A dim blurry mess flew in circles about my head. A bed of cold hard concrete to my back.

  I tried to move, but when I went to shove myself into a sit, the entire world pitched like a demented roundabout in a rundown low-budget pyground. Instead, I slipped back down to my elbows with a muted, thud.

  Thankfully, there wasn’t particurly far to fall.

  “Wooooah, there.”

  “Guh.” I groaned blearily as FortyEight’s concerned face swam above me, lit with dim blue light in near total darkness. I blinked dizzily, trying to recreate a timeline in my head. The pair of them had been in the room below me… I’d shouted a warning…

  Over his shoulder, I could just barely see the dder up to the control room. I gnced around in the darkness, FortyEight span, piles of rubble jumped out as murky shapes. I grimaced and closed my eyes against the onsught until everything stopped moving.

  I shook my head, bad idea, much to the chagrin of my stomach. “Did I fall?”

  My voice felt small and far away, my tongue, dusty, like I hadn’t used it for several years.

  “Oh.” FortyEight smiled, breathing out with a sigh that was half ugh, but half not. “n-No, no. I uh, carried you.” His lower lip had developed a tremble.

  “You…” My head felt fuzzy.

  I gnced back towards the dder, reaching twenty, thirty, feet to the ceiling. Though only half of it was actually visible, the top half simply disappeared murkily into the shadows. “I… you can lift me?”

  FortyEight just grinned.

  “Rugby pyer.” He flexed, not particurly impressively, winced, then quickly dropped his arm, favouring one shoulder.

  “But…” I blinked at him, “you’re so… Skinny.” His brows twitched but it wasn’t quite a frown.

  “I um, I w-was a winger…”

  He pulled back, murmuring more to himself than me, as he stood up. I pushed myself, successfully this time, into a sitting position.

  The blue glow, faded from his, and I assume, my, face as we got further away from the glowing mist pooled heavily all over the floor, like a miniature fog, pocketed about the room, slowly dissipating away.

  I was also quickly realising I didn’t know anything about rugby, certainly not enough to know what a ‘winger’ was, why it would be relevant, or keep up any further conversation about it. Would it even be applicable? Wasn’t like he’d have been an elf when he had these rugby wings, was it. Maybe I simply weighed less now and was easier to carry. Comparatively, obviously, elves where shorter than a person and would probably always weight less, but scaled down and retive to their- You know what? I didn’t care.

  Also my head hurt. Quite a lot.

  A shimmery stream of the fog, Christmas Spirit, beyond the cage of it’s pipes, bathed us in gentle blue light, bringing FortyEight’s features back into view as it swam close to my head. It was, ethereal, enchanting. Like a ghostly eel without a face. The room seemed almost to fade away as it brushed past my ear, all of the pain in my head disappearing into a soft fuzzy fog.

  I giggled as peppermint exploded across my tongue.

  Before it faded away, leaving my throat painful and thick. I felt suddenly quite sick. The world tilted at an angle.

  FortyEight’s hand had cupped round the back of my head at some point, to save me from falling over. “Hey, Three? Earth to Three?” The snake of spirit seemed to wriggle with silent ughter as it slithered away, silently, through the air over his shoulder, plunging us into near total darkness once more.

  I looked up at him, though I could only just about make out his silhouette, let alone the expression he might be making. With a nod, I held out my hand towards him and he grabbed it. Hoisting me to my feet.

  Finally, I saw it and gasped.

  It was impossible to make out much of what was left of surface defence, but the podium was obvious. Glowing blue mist swirled freely from the cracks in the once impassive podium; now three separate, chunks of concrete pced loosely together like a fgstone wall, inch wide, glowing scores between them. Bathing the entire, now only roughly squarish, mound of rubble with unhealthy luminescence.

  The immense cogwheels had been torn into mangled slivers, while smaller, more delicate pieces of the mechanism had been blown from the inside out, shattering into sharp tiny shards, small enough to shoot through the cracks in the podium and embed themselves into the floor and walls like weld spatter.

  The giant floor to ceiling barrel, was no longer attached.

  Instead, it hung from a dark bulbous blob on the ceiling, that after a few moments of contemption, I took to probably be the remains of the thick canvas spanning the hole through to the outside world. It was too murky to truly tell for sure. Where the base of the barrel should have disappeared into the podium was a conspicuous gap. The giant tube simply ended with an open hole, about half a yard above the podium’s remains. Through which fluttered a few white flecks of snow, melting wherever they nded.

  Something chittered high above us, echoing in the dark, a faint clicking noise like the pattering feet of many, many insects. I swallowed as hairs prickled up the back of my neck.

  “I saw… Shapes. Crawling up the barrel.” Though I couldn’t make out FortyEight’s face, and was more focused on what was left of surface defence, I heard him gulp audibly. “Where’re the other two?”

  “Nine’s getting us some torches.” I jumped as FortyFour piped up suddenly on my left, and gred at him.

  He leant back slowly against one of the ‘Spirit barrels, holding his left hand up to his chest. “So. Want to fill us in on why you and Seven have been all secretive? I mean, you could’ve bloody told us.” I stood awkwardly between the pair of them unsure what to say, the glow from the podium lit his face eerily, while FortyEight was cast completely in shadow. FortyFour blinked and levelled a gre at FortyEight. “Unless you knew too.”

  “I-I dd-didn’t.” FortyEight back-pedalled away, sending little pieces of rubble skittering under foot with a chittering sound that echoed up into the ceiling.

  Moving away from the pair of them, I took a few cautious steps towards the ruined podium. Spirit seemed almost to hiss in response to the rubble I unsettled underfoot as I drew nearer, anticipatory.

  “Fine. Anyone else? Forty? He know? Two?” FortyFour’s voice echoed for a second in the silence. Unnaturally loud with forced confidence. A clicking creak, scattered again from above us. Far away, the deep groan of metal on metal moaned through the ventition. “Pff. Great, she’s ignoring me.”

  I shuddered as flurries of the glowing mist darted out and twirled about my legs, before scurrying back to congregate around the remains of the podium. ‘Christmas Spirit,’ was quickly shooting up into second pce of my top ten worst things about the pole, superseded only by all the bloody sugar.

  The three of us jumped as the door creaked open with a ctter, and sent piles of debris suddenly skittering across the floor. A waning burst of blinding, milky white light flooded the space around us, drowning out the dim blue glow, and rendering everything beyond it’s beam pitch inky bck.

  “We need to check the emergency cupboards more often.” FortyNine huffed behind the gre of the torchbeam. “I had to go halfway back to the bleeding Flightbarn, just to find a working torch.”

  The beam grew brighter as she approached, until the four of us stood together in a circle, the torchbeam puddled like moonlight about our feet “Oh.” She looked me up and down, and visibly defted with a tiny smile. “You’re…” The smile vanished into a frown. “… Up.” Her voice took on a sharp edge.

  “Um.” I wilted under her steadily cementing gre, and kicked a metal shard, with three remaining cog teeth, away.

  “Yes, yes, the liar’s awake.” FortyFour, leant back casually against the barrel again, studied FortyNine’s face intently as he spoke. Her brow twitched ever so slightly at the interruption, while FortyEight did his best to shrink between the pair of them, with an etched look of desperation, as if he wished for all the world to phase right through the concrete floor. Four titled his head. “Any more secret reveals you fancy sharing with the group?”

  FortyNine went to reply when something cttered over our heads, louder this time. All chatter dropped like a stone.

  FortyNine’s torchbeam chased after the sound, drawing hasty lines through the thick clouds of concrete dust still filtering down from the ceiling. It did little more than further conceal the room, lighting up the reflective grey fog instead.

  The torchbeam dipped, waning in and out.

  Hissing through her teeth, FortyNine clicked it off and on again. Then gave it a few hard wacks before the beam finally flickered back, bright as before.

  Four elves breathed a collective sigh of relief.

  “Here.” She held out another torch to FortyFour, who took it slowly with a smirk. “Could only find the two.”

  She gnced back to me for a moment then looked away, surveying the mess that used to be the podium.

  Something rumbled far away, grumbling groans shuddered up through the floor beneath our feet. But as the sound gradually faded away, there wasn’t anything left to repce it, no more rattle of fans or the faint whine of mps, nothing to take it’s pce. I swallowed, wiping cmmy palms down my sides. The pole was eerie, this silent. Dead.

  FortyFour clicked his torch on as well, and quickly pointed it away from his face, blinking wildly. Two torchbeams swept the room like searchlights. Albeit one slightly brighter than the other.

  “Ss-So.” FortyEight sounded small, like a tiny child terrified to disturb an explosive parent. “Ww-what do we do, now?”

  “Well…”

  FortyNine sucked on her teeth for a moment then clicked her tongue. She gestured back to the podium, with her torch, picking her way towards it. “Looks like whatever managed to worm it’s way inside, also managed to blow itself to pieces in the process…” She frowned and whacked the side of her torch as the beam once again began to wane. “We need to find a way to block this before any more guests come a knocking.” She gestured to the gaping, jagged, hole in the bottom of the barrel with the beam, and took a few cautious steps toward the centre of the room.

