That which the citizens of the Colony had
designated as 'Christmas Day', dawned hot and murky as another, more gentle ash
storm made its way through to the sea.
Ellis looked out his window in the wing of the Former Baron's chateau to
see very little but grey, the Colony itself hidden beneath piles of ash which
no longer held so much as a hint of what lay underneath. He stepped out into the hall and, just as he
was about to make his way downstairs to see if anyone else was about, found a
large sock hanging from his door handle.
The unexpected item of footwear was dirty, stained and desperately in
need of a good darning in more than one place, but despite all this it still
held a large parcel - much larger than than the sock, in fact, wrapped up in
brown paper and tied off with string. A
scrap of paper was tied in also. Ellis
grabbed it, ripped it free of the string and read, 'Merry Crissmass (did I
spell it right?), lots of love, San-Ta Claws'.
The handwriting was unmistakably Von Spektr's. Ellis stared at it for a moment longer,
scratching his head, then cracked a smile, teased the parcel out into the open
air and began tearing into the paper with gusto.
The gift inside was as unorthodox as the
giver. It appeared to be a short sword,
but one made heavier and bulkier by all sorts of additional pieces, including
what appeared to be a small tank of black sand, to which was attached a dial
readout and a number of curious marked switches. Pipes and channels lead away from the device
on the hilt into the blade itself, suggesting that some hypostatick trickery
would be possible with it when it was switched on - however that could be
achieved, but the additional weight made it unwieldy, uncomfortable and, if
Ellis was to be any judge of such things, extremely unsightly. He examined it a moment longer, tracing the
pathways of its hypostatick channels and wondering just what the Former Baron
was thinking, before hefting it over his shoulder (which seemed the least
cumbersome way to carry it) and making his way downstairs.
In the living room, by a fire already roaring
at the height of its powers, sat Siren, Sarah, Annabella and Gulliver, each
with their own similarly mechanised presents at their side. Siren had a pair of oversized daggers,
Gulliver had the world's fattest, ugliest flintlock pistols, Sarah, much to her
bemusement, had received a set of vambraces the size of medieval manacles - if
manacles had ever been thickened and reinforced and designed to the resemble a
bundle of TNT, complete with timer - and Annabella, bucking the trend, had some
kind of headgear, looking not dissimilar to that worn by pilots during World
War I, only with extra padding, exposed clockwork and a set of brass goggles
expertly designed to make the wearer look like a kind of gigantic fly. Ellis took all this in in one sweeping gaze
and, as he caught the looks from the others staring back at him, they all burst
into fits of laughter.
"Merry Christmas, everyone," he
said when he regained the ability to breathe.
"Merry Christmas," they all
replied.
"Where's the Former Baron?"
"Where do you think?" Gulliver
replied, pointing downwards.
"I thought he might at least take a
break to enjoy some breakfast with us," Sarah said.
"Ooh, breakfast?" Ellis asked and
his stomach rumbled loudly to emphasise his need.
"Bacon and eggs," Siren said with
grin, "there's a plate cooling in the kitchen, but don't worry, it'll
reheat in no time."
After breakfast the group intended to descend
on the Former Baron to find out what his plans for the day were, but barely had
they opened the door to the basement laboratory when his voice boomed from
beneath, "Go away. I'm not ready
yet."
"But what should we do?" Ellis called down.
"Go play in the ash, or something,"
came the distracted reply.
They all stared at one another for a moment
until Ellis said, "I guess we'll go see what everyone else is up to."
The rest of the Colony was in fine
spirit. Children were playing with
mechanical toys in the ash drifts, getting themselves thoroughly dirty in the
process, whilst the adults watched on in wonder, or, if they were not to be
seen supervising their progeny, they were around the back of one of the
warehouses, practising with their new weapons.
"Santé left it for me," one
enthusiastic young militiaman said when they asked where he had acquired the
ugly-looking sword he held in his hands, though Ellis was already pretty sure
what the answer would be. It turned out
that the toys had come from 'Santa' as well and were similarly clunky, heavy
and malformed. Ellis couldn't imagine
the EU allowing those toys to be sold.
Regardless, no one seemed to mind that the toys were potentially
dangerous and the weapons next to useless.
Instead, they enjoyed the novelty of receiving presents from a jolly fat
man they'd only heard about two days before and making the most of the thick layer
of ash that covered the settlement.
"This is all very surreal," Ellis
remarked at one point after they had just passed a bunch of children putting
the finishing touches on their ashman, using an old door knocker in place of a
carrot nose.
