Here's a long chapter for you all! A big thank you to all readers new and old for going on this journey with me (and the Guardians.)

Side note: My OC Chaos has been part of my plan for this story since the beginning (wow, I can't believe that was all the way back in 2013,) and is not based on any other fanfic author's OC with the same name.

*To Crossover Junkie (both of you?): I hope you figured out your name issues. And don't worry, I'm not going to "yell at you" for your reviews.


Chapter 30: It's Always Darkest...

Burgess, Pennsylvania

Months passed and the school year progressed, until suddenly it was December. Diane continued working long days at the hospital. Jamie kept in contact with the Guardians, but much less so than before. The fact that Chaos, Hell and Dark seemed to have vanished off of the face of the earth again concerned him the longer they stayed hidden. Jamie was at least glad for the comfort of having a magical moonstone from MiM that was supposed to protect him from an attack by Chaos. Diane and Sophie had their own stones as well, due their vulnerable connections to the immortals of the world.

When Winter Break finally arrived, Pippa left Burgess for a family Christmas trip while Jamie and Monty (and sometimes Caleb and Claude) decided to spend their days doing things like having their own board game tournaments (which were an acceptable indoor activity during snow storms.) And there were a few large snowstorms that winter, all of them fierce, icy storms that were nothing like Jack's.

It hadn't snowed much that Autumn, and while Jamie usually loved snow, the storms only seemed ominous and empty without Jack. Of course, Jamie knew Terra, and the Autumn and Spring spirits could all create and control snowstorms, and he had no doubt that the spirit of Autumn or Mother Nature was behind this particular storm, but it still felt heavy with the weight of loss.

One day, just over a week before the winter solstice, Jamie and Monty decided to play every board and card game either of them owned, all of which they managed to pile up in Jamie's bedroom. They intentionally messed with each other as they took turns, and laughing as they attempted to figure out some older games that their grandparents might have played.

In the middle of playing the card game "War", Jamie's attention was torn away from his cards when heard a strange noise. It sounded like someone had just walked across the attic right above his bedroom.

"Did you hear that?" Jamie asked, carefully setting down his cards on the floor as he looked up at the ceiling.

Both boys sat completely still for a moment, listening for whatever sound Jamie had heard. "I don't hear anything," Monty said, finally breaking the silence. The only sounds he heard were the cars driving along the snowy street in front of the house.

Jamie got to his feet, still staring at the ceiling. He thought he heard someone walking around in the attic, but when he didn't hear the sound again, he sighed and went to sit down. Before he could, both teens were startled by a series of clicks that came from every room in the house.

From where he stood, Jamie could see the lock on his bedroom window slowly slide shut. He heard Monty stand up, cursing softly to himself as he raced over to the window and tried to unlock it. The lock wouldn't budge.

Abby the greyhound, who had been napping in the hallway outside Jamie's room, suddenly got to her feet and raced downstairs, barking at something unseen.

Following Abby, the two boys tried to open the front and back doors, and every window in between. but the result was the same. Someone had magically locked them inside. They stared in horror at each other as the both came to the same conclusion.

'Oh god,' Jamie realized, 'Chaos is here.'

He wasn't prepared for this. Not in the slightest. He simply couldn't fight Chaos alone, even with every form of magical protection given to him by the Guardians (and Death) that was upstairs in his room.

The sound of quiet footsteps above them made them look up at the ceiling. Monty wrung his hands nervously in the kitchen. Abby ran to the foot of the stairs, still barking. In living room, Jamie held his breath, desperately hoping that he was just imagining things. But no, the footsteps sounded like they were moving toward the stairs, and any second now Chaos would be able to see him.

"Jamie, come on!" Monty whispered, fear in his voice. Jamie stayed frozen for a second longer before following Monty through the kitchen to the basement stairs.

Jamie closed the door to the basement as quietly as he could, sending them into total darkness, but kept his hand on the door handle and turned it open. He didn't want to risk being locked in the basement if Chaos decided to lock the inside doors as well. What's more, what would he do if dark embodiment hurt Abby?

After listening intently for any sign of Chaos and hearing nothing except the cars outside and Abby growling, Jamie finally allowed himself to take a few deep breaths. With one hand still on the door, he prodded Monty's shoulder to get his attention and whispered, "If you get out of here, run as far and fast as you can. Call my mom, tell her Chaos is here and to summon the Guardians ASAP."

