A Friendly Voidling Christmas Special

Merry Christmas one and all. :)

As a Christmas present, have a silly little tale of Anya and friends returning briefly to Glimmerhome.

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"But I still don't see why it needs to be pink," came a snatch of voice as three young women stepped into existence in a residential street of Glimmerhome. Or, more accurately, two young women and an ancient eldritch horror cosplaying as a third.

"What's wrong with pink?" asked Anya, the eldritch horror.

"It just doesn't go with my skin colour."

"I could change your skin, then? What would go with pink? White? Blue? Green?"

"Ooo, blue scales? I wouldn't mind trying out scales for a few days," responded Keri, her cat ears twitching excitedly.

Okay, so to add another step of accuracy, it should be noted that one of the two young women was cosplaying as... well... a Keri. On worlds in which the internet had been invented, the phrase 'neko maid' might have been a better fit, but Keri was yet to discover the internet, and was thus trailblazing her own path.

"Quiet down a second, you two," said Jill, the third member of the group, who couldn't really be described as cosplaying anything. Cosplay generally involved costumes, and what Jill was wearing could never be described as a costume. It could barely be described as 'existing'. "Where is everyone?"

There was a moment of silence as heads swivelled.

"... You didn't bring us out in the middle of another golem apocalypse, did you?" asked Keri.

"No!" answered Anya. "After the first half dozen times, I started checking. Everyone's still here, alive and unharmed. They're just all indoors, for some reason."

"Oh no," said Jill, looking up, where threads of small, magical lights were strung between the buildings, criss-crossing the street. "It's okay... It's still daytime, and they're less active in daylight... But we need to get indoors. Now."

Keri followed Jill's gaze upward and said a rude word.

"Huh?" asked Anya, wondering why her companions were suddenly so frightened. "What's wrong?"

"What's wrong?" asked Jill incredulously. "What's wrong? You've brought us out at Christmas!"

"Christmas? What's Christmas?"

"Calm down," sighed Keri. "You really think we're at risk with Anya here?"

"... I guess not. It's just that Glimmerhome has always attracted great swarms of the buggers, so the fear response is practically genetic at this point."

"Great swarms of what?" asked Anya.

"You know... I wouldn't mind being a plushy for a few hours, as long as Anya could fix me afterwards," said Keri, thoughtfully.

"... Yes, but you're clinically insane," responded Jill.

"Sanity is overrated. My life has been far happier ever since I gave it up."

Jill pondered for a moment, but didn't feel like she could argue. It was certainly true that Keri was considerably happier than most people they'd met.

"Is anyone going to tell me what's going on?" asked an exasperated Anya.

The two real girls turned to look at her, but it was Jill who tried to answer. "It's the... the... urk, we aren't supposed to say their name. They can hear it. Santa's little helpers. The spirits of Christmas. The toymakers."

Anya tilted her head in confusion.

"Once a year, swarms of them descend on the human lands—mostly on Glimmerhome, admittedly—spend a week making toys, and then on the final day, they distribute them to children who have been 'good'."

"And that's... scary?" asked Anya, who was no less confused.

"They make the toys by transforming anyone who has been 'bad'," answered Jill. "Their toys are literally people."

"Then why are you scared of them? You're always good."

"I'd like to think I'm not evil, but I don't know I'd go so far as calling myself 'good'. But that's beside the point, anyway. The problem is that Santa's little helpers have very strange definitions of 'good' and 'bad'. As far as they're concerned, 'bad' includes little things like wearing clothes."

Anya looked Jill up and down, still unsure why she thought the visitors would consider her 'bad'.

"They tend to give all of their manufactured toys to the reindeer up north," continued Jill, unaware of the thoughts of her companion.

"So, why the lights?" asked Anya, looking up at the colourful glowing strings.

"The bright colours confuse them. Makes them misjudge ground level and crash."

"Weird..." said Anya.

"Can we go indoors yet?" asked Jill. "I know you can almost certainly protect us, but I've had a couple of decades of surviving Christmas, and my body isn't listening to my brain. If anyone starts jingling bells, I'm liable to piss myself."

Anya shrugged. "I don't remember anyone saying you couldn't go inside. You're the one who decided to stay out here."

Jill subjected that statement to a bit of mental scrutiny and realised it was correct. "It's just impolite to walk away when someone is talking."

"We can talk while we walk," continued Anya as they headed toward Jill's home. "On which note, who's Santa?"

"Pardon?"

"Santa. You referred to those monsters you're scared of as 'Santa's little helpers', which implies the existence of a 'Santa'. Is that their king or something?"

Jill opened her mouth. Jill closed her mouth. Jill looked to Keri for help.

"Don't look at me," shrugged Keri. "I've heard the nickname 'Santa's little helpers' for the elves, but I've not heard of any other mentions of Santa."

Jill opened her mouth again, this time in a less controlled fashion. Then she broke into a run.

"Hey, what's..." started Keri, then she heard the bells. "Ah. Oops."

Merry laughter sounded from above. From below. From every window, around every corner. Each tinkle of a bell was followed by far more reverberations and echoes than the volume warranted. Shrouded shapes of green and red fell from the sky, landing on the road with loud jingles.

One of them, distracted by the lights, went splash.

"And what do we have here?" asked a voice.

"This one is a good little girl..." declared a shape that had dropped directly between Jill and her front door.

