AN: I apologise profusely for the delay. For some reason, writing this chapter was like pulling teeth. It's a bit longer than usual, though; hopefully that will go some of the way towards making up for my inexcusable lateness. I will be participating in Camp NaNoWriMo throughout July, so waits between updates may be longer than usual. Thanks for bearing with me!
The world outside is white.
He hadn't known there could be so much brightness, and it strikes him like a slap in the face. It's alien and almost painful, but there's something beautiful about it nonetheless, in the spindly arms of the branches reaching up against the dark, overcast sky and the crisp edges of the shadows as they speed over the snow. He wants to stop, to explore, to drink it all in. But first, he has a task to carry out.
Jack doesn't have much of a head start. It doesn't take too long for the boy-who-is-a-prince to catch him up, whispering through the ever-shifting shadows. He whirls up out of the dark directly in Jack's path, scythe already tearing a sweeping slice through the air.
Jack shouts in surprise, and a ferocious gust of wind scoops him up and out of the scythe's trajectory, over the head of the boy-who-is-a-prince. The sudden blast of wind blows the boy backwards, catching the oversized head of the scythe as he tries to correct his stroke. The weapon suddenly feels far too unwieldy for the task at hand, and again the sand that makes it up tries to suggest a slenderer shape. The boy unravels it and drops back into shadow.
This will be harder in the air, but far from impossible. The boy-who-is-a-prince can't help a smile at the thought, a fierce joy thrilling through him as he spirals up and back into the race. This is going to be fun.
But it isn't.
Jack doesn't stop, barely fights, and even when he does, the boy-who-is-a-prince can tell he's holding back. The boy flings everything he has at Jack, drags him back to the earth with the long, grasping shadows of the trees, fires razor-edged bolts of shimmering sand too fast and thick to dodge, and still can barely get Jack to defend himself. It's infuriating, even more infuriating when the boy notices that even this barest minimum of self-defense is enough to keep him at bay. This can't be right. Once – once we had the power to snuff out stars
Jack blows away the last arrow with a gust of cold wind that barely sets the boy-who-is-a-prince's cloak fluttering, and dives up into the arms of that wind to avoid the next strike that the boy aims at him. "Jamie, please, don't do this," Jack pleads, holding his staff in front of him like a shield.
The boy opens his mouth, but it's the shadows that speak, a thousand hissing voices united and furious. "Not its name not anymore ours not yours ours ours ourssss -"
Jack stiffens in midair, dropping a good foot before regaining his composure. The boy-who-is-a-prince dives forward to take advantage of his shock, feeling the sudden burst of that strange sickly-sweet feeling as a moment of sudden clarity and strength. This strike will land, he's sure of it.
And finally, finally, Jack fights.
Ice sprays up around the boy-who-is-a-prince, deadly shards that pierce effortlessly through the shadows. The boy slings sand and darkness at Jack with gleeful ferocity, trying to coax back that lovely razor-edged sweetness, but Jack matches him blow for blow, and to his dismay, the boy finds himself driven back, out of the shadow of the trees.
He drops into the cast shadow of a spindly tree-branch, clutching his shoulder where a bolt of flash-frozen sand was blown back at him. The wound isn't large, but it's harder to knit together than it ought to be, the edges ragged and deadened with frostbite. He hisses at the sting as he coils a length of darkness around his arm as a makeshift bandage, and sets the tree-shadows spinning and reaching, hunting for Jack.
The frost spirit is turning slowly as he retreats out of the dark under the trees, obviously looking out for his opponent's next attack. The boy –who –is –a -prince rises soundlessly from the shadows behind him, drawing a thin trickle of sand into a long, slender shape. The blade that forms at the end begins straight and sharp, before curving into the familiar scytheblade.
Jack's slow turn finally brings him around to face the boy, just in time to put his throat squarely in the path of the scythe's swing. Jack stumbles backwards before the swing can connect, raising his staff, and the shadows of the trees grasp at him even as he fires.
The night explodes in blue.
Shadows are burnt away, the scythe and attendant nightmares blown apart, and the boy blasted completely off his feet by a cold so deep and biting that he can't even feel it until the first blast subsides. The trees groan under blankets of ice, icicles hanging horizontal from their trunks, and a few smaller saplings simply snap under the weight. The cold hits the boy a moment later, although 'cold' is hardly strong enough to describe it; this is like being torn open by claws of glacial ice, like the blood has frozen in his veins but still tries to flow.
He lands with a jarring thump, flat on his back, and lies still for a long moment, trying to recover himself. The boy reaches for a shadow to drop into, but finds nothing within reach. He's been thrust completely out of the trees, out of the dark.
The boy sits up, wincing at the bite of cold as ice crackles off of his front, and makes to stand. Jack hovers at the edge of the clearing, looking stricken, and he winces in sympathy when the boy tries to sit up. The way he steps out into the clearing is wary, though, his steps cautious and his staff raised against further attacks.
"Jamie?"
