Hi! If you like epic magical battles, the Guardians fighting to protect the world and its children from Pitch Black, not-my-OC-but-I'm-using-him Hell and other dark spirits the likes of which the Guardians have never fought before, Jack Frost and Jamie Bennett being awesome in general, and villains that may not be what they seem at first, then this might be the right story for you!

Disclaimer: I do not own Rise of the Guardians or its characters. That honor goes to William Joyce and Dreamworks.

Chapter 1: The First Strike

"We never know how high we are

Till we are called to rise;

And then, if we are true to plan,

Our statures touch the skies—"

~Emily Dickinson~

So, the Guardians defeat Pitch and save the world from disaster, Jack Frost gets believers and they all live happily ever after, right? Not so fast. After his defeat in Burgess, Pitch Black swore he would get his revenge, particularly on the Guardian of Fun. So, when his Nightmares finally stopped attacking him, Pitch began to plan and scheme. He wanted to be sure he wouldn't make the same mistakes again.

...Three Years Later...

North's Workshop

The day the Nightmare King chose to enact his vengeance on the Guardians began as a remarkably peaceful day around the world in mid-February, but this fateful day was to end very differently from how it began. That much became clear when Jack, Sandy and Bunny failed to turn up at North's Workshop for an emergency Guardian meeting. North had sent the aurora borealis out when many lights on the Globe of Belief had abruptly gone dark in Eastern Europe.

"They are never late, North! Especially Bunny!" Tooth burst out almost an hour after the aurora had gone out and still three of the five Guardians hadn't shown up. She and North stood side by side in front of the Globe of Belief, next to its control panels. Both were beginning to worry about their friends.

"Tooth, give them a little more time," North looked at the agitated fairy with a neutral expression, but internally he was trying to not think of all the bad things that could have happened to their friends. After a full minute of a staring contest with Tooth (and one of her mini fairies named Sera who was perched on her shoulder) North gave in.

"Fine! We will go find them." He bellowed, and began ordering his yetis to prepare the sleigh. The sleigh was ready in a matter of minutes. The two Guardians took off though the launch tube, soaring up into the gray Arctic sky. Both of them hoped that their fellow Guardians had simply been delayed from the meeting.

"Wait, Tooth. Where should we look for them first? They could be anywhere in the world." North suddenly realized that he didn't know where they were headed. Tooth looked at the miniature Globe of Belief at the front of North's sleigh for a moment before she answered, "Let's check Bunny's Warren first...then we should probably head down to Antarctica. To check for Jack at his new ice palace, you know? I guess we'll have to check Burgess on the way there. We should also watch for any dreamsand trails."

North nodded once in agreement with her plan. He took out a snowglobe and whispered, "Bunny's Warren!" A cone-shaped portal sucked them away. All the while, both Guardians hoped that the lights going dark hadn't been some horrible sign of things to come.

Bunny's Warren

The Warren had been ripped apart. As soon as North and Tooth had arrived, a falling boulder had almost crushed them, the sleigh and the reindeer. The back of the sleigh actually did get clipped as the stone continued to roll down Bunny's half collapsed tunnel hill, where the tunnels for each of the six populated continents branched out from.

"What happened here?" Tooth's eyes widened in horror as she flitted around, gazing at the broken stone pillars, torn grass and flowers, collapsed tunnels and smashed eggs. She put a hand to her mouth.

All but two of Bunny's sentinel eggs had been blasted apart, and the tunnel leading to the Indian sub-continent had a fire burning fiercely at its entrance. North ran through the maze of meadows and small canyons looking for the missing Guardians, and Tooth, Sera, and Baby Tooth went looking for clues in the tunnel hill.

North soon encountered a second fire burning in the meadow where the egg-tulips grew. Every single egg and flower had been burnt or crushed into the earth. "No," North whispered, watching the orange flames burn the once beautiful meadow. Then a scream rang out almost directly behind him. He turned sharply to find the Tooth Fairy as pale as a ghost, flying straight for him. Sera Tooth reached him first and immediately began pushing him back towards the tunnels.

"North!" Tooth screamed as she flew, looking for the old toy maker. She spotted him standing in front of yet another fire. North breathed in relief, at least the scream wasn't because Pitch had showed up.

"Tooth, what is it?" North asked as Tooth grabbed his arm and started pulling him back to the valley in front of the tunnels. He didn't receive an answer until they were standing in the center of the small valley.

"Look! Just look at that, North!" Tooth pointed at a stone wall between the burning India tunnel and the tunnel to Central Asia.

North's blue eyes searched for what the fairy was pointing to. Then he found it. Tooth was what looked like drying blood. It was smeared in the shape of half of a human handprint at tunnel's stone entrance, with similar dark red marks going along the right side of the tunnel and disappearing into the flames that were slowly consuming the earthen structure. North stepped back, a grimace on his face. No spirit had been attacked in this way since the Guardian's first battles with Pitch, and even then…Not like this.

Behind them, the fire burning in the tulip-egg garden suddenly shot an explosion of sparks high into the air.

North heard an ominous rumbling sound from inside the tunnel. "Run! The tunnel is collapsing!" He grabbed Tooth's hand and shoved Sera into his coat pocket, running to the far side of the valley in front of the tunnels.

The whole tunnel hill gave a giant shudder, sending flames and black smoke billowing out of the tunnel to India and making the grass catch fire where the Guardians had been standing a few seconds before. Tooth's violet eyes filled with anger as sparks caused the Russian and Western Europe tunnels to go up in flames as well. She could think of only one spirit who would go this far to destroy hope in the world:

Pitch Black.

AND SO IT BEGINS! Please review!

...and also, to Snowflakes: Would you like me to change anything about the tunnel entrances? Yes, the entrances to the tunnels are stone. Thanks for telling me about that...