The Boy in the Tower

By Sirenfox


Chapter IV: In Which Jack Sees a Human

Jack watched from the balcony of his tower as the stranger vanished into a hole in the ground with a feeling of satisfaction at having successfully run the guy off.

That satisfaction shriveled up and died when his eyes were drawn to something…odd.

He landed lightly, wincing and clutching at his ribs briefly before he was able to push the pain to the back of his mind. The familiar ache blooming across his whole body wasn't a new feeling, he'd been expecting it actually. Father wasn't a person you wanted to anger, and Jack had known this from experience and done so anyway. But he was used to it, and so could push it aside and focus on the something new he had discovered.

He slowly wandered closer, his eyes narrowing with every step he took until he was finally able to identify exactly what he was seeing. A horrified gasp escaped him and he dropped to his knees dramatically. "That black-hearted fiend!" He exclaimed, melodramatic, "And after all I've done for him." He pouted to himself, after all Jack didn't have to save him. It had been a choice.

Jack carefully ran a finger of the rough lines maring the otherwise smooth surface. He'd never seen anything like it before, long gouges carved directly into the ice slide as if the stranger had attempted to slow his descent, which was fair. But that wasn't the point!

Like with the flowers he couldn't just leave it like this, Father would know. And that would just anger him even more and Jack would rather avoid that if at all possible. So he summoned all the magic he could to smooth the ice over, until it was back to it's beautiful pristine condition. It was taxing, to say the least, leaving him out of breath and in a cold sweat. Normally it wouldn't be so difficult to do such a simple patch job, but he'd only just made that slide and with Father's punishment lingering...well it was more energy than Jack had at present.

Leaning heavily on his staff to ease his aching body he carefully inspected his newly formed ice for any other imperfections. "I should have let him fall." He grumbled under his breath petulantly.

Wind buffeted against him in admonishment and Jack huffed, childishly throwing himself onto the slide and steadfastly ignoring the wave of pain the motion sent cascading over his body. The pull of gravity as he slid down the ramp didn't do him any favors either but he chose to ignore that as well.

"What do you mean he didn't do anything wrong? You saw that travesty!" He'd adopted a bit of his father's posh accent to show Wind that he wasn't actually that upset.

Their playful argument was cut short when the boy came to a stop at the bottom of the tower. He skidded a couple feet before sliding to a slow stop right in front of a bright pink flower growing out of the cracked stone pavement.

Jack gaped at the strange sight, true shock pulling a gasp from his lips. He blinked rapidly, wondering if he was just seeing things, but his vision failed to clear of the hallucination that stubbornly clung to him:

The flower remained. As bright and cheerful as ever.

Its beauty was breathtaking; new and wonderful, and just as perfect as the one he'd found the day before.

Wide, blue eyes skittered around the courtyard as if attempting to locate whatever magic could have left such a beautiful gift behind. The ruins were just as bleak and uninteresting as ever, so Jack went back to pondering this new attraction. He didn't know where it had come from but he knew where it was going.

He couldn't very well leave it there in the middle of the walk way. His father would be sure to see it, or step on it. And then he'd turn his ire on Jack, and with how much he hurt right now he wanted to avoid such consequences for at least another month if he could help it. He knew hoping for anything else would be foolish, he was just too good at getting into trouble even when he wasn't trying to. So, a month was a good goal, he figured, but even that was pushing his luck.

No, he couldn't let his father find this little treasure. So again Jack went about rescuing the delicate blossom from his extremely unpredictable father. It was better to be safe than sorry.

Jack carefully pulled the bud from the ground and planted it in a plain white teacup, then whisked it up to his place on the roof to join it's cheerful yellow sibling. He was so enthralled with his new treasure that he completely forgot about his previously uninvited visitor and the painful reminders of his father's ire became nothing more then background noise.

***BitT***

Early the next morning, Wind informed him of the stranger's return. Everything came back to him in a ball of indignant rage.

How dare he return here? Hadn't he done enough damage already?

Jack didn't hesitate as he stormed over to the edge of the roof. His vibrant blue eyes scanned the terrain below, easily locating the intruder.

