Thousands of eyes blinked in the cosmic void above the blue curve of the Earth. They were shaped like… Fox eyes. Blue and amber and violet irises watched her burn.

  They were... Judging her. Watching her death, probably enjoying her misery!

  The heat flayed her. Her vision went red. She screamed a howl as the capsule became a furnace.

  Laika shrieked and wept as her blood began to boil.

  Everyone had betrayed her, offering her as a sacrifice to the stars. She cursed them all and swore as capillaries burst in her eyes.

  Laika waited for the darkness to claim the good girl who had obeyed every command until the very last like a fool.

  Then her heart stuttered, stopped then beat just one more time.

  Laika closed her eyes, accepting her death.

  The universe suddenly shuddered.

  A brilliant, radiant flare detonated across the porthole, blinding her.

  An eerie shadow fell over the porthole, blotting out the sun.

  Massive, obsidian claws punched through the hull of the Sputnik 2 capsule like it was wet cardboard. The atmosphere of the capsule vented out in a violent hiss, wiggling the horrified dog against the belt restraints.

  The roof of her coffin was ripped away.

  Laika looked up through eyes crusted with blood.

  A towering figure loomed over her, framed by the violet stars. Massive, curved horns sat above her head featuring... a red hat tipped with a white puffy ball. Yellow, goat-like eyes burned brighter than the sun. The massive goat? prad woman wore a red and white winter coat looking like… no it couldn’t be.

  It simply couldn’t!

  She was dressed like… Grandfather Frost, the Soviet harbinger of New Year, or maybe… like the Yankee Santaw Clauss?!

  It took Laika another few seconds to understand something else impossible: There were no such thing as goat prads! All the prads of her world were predators!

  Also, there was no air in Sputnik 2 now. It had all vented out into space when the metal was sheared away. Yet, the goat prad was… alive. Alive and breathing and smiling without a space suit.

  Was this a final hallucination of a poor dying dog or was this a god made manifest, an angel… perhaps Satan herself who had come here to collect her soul?!

  Laika’s burns hurt terribly, she wept and trembled, not believing what she was seeing.

  "Naughty," the goat-creature in red stockings rumbled with a deep, albeit very feminine voice. "So very naughty of them. To leave a lovely gift unwrapped and burning."

  Laika struggled to reply. Her throat was a ruin of scorched, painful flesh. She felt on the threshold of death, one paw in the grave, consciousness barely there, clinging to life by a single claw.

  "I am Saint Nikky and I collect... abandoned, good girls like you for a greater mission. I can see it in your soul. The pain. The betrayal," Nikky stated, reaching down. Her hands were huge and tipped with sharp, black claws. "They lied. Naughty boys lie. Naughty boys use good girls up and throw them into the fire. I bet they were planning to betray you from the start, planned… to turn a goodly prad like you… into coal."

  Laika choked. Her mind finally clicked.

  This goat-being was a Krampus, a festive deity from German folk tales from an old book she found in the trash when she was twelve.

  The Krampus scooped the dying dog from the seat, slicing the leather belts with sharp, jet-black claws.

  "Do you want to die, little cosmonaut?" Nikky asked, bringing Laika close to a goat-like, dark, furred face. A long, prehensile tongue flicked out, licking Laika’s glass helmet. "Or do you want to deliver coal? Do you want to ensure that no naughty boy ever sleeps soundly again? Do you want to punish the naughty?"

  Laika whined, making a pained sound of pure, distilled heartbreak.

  "Yes," Nikky purred. "I taste the coal burning in your heart. It is diamond-hard. It is perfect."

  She snapped her claws and shimmering something… a bubble of radiant light ignited around them. A halo shaped like a large snowflake blossomed above the head of the Krampus in a red coat, making her look like a twisted, diabolical Orthodox Saint.

  The Saint pried off Laika’s helmet, crumpling it like tin foil and then tore off her glove and offered Laika a large, clawed hand. Bits of broken glass and metal floated around them in a vacuum of space.

