Chapter 26:

To say the Sandman was confused when he opened his eyes would be a massively inconsiderate understatement.

He had no idea where he was; his memory was fuzzy, to say the least. He remembered the initial pain of Pitch's arrow piercing his back, then nothing but cold and endless blackness.

Sandy wasn't certain how much time he'd spent in that state, simply drifting, freezing and alone. Maybe he'd slept. He couldn't say, but he could remember at times feeling horrid dread and fear, sometimes stemming from apparently nothing at all, other times more vague fears for his comrades, his friends, the children.

But now here he was, lying on his back on a hard, dusty street, with a stranger crouching over him and smiling for some reason.

"Sandy?" the boy asked.

Sanderson felt his brow furrow. He knew that voice. The hair and eyes were different, the clothes were different, but he knew that voice.

A snowflake appeared in the cloud of golden sand above his head, followed shortly by a question mark.

The boy grinned. "Yeah, it's Jack. How're you feeling, Sandy? You alright?"

Sandy blinked. His head was swimming horribly and his vision was a bit blurred, but things could have been far worse.

The Sandman nodded, giving a hesitant smile.

Jack's grin widened until it almost split his face.

"Jack! Come on! We have to go!"

Jack's head turned in the direction of the speaker. "I know, I'll be right there Aditi!"

Jack returned his attention to the downed Sandman. "Look, Sandy, a lot of stuff's happened since you were shot. You've been gone for a little over two years; Pitch won shortly after he took you out. The other Guardians are basically powerless right now because belief is so low. We've managed to bring you back by spreading stories, but you need to start making kids dreams about Easter and Christmas and tooth fairies like… yesterday. There's a lot of real dangerous things going on and it needs to be taken care of ASAP or a lot of people are going to get hurt."

"Jack!"

"Okay, I'm coming!" Jack called over his shoulder, then smiled apologetically at the Sandman. "Sorry I can't tell you more Sandy, but we've got some pretty urgent work to do ourselves. Good luck!"

With that, Jack dashed off to Sandy's right. The Sandman had enough strength to turn his head in time to see Jack leap into the saddle of a tobiano mare. There were two others with him, also on horseback. Their figures were half-hidden in the shadows of the building behind them, but Sandy could see that both were women. The moment Jack was mounted, one of these women spurred her horse to leap straight up skyward. And it kept going.

Jack and the other woman followed in short order, and the Sandman was soon lying alone on the street.

That really hadn't cleared anything up for him; if anything, Sanderson now had more questions. But now that he was a bit more focused, he could tell that at least one thing Jack had said was true.

Belief in the Guardians was the lowest he'd felt it since… well, since the Dark Ages, really. Odd as whatever had just happened had been, Jack seemed to be all right. Sandy would have to settle for hoping that would last.

After taking a few more moments to regain something approaching full equilibrium, the Sandman pushed his hands against the ground and bobbed upright. He began twisting threads of golden sand around his hands, creating a small shining plane within a minute. Sandy hopped in, pulling a set of sand flight goggles over his eyes, cracking his knuckles as he eyed the controls.

Time to get to work.

Jack was chatting excitedly with Aditi and Madrik when War's yell… honestly, it was more of a roar… cut through the air as savagely as the Red Horseman's sword.

"Would you all shut the Hell up?!"

There was immediate silence as every Reaper (and most of the Death Gods, though they'd be slower to admit it) cowered in instinctive terror before turning their attention to the front of the gathering.

Jack still wasn't certain how to describe this place; everyone referred to it as the Between, though some of the older Reapers also called it the Void. Regardless, Death, and to a lesser extent the other three Horsemen, were able to manipulate reality here. It was beyond amazing; there were hundreds of thousands of Reapers, Death Gods and their assorted servants and subjects here. Logically to fit everyone the space would have to be the size of Jack didn't know how many Olympic stadiums, yet it appeared barely larger than…

Jack assessed again. Ten soccer fields, maybe? Whatever it was, it was far smaller than should be possible. He tried not to think about it to much; it made his head spin.

It had the appearance of a Great Hall, of sorts, crafted of pale stone. Everything that would supposedly be solid was blurry and indistinct, though, like the walls weren't really there. Which Jack supposed they weren't. Death and the other Horsemen stood atop of a bit of raised… whatever it was, it felt like a solid floor but not quite right in some way. War was standing at the front, with her horned helmet on, projecting a distinctly terrifying aura. Famine and Pestilence had, wisely in Jack's opinion, moved to the back corner of the dais. Death, standing beside War, was giving her some serious side-eye, with the impression that if he'd had eyebrows, at least one of them would be raised.

Once everyone had gotten over their momentary panic, people straightened and shuffled about slightly, half embarrassed, half still very nervous.

"Thank you, War," Death said dryly after another moment. Jack, despite the earlier fright, had to bite back a grin at the tone.

"I'm certain you've all heard by now that the first part of our plan has borne fruit," Death said, addressing the general assembly now. Jack still couldn't get over the fact that the entity wasn't shouting; he was talking as he always did, but it still sounded like Death was standing right next to him.

"Unfortunately, that means the easy part is over; now we destroy the demons still loose and close all the Hell Gates that Mephistopheles opened, and we need to move quickly. It will not take Mephistopheles long to discover our role in this setback, and once he does it won't take a genius to guess our next move. He will try to counter us, and given this very sudden loss of strength he will be pitting us against everything he has left. Stay together and watch yourselves; I'd hate to have to go down to Hell and drag any of you back up," Death said.

