“Oh come on,” Anon halfheartedly pouted, “it’s just once a year! Don’t you feel the Hearth’s Warming spirit?”
“Fah!” Haggis harrumphed, spitting into and wiping out a tankard. “I ain’t wearing it…”
Holding up a red and white stocking cap, he stuck out his bottom lip. “Please! The customers will love it.”
She slammed the container down hard enough to jar the bartop and leered over at him. “I ain’t wearing it! For Pete’s sake, you should be lucky I’m being this festive!”
Watching her reach over, grab a lump of coal from a sack, and toss it into the tall, wooden mug, he grimaced. “I don’t think giving patrons coal on Hearth’s Warming all that jolly…”
“Jolly - Bah!” she grumbled, filling the tankard with ale and sliding it down to a pony at the end of the bar. “You ain’t even from Equestria. How would you know the first thing about Hearth’s Warming?”
Adorned in the ugliest green sweater he could get at the local thrift shop, Anon defiantly crossed his arms. “I’ll admit I don’t know much, but the holiday is very similar to one we had on earth called Christmas. People would visit their families, there was almost always a big dinner, and folks of all ages exchanged gifts - it was really nice!”
“Aye, and I bet everypony has a grand old time and enjoys themselves,” she groused. “Let me tell you, not all of us are so lucky…”
He leaned on the bar and did his damnedest not to roll his eyes at her. “Who dropped horse apples in your cereal? Can’t you see everyone’s having a good time?”
Nodding, she rested on the bar and cocked her head. “The only thing I see is that nopony here knows the dark side of Hearth’s Warming…”
“Dark side?” he repeated incredulously.
“What do you think the coal is for?” she quipped, lifting and tossing one of the black rocks into the air. “Wards off evil spirits and brings good luck.”
Waving away her claim, he snickered. “Now I know you’re pulling my leg.”
“I ain’t and I can prove it,” she seethed, her tone hardening. “Mind the bar. I’ll be right back.”
She whipped around and stormed into the kitchen before he could say a thing. He really hadn’t meant to upset her, even if she was full of bologna about some dark side of Hearth’s Warming, but there wasn’t much he could do about that now. Stepping around and behind the bar, he picked up where she’d left off by cleaning and putting lumps of coal in unused tankards and tending to any customers.
It definitely wasn’t what he’d call a busy night - then again, given the holiday, he wasn’t all that surprised. Most ponies were home with their families or friends, leaving only a few steadfast drunks or loners in the tavern. Impassively listening to heavy hooffalls from overhead, hearing Haggis moving back to the stairwell, he expectantly looked over to the kitchen.
“Alright,” she growled, “you wanted proof? Here’s your proof.” Tossing a bundle of threadbare linen onto the bar in front of the man, she contemptuously spat on the floor.
He stared down at the bundle for a moment, both anxious and a bit curious. “What is it?”
“Unwrap her and see for yourself, since you don’t think Hearth’s Warming has perils,” she insisted, waving over to him.
Nervously reaching down and unfolding the cloth, he discovered what appeared to be a gnarled, broken horn or tusk. Dark as pitch and thicker than his wrist, the unsettling object had an air of wrongness about it - making him all the more hesitant to actually touch the thing. He lowered his head while turning the fabric, cautiously inspecting the item.
“And this is…?” he let the question hang, hoping she’d give an explanation.
“That,” Haggis began, inching closer to him, “is a horn…”
Quirking a brow over at her, he straightened up. “A horn of what though?”
Glancing to each of the windows and the door, she brought her muzzle to his ear. “The Krampus…”
“Oh bull shit,” he squawked, rearing back. “The Krampus isn’t - Hmmf?!?”
“Ssssssssh!” she hissed, clamping a forehoof over his mouth. “Are you daft? Do you want him to show up?!”
Haggis was many things, surly and unmovable most of the time, but shaken wasn’t one of them - making the look in her eyes, one of genuine concern, extraordinarily disconcerting. Relenting, he gently guided her forehoof away from his face and peered down at the fell item on the bar. As insane as it may have sounded, he was inclined to believe her.
Grabbing a bottle of hooch and two glasses from behind, he poured each of them a drink. “I hope you know me well enough to realize I wouldn’t demand details, but I think this warrants it.”
She snagged the bottle from his grasp mid-pour, brought it to her lips, and took a swig. “I fought it…”
“You fought Kr…” he fell silent under her baleful gaze. “You fought him ~ really?”
“Aye, and it weren’t easy, I’ll tell you that much,” she snarled, helping herself to another liberal gulp of spirits. Shifting her weight and turning her back to him, she hiked up her skirt. “See this?”
