Author's Note: Sorry for the wait. The upside is the chapter got so long we split it into two. The next one - which is a big'un - will be posted on November 1st. Expect big things. Big, possibly horrible things. For both Jack and Kozmotis.
The Boy Who Found Fear At Last
by Kira, Kate, and Kaylin
Chapter 4
Jack couldn't go forever without sleep. Myths could go sleepless for a very long time, but it was like a small part of them still ached for a bit of mortality, and what was more mortal than having to sleep? The stress of the maze, occasional injuries, and long stretches of solitude made it even harder to stay awake without a good rest. Occasionally, Jack felt sleep overcome him.
There was no truly safe place to sleep in the maze, but the rooms of lights had never held any dangers, no matter how many times he passed through them. So it was in one of those rooms - this one with even fewer lights than before - that Jack settled on for a nap, telling his skate buddies to keep watch and nudge him if something happened.
His dreams took him down endless corridors, with voices calling out to him from empty spaces.
They were frightening, but one loud voice spoke words that seemed meant to reassure him.
it will end…
it will end...
It gave him hope that even the maze had an end. But it might not have been meant to be hopeful. Maybe it meant that his life would end.
Maybe it would end sooner than he thought. A tickle at Jack's neck woke him, just before he felt his air cut off. Something was choking him. His eyes shot open and his hands flew to the hands currently wrapped around his neck. No one stood above him, no body pressed him down, but those fingers dug into his neck, resisting his attempts to pry them off.
"Grck!"
Wheezing, Jack pried the fingers away, thrusting the hands away. They landed on the floor, a bloodshot eye blinking in each palm.
It was that grotesque hand creature! The one from that strange room of boxes with the music box and Kozmotis' sword.
It skittered towards Jack's leg. He jumped back a few steps as if the floor under his feet was on fire and kicked it as hard as he could. It flew and slammed into the stone wall so hard that blood smeared the wall as it fell down. It skittered away when it landed, still trailing blood.
Jack staggered deeper into the maze, putting distance between himself and the hand. He collapsed against the wall and slid down it, breathless.
He finally caught his breath after a few moments of wheezing.
He looked up at his skate friends. "Why didn't you guys wake me up?" he croaked, his hoarse voice betraying his hurt. He rubbed at his neck. "That thing could've killed me! Why didn't you warn me?"
The skates simply hovered there for a moment, tilted as if they were staring down at him. Then they did a sudden joyful pirouette and skated away.
"Hey! Where are you going?"
They disappeared around a corner. Jack ran after them.
"Huey, Louie, I'm not that mad! It's okay, I know you didn't mean to - hey, guys, come back!"
He was losing them now, as they picked up speed and disappeared around another corner. Jack's eyes welled up with tears.
"Guys, come back! I'm sorry, I didn't mean to yell."
He skidded around another corner and saw them. They'd gotten far, far ahead of him.
"Please don't leave!" he cried out. He ran as fast as he could, but he was still winded from being strangled and couldn't keep up. "Please!"
They zipped around another corner and when Jack ran around it, he saw a junction where multiple hallways met. Five of them, to be exact, and no sign of the skates. There was no way he'd be able to find them now.
Jack dropped to his knees, eyes still brimming with tears at the thought of facing the maze alone, something in his chest twisting painfully.
The feeling was a familiar one. One that, once upon a time, he'd hoped he'd never have to know again. Now it was the only thing he knew. Apparently, what the maze gaveth, it taketh away.
Maybe the taking was why he'd been given it at all.
When Nightlight appeared again, Jack followed him, subdued. The next vision left him floating in space again, overlooking a planet that sparkled as if it were made of diamond, and a ship descending towards it. Kozmotis' ship. But the sight that took up his attention was the swath of - Jack wasn't sure what to call it. It hung across the blackness of space, a colorless nothing that lead to and away from the planet - some horrible trail cut into space itself.
The ship landed and Jack landed with it, finding himself once again on the world Nightlight had come from. It looked hardly different from the last time he saw it, but he quickly understood why when the soldiers all deployed from the ship. This must have taken place shortly before the other memories he'd seen. He spotted Kozmotis leading his men and followed. Their search took him through a village.
The village was a crystalline sort of organic, with twisty, black-barked trees growing in orderly rows between buildings grown from crystal. Some of it had been hewn aside to make smooth walls, but others had allowed the crystal to grow in its natural spires. Unlike earth crystal, these spires twisted like the trees in smooth, molten loops. Light bent through the curved stones, shining on the ground like water pouring from a fountain, pooling in decorative patterns on the sandy black soil.
"Fan out," said Kozmotis.
"Sir! Over here, sir!"
The soldier moved into an area that looked like it might have been some kind of meeting hall. The moment Jack moved into the room to take a look, he regretted it.
Bodies lay in a massive circle in the center of the room. The dead looked like Nightlight, their skin in various shades of white and cream and pale gold. There were men and women and even the elderly - and and every one of them a weapon in their hands, or one near enough to have fallen from them. Every one was cut open, their gashes still flowing with blood, the ground soaked where they lay.
Jack gagged twice before getting his stomach under control.
In the center of the circle was an empty space, where various handmade dolls and toys had been discarded. Kozmotis stepped over the bodies into the center of the circle and picked up a wooden doll, one not so different from the doll North had made for Jack. Jack's hand instinctively went to the doll, still in his pocket.
