How? How did all manage to spiral out of control so quickly? Just one second ago, Nat was smiling so sweetly at him, and then the next Pitch's dark sand was swirling in a maelstrom above their heads, dangerously close to ending the world as they knew it. Jack's heart hammered in his chest as he skipped through the clouds above the rainforest with Jamie tucked under his arm; his mind was reeling like a whirlpool right now. He couldn't focus on one single coherent thought. For the fifth time since he had taken to the air, he halted his wintery jet stream to glance back at the purple-black storm raging above the cove where the Tree of Life was tucked away. The dragon had descended into the gaping maw of the hurricane; the only evidence of its survival were the streams of white-hot air that occasionally burst through the thick wall of sand, melting the particles together in glass like sinister obsidian.

"Jack! Jack, don't worry about me!" Jamie huffed, tugging insistently at his frosted hoodie. "All the Guardians are way too far away to help now. Miss Nat is fighting all by herself. You have to help her!" Jack didn't know what to do. Jamie was a liability and he could never live with himself if something happened to him, but he had to let the other Guardians know what was happening somehow. They had been stupid and snuck out of the North Pole; nobody knew where they were right now. He wrestled with himself, watching with rising agony as Pitch's dark storm raged against the roaring dragon that was bearing his beloved Nathalie through the tempest.

Suddenly, he became aware of a loud, adamant cheeping, and looked down just in time to see Baby Tooth's brilliant green head poke out of the pocket of his hood.

"Baby Tooth! What-? How long have you been in there?!" he cried in disbelief as she flew up to hover in his face. "Nevermind! You have to hurry and get Tooth and the others, okay? I have to stay here and help Nat," he ordered. She chittered lightly and looked off into the skyline, looking a bit overwhelmed. He used a finger to gently stroke her feathered head reassuringly. "You can do it, Baby Tooth. I'm counting on you." She looked back to him with those cute eyes, then nodded firmly and shot off into the air, wings flapping wildly as she sped as fast as she could towards their salvation.

Jack then dropped out of the air to dive back behind the waterfall, carrying Jamie inside. Nathalie had sealed the overhead entrance with a tangled puzzle of tree roots; though it quivered ominously with every rumble of the battle overhead, it held steady, not even a hint of dust slipping through the tightly-interlocked mass of roots. "Jamie, whatever you do, do not come out," he instructed firmly as he set him down by the front door of Nathalie's cabin. "Stay in here," he said as he wrested it open and all but shoved him inside. The Pegasus came trotting up, head tossing and hooves stamping and feathers ruffling as his master warred in the skies far above their heads. "Hey, I'm counting on you to look after him," he said to the winged horse as he lightly skipped past, patting his flank before rushing back outside.

Nathalie was strong, but he was going to fight, nonetheless.

He could not lose her this time.


Nathalie looked from left to right, panting slightly. The tornadic maelstrom of Pitch's sand had enclosed around her in a swirling sphere, with the Bogeyman himself suspended near its epicenter on a platform of ever-shifting sand. In the writhing winds around her, the sand was taking shape into a menagerie of animals, much like the night when she and Jack had been attacked on the savannah. It seemed, for the sake of irony, he had decided to include a broader array of fauna this time; Nathalie felt like she was surrounded by a great mockery of the Tree of Life, as his shadows pranced in the form of everything from vicious velociraptors to stampeding elephants to baying hounds.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" Pitch sighed wistfully as he gestured to his grotesque creations. "I have you to thank for this masterpiece of mine. My previous nightmares were so… uninspired. Variety is the spice of life, indeed."

"You coward! Come down here and fight me yourself!" she spat at him. She couldn't get close; every time her dragon flapped within attacking range, a cloud of the dark animals would come bearing down on them. It was all the dragon could muster to hack and burn his way through the purple-black sandstorm, and he would be shoved back down in altitude. Nathalie knew better than to think that her bow and arrows would have any appreciable effect, so she had elected to save them for the opportune moment; but she was not weaponless. Upon her arrival to the North Pole, she had been gifted with an ornate short sword by the grand crafter and tinkerer himself. It was perfectly balanced and weighed nothing in her hands, and it cut through the air as smoothly as if it was butter. Any time one of the specters dared come close enough, she would hack through them, making them burst into clouds of harmless sand. However, that sand would just blend back into the maelstrom and reform into another hideous creature. Nathalie was trapped in an endless siege.

