Dark Side of the Pole

Mrs. Claus promised Nick she wouldn’t drink on Christmas eve. She sat alone in the gargantuan workshop, eyeballing a fifth of the snowman’s mystic sapphire brew sloshing around a bottle of enchanted ice, impervious to all forms of heat. This concoction of her old friend’s never failed to arrive before the chaos of the new season, its possession something she considered sanity insurance, a cheeky policy she could cash in when the season reached peak levels of soul demolishment.

There was a time when Frosty was going through something of an existential crisis, but nobody thought lesser of him for it. Who could when your body’s state of matter is vulnerable to even the slightest shift in temperature? Let’s not even get into the fact that his nose is a fucking carrot. Not his favourite topic of conversation.

“I just need to feel like a god damn person again, Martha,” he confided one day.

She had sent for him to look over the stability of the workshop’s prismatic ice core, the big magic battery that kept the lights on.

“Were you ever a person to begin with?” Martha asked. Her phrasing was off and she had worried he’d taken offence, but the question was sincere.

Frosty the Snowman had not once divulged to any living creature within the North Pole the true nature of his origins.

“Eh,” he dragged, replacing the shielded barrier once more to the apparatus containing the core, “all I’m saying is I need something to give me a little semblance of humanity, you know?”

“Sorry, Frosty. I didn’t mean it to come out the way it sounded.”

He threw his branches up in protest. “Ah, it’s nothin’. I can’t get caught up in my past when my present is already so full of shit,” he chuckled.

“Don’t say that,” she said. “You live in a place where the present can always be better. You need only be a good boy.” She threw a coy smile his way.

“My god, your jokes are still awful.”

Yet they both laughed.

During his next inspection she surprised him with a hand-knitted scarf of onyx black. When his own jet black eyes met hers in confusion, she shrugged and said, “I know it gets cold out there.”

That was fifteen years ago. The last four had seen Frosty fall off the grid, completely. Numerous scouting parties around the barren tundra cleared many a horizon, all to no avail. He even managed to erase himself from the almighty naughty or nice list, a feat that caused many speculative whispers to ebb from one dark nook of the workshop to the other. This ghostly departure wouldn’t halt the annual arrival of that fine brew, however, something the big guy took as an insult to his vigilance.

“This isn’t right,” St. Nick had told her, holding the bottle given to him by an elf guarding the main gate. “Neither the snowmen or the wolves have anything to say about his disappearance when I held council with them three days ago.” With his free hand he patted the snow from his body.

Martha had been tending the reindeer, her caress on Dasher’s snout hardened with the news, wearing its welcome.

“Sorry, Dash,” she said as he pulled away. “You don’t think the snowmen had anything to do with it, do you? They weren’t exactly thrilled by Frosty’s eagerness to be our engineer when we didn’t need one. Maybe they’re holding him.”

St. Nick sighed. “It’s a possibility. But if that’s the case, what can I do? Our relationship with the snowmen isn’t preserved because of Frosty. It’s the ice core. They power us, we keep the North cold. I can’t risk that balance over one snowman.”

“But it’s Frosty, Nick. Our Frosty.”

He placed his hand on her shoulder to offer what he knew she wouldn’t take. The consolation was brief, and then he was gone.

Martha couldn’t be sure of St. Nick’s search efforts when he conducted them. Twice a year, once every six months. But after four years, the likelihood of a revelation became near obsolete.

She ruminated the loss of her friend with the latest bottle, the empty workstations around her still throbbing with the heat of development. This was her spot, the emptiness of a room brimming with activity throughout the year a surreal comfort. Against her husband’s advice, she unfastened the lid of the ice bottle and brought the neck to her lips. The frosted elixir scorched her insides in a dizzying cleanse of anguish.

“Holy shit,” she whispered to herself, stifling several coughs.

“Are you that stressed?” St. Nick asked, leaning against one of the workshop’s many material printers.

His appearance didn’t shock her in the slightest.

“Is it time?”

“Elves are loading the sleigh, now. Are you prepared?”

