A/N: Please deposit all your tears in the donation jar to be spread among the authors.
The King of Cold Mountain
by Anders, Kaylin, and Saph
Chapter 7
There wasn't an ice cube's chance in a steel foundry that the Guardians were going to let Old Man Winter get away with kidnapping two of their own.
Bunny broke free of the ice first, gasping for air.
"Jack!" he hollered, wriggling free of the last bits of ice and leaping to the edge of the platform, broken and exposed in the wind that whistled through the wrecked foundry, scenting the air. "North!"
Sandy burst free second. He scoured Tooth and Anansi with a blast of sand, and they broke free from the thinned ice, Tooth flapping her wings furiously to dry them, Anansi with much colorful and creative language. Sandy was too worried even to tut at the Spider.
"Bunny?" Tooth called.
"I'm working on it!" Bunny answered from the edge of the platform. "I'll find them, Tooth, and they're gonna be fine and I'm going to kick Old Man Winter so hard he'll be looking for his guts halfway to the moon!"
Bunny leapt from the platform to a broken window, assisted by a narrow trail of dreamsand in his attempt to reach even higher ground to scent from. He paused at the top of the ruined east wall, his ears twitching as he caught something on the north wind.
"Jack!"
Bunny jumped down the wall, ricocheting off machinery and pelting for the north doorway. The others caught up just as Bunny wrenched the door open, and recoiled in almost instinctive horror. It was hard to blame them; at first sight, it was almost impossible to tell that the figure hunched in the doorway wasn't Old Man Winter.
"Jack!"
Jack two steps forward, leaning heavily on his staff, then collapsed. Bunny caught him before he hit the ground, wincing. Even through his fur, the cold was close to burning.
"Jack, where's North? Where's Old Man Winter?" Tooth asked. She and Bunny moved him inside, to a sheltered space between machines, out of the harsh wind and away from the broken windows. "Are you hurt?"
"North's gone," Jack said in a voice that almost echoed, as if it came from the hollow darkness of an ice cave.
"Gone, as in...?" Bunny prompted.
"Gone. He used a snow-globe tossed Old Man Winter away from here. But the shards..." Jack's voice was blank, all his emotion spent, the last remains frozen to his face. "Christmas isn't coming this year. It's never coming again."
Tooth clapped her hands to her mouth as if she could capture her gasp of horror and swallow it down. Sandy slumped, closing his eyes like reality was a poorly-crafted dream that could be dismissed. Bunny flinched as if the words had hit him in the chest, his ears falling to lay down his back.
"No!" Anansi protested. "No, that's not how it goes!" He scuttled to Jack on his spider's legs and grasped Jack by the arms. His wince made it clear that the ice burned his palms, but he ignored the pain. "That cannot be all! That is not how these stories go!"
Bunny wrenched Anansi's grip from Jack. "Get off him!"
"This isn't one of your stories, Anansi," Jack said, seemingly unphased by Anansi's fervor. His eyes, completely grey and cold, flicked to Bunny. "Even if it was, not every story has a happy ending. A lot of them have people that - that get left behind."
Even seated, he was unsteady, and he wove, barely able to sit up any longer.
"I need you all to promise me you won't let him get my heart."
Tooth shook her head as she knelt next to him, tears spilling from her eyes from her grief at losing one friend and the grief of knowing she was about to lose another. "Jack -"
"If you can make them understand he's not me and take his power away," Jack interrupted her, "If you can make the children understand - you might have a chance. But not if he takes my heart. I'd rather you keep it safe if it freezes - destroy it if you have to."
"Oh, how touching," came a voice from the shadows of the foundry. "It's as if you actually think they care about you, Frost."
They recognized the voice, their tear-stained faces hardening at once into expressions of ferocity. The Guardians moved quickly into position, weapons and fists raised, gathered around Jack and prepared to fight. Jack struggled to his feet, despite his weakness, gripping his staff for strength.
"Pitch!" Bunny called out, boomerang raised. "Show yourself!"
"Why would I want to do that? So you can give me a good crack on the - what was it you called it? The 'nong'? - like you did to the old man? I think I'll pass."
"You were watching us?" Tooth said quietly, the gears clicking in her head. She and Sandy shared a look of concern as together, they realized why Pitch would have been watching a fight that didn't involve him.
Bunny's eyes went wide as he figured it out.
"You woke him up! He was down there sleeping in the shadows, where the nightmares dragged you, and you woke him up!" he cried out, outraged that one of his two most hated enemies had unleashed the other on the world.
"All it took was a well-placed nightmare," said Pitch. His voice shifted constantly, coming from one shadow, then the other. "That's enough to wake up just about anyone. After that, it was just a matter of sitting back and watching the show. I'll tell you one thing, Jokul certainly doesn't do anything by half measures, but I was counting on that."
"The grootslang," said Anansi. He sounded angry, but unsurprised. "The other creatures stirring in the dark - they woke at your presence."
"I can't say it was on purpose, but why would I look a gift horse in the mouth? Especially when the grootslang so conveniently tunneled a way right back to the surface for me."
Pitch's voice oozed from behind Jack, and he whipped around to defend himself - but now the voice came from deeper in the foundry, echoing through the empty vats. "But we're avoiding the elephant in the room, aren't we, Anansi? What are you doing here? Don't tell me the Man in the Moon chose you as a new Guardian."
Anansi grinned, and Jack suddenly realized why Anansi's toothy grin always bothered him, aside from being a brilliant white that Tooth was sure to notice. There was a flash in Anansi's grin too reminiscent of a spider's fangs darting out to bite its prey. The predatory glint was much more overt when it was directed at an enemy.