That was not to say she was helpless.

With a resounding shriek, the birds that had been circling the sphere of darkness dove in to tear into a large swathe of the nightmares with sharp talons and strident beaks, ripping them asunder. The height of the rainforest canopy had climbed by dozens of feet, and their branches were whipping wildly back and forth at the base of the sphere to rend any of them that were close enough. Jaguars were leaping from the boughs to claw at their prey or crush their heads in powerful jaws, while herds of peccaries and tapirs and deer were stampeding along the ground, chasing any unfortunate stragglers to their doom. Pitch scowled at the relentless assault by the rainforest's denizens.

"Salazar! Go!" she cried as he became momentarily distracted by the hitch in his plans. The dragon surged upwards, and as a large portion of the nightmares surged down from the upper layers of the spheres to meet him, Nathalie jumped up to run over his scaled neck and leap from his head. Her legs pumped wildly as she vaulted through open air, short sword brandished over her head; then, per her design, a thick leafy vine came blasting through the tree line to mark a curving path towards Pitch's perch. She raced up the stalk with sure feet as she spurred its growth. The specters came charging toward her, but she would dramatically alter its course to dodge them, grabbing onto the stalk as it thrashed madly in another direction. Pitch lost sight of her in all the chaos, so he was completely unprepared when she came exploding through the water-like surface of the platform to surprise him from behind.

He only just managed to manifest a scythe to block Nathalie's oncoming attack. The sand had hardened into something reminiscent of obsidian, and as the steel of her sword crashed against its thin handle, sparks danced like fire fairies between them. Suddenly, they alighted the tempest with lightning; with crushing speed they came to blows over and over, weapons clashing together for a millisecond before they sprang apart again. Nathalie was not fool enough to stand on the platform only for the sand to claim her as a victim, so she rode the vine like a twisting slide. Pitch would cleave through its hefty stalk for her to only conjure another, and soon the upper hemisphere of the dark storm resembled the tangled upper story of the forest, choked with thick vines. Water spurted from their hollow cores to rain down around them, thickening the sand and sending it falling in thick chunks down below.

"You're much more athletic that appearance would imply, Mother Nature," Pitch laughed at her, blocking with the blade of his scythe as she somersaulted over his head in an attempt to drive her sword through his gaunt ugly face. He twirled the scythe in his hand just as she was landed to try and cleave her in two, but the vine had already wrested her back to his front side.

"What, did you think I just sat around for four hundred years?" she mocked him. The metallic thunder and lightning sparks boomed between them as their weapons met again, making her fierce emerald eyes gleam with brilliant gold. "I knew someone would come for the Tree of Life eventually. I have trained my body and mind diligently in battle awaiting that day! Your mistake of underestimating me will be your last!"

"How amusing. I was going to say the same thing!" he snarled, pushing her with his scythe. She fell back off the vine, tumbling head over heels through the air. By then, his storm was crumbling under the relentless assault of the natural fauna, allowing an eagle to swoop down and catch Nathalie by her arm. Blood bloomed where its sharp talons dug into the supple flesh of her bicep, but the adrenaline suppressed any pain she would feel. The raptor flung her back up into the fray, allowing her to once more meet Pitch's scythe within seconds of being tossed aside like a ragdoll. "Persistent little-!" he hissed.

"Nathalie!"

Her blonde hair, stringy and crimped with sweat, whipped over her shoulder as she tossed a glance to where Jack was calling her from above. As he dove down, he froze an entire section of the dark matter, leaving a wall of glittering purple-black crystals. Nat would almost call them beautiful if they weren't made of Pitch's monstrous parody of the Sandman's golden particles. With a roar, he came bearing down on the Bogeyman like an icy bullet, and an explosion of the dark crystals bloomed like a flower upon impact. Jack skipped away to hover beside her, cheekily smiling despite the absolute hell raging around them.