"They must have fought to the last man and woman to protect their children," Kozmotis said ruefully, placing the doll down again out of respect. He stepped away from the pile and back to his men. "We have to look for survivors."
Jack followed the soldiers as they searched. They didn't find any.
At least not until they found a cave outside the village.
"Sir, the lighting in here -" said one of the soldiers. "It might have been strong enough to keep the fearlings out."
The cave had crystals like in the village but where they seemed to capture light, these emitted it on their own. It was nearly as bright as day in the cave. The crystals that did not emit light of their own caught and split the light from the others so that the interior of the cave was dappled with light of every color.
A soldier inside the cave called out. "Over here! I think I found a survivor!"
Kozmotis hurried in after him. "Where?"
"In here, sir, they're - whoa!" The soldier jumped away just before a familiar crystal-tipped spear thrust out of a hole in the wall, a hidden nook in the cave. If he hadn't jumped out of the way in time, the soldier would have been speared in the thigh.
"Everyone back away. They're probably in a panic."
Jack winced, remembering that Nightlight had been the only one to survive the attack on his village. Was this that memory, or the memory of some other Star Herder village that had been even less lucky?
Kozmotis stood next to the hole and spoke quietly to whoever it was inside.
"I'm Captain Kozmotis Pitchiner, of the 5th regiment of the Golden Army. We mean you no harm."
The Star Herder didn't want to leave the hiding spot apparently. Kozmotis sighed.
"We want to help you. We have food. We can provide medical care for any injuries you might have. We need you to come out and put down your weapon."
Still the Star Herder hid.
"We can't help you unless you come out."
Apparently, the Star Herder didn't want to be helped.
Kozmotis sighed and resheathed his sword.
"Sir, what are you doing?"
"Something mad," he said calmly, kneeling down in front of the hole. The spear immediately shot out at his head and he calmly knocked it aside, grabbing onto it and yanking. It wasn't enough to pull the Star Herder out of the hole, but it was enough for Koz to yank the spear away and bring the wielder within reach.
There was a kicking, biting, vicious struggled as Kozmotis dragged Nightlight out and held him close, even as he fought to get free. The boy looked much more of a mess than he had in the later vision. He was injured and covered in dirt and his face was streaked with tears, as if he'd been crying for days.
Jack could sympathize.
Other soldiers moved forward to help, but Kozmotis snapped out, "Stay back. You'll only - mmf - frighten him even more."
"He's hardly more than a child," murmured a soldier behind the two. And she was right - Nightlight looked younger than Jack had been when he died, and looked younger still in Kozmotis' arms.
Nightlight fought against Kozmotis' grip, but the soldier held on tight, rocking him in place, hushing him gently.
"Sssh. It's alright. You're safe now. We're not going to hurt you. We're not going to hurt you, child. You're safe."
The boy, finally realizing that these were not fearlings trying to deceive him, started to calm. He began to shake uncontrollably in Kozmotis' arms.
"It's all over. We won't let the fearlings hurt you anymore."
The shaking was not just shaking now. Nightlight wept despondently, his mewling cries like the tinkling of stars dying and crumbling away into nothing. It made Jack's heart ache just to hear it. He slipped through the crowd toward the man and boy, almost without thinking about it. Nightlight was a child in pain, and Jack was a Guardian - that was what drove him forward, to reach out even though this pain was so very, very old.
Jack touched Nightlight's shoulder, and the vision burst like a soap bubble.
It was as impossible as ever to track time in the maze, but it had to be at least another two days before Jack came to another room of colored lights. He was about to settle down and snatch some rest when a movement caught his eye. Something was already resting in the room.
Jack reached for the staff that wasn't there on instinct, ready to attack before he even got a good look at the little bundle of tattered cloth leaning against the far wall. A child.
Not just any child.
"Jamie?"
Jack's heart lifted at the sight of the boy, then dropped as Jamie lifted his head and Jack saw the expression on his face, the dark circles under his eyes, realized there was blood seeping from the tatters in Jamie's t-shirt.
"Jack!"
Jamie's cry was nearly a sob. He threw himself at Jack, nearly bowling him over with his embrace. Jack dropped down to put his arms around Jamie as the boy buried his face in Jack's chest, shaking, barely restraining himself from crying. Brave little Jamie, who had the heart of a lion - but there were things in this place that would make even a lion tremble.
Jack couldn't even tell him it was going to be okay. Not without lying. "How did you get here?" he asked instead, kneeling down so he could look Jamie in the eye.
Jamie pulled back, hollow-eyed and streaming with tears.
"We were trying to find you and the trail led here. They brought me and Cupcake to help against the nightmares."
"Where are the others?" Jack asked. "Did they tell you to wait here?"
Jamie shook his head. "We - followed you to Camelot, but the Nightmares attacked and they forced me onto the Siege, and it took me here. I waited as long as I could, but these things came and chased me -" he trembled, gripping Jack's hoodie like a lifeline. "I haven't seen the Guardians since."
Jack was so furious he could feel his heartbeat pulsing in his ears.
Why had the others brought Jamie and Cupcake? How could they risk their lives like that? He wasn't worth this. If this was the price paid for trying to rescue him, they should have left him.
"Jack -" Jamie said, in a quiet, frightened voice. "It's been days. I'm so hungry. There was water and I guess it was safe because I haven't gotten sick from it, but there hasn't been any food."