"Gotcha." He whispered as he dove off the side of the building, allowing Wind to catch him at the last moment and deposit him close to his target.

He found the man wandering through his maze, looking lost and confused. It was so far from what Jack had been expecting that he felt his animosity melt away and be replaced with curiosity. He'd fully expected the stranger to have malicious intent, he'd anticipated a long and grueling fight where he would be the victor and he could finally show his father he could do more then hide in a tower for his whole life; he could help him fight the Big Four.

This discovery derailed all his plans. He wasn't going to instigate a fight with someone who obviously didn't know that they were trespassing. The stranger felt peaceful to Jack, the magic curling around him warm and soft, which was so different from anything the boy had ever encountered. Both he and his father had cold, harsh magic.

Once he had banished all thought of a fight from his mind something new bubbled to the surface, just as bright and colorful as his flowers. This was a stranger! Someone new. He couldn't remember the last time he saw anyone but his father, and Wind wasn't exactly a physical person.

The stranger was standing in one of the large empty rooms that hadn't managed to completely fall apart yet. He looked to be examining the walls, leaning close and squinting before pulling back and scraping it with one sharp looking claw.

That must be what caused the gouges in his ice. The thought of how frightened this stranger had to have been to leave such deep marks in the ice left a bad taste in his mouth. When he'd thought this person was a threat it was okay to mess with him like that, but Jack had never wanted to hurt someone innocent.

Jack landed lightly on the window sill, the room beyond was empty and missing large sections of the outer wall. The boy cocked his head to one side as he studied this strange being.

And strange he was. When he stood to his full height he stood taller then even Jack's father, but he spent most of his time bent over or crouching low. He was covered with a thick grey fur, and had two long, pointed ears that twitched at every little sound.

Was this what humans looked like? It certainly wasn't what Jack had been imagining, but then again what did he know. He'd never seen a real human before, all he knew came out of the few books Pitch had brought him before discovering Jack didn't really like to read.

Wind must have become bored with the staring and decided now was a good time to playfully kick Jack's staff out from under him. Jack gasped and scrabbled to catch his crook before it clattered to the ground, long pale fingers curled around the shaft and the boy's whole body froze as he turned wide blue eyes back to the human.

Jack had a brief second to watch the man go stiff at the sound. Panic bled into his limbs and Jack dropped out of the window, his heart racing as he ducked into another nearby window and collapsed against the wall separating him from his guest.

His heart was racing and his breath was coming in quick bursts. He had almost been seen! That human had almost caught him.

Jack didn't know if he was relieved that he had gotten away, or disappointed.

Either way, this had just gotten dangerous. Father would be furious when he found out. Jack had to get rid of this stranger before that happened.

Aster

Dawn saw the Easter Bunny once again wandering around the maze of ruined walls that once represented the great kingdom of Camelot. He could see the Ice Tower peaking out at him from what had to be the very center of the ruins, a beacon of strength hidden amidst the tragedy of a long forgotten past.

The pooka had once known this very castle like he knew his own Warren but now…it was a twisted shadow of its former majesty.

Pitch's touch was like poison; an acid made to rip away everything familiar and replace it with…with this mockery. Aster wondered at the Nightmare King's plans as he walked; what could he possibly want with this place? And, more importantly, what had happened yesterday? At first he had thought it was just a trap set to deter anyone but Pitch from entering the tower. But now he wasn't so sure, that ice had acted as if it had a mind of its own.

It had saved him. There was no other way to look at it, it had reacted to him slipping off the side of the building and pulled him back in before setting up a barrier to keep him on track.

That was not something Pitch would have done. Any trap he set would have meant certain death, if not eternal torment. Which left one option. Something else was going on here.

Was the ice itself sentient? No that made no sense, he was missing something. Something obvious that he couldn't quite put his finger on. He'd briefly touched on the thought that someone was working with Pitch but none of the Winter spirits had been reported missing and Pitch would have flaunted it had he gained a new ally.