  The podium was so saturated with swirling blue fog, washed out and white like mist beneath the onsught of light, that the hole was actually even harder to see than before.

  FortyNine pulled up short, leaning away from a wave of the thick mist, rolling towards her face. She bit her lip, brow furrowed in thought. “I’m pretty sure the only reason we haven’t carked it already, s’coz of the leak… Once whatever’s left drains from the lines… We’re in for a right whale of a time.”

  “Uh-huh-” FortyFour scooped up a little piece of debris, part of one of the pressure gauges? And gently threw it into the well of mist clinging about the podium.

  Little plumes dove back in on themselves after the tiny lump of metal and gss, like a cat pouncing on a mouse. The plumes dissipated silently, bursting into the aether against the concrete floor at the exact moment the broken gauge shattered, little pieces skittering back towards our feet. The four of us ducked, cringing away from sudden noise.

  “Four.” FortyNine levelled her torch on him with a gre. “Don’t be a prick.”

  Again, something clicked, rapidly, in the dark. Like a series of ratcheting mechanisms, somewhere above us, ramping up. I stared, uneasily into the gloom.

  “What um… What is that?”

  FortyNine looked at me with an inscrutable expression for several seconds before she replied.

  “Linkages between control and the podium. Must be just enough ‘Spirit left for it to try to move.” She sounded… Unconvinced. After a moment, she flicked her torch back towards the podium and the slowly thinning cloud of glowing fog. “Maybe we can block it off with some of the smaller bits of rubble? Or-”

  The clicking came again louder, this time circling around us menacingly, from the darkness.

  Hairs prickled coolly up my spine into the base of my neck, and I found myself pushed up against FortyEight, while the two torches chased the sound up into the metaphorical rafters. Dust clouds… Shadows… I swallowed slowly, forcing my thundering heart back down my throat. Heavy cracks, webbed all across the thick concrete ceiling.

  I wet the roof of my mouth to the dry taste, of a light coat of powdered cement.

  “Just linkages… Right?”

  FortyNine held up a hand without looking back. FortyEight shivered visibly.

  Creaks, groans, and the shuffling sprinkle of gently settling dust danced softly, just teetering on the edge of perceptible hearing. All the while, darkness loomed above our heads like a gloomy, predatory, dome.

  I was starting to really wish I had one of those torches.

  “New pn.” Her voice was low, barely more than a whisper, pulled taut like fishing line. She walked quietly over to the solitary barrel FortyFour had been leaning against, then flicked her torch over to the corner of the room. The waning beam only scarcely managed to paint the faintest of circles on the far wall. “Eight, Three, grab us some more of those backup barrels.” She motioned, flicking her torch forwards. “Four. Keep a light on them. I’ll keep a light on you.”

  FortyFour was the first to move, breaking hesitantly away from the group, and took several careful paces forwards into the dark. After several moments, he turned his torchbeam back at us, like a lighthouse at the midway point in the gloom.

  FortyEight exchanged a bewildered gnce with me. I looked over to the pile of ‘Spirit barrels, barely illuminated in the corner, looked back to him and shrugged.

  Stepping out of the light, and getting further from it’s comforting beam, was uncanny. Like fighting against the primal connection between safety and the campfire… By the time we reached the barrels, we had to stand off to the side, lest our own shadows obscured what we where doing.

  I stared apprehensively down at the metal barrel.

  “So how do we… Ah!”

  I dove forwards as FortyEight suddenly hoisted one end of the barrel up and I scrabbled to catch it by the other end. The cold metal lip, bit deep into both of my hands swiftly robbing them of heat. That said, bringing the barrel back was a very simir experience to moving a sofa. Only in the dark. Amongst piles of loose rubble underfoot. And accompanied the entire time with the prickly sensation of dangerous eyes watching you that you couldn’t see… So not really like moving a sofa at all.

  FortyNine scarcely looked up when we pced the barrel down with a soft sloshing thunk before her. She grabbed one of a procured pile of hose extension segments by her left knee, and began fitting it to the barrel. She jerked her head, a movement mimicked by the long shadow stretching across the floor behind her, cast by FortyFour’s torch.

  “Grab us another.”

  It was a slow, borious, process. The cool metal of each barrel quickly sapped all of the remaining warmth from my hands, leaving my fingers painfully numb. We worked in silence -or- tried to work in silence; FortyEight walked faster than I was quite comfortable with, forcing me to take a series of awkward, shuffling steps in quick succession, the height difference also meant that FortyEight inadvertently lifted his end of each barrel almost above my shoulders. This meant that for the duration of each trip, it felt rather like the he was about to drop it on my face.

  Which of course all lead to the occasional stumble over loose ground. Wherein we would both freeze, praying whatever manner of thing we shared the room with wouldn’t see fit to… Investigate.

  Relief bloomed warm in my chest as we finally approached the podium with the st barrel, readying to set it with the others as close to the podium as we’d dared to pile. Something small fell from the ceiling behind the podium the exact moment the barrel hit the floor. Bouncing away into the dark, like a dropped penny.

  We watched, frozen, beneath baited breath while FortyFour’s torchbeam chased through the shadows after whatever it was, leaving just FortyNine’s torch, perched between her knees to free her hands, for light.

  The moment stretched, until one by one, we dared to move. FortyNine nodded.

  “Okay.” She flinched as the sound of her own whispered voice, echoed back off the walls to greet us, and her eyes never left FortyFour’s searching beam, watching with uncertainty. She swallowed and continued quieter, dropping into a husky murmur. “Should be enough.”

  My heart pounded, and every breath felt entirely too loud as I crouched down with FortyEight, pushing the final barrel back into pce amidst the others with the softest scrape we could manage.

  FortyNine’s breath swirled, misting eerily about her mouth as she finished hooking up the test barrel to the rest, all plumbed together in a convoluted daisy chain. My whole body trembled, haemorrhaging heat through my jumpsuit. Though it hadn’t been warm before, the smattering of snowfkes from the hole blown through the middle of the Aurora, had slowly begun to build up around our feet, no longer melting the moment they touched the concrete.

  Already the swirling glimmering fog about the podium had thinned considerably. “We need-”

  Something dark, and heavy, dropped from the ceiling and nded with a mighty whump behind the wrecked podium, the impact vibrated the concrete floor, sending swirling plumes of glowing gas curling up into the dark.

  All four of us ducked, subconsciously, as one.

  FortyNine held her arm out, slowly, to the side, and made a gentle shooing motion. FortyEight shook, silent as a shadow. FortyFour breathed heavily, slowly, a barely perceptible quiver to each breath.

  She gnced back towards us, and her eyes grew wide, with a jerk of her head, she pointed off into the dark behind us with her torch. Illuminating the door.

  FortyFour nodded, and melted backwards into the shadows, night invisible behind the gre of his torch, that swiftly painted the podium with our shadows.

  I backed away as well. But after a few yards, FortyEight had continued to do no more than shake, even when FortyNine clicked her torch off and stepped carefully over the loose rubble, towards the wrecked podium and accompanying pile of barrels, his gaze never left the spot where she had been stood. Dammit! I swallowed the ugly mass of shards, intent on growing amidst my ribs, and slowly grimaced against the ragged furrows they carved all the way down before stepping back towards him.

  Whatever it was moved damn near silently now it was on the ground. FortyNine froze, a few metres ahead as the clicking came again, closer this time, raising in pitch.

  Gently, I tugged FortyEight’s arm at the elbow.

  He flinched at my touch. Finally focusing on me, but simply stared bnkly when I gave what I hoped was a comforting smile. I breathed a silent sight of relief as he allowed himself to be gently tugged away like a stray balloon. Movement in the dark prickled up my spine and animal parts of my brain screamed that ‘away’ would be a very, very good pce to be.

  I bit my lip hard enough to taste blood, fighting the urge to run, and forced each step to be carefully considered. Even despite the noise it would make, with neither torch actively focused on us, it was challenge enough not to trip over our own feet.

  FortyFour had himself braced against the door, torch clutched between his hand and the circur steel wheel. With a soft grunt, the wheel broke loose, and the door popped ajar.

  Tu-Clunk!

  FortyFour stared at the door in abject horror as it’s full weight dropped from the frame onto it’s hinge, the awful sound echoing into the room.

  Every muscle in my body froze. Tension in my chest, so tight, I couldn’t breathe.

  Behind me, a single, sing~song, note echoed back.

  … Like… birdsong… synthetically repyed, high, sweet and tinny, over an ancient phonograph.

  With a cringe I gnced back towards the middle of the room, sweat clung cmmy to the back of my neck. ‘Spirit drifted in vague softly moving shapes. Casting a rippling dim, uneven glow.

  Nobody spoke, nobody moved. My every breath shivered.

  A moment ter there was a soft clink! and a thick deluge of glowing gas swirled high up into the air, the quiet suddenly shattered by a deep ominous hisssssss!

  FortyNine tore towards us from the dark, her footsteps a series of loud rapid, cck’s, against the concrete.

  “Running! Door! Leaving now!”

  A horrifying scratching scrabble, scored against the concrete behind her. A squat round shape lunging round the podium, almost the height of my shoulders. Through the glow, I just caught the unmistakable glimmer of sharp metal and wet meat.

