Creation Mage 6

“I forget how little you know,” she said in an intentionally condescending voice. “That, Justin, is the Yuletide Yeti!”
“Of course it is,” I said. “And what’s his purpose? He’s the dude who gives out the presents is he?”
Mallory laughed lightly at this.
“Not quite, Mr. Mauler,” Idman Thunderstone said from just behind me, in his cuttingly dry voice. He had remained almost silent throughout the journey, but chose now, within the relative safety of the Chaosbane Ranch, to chime in.
“What does he do, then?” I asked.
“He is the legendary personage that visits the residences of all those who have been particularly ill-behaved throughout the year,” Idman said. “He spirits away such poor souls, to his lair on the top of Mount Pati where he skins and pickles them in jars.”
I raised my eyebrows and nodded. “Typical kids’ story.”
Barry floated over drift in front of me. “Funny you should say that. I remember when the whole premise for the Yuletide Yeti was cooked up. ‘Course, it’s a ‘legend’ now, but it all came about because, one Yuletide, a yeti wandered down from the mountains and actually abducted a bunch of younguns and pickled ‘em back in its cave.”
“Grim,” I said.
Barry made a face. “Aye, I s’pose,” he said. “I was an up and coming privateer at the time and one of the lads was our ship’s boy. Little shit he was. I always remember feelin’ slightly sorry for the yeti when the townsfolk hunted him down. Poor beggar was only tryin’ to make it as an entrepreneur in the condiments industry.”
Hoots and cries of delight echoed up from the ground below. Screams of mirth and fear pierced the frigid air as children and adults alike enjoyed the adrenaline-spiking rides and attractions.
“Reggie, dear?” Leah’s voice wafted lazily from the back of the sleigh.
“Yes, cousin,” Reginald said as he rummaged in his coat, patently looking for something with which he could wet his whistle.
“Is that inflatable yeti supposed to be doing that?” Leah asked.
“What?” Reginald replied, extracting a leather flask from a pocket and removing the stopper. He took a quick swig and spat it overboard. “Curse me, but that’s water!” he said.
“The Yuletide Yeti seems to be somewhat more animated than usual,” Leah pressed, still in her usual dreamy voice.
The screams and shouts below had taken on a slightly more panicked and urgent edge. I craned my head over the side of the sleigh, leaning right over so that I was half hanging out of our airborne ride.
The giant inflatable Yuletide Yeti did indeed look to be moving more than it had been only a few minutes before. Its great sausagey arms were swaying from side to side, for one thing. It was also blinking a lot, like a somnambulist who has just had a bucket of cold water thrown over them. It had no vocal chords, obviously, but it was flapping its massive rubbery lips in a way that made its inflatable tusks beat against one another with an uncomfortably ominous noise.
The carnival goers soon discovered an unscheduled change in the programming. Men, women, and children of all shapes, races, and sizes fled in all directions. Clearly, no one knew what terror had befallen them, only that they had to get out of there.
There was sharp twanging sound as the guide ropes that had been restraining the inflatable figure were wrenched free of the stakes that held them.
“Oh, dear,” Reginald said from the head of the sleigh as we performed a lazy circuit over the panicking people below, “looks like Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock has been a bit sloppy on his enchantments. Again.”
“Again?” Mallory peered across me so that her warm body and sizable cans pressed into me.
“Last year he enchanted a giant snowflake, made of real snow, to spin and flutter over our ranch,” Mort explained quietly.
“It was a lovely bit of snow sculpting,” Leah said in happy recollection, picking at one of the many holes in her baby blue jumper. “Three tons of snow cleared from our lawn to make something pretty. I thought Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock had never shown more brains or festive goodwill than when he did that.”
Idman Thunderstone snorted in derision of this statement.
“Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock was a little, ah, lax on setting proximity limitations on the spell,” Mort said. His tone was awkward, as if he did not want to speak ill of his elders. “The snowflake drifted out of the ken of our ranch, over the boundary line and onto the Flamewalker’s property. It drifted too far from Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock, and the thaumaturgical bond was severed. It dropped out of the sky and obliterated part of the Flamewalker’s marine stable block by their lake.”
“I did hear tell o’ that,” Barry said. “Ruined the chances of his prize hippocampus that was supposed to be competin’ in the Yuletide Subaquatic Derby, didn’t it?”
“Squashed it flat,” Leah said matter-of-factly.
“Speaking of things being squashed flat,” I interjected loudly, “how about we do something about what’s going on down there.”
There was a loud crunching noise as the Yuletide Yeti brought one bulbous foot down and crushed a cart selling tingle-tongue taffy. It swiped at a rotund dwarf with its inflatable fingers and batted him through a coconut shy in an explosion of splinters.
“No, not the coconut shy!” Reginald Chaosbane cried out in dismay. “Anything but that!”
The Yuletide Yeti lumbered about, smashing things to pieces and generally ruining what had, only a handful of minutes before, been a quite jolly time.
“You should get down there, Headmaster!” Enwyn said sharply.
“That’s a negative, my dear woman,” Reginald said. “I’m the only one insured for this craft. I can’t relinquish my hold on the reins without risking a crash and a hefty excess fee. Igor!”
“Igor’s out for the count, cousin,” Leah called back, poking at the Rune Mystic with a