If the basement light had been turned on, Jamie would had seen the look of disbelief that appeared on his friend's face as he spoke. Since they didn't dare turn the lights on with Chaos in the house, Monty's expression remained unseen, but the feeling of it carried into his voice when he whispered back, "But what about you?"

"If I can get to the moonstone and find Death's spell in my textbook, I can probably hold him off or some—"

"That's a stupid idea. Dude, do you even hear yourself? That's Chaos out there. Jack and Bunny died because of him!" Monty elbowed Jamie away from the door and took his place holding the handle open.

The teens froze as they heard Chaos slowly walk downstairs into the living room. It seemed that he was taking his time looking for them, and enjoyed the building terror that tactic caused. Jamie swallowed down his fear with a shaky breath.

Then Chaos laughed.

Jamie's hands curled into fists, and had Monty not been holding the door closed, he might have run out of the basement and tried to fight Chaos then and there. That laugh had been Jack's, and Chaos didn't deserved to have the same laughter, the same voice as the former Guardian of Fun.

There was total silence in the living room again, as if Chaos had suddenly disappeared.

Monty, leaning as far away from the basement door as he could without letting go of the handle, pulled his phone out of his back pocket. With the screen brightness turned down, the blue light from the phone screen just barely illuminated the space around them. The rest of the basement, which mostly served as a storage space for the Bennetts, remained dark and ominous at the bottom of the stairs.

Seeing the pained expression on Jamie's face, Monty quietly said, "Remember a few years ago when you showed up at my window in the middle of the night, literally floating in mid-air, and told me that Jack Frost was real and he needed our help to save the world?"

Jamie looked down the stairs, away from Monty.

Monty pretended not to notice the haunted look that passed over his friend's face, and continued talking. "All I'm trying to say is that I'm not leaving you to face Chaos alone. I didn't three years ago with Pitch, and I won't now."

"Chaos isn't like Pitch," Jamie started to protest, but Monty interrupted him.

"Look, I get that, but whatever he's like, I'm not leaving. I know that's what Jack would have done." Monty spoke with more certainty than Jamie had ever heard from him.

The brunette smiled faintly. "Thanks," He said.

"Do you think he's gone?" Monty asked, tilting his head in the direction of the closed door

"No. We can't stay here forever though." Jamie said, thinking about the best way out of their situation. Maybe Monty could text Diane, and tell her to call to Guardians to his house, and Jamie could get to his room to find the message Death left him in his textbook and use her spell? 'Yeah, that could work…'He thought, and was about to convey his plan to Monty when the sound of footsteps started again, now coming from the kitchen.

Chaos had remained undetected for the last two months, without launching a single attack.

No one in the immortal world had faced this new embodiment yet, and neither had any mortal.

Only the oldest spirits knew how dangerous he could truly be.

Given these things, Jamie felt with a terrible sense of dread that he and Monty were probably about the find out exactly why Terra, and Tempus feared Chaos' destructive power so much.

Then the footsteps were coming from behind them, and the teens remembered too late about Chaos' ability to travel through the shadows. There was the metallic sound of a blade being drawn from its sheath and then— "If you thought I didn't know where you were the entire time, you're greatly mistaken."

Jamie and Monty turned in unison to look down the stairs at the basement below.

Red eyes appeared out of the darkness first. Then the faint outline of a human body, and finally, the light from Monty's phone illuminated Chaos' pale face. His gloved hands were wrapped around the hilt of the jet black sword Jamie vaguely remembered seeing through Tempus' portal.

Without hesitation, Chaos stretched out a hand and flung a volley of seething shadows straight at the believers.

In a blind panic, the teens stumbled through basement door and crashed onto the kitchen floor in a tangle of limbs. The darkness writhed behind them like living nightmare sand, but instead of sand it was the shadows brought to life.

"Run!" Jamie shoved Monty off of him and then hauled his friend to his feet by one arm. As they ran out of the kitchen, Jamie looked back to see how fast Chaos was following them.

