Gosh-darnit, another chapter full of people talking to things that can't actually talk back. Or being a thing that can't actually talk back. Dammit Sandy and MiM. I blame you.
Chapter Twelve: A War of Dreams
Without his staff, without his ice, without the raw power of the wind and the fury of a winter storm, Jack Frost seemed frighteningly small.
Bunnymund's throat tightened as the boy-spirit slumped in Santa's sack, stick-thin limbs crumpling like kindling by a fire. Dream-sand clung to his lashes, giving them a golden glow, but true to Sandman's word that was the only hint of magic. The sleep was dreamless; dark, but safe from Nightmares. He'd be out for hours.
Feeling old and strange in his own fur, Bunny steps from the sack and brushes the last of the extra-potent dust from his paw. "Good work, fellas. Load 'im up."
Phil, the head of North's security team, grunted in assent and carefully secured the mouth of the sack before settling it in his arms. Bunny handed Frost's staff off to the second yeti, aware of how fragile it felt without the kid's power. "Carefully with this. Make sure it gets locked up somewhere safe."
He thumped the ground with his hind leg. Earth rumbled in the distance as the tunnels shifted and reformed. "This'll take you straight back to the Pole. No branches or anything. Just keep going straight. And also…" He eyed the bag, running his ears back with a restless paw. He sighed. "Give the kid a once-over when you get back, okay? He was moving weird up there. Think there might be some…some damage."
Made him sick to think about it. They didn't know yet how much abuse the kid could take, but that beating they'd seen before was fierce enough that a human child would've been hospitalized. To think that injuries lingered even now, or worse, that there'd been another thrashing in the two weeks since…it hurt. Even if the brat was a pain in the tail.
Phil nodded in understanding and cradled the sack ever more gently as he and his assistant lumbered through the earth. Bunnymund lingered a moment, listening to be sure they were off in the right direction – which they were – before tapping his foot again to summon an off-shoot back to the heart of Burgess, where the battle raged on. Time to get back in action. With any luck, Pitch would never notice he'd been gone.
High in the gray clouds, a new storm swelled in the shadow of the old, small but fierce. Black sand swirled as a single living mass, its edges tinged with ice pilfered from the winter winds. Coiling flares broke off into rampaging Nightmares bolstered and changed by memories devoured, some so twisted that they only resembled equines in passing, like an afterthought. At the heart of the storm lurked their master, Pitch Black, laughing as the mechanical sleigh and spinning blur of green feathers tried to fight their way through to strike him down.
Sandman observed it all from atop a swirling golden cloud hidden on the edge of twilight. For all Toothiana's heritage as a Sister of Flight and North's magnificent flying sleigh, this place among the clouds was his domain alone. They were not yet high enough to leave the city of Burgess behind, and it was vital that Pitch Black not be allowed to rise any further until Bunnymund returned, lest the Easter Bunny's absence be noted and their plan uncovered before Jack Frost had been secured.
The Sandman breathed deeply, summoning to his aid a warm southern wind that filled his body like a balloon. With great sweeps of his arms he called forth his dream-sand, pouring all of his determination and courage and desire to protect children into the glistening golden grains. It wrapped around him in a remnant memory of the wishing star he'd once piloted through space and time. Carrying Sandman at its heart, it arched through the clouds and dove for the center of Pitch's storm.
Sandy hoped, as the golden orb bore down, that the Nightmare King remembered all the Wishing Stars he'd attacked during his rampage of the Golden Age, remembered that even though he'd tried to destroy sweet dreams once before he'd failed, and he would fail again. Nightmares leapt from the storm to defense their master, but their hooves could not penetrate the golden shell in time. Mere meters from Pitch's perch, it burst, scattering the storm and leaving only a patch of darkness on which the Boogeyman could stand. Sandy leapt from it on a cloud of his own, twin whips cracking the wind.
"Woah-ho-ho!" Pitch half-laughed, dodging the first whip and parrying the second with his rapier. He crouched on his wave of black sand and formed a massive scythe around the sword, which he wielded two-handed to meet the golden whips blow-for-blow. "Sandy, there you are. It's been much too long since we've had a chance to chat."
Sandman scowled, striking with both whips in an overhead crack that would've split Pitch in two if he hadn't dodged. It was difficult for the Sandman to hold onto anger. His mind birthed the sweetest nights and brightest dreams and thus had no room for that darkness in more than flickering sparks. To keep his heart for battle, he pictured all the wrongs that must be righted in turn. All the dreams turned to Nightmares, all the children who lay awake in fear. Jack Frost, who'd never had a dream.
From the other side, Toothiana broke through the clouds and charged the Nightmare King with her singing blades. Sandy took the opportunity for a blow of his own as Pitch spun the scythe on her, only to find himself on the receiving end of an ice-blast he barely managed to block with a wave of sand.
While the pair was distracted, Pitch dropped from the sky, landed on a Nightmare's back and spiraled towards the city streets to lead them on a chase. Tooth shot after him. Further on, North's sleigh also dove for the ground. Sandy moved to follow, dropping from his cloud, but his path was blocked by a fearsome Nightmare the size of a draft horse, its face twisted with three muzzles and five eyes that burned like fire.