"I don't care how you feel about it, I'm going down there and ripping that fool demon lord's spine out through his mouth myself," War hissed.

Death gave her a look. "War. You're the distraction."

The Red Horseman perked up immediately. Jack could imagine why; Death had basically just told her she was in charge of getting the highest kill count out of any of them, which meant she'd be right where the fighting was thickest. Jack could think of no other place for the Red Horseman at a time like this, frankly.

"You all know your cadres at this point and you know your tasks. Work together and get them done, and for the love of my sanity please do them correctly and don't do anything overly foolish while doing so. The last thing any of us want at this point is giving Michael a reason to be self-righteous," Death said, with an eye roll that was audible instead of visible.

There was a collection of groans and grumbles from the Reapers and Death Gods. The angels were so concerned with their fallen brother Lucifer that they completely failed to pay attention to their far more powerful uncle. Jack wondered what had made God think getting the angels so riled up at the strife among themselves so as to exclude all else from their attention, knowing what Mephistopheles was capable of, not even telling them exactly what Mephistopheles was, was a good idea. The Lord of Hell had no doubt found the whole thing hilarious more than anything else, though Death had remarked to Jack at one point the Primordial had seemed to take the fallen angel and his fellows under his wing, to a degree. When Jack had pressed him further, Death had said he had no idea exactly how God or Mephistopheles' minds worked, and he rather preferred it that way. The Lord of Heaven had been a bit of what humans today referred to as a narcissist. The Lord of Hell may have regretted pushing the Lord of Heaven too far, may have regretted the pain he had caused his nephew, may have regretted the take-down of one of his pawns and was determined to build him back up to a credible threat, some combination thereof or none of those at all. Death tended not to pry with immortal beings; he was too busy with the mortal ones.

Jack had remarked on the general fucked-upness of the family. Death had responded with something along the lines of "they're God-beings. Longer-lived, bit of a different evolution and a bit more powerful, but still God-beings. You expected anything else?"

Jack had almost choked on the lingon berry juice he'd been drinking.

"But we're all pretty functional!" he'd said.

"I'm not a God. I'm a fact of existence," Death had called over his shoulder as he'd gone back to do… whatever it was he did when no one was looking. Work, mostly, Jack supposed.

Drawn out of his reverie by the other Reapers shifting and talking to each other around him, Jack turned as well and began sauntering back in the direction of the living world. Well, direction felt like a stretch, but Jack didn't know what else you'd call it.

He really wasn't looking forward to this. But it had to be done; hopefully it would help with the whole Pitch situation. And his family was counting on him.

"Are you ready for this, Jack?" Solriss asked.

Jack jumped. He hadn't even noticed his old mentor coming up beside him. The former frost spirit glanced to his right, his eyes meeting the old Norseman's cool blue gaze.

"Ready as I'll ever be. Figure I'm the best one for the job, anyhow," Jack answered as they stepped through the veil and into the cold, mist-swathed land of Germany's Black Forest.

"Agramon is not a demon to be taken lightly," Solriss said as his mare, Randi, trotted up to him.

"I know. But I'm not planning on taking him on directly, at least not at first; getting the Guardians to take on Pitch will be one hell of an attention-getter," Jack said with a laugh. He winced inwardly; it was a bit dryer than he'd been going for.

"I know. War told me what your plan was. But when he shows his face… and I agree with you, he will… he will know in a moment that you are a Reaper," Solriss said.

Jack looked at Solriss again as Mei sauntered over to join them.

"I'll be fine, Solriss. War's been training me to fight demons since before I died. Well, died again."

"Jack, Agramon is one of the greater demons; he is unlike the others you have faced."

"I'm just glad I'm not dealing with Alastor. That guy sounds like a real piece of work," Jack said with a shudder as he scratched under Mei's headpiece.

"Too bad you're not going after Belphegor," Madrik commented from atop his horse as he walked by. "He's one of the few beings Pestilence can tolerate most of the time."

Jack laughed. "He did sound pretty chill when War described him to me; she said he was pretty boring for a demon."

"Of course she did," Solriss muttered as he mounted.

"You are aware that Agramon can literally scare people to death, right?" Madrik said as Jack also pulled himself into his saddle.

"I was aware of that, yes," Jack said dryly as he grabbed the reins.

"Just… avoid his eyes, okay? And his breath," Madrik said with a worried look in Jack's direction.

"I know, Madrik. War and I have gone over this; I'll be okay," Jack said with a smile.

I hope so, at any rate, Jack thought as he kicked Mei into a skyward canter, turning her west so they could head back to the United States. That was likely where Sandy and the rest of the Guardians were, given that they were limited in the speed of their travel still.

"Say, Mei, whaddya say to harassing a Bogeyman and some super pesky Spring spirits?" Jack said, scratching his steed's neck.

Mei whickered at him and tossed her head, as if to say I know what you're doing, and I still think this is insane.

"Yeah, okay, we're also going to be pissing off the Demon of Fear. Not like I haven't done crazier stuff, right?"

Mei snorted and shook her head.

"I know. But you've got my back, right?"

Mei whinnied. Always.

Jack smiled. "Thanks, girl. Let's go find the Guardians and kick their useless rears in gear, huh?"

New job. Full time. I've been… busy. I know this is short and nothing really happens, but I wanted to get something posted 'cause I haven't touched this in I can't even remember how many months.

Big throwdown in the next chapter. We'll see if I can actually stick to my writing schedule this time, eh?