Chaos walked up the stairs at a leisurely pace, as if he was in no hurry to kill or capture the believers. The kitchen lights Monty had turned on the earlier brought his features into sharp relief as the embodiment of destruction reached the basement door.

For one brief yet eternal moment, mortal brown eyes met immortal red, and Jamie almost tripped over his own feet as he turned around to stare directly at Chaos' face.

Once Jack's face, it had been transformed into something cruel and monstrous. Three red scars still cut across his face, allthat was left over from Jack's first fight against Hell. The obsidian materials that Chaos' sword, armor, boots, and gloves were made of reflected almost no light, their visibility based more on the absence of light rather than its presence.

But his face…It was his face that Jamie kept going back to, the thing that kept him frozen in the middle of the kitchen despite wanting to run away as fast as he could. The believer didn't know how to mentally separate the familiar face from the actual soul that had made Jack Frost the Guardian of Fun and Nightlight.

As Chaos and Jamie stood facing each other across the Bennetts' kitchen, Chaos smirked at the boy. This time, Jamie could see the harsh edge to everything Chaos did. Whereas he had been unsure about seeing Chaos before, in that instant he knew that he could face Chaos without seeing Jack every time. For all his pranks Jack had never looked cruel, as Chaos did in the same body.

Despite his normally nervous demeanor, Monty was the one who didn't look back, freeze in fear, or pause to dwell on Chaos' existence. When Abby charged passed him toward Chaos, he forcefully dragged Jamie out of the way as Chaos flung another volley of shadows at them. An entire section of kitchen shelves where the believer had been standing was destroyed in an instant, leaving only charred and smoking wood behind.

Abby leapt out of the way of the blast and ran at Chaos again (once again proving Jamie's theory that animals could always see magical beings.)

"What are you waiting for? Let's go!" Monty yelled, pushing his shocked friend in the direction of the stairs. As he followed Jamie up to his bedroom, they heard Abby growling and various objects falling to the floor.

"Give that back this instant, you stupid creature!" Chaos shouted, and Jamie and Monty found themselves smiling in the hall outside Jamie's room as they realized what Abby must have done. She always had loved taking things from people's hands when they least expected it.

Then something metal clattered to the floor. Abby gave a high-pitched cry of pain, followed by utter silence. With a faint electrical whine, the house's power suddenly went out.

The two teens quickly remembered their hurry and rushed into Jamie's room, only to find Chaos waiting for them. In one hand, he gingerly held his jet black sword. The hilt was dented in some places, covered in scratch marks, and shiny with dog slobber. In the other hand, Chaos held the small moonstone that North had given Jamie—the magical stone that created in invisible, impenetrable barrier through which Chao's magic shouldn't be able to get through. Jamie had foolishly left it out on his desk, instead of in his pant pocket where it could actually protect him.

"You're dog is surprisingly fierce for a simple animal, isn't she?" Chaos said quietly. He kept his back to the teens as he inspected the moonstone. Jamie and Monty watched him cautiously, saying nothing in return. " You know, I have always wanted to know how these things worked. Especially after hearing about their lingering power many years after Pitch was defeated by that insufferable boy, Nightlight." Chaos commented. He stood facing the window, keeping just out of reach of the light streaming in.

It was almost sunset, and Jamie hoped that MiM would soon sense Chaos' appearance in Burgess, or that his mom might get home and would realize something was wrong when the front door didn't unlock.

Chaos suddenly infected the moonstone in his gloved hand with dark magic, shattering it into tiny fragments that fell through his fingers like sand. He turned to face the shocked teens. "You see," he said, red eyes glowing in the fading light, "You matter to the Guardians of Childhood Jamie, so I can't let you go free, giving them your belief or hope for the future."

"You're crazy!" Jamie snarled.

Chaos studied the teen carefully for a moment. Jamie barely had time to recognize the sensation of something physically pressing against his brain as Chaos reading his thoughts and memories before the feeling went away. Death's gaze, when she showed him his entire life in the span of a few seconds, had made him feel the same way.

"I chose this body for a reason." Chaos said.

"Oh yeah? Why?" Jamie demanded. He didn't notice Monty eyeing the space under his bed where they'd stored the world history textbook with Death's spell.

"Despite how much they might have abandoned him or pretended to hate him, in the end, Jack managed to endear himself to most immortals in the world."