"We'll - we'll figure something out. We'll -"
But he couldn't promise that. He couldn't promise that they'd find a way out, that the Guardians would find them in time.
"They're looking for us, Jamie." That much, he could be sure of. "The Guardians are looking for us, okay? We just - we just have to hold out long enough for them to find us. There are animals here and sometimes things we could use to make a fire. I don't know if they're safe but I could try to eat first to make sure, because if something makes me sick, we'd know it could kill you. We just have to - we just have to hold out for a while, okay? Because they're looking for us. They won't leave us in here. They know where we are now and they'll get us out."
Jamie finally released Jack's hoodie, smearing tears from his face with both hands.
"Okay," he said, nodding, choking back the fear. "You're right. They wouldn't leave us like this."
The smile on Jamie's face, wavery and fragile as it was, made it easier for Jack to smile, too.
"Now all we have to do," he said, standing up, reaching a hand out to Jamie to help him up "- is to stay together -"
It was as if the maze had been waiting for him to say it. Without even a crack of warning, the floor beneath Jamie split and fell away, and so did the boy - his screaming fit to freeze Jack's heart.
"NO!"
Jack threw himself into the hole, and landed hard as the floor reformed just in time for him to crash into it. He felt his shoulder pop and yelled again, in pain as much as in horror.
He rolled over, beating the floor with both fists, oblivious to the pain in his shoulder.
"JAMIE!"
The floor stayed solid beneath him. He pounded, and screamed, and jumped, but it refused to give. When he stopped yelling and pressed his ear to the stone, he heard the faintest sounds coming through - sounds that might have been screaming.
Jack stood up and charged out of the room, hoping that he'd come to a place soon with something he could use to break through the floor - but instead, he ran straight into another vision.
"NO!" he screamed, but there was no help for it - he floated in midair, intangible, unable to even touch his feet to the floor as Nightlight and Rashena ran through what looked like a large living room, the ornate furniture pushed back and covered with sheets in an elaborate blanket fort.
Rashena's shrieks of joy only put him in mind of Jamie's scream of terror. Jack thrashed against the memory, shouting over the words Kozmotis was speaking to his second in the corner.
"Let me out! LET ME OUT! I DON'T CARE ABOUT PITCH'S STUPID PAST! I DON'T CARE!"
The maze was as unyielding as ever. The memory carried on.
Jack settled against the wall, sliding down it to sit with his knees drawn up, watching the memory play out through blurred eyes.
Nightlight and Rashena were running around the house in a manner that could only be described as "capering," clearly engaged in some game of pretend. Nightlight's role in it involved dancing in a silly way and wearing something like a colander on his head.
Kozmotis sat at the table nearby with Jem Breen. The former had a glass of wine, the latter was not so much nursing a beer as aggressively doctoring it.
"Oh, for the love of Solus, are you chronically incapable of not being fancy?" Jem said, nodding towards Kozmotis' wine, reading the bottle. "'Sterling Saint Marigold tart cherry cranberry'? Really?"
"I am a slave to my nature," said Koz, sipping from the wineglass with his pinkie extended. "And my nature has a palate."
In the background, Jack had begun sobbing. The sight of Nightlight and Rashena capering, of Jem and Koz enjoying each others' company, hadn't stopped his tears.
Jamie was lost in the maze, hurting and afraid, and Jack was stuck here watching happiness that he knew had to end somehow, and horribly. In all his years of begging the moon for answers, he'd never felt so helpless.
Kozmotis and Jem sipped their drinks as Rashena and Nightlight collapsed their blanket fort by falling onto it. Kozmotis was watching them play with an expression that was almost sad.
"You know the Star Herders apparently put a weapon in the hands of their children as young as age twelve. We didn't run into them because there were so many of us and our ships were making so much noise, but some of the creatures on their planet are incredibly dangerous. If the Star Herders went out alone, the beasts would stalk them. They teach every child to fight as soon as they're old enough to hold a weapon," said Kozmotis. "His people lived in peace but even so, their children had to grow up sooner than they'd have liked. I can't pronounce it but they have a word for it that translates to 'the great sorrow.' "
He went on, "They're playing right now but he thinks he needs to protect her, as if he's some kind of bodyguard. That's how the older teens saw themselves apparently, in regards to the younger children. They were their shepherds, the guardians of their childhoods."
"Well, he doesn't have to grow up too fast now, does he?"
"I suppose not. Nothing can make up for what he's lost but maybe that's something extra I can give him."
"Yeah? What are you planning?"
"Well, I already have the adoption papers. All that's left is to -"
Koz and Jem went on chatting, but Jack was crying too hard to hear anymore. There was no reason he needed to see this. No more reason than that he needed to be chased by tentacle monsters, but at least the maze let him run from those. How could he sit and listen to happy people mildly discussing adoption when Jamie was starving to death, if something else wasn't killing him first?
When the voices stopped, he wiped his eyes and stood, prepared to go, but Nightlight stood directly in front of him, close enough to run into.
Jack was still only a second before running. Nightlight flashed out of his way like a puff of smoke, which was fine. Jack didn't care about getting to the vision of the boy. He had to get to the real boy who'd gotten lost in the maze because of him.
Jack ran for days. Sometimes he ran from things attracted by the motion. Mostly, he just ran in search of Jamie.
