Song: Into the Unknown
From: Frozen 2
Start song at (1)
I'm starting my merging in this chapter so while I still am paraphrasing Nightlight's journey as I have the others, I am also putting my own spin on things.
As always I claim no ownership of The Guardians of Childhood or The Rise of the Guardians.
At Kanthren's ending statement the room swam before Jack's eyes. He saw Katherine as the young women who had been reading to him but also as a girl from Santoff Clausen. Mr. Quarky was still the book shaped moth but Jack also saw him as a bookworm and a crissaless. He looked down at himself and saw his pail hands but also hands that were far thinner and covered in green gloves. What's happening! He wondered.
"Jack! What's wrong?!" Katherine and Mr. Quarky asked at the same time.
"I don't really know! It's like when I was swept up in my human memories but these are almost like someone else's memories." Jack told them.
"What are you seeing?" Mr. Quarky asked.
"Santoff Clausen, Mother Nature, fields, woods, a serpent, werewolves, a cabin, a snow fort…." He trailed off as the memories started to overwhelm his senses. Jack saw Mr. Quarky open his pages and Katherine take out her charcoal pencil. The memories he had no idea how he could have, organized themselves and started to play from the beginning. But unlike when he was so absorbed in his memories in the Antarctic ice Fissure with BabyTooth and his Tooth box he was conscious of the present and so able to describe what he saw to the waiting writer and book.
"There is a golden palace with a small family, a father and a mother who are dressed in royal looking attire and a new born baby. I am there to protect this little boy. I and the family go on the run as Pitch closes in on their home but he finds us, our ship battles his galleon with a crew of fearlings. In order to protect the prince I gather his tears and make a dagger that I use to plunge Pitch into a dormant sleep. We both fall to earth."
Flashes of the other Guardians stories flash by quickly but from a perspective of someone other then North, Bunny, Tooth, Sandy or Katherine. Then they slow down again and Jack can start telling Mother Goose what is being reveled to him.
"I had a dream for the 1st time and it held many surprises. I can hear it calling to me but I am afraid what will happen if I follow it. Afraid of what I will lose and what I might gain. Still it calls me like a haunting lullaby. (1) "Ahhh, ah, ahhh, ahhhhhhh." "
He describes deciding to go to sleep and the dream of the Nightlight stars helping him fight the battle and where he must trap Pitch, at Santoff Clausen under Big Root, with the help of Mother Nature. Then how he needed to find a certain cabin with a certain family and become a normal boy not the Nightlight he is.
Jack heard Katherine give a small gasp but she didn't interrupt him, which is a good thing because the memories don't have a pause button.
"The battle and trapping of Pitch in his own nightmare rock under Big Root go just as the dream showed. After saying good by to Mother Nature and the rest of all those in Santoff Clausen, human and animal alike, I set off on my long journey."
He described the fields, roads, forests, and skies he traveled and played in. How he ran with wolves, climbed with chipmunks, swam with fish, and flew with owls, as well as anything else that walked, climbed, swam, or flew. They taught him their ways and language, taught him to be a wild boy of nobility. Killing only to eat and no more and fighting only to make peace.
He told of how he meet Twiner, a stick man made by North and sent to find Nightlight. Told of the message Twiner relayed form North, that though no one knew if he was still alive North hoped that the powerful transforming companion could help their friend. And he told of fighting the Lermontoff serpent, a snake who's head alone was longer then Nightlight was tall and had venom in it's stare. How Twiner became a staff and the two fought like they had been doing so for years. How the diamond dagger staff he had before-left behind when he had woken from this dream and rushed into battle-had been a wonderful weapon, he found that Twiner was just as good if not better for he moved to composite if the enemy was just a bit off of where Nightlight aimed.
"The werewolf king Shadowbent, found me and took me in to the safety of his castle. These werewolves were men that had chosen to become beasts in order to help protect the weak and were forever connected to Mim and the moon, very similar to the connection the Lunar Lama's had to Mim. The next day they escorted me the rest of the way to the cabin I had dreamed of. Once there Twiner said he would remain in staff form as I remand in the mindset of a boy."
Jack described a cabin and the kind strong family inside. How they had taken the unknown boy into their home and adopted him. The days of play with the boy and girl, Jacklovic and Ana, how even chores were fun and adventurous thanks to their imaginations. And of the snow fort they built together on the frozen pond. The love of the parents, the night songs, and the hugs and Kisses. How all these things were so much more powerful as a receiver then a protector who only watched.
The story turned at this point as Jack was hit by a fear he recognized, the fear of losing someone you loved.
He described the day the fearlings and Serpent found the place they played. How he had rushed to try and get Jacklovic and Ana to safety and they had been surrounded by the braking ice under their fort.
"That's when Shadowbent and his pack arrived, they fought there way to us and I hugged my adopted siblings. "I am your brother and friend always!" I told them then Shadowbent scooped them up and raced them across the braking ice and into the woods. The serpent tried to follow them, intent on causing me a kind of harm worse then death. By keeping me alive but killing all those who I cared for, and I knew this would only be the beginning. Pitch was not done, he had created this snake and he would keep sending it after me for as long as I lived, which he intended to be a long while. He would let me wonder, make connections, build bonds, then rip them from me in the most horrific way. I would not let him though, I used Twiner to brake the ice completely and everything fell into the water, fearlings, serpent, snow fort, and me alike. Then ice arrows erupted from the shattered ice and tore all the fearlings apart, the serpent didn't fair much better and as we sank I finished it off. Twiner floated away from me as I fell asleep."
The memories went dark but Jack knew they were not finished.
"What happened then?" Katherina was breathless, worried for he long ago childhood friend and maybe something more.
"A long time he slept, emotionless, not allowing himself to have even so much as a thought. That is until…." Like before Jack trailed off and the memories took up his focus.
This time though it was his turn to gasp!
Cliffhanger! What do you think?
The next chapter will be were the last one, unless you all would like me to write a chapter about the final defeat of The Nightmare king from the Jack Frost Guardians of Childhood book. If that is the case should I write it like the other chapters, as a story being told by those who lived it, or change to a telling of it as it happens. Let me know, and thank you for reading and reviewing!