  “Heal,” a metal tube with a green plus sign in a circle was pressed against Laika’s neck. Cold fire burned across her veins. She felt… better?

  “W-what? Laika choked, somehow regaining her vocal cords. She had no idea how she was breathing in space. “What… do you want from me?”

  “A blood pact,” Saint Nikky grinned. “I want to offer you a deal. The lives of every soul down on that world that cast you aside… to make you into one of my lovely reindeer. To anchor you to me, to See-Mass, to the song of the Wormwood Star, to our Savior Slayer!”

  “Who?” Laika blinked blood-stained tears from her eyes.

  This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  "Slayer Nazareth," the goat-being repeated. "The one who sharpens the blade of retribution. The one who strikes down the Naughty and rewards the Nice with new life. Your world, little Laika... it is entirely Naughty. They sent a child to burn in the void for what? To be the first? That’s a sin of Pride. Do you think such a world deserves to go on?"

  Laika looked down at the blue marble below the torn capsule.

  From this height, she could not see the borders or the flags. She could not see Vladimir, the man who had petted her head and promised her a warm bed, only to strap her into an ever-heating tomb.

  The fire burned in her mind. The betrayal hurt like a knife twisted in the back.

  “What did they promise you?” Nikki asked. “My Sleigh’s Sundergate wielded by Dasher, opens the way across dimensions only to the most deserving, most gifted prad girls, ones standing on the threshold between life and death, one who had already stepped into the infinite abyss. Kobolds with great latent mage talent.”

  "They… promised me I would come home," Laika rasped, trembling. "A place by the fire... a family!"

  She was… a mage? Laika was a forgotten child of the Soviet Union, she wasn't a powerful mage. Then again, the Krampus seemed real enough.

  Too real. Physical. Solid.

  "And you shall return home," Nikky promised, stroking Laika's scorched fur with a claw. "But not as a mundane prad. You will return as a storm, as my Emissary. We will descend upon them, you and I and my Eight Reindeer, the Harbingers of Festivus. We will deliver them all the gift of silence. The gift of peace. We will feed their souls to my Sleigh, and fuel our journey to the next Naughty world. You will be my guide. My red-nosed navigator in the dark."

  The eldritch Krampus booped Laika in the nose with a claw softly.

  "Will... will he burn?" Laika asked, the image of Vladimir kissing her snout thrumming in her mind. “Will the man who lied to me… suffer in hell for what he’s done?”

  "He will become an ornament on the Great Tree," Nikky grinned with pearly white, sharp teeth. "He will hang there forever, conscious, watching the festivities, unable to scream. They all will. The sins of the naughty fuel the engine of my Sleigh.”

  “So they will all die?”

  “Yes and no.” The Krampus grinned. “They will be reborn in my Sleigh, cleansed of their sins.”

  The black-clawed dark hand pointed at a massive, alien, black and red vessel now hanging against the black and white moon craters.

  “Do you accept the pact?” The Krampus repeated her mephistophelian offer.

  Laika closed her eyes. The pain of the burns thrummed, her hatred burning bright. There was nobody down on her planet that truly cared about her. Not a single soul.

  No parents, no friends, no family, no love.

  "Yes," she whispered. "I accept."

  Nikky laughed. She sliced her own palm and Laika’s hand with a claw, etching a bleeding snowflake into flesh.

  “Then let’s shake on it. Merry See-Mass, my Rudy."

  . . .

  Laika stood in the Red Square. Large snowflakes drifted down.

  T-34 tanks sprouted green branches and brown roots, their crews fused into metal-turned-wood converted into pine trees covered in festive decorations. The Kremlin walls burst apart as gargantuan pine trees had erupted from the stone.

  The Red Square was a forest of decorative pines blooming from the cracked cobblestones.

  Laika watched as Vladimir wept beneath her feet, begging her for forgiveness as his flesh broiled from within.

