A/N: Sorry about the long update. I tried make it faster but school got in the way again and February has been brutal to me with the exams. I still hope everyone enjoys.
~~Chapter 6~~
"Monster."
He was just scared; he was just so scared that he let the word slip. It was too late to take it back. A cold, murderous smile was drawn on her white porcelain face, its presence made him gulped loudly. He shook in horror as he watched the queen raise her arms and flung them behind her causing another swirl of white dust to come out of nowhere. As he stared in fright at the swirling white dust, two sets of bigger and brighter eyes stared back at him. Instead of wolves, two gigantic snow golems appeared with thick, pointed fingers and hands made of ice, like its jagged sharp teeth, arms and legs. It roared behind her sending snowflakes in a savage torrent, the snow queen's train quivered at the intensity of the wind. The queen raised a pointed finger on something behind him and the golems swiftly obeyed and went. She turned to him and he shrank back, dreading whatever she planned to do with him. She had grabbed a fistful of his hair and yanked it. He howled at her, feeling the hair being pulled out of his scalp. She turned him so that he faced the other side, where the golems went.
The two giants stood by the bulldozer; they nodded and turned to the machine the humans brought. With one swipe of its claw the front and back mirror shattered and the driver's seat were in splinters. The other one descended its claw on the hood, with one effortless pull, ripped out its engine.
After the machine was beaten and torn apart, she let him go wailing, not from the destruction of his precious, company-owned bulldozer, nor to the fact that he would be fired as soon as he reports in. Because, let's face it, who's going to believe a crack up story of magical lady that could summon wolves and giant monsters made of ice and snow. It was due to the possibility that the snow queen might change her mind and have him torn apart just like the bulldozer if he did another slip up in her presence.
She approached the man Jerry called Jeremiah, and him noticing how the temperature around him dropped even lower, lifted his head to see her calm and unnerving eyes. She lifted a pointing finger towards the way back to town. He nodded ad stood, giving orders to his fellow woodcutters.
They scrambled to their feet to assist the injured, rushing past the queen who stared forward. They seemed to know what they were to do, moving almost in a choreographed manner. While everyone scattered to help the injured city folks, the wolves started to do their own routine. Quietly, a portion of the wolves that survived the onslaught picked up the nearest weapons to them. Like a rush of raging wind, they were gone and reappear empty handed as fast as they disappeared, picking up again another instrument of war before they vanish again. This went on until every piece, every metal weapons and arsenal were gone.
Burt was getting too old for this. He was sick and tired of keeping these know-it-all outsiders away from the snow queen and trying to keep them from getting themselves killed. Still, even though they kept trying to warn them (and God knows how hard and how much they tried), they seem to find it entertaining to beat the hornets' nest until the whole hive was out and stinging them on the face.
He sighed as he crouched down beside another idiot that thought they were stupid for believing in magical creatures. Looking closely at the four deep gashes on the man's face, he noticed that this one was missing an eye. The skin around it were singed and charred, a little ways beside him was an eye patch. This was the same man that foul mouthed the queen. All he could do was shake his head, karma was a boomerang that goes back at you tenfold. As the 45 year old man's hand hovered over the mercenary's neck he heard a vicious snarl. He looked up and saw one of the queen's wolves warning him to back off. He grimaced as he held both of his hands up in surrender, walking backwards on his knees. The wolf stopped, biting the man on the ground by the wrist and running off to somewhere else, dragging the body in the process.
The old woodcutter took a deep breath, filling his worn out lungs with the pine-scented minty air that surrounded them mixed with a whiff of medical alcohol, a dash of coppery blood and the strong and undeniable smell of death. Taking a moment, he scanned the scene around him. The group of wolves that wasn't picking guns or knives was dragging bodies into the forest. They knew what it meant.
Dead.
The bodies that the wolves hauled were corpses, dead from blood loss, these were the thoughts on his mind that was until he saw a body. He gasped and called out to their appointed leader. "Jerome!" He rushed to the body that seemed to be breathing shallow breaths. He was already bandaged up with light blue bandages, but the blood seeped out of their confines. Ginger hair sticking out of the bandage on his head as he groaned, under him blood had mated with snow.
