_oOo_

Ch. 5 – Big Cheesy Apocalypse

_oOo_

Bernard returned to the room where Santa and Charlie waited, semi-braced for the barrage of questions that he was sure was about to hit him. He could see it on their faces; they'd had time to prepare a list.

"What about Carol? Is she safe?" was Santa's first question.

"She doesn't matter to him unless he thinks she can convince you to run things differently. He'll be going after you first."

"So… what are we going to do about this?" Ah, the ultimate question. The elf was glad Scott had gotten to the heart of the matter so quickly.

"I have no idea." He took a seat next to his bewildered boss.

"But… I mean how did you defeat him last time? What happened last time? I can't believe I'm asking you how you defeated someone, this is like some bogus epic adventure thing."

"Yeah. Unfortunately. Last time…" he sighed, leaning back in the chair. "We got our hands on some gleipnir and Father Time bound him to history."

"Um, what? English?"

"Gleipnir is a kind of string. Made of… magic, I guess. Thin as a silk thread, stronger than an iron chain, or that's what's said, anyways. Made by the black dwarves in old Norway. That's where we lived back then, in Norway. And Father Time tied Pete to what he'd done, hoping it would make him repent. But the second Father Time secured the last knot, Pete disappeared, which was to be expected, I suppose. The theory was that if he let go of his wickedness the knots would come undone, and I don't really get how that was supposed to work." The looks on the faces of Santa and Charlie told Bernard that they were somewhat grasping what he was saying, so he continued. "It was hard enough to acquire gleipnir; the last of it was supposed to have been used on the Fenrisulfr's bindings, so we had to convince the dwarves to make us more."

"Wait, Fenrisulfr?" The small amount of understanding that had been on Santa's face had slipped away with the name.

"Yes, the wolf Fenris. Really isn't relevant here, I hope."

"Oh. Good. Continue. How did you convince the dwarves to make… that stuff?"

"Gleipnir. We gave them our magic."

"You what?"

"Yeah, it wasn't fun. Black dwarves have a fascination with white magic, kind of like man's fascination with the unknown. They wouldn't make any more gleipnir until we let them have a bunch of our magic."

"How can you give somebody magic?"

"It's… hard to explain. Again, doesn't really matter. What matters is we got the gleipnir and tied Pete up. And he was gone, just like that. Then we replaced the Claus's with someone more position-appropriate ." Bernard paused to stare thoughtfully at his knees while his head pounded with each heartbeat. In that singular moment he felt older than he'd ever felt before and he almost slipped into another hopeless type of mood, but he told himself that he was older than he'd ever been, obviously, and therefore the feeling was ok. Having dispelled with any bothersome philosophical thoughts, he raised his head back up.

"So," said Charlie, "he's escaped the… gleipnir? Is that what's happened?"

"I think so," Bernard said, nodding. "He said,'the solitary opening of a lock'. That must mean something released him somehow."

"And now he's… coming back up, through the roar of time. He's coming back to now."

"Exactly, Charlie. Now, it's a possibility that he's finally felt remorse over what he did, and the gleipnir released him. But knowing him, I doubt it. And if he'd actually been legitimately set free, I don't think he'd be approaching us like this. He'd want to come say sorry, not come scare the carbuncles out of everybody." Santa stuck his finger in the air, as if requesting a taxi.

"So can't we just tie him up again, except with a lot more knots? And no merciful rules of repent?"

Bernard stared at his boss, and felt his eyes glaze over. Presently he closed them and laid his head in his hands, to dissuade the impression that he was fighting an epic inner battle against discouragement, which he was. He loved humans; he really did. That's why he was head elf. It was his duty to encourage and protect them. But there were moments when human ignorance and shortsightedness tried to block him.

"Bernard, you ok?" asked Santa. The elf straightened up.

"Yeah. Man, this is the worst timing ever, I can't think."

"I asked if we could just tie him up again."

"Santa… Forever is a long time. Just keep that in mind. And we could only do that if we determined the cause of his release and made sure it didn't happen again. One of the holes in that plan is that I'm not sure where black dwarves are."

"Well if you met them a thousand years ago-"

"Yes, but something happened to them after we gave them our magic. Stories came back that their underground realm disappeared in a big cheesy flash of light after we left with the gleipnir. So we don't even know if the black dwarves still exist now."

"So… we have to find out if they're still alive, and if so, where?" Santa's straightforward thinking was aggravatingly logical. He didn't understand a fraction of all the details and complications of the situation, and yet he was stating the most obvious path that they'd have to take. In the back of his mind Bernard suspected they'd have to find the black dwarves as well, but all that that inferred was almost too painful to think about.