And that was the source of Aster's unease, Pitch was a showman. Proud to a fault, and petty beyond all reason. So why wasn't he gloating? Everything about this felt wrong, but all Aster could do was stalk through the rubble and guess.

The pooka climbed up a set of stable looking stairs to a higher level of the castle proper. While most of the outer portions of the city was little more than oddly placed rubble, large portions of the castle itself were still standing. Full rooms on the bottom two levels were still in tact and Bunny found himself wandering into these more secure locations.

Other than the tower, this location was the coldest. Drifts of powdery snow were pushed up against almost every wall, and ice coated random portions of the floor or dripped down from the ceiling in long, pointy cones. Frost laced it's way up most of the walls like a fine white climbing ivy, beautifully intricate and oddly solid.

Bunny spent a good amount of time just staring at the patterns in the frost, his mind wondering how he could replicate the effect on some of his googies next year, when the clatter of wood against stone startled Aster out of his thoughts.

There was a breathless gasp behind him, almost inaudible, and Bunny knew he would have missed it if he wasn't a pooka.

Someone else was there, in the room with him!

The pooka spun around, boomerangs at the ready, only to find an empty room.

Nothing moved, everything was exactly where it had been moments before. He might have thought he had imagined it, but he was a Pookan Warrior. He didn't make those sorts of mistakes…no matter how long it had been since his training.

There was no mistaking what he had heard. Someone had been in the room with him. His first thought was Pitch. It had to be, this place was drenched in his magic. But why was he hiding? Why hadn't he attacked?

Things weren't adding up.

The pooka turned to leave when something caught his attention. Aster paused, slowly turning around and approaching the window where a fine layer of frost sat innocently on the stone.

Aster frowned, tracing a finger through the fern like designs. Odd. This definitely had not been here before. That was why he'd been inspecting the wall, since it was the only location he'd noticed the frost patterns. Everything else was just ice and snow.

He leaned out the window and glanced around, but there was nowhere Pitch could have disappeared to unless he'd suddenly grown wings.

Aster shuddered when that thought conjured up the image of Pitch with Tooth's wings.

That was just wrong.

Shaking his head to banish that terrifying image, Aster turned to leave. The air in the hallway was chillier than it had been inside the room, suggesting that whoever had been spying on him was still nearby.

So, naturally Aster started checking rooms.

He could not find hide nor hair of the culprit but the everpresent chill and the unmistakable feeling of eyes following his every move told him he wasn't alone.

Not finding anything of significance within the ruins, Aster headed towards the most promising point in the whole valley: the Tower. It was obviously the centerpiece of the whole area and the closer he came the colder it got. He thought it was a bit odd that he hadn't noticed it at all the day before, but he noticed it now. Especially when the ground under his feet disappeared to be replaced with a sheet of slippery ice.

Aster went down with an undignified yelp reminiscent of the one from yesterday. His paws rebelled on him, each attempting to flee in the opposite direction.

He balanced for a split second, suspended in a painful position before he crashed to the ground. The impact send him spinning into the base of the tower.

This was going to be a running theme, he could tell by the tinkling laughter drifting on the wind.

Definitely not Pitch.

Slowly Aster climbed to his feet and took one last look up at the tower. As much as he would like nothing more than to continue his investigations he'd been wandering around the ruins for hours and his empty stomach was putting up a fuss.

Tomorrow was a new day, he'd just have to pick up from here in the morning. Hopefully his Host would be a bit more welcoming on the morrow.

He glanced around one more time, idly wondering if he could catch a glimpse of the illusive occupant of the dale. But there was no one around so Aster tapped his foot on the ground, summoning a tunnel in front of him. With a small leap he was gone, his tunnel closing up behind him.


Quick Note: Aster and Jack feel temperatures differently. The Tower Glade is warmer than Jack is comfortable with so it makes it difficult for him to keep things frosty but he does it anyway. Aster, who is used to a much warmer climate finds it chilly and the ice and snow everywhere just drops the temperature to an uncomfortable degree. I thought this might confuse a few people so I thought I'd explain it.

I hope you enjoyed this chapter and I'll see you all in a couple weeks.

Review!