"I heard he could even be friends with Death!" Monty suddenly interjected. The out-burst was so out of character for the usually nervous boy that Jamie found himself looking over at his friend and wondering when he'd gone and lost his mind.

Chaos, on the other hand, scowled at Death's name. "And how would you know of Death, boy?"

Monty faced Chaos directly, looking him in the eye. "Doesn't everyone? I mean, eventually?"

Jamie was seriously worried for Monty now; who on earth just looked the deadliest immortal in the eye like it was nothing!? However, as Jamie continued to stare at his friend in disbelief, he realized that Monty was subtly reminding him to cast Death's spell—since Jamie had received it, only he could cast it.

How could he have forgotten about Death's protection spell?!

Chaos raised his sword, pointing it directly at Jamie's heart. "As much as I'd love to continue talking, I'm afraid I have other things to do tonight that I can't delay any longer. I'm sure your disappearance will serve my purposes nicely." He said, and with one twitch of his fingers, a dark portal swirled open directly behind Monty and Jamie. Chaos advanced, forcing them closer and closer to its edge. Shadows rose up from the floor to wrap around their legs and began pulling the teens into the vortex.

With just seconds to spare, Jamie finally remembered the words to Death's spell, and pictured the hanging gardens of Nineveh in his mind's eye. Grabbing Monty's hand, he shouted, "ET LUX IN TENEBRIS LUCET!"

A surge of powerful, electrifying magic suddenly flashed through them.

The entire house gave a shudder as the luminous magic invoked by Death's spell rushed outward from Jamie's body like a shock wave, destroying Chaos' portal and forcing the embodiment to disappear from the house just before Death's magic could reach him.

When the light faded, the only sign that Jamie and Monty had been there was Monty's phone lying abandoned on the floor, and Jamie's bedroom window that had been shattered by the explosion of magic.


Diane was just pulling her car into the driveway with Sophie in the backseat when she saw a brilliant burst of light shatter Jamie's window. She had also noticed that power had gone out along the entire street, for every house and street light was dark.

Rushing out of the car, she raced up her icy front steps and unlocked the front door. as she pushed the front door open, she shivered, from cold and fear of what she would find inside the house.

Sophie got out of the car as well and followed her mother up the front steps with a yawn. The young girl had just been picked up from a play-date with one of her friends, and was bundled up in her warmest winter gear. Diane stopped her at the front door.

"Stay out here for a minute, Sophie." It wasn't a request.

"Why?" Sophie was tired, cold and hungry after her play-date. She also hadn't seen the broken window, only Diane's reaction to it.

"It…might not be safe inside. Just wait here, okay?"

"Is it the people that took away Bunny and Jack?"

Diane looked down at her daughter in surprise. Sometimes it was easy to forget how perceptive Sophie was, and that she too had once helped fight Pitch Black. With this in mind, she nodded. "It could be. Which is why you must wait out here until we know what happened."

Sophie seemed satisfied with that answer, for she sat down on the front steps and stared out at the snow that had been falling all day.

Diane crept into the house, using the flashlight in her phone to investigate. "Jamie?" She called. Hearing a low whine from the kitchen, she headed toward the sound and found Abby asleep on the floor in front of the fridge. The dog didn't have any visible injuries, but she was whimpering in her sleep. Diane bent down next to Abby, petting her as she surveyed the rest of the room. The kitchen itself was partially destroyed, with pots and pans and cooking utensils littering the floor. A section of the cabinets looked like it had spontaneously combusted, and the door to the basement lay wide open.

"Jamie?" Diane called out, louder this time. The house remained silent.

Sophie peered in through the open front door. "He's definitely not here," The girl said.

Although Diane was getting the same feeling, she still asked, "How do you know that, Soph?"

"I can just feel it," Sophie replied. Then she added, "Also, someone's phone is ringing upstairs, but it's not Jamie's."

Running upstairs, Diane found Jamie's room in disarray. Snow was blowing in through the broken window, and there was a scorch mark on the floor near the door. Board game boxes were stacked up in one corner of the room and playing cards scattered across the floor.

Sophie had been right. On the floor, Monty's phone was ringing with his father's phone number showing on the screen.