"I figured you could use a hand. Wait, don't look at me like that, Jamie's fine and Baby Tooth went to get everyone else!" he interrupted as she began to scowl and reprimand him for his foolishness. She huffed and gathered her long blonde hair in a fist, using some twine-like fronds from the vine to tie it in a loose bun over her head. It was getting in her way. The shards of frozen sand shattered to reveal a fuming Pitch Black; his false persona of reasonable demeanor had all but crumbled, leaving his face twisted in fury.

"I'll destroy you!" he howled in derangement, and all but a small circle of the platform detonated like a bomb to come shooting up at them like spires of rock. Nat and Jack sprung apart to weave through the lashing ropes of sand, Jack freezing them solid while Nathalie guided the growing vine around them. They came together again to attack Pitch simultaneously; he was driven down to one knee as he flung his scythe around wildly in a vain effort to fend them off.

"Just give it up, Pitch! You'll never win!" Jack shouted. Pitch just gave an inhuman snarl and lashed out at him, sending Jack rolling through the air a few feet away to keep from being decapitated. The gaunt man tugged at his hair, the slicked-back black strand now in utter disarray around his pale face, and brandished his scythe in a wide arc that pushed the two of them back several yards.

"I hate you!" he screamed and clawed at his cheek. "I will not let all my careful planning come crashing down! Not again!"

"Be careful, Jack. A cornered animal is always the most dangerous," Nathalie advised her partner breathily. The fight had only lasted a few minutes, but she was already panting. Every muscle in her body was pulsing at the explosive expense of energy; honestly, she didn't know how long she could keep this up. Calling upon the animals and plants had exhausted her to begin with; all this physical strain was depleting her even more rapidly. Jack was looking just as worse for wear, though he had joined the fight about two minutes after her. Who knew when Baby Tooth would arrive with reinforcements? Her animals were about spent too; many of the birds had dropped from the skies, maimed by the garish nightmares, and the ground animals were now out of reach, forced to prowl below with gnashing jaws. The trees were still growing, but that meant that Nathalie and Jack's fighting arena was rapidly dwindling in size, too, which presented its own set of problems. The two of them could only watch for Pitch's next move.

He released a demonic yowl before the sand suddenly pulsed, then converged on his form. Nathalie was nearly blown off the vine as the air pressure generated from the sudden onrush blasted into her back, but Jack grabbed her by the wrist and yanked her close, burning and freezing be damned. The sand convulsed around the buried Pitch in an indistinct, writhing mass, slowly inching into a more compact form as the pressure increased. Then, slowly, it began to morph into a nightmarish shape around him. A shadow fell over Nathalie and Jack as it grew bigger and more defined; they could only watch slack-jawed as a gigantic tyrannosaurus the height of a skyscraper towered up to loom above them in all its menacing glory. Its maw peeled apart to release a deafening roar that had them both clapping their hands to their ears lest their eardrums burst. Deep within the high-pitched keening bellow, Nathalie could hear the victorious howls of the Bogeyman.

"Is that fair?" Jack whined as he whirled his staff in his hand. He set Nathalie back on the vine, ice cracking off her frozen arm to clatter down like shards of a mirror. The massive sand-dinosaur took a lumbering step towards them, crushing several centuries-old trees underfoot and sending the animals Nathalie had gathered fleeing into the depths of the forest. The lingering birds valiantly attempted to attack it by clawing at its head; the sand sprinkled down as they scored harmless scours into the moldable flesh, and Pitch's creation tossed its head about to clamp down on them. Feathers and blood exploded between its dark teeth. In the face of all the careless destruction, Nathalie's insides began to burn, and she sank down onto the sturdy body of the vine with a low, pained moan. "Nat!"