He didn't even have time to skid to a stop when Nightlight stepped in front of him again. He skidded right through the boy and into another memory, as if Nightlight had been a portal he'd passed through.
"No! No, I don't care!" Jack huffed out, wringing his hands together fitfully. "I don't! Care!"
All that was going to happen was that he was going to watch a family fall apart - just like Jamie's would if he didn't get him out of the maze and they never saw him again.
Jack found himself outside on a balcony. Through the glass doors he saw people dancing in a large room.
It was a party, some kind of officers' ball taking place in a massive ballroom of Kozmotis' mansion. Officers milled around, some of them in normal formal dress, some of them in formal uniforms.
Kozmotis wasn't in the room, though. He was there on the balcony, with Lal Jelias, having a private moment that Jack seemed to have been dropped into.
"You wanted to talk to me about something?" Kozmotis asked her, looking bewildered. "If it's about your report, it was excellent. You needn't worry about the rescue operation, since Sergeant Vector was the one technically in charge, it's his responsibility to gather up the statistics on the refugees -"
"This isn't really about work," she said. There was a glint in her eye that suggested she was amused at his obliviousness.
It was obvious what he was being oblivious over. Lal had taken steps to look absolutely gorgeous. Unlike the other officers, she'd opted for a beautiful dress in deep blue with silver threads running through it like rivers, instead of her formal uniform. She'd made herself up, but Jack noticed, she hadn't taken steps to cover her scar. She wore it as brazenly as the dress.
Koz might not have figured out the reason behind the softness in her eyes but Jack did.
It made him want to vomit.
"I am not watching some other poor lady make goo-goo eyes at Pitch when I could be finding Jamie. First of all, I know she's just going to end up sad or dead or both, and second of all, ew!"
He turned on his heel and tried to stomp away, but they stood before him no matter which way he turned.
"Pretty smart of you to torture me by turning this into the Pitch Dating Show," Jack muttered, crossing his arms and growling under his breath. "This is definitely something I never wanted to see."
"So, what exactly was it that you wanted to talk about?" Kozmotis asked, still nervous. "That you needed to do alone."
"No point in drawing this out longer than necessary," Lal said straightening her shoulders and standing like a woman defiant before a firing squad. "I was hoping that you might be amenable to a couple after-party drinks, Kozmotis, or - some other form of after-party."
Kozmotis didn't seem to have words for that, just a very quizzical sounding noise.
Eventually he found them. "You mean, ah, with you and Jem, yes?"
Lal couldn't quite seem to suppress a smirk. "I am reasonably sure that Trixxi would object to Jem tagging along on the plans I had in mind, though I admit I haven't consulted her on the matter. But I see I've aimed too high," she continued, waving one hand and reaching out to take one of Kozmotis'. "I'll speak more plainly: my suggested after-party is not platonic."
"Ah," he said quietly, looking at a loss for words.
"Ughhhh," Jack groaned, throwing his hands up in the air. Could they just get through this stupid memory so he could go back to finding Jamie?
"I'm not professing my undying romantic love for you or anything," Lal said, all traces of the smirk from before having disappeared from her face. There was a flash of vulnerability behind her armor of confidence. "But you're a good man, Koz, and what I know of you, I do love. I just want to see where things could go. "
Somewhat hesitantly, she reached out for his hand. "Whaddaya say?"
Koz pulled his hand out of Lal's, shaking his head.
"Lal, I'm -"
Lal's face fell. "Please don't say you're sorry. There are ways to let people down without 'I'm sorry.'"
"I am, though," Kozmotis insisted. "You are - if I wasn't your commanding officer -"
"Please don't give me that, either," she said just a little flatly. Then she added, with some amusement. "You really aren't used to having to beat the women off with a stick, are you."
Kozmotis couldn't help but laugh. "Not so much, no. I was, to word it nicely, somewhat gawky in school and then I met..."
He trailed off.
"Ahava," she finished for him, her voice much gentler.
He nodded. "I don't think that I will ever be able to let her go. I know myself well enough to say that. You are - you are a magnificent person, though. I can say that without restraint. You are one of my favorite people. You're someone that makes me wish it could be different, because you're right, the fact that I'm your commanding officer is just an excuse. There are special dispensations...love finds a way. I can't use that as a shield."
He went on, "But I - I am just not the kind of man that is capable of moving on from that kind of grief."
"Or that kind of love, I should think," she said, seeming to have come to some sort of understanding. .
He looked at her gratefully, as if glad to be understood.
She took it in stride. "Well then, sir, I...don't apologize for my impertinence. As we of the 5th regiment infantry always say: 'Difficulties be damned.' I had to give a shot."
"And I'm honored, even if I have to say no." With one last tight-lipped smile, he turned back to the party. "I should -"
"Of course."
Jack was almost surprised. "You're turning her down?" he shouted, to Koz, speaking to the mirage for the first time. "Good! She's too good for you!"
Lal took a deep breath, alone on the balcony, but that deep breath steadied her. She walked back into the ballroom with her head held high. Jack approved. "Believe me," he assured the vision. "You're better off with someone - literally anyone else."
Kozmotis, even as he relaxed back into his role as party host, looked filled with regret. Jack didn't care. He had ceased caring for quite some time now.
