03 – Allies and Enemies
His staff was beautiful.
It had always had a rugged, natural beauty. But now – even without his frost clinging to the wood – it shone.
Jack stared at it, hardly dared to believe it was his. It was as though they had broken the metal from Pitch's sword down to its smallest components and then sprayed them onto the wood itself. The ridges and whorls of wood-grain were still visible, but over them, in fine particles, glittered a silvery sheen.
'Go on. Take it,' the Head Smith said, a glow of pride in his eyes.
Jack drew a breath, took it from the Head Smith's hands. It seemed like hardly any metal at all had been used for the entire staff and yet it glowed in the firelight. Jack exhaled hard as his frost started to creep up and down the staff just as naturally as it always had. He lifted it thoughtfully. It didn't feel much heavier, though he could tell there was a slight increase in weight; nothing like what he had initially expected.
'Will the ice affect it?' Jack said, staring at the coils of frost moving over the silvery particles of metal. It didn't seem possible, the ice seemed to make the metal even more impressive, it gleamed with increased brightness.
'You wanted to preserve the staff's power, and so we did. We're Glasera. We don't make mistakes. We can't,' the Head Smith said.
Jack swung the staff through the air and a cool wind answered, whipped around everyone. He grasped it in both hands and brought it down and snow answered. After so long without holding his staff, he felt even closer to it than he had before. He didn't care if it was wrong to be so sentimentally attached to an object, it was like an extra limb. He gazed at in awe as the ice followed its call.
'Now the arrowheads for you,' the Head Smith said, and Gwyn stepped forward, his body thrumming with the kind of nervous excitement that many children had at Christmas.
Instead of single arrowheads that still needed arrow shafts, the Head Staff unwrapped a bundle of arrows, finely made. Two of the arrows were huge; long and with wicked points at the end. Jack thought they looked almost like spears.
'Mail bodkins,' Gwyn said, tracing a single finger down the centre of the longest arrows.
'You didn't specify which bow, and I know you use three,' the Head Smith said. 'So! Three for your recurve. One for your crossbow. Two for your longbow. Figured you'd not be able to complain then.'
'I don't see anything to complain about here,' Gwyn said quietly, and he wrapped the arrows back up, carefully.
'Now, a chain.'
The Head Smith pulled the chain out of his pocket. It was longer than Jack had expected, made of thin, tiny, interlocking pieces. Jack held his hand out and the Head Smith carefully lowered it into the palm of his hand.
'This metal has an interesting property,' the Head Smith said. 'This chain won't break unless you have the right tools to break it. And you won't, because the Glasera and a handful of other wights are the only ones who have those tools; which is why you came to us, presumably.'
In the palm of his hand, it didn't look like much at all; a coiled filament of delicate metal. Jack closed his fingers around it. He looked at his staff.
'Does that mean my staff can't be broken?'
'Well, the wood isn't covered completely, so we can't say. But someone would really have to put their back into it. I'd say it'd be a damn sight harder to break.'
Jack remembered how awful he had felt when the Nightmare King had snapped his staff in two, and thought that having a hard-to-break staff was a good thing. He didn't want to ever feel like that again.
'Now. This one gave us some problems, but we wanted to get it done right, so it was worth it.'
Jack stepped back nervously as the seven foot tall blacksmith stepped forwards with the wrapped axe. The blades were broad and long, and had been heavily wrapped in protective fabric. Jack watched him unwind the cloth, feeling himself grow afraid. He didn't want to see it. This, more than anything, more – even – than his staff, was the reminder that he couldn't get the sword back again.
What was I thinking? What have I done?
Jack gasped as the weapon was revealed. Gwyn murmured in quiet appreciation.
It was a long, double-bladed axe, designed for a strong, powerful, tall warrior. The wood of the handle was black, and augmented with some of the same metal particles that covered the entirety of Jack's staff. The blades were...
Jack's eyes widened.
'The lunar alphabet,' he whispered, staring at the silvery ornate lettering that had been traced onto the black metal on the flat of the axe-blades. It brought to mind Pitch's robes, the embroidery, a language that Pitch had remembered, had spent time writing into his journal, quietly. 'You... but how?'
'We wrote it down of course,' the Head Smith said, as though Jack was stupid, 'and then incorporated it into the final design. Don't know what it means, but... there was a lot of writing in the sword. Didn't want to lose it. Maybe it said something important. Maybe it was a recipe for mead. Who knows?'
The flat of the axe blades themselves were made of an opaque black metal, the one that Gwyn must have asked for. But the sharpest points of the axe blades, curving down symmetrically on both sides, gleamed a white-silver metal sharpened to a wicked point; Pitch's sword repurposed. And across both sides of the double blades, the lunar alphabet, carefully lettered, painstakingly etched in the same metal of the sword itself.
It was a weapon both terrible and beautiful.
'We did the best we could,' the Head Smith said, staring up at the blades. 'It was criminal to ruin a sword like that. Would that I could meet the smiths who made it.'
'It's very fine,' Gwyn said, as the other smith started to wrap the axe back up again. When it was fully wrapped, the Head Smith handed the axe to Jack, but Gwyn took it in both of his hands.
'Now that he no longer has to carry the sword for himself, I think it might be best if I shouldered this beast.'
After that, they said their goodbyes. The Head Smith and Iskala followed them all the way to the entrance of their caves. Jack couldn't tell exactly – it wasn't like they were smiling or more cheerful than usual – but he thought the Head Smith seemed happier with them now that the transaction had been completed and all the new items had been made.
As they were waved off, the Head Smith called out:
'Good luck! But I'm not holding out much hope, if I'm honest!'
Jack shook his head.
'Then I guess you don't know me very well!' he called back.
As Gwyn and Jack walked away, Gwyn looked down at Jack.
'That was bravado, wasn't it?' he said.
Jack looked at Gwyn, glad that he seemed mostly free of worst of the dra'ocht. He'd gone back to thinking of Gwyn as an irritating ally.