The man called Jerome, the one Jerry called Jeremiah, sprinted to his fellow woodcutter's side, kneeling at the other side of the unmoving body and inspected the wounded soldier of fortune beside of him. They faced each other and nodded in silent understanding before Burt took out a thick, big, brown blanket. As he was putting the injured fellow on it, he noticed that Jerome was frozen stuck. He looked up to him to see him shivering, eyes wide as plates as his mouth opened and close, debating between screaming or not. A sweat dripped from his face even though it was still very abnormally chilly, petrified of what he saw behind the old man. Going with his better judgment, he did not try to look behind him and decided to pull his friend out of this trance.
He called out his name and tugged at his pants, effectively shoving him out of the hypnosis he was in. "Are you okay?" the old man asked worriedly, still commanding himself from turning his head to whatever his friend was just staring at.
Jerome nodded, not trusting his own voice after what he saw: beady, glowing eyes and sinister, smile showing off its sharp, white teeth that seemed to glow in the dark. He turned and helped his old friend to put the injured man on the blanket, telling himself not to look on that specific area again.
Burt immediately, dragged the mercenary behind him as he swiftly trekked the forest path to town. Once every injured person was bandaged up, the woodcutters hastily assisted them out of the forest. The snow queen watched as every injured person limped hurriedly away from that place, the remaining mercenaries were staring on the ground with big and tear-filled eyes as they passed her by. Not one of them had the courage to look her in the eye.
She flung her hand in a dismissive gesture and the snow giants bowed and carried the beaten and torn remains of the machine somewhere deeper in the forest, away from eyes of civilization. The white queen continued to watch the figures of the humans fade from her line of vision and sighed under her breath, hoping this wouldn't happen again, yet it always does. She felt the heavy weight of someone's stare on her, curious she turned and to her surprise it was a child, a boy to be exact. He looked at her with wide, scared eyes, but it didn't contain only that emotion. She could see it clearly like looking through a kaleidoscope. It had curiosity, amazement, nervousness and sense of familiarity. She approached slowly, as not to frighten him, giving him one of her gentle, motherly and comforting smile at him and bit by bit reaching a hand to him.
"Tom!" a deep, worry-filled voice shouted behind her. Whipping her head to the owner of the voice, she realized it was Jerome. She looked back at the child that stood there silently, still looking at her expectantly. The wolf-masked woman gave him a sad smile and turned to the leader of the woodcutters, cautiously backing away from the child so that it could run straight to his father. Yet the child still stood there. She tipped her head to the man that arrived and the child timidly walked to his father. Tom kept staring at the mysterious lady as he passed her by. The queen did the same: her pale blue eyes never left the child's warm brown ones. Ones the child was in his father's arms, she broke eye contact with him and gazed at the child's father who was shaking like a leaf, his arms protectively around his son, holding him tightly. She bowed slightly and turned her back at them. Taking it as his dismissal, the woodcutter gave a hurried bow and ran with his child in his arms, trying to catch up with the others. She faced the place where the fight took place and let loose another sigh.
Then a sense of emptiness took over that place, not a single cricket chirped into the stillness of the night. The strange and eerie silence seemed to calm the white queen.
The sound of clapping hands echoed crisply, shattering the silence that seemed to have thickened very quickly. A man dressed in black came out of the shadows followed by throaty laugh. "That was quite a show, I must say." The nightmare king strode to where she was, her little golem waddled to stand next to her his lip in a curve of a small smile glad that his creator wasn't hurt. "Quite a show indeed." smirking proudly as if a mentor showing off his most favorite student. Out of the bush came forth the guardians who seemed to have been ignored yet again. But this time, they will not wait to be acknowledged and stomped their way to the snow queen who had a puzzled look on her face like she had done nothing questionable.
"How could you hurt so many people? And some of them are dead." Distraught was abundant in North's voice, taking his place in front of the queen with the others, as he stared at the blood spatters. "Why would you-"
"Take their precious life?" She finished for him in a calm but cold tone. "If they really have valued their own lives, then they should have turned tail and ran in the first place instead of attacking me."
