A/N: Just a note, because we've gotten some reviews for stories in this series pointing out how some details are wrong as compared to the books, but Anders/Kate, Kaylin, and I (Saphie/Kira) wanted to let you know not to expect these stories to be 100% accurate to book canon. We feel the movie is more of an adaptation, as certain details from the movies and the official pre-movie comic don't match up to the books entirely. We definitely are going to play around with book canon a little bit and use some of it but it's not going to be all of it and things might be flipped around in unexpected ways.
We just wanted to let you know that's why some things will be similar to it but why others might be entirely divergent and based more on what would make the most sense with the movie.
P.S. We plan to feast on your tears of distress at the end of this chapter. We're going to have a late-night tipple of your tears in little scotch glasses. Fair warning. NO REGRETS.
The King of Cold Mountain
by Anders and Saph
Chapter 4
The yetis let Jack into the usual skylight entrance at the Pole. Sandy had beat him there by a few minutes and was landing as he entered, but Tooth, Bunny, and of course, North, were already there. He saw to his alarm that Bunny and Tooth were dusting snow and ice off of themselves, so clearly he hadn't been the only one to run into horrible weather. The snow was so cold that it had frozen in clumps to their fur and feathers, and they were having trouble dislodging it.
As he landed, Bunny saw him, and to Jack's surprise, darted immediately and aggressively into his personal space. North grabbed Bunny by the shoulder. "Hold o -"
"What is wrong with you?" Bunny shouted, shaking North's grip off. "What part of 'too much winter kills people' don't you understand? If you don't put a stop to this right now - "
Something sharp and ugly twisted in Jack's gut. His mouth dropped open in indignation. "You actually think I'd do this? That I'd hurt people just to – to have all this winter going? What's wrong with you?
How could Bunny think he'd do this? How dare he think he'd do this? What had happened to the Bunny at the Tooth Palace, who at least thought Jack was a good person even when they weren't getting along
"This isn't a game anymore!" Bunny's fury had not abated, and neither had his panic. "People are dying! Have died! Do you know how many hospitals are running on generators? How many aren't running at all? How do you excuse that?"
"I didn't. Do it," Jack insisted, barely able to swallow his anger. He pointed to the rest of the Guardians, standing at the edge of their tiff with similar expressions of worry and astonishment. "And look at that! It seems you're the only one who thinks I would."
"You're the only winter spirit with this kind of power," Bunny insisted. "So tell me - if you didn't do it, who did?"
"Enough!" North pulled them apart. Bunny shook North's grip off immediately but North stayed angrily in his space. North's eyebrows were furrowed in an expression of such severity that Jack was almost shocked to see it. He'd never seen North genuinely angry, let alone angry at Bunny. "You need proof Jack is not fool enough or cold enough to murder, is easy enough to get."
He snapped his fingers. The elves scurried forward with a round object covered by a cloth embroidered with a Christmas tree. North whipped the cover off, revealing a black globe about the size of a beach ball, and pressed a pattern on the sphere's surface.
"I use this to monitor news and weather when flying sleigh on Christmas Eve. Helps with avoiding the storms and, how you say, anti-aircraft missiles in no-fly zones."
An image bloomed in the globe. A human weatherman was delivering live coverage of the storms, looking very close to frantic as he pointed out massive storm systems spreading across all of Asia. North pressed more patterns on the globe and several other meteorologists appeared from across the globe, all reporting with frightened expressions the freak snowstorms spreading across the world.
"There you have it," said North, looking up from the globe at Bunny. "If Jack was one making the madness, how could madness continue, when he is here?"
Jack looked triumphantly at Bunny, but Bunny wasn't even paying attention to Jack. He was staring at the dark globe with an expression of horror the likes of which Jack had never seen on the rabbit's face - not when facing the grootslang, not mid-battle with Pitch, not even on one of North's wild sleigh rides.
"But - he's the only one," he said, pointing at Jack, but his voice was suddenly trembling with something softer than anger. "He's the only possible -"
He looked at Jack, almost desperately.
Jack's triumph faded quickly as the hurt settled in, acidic, like it was scouring his insides. His anger boiled to a head and he balled his fist, jerking almost instinctively to hit Bunny. He managed to stop himself before raising his fist, but Bunny started at the gesture, correctly reading its sentiment and taking a step back.
Jack stood there, shaking, one fist clenched at his side, the other holding his staff so tight that his knuckles were bone-white. He pressed his lips together just as he had when Bunny had rubbed in the fact that no one could see him, the day Jack had been dragged to the Pole and told – only by the others rather then the Moon – that he was a Guardian.
All of Bunny's criticism until now was a papercut compared to this. It was nothing compared to the knowledge that no matter how much good will he displayed, no matter how clear he made it that he cared more about the lives of the children of the world than he cared for his own – it would never be enough to make Bunny see him for what he was, instead of whatever it was Bunny saw every time he looked at Jack.
Well. That brought them full circle, didn't it? Back to that late snow day in North America, when Jack, new to the world, hadn't understood, and hadn't expected to ever meet, Bunny's irrational standards.
Fine. He didn't care.
And just like that, in more than just a defiant thought, he actually didn't care.
His shaking stopped, his eyes stopped watering, and something inside him, some little string that had been pulled taut all this time, snapped. The anger flowed away, and Jack felt an unfamiliar coldness replace it in his heart.
Bunny was looking at him, eyes wide, but Jack turned away from him, to North.
"Well now that we know I'm not doing it, maybe we should figure out who is."
"Strong activity building over Colorado. We will take the sleigh," North declared, no hint of a concession in his voice as he plowed past Bunny and through the workshop. "Is good for an aerial view and for no chance of losing each other. Hurry!"
Jack expected Bunny to put up a protest, but he loped after North in positively meek silence.