'Oh man, you have no idea.'
Gwyn laughed to himself in appreciation. Jack's lips quirked up into a smile.
He stopped and took out the locket, threaded it onto the chain while he leaned his staff against himself, and then he double looped it around his neck. He tucked the locket down under his sweatshirt and hid the chain beneath the material as much as he could. He felt strange wearing it, but he hadn't wanted to leave the likeness of Pitch's daughter in his pocket like that. He wanted a reminder, something that kept him concentrating on what he had to do. He could feel the metal against his skin; not cold, exactly, but there. A pressure that reminded him that he couldn't give up.
Gwyn placed a hand on Jack's shoulder, Jack flinched. It was the closest Gwyn had come to him, since Jack had kissed him. He was worried about the glamour affecting him..
'What?' he said, and looked up reluctantly. Gwyn looked back as if he knew exactly what Jack was worried about.
'We don't have to descend the mountain. The transaction is done. Let's go.'
Gwyn dissolved them both into light.
Later, at North's Workshop, Gwyn laid the axe in its wrappings carefully on Pitch's unmade bed. Jack stood in the doorway, feeling numb and disconnected from everything. It was the first time he'd seen Pitch's bed since the battle. North hadn't made it, and the elves and the yeti had left it alone. It looked like it had just been slept in. It looked like any moment, the person who it belonged to would be returning. Would come home.
And Jack remembered that the reason it wasn't made, was that Pitch and Jack had been lying on it together. That Jack had rucked up the sheets without realising as he'd asked Pitch to be with him, when Pitch had refused. He remembered that Pitch hadn't bothered to neaten the bed before they'd headed off to the school.
As though he'd expected to return to make it later.
Jack stared at the wrinkles and creases and folds and thought he was a balloon floating above himself, somewhere far away. He knew it should bother him more, knew that maybe even the numbness was a sign that it did, but he couldn't connect with any of it.
Gwyn walked past him, and pulled the door closed so that Jack couldn't see the bed anymore.
'I'll be back later, for training,' Gwyn said, and Jack stared at him in shock.
'Today?'
'Yes. See you then!'
Before Jack could protest, could ask for some time to bury himself in sleep, Gwyn simply melted into light. Jack's numbness evolved into irritation.
'Stupid Gwyn and his stupid training,' Jack muttered, rubbing a hand across his forehead, wondering – not for the first time – what the hell he'd gotten himself into.
He looked around the rest of the Workshop, considering. He felt like he'd changed since scaling the mountain to visit the Glasera dwarves. He had a shiny lacquer on his staff to prove it. He knew that toys were important, he knew that, but he also couldn't help but wonder how much stronger North would be if the yeti put down their toymaking and helped to fortify the factory. He looked at windows and entrances and measured them in terms of their vulnerability to attack. This was the place where the Nain Rouge had entered, storming the Workshop, attacking North. It was a place that was only safe from the Unseelie Court because it was now warded.
Jack found North in one of his many design rooms. This one held shelf after shelf of teleporting snowglobes, each globe of glass containing a constant swirl of snow and clouds, lightning and flashes of coloured light. North screwed another globe of glass into a new base and then fumbled and almost dropped it when he saw Jack.
'Jack!' North said, beaming, 'I have been thinking of you! It is so good to see you!'
He stood up, and Jack tried to wave him back down again, but North was having none of it. In two giant steps he'd reached Jack and was spreading his arms for a hug that would envelop him with warmth and the smell of baked goods and the reminder of what it was like to be cared for and Jack just didn't want it. He stepped back, holding up a hand, hoping North would understand.
Expressions played over North's face. First confusion, then hurt, and finally – in the way he sighed hugely and dropped his arms – something like resignation or disappointment.
'Can I tell you something? A secret? You cannot tell anyone,' North said seriously.
'I- Sure,' Jack said, disconcerted.
North looked down at his own hands, and then back up at Jack. He looked...lost. His thick, black eyebrows, so expressive, twisted together.
'I saw little girl. So little. And she was not breathing, Jack. Her little body on that floor at school gym. I am not as hardened or fierce as I used to be. The passing of time, ah, it has changed me. I could not save little girl, but I became certain to check all Guardians were okay, at least. This is my job, yes? This is part of my purpose. But I could not stop thinking about little girl, and then of you and how you helped the other children. I thought of your strength, in that school. I think of it since, many, many times. My secret is that I miss you, Jack. I miss you, and now you don't let me embrace you, like friends?'
Jack closed his eyes. That little girl – Stacey – and the friend who had seen her die – Patty – the one who had bravely picked up Jack's snowballs and helped to throw them at the other children, ensured that no one else had died. At the time, he'd decided that he would follow up on Patty, make sure she was okay. But in the aftermath, he'd not been able to find the time. He couldn't have predicted that his whole concentration would be taken up with making sure that he could get Pitch back.
'Maybe if I stand here quietly,' North said, 'you will come up and give me a quick embrace.'
Jack shook his head, but a smile crept over his face all the same. North could tell that Jack was finding his huge embraces overwhelming, and he'd already come up with a compromise. It was also novel to feel like he had something to offer someone else. That he could be missed. He'd spent so long seeking affection that it was strange to realise that someone might want it in return, from him.
Jack stepped forwards and wrapped his arms around North's middle, smelling ginger and soot, honey and something like motor oil. He was glad that the paranoia he'd had of crying or breaking apart simply by being near North was not coming to pass. He squeezed harder, and closed his eyes when North laid a broad, gentle hand over his shoulder.
'There,' North said. 'This part is easy part. You are changing, but you do not have to become stranger, no?'
Jack stepped back and looked up at North, offered an apologetic smile. He had thought that North would try and force him to change his mind about rescuing Pitch, he had thought that North would want him to become emotional and deal with his loss, that he would want Jack to move on.