“Aren’t I always?”

“You are,” he said, walking towards her. “But it worries me when you do this job half drunk. It makes me think you’ve forgotten how important it is, because if not for you, none of this exists.”

“I know.”

He took her hand in his. “Sleigh bells are ringing, darling.”

“Then let’s go.”

They made their way to the hangar, where hundreds of elves awaited the departure of St. Nick in regimented formation. All manner of jovial interactions were put to a standstill as he bade farewell to his wife. They spoke in whispers, displaying a stalwart affection for one another that had honed itself to be almost imperceptible to any unfamiliar with their partnership. Their final gesture to one another was a simple caress of the cheek.

St. Nick climbed the single elevated runway and mounted the gold-clad sleigh as Martha brought herself to the hangar bay door’s control panel. He made sure for the eighth time that the bag of infinity was fastened to the back of the sleigh with professional ardour. Martha met Rudolph’s eyes while he did this, falling victim as always to the fiery gemstone that was his nose, obtained not from any miracle of enchanted birth. The reindeer’s so called gift was the result of shielding St. Nick from the chaotic energy blast of a foe long dead. The magic took from Rudolph most of his face, corroding it with deep, glowing cracks that stemmed from the nose, outwards. It wasn’t respect he received from the other reindeer that day forward, but fear.

Antlers roused as St. Nick equipped the reigns. He offered his wife one curt nod before belaying the names of his loyal guides. She gave one back.

So ferocious was the sleigh’s departure that a temporary snow shower erupted from the snow padded runway. Martha watched as St. Nick receded within the folds of a winter sunset along the horizon, the sun’s dying rays illuminated mountainous caravans of snow-harbouring clouds making their way toward the workshop. The silence reemerged. It wasn’t until Rudolph ignited the horizon with his own light so far in the distance that Martha threw the lockdown switch.

Red lights engulfed the entirety of the workshop, followed by the low-pitched wail of a siren that cried every two seconds. The inner mechanisms of the hangar bay door lurched to life as it began to close, two steel curtains several feet in width closing on a final act. Facing their meeting point was Martha, a silhouette against the backdrop of a day’s dying breath, watching the light of Rudolph diminish within the clouds, beyond, until all that remained for her to see were those steel barriers, firm reminders of her duty.

She turned to the elven collective behind her, physical manifestations of loyalty in its purest form. Not one face betrayed its duty to the night, ahead. They awaited her instruction.

“To your posts,” she announced, and with that they dispersed.

Snowflake, the workshop’s combat expert, approached her as she made her way to the armoury.

“Fortifications are up to par, Mrs. Claus,” he said. “Although the frost barrier in the outer sector could do with some fine tuning, I think. Some cane-spear operators reported flakes falling within the perimeter.”

“These cane-spear operators wouldn’t happen to be the ones posted hear the mess hall, would they?” she asked, smirking.

Snowflake stepped ahead and held open the entrance to the armoury. “They haven’t been raiding the distillery again, if that’s what you’re implying. A few harvest runs through the candy cane forests at night put a stop to that.”

“I was joking, Snow. Have a squad you can trust circle the workshop with a few snowballs. See if there’s a weak link in the chain.”

“Done.”

He stood by her side, eyes flicking from one of the many hand crafted weapons developed by Martha and St. Nick to the other, each proudly displayed atop cushioned podiums. Some of these trinkets he had been lucky enough to use on scouting missions when reports of stray ice goblins called him to action. Martha ran her hands along the hilt of the garland whip, a multi-coloured tendril laced with spiked thistles that became sharp only when a sole button along the hilt was pressed.

“Not loud enough for me,” Snowflake said.

“Depends on how you use it,” Martha said. “And on what.”

She brought her attention to the next podium, where a pile of would be ornaments rested atop one another, perfect globes accented with silver etchings. If thrown with enough force, the concussive blast from those festive grenades was enough to rip flesh from bone, or stone from earth.