Sandy dodged its stomping hooves, rolled on the warm wind, and wrapped both whips around the Nightmare's massive neck. He landed firmly on its back, riding it through the night as it kicked and bucked in vain. Sandy pressed a bare hand against the beast's wide shoulder and, in a language that had neither words nto voice, he willed: You are not real. You are not true. You are nothing.
Beneath his palms, black sand turned to gold. The creature shrieked and tried to throw him off, but it was too late for it, much too late. Golden sand swallowed it whole and transformed the black beast into a gleaming manta ray like the ones that swam around Sandman's island home.
Sandy sat on the sea-creature's back and wiped his brow. Once upon a time, that spell had been so easy. He'd dispatched legions of Nightmare Men, clearing the way for good dreams and repurposing their sand for good. But this new breed, fed on twisted memories, was too powerful. As he paused to catch his breath, Sandy coaxed the stolen teeth from the dream's heart. They emerged white. He cupped them close and smiled. At least that theory was proven correct.
He tucked the precious memories away and steered the dream to downtown Burgess, where Tooth and North had Pitch pinned atop the flat roof of a corner store. The three combatants were a dance of steel, ice, and sand; but unseen to the Guardians, the Nightmares were closing in.
Sandman swept his mount into new whips, longer than the pair before, and dove at the encroaching equines. He caught two around the waist and slammed them into each other, where they shattered into sand, then dodged a charging third and leapt over a fourth to join the others on the roof. As North and Tooth pivoted from the fight to defend against Nightmares, Sandman again stared down his old nemesis, the Boogeyman, and his infuriating smile.
Sandy thought of broken dreams and murdered stars, of children stolen from their homes, of a boy whose trust and devotion was betrayed.
He cracked his whips towards the towering black figure. The gold strands snapped straight through him, scattering black sand with a disembodied laugh.
Sandy snapped the whips back, his head darting about in search of the lost Nightmare King. Ahead of him, Tooth dispatched a Nightmare with a swirling kick, spun towards him on a current of air, and gasped. "Sandy! Watch out!"
The Sandman spun around, just in time to see Pitch Black leveling a thorn of darkness as though it were an arrow. Before he could react, it was released. In the same moment a boomerang flew from the next building over and knocked the shot wild.
Sandy spun out of the arrow's way, but fast enough. The thorn scraped at his back as it shot by. It burned colder than ice, tearing into him like a beast. If he could, Sandy might have cried out at the sudden surge of pain.
He stumbled as the arrow burst against the rooftop and Tooth flew to assist Bunnymund with the Boogeyman. No one seemed to see that he'd been hit, and for that, Sandman counted blessings. He pressed a hand over the aching wound and drew it back to find black sand clinging to his fingers. It nipped at him, bitter in its chill, the fear it bore trying to burrow its way into his center.
Sandman took another deep breath, this one through his teeth, and thought of good things to keep the fear at bay. He thought of a warm island deep in the southern ocean, thought of laughing children sharing dreams, thought of his friends, his fellow Guardians, the new family he'd been given here on earth. And as he thought of these things he gathered dream-sand in his hands and smoothed it over black until the wound could no longer be seen.
Knowing that he could not risk anger now, Sandy retreated to North's sleigh, landing gently in the back as the toymaker again took up his reins. North didn't seem to notice the extra belt of sand, his focus narrowed on Pitch, who had taken to the air once more. Sandy waved to North with both hands, catching his attention in the reflection of a sword before flickering through the signs: an arrow pointing north, the swirling orb of a snow globe, a snowflake, and a spiral-patterned pole.
North sighed, his warrior instincts disappointed, but nodded. "Yes, yes, you are right. We must away." He snapped the reigns and whistled through his teeth as the team began to gallop, pulling them off the roof's edge. "Bunny! Tooth! Poydem!"
Bunnymund groaned visibly, but leapt to join Sandy in the sleigh just before it left the roof. Tooth paused in mid-attack and, though she also looked like she desired nothing more than to rend Pitch with her swords, flew back to join them. Behind her, Pitch rose on the back of his mount, his tarnished smile wide as a shark's. He thought he could close in for a killing blow.
Well. Not if Sandy had anything to do with it. He hopped onto the very back of North's sleigh, sweeping the last bits of his dream-sand for this battle into massive tendrils that trapped Pitch's hands and wrapped around the stick-thin waist. With a mighty jerk and an extra bit of muscle from Tooth and Bunny, he snapped the Nightmare King straight up into the air before slamming him firmly down among the trees at the outskirts of town.
Sandy wobbled and dropped back onto the wooden bench, worn down from the struggle and his hidden wound. He almost didn't hear North's bellows of a job well done, his focus locked on the trees to be sure that was where Pitch Black remained. Obviously, this battle would not be enough to deflect the Boogeyman for good. That had never been the intent. But now, they had what they needed. They had Jack Frost, safe and sound.
Sandy could only hope, as his wound twanged with pain, that they'd be able to convince the boy soon enough for it to do them any good.
