as ever to see just how much destruction he was capable of.

Just as they popped out of existence in Richmond, he looked back at the glaring red and blue lights of police cars that had responded to the alarm he’d set off in the house. Their screaming filled his ears as a pack of demons overturned the cars, contorting human bodies to impossible shapes under their onslaught.

It felt as if his body was being shoved through a tube, his skeleton fusing to itself under the pressure of his sudden inexplicable movement. He could hear his demon companions cackling in excitement, reminiscent of hyenas, as he spun through the darkness. Just when he was about to ask if he could get off the ride it came to a halt so abrupt it almost caused him to lose what little was in his stomach. Surprise managed to stave the nausea however.

He’d landed on his back, spread-eagle and disoriented. Bright, colored lights roamed over the ceiling high above his head – strobe-like, frantic in their encouragement of whatever activity they oversaw. He could smell sweat and cigarettes. What he mistook for ringing in his ears suddenly became obvious as the whine of feedback, a guitar held too close to an amp on its last growling notes. With a groan, he moved his head to look around only to realize hundreds of pairs of feet surrounded him. Slowly, he looked up to see those nearest surrounded him in a circle, looking down at him with expressions he imagined were just as surprised as his. The huge room was completely silent despite the chaotic lighting and atmosphere.

Scrambling to his feet, he looked around at the people staring at him and then up to the tiered balconies reaching up towards the ceiling. Even multiple floors up they were all staring at him…accusing.

He’d been here before.

The House of Blues in Boston…he’d seen Lamb of God here, made a trip to the city just to get away with some friends (a surprising thing for him to have, truly) and blow off some steam. Whether he’d ended up here because the demons had searched through his brain for familiar stops, or the power of his own unconscious suggestion had made it happen, he couldn’t say. But the place was distinctly less friendly than he remembered, even if it was decked out to celebrate Christmas Eve in style.

He didn’t recognize the members of the band standing up on stage, staring at him in the same dumb-founded silence as the rest of the crowd. But it was in the frontman’s face that he saw the first tide of recognition – perhaps not of what was really going on, but of some emotion other than confusion: rage. When Arka looked again on the people immediately surrounding them he saw the same furrowed brows, downturned mouths, one of the women cracking her neck as if preparing herself.

The Grinch’s demons appeared directly above and to the right, curling too-long fingers around the railings of the balconies above.

On the other side the Elves appeared, perhaps following the sea-water stench of the demons. Arka wouldn’t pretend to understand their magic and he didn’t have the time – the arrival of the opposing rooms seemed to strike a match, lighting the fuel of the crowd’s agitation.

Almost immediately the room turned on itself, man against man as those within the House of Blues picked sides and fought for Christmas.

Arka wasn’t particularly keen on becoming a part of the most murderous mosh pit he’d ever been in but as he tried to think of somewhere else – anywhere else – to go, he felt something like a fizzle as the teleportation that brought him there tried and failed to activate.

Goddamnit.

He ducked low as a fist made right for his face, narrowly avoiding having his skull smashed in. He nearly fell over backwards with his effort, catching a glimpse of the Demons and Elves leaping from their respective balconies to meet each other midair overhead. It was the kind of thing he might have laughed at in some cheesy B-rated Christmas horror film. And yet the tremble in the room when one of the Elves managed to throw a demon to the floor with a sickening thud was all too real. The crowd was milling, fighting each other tooth and nail in the cramped, dark space glowing with the light of the red-and-green strobes overhead.

He needed to get out of the center. Fists were flying – both at him and at each other as the strangers decided whether to kill each other based on their support of Elves or Demons – and space was more at a premium with each second that passed. Searching for a spot where the action seemed thinner, Arka rushed forward towards a slightly less packed spot in the crowd. The floor was slippery with alcohol, his feet losing traction as he pushed against a solid wall of people pummeling each other. He threw himself against them trying to get out but he was trapped. As space disappeared, the crowd attempting to devour itself, pressing ever inwards until Arka could feel his back pressed up against a row of fighters. Surrounding, it became harder to breathe. Every time he let out a breath the next inhalation was smaller, his ribs crushed under the weight of the crowd crush. Panic clawed at his throat and he did the first thing that came to mind: with a quick flash of light from the antlers crowning his head, he let out a telekinetic blast that sent everyone near him flying up and backwards. Screams of surprise shattered the concentration in the room as people fell from the sky, hit the pillars holding up the balconies – even the bottles behind the numerous bars on the first floor shattered in the wave of his attempt to extricate himself.

An inhuman scream from overhead caught his attention, one of the demons looking straight down at him from a perch on the balcony. He was throwing an Elf from over his shoulder and looked harried, but Arka could interpret the urgency in the scream.

With another thought, they blipped out of the club and in to the freezing cold.