North gasped when he saw Jack's staff. He held a hand out in a simple question, and Jack placed it into his palm. North's fingers curled around it, and he gazed at it, and then his eyes widened impossibly.
'No, you could not,' North said in shock. 'This feels like magic metal, the kind Pitch...'
'I had to,' Jack said quickly, feeling like he was in some kind of dry-run, practicing for Pitch's reaction when he saw what Jack had done.
'But who did this? Who turned sword to this? Even I do not have skills for this. Most would not. The craftsmanship is very fine, look at that, it reminds me of Glasera work. Robust. Intricate. Beautiful.' North kept turning the staff, staring at it in every direction, and then finally handed the staff back to Jack. 'Who did this?'
'It's Glasera work,' Jack said, uncomfortably.
North laughed in complete disbelief, the booming sound lasting as long as it took for North to realise that Jack hadn't moved, his expression hadn't changed, that he wasn't joking. Not joking, apparently I'm not good at that anymore, either.
'You scaled mountain?' North said, and Jack nodded.
'Gwyn helped.'
'Jack,' North breathed. 'Jack, I did not think... I was not thinking. I should have seen that you would do anything, but I did not imagine well enough what that anything would be.'
'Actually,' Jack said quickly, because he wanted to put the events on the mountain behind him, look ahead to what came next. 'Actually, I'm here to ask you a favour. But I have to sort of draw it out. Can I draw on your window?'
'I have paper,' North said, brow furrowing, and Jack flew over to the window he'd indicated when North didn't say no. Pen ink didn't behave in his hands, pencils were crude and graphite shattered, chalk froze and disobeyed; frost and his fingers would do just fine. He iced the window up quickly, making sure he let it move over the glass pane evenly. He was aware of how precious his frost was, these days. Spending days on the mountain unable to use his powers, and now knowing that they were even more reduced than they used to be, left him more aware of his limitations than ever before. It hadn't been so long ago, but he could hardly remember how freely he would use his powers, taking them for granted, assuming they would always be abundantly available.
'I want to focus the light that Gwyn makes,' Jack said, hovering as he sketched the first concept into the window. 'Something like this...'
'A laser?' North said, quietly. He stepped closer and peered at the design while Jack quickly started sketching out his second idea. This one would take longer to convey, since it wasn't like anything he'd ever seen before. 'How did you think of this?'
'Well, ice, of course,' Jack said, as he drew circle after circle, and connected them together with lines. 'Because clear ice is-'
'This is very clever,' North said, and Jack ignored the way he said it some surprise. He got it, already, he was no genius mastermind or anything. Previously he'd been using most of his inventiveness to figure out how to make the best snow days, and how to cheer kids up, and how to make sure sleds took the most exciting paths possible. He could forgive North being surprised that Jack had anything of this in him.
'Yeah, but can you do it?' Jack said, floating back once he finished the second drawing. 'I don't even know if either of these will work. We need...prototypes, or something.'
North nodded, and then pointed at Jack's second design.
'This is being high-tech snowball.'
Jack laughed, because that was exactly what it looked like. Or a soccer ball gone terribly wrong. He was less confident in the second design, since he'd never really studied science and he only knew about light and what it could do from seeing how sunlight played in icicles and snow and ice, and seeing the golden light after repeated training sessions. He was working off instinct, he had no idea how to begin building what he'd thought of, he could only suggest the ideas of the objects, and hope North caught on.
Jack looked at the 'high-tech snowball' drawn into the frost on the window, and pushed his palms out over it, closing his eyes in concentration. He drew the shape forth into the three-dimensional, holding it together with tiny ice crystals, spinning it slowly so that North might be able to see it more clearly.
North made a sound of realisation, and then stared at Jack in shock.
'Jack, this is serious weapon.'
'Yeah, yeah here's hoping. If you can make it, it's going to be a very serious weapon, I know.'
Jack let the ice crystals fall away, crouched on the tip of his staff as he settled in front of North again.
'I am having ideas already,' North said, 'I can start today, if you like.'
'Anyone ever tell you that you're awesome?' Jack said, and hopped down to the ground and turned to leave, wondering if he could catch a nap before Gwyn arrived. Given the option, he wanted to sleep for days, but the locket against his skin reminded him that it could wait. He could rest at his leisure later. Not now.
He turned, surprised, when North walked forwards quickly and stepped in front of him, blocking his exit. It was easy to forget sometimes that North could be fast, since he carried all his bulk with him. But he was fit and muscular beneath his size and tattoos.
'What are the bloodstains on your clothing?' North said, eyes narrowing, and Jack frowned. He'd forgotten he was still wearing the same hoodie he'd worn up the mountain. The same one that had stuck to the blood on his back.
'The mountain had its hard moments.' It was all Jack was willing to say on the matter. He didn't know when he'd find time to steal another sweatshirt. He had to stop ruining his clothing with blood. Perhaps it said something about his life choices that this was the second time he'd have to think about getting a replacement. Maybe he could just steal a whole lot at once and stash them somewhere.
'I have clothes that fit you, more like this, in storage. Yeti – David – will get them for you. And will clean this one too. They are very good at these things.'
Jack pursed his lips, tilted his head.
'North, are you saying that you have replacement clothing for me? In your Workshop?'
North flushed, and then laughed.
'I make toys. Clothes. Cannot help it. Now! One more thing, before you leave.'
North's expression became sombre, and Jack closed his eyes. Here it comes, some kind of lecture.
'I know, Jack. I know you are not dealing with things,' North said, and Jack rolled his eyes.
'I'm dealing fine, North. Look at me, it's not like I've spent my days huddled up whimpering in a ball in my shack or in the room you gave me. I have a job to do, I'm focused, and you know, I think I'm doing okay.'
'No, I know,' North said, stubbornly. 'When was the last time you visit children? Make snow day? Feel like throwing snowballs? I know, Jack.'
