Chapter 2: Not What It Seems
As some of the ashes from the fires fluttered through the air around along with the movements of Tooth's wings, North noticed jet black specks drifting through the air as well. "That's not ash…" He muttered, holding his hand out to catch some of the specks. Tooth turned to look at him as flames spread rapidly from tunnel to tunnel in the hill across the valley from them. (The worst part was that both Guardians knew when the fire reached the end of a tunnel, a fire would be started there.)
Tooth took a closer look at the particles in North's palm. "No," She whispered, "No that is definitely not ash. It's Nightmare sand."
"Tooth, we have to go after them! What if Bunny, or all three of them, went into that tunnel? And now that tunnel is collapsed and on fire!" North was getting more worried by the minute.
Tooth looked down at the dying grass below her and said quietly, "Guess we'd better go to the sleigh. We can't follow them through the tunnel, and the nightmare sand just proves that he's back." North knew she meant Pitch.
He nodded slowly. They took one last look at the burning tunnel hill, and then Sera (now out of North's pocket) led the way back to the sleigh.
"I am so sorry Bunny. We have to leave the Warren like this. All the fires, all this mess…" Tooth whispered as North opened a snowglobe portal to India. Then they were gone, as the Easter Bunny's world of hope turned to a world of dark.
On their way to hopefully find their friends, Tooth and North simply couldn't believe what had happened to the Warren. "North, I'm scared for them." Tooth sniffed. holding back her tears as scenes of destruction tore through her mind. Scenes like Pitch killing Jack for revenge, Sandy becoming a Nightmare forever, Bunny losing all hope and the world dying around him as he fading away, and North turning into a Fearling, no longer seeing or caring what he did.
North sighed and let the reigns fall to the sleigh's floor; the reindeer could fly straight in open air by themselves. "Tooth, we do not know what really happened. I am sure Sandy is still Sandman, Jack is still shooting frost every which way, and Bunny is still yelling insults and throwing his egg-bombs. They will be fine." North said as he gently hugged the comparatively small fairy. Sera put a tiny hand on Tooth's arm, hoping to provide comfort.
That was when something crashed forcefully onto the deck of the sleigh. Smoke and golden sand flew into the air around them and eventually began to settle into the wood that made up North's sleigh. North quickly slowed the reindeers' pace, then joined the fairy in finding out what, or rather who, had crash landed.
"SANDY!" North and Tooth exclaimed as the Sandman floated up out of the smoky wreckage and grimaced at them.
"Sandy, what happened to you? The aurora went out but you never showed up! Have you seen Jack or Bunny? They're both gone as well-OH!" Tooth's multitude of questions was stopped by Sandy as he flew over to a pile of sand by the helm of the sleigh. Parting the pile, he reached in and extracted a small, slightly bloodied ball of gray fur. Soft snores were emitted from the tiny creature every few seconds, and the ball of fur twitched occasionally in its sleep.
"Bunny!" North gasped. The Easter Bunny was so small that he could fit easily into North's palm. Sandy set the sleeping bunny down on a soft pile pillow of dreamsand. Then he conveyed their journey.
"I was flying past Burgess up to the Pole after I saw the aurora, and accidentally collided with Jack in mid-air. We were flying up to your Workshop together when over Greenland…or maybe the Yukon? We saw a squadron of Nightmares over a small town and we decided to follow them. They found out we were tailing them, but instead of attacking us, they shadow-traveled us with them to Bunnymund's Warren. We fought them for only a few minutes, maybe ten, before Pitch arrived. Bunny, Jack and I ran into the tunnels to India. Pitch chased us. His scythe got Aster's ear, and then Pitch disappeared after he stabbed Jack."
"Jack got stabbed? Where?!" Tooth shrieked.
"His side, maybe? I don't know exactly, but I know that he got stabbed. Pitch is much more vengeful than before. He threw some sort of magical explosive into some of Bunny's tunnels and they burst into flame. We had to leave quickly, or the fire would have gotten us. Jack got separated from us in the smoke. When we got to the other end of the Indian tunnel, a group of water spirits luckily stopped the fire from spreading. However, Bunny's Warren couldn't be helped."
North and Tooth were very relieved that the other Guardians were alive (including Jack, as far as they knew,) and now they knew who they were facing. But their youngest member was still missing and possible suffering from severe injuries.
"Now we must find Jack," Sandy wrote in the air with dreamsand.
"Yes," Tooth agreed. She was so tired of fighting Pitch Black. She wished he would just go away and leave them alone.
"TO THE POLE!"
As they all disappeared into a snowglobe portal, Tooth knew that for her, one thing was certain in this fight: Pitch Black was going to pay for all that he'd done, and he was going to be defeated so soundly that he would never be able to return again.
It didn't really matter how he was stopped, but she knew that she wanted to do it herself.
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