Lost in the trees, Pitch lurched back to his feet just in time to watch North's sleigh vanish into the night air with a rush of white magic and a funnel of light. The Nightmare King laughed as the portal closed, his loyal forces emerging from the dark to lurk at his side.
"That's right," he said, with no one to hear but the Nightmares. "Run. Run away with your tails your legs. Soon enough there won't be anywhere for any of you to hide and when that day comes…!"
He grasped the air as though to crush the Guardians themselves in his palm, but even as he spoke the words a nagging doubt crept into the shadows of his mind. Why, he wondered. Why would they retreat? North called the shots in their fights and Pitch knew North's tactics better than any creature alive. It wasn't like the old Cossack to back off with his enemy knocked down, not when there was still fight left in both sides. So why…?
Pitch thought back to the battle, working through each moment, turn by turn. The Guardians arrived just before sunset, catching his Nightmares on their earliest rounds and calling him out. He'd responded in kind. The battle rose into the clouds, where Sandman waited, cutting him off from overhead. He always was the greatest risk, that Sandman and his dreams. Pitch had seen the opportunity, down on the rooftops, to rid himself of that risk once and for all, but the rabbit reappeared…
Reappeared.
There was a fifteen-minute window in which he's completely lost track of Bunnymund. In the heat of battle, as those who could fly rose into the air, the land-bound beast slipped unseen from the field to pursue other targets. Other, farther, more important targets, of which there could only be one.
For the first time in centuries, fear surged in the heart of the Nightmare King. Shadows leapt to his unspoken call, swallowing him whole. He reappeared in the abandoned Victorian, darkness swirling at his heels. "Jack?" he called to the house, and when the boy did not appear he shouted louder. "Jack!"
No answer. Neither a hint of frost nor a speck of sand was to be found.
Pitch plunged his hands into the darkness, whispering the tracking spells he'd bound to his ward a century before. The trail unfurled and he took off like a shot, following it through the wintery roads of Burgess. It wound throughout the city, but doubled-back so close he could see the house from where it suddenly veered away. He hunted it from shadow to shadow and reappeared in the gloom of a dead-end alley with a broken light.
There, on the corner, sparkling in a gas station's dim light: a pile of black sand, tinted with ice.
Pitch swept through the pile, scattering grains to the wind as he rounded the corner. Ice stained the brick without artistry, melting in air that was slightly too warm. A trashcan lay overturned and abandoned, dented on one side as though it had been struck. The space between buildings dead-ended into a wall.
"Jack," he called again, catching the fleeting hope that the boy might have hidden himself well enough to escape. "Jack, answer me. Are you here?"
No. There was no one. All that remained in this empty place was a single rose-pink flower, poking from the asphalt where no life should have grown.
The trail ended here.
Pitch sank to his knees, groping at the ground for any trace to follow further, but his magic cut off right there as though severed by a cleaver. Gone. The boy was gone. His boy was gone, his Jack, stolen from right under his nose.
Grasping fingers found the flower that thrived in spite of its concrete prison. A spring blossom, well out of season. The Easter Bunny's calling card.
Snarling, the Nightmare King rent the flower from stalk to blossom, shredding it until only a pile of moist green and scattered petals remained. He roared, shattering every street lamp for three blocks and plunging the entire suburb into darkness. But even the frightened squeals of children suddenly robbed of their nightlights and cracked hallway doors could not appease his fury.
An army of Nightmares answered their master's call, scooping him from the ground in a torrent of black sand. At Pitch's whim, they tore through the cover of storm clouds and bore him up, up into the thin and frigid air beyond. The waxing moon waited there, barely a silver of its face exposed. And still, still, Pitch saw that infuriating, all-seeing, comforting smile.
"Thief!" he roared. "Foul bandit! Larcener! How dare you steal from me?!"
If the Man in the Moon spoke back, his voice could not be heard. It never could. But Pitch, who knew the Tsar as well as any creature alive, knew in his shriveled heart what the response would be:
Who are you to call thief? You, the pirate. The pilferer. Plunderer of planets. Filcher of children and parents alike. You, who horde that intended to be gift for the children of the world.
Pitch snarled at his own thoughts, tearing at the air with his nails. The Nightmare sand swirled around him, taking its singular form once more. He willed the ice to appear and it did, twisting through the storm for a split second before falling to the earth as hail. Though he could not follow the trail, the two-way connection between them remained as solid as ever before.
"He's mine," said the Nightmare King, knowing that however soft he spoke he held, at this moment, the Moon's full attention. "Do you hear me, Lunar? I made him. I shaped his world. Me. You think you can wipe all that away? Never."
He turned his face from the waxing moon and whistled through his teeth, summoning a Nightmare from the swirling sands. He cupped her muzzle and whispered to her instructions to recall the others from every corner of the globe. The Nightmare whinnied in understanding and dove into the gray, galloping off into the darkness of a moonless night.
Pitch turned back to the moon, folding his hands tight together over the hilt of his sword. "Jack Frost belongs to me, old friend. And I will have him back. If I have to tear down everything you've built to do it? Fine." He smiled. "All the more fun for me."