Now that Jack knew more about centres, thanks to Gwyn, he understood what North was referring to. But it was more than that, too. When was the last time he'd felt like throwing snowballs? When had he last considered a snow day? It wasn't that long ago that he had felt like someone being dragged into a war that wasn't his to begin with; that he wanted nothing to do with. Now, he couldn't imagine being so carefree. Something twinged inside of him, a small and tiny spasm inside of his stomach, but it was easy enough to dismiss.
'North...' Jack said, wishing he knew what to say.
'I wish I could do more,' North said. 'I will be here though, when you are starting to deal with these things. And you will. And when I see that it is starting, I will not wait for you this time. I will try and be there.'
Jack's hand drifted up to touch the skin over his stomach absently. He'd felt that twinge again, and alongside it, he felt touched. He didn't know what to say. He had never thought that North could be like this, to him. Oh, maybe he'd hoped it when he was at his most alone, but hope was not like being realistic. At some point North had changed from behaving in the way Jack expected he would, to behaving in a way that Jack had barely dared hope for.
He found himself grateful, with no way to convey it.
'Do you think my centre will ever be fun again?' Jack said, the words escaping his mouth before he realised how heavily the question had been weighing on him.
North smiled sadly.
'It is still there, somewhere. I am sure. It is just being rotated out of the centre. Maybe for you, it is like clock. When the time is right, it will return.'
Jack couldn't help but return North's smile at the image he'd evoked. Jack didn't know if he was right, didn't even know if he wanted North to be right. Maybe if he'd been a little less focused on fun, he would have been better prepared when the Nain Rouge attacked him. He would have been more able to sit in on meetings and actually offer something useful before the shadows had possessed Pitch. There were consequences that came with every centre – Jack understood that now – he didn't know if he was ready to accept the particular consequences associated with having a centre that represented fun.
Gwyn was able to make the golden light detach from his sword in a separate beam now, and had obviously been working hard at it; but Jack could see that it was clearly a poor imitation of what Pitch had been able to create.
But Jack couldn't throw stones on the matter. Even his own frost and snow was a poor imitation of what he used to be able to call into existence. It wasn't the metal on the staff that was the problem, he could tell. The Head Smith had been right, he had preserved Jack's ability to use the staff as a channel for his powers perfectly; if anything, Jack sometimes suspected the metal actually strengthened or enhanced what he was doing, though he couldn't tell how, and sometimes he thought that he was just telling himself that to further justify what he'd done to Pitch's sword. Besides, even if it was enhancing his powers, he still wasn't as powerful as he had been anymore, and he just had to accept that. He knew that sometimes it was important to just make the best of a bad situation.
And a bad situation was definitely training with Gwyn.
He'd thought that training with Pitch was bad enough, but Pitch had actually relented when Jack hit his limits, and Gwyn showed no signs of letting up. He demanded that Jack copy stances, that he observe closely, and the look of disappointment on his face when Jack missed something, or simply wasn't paying attention, was profound enough that Jack wanted to avoid it. But he never managed to avoid it, and it seemed like Gwyn's face was going to set permanently in a glower of disapproval.
Jack wasn't good at copying others. He wasn't skilled at this unnatural method of observation. Not only that, but Gwyn's battle technique was not particularly fluid and didn't suit the way he liked to move. It was also difficult to make the light-infused snow with him. Unlike Pitch, Gwyn could not just sent ray after ray of strong, powerful light into the air. Jack couldn't just fly and wait for one to overtake him, before he seeded it with snow and frost. He had to keep his eyes on the ground, had to catch the ray of light before it burnt out, and it was almost always too weak to seed by the time it reached Jack.
In the end, he realised he may have to start seeding them with snow from the ground, and then get into the air to create the storms. But he didn't know if there'd be enough light for more than a small cloud, and he didn't know how long it would last for.
He was tired, frustrated, annoyed at Gwyn's lack of ability and annoyed at his own fatigue. Several times his hands had clenched around his staff in anger, and he'd had to restrain himself from simply sending a bolt of frost lightning towards Gwyn and then flying off in the opposite direction.
Jack was sick of it when Gwyn tried to get him to copy a drill that clearly wasn't designed for his staff, his body. It was so counter-intuitive to everything he knew that he slammed the butt of his staff down into compacted snow and glared. He ignored the frost lightning that accidentally shot from the end of his staff.
Gwyn returned Jack's glare with a scowl of his own, and they faced each other stubbornly.
'You can throw as many tantrums as you like,' Gwyn said, 'You committed to this, and you committed because you know it's necessary. You can't tell me after today that we're in good shape to go up against the Nightmare King, or anyone at this point.'
Jack didn't want to hear logic, didn't want Gwyn to be right.
'You can't keep telling me what to do like this! You're not even...I'm not like you! I'm not like Pitch!'
Jack gritted his teeth, he became aware of how much of his anger was directed at himself. He looked down at the ground, something like acid rocketing through him.
He couldn't tell Gwyn that he secretly wanted to be able to do this, that he had hoped it would be easy to overcome now that his centre had changed even though his instincts had told him it wouldn't be. He couldn't say that the idea of making Pitch or Gwyn proud appealed to him, because that was laughable, wasn't it? He didn't do things like that. He wasn't good at making people proud of him; not so long ago, he wasn't even good at being noticed. He felt the truth of Gwyn's statements as a personal condemnation; he wasn't like Gwyn, or Pitch. His best had to be enough, it had to be, but-
'Then tell me what to do,' Gwyn said, his eyes fierce. 'If I have to switch who's in charge of who in order to make this work, then I'll do it. Go on. Take over. You direct this.'
Jack stared in shock. Gwyn's expression seemed to say, 'Well? I'm waiting,' and Jack ignored it while he considered his abrupt change in circumstances.
If he could control what they worked on, where would he start? What would he do?
'You're always making the light with those drill movements Pitch taught you,' Jack said, thoughtfully. 'Do you ever just...improvise? Like, surely you'd have a natural fighting style? I mean, you could manipulate light way before Pitch, right? That's a thing you can do?'