The rush for the sleigh was subdued. North wasn't smiling, and Jack wasn't totally sure it was just because of his and Bunny's fight. Sandy and Tooth wore similar expressions of concern, and maybe a little fear, but they didn't walk in silence for long, dropping back to close in on Bunny. Tooth's voice was too hushed for Jack to hear, but it sounded equal parts angry and astonished. Jack glanced back and saw Sandy's dreamsand pictograms working overtime over his head. Tiny, fluffy images of multiple versions of Bunny in his tiny form kept reappearing, but the rest of the images flashed along at such a speed that Jack couldn't make sense of them.
"- nothing rational about that and you know it. Have you been waiting for –" Jack caught Tooth saying, when her voice briefly rose just enough for him to hear, before dropping back down to a register only audible to rabbit ears.
Jack looked back to the path before him with a little bit of relief. At least the others didn't suspect him.
But they were all deeply worried about something other than an in-team blowup, and that was alarming. The ice tornadoes in Giza and the blizzard over Atlanta hadn't been a joke, but neither had the crisis at the Tooth palace, and North had jollied his way through that (at least at the start). Whatever this was, it wasn't just big, it was possibly something the older Guardians knew something about that he did not.
He spoke to North's back. "So...what is everyone worried about that I'm not up to speed on?"
They emerged into the sleigh's launch cavern, where the yetis were working double time to check the sleigh over. Each Guardian jumped in the sleigh without hesitation, even Bunny.
"When there is more to go on than suspicion, then maybe we should say," North said. He cracked the reigns without an enthusiastic "YAHH" but the reindeer took off at their usual breakneck speed, whipping the sleigh through the ice tunnel and out into the open air. North readied his snowglobe to throw as Jack heard his name spoken.
"Jack."
Jack looked up. Bunny was gripping the edge of the sleigh tight, his nails digging into the wood, already looking green around the gills from the ride.
"I'm sorry," he said. He sounded so sincere that for a moment, Jack's sting at being accused softened. "When I saw the storms, I thought -"
That someone who'd lay down his life for Jamie, for Sophie, for the rest of the children, would have created them? That someone that convinced Jamie to believe in Bunny before he faded away would hurt people?
Jack's voice wasn't angry as he spoke. It was like he couldn't even muster anger up anymore, and his voice was only quiet - and cold. "You thought the worst of me. I'm just going to assume you always will." He inhaled, a last little flare of anger dissipating in the coldness of his heart. "No problem. We don't have to like each other to work together. I don't feel any need to force it when I don't want to be your friend anyway."
Bunny was silent, leaning on the side of the sleigh and looking away from Jack as they flew into the pull of North's portal. They emerged with blinding sunlight behind them, glaring on a massive tower of thundering black clouds, pouring snow on an already frozen range of mountains.
Something was zipping down one of the mountains, cutting a track across the fresh mountain snow in their direction. The figure sparkled in the sunlight like it was covered in - or made of - snow.
"Hey!" Jack stood, pointing at the figure. "North, take us down."
North glanced over the edge of the sleigh. "Is friend of yours?"
"Yeah. Well. Sort of," said Jack. "He's coming from the storm, so maybe he saw something the human news crews didn't."
North jerked the reins, pulling the reindeer in a sharp turn. The sleigh descended quickly to the mountainside, where the lone snowboarder slid the rest of the way to them, the sun gleaming off the ice of his board and the snow that made his body. Frosty the Snowman cut to a stop, kicking up a spray of snow that flew over the sleigh.
"Oh man, am I glad to see you guys!" The normally calm, smiling, human-shaped collection of button-nosed, coal-eyed snow was as close to panic as Jack had ever seen him. He adjusted his magic hat, which was slightly askew. "You gotta get up the slopes and do your Guardian thing like pronto, man. There are kids back there and I don't know how much longer the lodge is gonna have power."
"Okay, Frosty, calm down," Jack said, stepping forward as North drew up beside him. "What's going on back there?
Frosty the Snowman was one of those rare few myths who'd been born of belief alone, made new out of nothing but a story, and he'd been born only a few decades ago. Jack had always found him friendly enough, but forming any kind of bond with someone with such a shallow affect was pretty much impossible. It was as if, in his newness and lack of an old life, Frosty didn't really have a personality so much as a collection of quirky traits and mannerisms that were hard to have a solid friendship with. You couldn't talk to the guy – anytime Jack had tried to talk to him about something more serious than snowboarding, Frosty's reaction had been along the lines of "dudebro, you're bummin' me out; lay down some fresh pow-pow and let's hit it."
Which was the other problem – Jack was fairly sure Frosty liked him more for his ability to make it snow than for anything else. The few times they'd hung out, it'd left the frost spirit feeling a little used, like the neighborhood kid that everyone was friends with only so they'd get to play on their trampoline.
Still, Frosty wasn't a bad guy overall, and he was always good with the kids. He grinned at Jack, obvious relief spreading across his coal features.
"Jack, bro." He offered Jack a hand, which Jack slapped companionably. "It's so beige this is how we run into each other again, but I am glad to see you. Could not be more of a relief to have the Guardians here. It was whack, man, the storm just came out of nowhere. It was a totally nectar day! Me and the kids were shreddin' the gnar when all of a sudden this wicked blizzard just dumps on us and this blue hoedad is flying around, laughing all crazy -"
"Wait, you saw someone? Who was it?" Jack interjected, as Tooth asked, "Are the kids alright?"
Frosty nodded. "Yeah, I got 'em back to the lodge, but then I bailed." He shook his head at himself. "I feel like such a muppet but you should have seen the storm – hail the size of softballs, wind like – like a sharp thing, I don't even know. This Old Man Winter guy, he's one gnarly piece of work. Bad gnarly," Frosty clarified, "Not good gnarly. I'm just one snowman, man, I didn't stand a chance."