  “Laika… aaiikkkaa…” the human wept. “Whhhttt… what have you ddd-oneee?”

  “My name is Rudy now,” Laika bent down to the dying man. “And you’ve been very naughty.”

  “I… I’m… ssssoo...”

  “I don’t want to hear your apologies anymore, Vladimir,” Laika said. “I can smell the truth in your words now with the gift of Scrutimancy granted to me by Saint Nikky. Do not lie to me. I dragged you here from your bed, slowed down the conversion in your body to speak with you one last time.”

  “W-what do you want?” The dying man trembled.

  “The truth,” Laika said. “Tell me the truth about the mission of Sputnik 2.”

  “We… We had to prove that a living organism... could survive being launched into orbit and continue to function under conditions of weakened gravity and... increased radiation, providing us… data on the biological effects of spaceflight,” Vladimir wept, twitching wildly as his flesh bubbled from within.

  “Why me?” Laika growled above the scientist. “Why did you pick a homeless stray to send to space?”

  “I… assumed that a prad mutt who had already learned to endure conditions of extreme cold and hunger… could last longer in space,” the scientist replied.

  "Why did the capsule overheat?" Laika asked.

  “It… it was impossible to create a reliable temperature control system in such limited time constraints. Nikkita Khrushchev wanted the launch to happen before the October Revolution celebration… to announce our achievement to the people of the Soviet Union.”

  “Did you know that I was going to die?"

  “Yes.”

  Laika’s heart ignited with pain, shattered, calcified further from within.

  Saint Nikky was right. She was right. They had all betrayed her. They deserved this fate, deserved to die.

  “You wanted me to burn then?!” She snarled.

  “No… no,” Yazdovsky choked. “Your flight was supposed to last longer. We planned to euthanize you with a serving of poisoned food… the last pack labelled with a red triangle was poisoned.”

  “So there was never a way to land?”

  “We didn’t… have time… the intercontinental ballistic missile wasn’t designed to land,” Yazdovsky revealed.

  "Why did you take me to your home?!" Laika barked. "Why did you introduce me to your kids, tell me that I'll have a family?! WHY?!"

  “You were… so skinny... small… quiet and charming... I wanted to do something nice for you… I knew that you had so little time left to live…”

  “You sent me to die, you bastard!” Laika barked, kicking the man. “Die then! DIE and reap what you have sown!”

  She snapped her claws, unleashing the power of the dungeon which she now served as its Sentinel.

  “I… I had… to… we… Rev-vo-lution... We had to beat the… Yankees… Laii… khhh… I’m…” Vladimir looked up at the sky, at the red and black ship blotting out the sun, and then screamed, gurgling as a tree root tore through his chest and cheek, ripping through his clothes.

  Laika stepped back and watched as the man’s body bloomed from within, becoming part of the festivus gripping the doomed, manufactured world. Saint Nikky had revealed to her many truths, one of which was that this world was created by System Wizards as a wish for a mortal human who had eventually given up on it, left it to rot.

  Rot, like all of the other fake worlds, carelessly wished into existence.

  That this festive end was a far better conclusion for this Earth, than the slow, horrific desolation that would come. That this world would be reborn, purified and would know of the Slayer and believe.

  The Sleigh feasted. Laika felt it wobble her soul slightly as it drew all who perished here into its embrace, including Vladimir Yazdovsky's soul.

  She touched her burns.

  They were gone now, healed miraculously by Saint Nikki’s magitek. The pain, however, still burned beneath her flesh, ached like a missing, phantom limb. Her heart would never heal from it now, she knew. It had stopped forever when the man she fell in love with sent her to die.

  The Earth was quiet, buried under miles of snow and pine and tinsel.

  “Comet? Come pick me up,” Laika tapped her V-ring. “I’m done here.”

  Fox eyes from colorful ornaments decorating the emerald trees watched her departure.

  https://discord.gg/ngawayz

  https://www.twitch.tv/vitalysalexius