  FortyNine flew past me me like a runaway freight train, shoving FortyEight before her, and, with a sharp jolt as she grabbed my hand, dragging me behind.

  FortyFour, for his part, had the good sense to slip deftly through the doorway ahead of the three of us. Ready and waiting, he smmed the door shut with a resounding cng the moment we where all through.

  Reverberations rang in waves up and down the tiny tunnel, as if we where rivets in a cymbal. It took me several seconds to pick out the gentle rasp of FortyNine and FortyFour wheeling the door tightly shut beneath the ongoing echo.

  I gasped, catching my breath as the noise finally faded away, into a faint, high-pitched, wail.

  “Nine.” FortyFour panted, leant with one arm against the wall, and one palm still ft against the door, each ragged breath punctuating a word as he whirled his torch on her. “What the hell was that?”

  FortyNine almost vibrated with energy, hairs had begun to pull away from her braid, her eyes where wide and jittery, surrounded by the dark purpled bruising of little sleep.

  She breathed in sharply through her nose and straightened her back.

  “I’m not sure-” She froze-

  The thing, behind the door, clicked rapidly, like an ominous freewheeling bicycle. We all stared at the door. Thunk! … Thunk! … THUNK!

  FortyFour took a few faltering steps away as it almost jumped in it’s frame.

  The faintest whisps of ‘Spirit began to worm their way out from under it.

  FortyNine breathed out slowly, though my chest felt too tight to share any relief, and jerked her head back towards the darkened hallway behind us. “Come on… We should get moving.” With a soft click she flicked on her torch and set off down the narrow tunnel, it’s pale beam not quite illuminating twenty feet of darkness before petering away.

  “Wha- Bu-” FortyFour blinked, whispering after, disbelief creeping into his lowered his voice. “Will this stop it? What if it can open doors?!” He hissed, spittle misting with his breath in the unnatural light. FortyEight quivered between the pair of them, his back pressed firmly up against the wall. Slightly taller than the bubble of reflected torchbeams that pyed against the white paint on all sides that gave the tunnel the illusion of compacted snow, his face half shrouded by the shadows overhead.

  FortyNine stopped, slowly, but didn’t turn around.

  Gently, she tilted her head, only half back towards us, bnkly staring at the wall. She opened her mouth, then closed it for a moment, before she simply whispered with a tiny, resigned shrug.

  “Do you really want to stay and find out?”

  ---

  I trudged limply at the back of our single file procession, the gloom behind me nipped aggressively at my heels.

  FortyEight ducked, narrowly avoiding smashing one of the dead, bulbous, ceiling mps with his forehead.

  “Look,” every time FortyFour opened his mouth he had to make wild gestures with his arms, sending his torchlight flying left to right and painting the narrow walls with shadows. “I can understand being pissy with some of us. But it’s not like I was one of the diggers on tunnel tom.” He paused, dramatically, for a second with one hand on his chest and called back behind him. “Had you got that far?”

  I crossed my arms, and stared down at my feet.

  “I-I- um, I really didn't know either-” FortyEight flinched as FortyFour flicked at him with his hand.

  “Come on, Nine. Quit being cagey. What the fuck was that thing?” Silence. We passed another door, hanging open. Nearly every, door that we passed, was hanging open. FortyFour's voice took on an echoey, ethereal quality, carrying down the pitch bck hallway in front us as he added: “…Things. Plural.”

  FortyNine didn't reply, instead she stared intently into the darkness bleeding away at the cusp of her torchlight.

  Aptly named, it took Four just as many seconds to snap. “Oh for- Nine! At least tell, me.”

  “I said I don't know, Four.” She spat, staring back at him for several silent seconds, before turning back down the gloomy tunnel.

  “Hh-hey…” FortyFour licked his lips, gnced back at me and FortyEight, then followed after her. Gesturing once more with his torch, entirely too loud. “I don’t believe you! How can you not know? You. Knowing shits your entire shtick!”

  A single sing~song note tittered on an uncharacteristic breeze that rustled between us. Sending a few loose strands of my hair, fluttering past my cheeks.

  All four of us froze mid-step, and my heart smmed full force into my ribs, like a passenger without a seatbelt. Dark shapes loomed in the shadows beyond the torches. Their edges fuzzy, unclear where creature began and darkness ended.

  My breathing felt thunderous. Sweat began to pool in the small of my back.

  FortyNine took a careful step, then another, then another. Her torch flickered, dimming the space before her.

  I held my breath.

  “Fuck!” She hissed, and thumped it into her other palm.

  The darkness crawled. Movement, shapes, swirling rger and rger the closer they came. With one final try, she smacked her waning torch, sharply. The beam surged and cut the shadows down. Nothing. No movement, just a trick of the dark.

  FortyNine took few more steps, and another open door crept slowly into the light.

  Gingerly, she reached out for it’s handle, pulling it softly closed with a click! Sweat slithered coldly through the hairs prickling up across the back of my neck as I released the breath.

  “I just, don’t, Four.” She sounded tired, voice, scarcely a whisper.

  She turned to face him

  Her jumpsuit ruffled in the quiet as she shrugged her shoulders. “Wasn’t anything like that st year. It was much more… I don’t know. Ethereal, I guess.” She let out a shaky breath that pooled in the air as a fine white mist and chewed at her lower lip. “Nothing ever made it inside the Pole then either.”

  FortyFour shifted from one leg to the other but didn’t say anything else. FortyNine looked carefully from him, to FortyEight. Then to me.

  A frown flickered at her brow before she turned, fast enough to toss her braid over her shoulder, and carried on down the tunnel.

  Her words seemed to loom, heavy over our heads as we set off, with only a slight dey, behind her.

  A periodic groan would rumble it’s way past, and back down the tunnel behind us. Heralded by the pit-a-pat of dust dancing down from the ceiling to nd upon our heads. The shadows beyond the torchlight would dance, coiling with shapes. An endless wave of potential creatures, melting away into nothing against our protective wall of torchlight. But mostly, the tunnels where silent. Unnaturally so. The back of my head itched, the prickly touch of eyes, spying from the dark. But every gnce behind me simply revealed a solid wall of bck.

  It wasn’t just me. More than once, FortyFour would flinch, and throw his torchbeam behind us as well. Still nothing. Still darkness, simply shunted slightly further away.

  Even knowing that I’d just seen there was nothing back there… I couldn’t stop my scalp from prickling the moment he’d focused his beam up front again.

  Gradually my teeth began to chatter, and I crossed my arms against my chest as a shiver ran down my back inside the jumpsuit.

  A soft breeze began to blow gently from somewhere far ahead, drying out the surface of my eyes, growing subtly stronger the further we went. I wrapped my forearms tighter about my ribs, hands tucked up into my armpits. I’m not sure if that actually helped against the cold, but at least it felt better than nothing.

  FortyNine snapped out her arm abruptly. Sending me into the back of FortyEight and FortyEight into the back of FortyFour, who had simply stopped in pce.

  “Oof. Wha-”

  “Shhh-t!” FortyEight tensed abruptly as FortyFour hissed him into silence.

  I felt my eyes grow wide.

  An irregur shadow jutted out from the wall up ahead, looming just beyond proper reach of the two torches. Far bigger than any elf and definitely, horrifyingly real.

  No one moved. Not us, not the thing in the hall.

  I felt the quiver of FortyEight’s arm through my chest as I peered around him. FortyNine’s hand trembled, normally imperceivable, but clearly amplified by her shadow on the wall, cast by FortyFour’s torch.

  Seconds ticked monotonously into minutes.

  The shape didn’t move either. Looming, utterly motionless.

  FortyNine closed her hand, slowly into a loose fist, dropping her arm as she began to move carefully, quietly, towards it.

  The three of us trailed, begrudgingly, a few steps behind.

  The shadow morphed the closer we got, gradually taking shape. A rough pte of mangled rectangur metal, peeling away from the wall, that glinted in the gloom.

  Energy left me in a wave, much more of this and nothing would matter, the stress would kill me first. I felt my brow twitch towards a frown as I recognised the subtle, unobtrusive, hinges that still dutifully clung to the wall. One of the emergency cupboards.

  FortyNine, ducked slowly around the warped cupboard door. Gnced inside, defted inwardly and clicked her tongue.

  “Come on.” She flicked her torches towards us, before casting it back down the tunnel, into the dark. "We should keep moving." Her voice was quiet, as if afraid to let any sound spread beyond our wan little puddle of light.

  I slowed as I followed and gave the cupboard a final wandering gnce.

  The fading refracted light of my companions torches flowed over the warped shelves as they walked away. Glinting off the cupboard floor, lined with shattered pieces of ceramics and gss, broken radios, a piece of a torch’s bulky handle. Two familiar, vaguely santa-esque gas masks hung from their hooks, vicious sshes slitting them right the way up, from filter to the tips of their pointed heads.

  I hurried after the torchlight, and left the gssy, eyeless, masks where they swung.

  ---

  We passed two more cupboards had been ripped from the walls along the way.

  The four of us bundled up at the end of the tunnel where it terminated crowding around the impassive steel door, propped to, as if someone had left it not quite closed. The same ominous wind, stronger now, pealed round through the cracks in the door frame.

