Chapter 16:
Jack stared out the window at the snow whipping around the North Pole, mindful of the tightness in his chest, the heaviness in his stomach as the Guardians mourned their fallen comrade.
Sandy wasn't dead; if there was one thing Jack knew, his father always, always collected the Spirits and the Gods when their time came.
But Death had never appeared once during the entire battle with Pitch. Neither had any of the other Horsemen, nor had any of the Reapers.
Something was wrong. Something was very wrong.
Tuning out the ringing of the elves' bells as best he could, Jack turned his attention inward. He closed his eyes, searching for the strange tie that connected him to Death.
Nothing. Not even the faintest pull.
A bang at the window had Jack jerking out of his reverie with a start, nearly falling off the sill.
Glancing at the Guardians to make sure they hadn't heard anything, Jack quickly turned back to the window and looked down.
He could feel his eyes widening when he beheld the sight of the Red Horseman and her steed peering up at him; apparently War had thrown a snowball to get his attention.
When War gestured for him to come down, Jack dared another glance over his shoulder before opening the window and slipping outside. Shutting the window as quietly as he could, Jack glided down and landed gently in the snow just as War dismounted.
"What's going on?" Jack asked before War could even open her mouth. "I tried to contact Death earlier and I couldn't sense him! Not at all! I can always sense him! I mean, unless he's in the Realm of the Dead, but I don't think…"
War held up a hand and Jack immediately stopped talking.
"Death is missing," she said, face uncharacteristically grim. Jack felt for a second that his jaw had come unhinged with how low his mouth dropped.
"But… but… what? How can Death go missing?"
"He does on occasion cloak himself from us when he wants to be left alone, but he always responds to urgent calls from us. The fact that he hasn't, to you or any of us, means he is unable to."
"But how is that possible? What could possibly stop Death?" Jack asked, gripping his staff closer to him, feeling his toes curl in the snow.
"There are only two beings capable of both trapping Death and keeping us from communicating with him."
"Who?"
"A more accurate question would probably be what. Death is one of three beings the rest of us refer to as Primordials. The other two are his siblings; the beings humans refer to as God and the Devil, the Primordials of good and evil."
"Wait, so all of that stuff is real? The Bible and whatnot?" Jack asked incredulously.
War shook her head. "No; none of the "holy books" humans have written are particularly accurate. They may get a few aspects and characters right here and there, but never everything. God, Death and the Devil could be considered triplets, but it is widely believed by many of the older beings that Death is slightly older than the other two."
Jack's only response to this was to stare blankly ahead.
"God has been MIA for dozens of millennia now, which essentially eliminates him as a suspect," War went on.
Realizing what she was getting at, Jack was jolted out of his earlier stupor by the sensation of his stomach dropping somewhere below his feet.
"The Devil has him?" Jack said softly.
"We believe so, yes."
Jack sat down heavily, running his fingers through his hair as he stared at nothing.
"What do we do?" the frost spirit managed eventually.
"We look for him, and try to figure out what Mephistopheles is up to that he deems it necessary to bind Death."
Jack nodded to nobody in particular. Then, exhaling heavily, he pushed himself to his feet.
"All right," he said, raising his head to meet War's gaze. "I'll call Mei and we can get going."
At War's raised eyebrow, Jack shrugged. "The Guardians won't care; I doubt they'll really even notice. This is more important than preserving children's belief, anyway."
Finding out what Mephistopheles was up to turned out to be the easy part. War figured it out fairly quickly when she and Jack were attacked by a horde of Jikininki demons in northern Canada.
"That infernal bastard!" War hissed as she slid her sword from the chest of the last demon. "He's trying to expand his domain!"
"Who? Mephistopheles?" Jack asked, guiding Mei out of the bushes they'd been hiding in.
"Yes!" War spat as she wiped her sword, covered in black blood, on the snow. "He's trying to create a literal Hell on Earth!"
Jack felt a distinctly unpleasant chill run down his spine. "How do you know?"
War gestured to the corpse her horse was pawing interestedly at. "These demons are native to Japan. They should not be able to spread so quickly without anyone catching on."
"So they had help," Jack surmised.
War nodded, baring her teeth in a wolfish snarl. "He's doing a typical divide and conquer; spread our forces thin, then slam us with a hammer blow one at a time."
"Would that work against you guys? I mean, if you intensify your aspects everything that touches you dies instantly."
War shook her head. "Demons take a lot more power to kill than a human or a spirit. Your typical Reaper might be able to take out a few, probably a dozen or so, but more than that and they'd need to resort to physical combat or return to the Realm of the Dead and regenerate. Pestilence, Famine and I could last considerably longer, but we'd weaken eventually as well. And without Death to bolster our power, we'd weaken even faster. In other circumstances we could spread our influence among the humans and spirits to gain power, but in this case it would only help our enemies."
"Then shouldn't finding Death be our first priority?" Jack asked.
"Yes, and Mephistopheles knows it. He'll be watching us carefully and will move to intercept us if we get too close," War said, tapping the clawed fingertips of her gloves against her lips thoughtfully. She apparently ignored the way her horse had begun stomping on the corpses behind her. "He will not, however, be paying much attention to you."
"What?" Jack asked with a jolt.
"He won't consider you much of a threat; on the power scale you're far below us and most of the demons. The thing he'd be concerned about with you is your connections. You're connected with perhaps the most powerful being in the universe, and are connected with several other powerful beings associated with him. But you yourself he doesn't consider much of a threat. Which is why I need you to find Raven and get him to rally the Elder Spirits; we're going to need their help."
"Okay," Jack said, not entirely sure where the Red Horseman was going with this. Undoubtedly noticing his furrowed brow War went on, "I'll need their help to take on the freed demons. You, however, should keep looking for Death."
"What?" Jack practically shouted. "But you just said I have connections! I could help you mobilize the other spirits!"
"And that's exactly what Mephistopheles expects. He'll have prepared for it. Your connection with Death, however, is unique, something none of us understand. It is unpredictable, and that is exactly what we need right now."
Jack exhaled heavily, closing his eyes as he stroked Mei's neck for a moment.
Then he opened them. "All right. I'll go find Raven."
"Tell him to find as many Elder Spirits and Death Gods as he can. Once you've done that, find Black Shuck and one of the cat sidhe. They'll be able to protect you while you search."
Jack nodded, mouth set in a grim line. "All right. Good luck, War."
"Good fortune, Jack Frost."
Hello, everyone. I apologize for taking over three months to update this story, but my grandmother suffered a severe stroke and my family was working to take care of her. She passed away a couple of weeks ago, and all of this combined to bring about a bit of a relapse in my depression. I've already started working on the next chapter, though, so hopefully I'll be able to update again soon.