"You're telling me," Sarah replied,
"but it's also kind of wonderful, don't you think? They don't really understand any of this, and
yet they're enjoying it all the same."
"It's all just a distraction, though,
isn't it? The Stoneskins could be here
any minute." Siren let out a sigh.
"I just wish I knew what Franck was planning down there. I feel so unprepared, so powerless, so... not
in control."
"And that's the real problem right
there," Gulliver said with a half smile, although his attempt at a joke
seemed to fall on deaf ears.
"I'm sure he knows what he's
doing," said Annabella. "His
plans have always worked out in the past, right?"
"Well, mostly," Ellis agreed,
"although he's cut it pretty close before and... I don't know. He just doesn't seem the same to me. I'm still worried that he's not all there any
more."
"Let's just 'ope you're wrong then, eh,
mate?"
The warning shout came at about midday, not
long after a fresh ash fall had begun to drift down from the leaden skies. They were advancing from the North East, from
the direction of the distant Ashvault, and their passage kicked up a vast cloud
of ash and dust. The Militia estimated
they would be upon them before evening.
All jollity and celebration turned to panic
in an instant and before very long a whole crowd of Colonists were piling up
outside the Grand Chateau, shouting and crying, demanding answers from their
defacto mayor and wondering why they weren't given more warning.
The Former Baron appeared, after some
kerfuffle removing packing crates and old wooden boards covering the french
windows, at a balcony on the first floor.
There was very little room and what room there was was mostly filled
with junk and debris, but somehow the spindly old man found a place to stand
and stared down at the people of the Colony with fatherly patience.
"Hush, hush, all of you!" he called
out, before waiting for the din to die down.
"Be quiet, please..."
The crowd took the hint slowly, but, before
very long, had managed to reduce their angry complaints and mutterings to a low
roar, quiet enough at least for the Former Baron to be heard over the top of
them with the aid of some sort of hypostatick loudspeaker system.
"I appreciate that many of you are
angry, that you think you have been duped, that you feel like a glitterfish
surrounded by a shoal of greedy kleptognaths, but let me assure you, all is not
what it seems."
There were a series of angry shouts and
another chorus of mutters until Siren stepped up onto a rubbish crate and
demanded silence.
"Let him explain!"
The swell of voices receded and, satisfied,
the Former Baron continued.
"Whilst you have all been preparing for
this Christmas we have been enjoying, I have not ceased working on a way to
fend off this attack. I've been drawing
up plans, refining blueprints and tinkering with prototypes for months now,
hardly sleeping, and the last few days in particular have been furious with
activity. I have had a horde of Mosskind
working night and day on my designs and, I'm pleased to say, they are all but
finished. Only the last touches need to
be put in place," he said with an almost maniacal grin. "Oh," he added, almost as an
afterthought, although Ellis suspected it was his desire for the dramatic that
made the old man do it, "and this!"
Von Spektr flicked a switch to the side of
the balcony (suggesting that even the clutter and boards were something of an
affectation) and sent the hypostatick machinery of the Chateau's defense system
into overdrive. Pipes clanks, flywheels
whirred, vents whistled and the air thrummed with energy. And then, one by one, then all at once, the
many and varied weapons and toys the Colonists had received from 'Father
Christmas' (or some variation thereof) came to life in a number of surprising
and often alarming ways.
Nun-chucks too heavy to lift seemed to spin on
their own, requiring considerably restraint to prevent injury; A halberd, so
misshapen it resembled a traffic sign after a collision with a large
articulated lorry, began to vibrate and twist; a set of oversized shuriken
began to fold and unfold and hover in mid-air.
Ellis' sword transformed from overweight lump to elegantly balanced in a
matter of seconds, glowing with the energy which made it alive. Similar alterations were occurring with his
friends also, the hypostatick energy taking what appeared over-augmented and
useless into weapons that were both efficient and surprisingly easy to use.
All across the crowd people were screaming
and dropping their gifts, so the Former Baron flicked the switch again and in
mere moments all had fallen still once more.
"Fear not," he said, failing to
hide his cat-with-cream expression quite spectacularly, "that was just a
demonstration. When you're using the
weapons with the black sand I will provide they will be much more
manageable!"
"So you're just going to send us out
there against the Stoneskins?" someone called out.
"Oh no," the Former Baron replied,
"no, no, no! Not at all!"
"Then what else?"
"Ah, well, I don't want to spoil the
surprise just yet. In the meantime I
need you all to take positions around the perimeter of the Colony, along the
line I marked out last night. Don't
stray, but feel free to amuse yourselves.... in fact," he added with
another wide grin, "build some ashmen!"
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