  FortyNine put a single finger to her lips, one hand already ft against the thick steel, and pushed.

  It cracked open slowly, with a low, ominous, creak that split the air. Two torchbeams probed the darkness beyond, slithering over the familiar dusty wooden floorboards of the Flightbarn. The creak finally cut with a chirp as the door came to a rest against the wall. It was a bizarre, twilight sound, that would have normally been wholly swallowed by the rattle of ventition and the crackle of now dormant braziers.

  I gasped as an icy gust of wind nestled swiftly over every inch of exposed skin, slicing deep into the marrow of my bones. One by one, we filed into the room, until finally it was just me in the pitch bck tunnel.

  The steel of the door was so cold, my fingers threatened to stick to it as I closed it behind me.

  Frost completely bnketed every surface the torchlight exposed.

  FortyNine’s waning beam crept slowly over the sleighs, two rows of glittering carcasses, dutifully fnking both sides of the room. Tiny clouds of spirit, no bigger than an inch across, hovered within each of the dormant braziers lining the walls, like hovering will-o-the-wisps, winking faintly in the darkness after the torch had passed.

  Hairs prickled up the back of my neck as the ceiling yawned dark and unknowable above us, the crawling sensation crept right up the back of my head, burrowing deep into my scalp. I think I’d felt safer in the tunnel. Carefully, I swallowed, stepping further into the room and resisted the mounting urge to get FortyNine or FortyFour to check the darkness above me with their light.

  “Jeeze.” FortyEight whispered shakily.

  His voice seemed so loud in the unnatural quiet, it almost seemed bsphemous. I came, cautiously, to a stop beside him, the pair of us hovering close to the puddle of torchlight. It lit his face pale, faintly, reflecting up off the floor. I bit the inside of my cheek. Nausea began to broil anxiously in my belly.

  ‘Jeeze,’ didn’t seem wholly appropriate.

  One of the sleighs had been torn, piece from wretched piece, shattering into broken boards of wood and mangled struts of metal. Looking at it, there was less a sleigh, and more a cloud of debris stretching all the way from the gaping shutters on the far wall, to the imposing wooden doors of the Stables at the back of the room.

  I bit my lip, tearing at the skin. It looked as if the unsuspecting sleigh had been poised, ready for flight, before being unexpectedly, unceremoniously, steam-rolled by an incredible, unstoppable, force.

  …Wait.

  I felt my head turn back to gaping shutters, almost without my meaning to.

  The frost, the cold, the wind. Suddenly it all made sense.

  I stared at the murky ice corridor, lit pale and sickly with refracted torchlight. Outside. I mean directly outside. For all I knew, that could well be actual moonlight. The wind buffeted against my jumpsuit, sending little flurries of rapidly melting snow across the room, where one or two fkes swiftly disappeared against my cheeks.

  I felt myself shiver, half from the cold, half from a nervous, anticipatory energy.

  The shimmery translucent shield, simir to the aurora’s in the sky, the one that had separated the Flightbarn from the outside was simply gone. Without a trace. Maybe elves could have gone through it anyway, though, it didn’t feel like that was the case. Maybe they could only pass through when on the sleighs? That didn’t really feel right either. Maybe it disappeared the moment the sleighs where about to go through-

  With a start I shook myself; Right here, right now, it doesn’t matter. Either way. It’s not there now. I felt myself take a subconscious breath. Just an open path to the outside word.

  … Could we really just… Leave?

  My boots clunked over the wooden floor as I drifted away from the others towards the gaping hole into the outside world, like a moth to a fme.

  How far below ground where we right now anyway? Floorboards creaked softly underfoot, marred and smudged with murky footprints that rapidly became invisible the further from the torchlight I went. I picked my way carefully over a wayward ski from the shattered sleigh in the dark. It couldn’t be any deeper than forty feet. The roof of our wrecked surface defence room practically touched the surface, and there didn’t seem to be much of an incline to the web of tiny tunnels in the Pole’s upper level.

  My baggy jumpsuit ruffled, pattering against my body in the wind. The dim tunnel opening up, further and further in front of me. Growing longer and clearer as my eyes slowly adjusted to the dark.

  The natural packed snow walls glimmered, speckling in the refracted torchlight from across the room, almost taking on a glow of their own. Huge chunks of ice, some as big as my shin, y like pnted spears to the sides of two old scores from many a sleigh ski’s. I wrapped my arms around my chest, tensing my stomach against a full body shiver. It was like a door to another world.

  The tunnel itself had to be longer than we where deep since, steep as it was, it didn’t go straight up. Maybe… sixty feet? I squinted against the cutting wind, and subconsciously took another step.

  Cold bled steadily through the soles of my boot from the rough ice floor.

  With a start I drew back my leg to the retive warmth of the floorboards. I blinked down at my foot, hidden inside it’s chunky boot. If it was this cold down here, how cold was it up there?

  …Probably very.

  With a hesitant breath, I took another two steps, out, onto the ice, and shivered.

  Stubby burs jutted murkily from the ceiling dangerously poised to take an unsuspecting sleigh riders head off. And at the end… a solid wall. The ice shimmered in the gloom, pying with my perception for a minute, until I realised it wasn’t a wall at all, but an even steeper upturn at the end of the tunnel. A ramp, the st step before a sleigh could take flight…

  It probably didn’t go much further after the upturn before breaking the surface.

  I could already imagine acres of snow up to my chest, as far as the eye could see. The sea of creatures in the sky, no longer kept at bay by the Aurora. Santa would spot us as we tried to flee, several dark figures against the snow, easily visible from the air, spearing towards us in his sleigh…

  If hypothermia didn’t get us first.

  I turned and stepped back onto the floorboards my feet numb, leaden in my boots.

  If we where ever leaving here… We needed a way to stay warm.

  A shiver ran down my back as I became suddenly aware of how far I’d wandered from the group, and gnced back to make sure the others where still there.

  FortyFour was lit by FortyNine’s torch, silhouetted crisply against the dark wooden doors of the Stables across the room. FortyNine herself completely invisible, encased by darkness behind the floating light in her hand. FortyEight slipped into view, then disappeared again as he walked across the torchbeam and back out of the way again. The three of them crowded round the husk of the shattered sleigh, the rgest remaining chunk of several smaller pieces really, embedded, deep, in the wall beside the Stable doors.

  Reddy-Brownish cquer smeared the floor leading up to the mangled hulk jutting from the wall.

  Wood doesn’t transfer it’s colour like that though, not unless the stain was wet. My brain felt like it was slowing, desperately too te to stop before a cliff. The sleigh looked like it’d hit something that spttered like paint, but that wouldn’t make sense to be left out in the middle of the floor-

  … Oh.

  I felt cold in an entirely new way. Stuck. As if I’d plunged off a cliff into a giant pool of tar. The obvious answer, three. I traced the smear all the way to it’s beginning, red and brown that ran with the scraping scores in the floorboards, petering out suddenly a scant few metres before the wreck, crumpled against the wall.

  My stomach dropped nauseatingly, rolling about the base of my abdomen like a ball in a bowl. Suddenly relieved to be so far away, across the room.

  I tore my eyes away from the aftermath, I didn’t want to see- I didn’t want to know, to the smudges, the footprints, the criss crossing patterns marring the floorboards that blended deeper and deeper with the dark the further they got from the torchlight until, approaching me, they where nigh on invisible.

  The same marks I’d so thoughtlessly picked my way across less than a minute ago.

  Scratches. I felt my breath quicken. A sickly tightening in my chest. Sets of three, like giant cws, great gouges, inches wide, wrought straight through the ancient floorboards.

  Footprints.

  It was too dim, too dark, to tell for sure what those footprints where made with.

  But you know, Three.

  My thoughts fizzed, electrically arcing from one part of my brain to another. It couldn’t be. How much? I crossed my arms tight against my chest. Calm, Three! One step at a time.

  My chest, squidged, beneath my arms- Not! Now!

  I dug my fingernails in my upper arms, digging hard into my jumpsuit which unhelpfully blunted the force. Focus, on something, Else. I bit my teeth against the rising panic, bubbling, ramping, like it hadn’t since my first day at the Pole.

  I felt something cold in my palm.

  Everything stopped.

  My veins froze over, an icy numbness that slowly permeated my entire body, until my heartbeat was a dull, steady, distant, ache. Slowly, I loosened my grip on my upper arm. Softly, I rubbed my thumb across my fingers, slick, and slippery.

  …Wet.

  I dabbed my fingertips to my sleeve again, once more coming away cold.

  It’s… It’s… wet.

  I shivered and held both hands out before me. I couldn’t see them, only the vaguest of outlines that they where even there. Muscles clenched in my neck making each inhale short, and jittery.

  Why is my hand wet. Why is my arm, wet!

  I stared blindly as I rubbed my thumb, invisibly across my fingers. Gliding freely across one another with a slick oily squelch.

  Carefully, gingerly, I wiped my hands slowly down my sleeves. My entire right side, smeared, beneath my palm. Peeling my hands away, I finally smelt the heavy stink of old iron.