"You are certain is Old Man Winter?" North stepped closer to Frosty, utter seriousness in his twinkling eyes.
Frosty nodded, equally serious. "Yeah man, he was shouting it all over the - " Frosty suddenly looked past Jack, concerned. "Uh, is he okay?"
Jack glanced over his shoulder to where Bunny was leaning against the sleigh, tossing his carrots into a snowbank.
Jack snorted as Tooth zipped to Bunny's side, feeling a harsh barb of amusement at Bunny's discomfort. "Not everyone loves the sleigh."
"Look," Frosty went on, clearly gathering his resolve – "I'm not much compared to a Guardian, but if you guys are going in, I'll go in with you. Those kids are real crispy little bros. If there's anything I can do to help them, man, I might not be much, but at least I can help you guys out, right?"
Jack glanced at the others. Tooth was busy patting Bunny on the shoulder, Bunny was busy…not paying attention, and Sandy and North returned his glance with simultaneous nods. Jack turned back to Frosty. "Welcome to the team, in that case. Sounds like we're gonna need all the help we can get."
"Everyone, back in the sleigh," North said. "Mountain will not climb itself. Bunny -"
"I'm all right," Bunny said, in a trembling voice that said he was not, in fact, all right, as he climbed back into the sleigh. North paused just a moment, and Jack thought about throwing out a teasing line - something about how North was clearly worried Bunny was going to ruin the finish on the wooden seating. But frankly, he was still too angry to joke with Bunny at all, even at his expense, when such a golden opportunity presented itself. He stayed silent, Bunny gripped the side of the sleigh like he was trying to strangle it, and North cracked the reigns sharply.
They charged into the storm, the black clouds roiling and whipping snow at them like it was personal. The snow was so cold that the flakes landed like shards of flying ice. Jack couldn't remember ever feeling snowflakes that hurt, but even he felt the sting as they tore at his cheeks.
The very wind felt malicious – almost as if it was laughing in his ears at his pain.
No – that was definitely laughter he was hearing, deranged, full-bodied laughter, rising over the scream of the wind. The laughter grew louder as they flew deep into the heart of the storm, until it seemed to fly at them from every direction. Visibility dropped to a hundred feet in any direction. The reindeer were slowing, confusion making them falter in their flight.
North read the instruments on his sleigh with intense concentration, now that they were his only means of avoiding driving the reindeer directly into a mountain. The rest of the Guardians (and Frosty) stood tense in the bed of the sleigh, staring into the whiteout with silent, shivering vigilance. Tooth and Sandy kept glancing at each other, their faces written with concern. Bunny had already drawn his boomerangs.
But it was Jack who saw him first – a shadow barely visible at first through the blinding snow, flying with jerky, awkward motions, like a bird trying to carry prey too heavy for it off the ground. Something in the sight of the shadow chilled Jack, as he had never been chilled before, down to his very soul.
"Guys!"
The Guardians (and Frosty) turned, just as the shadow vanished into the white again.
Suddenly the laughter seemed to come from right beside the sleigh, then from a distance, then close again – whipping around like the wind, higher, more frantic. The blizzard blew with greater intensity, and the last of the visibility was wiped away. The reindeer snorted with panic in their harnesses, jerking the sleigh wildly.
"Am taking her down!" North shouted. "Even the instruments – look, they are unsteady."
The sleigh couldn't take the conditions. Santa's sleigh couldn't take the conditions. If Jack hadn't already been chilled, that would have chilled him more.
The sleigh landed hard and the Guardians leaped out, those who hadn't already drawn their weapons drawing them. The laughter boomed in the snow around them like thunder, resolving into a voice like ice grinding rock down.
"Well, well, well! If it isn't my old friends, the Guardians! Oh, but you probably don't remember little old me, do you? Can't think whoooooo could be causing all this lovely destruction? Well don't worry, you'll remember once –"
"We know it's you, Old Man Winter!" Bunny shouted. "You're not keeping anyone on the edge of their seat."
A figure was suddenly there without warning, a haggard, bent shadow walking on the crust of the snow. "What? Who told you?"
Old Man Winter walked into view. His ragged cloak was threadbare and rotten, held together only by the icicles that dripped from his body. His hands shook, and his back was bent like an old man's. He looked half-rotten himself, as if the cold had eaten away parts of his body. His skin was the mottled blue of a frozen corpse, his nose broken away, leaving only a blackened stump on his face. His eyes stared out through deep-shadowed holes in his icy, wrinkled face, glittering like shards of ice.
With a horrified start, Jack recognized those eyes. They were the same pale, grey eyes that had pierced him with such hatred in his nightmare at the Tooth Palace. The memory rushed back to him suddenly, drawing the steadiness from his hands.
"I mean it," Old Man Winter continued, gesturing vaguely with his clawlike hand. His nails had grown long and sharp from fingertips blackened with frostbite. "Who gave up the goodies?" He fixed his eyes on Frosty. "Was it that guy?"
Frosty, trembling, said nothing and sidled slightly behind North, clearly regretting his attempt at heroism.
"Oh, well that's...that's disappointing. That really takes the wind out of my sails..." Old Man Winter trailed off, sagging, disappointment pulling his wrinkled features farther downward. "I had a speech and everything."
The Guardians all exchanged glances before resuming their battle-ready stances.
"Call this off now," North demanded, brandishing his swords. "You have been asleep for too long, Old Man Winter. We will let you return to your slumber – is only mercy we have to give you."
Old Man Winter groaned. "Ugh. I know. Feelin' kinda groggy - I mean, how long was I out for? One, two thousand years? You ever take a nap, but then you nap way longer than you meant to, so when you wake up it's like – 'well I slept a whole eon away, might as well just make a full millennia of it?'"
"Couldn't've come up with a better plan myself," Bunny growled.