'My innate light isn't effective against the shadows,' Gwyn said.
'Yeah, well, we know that. I just...you ever considered trying to be a bit more organic about it? Maybe it'd make the light stronger, if it came more naturally. It's hard to seed clouds from the ground. Snow doesn't work like that. It falls from the sky. And sure, I can make it at our level,' Jack waved his staff across his body and a snow flurry followed, before falling towards the ground, 'but it's going to be super weak, if we do that.'
Jack waved his staff again thoughtfully, looked at the snow that followed it, and then thought about how else they could use the golden light. It refused to meld with the frost lightning, but there were other forms of ice, other ways they could possibly distribute it.
'How's your cold tolerance?' Jack said, smiling.
Gwyn shrugged, as though cold was no matter to him.
Jack hopped lightly into the air, though he stayed very low to the ground. In almost no time at all, he'd dropped the air temperature further, created a thick mist of diamond dust; the tiny ground-level ice crystals that hung lightly in the air like mist. In the end, he'd created enough that visibility had dropped, and Jack landed near Gwyn, satisfied with it.
'Can you infuse this with the golden light?'
Gwyn used one of the drills that Pitch had taught him, and Jack noticed that Gwyn didn't move as seamlessly as Pitch did. Pitch had used his sword as though it was an extra limb in a complicated dance. Gwyn made the movements more purposeful, but in doing so, took away some of its fluidity.
Still, he made a flare of golden light, and the ice crystals hung onto it, slowed down its progression and held it longer than the clear air had. It took at least twice as long to dissipate. Jack thought of the possibilities. It could be a temporary barrier perhaps, it could be used to distract. It was no giant cumulonimbus infused with light, but it had potential.
Gwyn turned to Jack, a spark in his pale eyes.
'We should have done this earlier,' he said. 'Now, do you want me to do it again?'
'Yeah,' Jack said, relieved that Gwyn no longer looked disappointed, 'yeah, that would be great.'
Jack's life took on a pattern that was painfully familiar. He trained during the day, and he slept at night, having worked himself into exhaustion. It was a familiarity that made him think of Pitch, of how he'd spent himself up leading up to the battle with the Nain Rouge, with Augus Each Uisge.
In the evenings, he slept on Sandy's sand-cloud, whether Sandy was there or not. Sandy's quiet company was one of the few things that allowed him to fall asleep more peacefully, it eased the grinding, relentless pain in his heart. It made the hard ice he'd formed around the core of himself seem clearer, as though he could see through it to what he was trying to do. It clarified his spirit, made things less muddled for a while. And while Sandy didn't give him good dreams – he seemed to be able to tell that Jack couldn't bear them – there was something about sleeping on the golden sand that just acted like a gentle, warm sleep tonic.
Sandy was also as tired as he'd ever been, working more fervently than ever to send good dreams out to those who needed them during a time when people were increasingly stressed and anxious. And between that, he kept poring through threads and strands of golden sand, looking for the tiny pieces of Mora.
Sandy benefitted from what had become a symbiotic arrangement. The transparent metallic coating on Jack's staff – that now made it sheen silver in certain angles of light – did have the power to keep the Nightmare King away. And while he carried it near him, the Nightmare King couldn't penetrate his mind, and he left Sandy alone as well, if they slept at the same time. When Jack realised this, he'd shared the information with Gwyn, who had then left three of his new arrows with North. One arrowhead for each of the remaining Guardians; North, Toothiana and Bunnymund. They had each been plagued by harrowing nightmares whenever they dared rest. North had tried to refuse, but Gwyn had insisted, maintaining that they would be easy enough to pick up again when they were no longer necessary.
Gwyn's faith that Jack would find a way to get Pitch back was terrifying. Jack hadn't done anything to earn that faith, and it made him fear that he would only end up disappointing everyone; himself and Pitch most of all.
The swirling black dust-cloud that was Mora hadn't seemed to mind the metal from Pitch's sword touching Jack's staff too much, but even so, Jack had asked Sandy about it. Whether it would hurt her. Sandy had made a long string of symbols that didn't make any sense and ended with an exclamation mark and a light-bulb that meant he had an idea. Jack still wasn't skilled at understanding Sandy's symbolic language, but he found it easy to trust Sandy's intentions.
His days were spent checking in with North and the quiet awe that came from seeing something he'd drawn into frost, being turned into real, functional objects. He spent afternoons training, surprised that Gwyn had been serious about allowing him to take the lead. Ever since that day, Gwyn waited for Jack to direct him. There were times where he argued, times where he his eyes flared with anger or disapproval, but there were also times where he patiently explained his point or suggested another way of doing something. There were even times when Gwyn watched him in a considering manner, appraising.
Jack learned that as a leader, he could be inventive, and that he was willing to do something over and over again if people weren't telling him to do it; but if someone told him to do something, he put his back up and refused, even if he could see the merits of doing it. He didn't have the time to wonder where that came from, or the time to change it; so he accepted it instead. If he was the only one getting on his back about something, it didn't seem so bad anyway. More than that, he was learning a sense of his strengths and weaknesses, and Gwyn's as well. It became easier to dismiss the dra'ocht, and the more the confusing glamour fell away, the more he began to get a sense of Gwyn. The more he trained with him, the more he saw the distinctions between Gwyn and Pitch. They had elements in common, certainly, but Gwyn was nothing like Pitch, and as Jack came to understand that, he began to get a better understanding of how Gwyn moved through the world.
It was that increasing synchronisation that allowed them to spontaneously develop new drills that merged their abilities together in a way that took advantage of their strengths. Jack could seed the storm clouds from the ground after all, if he called a wind to him first that would sweep the snow and ice crystals upwards. The technique of infusing diamond dust with light could be used to create a brief dome of light around them both that would temporarily keep shadows at bay and allow them to focus on other attacks.