  “What?” The quiet whimper broke past my lips.

  Seconds ter everything exploded with bright white light. Three audible gasps.

  “Holy hell.”

  “…Three?”

  I held up my hand to shield my face, eyelids flickering as I squinted against the light streaming through my fingers.

  All time seemed to slow. Each thunderous thud of my heart taking minutes to arrive.

  My hand was soaked with red, as if it where freshly dipped, deep, within the abattoir trough beneath a hanging pig. Glimmers of white reflections bounced from my fingers where the blood caught the torchlight. Every muscle in my chest coiled tighter and tighter, squeezing hard on my lungs even as they fought to expand taking on more and more air. My focus shot to my upper arm, where murky drizzles formed snaking pathways that stained the dark green jumpsuit even darker. Crawling all the way up to my shoulder.

  A sickening, tickling, sensation crept up my neck and into my scalp.

  I scraped at the side of my face with my hand, my other hand, the clean hand. The coarse sleeve of my jumpsuit dragged, rough, against my cheek as I scrubbed.

  It came away, once again, smeared with red.

  My fingers trembled in front of me all on their own. Like they had never known how to be still in all of their lives. I bit the inside of my cheek, and tasted fresh copper.

  Somehow, that was grounding.

  A single heartbeat arrived, thundering in my ears. Don’t panic.

  My cheek throbbed where I’d torn through it. Localised pain. There, and only there. Not my blood

  Another heartbeat arrived. Time felt like it was slipping away, faster and faster.

  I was already tracing the footprints through the torchlight, following them away from my feet, back the way I’d come, back towards the cacophony that pockmarked the floorboards. The marks, the lines, the smudges. Not my blood.

  Another heartbeat.

  All the different sets of tracks. Smudged, and hurried, unlike mine, which where crystal clear by comparison. A panic. Tens of elves, cmouring over one another. Coalescing back towards a dominatingly rge, circur patch of murky dark that stained the floor.

  Dim, not properly lit by the torch.

  A puddle. Yards wide, though not very deep, I hadn’t even noticed when I’d stepped across it. Not my blood. I clung tightly to those three little words, holding them close to my chest, but they beget three others.

  … Whose was it?

  A gentle sound shattered my reverie. A light pattering broke the puddle, spshing, but unlike water.

  Rain that wasn’t rain.

  I looked up, and part of me simply… stopped.

  Refracted torchlight lit the rafters above me in a dim, monotone, grey. Shapes, gangly and bizarre where spun back and forth between the wooden beams, banced as a sickening, awful, web. It became quite clear, quite quickly, where the rest of the shattered sleigh had ended up. It’s carriage compartment more resembled a spiky ball of wood and steel than any sleigh, having bent at it’s centre, and folded in on itself to crush the bench seats within. Spyed across it, y the battered remains of the reindeer, once hitched to the front, impaled savagely in pce, oozing from a jagged hole in it’s neck where a jagged length of discarded ski nestled.

  Drip.

  His head dangled sadly towards the floor. ‘Comet.’ Still glimmered dimly, proudly dispyed either side of the poor deer’s face. If I’d been just a few inches taller, I’d have taken an eye out unknowingly walking between his antlers, hanging in the dark.

  Behind him, long, thin shapes, that I’d taken for sleigh wreckage took shape. Twisted legs, shattered knees. Mercifully hidden faces.

  Passengers.

  A single arm dangled at an angle, a scuffed, grubby radio, still banced in it’s lifeless fingers.

  ‘68.’

  … The Sixth. Who knows how many. I couldn’t bring myself to begin to count.

  A faint, ratcheting click groaned faintly down from the ceiling.

  A rge murky patch of grey above the sleigh, that I’d taken for simple ceiling, lurched away, melting into the darkness. Leaving behind nothing but bck, no matter how hard I searched for it. The subtle rasp of metal on wood graced my ears, and I locked eyes with FortyNine across the room, where she stared, peeking pale, above the blinding light of her torch.

  It couldn’t have been more than a few seconds at most.

  Cognitive function swirled in a pool of feeling so intense, it felt like my brain physically backfired. I didn’t know what to think, what to feel, did she see? Did she know?

  The golden sparks in her eyes flew so fast that with the distance they appeared to blur. My entire body went cold, awash with sickening numbness as the single, all encompassing realisation struck me so hard in the chest I swear I could hear my ribs thrum; the thing that did this, was here. It had just moved, I did not know, where it had gone. And all three of them, FortyNine, FortyEight and FortyFour. Had been too preoccupied looking at me, to notice.

  A loud trilling warble echoed down the icy tunnel behind me. My heartbeat came rushing back all at once, as time finally caught up, thundering faster, faster than it ever had before.

  A harried gnce over my shoulder simply confirmed that after staring into FortyNine’s torch, my night vision was shot to pieces.

  Whirling back around again the two torchbeams dove, one left, one right, melting away to the sides. I lost track of FortyEight completely. I felt more than heard the scrape of metal on the ice behind me. Move!

  Movemovemovemovemove!

  The message finally reached my feet, I darted left and ran full pelt into one of the sleighs with a Thunk!

  Dammit! My vision exploded with streaks of light as I picked my way around to the back of the sleigh, clutching desperately at my nose. Ow!Why!Fucking!Why! Debris cttered across the floor about my feet. I snorted painfully, and peeled my palms stickily away from my face, though if the blood was mine, or simply the same blood as before I couldn’t tell. Crouched down, I leant back, hard against the sleigh, my chest heaving with every breath.

  Skittering-scratching noises, scraped through the dark somewhere above us.

  “Up-” My tongue felt suddenly incredibly dry in my mouth and I coughed, like a sponge was sucking the salvia from my throat. “More, in the rafters!”

  Peeking round the sleigh I felt a brief spsh of relief as the torchbeams across the rge hall angled upwards. A few seconds ter I felt my eyes grow wide as I realised exactly what I’d just done. The sleigh behind me shifted, groaning, as something heavy nded atop it with the quiet creak of splintering wood.

  Fuck! I dropped, almost to all fours, and carefully began to crawl sideways towards the next sleigh in the row.

  An ominous Du-thunk! Rocked the floor beneath my feet as it dropped down to the floor. A gentle breeze of dispced air washed over me from behind, tousling my ponytail.

  I bit my tongue, hot sweat running down neck as I reached out to steady myself against the next sleigh little more than a murky shape in the dark. My lungs jerked as I tried to stifle the noise of each breath creeping along towards the one after that, and I winced internally at every little creak of the wooden floor.

  Sharp metal scraped menacingly against the wood, close.

  I held my breath and froze, pressing my back hard into the closest sleigh, putting it between me and the thing, hiding in the dark. What I wouldn’t give for some light- “Ack!”

  One of torch-beams hit me square in the eyes and sent me stumbling, completely blind.

  A shrill warble shattered the quiet. The crack of shattering wood. I threw my arms, desperately over my face against a vicious fsh of brownish bronze-

  -that carried on, flying clear past me.

  Over in a second, I stumbled, clutching my stomach tightly as I caught my footing, gasping for breath. It had missed me? It hadn’t seen me? It had… It had…

  It had gone for the light.

  A wordless scream in my periphery. Male. FortyEight? FortyFour? I couldn’t tell which. A split second ter, there was an almighty crash, one of the torches across the room went flying, strobing as it flipped through the air and bounced off a wall.

  The floor beneath me, jumped, so loud it could only be one of the sleighs tipping over. Thousands tiny pieces ran invisibly across the floor in a cacophonous ctter.

  The other light whirled wildly, searching the floor; ceiling, a fsh of hulking bronze, sleigh, wall-

  “Eight!” Lit only for a second by whirling torches, outlined stark, against the heavy stable doors. I took off at a sprint towards him. “Move-” Something huge and heavy dropped from above and sent me sprawling out, winded and wheezing on the floor.

  Say, weren’t there two of these things?

  I screamed unintelligibly as a whirring mass of glinting, spinning bdes roared in my face. I tried to roll, but two crushing weights grabbed each of my shoulders puncturing clear through my baggy jumpsuit and deep into the wood beneath me with a twin Thun-Thunk! I grabbed desperately at the two limbs that pinned me in pce, cold thin poles, tugging, thrashing and heaving as I tried frantically to pull it off of me. The crushing mechanical grip simply tightened about my shoulders. I whimpered as it sliced through skin and kicked repeatedly out towards at it, but my feet met only empty air.

  I pushed off the floor with my legs, throwing myself in all directions of away, fabric grated around my neck but it had me by the jumpsuit, I wasn’t strong enough to tear through the fabric. Breeze from the whirling bdes spshed across my face with a hot misting spray of liquid vapour. I rolled my head from side to side writhing in pce, I didn’t have a reason any more, I didn’t have a pn.

  Torchlight strobed across the pair of us, lighting only bits, only pieces.

  Cogs. But not just cogs. Warmth, above me. The glisten of wet meat. Beneath the mechanical whir, gentle, methodical, breathing. I stretched against the jumpsuit, pushing, away from the cogs, my face brushed up against one of it’s strange limbs, cold, on my cheek. I bit savagely until my gums throbbed.

