Chapter 4: The Moon's Shadows
There were shadows where they shouldn't be: shadows floating where they was nothing to cast them. A single large shadow across the ground, reflected across the sky. Every other shadow felt pale and fragile in comparison.
The shadow's master could not touch the earth, could not change it, but it could create others to touch the earth in its place. It called these 'others' its "Guardians."
Now it seemed that a Guardian's fate was hung in the balance.
The moon hung in the sky, watching quietly as his own fought themselves.
.:.
"To zee sleigh!" North called.
The Guardians moved fast, gathering a few stray items they had dropped during the scuffle: a long tree branch shaped like a letter "Y," a boomerang, a small golden box lying on its side, a small brown-eyed boy painted on its lid, and depositing them in the sleigh. They then cleared a space for their most precious charge: one of their own, wrapped in sand and warm arms.
Time seemed slow, each second feeling a minute too long, each minute feeling like an hour, each snap of a stick sending ice through the Guardians' bones. Each sound reminded them of the battle: ice shattering, bones breaking, the water lapping at the banks, and the wet shp of a knife burying itself in a boy's side, and now they waited for Tooth to scream.
They waited for Jack to die. The thought sickened them.
Therefore, each moment felt too long, as it always does when one waits for something.
The Sandman slowly moved his hands like a conductor and the sand basket sank into the sleigh, slowly like a skybound feather falling to Earth. For a moment the boy seemed at peace with the world, despite his terrible wounds. As they continued to The Pole, the Guardians continued to look forward, then back at the 'immortal' teen. They did it purely to save their sanity, or what little they had left after the events that had transpired.
Finally, reality seemed to hit The Cossack. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a snow globe. Bunny kept his mouth shut for once. As The Cossack looked back at the boy he considered a son, he threw the globe. As the circling stopped he glanced back, to make sure that Jack was still okay. To his relief, the boy appeared to be.
The reindeer landed in record time, seeming to sense their master's need for urgency. Though, they didn't do it a gently as The Big Four could've hoped for, but it would have to do.
The Cossack quickly grabbed the snow haired teen and took off towards The Workshop. As soon as the door opened, a swarm of Yetis immediately rush to help. Three of them took Bunny to the infirmary to see if they could fix his hand, while the remaining Yetis followed the large Cossack and the unconscious teenage winter sprite into the infirmary. The large wooden doors opened to a stark white room with three hospital beds. Bunny was currently occupying one of the low cots as one of the yetis tried to sew his three fingers back together. North went straight to the first bed, given already Bunny occupied the second, and set down Jack as gently as he could. The yetis instantly went to work trying to save the youngest Guardian.
IVs were hooked up to the teen, filling his veins with fluids and medicines. Then the unlikely medics removed his blue hoodie along with the with tee-shirt he had on underneath. Phil, the yeti who North trusted with the boy, handed it off to another, who went off to a different room, probably to try to stitch it up and wash the blood out. Now that cloth no longer covered the wound, they could see the true damage Jaquie Luck caused to the young Guardian. As North looked over the boy, who he considered a son, he realised how lucky Jack was.
By a stroke of fate, Jaquie had bypassed all of the Guardian's organs. Instead, she had stabbed him in the small cavity located just below the sternum, plunging the knife between his diaphragm and his lungs. The only problem they would face would be that Jack could very easily bleed out, or that's what they thought ...
As The Cossack went to check on Bunny, there was a long tone being held instead of the continuous, steady beeping that represented Jack's heartbeat. North turned, not quite sure what the sound meant. As he turned back to Jack, the Yetis quickly surrounded him, the duo that had been working on Bunny quickly switched their attention to Jack. The only thing Bunny did was raise an eyebrow. North assumed it wasn't because the Yetis moved to attend to Jack. Tooth, who had been in another part of the workshop, flew in at top speed with Sandy following close behind. However, once they heard the high pitch tone, which North was starting to find rather annoying, they stopped short.
"His ribs are shattered, we need to reset them, then tend to the holes in his lungs." Phil told the other Yetis, who quickly began setting his ribs.
"Get the defibrillator!" another Yeti commanded. That was when North figured it out. He stumbled back to join his fellow Guardians, blinking like an owl faced with a strobe light.
He was helpless, he realised: there was nothing he could do but hope that Jack would pull through.
.:.
The grey mist felt solid beneath his feet and slippery, like he was laying on a glass floor. Glass ... ice … it was no matter: he was still trapped in this cold, dead world.
Yes, the Guardian of ice and snow felt the cold around him. It was a scary thought.
How cold is this place? Jack wondered, pushing himself to his feet. I need to get out of here.
"And how do you plan to do that?"
"Who's there?" Jack called, his voice bouncing off of the shifting mist.
"You would not know me so my name does not matter to you."
"For my sanity's sake, let's say that it does. Who are you?"
Jack could hear laughter coming from all directions. "I am Nothing, the Guardian of Limbo."
"Limbo?"
"The state between life and death, the unknown between truth and lies. The half-truth, one might say, but I prefer to call it 'limbo:' the bent state."
"Death?"
Another spurt of childish laughter. "Yes, death."
"Why?"
"Who knows? Does it really mean that much to you?"
"Maybe it does." A sudden gust of wind blew his white hair across his face and the white-haired Guardian whipped around, trying to see the speaker. "Where are you?"
"Nowhere," wind across the mist, curling it and sending the delicate tendrils out before him, "and everywhere. Always watching and always seeing. I know everything about you: your lies, your truths, your desires, your life after life ..." another breeze, this one softer than the last: a caress instead of a hit. "... and nothing about myself."
"Can I see you?"
A sullen sigh, drawn out in exaggeration. "If you wish."
Jack leaned to the side, the mist moving to provide a ledge. "I wish."
"Then look into the face of death, Jack Frost."
"Nothing: the Guardian of Limbo" belongs to 7ShadowsUnleashed
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BionicVampireDragonGuardian1
Well, that was interesting to say the least. Please review ... no, honestly, please review.
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