The queen moved closer to the battleground, passing through the clearly disturbed audience of hers. Snow had stopped falling as she surveyed the area. Thick layers of freshly fallen snow coated the fertilized soil, parts of it drenched in crimson blood. The broken pieces of the frozen flame lying pathetically beside the imprint of the flame thrower. Splaying her fingers downward, the wind suddenly picked up speed. As she lifted her open hand, snowflakes rose from the ground higher and higher. And bit by bit, the bloodstained snow and frozen flame along with the queen's mask that the queen wore dissolved and piled up above them, creating a large snowflake in the sky. Pitch recognized it as the snowflake he saw the first time the black king and the white queen met, while the guardians identified it as the snowflake the Man in the Moon showed them.
Pale white hands twirled guiding the wind to break it down, long, slender fingers moved as if weaving silk white threads so finely spun that seemed invisible to the naked eye, at least to human eyes. But for those that bore magic, they could see it dance at her fingertips into a ball of gushing wind and dust-like snow. She closed both her hands into fists and set them side by side, her fingers opened like a blooming flower. On the sky, the shifting ball of wind sped up. On both side, covered with frost and tiny snowflakes that piled on top of each other creating a rough shape of wings suddenly popped up.
At a snail's pace, she separated her hands that her palms showed but kept them connected with her thumbs overlapping the other similar to the position of the hands when creating a bird in a shadow play. Carefully moving her fingers up and down, her fingers replicating the way birds flap their wings. A puppet following the will of the puppeteer, it imitated her fingers. With one powerful beat of it its elegant wings, it soared out of its white cocoon. First a sharp crystal blue beak pierced the ball of dusty white, and then its head appeared. Eyes as blue as the ocean outlined by crimson lids, atop its head blazing sky blue flame with streaks of red waved, curling and bending gracefully against the racing winds as it lifted its whole body out of its prison. Feathers of light cobalt blue fading to white covered its body. The tail, same as the one on top of its head, trailed behind it as it did a circle in the air towards its creator. The light it emitted was of whitish-blue, spreading towards the dark star speckled evening blanket that sheltered the world.
It gave off a sound like a soft, inviting whistle and landed its crystal blue talons on the outstretched arm of the snow bringer. It extended its fire tipped wings as it dipped its head in a bow and then folding its wings neatly on its side as it stood proudly with chest puffed out and looked intently at the blonde queen. "You know what to do." She whispered softly, giving her arms where it was perched a nudge it took off and flew off, the winged creature's form contrasting against the dim sky.
"What was it? And what was it for?" Bunnymund interrogated almost to the point of accusing.
"Do you know how much the humans want to see this world to burn?" casually informing the furry guardian, her back still facing them as she stared off where her creation was before it faded out of her vision. "This world's atmosphere is already badly damaged. I've been sending off so many of my creation to repair the damages and maintain it into its livable condition." She turned with a stern expression on her face and continued. "They add another layer to replace what had been lost in exchange of a piece of them, and will keep doing so until they return into being nothing more than a thin air in the sky." She crossed her arms, eyes turning cold and discomforting. "It's an ice phoenix by the way, made of ice, snow, blood and iced fire. Blood and iced fire makes them last longer."
"And it was worth killing several humans over for?" Toothiana breathed out in grief as she remembered those who fell in front of her. "I admit they were pretty rude, but no reason is worth a human's life and using them as something like source of ingredients for your creation."
"You suggest I waste them?" stating emotionlessly, looking at her like she was the crazy person. The tooth fairy gasped at her and glided back, not believing what she just heard. The guardians stared at her distastefully, had they already failed before they even began? Could they ever change her into something worthy of the title of a guardian? Could they trust her?
Disinterested sapphire eyes scanned their eyes, "Oh, what? Did I lose my chance to be a guardian?" her voice and face in mocking disappointment. "Is my résumé not to your liking?" She sarcastically said and gasped, then she straightened and expression blank of any emotion but irritation. "Good." She said indifferently and turned to leave. "Now you don't have any further business here and you all could leave me be, never to return again."