Old Man Winter's expression suddenly shifted, a huge smile cutting his wrinkled face nearly in half, revealing the stubs of his broken teeth. His eyes fell on Jack and Jack tightened his grip on his staff, his spine still tingling with the memory of his nightmare.
"Wow, I really have been sleeping too long. You guys even got yourselves a brand new Guardian." But he looked past Jack, still grinning...at Bunny? "Who are you supposed to be, the Easter Bunny?"
Bunny launched a boomerang at Old Man Winter with an angry shout. Old Man Winter raised one hand and an ice sculpture erupted out of the snow in front of him, knocking the boomerang away with a jagged, glittering hand. The force of the boomerang still cracked the arm and lopped it off, but another ice sculpture jutted out of the ground behind it, and Old Man Winter faded into the white haze. More statues erupted out of the ground, strange, vaguely human shapes with expression-less faces and hollow holes for eyes. In moments the Guardians were completely surrounded, the ice sculptures both barrier and foe.
With a shout, the Guardians threw themselves into battle. The ice sculptures could only move in short jerks, but those bursts were lightning quick and every inch of their surface was covered with sharp, jagged ice. The sculptures fell quickly, whether it was to sword, boomerang, wing, or sand, but each one was replaced just as quickly.
"We are so krunked, man," Frosty moaned, but even he fought and he did fight well. He zoomed across the snow on his ice board, 360-ing through the heads of the killer ice statues, his board both a shield and a blunt weapon.
Jack turned his staff on the first statue he saw, blasting it to freeze it to the ground.
For a moment, that stopped it – then the statue absorbed the new ice, broke free from the ground, and continued marching along, even bigger than before.
"Uh, slight problem, guys!" Jack said, backing away in the air – and barely managed to duck in time as the ice sculpture behind him swung a blow meant to knock his head off. He smashed the sculpture's head with his staff, and it crumbled. "Ice powers! Ice powers against ice!"
"Can you not take them apart? Or control them?" North asked as he slashed through a statue's head. "Make them work for you!"
Jack tried to exert his power on the ice, but absolutely nothing happened. He couldn't even influence the snowflakes whipping around him. "Not working!"
"Then smash with staff," North advised, "and keep close!"
"Of course they won't obey you, boy." Old Man Winter's voice creaked out of the snowy fog around them. "You aren't the real spirit of winter. You're a fake. You're just a scab, a poor man's version. A knockoff! A dime a dozen! I could go on."
He dropped suddenly out of the air just as Frosty smashed through another sculpture, tackling the snowman right off his board.
"Oh, and what do we have here? A fragile greenhorn, all cool tricks and dag moves my dudebro when there's nobody around to impress but a bunch of dumb kids? How're the big leagues treatin' ya, rookie?" Old Man Winter leered his rotten grin as Frosty struggled in the old man's armlock.
The Guardians froze, weapons in hand. The snowman moaned in mortal terror, struggling in Old Man Winter's headlock. "Oh man, oh man, this is not cash –"
"Let the snowman go," Jack said, stepping forward, but stopping as Old Man Winter held his clawlike hand threateningly over the snowman's chest. Frosty shuddered with horror.
"Ah-ah-ah, one more step and the snowman bites the pow-pow," Old Man Winter admonished. "Why do you care? Is he one of yours?"
"He's one of his own," said Jack, gritting his teeth, straining not to move as Old Man Winter flexed his claws closer to Frosty's chest. He could practically feel the others tensing the same around him. Frosty maybe wasn't the deepest myth on the mountain, but he didn't deserve whatever Old Man Winter had planned.
"Oh come on. This guy's such a ninny. But I bet I could whip him into shape."
"I'll never join you, you beige hoedad!" Frosty shouted. "You are the un-crispiest un-bro!"
"Please, like I was giving you a choice," scoffed Old Man Winter, and he plunged his claws into Frosty's chest.
"No!" Jack cried out.
Frosty howled as Old Man Winter dug his hand in deep, yanking something from the snowman's chest. The Guardians surged forward, but they were too late to prevent Old Man Winter opening his mouth wide and swallowing Frosty the Snowman's heart whole.
Frosty's body sagged into loose snow, drifting away on the wind. His last words drifted to them on the wind as his button eyes fell to rest on the snow below –
"This is – so – beige..."
Old Man Winter vanished on a gust of wind, blown away like a crow feather out of the Guardians' reach.
"Neat trick, huh?" His voice came from behind them. They whipped around, spotting him on a ridge above them, his eyes gleaming with more malice. "Wanna see another one?"
The snow around them suddenly exploded, but not with the barely-mobile ice sculptures. It coalesced into snow figures, many of them, with black, soulless eyes and mouths that dripped with knifelike icicle teeth.
Jack let out an involuntary yelp of disgust and horror as he was surrounded by zombie Frosties.
"Yeah, and I ate the Snow Queen's heart too. I can't wait to show you what tricks that broad had up her sleeve."
The snowmen launched their attack. The Guardians threw themselves into the fight again, felling snowmen left and right, but where the ice sculptures had been numerous but slow, the snowmen took longer to form, but were fast and agile. The battle raged as Old Man Winter's laughter echoed at them from high places.
"I think it's safe to say, no more napping for me. Not when there's so much left to be frozen. What can I say? I'm a go-getter."
A roar filled their ears, a noise like a train that shook the mountain. The snowmen grinned evil grins as the Guardians faltered in their fighting, distracted by the noise.
"Avalanche!" North shouted – because after all, there was no harm in shouting about an avalanche when it had already begun. "Is heading right toward us!"
"Not toward us!" Bunny shouted back, his ears twitching in the wind as he strained to judge the avalanche's direction. "The –"
But whatever it was headed for had to be important, because Bunny took off before he finished his sentence, streaking past the snowmen at full-out rabbit speed to disappear into the whiteout.