"I can't… He's… He's killing everything," she hissed. Was it possible for her to lose, even at the height of her power? The dinosaur began lumbering towards them with deliberate, crushing steps, claws ready to rake into her small body. Tremors began to wrack her body. She could hear them screaming, the frightened animals running for their lives and those trapped in the path of the monster, bleeding and mangled and terrified; she could feel the plants' pain as they were ripped and torn and crushed and maimed, releasing hormones into the air to signal their demises. "Uuunhh!" she cried with tears streaming down her cheeks as she curled into a ball onto the stalk. "It hurts, Jack…"

"I know. I know." Though he knew he would add to her pain, he placed a hand on her back. The burning of ice forming underneath his touch was almost soothing compared to the absolute fire surging through every inch of her body. Get up… Get up, Nathalie! This is no time to falter! Clenching her teeth so tightly she thought they might crack, she forced herself back to a standing position, her sword held in a knuckle-white grip. "Nat, you don't have to fight-" Jack began.

"No," she huffed. Her emerald eyes beheld the wild beast eclipsing the horizon, and her grip tightened on the hilt of the short sword. "I must fight. This has always been my fight, from the beginning. If I waver here, I will dishonor all those who came before me." She sucked in a deep breath, fighting back the pain prickling at her every nerve. "As Mother Nature, I will protect the Tree of Life. That is my duty, as I live or die!" she growled and then spurred the vine forward, heading right for the dinosaur's throat.

"That's my girl!" she heard Jack shouting beside her, and despite the dismal situation, she could not help but smirk. Always the optimist, he was. The tyrannosaurus' head bore down as she approached, razor-sharp teeth ready to devour her, and she veered under its chin at the final moment to bury the short sword hilt-deep into its neck. The vine carried her from one invisible vein to the other, and purple sand like blood gushed from its slit throat. The beast wailed in agony and stumbled backwards, barely veiling the hint of Pitch howling in anger within. Jack was skipping over the frosty winds below her, freezing its gigantic legs to the ground. As it swayed back and forth, reeling from Nathalie's blow, she shot backwards and made a twisting motion with her hand. The surrounding trees dug their branches into its thick body, digging and digging into the sandy flesh. She was going to wrench Pitch from inside that monster, one way or another.

There was still plenty of fight left in her.


Jamie whimpered and curled into a tighter ball underneath Nathalie's dining room table as the cave continued to rumble. From his vantage point, he could see the Pegasus pacing excitedly back and forth through the quivering glass panes of the window. They had been fighting for ten minutes now, at least. The shaking had grown worse and worse over time. Jamie knew he was safe within the confines of the cave, but what about Jack and Nat? He believed in them, sure, but… It was Pitch Black, after all. Last time, it had taken the entire team of Guardians plus Jamie and his friends to defeat him. This time, it was only the two of them.

Sniffling as tears of fear and frustration welled up in his eyes, he crawled out from under the table and to the door. He boosted himself up onto his knees to open the door, because the ground was tremoring far too much for him to hope of walking. He shambled over to the Pegasus to hug its hind leg, crying softly.

"Are you worried too?" he asked as it leaned down to nibble at his messy hair reassuringly. "I can't help but think that there's something that we can do," he sniffed miserably. Wait. Maybe there was! They had taken down Pitch by turning his nightmares back into the golden sand just by touching them. Jamie could just do that again, and it would turn the tide, surely. "Hey! Take me outside! I can help!" he begged the horse. It looked at him hesitantly, driving its hoof into the soft soil of the cave with a disdainful snort as it mulled it over. "Come on. You want to help them too, right?" The horse blinked at him, then snorted again and fell down onto its knees to allow Jamie to clamber onto its back. He clung to its long white hair for purchase as it climbed back up, then took off into a gallop out of the cave. As it leaped through the waterfall, it spread its wings wide, catching the air in a glide. It then began to flap, turning in a wide arc to bear them up the waterfall to the battlefield.

Jamie had never seen something so horrifying.