However, his disinterest in watching Pitch eventually ruining his own life didn't seem to extend to Nightlight and Rashena, who were playing at the fringes of the party. It seemed that Pitch hadn't had the heart to make them stay elsewhere in the house while it went on (as if children could resist parties anyway). Nightlight wore his armor, as he had every time Jack had seen him, but apparently he felt the occasion warranted some dressing up because he was had tied a festive bright blue bowtie over it. Even after everything he'd suffered, the sight of it brought the smallest of smiles to Jack's face. Rashena, on the other hand, was dressed to the nines in a fluffy purple garment that had so many frills and bows per square inch that Jack wondered how one hadn't popped off and hit someone in the eye yet from the pressure.
They kept to the edges of the party until Nightlight spotted a particularly pretty teenage girl with raven-black hair and blue skin who was somewhere around his age, perhaps a daughter of the one the soldiers. His eyes went a little wide and his mouth opened into a little "o" as he stared at her. Rashena smiled as she saw him staring and nudged him.
He looked down at her and shook his head, as if to ask, 'What?'
"Go ask her to dance. Duh," said Rashena, who was now old enough to say things like "duh" apparently.
Nightlight hesitated. Rashena nudged him again. "Go on."
At his surrogate sister's encouragement, Nightlight stepped forward, walked to the girl, and waved to get her attention away from her group of friends. He opened his mouth as if to say something then gestured to his throat to try to explain that he had trouble talking.
The girl stared at him disdainfully as he held out his hand, welcoming her to dance with him. When she made no response, he did a little twirl to show his intention, before holding out his hand again.
"Reb, I think he wants to dance with you," chirped one of her friends.
"Well, why didn't he just say so?"
"I don't think he can talk."
The girl turned up her nose. "Why would I want to dance with you? I don't even know what you are."
Some of her friends tittered but a few looked discomfited. Nightlight mostly looked bewildered at getting such a response, and then thoughtful, as if he was trying to figure out how to even react to it. Jack supposed that, while living in the loving atmosphere of the Pitchiner home, he probably hadn't run into nastiness like this that often.
"Reb, that's not very nice..." said the chirpy friend who didn't sound so chirpy anymore.
Nightlight simply waved a hand, as if to say it was perfectly fine - or no, that it was a mistake. It was very much a "No no, I wasn't talking to you" gesture. He gestured to the lamp right next to the sneering girl, as if he had meant to dance with it all along. Bowing a deep bow to the lamp, he took it in his arms and danced around the room with it, sashaying gracefully. Some of the adults did rather comedic double-takes when they saw the strange boy dancing around the room with a lamp, but the friends that had looked uncomfortable with Reb's rudeness immediately started laughing and so did the watching Rashena. After a minute or two Nightlight put the lamp back and gestured to the other girls that had been laughing at his antics, as if to say, "Any takers?"
Three of them all leapt at the chance to dance with him, while sullen Reb hung back and glared. Nightlight made a game effort to dance with them all at once.
However, when Rashena approached, he politely turned them away and immediately swept his sister up to dance with him, balancing her little feet on his and parading her around the room. Always, he seemed like a ghost, a wisp of thing that might evaporate into nothing but it was amidst Rashena's laughter that he seemed most alive.
"Barbaric, those Star Herders," Jack suddenly heard behind him. Standing there was a man in a tuxedo and top hat, his face mostly hidden by a massive handlebar mustache and gratuitous amounts of sideburns. He stood with equally frumpy-looking older soldiers, and a woman in a poofy green gown. "No sense of etiquette. You'd think he'd learn from his betters living with a man like Kozmotis, but look at him rollicking around like an animal, dancing with lamps. He should know that his behavior reflects on his guardian. How dare he embarrass the man after he took him in."
"Hey!" Jack said defensively, despite knowing the that the man wasn't real and couldn't hear him. "What's barbaric are those sideburns."
The man had looked from side to side to make sure Kozmotis hadn't overheard, but he hadn't looked behind him. If he had, he'd have seen both Lal and Jem literally holding Kozmotis back from flying at the man in a rage. When he finally calmed, they let him go, and stood calmly by as Koz stepped, equally calm, right behind Mr. Mustache. Quietly, he said, "Actually, I'm quite proud of him."
The man nearly jumped a foot in the air. Apparently, Koz had gotten some practice being creepy long before he became Pitch.
"He's come a long way since I took him in. It's a miracle that he's learned to laugh again."
Crystalline laughter drifted over the sounds of the party from where Nightlight danced with Rashena, as if on cue
The mustached man looked flabbergasted as he sputtered. "I meant - I didn't mean -"
"Of course you did," Koz cut him off, with a veneer of snide understanding. "That's what everyone thinks of the Star Herders. How tragic that, with him the last of them, no one will ever learn otherwise."
"Well, it's not entirely off base," the man half-whined. "They'd been in contact with us for how long, and they still lived in those dank holes, fighting off those dreadful monsters with whatever spear-shaped things grew out of the ground? To say they lived for their children -" he sneered. "Their children might have done well for themselves if they'd grown up in our schools, learning to be modern individuals alongside our children. I don't know why they insisted on not sending them to be educated." He sniffed. "Their people might have survived if they had."
Jack's attention was on Kozmotis then. In that specific moment, he saw the darkness in Koz. He saw the coldness he was used to seeing in those eyes, rage and spite crystallizing into something solid and sharp as Koz stared the man down. He still wasn't Pitch, because this was born of compassion and love and a mind open to things the admiral couldn't even imagine, but Jack could see how Pitch could come from this man.