"The lodge," Tooth whispered, drawing the only possible conclusion.
"The children!" North gasped, as the roar of the avalanche raged on – away from them – on the far side of the mountain. "Everyone! Back to the sleigh!"
Even despite the horrible flying conditions, they still had to try to get there to help.
But the command only caused the snowmen to focus their attack on North. Tooth and Sandy took to the air and Jack raised his staff to join them, but instead of lifting him up, the wind beat him down with a crushing blow. A snowman's knee landed hard on his chest.
Jack gasped, the air knocked out of him, but the snowman had only moments to leer above him before it exploded, cut to fragments by Tooth's razor sharp wings. She helped him back to his feet, but the wind blew him out of her hands when she tried to lift him into the air, and it was obvious that she was struggling to stay airborne. The ice sculptures grew steadily around them, a forest of jagged glassy ice separating Jack and North from the sleigh. Sandy's dreamsand glowed softly in the whiteout as the Guardians stood at each others' backs, and he lifted his hands to summon a dreamsand cloud large enough to carry them all.
The snowmen saw his plans and focused their attack on him, the ice sculptures taking up the battle with Jack, North, and Tooth. The three Guardians fought, not just for their lives, but to clear a path to Sandy, but without a fifth Guardian, the deck was stacked even higher against them.
The only thing they had on their side was that by now, the Guardians were a seasoned team capable of cooperation in the extreme. North blazed forward in the lead, slicing and shattered snowmen and statues, a whirling cyclone of color and movement. Behind him, Sandy tossed snowmen and statues up into the air with his sandwhips so that Tooth could fly by and slice and shatter them with her wings. All the while a cloud of dreamsand was gathering beneath his feet. Jack brought up the rear, smashing the statues and snowmen as they started to reform, covering Sandy from behind as their getaway cloud coalesced beneath him.
Because of his position at the rear, Jack was in a unique position to see Old Man Winter appear out of the haze behind them. The old man hefted an ice spear to throw, his gaze focused on Sandy, and Jack couldn't stop the gasp that erupted from his lungs at the thought of history repeating itself. Old Man Winter took an aim that was steadier than Jack had thought his shaking hands were capable of, and threw the spear with more force than Jack thought a man so old would be able to summon. Jack shot into the air and swung his staff wide, smashing the spear to pieces before it could finish its arc. The wind forced him back to the ground, and he landed hard.
"Guys, watch out, he's sniping from behind!" he called to the others, but the shrieking noise of the wild snowstorm carried his voice away. They didn't look back, distracted by battle.
When he looked back, Old Man Winter had vanished into the haze again, but Jack spotted him when he emerged to their left, aiming another spear at North's back.
He blasted Old Man Winter with such force that the spear flew out of his hands, landing harmlessly in the distant snow. Now the real onslaught began, Old Man Winter appearing and disappearing, spear in hand each time to throw at them. Jack had his hands full knocking each one out of his grip or smashing them mid-flight. It was during a jump to smash one out of the air that he found himself at the mercy of the wind to a nearly deadly extreme. It suddenly bore down on him, blowing him down towards a rocky outcropping on the ground with such force that he knew he'd get skewered or crushed if he landed straight on it. At the last minute he wrenched control of his flight away from the wind and landed to the side, unskewerd, but slamming into the packed snow painfully.
As he struggled to his feet, trying to get his bearings, a snowman suddenly grew up from the snow around his staff, ripping it out of his slackened grip.
"Aaah, no!" Jack lunged for it, but the snowman stood up at its full height, dancing away with the staff held high out of Jack's reach. More snowmen grew around him, along several ice sculptures, surrounding him with a sinister barrier of ice and snow. He could barely see or hear the others fighting in the whiteout, even though they weren't that far away. Only the dimmest glow from Sandy's dreamsand reached him.
As the horde of snow creatures advanced on him, he called out for help.
"North! North, Sandy, Tooth! Help!"
The wind whipped his thin voice away, and even though the Guardians weren't that far off, they may as well have been in an entirely different world.
"They can't hear you. The wind won't let them. I won't let them."
Jack turned. Old Man Winter stood right behind him. The snowmen and ice sculptures closed rank, surrounding Jack completely in a ring of enemy ice and snow. The snowman that had stolen his staff handed it to the old man, who swung it around with interest. The way he twirled it made it look like he knew his way around a bo.
"You're going to pay for what you did to Frosty," Jack said.
"The dudebro? No. No, I'm not. Who cares about him anyway?"
"'Dudebro'? Where are you even getting this stuff if you've been sleeping for centuries?"
"Watched TV for a solid two weeks after I woke up. Wanted to catch up on the world."
"Where did you get a TV?" Jack asked. Despite the seriousness of the situation, he couldn't help but be amused.
"The thing about freezing a family to death is, they don't object much to you borrowing their stuff afterwards."
The amusement was gone. Jack's eyes went wide.
"Ah, finally you understand the seriousness of your situation. Good, good. I know it was you," Old Man Winter said. "You stole my name, stole my power, and put me to sleep all those years ago. Well you're not getting away with it any more, sonny Jim."
Jack frowned as Old Man Winter advanced on him a step, still twirling the staff like he'd been handling it for ages. "I have no idea who you are. The Guardians faced you before, but I've never heard of you in my life."
"Never heard of me? Never heard of me? That's funny! You're a funny guy. Come on. Jack Frost, Jokul Frosti? Tsk tsk, that's not homage, my boy, that's plagiarism." He kept advancing, pushing Jack closer and closer to the far edge of the ring of snowmen. He fixed his eyes on Jack again. "You tried to replace me."
His glare was no less hateful than the one from Jack's nightmare.
"You stole so much of my belief I went to sleep where I stood, and you've been running rampant ever since, making a mockery of winter."
