Alright, so it's been a very long while since I've written any form of fanfiction, but I've fallen in-love with RotG - more specifically Sandy and Pitch - and I just could not resist. :)
This will probably end up being a fair few chapters long, I am very much looking forward to twining the plot for this piece, and dearly hope you lovely readers enjoy reading this as much as I am enjoying writing it!
The second part is already under way and yes Sandy will make his grand appearance. Until then, happy reading! 3
Pitch groaned as he gained consciousness and shifted, attempting to will his battered body into a sitting position from where he lay crumpled against a fallen pillar. He had been lying there for what seemed an eternity now, loosing track of time early on in his confinement to the realm of shadows for light did not reach down into this abyss. No, only the void, malign darkness dared to habituate the space alongside he and the fearlings.
Grunting slightly and using the rounded slope of the colonnade behind him the Nightmare King began the arduous task of hoisting himself up into a reclining position, an action which took every ounce of energy and determination he possessed, but slowly and with careful manoeuvring of aching limbs was able to slide down so that his back pressed against the cool stone and his legs stretched horizontally out before him. It was at this point that Pitch realized just how pitiful his situation had become – he was unable to even move without a burning agony flaring down every muscle and any thought of ever leaving this now dreadful place was fading quickly as his sanity seemed to be.
Across the darkness, a sudden scuffling noise began and Pitch snapped his head up with a wince at the unwelcome sound. He could barely make out the shifting flicker of animated black in his weakened state amongst the rest of the dark, but vague outlines caught his heavy eyes and he knew with out a doubt that the nightmares and fearlings were fighting each other for a chance to feed off of him when awareness left once again. It sent a maddening desperation shooting along his veins and something inside of him cried achingly for something he couldn't quite remember or grasp at, but longed wholly for nonetheless.
How long had he been here, left to rot in nothing but pain and fear? A day, a week, a year – a decade, perhaps a century? Maybe an eternity had come and gone while he had suffocated, struggled for anything other than this maddening hurt for which there was no reprieve from. There was no way to tell however, because there was nothing but this endless torture and, Pitch was beginning to suspect, that was all there was ever going to be... could he even remember anything else, fathom what it was to not feel as though his insides were being ripped out and stuffed back in time and time again?
He couldn't.
And it struck his ailing sanity then that maybe this really was all there had ever been. Maybe he had never been anything more than this writhing creature of anguished terror – a raw bundle of nerves whose only purpose was to sustain the malignant wraiths ruling the Stygian underworld he had become prisoner to. Rulers who were waiting – as they always were – for the moment when Pitch would succumb to unconsciousness once again. It was then they would strike, after the unending nightmares had eroded his will to mere scraps and the fear had taken such a hold that he was left no other choice but to scream, or else tear apart completely at the seams. This was how they would take him, thrashing with desperation and what little strength he had left, to the tune of his own broken sobbing – wrapped tightly in the nightmare sand he had once so masterfully controlled.
But that had been before; before the guardians and Jack Frost, before everything had been laid to waste, his cleverly conceived plans destroyed by the hands of the ice brat and his rag-tag group of do-good friends. Now both his nightmares and the fearlings, trapped also as they were with him in this hell, had turned upon the one they had once obeyed as master. Not that Pitch could fault them, for they were animals and it was merely instinct to survive by whatever means necessary – even if that means had to be Pitch himself.
Though surely there had to be more than this vague apathetic daze and merciless pang of backlash his twisted existence had been rendered into, but for the mockery of life within him Pitch could not quite discern what that more could possibly be. It felt as though there was some crucial piece to a layered puzzle that had maybe been there before, but was now gone – lost amongst morbid snatches of his mind and lingering just a breadth out of reach.
It was maddening, really, he thought humourlessly. Maddening in a sense that brought the tentative fragility of hysterics bubbling up inside of him and even his opulent grasp on what could barely be considered reality was beginning to shatter despairingly. And it was with this sinking notion of his waning evanescence that Pitch finally found himself tumbling over the precarious edge and into the fragmented world that had always menacingly simmered below him.
A numb, creeping haze settled across his mind – there was a snap, followed by a deafening shriek.
He began to laugh.
And once again knew nothing but obliterating darkness.
"Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true." - Demosthenes, Third Olynthiac