  Hard-

  Metal-

  High above the high pitched screaming that permeated my hearing, the thing warbled mockingly. Crackly, like old sound reyed over a battered phonograph. I realised for the first time that the thrashing cogs couldn’t have been part of it’s face or head, they where too low on it’s body.

  Dully, I also realised that the high pitched scream in my ears was me.

  CLANG!

  I rolled, chest heaving as the terrible weight suddenly disappeared, and nded away from me in the dark with a horrible, metallic crash. FortyEight, lit pale by torchlight stood in it’s pce, holding a mangled spur of metal like it where a cricket bat.

  “Yy-yy-you okay?”

  I blinked gormlessly, and grabbed his outstretched hand, speechless as he hauled me to my feet.

  “Eight, Three!” FortyFour. The torchbeam that lit the pair of us wobbled with the tremor in his voice. “Fucking move!”

  “Over here!”

  I stared through the murky room, lit only by the flickering beam of FortyNine’s forgotten torch, nestled against the wall, before FortyFour got his own torch levied in the right direction. FortyNine squinted against the gre, silhouetted by the open doorway. “Well come on!”

  The creature FortyEight had thrown off of me righted itself behind us with a creaking groan, whirring ominously.

  As one, we sprinted for the doorway.

  FortyFour was closest and first through, plunging the Flightbarn into a confusing gloom. FortyEight began to pull ahead. He was taller, faster, my legs screamed in fiery protest, but I was incapable of caring. Slowly, I began to fall behind. Nearly there! Nearly, there-

  One second FortyEight was there, running just ahead of me. The next he was a flying blur of green and bronze.

  His scream as he bounced off of the floor with a meaty Crack! Pierced my very soul. Tumbling out of sight down the tunnel, like forgotten doll discarded from the jaws of a rabid dog.

  The creature puffed itself out in the doorway and whirred, it’s back a bronze wall of ft metal sts. With dawning horror, I scrabbled desperately, heaving against my own momentum.

  Fuck, fuck! Fuckity-

  My left leg flew to the side in the slick coppery puddle left by FortyEight’s face as I tried to turn, painful white exploded across my vision as I smashed, head first into the floorboards.

  My teeth rattled in my skull. Groggily, I pushed myself up onto all fours, and crawled desperately towards the flickery light in front of me, the only thing I could see. A wave of pressure sucked at my ponytail as the second, bristling metallic mass, soared over the top of me, shattering clear through one of the parked sleighs.

  My hands knocked into the light, sending it sliding across the floor, bouncing back into the wall.

  The world swam dizzily. Leaning on the bulky torch for support, I hauled myself shakily to my feet and I felt distinctly sick.

  Tossing the waning beam behind me, I caught the barest glimpse of a murky shape disappearing down the side tunnel. The freshly wrecked sleigh shifted with the sound of splintering wood, followed briefly by a low, inquisitive warble.

  Dully, I realised tripping had probably saved my life as I turned tail and staggered back into a drunken unsteady sprint, off kilter, and almost entirely blind.

  The bobbing torch-beam did more to upset my stomach than light the way.

  A high pitched trill haunted behind me. I could feel it gaining on me, an odd hopping THUNK, THUNK! THUNK! Splintered the wood. Closer. Closer. Until I felt the rush of dispced breeze, spsh across the back of my neck.

  I threw myself, hard to the side.

  It was a stupid decision. If there had been a wall there in the dark, or the deadbolts in pce, I could well have caved my head in right then and there. As it was, I found myself tumbling through the thick heavy doors of the Stables.

  I hit the floor with a meaty thwack, my torch skittered off somewhere in the dark, winking on and off as I rolled several times, before finally coming to a stop as a rather dazed, bloody nosed, pile of limbs.

  My everything hurt.

  With a groan, I rolled back onto my front. I slipped, once, twice, back to the ground before I finally wobbled back up onto all fours.

  In the Stables, it was somehow even darker than the Flightbarn.

  The torch flickered from the corner, and cast a thin sliver of the room in an eerie cone of light. Come on, Three. Exhaustion scraped at my limbs as I grabbed at handfuls of loose straw, and cwed away from the centre of the room for the retive safety of a stable stall. Keep, moving. Straw dust mingled with the blood on my palms, congealing into a grisly, gravelly paste.

  I smmed my back against the low wall of the stall with a thunk, and crouched down low, out of sight of the doors.

  Every breath dragged, cwing at my throat. Raw, loud and ragged.

  …Gradually… shapes emerged from the gloom, as my eyes adjusted to the dark. Stall walls began to materialise from formless dark sbs, back into a series of individual wooden boards. The haziness of the floor became a thin uneven coat of scattered hay.

  I felt deaf, straining for any sound I might have missed under the rush of every breath, the echoing drum of my heart.

  Gingerly, I bobbed up above stall, as fast I could, and snatched a gnce at the door.

  Cone of light. Shadows. Wood. Hay.

  “Fuck.” I hissed between breaths, crouching down once more, and leant my head back against the wall behind me. Didn’t see a thing. I took a breath, then another, then another, then tensed my chest.

  Slowly, begrudgingly, I peeped around the corner, just enough to let one eye peer around the stall. The torch at the back of the stable flickered idly, and lit the entrance, strange with shadow. The high arched doors swung loosely, almost, but not quite closed. The thin slit of utter bckness between them tapered thinner and thinner until it was lost amidst the shadows of the ceiling.

  …The door pushed, ever so slowly, open.

  I tucked my head back into the safety of the stall, and bit my tongue to steady my breath.

  A rge gssy eye stared back at me.

  I would have screamed, instead I jumped, biting down even harder on said aforementioned tongue and bumped into the wall with a soft whump. The giant deer snorted quietly, and his breath rolled over me in warm, gentle, waves. ‘Prancer,’ glimmered dully across his halter in the gloom.

  Behind us, the creature groaned cautiously into the room, a low quiet clicking noise, the harmonious flutter of hundreds of little cogs.

  Prancer didn’t move, he simply watched me motionlessly, with his dark brown eyes. Stooped so low in his stall that we where almost face to face. I raised a single finger to my lips. Whether he understood or not, was anyone’s guess, but he kept quiet. As he had obviously already been doing. His eyes flicked to the side.

  I jerked towards the hideous sound of sharp metal grating across wood, and physically felt my eyes go wide as I caught my first clear, side on, view. I bit he inside of my cheek to keep my voice in check, and kept as still as I possibly could.

  They’re birds.

  Huge. Just a hair taller than me, far rounder and squatter. The monstrous thing, perched heavily, high above my head as it teetered atop the lip to the stall opposite, across the room. Half illuminated by the waning torch, half cast in the darkest of shadow.

  Glints of light refracted down the st sheets of bronze metal of it’s back, glittering over hundreds of tiny sharpened sheets, every one intricately inscribed to perfectly mimic a single feather. Heavy complex exposed cog work over it’s chest joined it’s wings to it’s body. Red, painted cogs twisted and whirred, wheeling, as it adjusted it’s bance, sweeping each massive sharpened wing through the air with a terrifying silence. Hidden, shielded, but still glinting wetly through the gaps in all the metal I could just barely make out the creatures original flesh, torn, raw, and scabbed where sharpened clockwork emerged unnaturally from it’s body like protrusions of broken bone, tugging at loose fps of muscle and skin whenever it moved.

  A robin.

  The woodwork of the stall creaked subtly as talons ground for purchase, it’s head spun on a juddery swivel, huge, dark, soulless eyes of gss panning the dark. I turned my head, and squeezed shut my eyes as the sharp curve of it’s beak slid round into view-

  Whump.

  Quietly, it flopped, out of sight into the stall.

  I held my breath, teeth clenched hard to suppress the shakes that threatened to wrack my body.

  A few agonising seconds ter it reappeared, on the other side of the stall. I could just about see it’s squat round head over the top of the wall, before it dropped down into that stall too.

  Far less quietly though.

  My stomach pitched in horror, I cmped my hands over my ears as the deer within thrashed and screamed, it’s hooves cttering uselessly against wood. The sound from it’s tortured throat cut deep through my heaving chest, slowly gurgling beyond recognition as it’s antlers scraped, ccking against impassive, wooden walls.

  The sound washed over me for several seconds before it became utterly overwhelming. I crawled slowly to the edge of the stall, and leant, exposed, into the room. Prancer stared back at me from the corner of my eye, I ignored the glint of the chain round his neck.

  My throat felt tight, dry, as I turned away from him. I could see the door.

  It was right, there! Lit like salvation by the discarded torch at the back of the room. I bit my lip against the sickness boiling in my belly. Aware of Prancer’s gaze on my back.

  He’s a deer.

  Steeling my shuddery breath, I slipped out into the openness of the room. The faint torchlight cast my shadow, long and gangly across the giant doors gradually shrinking as I inched my way slowly forwards, careful, not to make a sound.

  Just, a deer.

  The horrible, sughterous noise fell to grisly silence. Followed by a short, inquisitive warble. I froze, fear and guilt warring in my chest.

  For fucks sake, Three! He’s, only, a deer!