"Making a mockery of – what are you -"
"You made it fun! Fun!" Old Man Winter flailed apoplectically, swinging Jack's staff, absolutely furious. "Winter isn't supposed to be fun, it's supposed to be death! It's supposed to be bleakness personified! It's supposed to be the end of all things. Winter is supposed to bite and take and leech everything good away from the world. You took my belief – you even took my name – and you ruined it. And now you're going to pay the price. You took my belief. Now I'm going to take yours."
There was nothing for it. Jack lunged at Old Man Winter, grabbing at his staff, but the old man jerked it out of his reach and with a deft parry, smacked him in the elbow hard enough that the bone almost broke.
Jack cried out in pain, cradling the injured arm protectively.
"See?" Jokul Frosti's eyes glittered with amused malice. "Pain. Winter is supposed to cause pain."
Jack lunged again. Old Man Winter thwacked his other elbow in retaliation.
"Son, I was a Viking in my old life. I'd kill twenty boys like you before breakfast," he chuckled, "and that was on a slow day. But I'll tell you what – if you can get this staff out of my hands, I'll let you live. How does that sound?"
Jack lunged again, determined to get his staff back, but Jokul struck again. This time, it was a knee. Next, an ankle, and as Jack fell, a sharp blow to his solar plexus. Jack knelt in the snow, clutching his gut, trying to catch his breath. He was well out of his league. Without his staff, he was just a boy who was good at having fun. Old Man Winter, even on his own, was winter at its coldest and deadliest.
"Look at you. Pitiful, just pitiful. This is – this is almost too easy," Jokul said ruefully. "Can't you put up at least a little more of a fight? It's not even going to feel like a victory this way."
Jack shook his head, hand curled at his stomach. "I can't. I can't beat you head on."
So he rolled sideways and threw the hardened ball of ice he'd been discreetly forming in that curled hand at Old Man Winter's head. It struck, hitting him hard enough on the head to throw him off balance. Jack took advantage of the opening and went for his staff again, but Jokul simply used his own momentum from the blow to his head to spin around and swing the staff at Jack. Pain exploded in his head as the staff connected with his cheek. Jack flew into the air, spinning, and slid through the snow almost to the line of ice statues and snowmen.
"There we go, that's a little better! At least you've got some spunk, kid, I'll give you that."
Jack struggled to his feet, Jokul advancing on him. The doddering old man he'd seemed when they first began their fight clearly was not the whole measure of him. He held the staff in his corpselike, unshaking hand, his back straight, his chin up high, steady in his moment of exerting power over Jack – an imperious king of his element, a hardened warrior with a heart as cold as the dark side of the moon.
Jack shook with fear – and cold. The air around the old man was so cold even Jack could feel it. He stood, knowing he didn't stand a chance. He wouldn't be able to get his staff back. His only option was to try to break past the wall of minions and reach the others.
Jack turned and ran, but something – most likely his staff - snagged his hood and yanked him onto his back. He rolled over and tried to scramble to his feet again, but only met with more pain as Old Man Winter struck him on the face.
"Put him on his knees. The others will try to interfere if it takes any longer."
The ice statues grabbed and jerked Jack to his knees, holding him in place with icy vice grips. He struggled viciously, but a third moved behind him, jagged, icy hands clenching around his face, forcing him to look at Jokul Frosti.
"The other Guardians will –"
"Save you? Destroy me?" He laughed. "They could barely overpower me before. And now that I'm taking back the belief that was rightfully mine, they'll never be able to stop me."
Jack's eyes widened. "Taking back the –"
Jokul leaned in with a huge grin. "Can't you feel it? Then again, you've probably been a little too distracted to notice, what with your imminent death and all."
Jack's spirit sank as he took a moment to attend to his senses and realized that Old Man Winter was right. He could feel the kids out there, their belief and joy in his existence turning to fear and distrust. He felt them growing afraid of him, even hating him. All the believers he'd gained across the world were turning against him, doubting his goodwill, believing he'd hurt them.
There were millions of voices he could only just barely catch the edges of.
"Mommy, why is it so cold? It's making my fingers hurt."
"Why is Jack Frost being so mean? All the elephants at the zoo died."
Why did Jack Frost have to make it so cold that Mr. Tibbles went to sleep? I hate him I hate him I hate him –"
Tears began to run from Jack's eyes, along with the blood dripping from his split lip, both freezing on his skin in the cold. After three hundred years of being alone, he'd worked so hard to make them believe in him, and now, even worse than deciding they didn't, they were beginning to revile him. Just like he'd felt their belief and their joy, now their hatred coursed through him.
"What did you do?" he gasped, his voice hoarse with misery.
"A blizzard here, a shadow among the snowfall there, laughter like the laughter they're used to hearing when the snowstorms come. I had some help figuring out the right little touches."
Help? Jack wondered. What help?
"They're already starting to believe that we're one and the same," said Jokul. "That Jack Frost is the winter spirit that bites and freezes and brings death. There's only one last thing I need to cement my reign, Jack."
Old Man Winter looked at his chest and he already knew what that thing was before the Old Man said it.
"Your heart. Then you'll be a part of me, and instead of sharing the belief, it'll all be mine. Bit harder to take it from someone flesh and blood than it is from someone made of ice or snow, but luckily I picked up a little trick from the Snow Queen. She had something handy that helps with this sort of thing."
Jokul flicked his wrist like a magician doing a card trick. He suddenly held two large splinters of ice in his fingers.
"These would do the trick over time," he said, leering at the ice shards with far too much glee, "but lucky for you, I only want you to have these ones for a few minutes." He shook his head with sudden disgust. "You thought winter was fun. You thought the world was some happy place with snowballs and – and funtimes. Well, I got news for you, kid. The world's a dark place, dark and cold. And now?"