"Hey! We're not through yet." Jack yelled at with stubbornness and anger.
Walking further away from the guardians, Olaf was watching silently at the side. "Well, I'm through with you."
"How could you walk away like you just thrown away some-…-some garbage?" the winter spirit took deep breaths, becoming restless all the more.
"With some practice." She simply stated.
"Why?" he screamed with vehemence. "Was it because you're more powerful than them?" that made her pause. He wasn't sure what expression she wore as he can only see her back. Struck a nerve… he thought and continued. "Was it because you like feeling their life at the palm of your hands? Being a god to decide if they live or die? How!?" he demanded. "HOW!?"
"How?" she chuckled grimly, she turned and faced the white haired boy. "You want to know how?" she spat every word like acid that seemed to burn her tongue and her patience. "Oh, I'll tell you how." Taking long strides to come face to face with the insolent boy, she pointed a condemning finger at him as she trembled with icy fury, eyes flashed with deadly threat. Sharp and lethal words and points already chosen in her mind that she knew would cut anyone deeply, yet when she opened her mouth not one came out. Thoughts pressed the emergency brake and tongue bit back the moment she heard her name and felt the tugging on her dress. Whipping her head down at the side, brow scrunched up in annoyance, she looked at the face of a worried Olaf. Seeing his sad soulful eyes while he clutched at her skirt like a helpless, frightened child desperately clinging on his mother to hide somehow calmed her down a bit. "What is it?" she managed to say with less temper.
He pointed up to Jack. "His eyes, Elsa." He said solemnly as he sluggishly put down his hand to his side. "His eyes."
She immediately spun to the boy, his face mirrored her own reaction: scrunched up brows, mouth hanging open slightly in confusion. The cold hands of the queen shot up and held Jack's face, making him stare at her own blue eyes. He tried to yank his head free from her grasp, but when he caught a glimpse of her beautiful blue jewels for eyes he stopped all together. Hypnotized by her twinkling gems, giving her freedom to delve within him, let her read whatever she wanted to read, let her discover things within him. At first he saw fiery hatred and irritation so concentrated that he shivered and felt his own skin burning up, then it turned to lifeless, glassy that reminded him of a porcelain dolls eyes. Gradually they changed after he saw her eyes widen and returned to normal size, warmth started to flood in, then different emotions swam within them. The creases of her forehead slowly disappeared, her features softened, eyes somber and drunk with sorrow. What was she feeling sorry for? What did she see? Her stiff and vice-like grip on his face turned into a touch of tenderness, thumbs stroking soothingly under his eye.
"Oh… So that's why." Muttering quietly as she let him go and started baking away, his questioning and bewildered eyes still on hers. Her hands folded protectively over her chest, as if afraid that her touch had contaminated something precious in him or infect him with some disease. A canvas of fragile beauty yet full of heart wrenching misery that makes you grab it and protect it from the world, carry her burden for her. That was what Jack could only describe her, as he continued to stare at her quivering blue eyes. Letting a humorless laugh looking at the side where Olaf kept watching her with the same sad eyes. "Now I know why you were able to resist Pitch's influence." Turning to look at him, this time with a small smile on her pink lips. "That's…" looking down for a second and a hand on her chin as she tried to find the right word to say. "…rare." She stood straight and gazed at him. "Especially, those who have lived for so long. Careful not to lose it." She said with genuine care and turned to leave.
Everyone gawked at her at the sudden development, baffled with how rapidly her mood changed. One moment she was calm and collected, then cold and calculating and then couldn't wait to rip throats with them. The next thing you know she'd turned to a sweet caring and compassionate creature. It was making them dizzy and triple guess everything they knew. "W-wait!" the youngest guardian reached out.
