Rise of the Guardians

Thanatos' Scribe

Chapter One

In every living thing, that breathed and aged and grew, there was one consistent, constant fear that some had early on, or reached at its end. This fear was sometimes met with dignity, other times met with pleas and bargaining.

Death was a silent part of the living. At the end of every life, from small, insignificant creatures, to the larger, smarter beings, Death had no discrimination. He wandered, seeking the dying to take their last breathes and set them free from their physical form to go wherever it was that that being needed or wanted to go.

Death came in many names, many forms. He was always feared, always known and yet never seen until it was too late. His cruelty was pronounced, the more along his path he traveled. Left alone to his own devices, his mind slowly began to warp. From the beginning, Death was once a kind and gentle being, forgiving and careful.

But alone, for lifetimes after lifetimes, in the silence of nothingness and vainly forgotten to avoid the terror that came at the end of life, Death was left by his own self, his own mind, his own thoughts. Dangerous to begin with, his pain began to eat away at his sanity until he craved suffering and despair and most importantly, fear. It gave him a moment of bliss, of feeling something other than crippling loneliness.

There were a few lives that he saved, those who he chose to be his followers, his deliverers. So few managed for long and those who did, became monsters that he destroyed without a thought. He kept them away from him, unknowingly afraid of them as well as knowingly disgusted by them. All of them chose to follow him to save them from death, no other reasons given.

Until the ladies of Fate intervened and brought to him, unknowingly, a life that could not be broken.

Everything was fuzzy, filled with pain. The girl struggled to look over, crying softly. Her cinnamon hair was coated liberally in blood, having suffered severe head trauma. Her only thought was of the other girl next to her. "Helene.." Her voice was hoarse.

Helene had her eyes opened, filled with terror and pain. Both of them were badly injured, their vehicle crushed and therefore, crushing them. Helena, who was the exact look-a-like of her twin, was gasping, tears forming.

There was a shadow that passed over the girl as she turned weakly. She faced the man, tall, thin, pale, and dark-eyed, whose emotionless face revealed nothing.

"Do you wish to live?"

It was such a simple question as the girl tried to answer.

"Only one may live. The other must go."

Helene was openly crying at this time. The girl turned toward her sister, remembering how beloved she was, how popular, and wonderful she was. That she was already on a road toward happiness while she still floundered about, trying to figure out exactly where she would stand when she had no ground of which to stand on.

She turned, her blue-gray eyes clear with her decision. "Take mine."

His eyes barely widened.

"Lana…" Her sister gurgled, blood oozing out of her mouth.

"Take my life. Let her live. She has a future."

Death stared at her, her eyes free of fear and pain, full of determination and love.

"As you wish." His hand reached down and as the sirens grew loudly as the ambulance, Lana breathed her last breath as her sister screamed in pain.

She had to rest for a while, unable to do anything. Unlike the others, Death kept her close, watching her silently. He only left once, about a week later, and came back to her as she was vainly trying to move.

She looked up at the man who resided in the armchair, eyes brooding. She managed to her feet, wobbly at best. She fell to her knees as she winced.

Lana's eyes moved up to his hand where she paled when she recognized what he held. Her sister's necklace, the same that she wore that the two had bought together when they were merely children.

"No."

Her eyes moved to meet his as he stared her down. "How could you? You said she would live!"

"She did. Until she took her own life." He stood up and threw the necklace to her lap. "Some are not as strong as you think, woman."

Lana slowly picked up the necklace. "Helene… no…why did you do that? You had so much wonderful things going for you…" Her eyes filled with tears. "Is she all right now?"

"She killed herself. There is no good place for that." He spoke, his voice clipped.

"I don't understand…"

"To bring your own death is to underhand my power and the Fates. She is now lost in purgatory, never to return."

She cried out as she crumbled. "Helene…!"

"If it helps," His voice was cold. "She felt no pain."

Death left her as Lana sobbed, her hand fisted with the necklace. "My sister… oh, god, Helene… no…"

Lana never recovered. Her sister's suicide rested on her shoulders like a heavy burden, the guilt eating her inside. Once Lana was recovered physically, she was trained to be Death's minion, to do his bidding when he was too busy with other deaths. She handled the weak, the elderly, the terminal, the ones whose time simply ended. She watched him do his work silently, hating how cruel he was, how emotionless he was to their pain and suffering.

Lana didn't have it in her to be cruel like Death. So she was soft-spoken, gentle, sweet. She waited out the dying before guiding them gently to the gate to the Fates, where their new beginning would start. Those who saw her, who dealt with her, never feared her.

They feared the shadow behind her, the silent, large being with hollow eyes. She outright ignored Death from time to time, doing her job as carefully as she always was. Lana returned to Death's home in the dark abyss of nothingness, where little grew and even littler had light.

For all of his cruelty, for his harsh personality, Death kept her closer to him, unable to really relinquish her. He surmised that she did a good job, even though not in the way he did it. But it was appreciated and as Lana never seemed to be touched by the taint of darkness that was all around, she was deemed fit to continue what she was to do per his bidding.

Lana was in the massive library, trying to find something to read that wasn't dark and dreary. She found a book of fairytales as she started to open it.

She felt the rustle of air and the sensation of being watched. She turned to see Death watching her. He did this often, as if to bother her.

She found that Death didn't bother her like he wanted to do. She smiled at him and waved the book. "Want me to read it to you?"

