11th day of Christmas: Northward Bound
By Sir Wintrust - Published 2019-12-23
Crossing the border really wasn't hard. We intentionally crossed in a border town, far from the normal checkpoints. People cross so frequently here that very little was questioned. They asked us where we were going. We were going to Nunavit. Why were we going. Business. Soda or water? Water. He handed us a few bottled waters he had with him, hydration is important. We left towards the northern border of Canada. When we arrived, we had another issue. We needed to find a way to make it across the water to the northern ice. We started by trying to swim. Eight writers and one intern later we decided that we didn’t want to freeze to death. Tim almost died, but that doesn’t matter, no one likes tim. Next, we tried pulling out our dingy, it sank instantly. Our steamboat was out of commission this week, so we had to be creative, the most obvious opportunities were proven unfruitful. We started with a trebuchet. We prepared our axes and felled four large pine trees. Two were cut in thirds and used as bracing, one was the axel and one made up the arm. We tied a heavy stone counterweight to one end and we gathered at the other end. We used to van to pull the counterweight up the trebuchet, then we let loose. We flew like the birds in the clouded-skies above us but to our dismay, the trebuchet was pointed in the wrong direction. It was not long for us to realise our mistake, but at that point it was still too late. We activated parachutes and landed several hundred meters away. We next try ice fishing. It was unclear how we expected for ice fishing to help us get across the water but it was fun, we caught cod! We tried using what remained of our trebuchet to build a bridge. Luckily for us the logs could float, so all we had to do was place the logs on the water, the bridge would naturally not fall. While this would limit our weight, it was a strong possibility until Gerald Fitz burnt all the trees down. Without the trees, it would not be possible. If we can’t swim or bridge over it, we would simply walk.We tied stones to our feet to make us sink, then we planned to walk across the ocean floor towards our goal. The office of avoiding lawsuits said this was outside of the bounds of safety. This was ridiculous as the office of avoiding lawsuits had not minded all of our other dangerous activities, and this was far from the stupidest and most dangerous idea we ever came up with. Nevertheless, we would not be able to walk under the water, but we had a new idea. If we tied giant leaves to our feet, we could walk on the water across. After a long and boring physics explanation from Heinbrow that would make Heisenburg proud, we realised he was trying to tell us that that wasn’t how buoyancy works. Tim suggested we should just take a plane. We ignored him because no one likes tim. We then came across a brilliant plan: take a plane! We added a wing decal to our van and ramped into the ocean. We were able to fly, but only for periods of less than a few milliseconds and each time only two of our tires were flying. On the last hill we launched upwards, before immediately crashing. It was clear to the same members of our expedition that there was a magical force field that stopped all plane flight. If planes could not fly, then maybe we could. We strapped bird wings to ourselves and flapped as hard as we could. We did the chicken dance like killing santa depended on it, and yet, we gained no altitude. We began to feel like there was no way to get across, but then a realisation hit. A spark of brilliance came upon our party as we added flotation devices to our van and drove it into the sea. It sank immedetly, but we were rescuded by some nice canadian sailors who make the idiotic decision of taking us to the north pole for the stupid reason that that is where they were going already. They were part of a science crew going to look at some snow for a while. They took us across the channel before letting us go on our way. Now, the march to the pole
We had never felt wind. Our office did get the occasional breeze, and we had a few days we lost our tin-foil but there were no days like this. The wind completely obscured our vision and we had to push and fight to move a foot. Each step was a battle against the elements who desired to disorient and destroy us. We frantically followed our compasses, even as our compass movement became more erratic. We pushed through against all odds. Our clothes were covered in snow and sleet as we pushed on through the snow. Troging, marching, pushing and walking, we forged ahead. We made our first camp early on. We had not brought our winter gear, it would be too suspicious to bring into the entirely warm and welcoming Canada. We had a few light jackets, which would provide protection for our travel. We laid amongst the stars, and shared a few marshmallows. We were all just in awe of the stars and the scenery around us. The snow glowed and sparkled as if it were coated in fine powder made from precious gems. The crystal of the snow felt more valuable than gold, and twice as beautiful. When we woke up, we were forced to ponder that while many days have passed in our mission, it was still christmas day. We pondered if the writer of this story was simply an idiot who didn’t care about timelines, or if maybe the story would be all a dream, explaining all of the stupid falures of logic. We snapped out of our fourth wall breaking stupor with great speed as we planned to made the final hike. As we peeked out of our tents, we saw the weather would be better today. The fresh snow would be hard to walk on, but there was no blizzard and there was no snowfall. The wind was dead, and no one had died of exposure yet. We ate our pre-packaged meals of lazy half-made sandwiches and over steamed vegetables before we began to move. We had the company of each other and the elegant show-covered dunes . After a long day of non stop walking, we arrived at the final destination.
Once we made it to the north pole, there was much rejoicing. We saw a small wooden cabin, which was no-doubt the summer home of Santa. It was only aesthetically a cabin, its construction was modern and built to last. It had thick modern glass coated in a dense layer of snow. We slowly pulled the door open. We began to sneak around the interior. Notes and journals of other adventurers accompanied desk tables and scientific equipment. Turning left we found small cots, laid with small privacy curtains between them. At the end of the cots we found a mess kitchen, with no pots or pans. There was a medical station complete with first aid box, a small table and even small bed. Our compasses were crazy, so we knew we made it. That is when we found it. A small oak desk with a small list saying “naughty” and “nice”. It had at least 5 names organised into either naughty or nice. It seems this was the big-man’s actual desk. We went lower into the building, and found the power generator. It was a simply gas-fed generator. We gathered what we could and destroyed the rest. We deactivated the generator and abandoned the place for good, locking it up with a bike lock for good measure. With one last explosion, we sank the station between the ice. Santa must have warned the elves to evacuate first but we still had our victory, or so we thought. We went to sleep in a small tent camp, happy with our victory. Without his main office and his lab, shipments from santa are stopped and christmas is canceled. But we remembered one last thing. Santa lives in christmas dreams, and now that we were asleep this close to magnetic north he has authority over us. He can see all of us as we sleep but our proximity to his base made it so he could shape our dreams. It was clear to us that the Santa we arrested was only one of Santa’s avatars. He is an ethereal eldritch force capable of reincarnation. While we killed his base of operations, we needed to defeat the real, non-corporeal, him. We prepped for a dream-state boss fight.