He flicked his wrist. Before Jack had a chance to cringe or close his eyes, the shards flew at his face and his world exploded in pain – and darkness.
"Now you get to see the world the way I see it."
North did not want to admit it, but the fight was not going well. Tooth could barely get airborne in the wind, Bunny hadn't returned, the snow army was never-ending, and minions were dogpiling Sandy, preventing him from getting his sand cloud free and into the air.
And Jack - Jack was barely holding his own. The creatures were working the entire fight to separate Jack from the Guardians' aid, the only reason North knew he was alright was because Jack's long-limbed silhouette was within view in the whiteout, a few yards away. If not for the comforting sight of the boy swinging his staff and shattering other figures, North would have been panicking by now.
"Sandy, we have to be going now!"
Sandy gave him a slight eye roll and an incredulous look that said 'I'm trying here! Do you want to do this?' before narrowly evading another snowman's diving elbow drop.
Suddenly North saw the shadowy shape of an ice statue knock Jack to the ground. He struggled, falling too far behind. North surged back towards the boy, slicing through snowmen and sculptures.
"Jack, you are falling behind! They are trying to separate us –"
Now that he was closer, he realized something was wrong. Jack's form was a little off, his outline a little too sharp.
"Jack?" Now, close enough to see clearly, North's eyes went wide with horror.
The Jack-shaped snowman spun its ice staff, grinning icicle teeth at North. This whole time they'd thought Jack was just yards away in the snow, it had been an icy imposter. So if this wasn't Jack, then where was the real –
A scream carried over the wind, just barely, as if the wind were trying to keep the sound from them, but it was too high, too loud, to filled with agony, to be completely whipped away.
North let out a cry of rage, sliced the doppelganger's head clean off, and called to the others. "Old Man Winter has Jack! It was a trick! All of this, a distraction!"
The snowstorm, the avalanche, the minions - all a calculated move to get to the other winter spirit. It was a trap and they'd let Jack fall right into it. As North rushed through the snow, slicing his way through their enemies, he could only hope that Jack was still alive to be saved.
The world was a dark, cold place.
Well of course it was now. But for the moment, that's all it was – all Jack knew, from touch, since he couldn't know anything from sight. He was blind.
Not snow-blind. Completely blinded.
He felt his blood dripping from his eyes, liquid only for the briefest moment before freezing on contact with the air. Icicles of blood hung from his cheekbones.
He screamed and then screamed again.
His own sobs pierced his heart as hard as his eyes had been pierced – no amount of screaming would bring his vision back, and yet he couldn't stop.
And yet – his vision was coming back.
Jack blinked, opened his eyes again – and wished he'd stayed blind.
Old Man Winter leered over him, somehow more hideous than he'd managed before.
"How about it, boy? How much fun does the snow look like now?"
Jack gasped a single sob. The bladelike edges of the snowflakes flashed at him in light that was somehow too dreary and too flashingly bright at the same time, shadows and glare mottling the air like sickness. As he blinked, the shards in his eyes dug deeper. He cried in pain, the icy agony cutting deep as he knelt helpless in the snow.
"It's too bad you're going to die seeing only enemies. I'm guessing none of us look that different." Jokul Frosti beamed, and Jack's sharded vision saw the malice in it and matched it to every look of malice he'd seen in his long life. And he had seen so much malice –how had he never internalized it?
He'd brushed it under the rug – all the private cruelties he'd been witness to, all the acts of inhumanity that he had barely any power to counter, decades and decades of slow-changing hate – by distracting himself with fun. But even the source of his fun – even that hurt people. Killed them, even.
The world was like a poorly-built house that had taken three hundred years to crash down around him. The ice sculptures released him but Jack didn't get up to run away – he only fell, unsupported and agonized, into snow that was suddenly cold to him.
"But then, I imagine you've had time to make plenty of bad memories to dredge up."
Jack looked up. Jokul Frosti stood over him, his hand full of a second round of shards. "But as gratifying as this is, my boy, no one knows like I do – all good things must end."
Old Man Winter threw the shards.
Or he would have, if North had been a second longer to reach him.
North's battle cry became an agonized roar as Old Man Winter redirected his blow, stabbing his new enemy through the thick layers of his fur coat, but North's swords still rang on the ice spear Jokul Frosti summoned up as the two old warriors went head-to-head in battle. North fought one-armed, his sharded arm dangling, his only sword flashing fast enough for two.
He was a terrible creature, shouting for another's blood, his sword flashing like the claw of some unforgiving animal. There was no hint of jolliness, no shadow of compassion, to soften old Saint Nick.
How many people had died with this North as their last? Had – had all of them most certainly been bad enough to deserve it?
Jack knelt listlessly, watching the fight in a daze. He didn't even reach for his staff as the snowmen closed in around North and Old Man Winter, ice sculptures rising in an arenalike barrier behind them. Old Man Winter laughed, as if he were delighted to have found a worthy opponent – even a worthy opponent who was faltering.
Because North was faltering – though his advances were swift and strong, pain was written on his face, and twice already his footing had been unsteady enough for Old Man Winter to nearly land a serious blow. The old Viking parried the Cossack's sword, striking at his feet, and North, unbelievably, stumbled. Jokul Frosti lifted his spear to strike.
North's death loomed like a shadow in Jack's horrific new vision, and he howled a warning that was surely too late.
His howl covered the thwip of a boomerang whipping through the storm, careening with a force that cut the wind like a knife.
It struck Old Man Winter in the back of the head with a crack like thunder. Black, coagulated blood flew in globs and the boomerang cracked completely in half, falling to the snow in pieces. Old Man Winter stumbled, his laughter turning to a howl of rage and pain as blood bubbled from his skull. Snowmen surrounding him suddenly erupted into powder as Tooth cut through them, a blue and green blur of razor-sharp wings. Bunny leaped over an ice sculpture into the ring of snowmen, his only remaining boomerang flying in Tooth's assistance.