The thing that struck Jack was that, despite Pitch's towering evil, Kozmotis was far more terrifying. He imagined the kind of monster Pitch could have been if he cared about something this much, but still felt it was okay for him to do evil in its name instead.
The first thing that came to his mind was that he finally understood - Pitch did care about something this much. He cared about Jack. He cared enough to wake up Old Man Winter, and risk the world to get to him. He cared enough to drag Jack into the maze, to be tortured for turning him down.
He cared enough to trap him in the dark - him and Jamie - for how long
The ferocious streak Jack saw in Koz suggested that it could be a long, long time.
"As you well know, there are planets in the Core Worlds where they shoved their children outside of the shelters to be taken," Koz said, in the oily tones Jack associated with Pitch's threats. " We pretend it doesn't happen, and when we can't, we nod our heads and say 'well what else could they have done?'" Kozmotis shook his head, in mock pity, "Now, the Star Herders, on the other hand - the Star Herders fought to the bitter end. In every village, in every home, every single adult died trying to protect their children. And before the fearlings, they'd hardly known war - against the natural forces of their world, certainly, but the very concept of fighting each other was all but unimaginable. Our history, you recall, was a bit more storied than that."
He turned on the man, the oily smoothness all slicked out of his tone. He finished with a snarl. "I should hope that someday we can aspire to their level of barbarism. So if you don't mind, please refrain from casting aspersions on my ward's people."
He added, calmly, "You ignorant fathead."
Behind him, Jem and Lal were both facepalming. Jack almost laughed.
The mutton-chopped man, meanwhile, had turned a truly fantastic shade of purple.
"You'll -" he sputtered. "You will regret this, colonel," he sneered. He whirled on his slightly elevated bootheel and pushed away through the crowd.
The other people that had been talking to Mr. Mustache harrumphed and walked away with a few mutters of "Well, I say!" and "The nerve!"
Lal stepped forward, still wincing. "You do know that was Admiral Flev's husband, right?"
Koz's mouth dropped open and then shut with a slight click, his already pale skin going paler. He breathed out a creaky, pained, "No, I did not, actually."
Jem patted him on the back, sympathetic. "Would you like to kiss your shiny promotion goodbye now, or later?
Rashena's scream interrupted what might have been a meltdown on her father's part. Jack and the three officers whirled around, zeroing in on her location. Only a moment ago, she'd been holding her locket up, proudly displaying it to a captain who was a little, it seemed, deep in his cups - now, the captain had fallen to the ground, clawing at Rashena's dress, ripping bows from it as she wriggled away. The man's eyes rolled in his head as he pulled the little girl to him, lurching as if using his body for the first time. He reached for her throat. She twisted away but shadows formed around one of his hands into nasty-looking claws, well long enough to slice the little girl open.
The soldiers in dress uniforms were drawing their weapons. Eyes wide with terror, Kozmotis himself was rushing over as if he planned to kill the man with his bare hands.
But none of them reacted faster than Nightlight. He dashed for his spear like a beam of starlight, then vaulted himself at the man, kicking him soundly in the chest with both feet.
Shadows sprang out of the man's mouth and eyes and ears as Nightlight brought the spear down and stabbed him in the chest. For a moment, the light at the tip flashed so bright that it was nearly blinding, suspending every figure in the room in starlight. Inhuman screams filled the air as the shadows suffered under the onslaught of light.
The boy leapt back. In a room of trained soldiers, Nightlight, first and best, kept himself between Rashena and the room, his knuckles white around his spear.
The downed man moved. The circle around him jumped back, then jumped back farther as the corpse wriggled in such a way that no healthy human moved. Long, shadowy masses snaked under his skin and poured into the air, massing above the dead man.
But they had been weakened by the light of Nightlight's spear and without a living body to latch onto they dissolved away into nothingness.
The man no longer moved.
Mass chaos erupted. Amidst the screeching, Jack caught words. "-Fearlings -" "Who ever knew -" "- bypassed all the wards -" "- they can possess us now?"
Kozmotis had no ears for the discussion. He fell on his children, scooping the crying Rashena up in one arm and throwing the other around Nightlight. Nightlight, who hadn't moved from his defensive position over Rashena, his eyes huge, his teeth gritted, trembled in place as if frozen there despite Koz's one-armed hug around him.
Slowly, the trembling took over Nightlight's body, and he dropped his spear. It clattered on the floor as he sagged into Koz's arms, his other going around Rashena, as if their contact was a tether drawing him back from the last time he'd held his spear in defense of a child.
"It's all right," Kozmotis soothed, as Nightlight's tinkling starlike weeping joined Rashena's, as the bodyguard became a young boy again in his arms. "Ssssh, you're both safe. You're safe now."
The memory fell away, leaving only Nightlight, on his knees as if still hugging an invisible man and child.
He stood, his face still streaked with tears, but his eyes were no longer wild. He hefted his spear and tilted his head at Jack, as if awaiting questions.
Jack just looked at him impassively. "So can I go now?"
Up ahead of them, Jamie screamed.
Jack charged ahead, Nightlight vanishing around the corner in front of him. A blooming field of bone-white flowers dipped on their stems to drink from a stream of blood, flowing from a small pile of meat and polyester being savaged by a hairless, Labrador-sized thing with a spine of bone spikes.
Jack had never killed anything with his bare hands before, but there was a first time for everything.