Jack walked a tightrope between allowing himself to feel hopeful that all of his efforts would be successful, and wondering how anything would ever be effective against the Nightmare King, let alone the rest of the Unseelie Court. If he let himself feel too hopeful, it hurt too badly when he entered reality and considered what he was up against. And if he let himself consider how futile their task was, the pit of despair inside of him yawned open, maw hungry and waiting to swallow him whole.
Jack felt as though he was on the precipice of something terrible. Training distracted him. Sleep allowed him to bury his awareness of it. But between those things, he felt like he was being eroded. His internal landscape was being scoured with Antarctic winds. He had imagined the core of ice and resolve within himself strengthening so often, that he was finding it hard to feel anything at all with clarity. Emotions were unclear and jagged, and whenever he didn't like them, he pushed them down. Unfortunately, he didn't like any of his emotions. Whether good or bad, they were all minefields. Nothing was trustworthy.
He knew he'd changed and was still changing. He thought that if he just stopped long enough to see how much, he'd regret it, he'd realise that something had gone terribly, terribly wrong.
And that just made him work harder.
He didn't have time to focus on anything else except getting Pitch back.
He would know what to do.
As the sun set, causing puffs of altocumulus to glow gold and then pink, one of the yeti approached Gwyn and Jack in the training arena and waved them both inside. Jack lowered his staff, Gwyn sheathed his sword, and Jack found himself clenching his hands together in excitement. When he'd checked in on North that morning, North had pushed him out of the door, saying, 'Too close to end now to show you, must wait!'
Could they be ready?
'I forgot to ask earlier, but anymore reports about the Unseelie Court?' Jack asked, as Gwyn walked up the steps and Jack floated next to him.
'Nothing new. Albion reports that he's won back several aquifers and other water sources throughout the UK, but it's a tentative victory. He's a sea wight trying to reclaim fresh water for weaker fae, it's a tenuous situation. Still, no new confirmed sightings of the Nightmare King outside of nightmares being sent out en masse, and nothing of Augus Each Uisge either. To tell the truth, I like it more when I know what they're doing. Not this preternatural quiet.'
Jack didn't know what he preferred. Gwyn was someone who accounted for his actions, accounted for what was happening in his Court, and had taken up the habit of telling Jack how many new fae were without homes, how many were wasting away without access to their lakes, how many landscapes were becoming bleached of their life-force. Humans were calling the subsequent land disease that caused plants to shrivel and soils to lose their nutriment; the Blight. It only affected certain places, locations where land spirits had been forcibly ousted. Gwyn said that nothing like it had ever happened in his living memory, that a Fae King would abuse his power to such a degree that it would destroy landscapes like this.
The idea that the Nightmare King and the Each Uisge were not working at their full strengths, and that the Blight, the deaths of fae, removing them from their homes, was their version of 'laying low,' filled Jack with horror. What possible endgame could Augus have?
'Even if we destroy all of the shadows, even if that were ever possible, which Pitch always said it wasn't – Augus would keep doing this, wouldn't he?'
Gwyn sighed.
'He needs to be forcibly removed from Kingship, and that's a complicated matter in our world. When you can't kill someone outright, everything becomes far more convoluted. The Unseelie and Seelie fae vote in their Kings or Queens, but once voted in, royalty either steps down voluntarily, or is forcibly demoted by having the bulk of their powers removed. There is no...voting out, there is no recourse for all of the Unseelie fae who are also being ousted from their homes. It's a system that's worked for us for thousands upon thousands of years. The Oak King and the Raven Prince were both very successful leaders, and it wasn't until Augus that things have been so unstable.
'But one thing at a time. The Nightmare King comes first, Augus will be easier to deal with if we can strip him of that ally. Though...still not exactly easy. The Each Uisge was very powerful long before he became King, and once one steps into Kingship, that power multiplies.'
'Sounds like he just went full out power crazy, if you ask me,' Jack said, rolling his eyes.
Gwyn didn't reply. His face had become gloomy, as it often did whenever he brought up matters of the Seelie or Unseelie Court. Jack got the strong impression that if Gwyn could throw away his Kingship, he would have done it the day he'd been voted in. He'd never put himself up as candidate; the Seelie fae had decided without him, and once the decision had been made, he wasn't able to demote himself until three centuries had passed. The more Jack found out about the fae, the more they didn't make any sense.
The yeti waited impatiently by the doorway, while Gwyn and Jack entered one of the large toy testing rooms.
Jack thought North would present the weapons with fanfare. He thought that maybe he'd cover them with a sheet first and whip it off with a flourish. But instead they were just there on a wooden table, hundreds of pieces of metal, glass, crystal and other materials scattered around them. The tiny wrenches and chisels and hammers that North used were everywhere.
'Look at that,' Jack breathed, walking straight up to them. 'That's amazing! That I can draw something and you can just...do this. I don't even know what half of these things do! And this? This is way bigger than I envisioned. But this?' Jack picked up what North had called the 'high-tech snowball,' 'This is exactly what I thought it would be.'
'I don't understand,' Gwyn said in confusion. 'What am I looking at?'
'I want to test these,' Jack said, looking at North, ignoring Gwyn. 'But I think we should hike out a ways from the Workshop, in case the light becomes...destructive to more than just the shadows. You know, don't want to blow up the Workshop or anything. Do you know a place?'
'Presuming they even work, of course!' North said, smiling at Jack's wonder. Jack didn't dare touch the weapons himself, in case he ruined their delicate craftsmanship with his ice, but he hovered his palms and fingers over them. 'There is big forest behind mountains. Uninhabited.'
'If someone could just tell me what that is for...' Gwyn said, pointing to the circular device made of interconnected, small circular disks.
'Okay, okay,' Jack said. He pointed to the first weapon, the one that looked like some sort of fragile, delicate gun made of transparent materials, thin wires, panels and panes of mirrors and crystal. North had made it larger, and Jack could see why. North had factored into account that it was hard to create single, narrow rays of light, and created an attachment device that would absorb a broader ray of light.