The forest was razed. Twisted roots of upended trees reached for the sky like skeletons' hands, dirt clinging to them like rotted flesh. The corpses and half-dead bodies alike of various animals were scattered about in pools of blood and feathers and fur. He pressed into the horse as he suddenly grew very nauseous. The rainforest had been so beautiful and now it was just a twisted scene from a horror movie. The ground was continuously and violently rumbling. He cried out and snapped his hands to his ears as a deafening roar resounded through the air, thick with the stench of iron and decay. He looked around wildly for what could be the source of the sound and was greeted with the most nightmarish scene yet.

The grotesque bastardization of a dinosaur was tromping through the forest. Its mass would shift and contort such that sharp spikes burst from its form at random moments, spearing the surrounding trees to send them toppling. He could make out a rapidly twisting vine and Jack's icy wind swirling around it, peppering the sand dinosaur with useless attacks. Jamie gulped and fisted the horse's mane. Gotta be brave! He's just the Bogeyman! Good thoughts will make the nightmare go away! He told himself firmly. "All right! Charge!" he shouted and snapped the pegasus' hair like he would reigns. It whinnied and surged forward, galloping in the open air towards the dinosaur.

The wind stung his face at the speed, but he forced his eyes to stay open, one hand held out. All he had to do was touch the dinosaur's body. That's all he had to do. Closer and closer and closer… He could do it! The dinosaur was seemingly oblivious to his approach, too busy with dealing with Nat and Jack. The horse sped towards its big pseudo-scaled belly. He just had to reach… He could already see the golden overtaking the purple, falling away, revealing the defeated Pitch Black within…

Then, spikes shot out towards them. The horse screamed and rocketed upwards at a ninety-degree angle. Jamie screamed in terror as he held on only by the thick fibers of the horse's mane, but his weight was too much for them to bear; they were snapping like frayed ropes in his fingers, and he was slipping, slipping, falling. His limbs flailed in the open air as he tumbled head-over-heels, the wind ripping his screams right out of his lungs. He could faintly hear the two teenagers yelling for him, but he couldn't see them in the blurry mess of colors that was his vision. He could only see the blob of darkness as the dinosaur's head reared up to greet him, jaws spread open to devour him whole. No, that wasn't it; spikes were blasting like plumes of fire from its mouth, shooting at him like arrows. He was going to die; he was going to die, and his short life flashed before his eyes. Flickering images, fast like a rolling camera reel; Like background music in his head, for some reason "Ring Around the Rosie" was playing in his head. Ring around the rosie-

The first birthday he could remember, the birth of his sister, his first day at kindergarten, losing his first tooth,

Pocket full of posies-

making his first friend on the playground, Christmases, Easter egg hunts, more birthdays, the first time he met Jack, his adventure with the Guardians, playing games in the streets, that first day of spring that set all of this into motion and led him right up to this moment, the moment of his death.

Ashes, ashes-

Then, suddenly, he wasn't falling. He dangled in open air, swaying slowly back and forth. His breath was coming in short, ragged gasps, not nearly good enough to supply oxygen to his still-screaming brain. Fall below him, the writhing trees slowly stopped writhing, quivering leaves and thrashing branches falling still. Wait. He could feels someone's arms wrapped around him, warm and inviting and motherly. Someone was holding him. He felt tears splash down into his brown hair, and he looked up to see Nat, smiling with tears streaming down her face in rivers.

"I've got you. I've got you, Jamie." Her voice was shaking. Her body was too. There was a slithering sound, and he glanced down to see the thick vine curling under his feet. She gently set him down, but his legs were like Jell-O, unable to bear his weight; he sank down to his knees, shaking all over. He had almost died. He had almost died, but Nat saved him. Bursting into tears, he looked back up at her, a thank-you on his lips, but it caught in a lump in his throat as his mouth went dry.

The trees had stopped shaking. The trees had stopped shaking because Nat no longer had the power to move them, because instead of hitting Jamie, one of those spikes had impaled Nat right through her chest.

We all fall down.