Chapter 1: Into the Ice
…*Sigh* Another fresh start…
Spirits like him didn't need sleep, yet sleep he did… just to dream.
It was dark…
… and it was cold.
Yet he could see bright lights, like lightning, arc across the abyss that set upon them like wolves.
Them?
He was not alone in the darkness, it would seem. Another stood before him, protecting him from the encroaching black nothingness.
It was speaking, telling him… something? Something that he was having a hard time understanding what with the nature of the dream being downright murky. Its last words, like breaking glass, were clear enough, however.
"Don't forget…" It said — no — pleaded.
And there it was, the problem. He didn't even know what it was he wasn't supposed to forget. Or maybe he had forgotten already?
… Or maybe it was just a dream.
Yes, it was just a stupid, meaningless dream.
Jack awoke, opening his eyes slowly. He blinked a couple of times to get his bearings straight before sitting up from the snowy tree branch he had been sitting on — snowy not because it was winter, mind you; it was actually the middle of summer, but him being who he was, well, everything got snowy whenever Jack was around.
He stretched then jumped out of the tree, the very tall tree — usually a bad idea to some, but not so much for Jack. After all, what respectable spirit was he if he couldn't fly, right? So falling didn't really matter to him none.
Looking around himself as he floated up into the night sky, he wondered where he had flown himself off to this time.
He could see a kingdom from up where he hung himself on nothing — Arendelle, the name was, if he remembered right.
"What the? And how the heck did I get here?" He couldn't recall. He didn't fly there, that was for sure. So how?
The moon was shinning bright that night, and Jack stared at it as if it would answer his question. He shook his head, banishing the silly thought away.
With a big whiff through the nose, the snowy-haired, teen-looking spirit took in the prickly-cold (thanks to him now) summer sea breeze and thought to himself, 'Well, seeing that I'm already here, no sense in wasting the opportunity. Let's have some fun, shall I?'
Fun? Why fun? Why then? Questions one may ask. To Jack, however, there was only one question: why not? Simply put, because he was who he was — him, winter's spirit of mischief and fun. Frost's the name. Reeking wintry, fun havoc was his game!
'More fun, Jack? Don't you get too much of that already on your own time?' Responded the voice in his head sarcastically. 'Why don't you do something productive for once, like say, staying in your own season?'
'Ah, but therein lies the pickle, my disembodied friend. Because where would the fun be in that?'
Crazy? Off his rocker? A few apples short of an egg salad?
No, Jack wasn't crazy; his life as an invisible ghost just made him a tad bit lonely, is all. So one day (he couldn't even remember when anymore) came the "other Jack", "the voice of sarcasm", the "even-more-invisible-than-me" Jack, his mind's byproduct of said loneliness to keep him from being too — well — lonely. He called him mr. Happy because it was a total contradictory and that's always a laugh, plus, the name annoyed him so win-win.
'*Sigh*' Happy sighed.
Nope, Jack was crazy not one bit.
Jack crossed his legs and pretended to sit, thinking of what fun he could have that night. What to do, what to do?
But then, just then as he was pondering himself into a daze, suddenly there was a dip in the atmosphere, and Jack felt an unexplainable fear creep up his spine. It knocked the levity right out of him, and it made him more wary. To Jack, it was like an air of something that wasn't supposed to happen was about to happen that summer night.
'What is it? What's wrong?'
"I… I don't know." Jack whispered. "Don't you feel it?"
'I'm you, Smarty. Of course I feel it. What I want to know is what is it?'
"I just said I didn't know!" He whispered back again, but more tensely that time.
'Okay, okay. Chill. No use getting—' Happy never got to finish as something large and dark went flying past, a dervish following in it's wake.
"What the—!?"
It's skin, or coat, shone grey in the night, but Jack could tell that it was actually ebony touched by moonlight. Jack had never seen anything like it before.
"Hold on there!" Jack gave chase.
'Woah what?! We're actually going after this thing!? We don't even know what it is!'
Jack replied distractedly, more focused on chasing his flighty quarry, 'It kinda looks like a horse.'
'Yeah, that could fly! And without wings! "Highly suspicious. Do not chase," not kicking in?'
"Nope!"
As if sensing that it was being followed, the dark stallion dove down towards the ground.
'There it goes!'
It flew through the forest near Arendelle, hoping that it would lose Jack through the trees, but Jack was skilled in flight, the northern wind itself lending him haste. The stallion grew more frantic when it saw Jack catching up and changed course towards Arendelle, the kingdom itself.