'This is like a laser. I'm hoping that if you put a ray of light here, it'll come out the other end as a narrow, focused, hyper-charged beam. And this one? It's the same thing. Except... like, about ten or fifteen narrow, focused, hyper-charged beams that will spread in all directions. But you know, it'd be better to just show you.'
'Now?' Gwyn said, and Jack started to nod, and then shook his head. His excitement was getting the better of him. It probably wouldn't make the most sense for both of them to try out the weapons on low energy.
'Tomorrow.'
Gwyn looked at the weapons as though he wasn't quite certain of them. But before Jack could say anything reassuring about it, Gwyn had teleported away.
'I hate it when he does that,' Jack grumbled.
North laughed.
'I suppose I should be showing you how these are going to be working, yes?' North said, and Jack yawned hugely, before nodding sleepily. The whole day was bearing down upon him, as it often did around sunset. One moment, he'd be going along just fine, the next, exhaustion would powerhouse into him like a reckless animal. At Jack's yawn, North stepped away from the work table, and beckoned with his finger.
'I show you tomorrow morning. Hm? There are fresh cookies out of the oven, and sometimes it is better to get to them before the elves have licked every one. Come then, these will wait.'
Jack followed, suddenly too tired to argue.
Gwyn came back with his soldiers late the next morning, and Jack kept spinning his staff nervously, worried that the weapons wouldn't work, worried that it would be back to the drawing board for new ideas.
Gwyn had teleported them into the forest that North had mentioned, along with the weapons, and Jack looked around at the trees close by and decided they would – at least – need a clearing. It was a shame they didn't have a living shadow to test it on, but this was just a trial, maybe they wouldn't work at all.
Jack explained how the weapons worked as quickly as possible, and when he was done, Gwyn looked down at him with wide eyes.
'When you said you had an idea, I didn't know you meant...this is like nothing I've used before.'
'Yeah,' Jack said, 'because for some reason, all of you guys are stuck in the dark ages. You know, the Nain Rouge used guns, and she was able to get ahead of everyone because of it. She didn't even need magical guns, just regular ones, and look what she could do. I know you don't like things like this, but step it up already. If this works, it's not going to matter how weak your light is. And if that works,' Jack pointed to the circular weapon, refractive disks shaped carefully together like a double-layered snowball, 'well...'
Jack looked around and saw a clear line of sight to a distant tree.
'Before we get a better location, we could at least try the single beam first, see how that goes. We might as well just find out how dangerous they are. North said if he hadn't worked out the angles properly, it could backfire pretty badly.'
'This sounds very promising already,' Gwyn said, reluctantly, as Jack and one of Gwyn's soldiers started working together to manoeuvre the gun into place. Jack had originally envisioned something simple, like the kind of fake ray-guns that kids used when pretending that they were fighting space aliens, but North had turned it into something huge, almost like a rocket launcher made of mirrors and metal, with Jack's original idea as a tiny afterthought at the end. It needed more than one person to manipulate, and it was stabilised with two sets of adjustable legs.
Jack lined up the sight, and Gwyn came over and took control, muttering something about leaving the aim of a weapon like that to someone who actually knew how to shoot an arrow.
Once it was set up, Gwyn stood behind the weapon uncertainly.
'What now?'
'You just slice a ray of light into it, and...we see what happens?'
Gwyn looked at the contraption in front of him sceptically, and then looked at the tree they were aiming at. He unsheathed his sword and took a few steps back, looking down at his feet and making sure they were positioned correctly. His fingers kept shifting slightly in the grip he had on his hilt, and Jack knew enough about Gwyn by now to know that he was nervous.
Jack opened his mouth to say that it would be fine, to just go ahead already, when Gwyn stepped forward and swung his sword up and then down, making a single slice of light that landed perfectly, sinking into the weapon.
The contraption vibrated, and then a high-pitched hum started emitting from it. Jack's eyes widened in alarm, and Gwyn's soldiers quickly stepped back from the weapon. Jack was just about to say that he wasn't sure if it was supposed to do that, when the whole light-launcher glowed golden, and the high-pitched hum escalated until it was no longer audible, just an uncomfortable sensation inside his head.
A second later, a narrow, powerful beam of golden light – too bright for Jack to look at it – shot through the lens at the barrel and hit the tree they'd been aiming at, forty feet away.
The whole tree glowed golden, birds scattered from its branches. Jack stared with horror and awe as it began to grow, unnaturally. Branches burst out of its crown, twisting and writhing like snakes, leaves grew and fell and grew again, it flowered and dropped fruit and twisted up metres into the sky in a matter of seconds.
And then the light died. Jack's eyes still held the imprint of a golden streak of light across it. The tree shuddered, the weapon's hum died down, the golden glow disappeared.
Jack risked looking at Gwyn, who was blinking at the tree over and over again, mouth half-open.
'It's gonna work,' Jack said quietly. 'The shadows, the living shadows, are the like the opposite of life and growth. They hold things back. Look at what that just did. A small amount of the golden light heals people. And that just...wow. Tell me you think the shadows could survive that. Even the Nightmare Men.'
'I agree,' Gwyn said, 'but do you think Pitch's body will survive that?'
Jack grimaced.
'I think Pitch's body has withstood those Nightmare Men twice now. He's had the root of malevolence inside of him and he's come back from that. And that tree is still standing. And it looks...kind of better than it did before.'
It was true. The tree didn't look like it had aged, so much as taken on an unusual amount of life. Birds were flocking back to it, more than had left it when the golden light had hit it. A deer was already grazing at its roots. Whatever had happened to it wasn't putting off the local wildlife. Its leaves were greener, its branches seemed sturdier. It was the tallest tree around.
'I think we should find a clearing and test these out a bit more, and then decide what we're gonna do from there, yeah?' Jack said, and Gwyn nodded.
Gwyn sent two of his soldiers off to scout for locations, and Jack – being able to fly – quickly set off through the forest, seeking clearings.