  Inches from the door, I watched over my shoulder as the robin disappeared, quietly into the next stall along. Precious little time before it would cross to the stalls on the other wall, and surely spot me. A split second ter, I scrabbled as quickly and quietly as I could back to Prancer’s stall. Just a bloody, fucking, deer, Three!

  Clink! A simple spring tch held the chain in pce, and passed that, it was looped into a basic knot.

  Come on! Come on!

  Clink! The giant deer’s stinking breath blew the few loose hairs that had wormed free of my ponytail, tickling across my cheeks. Clink! A faint thud in the wider room echoed cavernously in my ears. Each long link of chain unlooped awkwardly, slowly, with the gentle scrape of metal on metal.

  Clink!

  I froze, screwed my eyes shut and tensed my stomach, fighting my trembling, traitorous, hands and bit back the rising, panicky, sensation of being watched. Slow down, Three. I opened my eyes and with more care this time, began to tenderly unfasten the chain.

  It slipped, suddenly free, with a deafening rattle, plunging to the floor. I watched it fell and hit the floor piling in on itself, as if I where trapped in slow motion. I only just caught it’s tail with a lunge, grabbing it just before it could finish cttering noisily to the floor.

  Silence. I stared at the traitorous chain with horror, still softly swinging from my hand. The skin across the back of my neck crawled.

  The empty dark behind me, chirped.

  The stall erupted into a cloud of chaos and kicked up straw. I caught a fsh of prancer rearing in the dim torchlight as the robin smmed into my back, and unched me, face first, into the short wooden wall. The giant deer bolted past me and I lost track of him as I rolled off the wall. I blinked, blearily, and tasted dust, hay, blood. Something squeezed my middle, crushing my sides so hard it blew the air from my lungs. I whimpered as I felt ribs begin to creak. The fsh of reflected light glinted off it’s sharpened beak, plunging towards my face.

  My head cracked off the floor as I made to avoid it, sending my world spinning.

  I blinked wearily up as the savage beak rose, high above my head again, blurring into three. My limbs felt weak, distant, through the disorientation. It plunged back in towards me, and all I could do was flinch-

  -as it smmed into the ground beside my head, embedding deep into the floorboards in an explosion of splinters, centimetres from my cheek. Two giant hooves, pnted firmly, on the back of it’s head.

  I stared, gormless, the world still turning around me in way that wanted to flip my stomach.

  Until Prancer reared up again, and the robin grew suddenly lighter against my chest. Spurned on with a sudden, final jolt of panic, I scrabbled, sliding myself backwards. Out. Away. My lungs heaved as my back hit the far wall of the stall. My legs still trying fruitlessly to push me further, and further away.

  I quivered, paralysed with horror. Unable to do anything but stare as the thunderous hooves came again and again and again.

  Up. And down. Up. And down. Up. Down.

  The awful noise rolled against my ears like gentle waves against the shore. Meat, metal and bone, spattered, in equal measure.

  ---

  The shutters to the dark icy tunnel closed slowly. Methodically. Far, far, slower than I might have liked. My leg bounced almost of it’s own accord as I turned the little crank handle embedded in the wall. A tiny, juddering, motion.

  With a loud ctter, the heavy shutter finally finished rattling down to the ground, and the metal sts quivered in pce. Abruptly, I found myself completely cut off from the freezing outside wind.

  I stared at it for a very long time. Emptily watching the quivering metal.

  I blinked. Stray thoughts scurrying away to the unloved corners of my brain, and looked back at the murky Flightbarn behind me. The world seemed to drip back to me piecemeal, like water was draining slowly from my ears until I could hear again. I squinted into the dark, and vaguely recalled running from door to door, shutting them one by one.

  With hesitation, I scooped up the torch, propped atop the closest sleigh. Carefully positioned so I wouldn’t have to see the grisly array nestling amidst the rafters, and raised it with a wince, until it’s light just barely brushed the hand dangling limply beside poor comet.

  Where the battered radio was still cradled, delicately bancing, amidst loose fingers.

  ‘68.’

  I stared emptily at the numbers.

  A gust of wind from outside rattled the shutter behind me. Biting my lip, I tentatively reached up to loosen the cool fingers still clutching the radio and cradled the little box to my chest. I lowered the torch and hastily looked away.

  The arm swung gently to and fro, where I’d disturbed it.

  Even turned away… I knew that it was still there. That it—She… Dignity, in death.

  …

  I couldn’t shake the feeling that I should feel… more. That I didn’t really… care. It took the longest, most agonising, minute of my life thus far to dredge up the energy to finally hold that talk button down.

  “…Hello?”

  The button didn’t want to retract to let me listen for a response, sticking slightly until I pressed and released it a few times. “Uh. Th-this is FortyThree… Hello? Anyone?”

  Nothing.

  I felt the unconscious bounce return to my leg, all the feeling began to drip from my heart, emptier and emptier as seconds ticked by.

  “KRSHT!!-” The radio barked in my face and nearly got itself dropped for the trouble. Two voices cshed over the top of each other. “Fourth, get off- INFORMATION REQUEST UNCLEAR- change to your own line and- PLEASE RETRY- ‘specially if you ‘spect a reply.”

  I blinked. Was that… EightyEight?

  Possibly. It was hard to tell. The other voice sounded identical to the robotic announcements that pyed over the pole’s speakers.

  Something creaked behind me, a slow, quiet, cracking noise.

  I whirled, darting around the room with the torchbeam. The light flickered, dulling, slightly yellower than before. I hit it twice with my other hand until whatever that was loose inside it aligned, growing bright once more.

  Nothing, just the wood settling. The same gore streaked room as before. Something dripped, quietly, from the ceiling.

  I swallowed, fighting the dryness in my throat, looked down at the little radio, and flipped the dial to point from dot between ‘0’ and ‘9,’ to ‘4.’

  “Um.” Shakily, I brought the little box back up to my mouth. “Hello? Anyone there?”

  “KRSHT-! FortyThree!” I let out the longest of breaths, defting as hours of tension left my chest, and warm relief flooded my head. “Three! ‘Yer alright!”

  A cacophony of distorted noise, shouts, cngs and the hiss of steam, probably spirit, tore all around his gruff unmistakable voice. Like the little box in my had became a tiny portal to another pce every time he held down the button to talk.

  “F-Forty!” I clenched the little rectangur box so tight my fingers started to go numb.

  Even distorted and tinny, the rge man’s calming rumble flowed evenly through the dim quiet of the Flightbarn, flooding over me in a wave of relief.

  “Two! Two, get over here, it’s Three!” He became momentarily muffled, blending into the din as he called over his shoulder. Before coming back to normal volume as he addressed me directly. “Three! Who’s with yo— You have any idea what the hell happened? I lost you in the mob. Me an’ Two wound up with the Second— S’chaos up here, Duck! Jus’ before the power went, there where people saying t’where the Fourth what knocked their lights out the sky!”

  Guilt welled, ugly about my heart, threatening to suffocate it. When this was all over, if it was ever, all over, I was going to take a big stack of those schematics FortyOne was always poring over, and do some serious studying after hours. Find out exactly why what we’d done had spiralled so badly.

  “I-I-” I bit my lip to stop it trembling. “L-look Forty, you gotta listen, there’s- ther— These things, Forty, mechanical, fleshy, fucking…” My other hand shook in the air, scraping at the words in my head that I just couldn’t articute aloud.

  “What? Three what you on abou-”

  I cut him off. Radios don’t work like that of course, he couldn’t hear me until he released the talk button on his end, but the rational part of my mind couldn’t quite process that, and I kept on going in the hopes he could hear me regardless.

  “Forty! Forty. Listen— Look it’s just. Listen. You have to b-barricade the doors! You and Two, you block the doors! They’re inside, t-tell- Forty. Tell the Second. They’re in the Pole- They’re- These big, fucking, clockwork robins, l-like the birds and I know that sounds so, so-” My entire body shook, and I became vaguely aware that I was raising my voice, getting increasingly higher pitched. “So fucking stupid! But they are, a-and they’re big, and sharp, and th-they killed Comet, a-and they killed, s-s-” I took a gulp of thick, heavy, air. “S-Some of Sixth, I don’t know how many, a-and…”

  I paused, panting, as the words all but dried up at once, leaving me empty in their absence. “…They got, FortyEight. Forty. h-He was… right there, in front of me… and…”

  The quiet of the room felt loud. Oh, so, loud.

  I stared into the tiny round speaker grille as the silence tried to swallow me whole. Behind me, Comet, dripped.

  I closed my eyes, braced against a wave of weariness. Maybe, in a way, I deserved this. But the others didn’t. Clearly, the others didn’t. If I’d just been… honest. Maybe we would have clicked better as a group. Maybe none of this would have gone, oh, so, wrong.

  When the radio crackled again, his voice was low, barely audible, mumbling over the noise in the background. The faint sound of people behind him running.

  “How bad, Three?” Not even a hint of a tremor to his voice, simply a level resignation. “Is he alright?”

  It was grounding, anchoring. I tched onto his calm, like a solitary rock that stood tall above rough waters.