A shaking hand raising to cover her mouth, Diane could barely breath past the sob of anguish and anger that caught in the back of her throat. 'This cannot be happening,' She thought, shaking her head in denial at the scene before her.

Slowly, she picked up Monty's abandoned cell phone and walked out of the room, shutting the door tightly behind her. Going back downstairs, she found Sophie and Abby sitting on the couch in the darkened living room. Her daughter's emerald eyes seemed to glimmer slightly in the darkness as she watched her mother answer the phone and raise it to her ear with a shuddering breath.

Even as she talked to Monty's worried father, Diane began planning. There was an emergency snowglobe hidden in the glove box of her car; she would use it to get to the North Pole with Sophie, and then she would find her son.


(Meanwhile)

"What did Death say that spell was for, again?"

Jamie slowly returned to consciousness to the sound of Monty's voice. He sounded vaguely amused, which was not the first thing Jamie would associate with nearly blasting yourself to smithereens.

'Why would I intentionally blow myself up?' Jamie wondered groggily.

Monty gave a snort of laughter somewhere close by.

'Oh yes,' Jamie recalled, 'That's right. Chaos tried to kidnap me.'

That thought made him open his eyes and scramble to sit up. Monty was sitting next to him, taking in their surroundings with bewildered awe.

They were in a field of tall grasses. A gurgling stream could be heard nearby. Upon close inspection of the ground around them, Jamie realized that they were in a farm field of some kind; the grasses—no, grain—around them were clearly agriculturally cultivated.

"Jamie?" Monty prompted again. Jamie looked over at him with a sinking feeling in his stomach.

"I…have no idea." The brown-haired believer continued looking around them in confusion. What had Death's spell done? It had obviously transported them away from Chaos, which was great, but what was the point of dropping them in the middle of a random field?

Despite their situation, Monty gave a small laugh again. Jamie turned to him, not seeing what was so funny. "Why are you laughing? We were just almost killed by Chaos, and now we're stuck in the middle of who knows where!"

Monty pointed through the grain stalks at something Jamie couldn't quite see. "A man just fell out of a palm tree over there. It was a slightly funny, that's all." He said.

"Come on, we don't have palm trees in Pennsylvania."

"I know."

"Then what are you talking about?"

Monty sighed, looking at that Jamie like the answer should be obvious. "Jamie, we're clearly not in Burgess anymore—"

"That doesn't answer my question."

After a moment, Monty said, "I don't know where we are, but we ARE somewhere with palm trees. Take a look for yourself."

Jamie got to his feet and immediately wished he hadn't. Monty continued rambling, "-and I know about as much about magic spells as you do. Meaning that neither of us know anything about what the spell was supposed to do. Kind of makes me wish Hogwarts was real, you know? Maybe then—"

"You're right, okay? There are a lot of palm trees." Jamie interrupted.

Monty fell silent again. Then he stood up, and two teens stared in stunned confusion their new surroundings. The man who had fallen out of a palm tree in the distance appeared to be climbing it again, with better luck this time.

It was as if they had fallen into an alternate dimension. The people they could see wore clothing and worked in the field with tools that Jamie thought hadn't been used in at least 1,000 years. The tiered pyramid-like structure visible within the town at the edge of the field began look vaguely familiar, and then Jamie realized what Death's spell had done.

Monty was the first to voice his suspicions. "That looks like a really good recreation of the Babylonian temples we studied in world history a few months ago, doesn't it?" He said, looking between the town and Jamie warily, like he knew he wouldn't like Jamie's answer.

Jamie looked back at him and replied quickly, "It's….It's probably not a recreation. Remember where Death wrote her spell in my world history textbook? She basically told me what the spell would do that night she came to my house. I just didn't realize it."

Monty shook his head slightly, trying to deny the truth even as he felt Jamie's words ring true. He had seen the faint, glowing handwriting next to the illustration of a Babylonian temple in Jamie's textbook. If they hadn't been desperate to escape Chaos, the thought that a world history textbook was an odd place to leave powerful spell lying around might have crossed their minds; but it didn't. Now here they were, safe from Chaos but somewhere potentially far worse for two teenagers used to the comforts of the 21st century.

The only thing on their minds then became, 'How to we get back home?'

Of course Death had left no instructions on how to undo a time-travel spell.