"Yeah, I guess we do."

"You sound a little bummed about that."

"Well… you would too if you'd ever met a black dwarf."

"Why? What are they like?"

"If it comes down to you having to meet one, I'll warn you. In the meantime, Peter'll be searching for us. If he finds you, he'll try to convince you to work with him. If you don't agree, he'll kill you. Hopefully it'll never come down to that, because you're going to stick by my side until this is over."

"Why?"

"I can protect you."

"You can protect me? I thought I was the official member of the Council of Magical Entities."

"Yeah, you're the face of our whole production, but you're just the messenger. You're a link between our world and the human world. When it comes to pure magic I'm afraid I outrank you. So does Pete. Unfortunately Pete will probably be looking for me too, for that very reason; he wants me out of the way."

"Can he get you out of the way?"

"It all depends on circumstance. A thousand years ago he could, because he had Santa on his side. This time he might have something else, something to do with how he untied himself in the first place. Kull, you two, this is all just speculation. None of this is for sure and there's no way of finding out more until he makes another move. We may end up needing to find the black dwarves but we don't want to do that until we're sure we need gleipnir."

"Can we make our own gleipnir?" asked Charlie. The question caught Bernard off-guard and he thought for a moment.

"Make gleipnir. Charlie, I can honestly say I have no idea if we can do that. Dwarves are master craftspeople, they're pretty much qualified to make anything out of anything. I can't say the same for myself. Gleipnir is made of a bunch of things that don't exist anymore because of its creation, so it's not like it's a low-impact endeavor."

"Wait, what do you mean by-" Santa started to ask.

"The sound of a cat's footfall," answered Bernard. "The breath of a fish. Things that don't exist."

"Oh, wow," said Scott, and stood up, pressing his palms against his ears as if he didn't want to hear any more. Bernard had been waiting for this. "Alright, I was trying to just follow along calmly up to this point, but this, this just tops it all off, doesn't it?" Santa's voice now bordered on maniacal. Bernard held back from saying that Santa didn't know nearly the half of it yet. Let the man have his panic attack in peace, he thought. "A string made of things that don't exist. Someone gets tied to a moment. Different kinds of magic, demon wolves, black dwarves, big cheesy explosions of light, why the dickens didn't I know about any of this? Bernard, I'm sorry, I know you're trying to patiently explain everything but this is just… it's just…"

"Santa, you're doing fine. Just-"

"Aaah, ah ah. Don't tell me I'm doing fine, you can see I'm most certainly not doing fine. I feel like you just threw a million pieces of confetti at me and told me to catch them all in rainbow order before they hit the ground. With my knee. You know how impossible that is?" Bernard didn't answer, not knowing what to say. At this point, there was nothing he could do for Santa until the man calmed down by himself. Thankfully, Charlie stepped in.

"Dad, none of this is going to get any clearer if we don't let Bernard explain it." None of it's going to get clearer if I DO explain it, Bernard thought, but nodded encouragingly at Santa, who seemed to be considering. After a moment he sat back down, shaking his head.

"Sorry. Sorry, I just-"

"I know, it's complicated." The elf wanted to tack on some corny bit of positivity at the end, but could come up with nothing. What Santa needed at the moment was a sense of hope, that exceptionally human necessity. A first step would be good. Some way to get them rolling down a path, anything but sitting stagnant and waiting for Peter to come knocking with tidings of the apocalypse of man. Bernard would almost be ok with simply waiting for Peter, if it meant that he'd be able to get in some sleep.

"Alright," said Bernard, forcing energy into his words. "Father Time knows more about Peter's bonds than we do. We need his input."

"Great. Good plan," said Santa, rubbing his hands together. "How do we find him? Where does he live?"

"Father Time assumes a material form only when someone wants to see him. Otherwise he's ubiquitous."

"Creepy," said Charlie, as Bernard mentally called out to Father Time. The plane of magic sent his thoughts back to him, echoing hollowly, and his heart started to fall, wishing against everything that he wasn't about to run into yet another complication. Why was it so empty out there? Where was Father Time? After a moment of darkness he started to sense the formation of something more tangible than the surrounding vacuum, and relief hit him. A split second later his ears perceived an irritated whine, like a distant mosquito, and he had only a moment to wonder about its origins before it exploded into a deafening, punctuated shriek – harsh laughter, ending with a deep breath and a single word forced through what must have been a numb throat –

"HEY! "

_oOo_

A/N: I realize this chapter was pretty much them sitting around having explanative dialogue. Not too riveting… eh. Looks like you made it to the bottom anyways. You deserve a string of LED Christmas Lights! *~~~*~~~*~~~*