When the savaging creature was dead, and Jack's hands were bleeding, he fell on the shredded windbreaker and spilling down vest, but no one would have called what was left with the blood-soaked fabric and feathers a body.
He screamed so loud, so long, the whole maze had to hear him. And when he was done, for good measure, he did it again.
His roar refined into words.
"IT'S - NOT - REAL!"
It was not real. It was not real. He feared this so much. He feared this, maybe more than he feared never leaving the maze himself. That was what the maze did. Made you face your fears - not the reasonable ones that, in facing, you became stronger for overcoming, but the ones that you never considered, because there was no overcoming them. There was no good to be had from thinking them over - and over - until they consumed you.
They were just horrible. And possible. And you didn't think about them, because thinking about them too much would suck the life out of living.
Jamie couldn't really have fallen on the Siege and died in this place.
The maze just had to know that this was a horror Jack would never forget. No matter how much he tried.
"You - think I'd just believe this," Jack screamed, tears streaming down his face as he stood as if to face the maze around him. "I don't! I'm not broken!"
He stopped talking, just for a moment, to sob violently into his hands. But when the moment had passed, he stood up, and though his eyes were still wet, the stream of tears had stopped. That meant, of course, that there was nothing there to wash away the blood smeared on his face.
"I'm not even breaking!" he shouted. "This isn't real! This isn't real. This isn't real…"
He said it to himself again and again as he walked away, hands still soaked in blood, until he'd said it so much that the words lost their meaning.
After ages of wandering in and out of shadows, Jack wandered into another memory. He stood silently, waiting for it to be over.
"According to the general's report, every civilian was successfully evacuated with minimal casualties to your unit," said a woman wearing a very fancy-looking uniform with quite a few bars on her chest. She was older than Koz, with dark skin and golden dreadlocks pulled back into a ponytail. She sat there at her desk, looking over a report, while Kozmotis stood at attention in front of her.
"Yes, ma'am. We only lost five soldiers at the moonlight refinery and power plant. The reactor was going critical. We managed to get our engineers in place to prevent a meltdown, but there was an explosion in one of the control rooms. We retook the power plant only just in time."
"Considering the circumstance - and the minimal time it took for things to be brought under control - the loss is unfortunate but most likely could not have been avoided. To suffer no other casualties among the refugees or our men and women… well, that is really quite extraordinary leadership, Colonel Pitchiner."
"What's most extraordinary is the discipline and skill of my unit, ma'am. They're all fine soldiers and I'm proud to lead them."
"Modest, as well - though don't think I can't see that pride burning behind your eyes Pitchiner. You trained them after all. I know your type." She kept scanning over the reports. "You've climbed the command structure faster than most and no one does that without intent. I suppose you're aiming for general now."
She put the report down. Kozmotis looked more nervous as he stood.
"Of course, promotions are not without their politics. Even a stellar record doesn't guarantee you one. There is the matter of personal judgement on the part of the admirals."
Pitch finally spoke up, "Ma'am, if this is about the party -"
"Save it," Admiral Flev said sharply.
"My apologies, ma'am."
"Your apologies indeed. My husband said you never did apologize to him for your remarks. I suppose the unfortunate incident with Captain Kallus prevented that, but would you now?"
Kozmotis stood silent for a moment, working his jaw. Finally he took a deep breath and said, "No, I would not, ma'am. He insulted my ward's people and essentially called him a barbarian - and he did it under my roof. If standing up for a child in one's care, and for a people that can no longer speak up for themselves, is something to be punished, then I will suffer it gladly."
"Indeed you would," the admiral said she cracked the smallest inkling of a smile "If I didn't know that my husband can be a tremendous blowhard. I love the man - he's far more generous in his actions than he is in his words - but some of his beliefs are so antiquated they could be appraised by a museum curator. There was no call for what he said and he and I have had a little talk. Do expect a written apology arriving in the mail sometime soon - to you and your ward, if you're inclined to share it with him. Although you should expect your formal notice of promotion to arrive much sooner."
"Ma'am?" Kozmotis said, his voice cracking just slightly in bewilderment.
"Only five men lost in a campaign that size, every civilian accounted for, and you're uncompromising enough in your integrity to stand before admiral and be utterly unapologetic for defending a child in your care? If that's not leadership material, I don't know what is. We're going to need men like you in high places, especially now that the fearlings are developing new abilities."
"Thank you, Admiral Flev," said a still bewildered Kozmotis. "I will endeavor to exceed the expectations of and you and the other admirals."
"Let's just hope that your leadership skills continue to outshine your skills at diplomacy, General Pitchiner."
"Yes, ma'am," said Kozmotis somewhat breathlessly, his voice going a bit more wry. "That is indeed the hope."
The memories shifted suddenly around him. Kozmotis sat in his home, reading some sort of tablet. Rashena and Nightlight were on the floor beside his chair with a board game spread between them. Rashena appeared to be winning.
Nightlight claimed a piece, however, and laughed a short burst of triumph. Koz looked up from his technology, nodding with a smile as Rashena yielded one of her pieces. Nightlight leaned against the arm of the chair. Absently, Koz rested his fingers on Nightlight's hair, petting him lightly as he read.
The children played, and Kozmotis read for a moment longer before he seemed to consider what he was doing. His fingers paused in Nightlight's hair as he looked at the children, who played happily on.