For the second time, she paused. "I won't tell you why I do things the way they are, but know this." Giving the confused guardians a sideward glance and a melancholy smile, "Situations where I am concerned is not as black and white as it seems." Another sigh came from her again, more on uncertainty and exhaustion than anything. With that piece said she moved her attention to Pitch that seemed to watch everything unravel before him with uncanny silence, face blank of any emotion and his eyes did not betray him for they showed no emotion either. She offered him a rueful smile yet he did not budge. "Their fear will be ripe by now. I'm sure they'll have a pretty vivid nightmare. Help yourself 'till your heart's content." And she continued to trudge the path towards the forest. Everyone watched in eerie silence, not three steps taken she started to wobble. A had shot up to the side of her temple, another hand reaching out for something to hold onto. They heard her moan as she forced herself to take another shaky step.
"Elsa…?" Her snow golem inquired as he gingerly neared her, it was when she took another step that she collapsed. "ELSA!?" The snow man shouted as he sprinted to her side. She managed to lean on a nearby tree as they heard her gasp for air, clouds of breath erupted from her mouth as she panted. Elsa turned to her worrying golem and patted his head reassuringly.
"It's…" taking a deep, tired breath "okay, Olaf. I just…a little winded…..feeling a little light-headed." She managed to say in between breaths. "Been a while….since I tried to freeze fire….opposite element…. Took a lot out of me…." Finally evening her breathes, closing her eyes in concentration. "Nothing a...rest wouldn't cure." Both the golem and the queen perked up as if they heard something the others could not. Even with how long the nightmare king had been with the snow queen and how many times he already saw this reaction from both of them, he still couldn't hear it. "It's time." The blonde woman blurted out as she gazed up in the sky. The little snow man just nodded and assisted her to stand on her still unsteady feet. A white outstretch hand was flung in a circular motion, wisps of white cloudy smoke encircled both the snow caster and her creature. Whirlwind of snow and wind enveloped them, turning it into a ball of shifting white particles that was gradually growing smaller into a floating dot and eventually fading into thin air with a zip.
"What was that?" the feathered guardian asked and turned to her little yellow friend that just answered him with a shrug and a question mark. Out of the corner of North's eye he saw the shadow manipulator walking away towards the shadows.
"And where you think you're going?" he bellowed.
"To my place, where else." He answered with disinterest. "My nightmares will just have to collect fear in my stead, I have far too much on my mind right now to deal with anything," he turned and glared at his enemies "or with any of you." resuming his walk towards the darkened part of the forest.
"Oh yeah?" the guardian of fun smugly bellowed. "Like we'll let you?" pointing his wooden staff at the black robed spirit.
"Oh?" now facing the hot-blooded spirit and walking towards him. He chuckled grimly, "You're going to stop me?" stopping just a few meters away from the boy. Stooping down until they were face to face, bright yellow malignant eyes with hint of silver malice clashed with electric defiant blue eyes. "I'd like to see you try." He said wryly that made the winter spirit's blood boil, raising his staff's aim to Pitch's face.
"Oh I will try." Jack gritted his perfectly white teeth.
"Then take your best shot." The lord of darkness taunted with cocky confidence that ticked him off.
"You asked for it." He snapped and jabbed the head of his weapon on the dark spirit's chest that sent him….a few steps away? The winter spirit gapped at his opponent.
"Ow. That hurt." Then the black haired spirit grinned. "Kidding." He flicked the imaginary frost that should've been there. Jack gawped at his weapon. "Is your staff broken or out of magic?"
He tried again but still nothing happened, no matter how he tried his staff wouldn't work. Accidentally while trying to figure out what was wrong with his staff, he pointed it to a nearby tree and out came blue lightning freezing its bark, spreading within seconds. One-fourth of the bark had been covered with frost. "What?" Mumbling under his breath with perplexity as his focus changed from his staff to the tree. A deep throaty laugh took his attention and glared at the tall gray man.
"How lovely." His hands neatly folded behind him, standing straight with superiority and intimidation as he took a step back. "Jack. Jack. Jack." a snicker escaping him, "You think just because you're a guardian now means you already know everything there is to know about this game that we play." His features darkened as his tone turned into a spine-chilling ferocity. "You're just a newbie of this game, while I have been playing this game for millennia." He glared at the other four guardians that went into defensive mode in a blink of an eye. "Oh I see…" he hissed in demonic glee, "They haven't to you explained about the rules, have they."