The boy-who-is-a-prince snarls, reaching for something, anything, to make a weapon of. The shadows that answer his call are sluggish, weak, his nightmares working their way slowly free of the ice, and a prickle of discomfort worries at the back of his mind. Nonetheless, he pulls himself to his feet, gathering what darkness he can muster to himself. Two short blades resolve out of shadow, unlovely but useful. It seems to take more effort than it ought, and he scowls as he circles slowly toward the treeline and the blissful dark. If he can only bring this back into his element –
Without warning, the clouds above part, and the clearing is flooded with silvery light.
The moonlight burns, an icy sting all over his exposed face and hands, and a flare of brilliant pain in his chest, just where his heart should be. The boy shrinks back, fight momentarily forgotten. He looks up at the distant and impassive face of the moon, and wants nothing more than to rip the smiling Tsar from his place in the sky –
A flicker of movement in the corner of his eye; the boy-who-is-a-prince spins, and Jack freezes in place. He's only taken a single step forward, has lowered his staff. As though the fight is already over. As though the boy isn't even a threat.
Hot and unfamiliar hate courses through him, fills him with incandescent anger and a strength he doesn't recognize. Overhead, a cloud passes between them and the moon, and the clearing falls into shadow.
Kill him.
Jack isn't prepared for the first blow; it comes from all around, tree-shadows turned to whips and grasping talons, and he shouts in pain and surprise when they rake across his back, claw at his legs. It's little more than a distraction, but it serves its purpose. Jack's caught offguard by the second strike, fighting off the shadows that cling and lash at him, and brings his staff back up too late to block the sweeping blow that the boy aims at his chest. One short sword glances off of the staff and catches Jack in the shoulder, knocking him back. The wind howls around them both, lifting him like a leaf.
The boy-who-is-a-prince gives a little growl of frustration, ignoring the growing throb of pain in his chest, and calls on his favourite of the nightmares. Though still weak from battling her way through ice and snow, she comes quickly, bearing him up towards the clouds on a glittering black cloud of his own. Whispering tendrils of darkness peel up from the snow and rise after him.
The battle is short, and fierce, and silent, save for the quiet shifting of sand and the fizzling crackle of ice. What nightmares the boy could salvage glint darkly in the occasional glimmer of moonlight that fights through the scraps of cloud, their constant harrassment drawing Jack's attention from the boy who commands them and the ball of concentrated blackness growing at his fingertips. He's so focused on building the missile, on finding an opening to hit Jack, that he barely notices the darkly-glittering snowflakes bursting around him until there are suddenly no more nightmares in the sky.
Just as the last shower of flakes falls away, the boy-who-is-a-prince flings the ball.
- the crunch and crisp bite of snow between his fingers, the spin and heft of icy projectiles, the echo of laughter on the wind –
Jack dives, barrel rolls through the air out of reach and out of range. He needn't have worried; the boy-who-is-a-prince has nearly doubled over at the twin stabs of sudden, bitter-bright pain in his heart and needle-sharp jabs at his head. Somewhere overhead, the ball of solid darkness explodes harmlessly, shadows streaming out in all directions as they flee the unexpected bloom of moonlight between the clouds. The nightmare who carries the boy in midair plucks anxiously at him, and he straightens, pushing away the faint impression of cold and – joy? – that had hurt so badly.
Jack hasn't run. In fact, he's barely even moved, hovering close enough to touch, despite the wind's frantic tugging. And though the look that he trains on the boy-who-is-a-prince is full of that strange sweet something, it's not of the boy.
It's for him. And Jack's voice, when he speaks, is sickeningly hopeful.
"Jamie?"
The boy shakes his head no, wincing, but Jack only flies closer, his jaw set determinedly. "I know you're in there. You have to fight it, Jamie! You have to -"
Something changes. Something turns the determination on his face into dawning, horrified pity.
"You have to believe in me," he says, softly, to himself, and the boy-who-is-a-prince has heard enough.
He cuts Jack off with another blast of dark, a haphazard shot that even at such close range has little chance of hitting its intended target. It doesn't matter, though; it takes Jack a moment to reel out of the way, and that moment is all the boy needs to wrap himself in what remains of his favourite nightmare and reemerge, in a whirl, directly behind Jack. The wind shrieks a warning, and Jack turns, too late.
This time, the boy does not miss.
Jack drops soundlessly, one hand pressed to his side, a slow, arching fall down, down into the trackless snow below. The staff slips from his fingers, landing as the boy-who-is-a-prince does, inches from his feet.
It can't have been that easy. The boy reaches down for the staff, but stops short. It would be far wiser to make certain its owner can't get up, first, before he bothers with a length of wood.
he ignores the inkling that to break the staff is to make certain its owner can't get up
Jack doesn't try to rise, but he lets out a hollow groan when the boy's shadow falls across him. The frost spirit reaches out for his staff, fingers scrabbling and closing on empty air. The boy-who-is-a-prince raises a hand, and the black-sand blade that forms there is long and curved and elegant, glinting with wicked sharpness.
The wind keens like a dying man, howling helplessly around the boy as he raises the sword.
"I'm sorry."
The words are quiet, almost too faint to be heard over the wailing wind, but there's something about them that makes the boy freeze in place. The wind stills, faint eddies worriedly ruffling Jack's hair. Jack sighs, and turns his face up to the moonlight filtering through the crumbling clouds.
"This is all my fault."