"He acted like her bodyguard at first," said Koz's voice, as if in a voiceover. The image of the family became smudged as another memory bled into it. Shadows of Jem and Koz walked through the memory, wavering in and out of clear view, the interior of one of their ships just discernible as they walked through it and the memory of the living room. "But I don't want to think of one child as bodyguard to another. I don't want him to think of himself as anything but her brother. As my son."
"So when do you get the adoption papers?" Jem asked.
Both spectral memories gusted away like puffs of smoke, leaving Kozmotis still walking, down the long hall, to the door - the towering door with the countless intricate locks, to the guard post Jack had seen him take in that first memory.
The whispers waited until the silence was so heavy that their sound was almost a relief to hear.
"Ahava."
Koz gritted his teeth, sucking in his breath. There was sweat on his brow, and the lines around his eyes had deepened since he first took up his post.
It seemed to have been many years since he first stood at the door. Many years - or a few short, horrible ones
"You have no power here," he hissed, but there was an uneven quality to his voice. "Using her to hurt me won't change that."
"she still cries for you to come save her," the whispers hissed. There was a tone to their whispers similar to the satisfied moans of a hungry person biting into the first food they'd seen all day. "she begs you to come rescue her from her agony."
Something inside the prison banged, hard, against the door.
"Kozmotis!"
Ahava's voice poured through unseen cracks in the doors dissolving into pained weeping at the end.
Koz kicked the door. "Settle down in there," he growled, gritting his teeth, anger wrinkling his brow to a severity Jack had only seen when the possessed captain had tried to kill Rashena.
"Kozmotis, my love," Ahava sobbed. The thuds against the door grew softer, like a woman letting her palms land against them. There was a scraping sound of a body sliding down the door. "Are you there? Please say you're there -"
"I said stop it!"
And suddenly Pitch - no, he was Kozmotis still - was kicking the door, and hammering it with his fists, his teeth clenched so tight that it seemed he would crack them.
The hall rang with the echoes of his assault on the door when he stopped, breathing heavily, the whispers and the weeping silenced.
The weeping came, slowly, back.
"I'm sorry," Ahava cried, as if Kozmotis had struck her, and not the door. "I'm sorry - I know - you can't trust -" she broke off into more quiet cries. "Please, this once. Trust me, my love. Let me out. They tear me apart again and again in here. Please let me out -"
"You're not real," Kozmotis said, softly, sadness in his voice. "You're dead. I held your body. I pushed the button that sent your casket into the quasar -"
"I'm not my body," Ahava said, plaintive, soft. "Please. Let me go -"
"Just shut up," Kozmotis whispered, a hiss that cut through the whispers. "Just - for today, won't you shut up? Just once -"
There was silence behind the door, but not too much, before Ahava's voice came back. "There's nothing I can say to convince you," she mused, sadly. "You're too - too you for that. Even if you believed me, you'd never open the door."
"The risk would be too great," Kozmotis agreed.
"You'll stand guard forever, with this door always between us."
"I would," Koz confirmed, the lines in his face deepening.
"You'd leave me here in the dark, with them, forever."
The horror of that settled on him, visibly like a weight. Kozmotis slouched beneath it.
"You'd listen to them rip my soul apart, and you'd guard them while they did it."
Kozmotis closed his eyes, and tears ran through the deep creases around his eyes, the frown-lines digging deep around his mouth.
"Nothing you say," he whispered, "will make me open these doors."
Ahava didn't weep anymore - didn't say anything for a moment, as the whispers hissed softly - as if gathering - behind the door.
"At least touch me once, before they tear me apart," she asked. "Please. Don't let me go without any comfort -"
Black fingers extended under the door - but they were the black of a night sky full of stars, and the silver nails were chipped, ragged and bleeding.
Kozmotis' mouth opened in a silent scream as the fingers groped for his.
Eyes wide, he reached down, slowly, to touch them.
And suddenly, they were gone. They could never have been there. There was no crack between the floor and the lower edge of the towering doors, no seam even for a woman's slim fingers to snake under.
He stood again, at attention, eyes shut tight to keep the brimming tears from falling, taking deep breaths to calm himself.
"You could have stopped taking guard duty, but you couldn't let them know it was affecting you," Jack said, his voice flat with growing hatred and disdain. "That's why all this is going to come apart at the seams."
He hadn't gone without learning a few things from Anansi about stories and one of the primary lessons he'd learned was how dangerous pride was and how it always led to a fall.
"You were too proud to tell anyone the great General Pitchiner couldn't hack it, after putting so many of them away."
Pitchiner stood there shaking and Jack had trouble feeling pity for him. A part of him did. A part of him always would feel compassion for others, even through rage and pain, but right now the rage and pain was so strong that the part of him that was kind had been reduced to a whisper.
"And because you couldn't walk away, because you couldn't let people know you couldn't do it, that's why Jamie -" He swallowed thickly. "That's why Jamie might be dead, if all that was real. It's why I'm here. It's why there's a Pitch Black, isn't it."
He smiled a smile that was almost deranged.
"When I get out of here, I'm going to tell everyone. I'm going to tell them all your secrets. I'm going to tell them all your fears. I'm going to tell them all about Kozmotis Pitchiner, the weak link that let fear get into my world. Maybe someday Pitch will even be you again so that it actually hurts."
Kozmotis said nothing, of course - just stood, proud as ever, as the whispers started up again.