They were flying through rooftops, streets, and alleys now, and Jack was growing tired of the chase. 'I like flying as much as the next guy but…' Brandishing out his faithful shepherd's staff, Jack aimed and let loose a torrent of cold energy at his target. It missed and hit the adjacent window cill of an unsuspecting house, freezing the window shut as ice crawled over it like a web. "Slippery little…"
A couple of more pot shots and Arendelle was looking more winter than summer.
'Oh man, summer ain't gonna like this,' Happy mumbled under his breath — that is, if he had a breath to mumble under.
"Shh! Focusing here!"
The last shot that hit the castle's top spire window had been the last straw, and there had been plenty of straws! "Ramming speed!" Jack roared and Wind consented, carrying him as fast as she could. Using himself as a projectile, Jack bodychecked the flying horse with all the force of an oncoming storm.
"Gotcha, ya stinkin' piece'a — !"
'— Alright! So um uh… what now?'
Jack's triumphant smile melted into a concerned, pondering frown as he and the stunned horse plummeted towards the fjord below. "Um."
There was a loud splash as the water became the sudden recipient of one Jack Frost and friend. The fjord rocked and waved until it finally calmed — too calm actually. A few seconds ticked past and there were no signs of Jack coming up from the water. Seconds turned into minutes, and minutes turned into even more minutes when suddenly ice began to form, and the arching waves froze at their peaks.
As the entire fjord surrounding Arendelle hardened into smooth ice, Jack at last burst forth from glacier he had made — the dark stallion gone.
'Remind me again why we went off chasing that guy?'
Jack didn't know, 'It's nothing, just… just a feeling — like it wasn't supposed to be there. You know?'
'So chase it off with a stick, huh? Mm, legit. Makes sense.'
'It does?'
'No.'
"Argh!" Jack suddenly clutched at his head as a splitting pain overcame him; his wits feeling like it were being torn asunder. Along the torment also came a voice much louder than Happy's whose timber shook him to his bones. Knees on the ice, Jack had no choice but to bear the phenomenal weight that he felt sat on his mind.
The voice, it was all encompassing and filled his every pore, it's very words threatening to choke him even though he needn't take breath as a spirit. 'It wasn't supposed to be there, Jack, and you know it,' It whispered. 'Now hurry. Fix the damage that had been done. You are running out of time!' were it's last words before it cut out completely.
With the absence of the voice, it was like a damper had been lifted. The air felt light and breathable again, and Jack took gulps of it. "Ugh." He suddenly felt sick to his stomach.
'That didn't feel good.' Commented Happy, sounding winded himself.
But Jack might as well have not heard as he was mumbling to himself, suddenly filled with a sense of urgency that numbed him to his gums. "Running out of time." What did that suppose to mean?
Jack wasn't sure what drove him to do so, but he took off into the night as fast as he could, scared of what it was he was running out of time for.
He searched and searched, but could not find — whatever it was. Luckily, Wind felt like helping as she carried Jack a small sound on her breeze — voices. He followed the sound that lead him behind Arendelle's castle. Rounding the fourth tower, Jack came upon a group of people talking in hushed tones.
"Get the boats out here now!"
"But my king, the fjord, it's frozen!"
These people were royalty it would seem. 'Bet he owns the big house over there too.'
"What!? But it's the middle of — how — frozen!? Is that even — argh! Never mind! Sleds then. We need sleds as quickly as you can get them!"
"Yes, m'lord." The other man bowed and went off in the direction, Jack guessed, where the sleds were.
Jack was lost on what to do; should he help these people? It's not like he was given instructions after all. At least the feeling of urgency from before had dulled some; that told him that he should be on the right track, or not far from it.
"Henry!" Another voice entered the fray. "Elsa, sh-she won't wake up! She keeps crying in her sleep, but no matter what I do, she won't wake up!" A woman, 'The wife' Jack concluded, stated with worry stuttering her words.
'If that's the missus then she must be the queen.' It was easy enough for Jack to put together. 'All that's missing now is a —'
"She's shaking so much!" The queen pushed a piece of cloth away and revealed a child's face from within the blankets she held in her arms.
"Huh, wha'd'ya you know, a full house," Jack chuffed to himself, referring to the card game.
'No, not like a full house, Jack.' Sarcastic even in such situations, Happy would have been shaking his head, if only he had one, at the erroneous referral.
"Calm, Diana. Elsa will be fine. We'll get help for her. We just have to get her up those mountains."
The queens eyes shone with realisation. "The trolls?"
While the kings eyes were resolute. "The trolls."
Eyes confused, "The heck are trolls?" Jack asked no one in particular.