Shielding his eyes, he waved a hand. “I don’t think -”
“Not my arse, ya ninny!” she blurted. “Above my fetlock!”
He peeked through his fingers and peered down at her lower leg. Sure enough, just above the furry joint, was a jagged patch of bare, scarred skin that circled her limb. “The scar?”
She gave a solemn nod and rubbed the old wound. “He did that. Nearly took my leg off too.”
Gazing off into the distance, her eyes glazed over with some distant memory. Delicately moving the bottle away from her, he pushed one of the two glasses in her direction and held his breath. There’d been a number of stories she’d glibly mentioned in the past, but he could tell that this one might just be one of the most terrifying.
“We weren’t even trying to find trouble,” she whispered, “but trouble found us - oh did it ever find us…”
She shivered, struck by some imperceptible chill, and downed her glass in an instant. While he was reluctant to pour her another measure of liquor, he wasn’t above loosening her tongue with another drink to hear the tale. Staying quiet, he turned the bottle up and offered another two fingers. Considering the late hour, how slow it had been, and her apparent discomfort, maybe she actually needed something to relax.
With a trembling hoof, she reached for her glass. “There was a blizzard, the worst Yakyakistan had seen in generations, and it caught us completely off guard - rolled over the mountains like an avalanche of driving wind and frigid cold. Phalanx had spotted a cave earlier, so -”
“Phalanx like a formation?” he softly interrupted.
Continuing to pay him little mind and keeping her voice low, she shook her head. “No, we just called him Phalanx. We made our way to that cave, the one he’d noticed along the ridgeline, but…”
He waited in abject silence, as did a patron sitting within earshot for her to continue, before he nudged her glass. “But…?”
“The cave,” she muttered, tossing the shot of alcohol back. “The cave wasn’t right. There were chains and sacks hung from the walls, the place stunk of leather and burnt wood, and we were tempted to leave as soon as we’d set hoof into the place. It was like trotting through the gates of Tartarus…”
As much as he wanted to urge her to keep talking, he reigned himself in and bit his tongue. Whatever had happened in that cage had done more than just leave a physical scar - it had haunted her for years or even decades. Taking a sip of his drink, discovering that he’d grabbed what seemed to be a rye whisky, he tried not to cough.
A single bead of sweat rolled down her brow while she shifted her gaze to the window and the gale outside. “Setting up just inside the cavern, close enough to the exit to leave if need be, we hunkered down for the night around a small fire. Hours passed with only the sound of wind outside to keep us company, but then we heard it - a snarling that came from the bowels of the earth itself…”
“What was it?” the customer, an older unicorn stallion asked.
Her eyes shot to him, staring him down so hard that he flinched. “A demon, a creature that clawed its way out of the abyss itself. Faster than we could think, moving in ways that shouldn’t be possible, it was upon it. Tooth and talon and horn and rage - pure spite and death itself, that’s what it was. We…we barely made it out alive…”
Shifting uncomfortably, Anon poured himself a generous dose of liquid courage to steady himself. “Well at least you bloodied his nose…”
“No…” she breathed. “No, all we did was anger it, I’m sure of that much. We only found out later that it’s been around for as long as time itself, a terror that stalks many worlds and brings woe wherever it treads, and that wasn’t the first time somepony, be they pony or not, had tried to slay it. Everypony who’s sought to end it has failed, even though it’s been brought low on a fabled occasion or two. Somehow it comes back - it always comes back…”
Anon knocked back his drink and quickly refilled his and Haggis’ glasses, but not before depositing a lump of coal in their cups. Hastily taking her proffered shot, she took a draw from her cigar. He couldn’t say if the thing she’d encountered was actually Krampus, the Krampus he’d heard about as a child, but that wasn’t important - what was important was that he was going to double-lock all the windows and doors before going to sleep that night. Seeing her wander away while murmuring to herself, he gulped. All he could do was try to forget about the horrifying concept that Haggis, the strongest, baddest, most intimidating pony he’d ever met, was actually scared of something.
Unseating himself, the customer who’d listened in unsteadily trotted to the exit. “I’m going to head home, Anon. Put that on my tab.”
“Sure,” Anon dully responded.
Though the merriness of Hearth’s Warming still lingered, the joy he’d felt was tainted - stained by the notion that something truly nightmarish existed. Chimeras, dragons, cockatrices, hydras - those could be fought, those could be slain, but monsters, at least real ones, may just lurk in the night. Peering out into the cold, he rubbed his eyes and did a double take. It may have been his imagination, but he could swear he saw the silhouette of something tall, lanky, and with a sack hung over its shoulder lurking in the distance…