A/N: Holy toledos, you guys are amazing. 8D Thank you so much for all your follows and reviews and favorites. I sincerely hope I can keep living up that standard. :) And also to Em, yeah, I pretty much just picked Saskatchewan because I love saying it and I know it gets a lot of snow. XD I have a friend from Wyoming who always talks about how they never got snow days there either, so she can sympathize. As with chapter one, reviews are most welcome and I promise to respond to them and I really hope that y'all enjoy this chapter as much as the first. ^-^
"What do you mean, Hate has taken him?" North growled. Pitch sighed heavily.
"I mean that Hate has taken him; it's reasonably straightforward, I should think. And before you can ask, no, I still do not know where to find him." Sandy arched an eyebrow and made an image of two people shaking hands over his head. Pitch scowled.
"We were friends once upon a time, but we had a falling-out after the Plague. Haven't spoken to him since. He's not a very pleasant person, you know…" North fixed his glare on Pitch, but he could feel in his belly that the nightmare spirit was telling the truth. It put them in an even worse spot.
Had Pitch taken Jack, they knew that they could fight him, and most importantly, win. But Hate was a whole other ball game. No doubt he had a plan in mind, but until they knew they couldn't stop him- or get Jack back. He turned to Sandy and nodded shortly; the other spirit nodded back.
"Okay Pitch, we believe you." They turned to leave but the nightmare spirit called after them,
"I know you're going to ignore me, but if I were you, I would not take Hate on."
"You are right," North called without looking back. "We are going to ignore you."
Bunny and Tooth had been scouring the woods for well over an hour and had yet to find any trace of the missing winter spirit. Nothing but fields of untouched snow and intricate patterns of ice and frost. "Kid can do some nice work," Bunny muttered as they moved along. "But none of this is helping us."
"Let's go to the edge of the snow," Tooth suggested, flitting along beside him. "That's where he was last; you know he would have put up a fight. If there's any sign of it, it'll be there." They hurried to the very edge of the snow, looking methodically from one end to the other, until they found what they were looking for. They froze, shocked.
It was absolute chaos. Patches of snow had been melted, scorch marks searing the earth below them, and more than a few trees had been knocked to the ground. Their freshly broken trunks poked up out of the drift and the remainders of them lay where they had crashed to the ground. Bunny's heart sank down to his feet when he saw Jack's staff, which never left his hands, tossed aside, half buried in snow.
Next to it was the largest scorch mark of all, intertwined with solid ice. In the ash, they could see a footprint, Jack's size. There was nothing beyond that. Tooth scanned anxiously, hoping to spot some further sign, while Bunny picked up the staff. It was cold, much like its owner, and somehow it just seemed so utterly wrong to see it without it being held in Jack's hands. Tooth buzzed back over.
"I can't find anything else," she said quietly. Bunny sighed and tapped his foot twice, opening up a warren.
"Let's go back to the Pole. I swear, when I find whoever did this they're gonna regret ever thinking about hurting him." He and Tooth gave one last look around and then left, the warren closing behind them and leaving behind a small yellow flower, in the middle of a battlefield.
"What do you mean it wasn't Pitch?" Bunny growled at North. "If it wasn't him, then who did?"
"It was not Pitch," North responded. "It was Hate who took Jack." The other two Guardians looked stunned.
"Hate?" Tooth exclaimed. "But I thought we got rid of him after the Plague?" Bunny scowled.
"Yeah, but we also figured we'd knocked out Pitch too, and that didn't turn out to be true." The Guardians fell silent, each in their own little world, worried for their friend. Jack was in the hands of a dangerous enemy, one even more dangerous than Pitch, and there was nothing they could do.
"Where did you find his staff?" North finally broke the somber silence.
"Up in Saskatchewan; you were right, mate. That was where they took him. He put up one hell of a fight, though. There were ice blasts and scorch marks all over the place." Sandy looked up suddenly, a small golden flame dancing over his head next to a question mark.
"You know what made those, Sandy?" Tooth asked excitedly. Sandy nodded and then another picture flashed over his head. Even in the glowing golden sand, it was a frightening picture. Vaguely shaped like yetis, but slightly smaller, they danced with flames and had their mouths open in roars.
"Firelings," North muttered. "Hate's servants; he must have sent them out to take Jack."
"Hang on a minute," Bunny interrupted, "if these things are made of fire, they'll leave a trail, won't they?" He looked at North, who shrugged.
"It is possible, but it would be hard to follow. They are careful about where they go."
"But still, it gives us a chance, doesn't it? If we can track them they'll lead us to Jack. I say we go for it." He looked around at the others. Tooth agreed, and after mulling it over, Sandy nodded his head and flashed a thumbs-up sign. North thought it over.
"I think you are right, Bunny. We must follow the Firelings. It is our only chance. Arm yourselves, everyone, and meet me back here in an hour." It took well less than an hour before they had all assembled back in the globe room, raring to go.
"What on earth is that?" Bunny asked North, gesturing to the odd-looking pack the Russian had on.
"This is little invention of mine," North responded with a grim smile. "Hopefully to make the Firelings quite uncomfortable. I plan on having a chance to use it." He didn't elaborate any further, instead heading for the sleigh. "Come on," he called. "This is the quickest way." The others hurried off after him, although Bunny looked decidedly green at the thought of another sleigh ride. Or perhaps orange was more the color. One flight (and several minutes of staring deliberately at nothing on Bunny's part) later, the sleigh landed in Saskatchewan.
"Okay," Tooth said, "I've got the fairies checking things out from the air; they'll tell us if they spot anything."
"Good," North responded. "Now let us get to work. We have a long way to go."
"It's time to wake up, Jack Frost. Now." Jack felt the voice more than he heard it, cutting through the unconsciousness like a knife. Slowly, he forced his eyes to open, fighting to keep them that way both because of exhaustion and because he didn't really want to see who was standing over him. Jack pushed himself into a sitting position with a groan and he heard his captor laugh.
"If you hadn't put up such a fight you wouldn't be so sore right now."
"Oh, so you're saying it's my fault?" Jack shot back sarcastically, eyes still focusing in the now dark room. He could see enough to watch the smirk slide off the face of the man standing in the doorway.
"You're a funny one, Jack; if I were you I would shut up." Jack still couldn't quite see clearly, but he could certainly tell when the Firelings came into the room, flickering like living torches. "Now, you and I have some things to discuss."