Arka had never been wherever it was they were, but it was far quieter than the House of Blues – a fact for which he was eternally grateful. The same impulse that had made him immune to the cold outside his house (so far away) kept him buffeted now. The landscape was alien to him: a huge sheet of snow and ice stretched out ahead of him and his demon companions, eventually rising to meet the face of the tallest, most beautiful mountain Arka had ever seen. It was dark, crowned by snow that seemed even brighter in appearance under a high-set moon. Trees ringed its base. Water lapped quietly on the shore behind him. He wondered if he’d seen a picture of it once, if his mind had longed for quiet after the chaos of Boston and had taken him here.

He took a deep breath, watching it mist while he waited for their teleportation to come back.

The demons prowled around him as they waited – like sharks, ever moving.

A scream from the distance caught the attention of every single one of them, each stopping – Arka even holding his breath – to listen. Another call came almost immediately after. The sound carried down the sloping face of the mountain with a clarity that shot down Arka’s spine. Another thirty seconds or so passed but none of the group dared to move again. Another minute passed. Two.

From the cleft between two peaks of the mountain, a cloud of displaced snow caught Arka’s attention. It glittered in the moonlight, powder swirling in the night air. It might have been beautiful had he not seen its catalyst. Something enormous barreled down the mountain’s face at breakneck speed. The demons started pacing even faster as if preparing themselves to greet whatever came with such haste.

The closer it got, the more details Arka could pick out. It was at least twelve feet tall, not including the jagged antlers that rose from its skull. It had the face of a caribou or something along those lines, but its eyes glowed a bright enough red to shine through the snow it was kicking up as it…ran on two legs. And arms hung from its sides, abnormally long and ending in bestial hands. It was thin except for its barrel chest, its ribs revolving under dead-dry skin. Arka had something of an affinity for monsters and the like, and even he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

“A wendigo?!” he exclaimed to himself, the demons shivering and spinning their heads towards him in question.

The closer it got, the more powerful the stench of rot and decay became.

Little could be said for the Grinch or his pets so far that night, but Arka had to hand it to them: the second the Wendigo got too close for comfort, all of the demons jumped without hesitation to head it off. With an enraged roar, the antlered creature reached up to pluck one off its face, a chunk of rotting flesh coming off in the demons mouth as it was tossed to the side. This close Arka could see his measurement was wrong – the Wendigo was several times his size and built with wiry strength despite its emaciation. It peeled another demon from its side, throwing the Grinch’s minion on the ground before lifting both fists high up in the air to bring them crashing back down on what it surely considered a minor inconvenience. Oily blood spurted up, suspended for just a second in the cloud of snow that puffed up under the Wendigo’s strike. The ground shook beneath Arka’s feet.

He tried to teleport the group. Nothing happened.

As if sensing his attempt to get away, the creature turned on Arka, spinning around with a massive arm extended to knock the man from his feet. Narrowly missing a boulder jutting from the snow, Arka rolled through drifts until he slammed against a tree trunk. He let out a groan, hearing something roll and crack inside of him as he scrambled to his feet.

Think Arka, think…how do you stop a Wendigo!?

Of course from whatever he read there were conflicting theories – and even differing opinions of what the creature looked like. For fucks sake, the thing wasn’t even supposed to be real! Wracking his brains, Arka stayed low in the tree-line as the Wendigo went back to trying to dispose of the demons.

Fire.
Wendigos hated fire.

He’d used barely any of the magic in the antlers, and though he could sense his options were finite, he thought he could use what was stored up for something that would buy him enough time to wait until the teleportation was active again. Closing his eyes, he imagined the treetops above him on fire – a raging inferno feeding on the rich oxygen this low on the mountain, bright and dancing flames reflecting off the snow to seem even larger. A flare of heat exploded over his head and when he looked up he saw flames growing towards the sky, the pine needles of the trees burning with loud cracks and pops. Sparks flew towards the stars, the inferno egging itself on with Arka’s help.

The Wendigo stopped what it was doing, turning to watch the flames with something like hesitation in its eyes. It wasn’t the fear – the animal panic – that Arka had hoped for. But it would do. It hesitated long enough to let its guard down – a fatal mistake around creatures built for deceit, as the Grinch’s demons. One threw its inky body at the Wendigo, clamping its jaws in to the creature’s neck and growling in ecstasy as thick, dark blood poured down its throat. The Wendigo screamed in rage, whirling around to try and remove the demon.

It was a show Arka might actually have enjoyed watching had he not felt the rush of teleportation returning to him – just in time, as the Elves finally caught up. Perhaps it had been too strange a location for them to figure out immediately, or perhaps they’d just taken a beating back in the club. Either way, Arka grinned up at them – a cruel tease of a gesture, a sign of his arrogance – as he disappeared with the Demons.

The group found themselves outside an enormous factory, one complete with a warm, homey feel usually not associated with the word. The demons cackled again, though the laughter turned to low, throaty growls as the Elves – persistent and annoying – joined the party.

“This is where it stops,” the Head Elf insisted with confidence despite the blood marring his outfit, the same elf that had attempted to stop Arka before.

“You’re just afraid we’ve gotten this far,” Arka replied, a grin too much like the Grinch’s curling on to his face.

ARKA

the chamber's scumbag cadet