“We need these in different colours,” Snowflake said, running his finger along the silver etching. “You can instil only so much terror with red and green.”

“You know Nick and I are fond of our colours,” she said. “But I don’t think we’ll be needing those, tonight. It’ll most likely be another quiet year. Some stragglers, maybe, but nothing to get excited about.”

“Sure. I’m gonna go round up some people for that perimeter check. Don’t go killing yourself with whatever you grab,” he said, heading for the door.

“Who was it that impaled his foot with a candy stake, two seasons ago?”

“Wasn’t my fault,” he chimed, closing the door behind him.

It was unusual for Martha to feel restless on the eve of Christmas. She would normally grab a scoped light rifle and patrol the ramparts in a large feathered coat, dishing hot chocolate to any elves who were without that held a fixed position.

That method of defence was too impersonal for her current demeanour, which is why she grabbed the northern star. The hilt was leather bound, with an iron frame smithed to look like a diamond prism resting on the guard. Elves unfamiliar with its function would ask her what the whisk was for.

She found herself stalking the halls of the workshop in an absent minded state, paying little heed to the armoured elves making their security rounds. Her mind had pushed her back towards Frosty’s brew without her say so, and before she could register the walk actually taking place, there the bottle stood, right where she had left it. It wasn’t an ache she washed away with her second gulp, but fatigue. The past few years had stripped her mental bearings to something that became overburdened without much effort. She polished the brew off with the third and final swig, shedding the weight of that fatigue for a few blissful moments before it grew back.

“Oof,” she cringed, shaking the violence of the liquid from her palette. “Okay.”

She turned to make her way to the outer perimeter when something lying on the work station caught her eye, something that most definitely had not been there before.

It was a present.

The wrapping was standard Christmas bullshit, but the tag was something else. It read,

‘To Martha, from The Big Guy.’

She scoffed. The Big Guy?

Her silent ridicule of her husband quickly became one of suspicion. When has he ever said anything so ridiculous?

Although she affirmed to herself that this was the same man who screamed “Ho ho ho!” to the sleeping children of the world while riding a sleigh towed by a squadron of magic reindeer, none of the gifts she’d ever received from him had ever been left about so casually with such insincere words.

She opened it in one swift tear, the tips of her fingers brushing against some kind of fabric. The length was impressive as she let it unfold in her hands, but the material was too dark and her vision too blurred to make out what it was she was holding. She refolded as she made her way to the halls where there was light, stopped dead in her tracks when her index finger grazed what felt like stitch lettering. She brought it to her face, noting the distinct silver F, and just like that was ripped from her drunken stupor.

It was the scarf she gave to Frosty.

Heart in throat, shakes of the unwanted degree, sweats colder than ice, Mrs. Claus retained every fibre of what composure she had left and placed the scarf back where it lay, lowering her right hand to take hold of the northern star.

She wasn’t subtle enough.

Something hit her from behind with enough force to vault her over the workstation she stood at, her shoulder taking the landing upon itself. In her winded state she failed to see the creature that attacked destroy the doors to the outer halls, but certainly did she hear the cries of her fellow elves being torn apart. Light rifle fire followed by screams, silence, then repeat. She coughed her lungs into paralysis as she stood, hobbling towards the exit. The workshop went into red alert as she reached the hall. A stampede of stoic elves sped past her, one of her lieutenants, Holly, dropping out of formation to check her condition.

“Ma’am, are you okay?” she asked, offering a hand up towards Martha’s hip.

Martha couldn’t register the question, or take her eyes from the massacre of elves that lay before her. One elf lay headless, with the head nowhere in sight. Another had been kicked into the wall with such force that its body sat within the wall, folded on itself completely. The blood trail from a body that was no longer there was the most interesting. It stretched out from a pool that hugged the wall, skidding in a rough arch onto and across the ceiling, then back to the floor in a sadistic spiral that trailed further along the corridor.

“Ma’am?” the lieutenant repeated.

“Call your squad back,” Martha ordered.

“Ma’am, we don’t know what this is. We—“ her radio began to crackle.