  “I-I-” I swallowed and cleared my throat. “I don’t know how bad. I… There where two of them, the robins, one, i-it threw, Eight d-down the tunnel Nine an’ Four took… The other trapped me here. I-I-” Even though he couldn’t see me, I lowered my gaze from the radio. It felt like an eye, boring into my soul. “I haven’t gone after him. t-To check.”

  “…Where’s here, Three? Are you safe?”

  “Yeah. Kinda. The Flightbarn. I got separated- I- Nine an’ Four, they made it to one of the tunnels.” Vaguely I was aware I was repeating myself. I looked up across the room, staring at the nondescript steel door, encased in a watery circle of torchlight, identical to so many others. “I…” The grisly rafters loomed invisibly above my head in dark. Drip. Though it had long since begun to dry and crack, my hand still felt cold, a ghostly wet.

  “Alright. Alright- Hey up, one moment, Duck.” A ctter and hollering sounded for a moment before he cut off entirely as he released the button.

  The metal shutter rattled again as a gust of wind railed against it from the other side. At least I hoped it was wind. I stared intently at the metal.

  An elf wouldn’t be able to do much to it, not without tools, but one of those things? I tried not to think of how effortlessly the robin had bsted through the sleigh. With enough force to shatter it back into splinters.

  The shutter rattled again, gentler this time. I didn’t rate it’s chances. “KRSHT-!”

  I jumped as the radio barked in my hand. “Right! Since the power’s gone, we’re hot swapping Spirit barrels trying to jump-start the Second’s aurora off of them, that should help stop any more getting down an inside.” He paused to take a breath, seeming to centre himself. “The Second are barricading off surface defence here, so it should stay pretty safe, them doors are pretty hefty. Just. Give us a moment, Duck, just to get their aurora back up in the sky an’ me n’ Two’ll come get you. A minute. Ten… Twenty at the most… alright?”

  I frowned.

  Starting the Fourth’s aurora was challenging at the best of times, but especially with low numbers. That lead to… mistakes. That’s what got us into this mess. Also… The back of my head prickled and I got the distinctive feeling that if Santa where to ever get wind of two elves scooting off just to help me… Robins would be the least of our worries.

  “i-I can’t stay here Forty.” You have to press the button, Three. I steeled my stomach. “No… I’ll come to you.”

  I cleared my throat, painfully aware of the door, still lit solitarily in the corner of my eye by the torch in my hand. “I’m not staying here waiting for more of those…” I squeezed my eyes shut, and breathed out long and slow. “Where did you say you where again?”

  “Three you sure? Honest if you just hang tight…”

  “I’m sure. Forty.”

  He didn’t respond for what felt like an age. The longer the silence reigned, the more my skin began to crawl up the back of my neck. An itching, springing, sensation, that moved in time with the occasional groan of setting wood, and the muted murmur of wind outside.

  I breathed a palpable sigh of relief when the radio crackled once more with his voice.

  “Alright, Three. TwentyTwo says you can get here pretty quick from the FlightBarn. Just head the same way as you would when you’re headed back to the SnowGlobe, but ah- Instead of following all the way back to the ‘Globe, you’ll want to take the tenth door on the right.”

  There was a muffled scraping noise, as something brushed over the receiver. His muted rumble seemed to confer with another, softer voice below the rustling. “Right.”

  Forty returned full force, accompanied by a sharp crack of feedback. “Right. Then you’ll wanna follow that tunnel, right up till the end an’ you should find some stairs…” More rustling, and muffled conversation. “Okay. You’ll wanna go one floor down… One down. Then… Second door on the right… You got that?”

  I nodded absently. Honestly I kind of wished I had something to write it down with. “… Three?” I blinked and remembered he couldn’t see me.

  “Yeah. Yeah I got it.” I swallowed uneasily, and shuddered as something else dripped from the ceiling. “Ten doors, down the stairs, second right. I… I-I’ll see you soon Forty.”

  “See you soon, Duck.” His voice seemed strained. I could picture the concerned crease of his brow. “… Be careful.”

  The silence felt even worse in the aftermath of conversation. The darkness, more menacing, more oppressing. And me, more alone. I tensed my stomach and walked woodenly back across the room, picking my way carefully over and around the wreckage and the bloodstains, doing my best to ignore they where even there.

  I pced my hand softly against the heavy wood and took a breath. Carefully, I shoved the heavy stable door aside.

  Several sets of reindeer eyes shone my torchlight back at me, glinting pinpricks in the dark.

  Discarded hay crunched softly underfoot as I approached Prancer’s stall. I could feel them, watching me, turning, eyes following like so many cameras in the gloom.

  When I found him, he’d moved, huddling down in the hay besides another deer in the stall behind his. ‘Blitzen.’ Not that I bmed him for moving.

  I wouldn’t want to y down with gory robin remains either.

  I felt the corner of my mouth twitch as Prancer stared back at me, and I felt distinctly ‘put on the spot’ by his gssy gaze.

  “Thank you.” I finally said, with a small shrug. “You um. You basically saved my life.” He simply stared, as I shuffled awkwardly from foot to foot. After a few too many seconds of uncertain deliberation, I reached up and gently patted the enormous deer, twice, on the forehead.

  He leant subtly forwards, a gentle pressure against my palm, and closed his eyes.

  I felt a smile twitch, ghosting across my lips. I held my hand there for him for almost a full second, before dropping it back to my side.

  I looked awkwardly away. The giant steel, vault door at the back of the Stables hung open, eerily, revealing a huge, empty steel box, devoid even of the light dusting of straw, that dominated the rest of the room. Huge bck charred marks that marred it’s impressive walls. The massive door itself, almost an entire foot thick. I shuddered, simply gd that whatever it was we normally kept in there, wasn’t here now, and turned back to the deer.

  “I have to go, boy.” Instantly a fsh of guilt fred in my throat. I knitted my brows with uncertainty. It felt… Wrong. To treat him like he was just another animal, like some kind of pet. “I mean. Prancer…” He stared back at me, silent. “… I’ll leave the door open, okay?”

  With a snort, his eyes grew wide. He bared his ft teeth and screamed. An awful, grating, bray that tore at the walls of his throat.

  I flinched, back-pedalling, loose hay-dust powdering about my feet.

  Prancer lunged to his hooves, towering over me.

  I threw my arms out towards him, sending torchlight running across the ceiling. “Sorry! I won’t! I’ll close it! I’ll close it!” I peeked out cautiously from behind my hands, raised as non-threateningly as I could. “…Better?”

  He stared into me. My heart thundering in my ears, until he snorted, once, softly, and pawed at the ground with a hoof.

  Well, it wasn’t screaming at least. I stepped back towards the stable door, and carefully lowered my hands. I gave him a little wave as I pulled the doors closed as best I could. Unable to properly tch them from the outside. Santa must open them for the elves in the morning… I was pretty sure he could magically squeeze himself into any nook and cranny of the pole he wanted.

  Prancer watched motionlessly, as the shadow of the door cut slowly across his face.

  I stared endlessly at the dark, ancient, wood after I’d pulled it to, and bit, nervously, at my lip.

  You’re putting it off.

  I tensed my stomach against the sudden queasiness swirling in my abdomen and took my first few steps towards the steel door. Still standing dutifully in the corner of my eye. A door so simir to so many others.

  The radio creaked in my hand as I stood before it, subconsciously clenching my fists. My heartbeat, thunderously loud in the silence.

  Come on, Three. Just follow the path. Tenth door. One flight of stairs. Second on the right.

  …

  I stared at the round steel handle of the door to the tunnel the others had fled down, and hoped beyond hope for what I might find behind it. Or what I wouldn’t.

  Before my fleeting courage could fail me, I wrenched it wide as quickly as I could manage.

  The flickery torchlight flooded the cramped tunnel, filtering fainter and fainter until it finally fizzled away into darkness. Coppery, carmine stains dragged across the formerly white walls and floor. But other than that there was no sign of the others.

  I breathed a light sigh of relief, and stepped fully into the hallway.

  The door smmed shut behind me with a commanding CLANG! I ducked, flinching as the sound echoed out before me.

  But nothing came. No voices. No warbles.

  I swallowed queasily, and stepped around the slug trail of blood from FortyEight’s slide across the floor. There wasn’t anything else though, thankfully. I’d half expected a body. Or… Bits of one.

  I took that thought, and locked it back in the Flightbarn behind me. “… Four? … FortyNine?” I whispered as loudly as I dared. Nothing. No reply. “… FortyEight?”

  As I walked the blood gradually ran out, until I was standing at the st of it, nothing left to stain the white painted walls in front of me.

  I swallowed again, bile bubbling up my throat, and held my flickering torch held out before me. Like a crucifix to ward off evil.

  “Forty?” I held the radio up to my face, whispering into it. “I’ll see you soon, okay?”

  I swallowed, nervously.

  No reply.

  That’s fine. It was probably pretty hectic where he was… I swallowed again, and began to walk, steadily, step by step, into the darkness.

  I’d get to Forty and FortyTwo, barricaded, where it was safe. I might even find Nine, or Four along the way….And FortyEight would be okay too. I let out an unsteady sigh, the breath I’d been holding misting in the air.

  All of us.

  Everything was gonna be just, fine.

  Penelope-Namesley