"But this one is a very bad girl," said another of the three-foot tall clawed creatures, wrapping Keri's tail around its neck like a scarf, while the girl in question beamed excitedly.

"And this one is..." started a fourth voice. Then it screamed.

The laughter cut out, the elves freezing as they watched one of their number sprinting down the street.

"Uh... Yeah, Anya can take people like that," said Jill carefully.

"But I didn't do anything..." complained Anya, checking for unexpected tentacles, just in case a few had sprouted while she wasn't paying attention.

The remaining gang of elves slowly and silently backed away, patches of red and green melding into walls, slipping into the ground, or simply fading out of existence, once again leaving the trio of girls alone. If anything, the lack of laughter and jingling bells as the creatures vanished only served to make them more eerie.

"I'm not sure how I feel about this," said Keri, looking vaguely disappointed.

"Just ask Anya if you're that desperate to try out being a plushie," sighed Jill. "As for me, I'm going home."

The three young women filed into Jill's house, Keri pouncing onto the sofa and Jill rooting around in the fridge while Anya looked thoughtful.

"I don't know where those odd creatures went," she admitted. "Or came from, although admittedly I wasn't paying as much attention at that point."

"Does it matter?" asked Jill, chewing on a slice of melon as she looked around the apartment. "I should put some basic defences up. A few lengths of tinsel, at the least. I have some in the storeroom."

"I don't think it matters, but I'm still curious. It wasn't any sort of teleportation or invisibility. They just kinda drifted out of existence. To do that in a way I couldn't follow is... unusual. Maybe they weren't real to begin with?"

At that, Jill peered over in concern. "It's not that you didn't track them, but you tried to and failed?" she asked.

"Yeah. Like I said, it was weird."

"Wow, I was scared before, but now I'm terrified. Yeah, I'm going to find that tinsel."

Saying as such, she hurried out of the room.

"Can you see any others in the city?" asked Keri from the sofa, where she'd curled up.

Anya looked around. "No."

"Okay, so what are we going to do about it?"

"Do about it?" came Jill's slightly muffled voice from outside the room. "What do you mean... Oh."

"Hmm..." said Anya, tilting her head as she considered the problem. Then she walked over to a window, opened it, and poked her head out.

"Hey! Santa!"

There came a loud bang from the storage room, followed by some rather colourful swearing.

"Not quite what I had in mind, but okay," said Keri as the echoes rolled over the city, shattering windows and cracking plaster as they bounced off buildings.

A bell sounded, not the high-pitched jingly bells of the elves, but something larger, louder and colder. The great toll of a funeral bell. The sky darkened. So did the magical lights strung up to protect the city. Within seconds, Jill's home was a lone island of light within a blackened void.

Jill came rushing back into the room, a length of rainbow-coloured tinsel wrapped around herself. "Are you sure you should have done that?"

"Dunno why you're worried," replied Keri, who hadn't moved from the sofa. "They called you a good girl."

"Oh, seriously?" complained Anya under her breath, as thick tentacles rose from the void, curling around Jill's home. The skin of the tentacles split, bloody eyes opening and peering down upon the isolated abode.

"Who dares..." started a voice, loud and deep enough that the girls perceived it through their feet rather than their ears. However, it cut off after a mere two words, the thousand eyes suddenly flicking around uncertainly. "... You?!"

"Me," agreed Anya, frowning out of the window. "So, have you been enjoying yourself, 'Santa'."

"I... I... I have no idea what you're talking about..."

"Uh... Is it my imagination, or do the big, scary tentacles look embarrassed?" asked Jill.

"Don't ask me. You're the tentacle expert," said Keri, who was still curled up on the sofa and hadn't so much as twitched.

"Look, I'm not angry," said Anya, ignoring the noise behind her. "I'm not even disappointed. Just... why?"

"What does it matter if you are angry? You're not the boss of me!" answered the voice, somehow managing to squeak despite remaining so deep that entire heavily whiskered ecosystems could dwell in its depths.

"I never said I was," shrugged Anya.

"... I was bored," admitted the Creature.

"Okay, now I am angry. If you were bored enough to play around with a universe like this, why did you always tell me you were busy whenever I asked if you wanted to do anything?"

"I'm not 'playing around'," denied the Creature, ignoring the tail end of the question. "I'm delivering Christmas cheer."

"Cheer?!" exclaimed Jill, leaping from petrified to apoplectic fury in one smooth step. "You've terrorised our city for centuries! 'Christmas' is a word that's so scary that we don't even use it for swearing purposes! You just made me have a little accident in my own wardrobe!"

"What is that soft and squishy thing squeaking about?"

Anya sighed. "Just go away, will you?"

"Why should I? I was here first."

"Because I spend a lot of time here, and if you keep this up, you're going to keep bumping into me. And I'm going to talk to you. And invite you in to play games."

The tentacles spent a few seconds in sullen silence as they considered that threat.

"... Fine."

The tentacles withdrew. The sun remembered it was supposed to be shining in the sky. The rest of the city reappeared, its usual background soundtrack of screams and shouting resuming, albeit muted somewhat by the way everyone was indoors, and hence the violence was mostly restricted to within families.

"Seriously?" complained Anya. "He'd rather move to a different universe than talk to me? Why does everyone hate me so much?"

The only response was Jill's arms wrapping around her. Or, at least trying to; the bulk of her dress meant that it would take a truly heroic arm span to reach around her full circumference.

"Hate you?" asked Jill. "How could we ever hate you? You just ruined Christmas!"