“This is commander Snowflake, any and all hands report immediately to the reactor room! It’s going for the core!”

The lieutenant grabbed her radio to respond, interrupted by Martha’s acquisition.

“Mrs. Claus here, Belay that order, Snow. I’m en route. Fall back and see to the wounded. That’s an order.”

“There are no wounded, ma’am, this fucking thing is a completionist! Behind you, Tinsel! The tail! On the ceiling! ON THE CE—“

The radio became silent, but the muffled pop of distant rifle fire could be heard coming from the other side of the workshop. Martha grabbed the northern star and swung it downward. An extension put the iron prism several feet from the hilt before it exploded with light.

“Lieutenant Holly, I need you to grab everyone you can and head out to the barracks. If something’s going for the core, there’s probably something on the outside waiting to get in.”

“Understood, ma’am.”

Lieutenant Holly ran opposite the direction of the carnage, leaving Martha to follow that swirling trail of elf blood, now firmly dried into the ceiling. Those stains are gonna be impossible, she thought, stepping over several corpses.

The trail became one with several, those several meshing with the result of many a bludgeoning. Martha found herself tripping through her own personal slice of hell. The entrance to the reactor room had been blown to nothing. The light from the ice core was a minor improvement on the newly painted walls. She spotted Snowflake and his platoon huddled in fixed positions on the other side of the entrance. He signalled towards the core.

Martha gave the signal to stay put. He obeyed.

The room was a perfect sphere. It used several grated walkways hoisted above a farm of large, sequenced pipes filtering power from the core throughout the facility. An elf hung from the edge of a walkway surrounding the core.

“Help,” he croaked, fingers and knuckles paper white as they clasped for life.

Martha ran to him without thought, without checking above, underneath, or behind. She gripped the young elf’s hand and pulled him to safety, astonished by how light he was. Surprise left her when she realised his lower half was no longer a thing that existed. Several organs trailed behind him as she put him on his back.

“Is it bad?” he asked, coughing blood.

“It’s bad.”

And then he died.

She shone the light of the northern star beneath the walkway, the shadows of pipes and various levers obscuring too much for comfort. She circled the core, stopping when the light of her weapon caught two orbs staring back at her from the darkness, below. Fear struck a chord in her before they disappeared.

“Oh Martha. Martha Martha Martha,” a voice cooed from below. “The illustrious Mrs. Claus, paradigm of graciousness.” Metal could be heard bending as the creature leapt from one pipe to the other. “There is so much blood on your hands, Martha dearest.”

“Enough of this shit. How did you get through the shield, and why do you have Frosty’s scarf?”

“Wonderful! Two questions with one answer.”

Martha continued to scan the bottom of the room, catching momentary glimpses of scaled flesh disappearing from one shadow to the next.

“My purpose is one of self reflection, Martha, to make those who have committed unforgivable atrocities seek redemption. The laws of my kind grant immunity to any and all fortifications so long as a corruption of spirit rests within their folds.”

“And I’m the corruption?” she asked.

“Well, you have been drinking quite a bit, have you not?”

She didn’t respond.

“A trivial thing, I’ll admit, but not as much when the nectar you covet is bled from the body of a friend. The one you call Frosty.”

“…what?”

“You’ve been drinking your friend for four years, darling. That last thirsty gulp was all that remained of him. It’s not easy to make, such a concoction, but I daresay it wouldn’t be too brash to give myself some credit for its production.”

She repressed the urge to vomit for a few measured moments. There would be time to process what had just been told, but for now she wanted this thing dead. She leapt over the rail of the walkway, opting to ignore the consequence of embracing that darkness below.

She fell for a while before landing on one of the larger pipes, far from the hum of the ice core. The only sounds that reached her were the sporadic clink of metals expanding and the gaseous hiss of pistons firing to regulate pressure. Further from the light of the core she walked, the northern star her only guide.

“Show yourself.”