"No." He didn't move from his spot.

She walked closer carefully, to his side. He didn't like it when he was directly approached so she moved from the side until she was a few feet away from him.

She hesitated only momentarily. "Can I call you something?"

"You can call me Master."

She frowned at him. "Lana. My name is Lana. What's yours?"

"I have none."

"No, you have many names. What is the one you want me to call you?"

His eyes were piercing as there was a heavy moment of silence.

"Thanatos. You can call me Thanatos."

"That's great! You can call me Lana.. You know, instead of 'woman'."

He snorted and turned away. "Read at your own will and be silent."

Lana did read, pushing her hair over to rest over a single shoulder. Her finger twirled a strand as she lost herself in the fairytales, desperate to read some light in the world of darkness.

She resided with the man she now called Thanatos. She had her own wing, her own place that she decorated with bright and sunny colors. He never ventured anywhere near her so she assumed he cared nothing for her work or for her.

Lana didn't like one thing, however, and it was looking into the mirror. For all aspects, she remained the same. Slightly round face, with richly-hued Caucasian skin with moderately long cinnamon colored hair. She had a three-beaded barrette, colored blue-gray to match her eyes, on each side of her bangs, pulling them back to curl over her ears.

That wasn't what bothered her. It was seeing the blue lining on her body. It formed into partial squares upon her cheeks, followed down the main arteries of her body and across her hands and knuckles, all the way down her feet and heels.

It was his power, that was in place to control her should she ever do anything to displease him. She hadn't so far but she had seen him use it with another one of his minions. It was torture, plain and simple. So she hated it, wishing she did not bear such markings but he seemed as if he needed to control others so she let him do so. After all, she had agreed to death and for it, became a part of his legion.

It took her a while to learn something else about the markings. It changed colors with her emotions. At first, she was overcome in grief and shock of her death and the loss of her beloved twin, and then as time wove on, she began to adapt to her surroundings, to fit in enough that she felt comfortable again. It was actually a lot easier than she expected. She was rarely happy and even more rarely angry, not in her personality to be truly angry.

But she could be happy. When she lost herself in the fairytales, of uplifting stories, her mood was lifted and warmed. As such, the blue markings changed to a gold coloring, shining with the good emotion.

She discovered this by accident, as she was reading in the near dark and laughing softly to herself until the light was bright enough to be distracting. Looking into the vanity mirror, she stared with surprise at the change. It was different, warmer, happier. She felt better and since she learned of this adaptation, she sought to continue that feeling.

It never dawned on her that what she felt was transferred to Thanatos, whose confusion at feeling a foreign happiness was unnerving for him. He didn't know it was her for he was still too enriched in his own pain to realize it. So the two resided together, unaware of each other's marking on the other and how carefully, slowly, and very subtly, change was set in motion.

It was time, after a long period of nothingness, for danger to start to lurk. The Guardians were happily working toward making children happy. Keeping up the wonder and life and laughter. But there was a strangeness in the air that was disturbing North, who looked to the skies that seemed just a little bit darker than usual. He was outside, exercising the reindeer as several elves were preparing their food.

"Something is wrong," North mused. He turned to the coming night sky, where the moon was already visible. "Manny, what is wrong here?"

The Man in the Moon was silent. Whatever it was, wasn't something the Man in the Moon dealt with. That bothered North even more. He turned and reentered his home, tapping his beard as he tried to think.

Phil appeared at his side, always willing to listen to his friend. North finally noticed the Yeti as North spun around.

"What is in the air? Is there danger or something else? I can't tell."

Phil shrugged and looked upward and around. He ran his hand through his hair as he spoke in his garbled tongue.

"Is it what?" North was utterly confused. "An deity?"

Phil spoke louder.

"Entity?"

Phil pointed up to the window where the moon was visible.

"No, Manny doesn't seem to know."

Phil looked completely surprised. North shrugged at the Yeti. "Is strange, yes. It feels wrong but I cannot say why."

The wind burst in suddenly as the Tooth Fairy entered, frazzled. "North! North!"

"What is it, Toothy?"

Tooth held out a tooth, small and insignificant. "There's something leaking into the memories of children! There's something wrong with Death."

"What?"

"A bad memory is reoccurring in the memories of these children. Deaths that shouldn't be happening! Someone is doing it wrong and we need to do something!"

"We cannot even see Death!"

"No but we can see his minions."

"Are you sure?"

Tooth nodded. "I have seen a few of them. Not often but a couple in the span of a century. If we can capture one, we can get answers."

"But.. Are you sure it is Death?"

"There have been too many disasters happening. What looks to be natural isn't by man but by something supernatural. Not only that but there seems to be something more… I'm not familiar enough with Death to know what that is but we've all seen Death at one point in our lives and there has been something bad brewing for a long time."

"Is not doing his job right?" North asked, hushed.

"I'm not sure if it's him or one of his. Does it really matter? They're all the same, anyways!" Tooth shuddered in fear. "To cause death is their wish! We need to do something! We may protect the children but how can we protect the children if they die?"

"Not all die!"

"Well, a lot of people have been dying!"

"We will look into it, Tooth," North said soothingly. He really didn't want to, though. He, like all others, feared Death and his power, opting to leave him alone.

They never realized that had been the start of the problem. A problem now much too big to deal with.