"What rules?" dubiously squinting his eyes at him.
He grinned like a Cheshire cat as the winter spirit took his bait. "Well, if I recall correctly." A pointing finger rested on his cheek as the other hand cradled his elbow, eyes gazing up the sky as if trying to recall something. "One of them says, you can't harm me unless I do something naughty. Like…." Eyes lowered to see the annoyed feature of the teenage boy. "…endangering the children. That or threatening the existence of the guardians, whichever floats MiM's boat." Both his palms turned up while he shrugged.
"You are a threat!" Jack argued. "You've been changing Sandy's dream sand into your nightmares."
"Uh, uh, uh." Wagging a finger in front of the young spirit. "That's where you're wrong." Jabbing the boy's forehead with his pointing finger making him growl at him. "I haven't changed any sands lately, nor did I frighten any children as of recent. All I frightened are those that already crossed the border of childhood, well occasionally. But the one that really terrorized the humans isn't me, it is the queen's own doing. All I've been doing all this time was absorbing their sweet, succulent fears. And their exquisite nightmare," he chuckled darkly "they made it themselves. In short, you can't lay a finger on me impudent child." He said smugly and turned to walk towards the darkness. He laughed mockingly as he walked away, the guardians could only watch him as his figure was devoured by the shadows.
"Damn it." Jack tightened his hold on the staff as he gritted his teeth in frustration.
"He's right." North agreed regretfully, "We can't touch him unless he does something to children to make them stop believing in us." His big hand rested on Jack's shoulder as he looked at his companions. "We need to think about Elsa."
"Nah, there's nothing left to save in her." Easter Bunny grumpily stated.
"No." Tooth countered. "Did you see how she reacted to the son of one of the woodcutters?"
"And d'you see what he did to those other humans?"
Sandy popped up a picture of Elsa's snowflake, a happy face and then the image of Olaf.
"He does have a point." Jack happily approved. "She does have a soft spot for Olaf."
"Wait, wait…." The red fur coat wearing guardian hummed as he massaged his temples. "Idea!" he blurted out. "Maybe, if we get close to Olaf, we can find out what's happened to her and help convince her to our side."
"We need to know everything we can about her." The winged fairy declared. "The woodcutters seemed to know more. Maybe we could start there."
"Yeah!" Jack cheered on. "There's still good inside her. I just know it. We could still save her. Now where did those woodcutters go?" he enthusiastically sat on top of his staff as he looked left and right. The sand man created a cloud and sat on top of it as it floated higher and higher until he had the same height of Jack with a telescope over his eyes. When he saw something, he tugs on Frost's sweater until he turned to look at him. He pointed towards a town with little lights twinkling against the chilled night. "Nice work Sandy!" he jumped and the wind took him where he wanted to go, Sandy and Tooth followed suit.
"Just for the record," the pooka muttered to his old companion. "I still don't trust her and I think it's a mistake choosing her as a guardian."
"Brighten up, Bunny." The bearded man merrily patted his friend on the back. "That's what you said when Man in Moon chose Jack."
"And what does your belly tell you?" he stared sternly at North for a long moment before he summoned a hole and jumped in but it didn't closed up as if waiting for him to jump. He looked up into the stars and sighed. That MiM's hiding something, that's something much more dangerous than Pitch is surfacing onto the earth, that Elsa's both an enemy and an ally. He sighed uneasily. And from this point on, everything's about change. He glumly jumped into the hole Bunny created that sealed behind him as he slid down the tunnels.
If he only knew what awaited them, who awaited him.
After the guardians left:
"Woah, who're those people?"
"Is this frost?"
"She'd never leave a spot before?"
"Was that a huge rabbit?"
"Sparkle…"
"Human Birdie!"
The beings looked at each other.
"Let's just clean it up and go home, the sun's about to go up."
"Should we tell King Pabbie?"
…
"Nah…."