The snowmen fell in droves as Old Man Winter howled, distracted in confusion and pain. North raised his sword to deliver a killing blow – but Old Man Winter lunged with his spear, stabbing into North's good shoulder even in spite of his own injury.
Golden light suffused the scene as the Sandman swooped in on a golden cloud, striking out with a sand whip to knock Old Man Winter off his feet. Tooth and Bunny were at North's side in an instant, ferrying him onto the cloud as North hissed through gritted teeth. The ice sculptures began to close in as the sand cloud pulled up to Jack, just as Bunny darted over to pick up Jack's fallen staff.
"NO!"
Jack's ragged howl of rage ripped out of his throat and he threw himself at the staff before Bunny could touch it, rolling with the staff to smack the rabbit across the face.
The blow landed, unexpected and hard. There was blood on Bunny's paw when he pulled it away from his nose. For a moment they could not spare, the Guardians stared at Jack Frost in shock.
He had no way to know what the others saw in that moment – a hollow-eyed figure, blood pouring down his cheeks, the expression past the frozen blood so full of hatred that the twisted face was barely recognizable as Jack's.
He felt Tooth's hands pulling him onto the cloud, Bunny hopped on the opposite side, away from Jack, and then they were in the air. Sandman powered through the evil wind, every ounce of his strength needed just to keep the cloud and its passengers together.
Old Man Winter's howls of agony were turning, slowly, back to mad laughter.
"Run, you cowards!" Fury and pain flowed together in the shouts that carried after them on the wind. "Just you run! No one makes it home tonight! NO ONE MAKES IT HOME TONIGHT!"
"Bunny! The lodge?" Tooth asked.
"Still standing," he said, sheathing his remaining boomerang, his voice a little nasal as he was still pressing his paw to his nose where Jack had bloodied it. "Dumped the snow into a massive tunnel. Bloody avalanche flooded about half the tunnels under the state, but I left one clear for the people to evacuate through. Got a couple of the kids on convincing the grown-ups to take it."
The Guardians all breathed a sigh of relief. In the midst of all that had gone wrong, at least the most important thing – keeping the children safe – had not.
"The sleigh," North said, groaning with pain and urgency. "We have to –"
But Sandy shook his head as an image appeared over it. Snowmen were crushing the wreckage of the sleigh, though he showed that the reindeer had run away. North clutched his shoulder as he viewed the image, and hung his head in sadness.
Inventors. Mourning their toys when the world was too far gone for toys anymore.
Tears burned Jack's broken eyes, streaming down the bloody ice on his face as he saw his friends in the warped light of the storm – Sandy, straining to do so much as keep his cloud together. North, with an injury that halved the mighty warrior.
He didn't need the evil shards in his eyes to see Bunny for what he was – a suspicious, hateful creature who didn't have the decency to just observe everything that was already evil, in the world – no, he had to imagine evil into people who weren't, too. That was nothing new.
But the shards certainly helped highlight it.
That was just it, though. He was starting to understand that his new perspective wasn't a truth – it was a distortion from the shards. Jack looked over the edge of the sandcloud and in the breaks in the clouds, the mountain forest, which should have looked beautiful to him, looked like so much boiled spinach. As they passed high enough above the cloud cover to see the sky beyond, the light of the sun was too glaringly bright, the glare somehow making everything else seem dull and bleak alongside it.
"Jack, let me see your eyes," Tooth said, reaching out for him, containing her horror at his condition. She touched his face, but Jack didn't feel the gentleness he knew from experience that she always she touched him with. Her hands felt like sandpaper on his skin.
It was all wrong. Everything was wrong.
His eyes tried to distort the sight of Tooth – who he knew, in his heart, was so beautiful - to something sinister and ugly. Jack's breath came in short, terrified gasps.
He closed his eyes against the sight of her warping appearance and curled up on his side, covering his eyes with both hands.
"Jack, please –"
"I don't want to look at you. Please don't make me look," he begged, voice cracking. "Please."
The other Guardians could only look on in horror as Sandy flew them away on a hostile wind, over a world gripped by a winter that never wanted to let go.
The storms spread across the world and darkness fell as the light of the sun – and the moon – was blocked out by the stormclouds.
Not far from the abandoned resort, the man in the shadows watched the yellow speck of light disappear beyond the cloud cover. With a bark of laughter, he danced a little softshoe in the snow.
He looked up at the darkening sky and felt the rush of the life-leeching wind. He breathed in the smell of the snow that was smothering the world in darkness.
"Look at the old man go," said Pitch Black to the night-mare that stood beside him, grinning as the fear began to pour in. He ran his hands through his hair, reveling in the rush of power. "And to think, all he needed to start rolling was a wakeup call."
Now he just had to wait as the cold set in and the dark fell, and then they children would never let go of their fear again.
Of course, Jokul Frosti was not the most trustworthy. Pitch knew that he'd happily freeze everyone on the planet to death if he were left unsupervised for long. That hardly served Pitch's purposes. Where would he get fear if no one was alive to be afraid?
So of course, Pitch had made that careful little comment to the old man about the new winter spirit seeing the world all wrong. It had done exactly what Pitch had intended it to do. And his intervention during the storm, knocking down Frost's doppelganger so North came closer to help and discovered the ruse, allowed the blowhard to intervene before Frost was killed. It had been timed perfectly.
With the added benefit of North getting sharded himself. Pitch could not have been more gleeful about that fortuitous little turn of events.
No, letting Old Man Winter run wild forever wasn't part of the plan. Fortunately, Pitch knew how to play the long game. After all, he'd had a very, very long time to practice.
"Cold and dark, together again," he said, hopping up on the night-mare's back. It whinnied and reared up, leaping into the air. "Why didn't I think of this sooner?"