His heart wouldn't stop hammering as he flew between trees, staying low to the ground instead of going above the canopy. Augus Each Uisge was still looking for him, and he'd gotten used to not flying up too high, too often, in case one of the Each Uisge's watchers reported back to him. Apparently Unseelie fae lived everywhere, and in an unwarded forest, he didn't want to be away from Gwyn and his soldiers for too long.
The weapon had worked. Jack's mind was racing with questions. Would it work more than once? Would it hurt Pitch? What, exactly, would it do the shadows? What would the other weapon be like? How would they even get the Nightmare King and the weapons in the same space? What if the Nightmare King just destroyed them as soon as he saw them? What if he was too strong?
His fear wouldn't settle down. He tried to push it deep down inside of him, but there was too much of it.
Oh, hey, clearing.
He slowed down, looking around at the trees that fringed it.
He was so busy assessing its suitability that he didn't notice the lake beneath him. He didn't notice how it wasn't frozen over, despite the frigid temperature. He didn't see the still water shift until it was too late.
Jack felt something cold and slimy slap over one of his ankles. It cinched tight, caused a flare of pain. He was dragged rapidly backwards, losing all sense of orientation. He turned, shouting in surprise and then horror when he saw that it was a long rope of waterweed. Fear exploded through him when he saw Augus waiting, half out of the water, bare-chested, a smirk on his face.
Jack blasted the waterweed beneath his ankle and then flew rapidly backwards, shooting a huge bolt of frost lightning into the sky above him. He hoped that one of the soldiers would see it, or that Gwyn would realise that Augus was here. How long had he been waiting near North's Workshop? Jack panicked when he realised that the Nightmare King could be close by, and he scanned the woods as quickly as possible.
Just as he turned to get Augus in his sight again, a length of waterweed latched around his staff and yanked it out of his grip. Jack's hands clasped on thin air and he fell. He caught a glimpse of his staff being pulled down into the water. Another whipping rope of waterweed lashed around his waist. He hit the water with a shriek, tearing at the weed, unable to get a purchase on its slimy grip. He flooded the water with frost, freezing it, and Augus chuckled as he swam languidly towards him, melting the water around him with his very presence.
When Augus reached him, Jack struck out wildly. His open palm made contact with Augus' shoulder, and Jack yanked his hand back to strike again, only to find that it was stuck fast against Augus' skin.
No! Jack tugged and tugged, but his skin was stuck to Augus', and he remembered abruptly that one of Augus' powers – the one he used most often when drowning his victims – was the ability to make others stick to him, unable to tear themselves away.
'Let me go!' Jack yelled, and Augus took the hand that was stuck to his shoulder by the wrist, and then reached out with supernatural speed and took his other wrist, transferring them both into a single grip.
'Dear me, Jack Frost. Is your golden warrior not here to save you, this time?'
Jack opened his mouth to scream for Gwyn, and Augus slapped him with his free hand. Jack's head rocked, the side of his head flared with a sudden burst of pain.
'Silence.'
The compulsion struck Jack with full force, and his voice was stolen right out of his throat. He kicked out in the water, frustrated at how it dragged at his limbs, slowed them down. He was still able to connect the heel of his foot with Augus' shin, but Augus only clucked his tongue.
'Stop fighting me.'
Jack's body sagged, limp. It was nothing like the first time he'd experienced Augus' compusion, when he'd been filled with a strange, relaxing lassitude. His horror continued to build inside of him. His limbs ached with the need to thrash and get away, but he couldn't move. He couldn't make a single sound of protest.
'Jack Frost,' Augus said grimly. 'You are a surprisingly hard frost spirit to get a hold of these days. How delightful, that I managed to catch you, then. Now, how would you like to join me for some tea and some conversation?'
Augus rested Jack on the water and left him floating, and Jack's eyes rolled in time to catch the Each Uisge calmly shedding his human form. Jack's throat worked, wanting to eject the fear he felt vocally, but he couldn't. He could only stare as Augus' bones shifted, as his eyes turned into black wells and his face lengthened and hair sprouted from his skin. His ears grew into furry black horse's ears, his hair lengthened into a lustrous, green-black mane. In under a minute, he was no longer a man, but a black waterhorse with a deep, green shine that rippled like water over his hair. It was a creature that had never been human, a creature that had never cared for humans except as prey and food; mouth filled with rows of sharp, rotting teeth. The waterhorse opened that awful maw wide, and Jack's whole body shivered helplessly, straining against the compulsion as he saw those teeth descending towards him.
The Each Uisge sank his jaws deep into Jack's side, grabbing hold of him. The explosion of pain that sawed through him was made all the worse by the fact that he couldn't do anything about it.
The waterhorse kicked away from the shore and moved through the water like no creature should be able to, deciding its own buoyancy with thought, paying no mind to physics.
'You can start fighting again, now, if you wish,' the Each Uisge said in a terrible, unnatural voice. It was a sound that pushed deep into his mind and released him from the compulsion.
Jack opened his mouth to shout for help, just as the Each Uisge dragged him underwater.
The water that covered his head refused to freeze, and Jack looked up at the clear sky that was disappearing from view through disturbed water.
It was all too familiar.
He opened his mouth in terror and water flooded it. He writhed in the waterhorse's grip, but he only succeeded in hurting himself further. It felt like there was something corrosive in the waterhorse's teeth. He could feel each of the tiny points underneath his skin, and the whole side of his torso burnt terribly. Knew he was bleeding. Water pushed its way into his lungs, his nose, his mouth, his ears. He forgot that he wasn't human anymore, that he couldn't drown again.
Jack screamed.
Author's Note: Firstly, thank you so much for all the faves/follows, and the reviews. They are so awesome, I cannot even convey how much.
In our next chapter, 'Just a Pawn,' Augus Each Uisge decides to make good on earlier threats he's made to a certain thorn in his side; one Jack Frost.