The creature’s tail clipped her left heel, knocking her down. It had been crawling underneath the pipe she walked on. A clawed hand clasped her wrist and flung her from where she lay, her body careening towards nothing she could see. A set of coils caught her lower half, flipping her upside down to land once more on a different pipe, this one walled on both sides by others of various sizes.

The creature launched itself towards her, landing close with the intent to strike between the coiled barriers. Martha put a stop to this with one swing of the northern star, obliterating all in one concussive explosion that caused the creature to reel in agony, hanging from what remained of the pipework. Steady jets of steam shrouded its figure, the light from Martha’s weapon giving it definition. Its lanky form was akin to a spider, but more humanoid. The head was sinister incarnate, sharp every which way with two horns protruding from the forehead.

“Oh fuck. Krampus.”

His head came through the steam veil, cracked smile showcasing elf flesh between jagged teeth. “Yes?”

The yellow eyes were too much an obstruction of righteous intent for her to handle. She moved to strike one more time, failing to land the blow. His tail came for her legs once more, but she jumped from its reach, slamming her mace into the tailbone of the beast as she came down. The force of the blow threw him further along the pipe. Where any other being would have no choice in their landing, Krampus extended every available limb to catch himself along the barriers.

There was no hesitation in his next attack. He leapt from one barrier to the other on all fours, launching himself at Martha with all he had. She ran forward, dropped to her knees and slid towards him as he jumped, swinging the northern star in an upward arch that caught the beast’s sternum, breaking flesh and bone alike. There was no recovery from this. So critical was her strike that it rendered the demon incapable of crying out as it dropped behind her.

Martha wasted no time, rushing the beast with another strike to its head, severing the larger horn from its gnarled head. Despite the damage, he smiled.

“WHY did you do this!?” she cried, swinging once more. The blow caved the left side of its face, obliterating its eye. Still, it smiled.

“Boredom, mostly,” he chuckled. “I knew I wouldn’t get far. There’s only so much one lone demon can do against the house of Claus…that’s why I employed the snowmen.”

He noted her confusion.

“Oh yes,” he smiled. “An army heading right this way for their beloved engineer, Frosty, held captive by the inscrutable Father Christmas who couldn’t bare the thought of his precious ice core becoming faulty without aid.”

“That’s exactly what'll keep them out,” Martha said.

“Unlikely, given my tampering with the power distribution.”

“But they won’t win, you parasite! We’ll hold them off until St. Nick comes back. Nobody can survive him.”

“Oh, besides the point, Martha! Tonight, your halls ran red with the blood of your own. Plenty more will spill, I promise you. And let us not forget our dear Frosty. I imagine the weight of that will burden you for quite some time. Call your survival whatever you wish, Mrs. Claus, but from this moment forward, you’ll be forever tainted.”

“I guess we’ll see, won’t we?”

She brought the northern star down one last time, caving the skull of Krampus. Still, his laughter echoed.

The mace receded towards the hilt as she let it drop. She looked up and called out.

“SNOW!”

She was about to call again when a descending Snowflake appeared before her, rappelling from the walkway.

“Next time I go with you,” he said, eyeballing the dead demon as he linked Martha to himself.

“If both of us died then St. Nick wouldn’t know what the hell to do.”

“I’d rather it be both of us. I’m not as patient a lover as you are.”

They ascended.

The report came in from every watchtower and sniper’s nest along the ramparts: snowmen approaching.

Martha and Snowflake watched the last remaining fusion splices of power from the ice core before it rotated no more. There would be no time for repairs. They gathered their forces to hold out until daybreak, when St. Nick would approach from the west and decimate any that looked to harm the sanctity of his legacy.

She looked out on that abysmal horizon with Snowflake by her side, noting the thin white line coalescing upon the snow capped ridges of the landscape, before her. The events to come played in her head with vivid clarity, the approach, the defense, the deus ex machina that was her husband, the intent to regain some form of normality once all was said and done. She saw herself die a thousand times over in the life she would lead after this day. It was only when Snowflake roared at his men to take aim that Martha realised, beyond a shred of doubt, she truly had lost.