"Oh yes," said Anansi, teeth gleaming - "A Guardian, new and so, so very old."
"You never were one for straight answers."
"We're all creatures of habit," Anansi answered. "I see yours haven't changed. You're still as power-hungry as ever. How strong have you gotten now that the children of the world are trapped in the snow under an overcast sky?"
"Strong enough to beat all of you, if that's what you're wondering," said Pitch. "Especially in your current state. Where is North by the way? Did I hear Jack correctly? Is the old blowhard really gone for good?"
The last embers of any sort of fire burning inside Jack flared up at Pitch's disrespect to North. He stepped forward with a cry of anger, staff at the ready. Pitch's chuckle echoed through the foundry.
"Ah, I see your heart hasn't frozen over entirely. Good. I'm not too late. But you're close now, Jack. Very close. I suppose I'll have to cut to the chase."
A shadow moved suddenly in the corner of Jack's eye. He turned at the flash of movement and saw Pitch standing behind Anansi, scythe raised.
"Anansi, look out!"
The spider myth dodged just in time, whipping a leg out into Pitch's arm, knocking the scythe-blow wide.
"Why the hurry, Pitch? I thought you wanted to hear about North," Anansi said, glib as he scuttled out of Pitch's way. "I wouldn't have picked you as one for tales of heart-rending heroics. Would you like to hear this one?"
Pitch's eyes gleamed as he faded back into the dark as the Guardians rushed to Anansi's aid, disappearing before any of them were close enough to get a blow in. Bunny's boomerang whipped harmlessly through the shadows and back to his paw.
"Spare me the sob-story, Spider," said Pitch, his voice coming from beneath a mass of machinery. "A blowhard is gone from the world - all the better for me."
"Perhaps you'd like to hear another," suggested Anansi. "One of your future defeat."
Pitch chuckled. "Speculative fiction isn't my genre either. Has your mastery over stories gone the way of your peoples' belief in you, Anansi? I have to say - picking a Guardian no one believed in yet was one thing, but I'm more than a little surprised that the Man in the Moon would pick a Guardian no one believes in anymore."
"Pitch!" Bunny shouted, as the last of his temper frayed. "If you're so powerful, come out of the shadows and fight us like you mean it!"
Anansi pressed his lips together, but it was the only sign Jack could see that Pitch's barb had landed.
"Tempting," Pitch's voice ran along the remains of the wall, slithering between the shadows cast by the machinery. "Truly, truly tempting - so -"
And then he was there - in front of them.
"Why not?"
Pitch flipped his hand, and a solidified shadow rose and flipped a huge steel vat over, trapping the Sandman in the bowl underneath. The shadows stretched into near-human shapes that held the edges of the vat down and the steel gonged as Sandy attacked it from the inside, lashing it with sand whips. Bunny had already launched his boomerang at Pitch, but caught himself mid-jump to raise his foot to open a tunnel to let Sandy out - but chains, entwined with shadows that were solid, whipped around his midsection and pulled him off the ground before he could stamp on it. His boomerang returned to the space he'd been and clattered harmlessly against the steel cauldron as Bunny hung, struggling, overhead.
"Take a moment," said Pitch, as he parried Tooth's attacks with her sword, his scythe slicing easily through Anansi's webs when he attempted to either pull Bunny down, or pull the vat over to release Sandy. "Can't you feel the fear building? Oh I know you can," he said, a small wave of nightmare sand more than enough to counter the small attack Jack barely had strength anymore to launch. "But really, all of you, drink it in."
He slammed Tooth against the wall with the back of his scythe. She landed, hard against Sandy's vat, dropping her sword, stuck on a gob of Anansi's sticky webs. The spider silk refused to give against her struggles, and her sword lay out of reach.
"How many sweet dreams have they had, in the last few days?" Pitch called, his voice loud enough to cut through the thick walls of the vat imprisoning Sandy. "Not many? Because while you've been busy, Sandman, so have I."
The sound of Sandy's attacks on the inner walls of the vat paused as Pitch's implication sank in. Then came the sound of Sandy attacking anew, stronger this time, the lashing of the dreamsand coming faster and faster. Tooth gritted her teeth against the noise and the vibration.
"Does it remind you of anything?" said Pitch, confident enough to turn his gaze straight up into the air, where Bunny was still struggling against the chains. "Maybe of this time last year, when nobody had any sweet dreams?"
He brought his scythe down with a whoosh, and the tip pierced the hem of Anansi's dashiki, pinning him to the ground before he could scuttle to Tooth to free her. "When every time the children closed their eyes, all they saw were visions so horrible they never wanted to sleep again?" His eyes glittered with malice - and triumph. "If this keeps up, and soon, the children will start associating Easter less with springtime and more with fear."
Bunny couldn't hide the horror in his expression. Then the horror gave way to rage, and he threw himself into his fight against the chains. "You shadow-sneaking ratbag! I'll finish you first!"
"What, you'll finish me like you finished Old Man Winter? You'll do nothing of the sort and you know it," said Pitch. "But this isn't about you or how fated you are, it seems, never to save the ones you love. No, this is about him."
Pitch rounded on Jack, gliding towards him like some sort of deranged phantom. Jack held out his staff nervously, stumbling away from him weakly, the icicles all over his body tinkling as he moved.
Though he seemed to have the tiniest sparks of power left if he dug deep enough (maybe some kids like Jamie and his friends still believed he wasn't causing the storms?) they surely wouldn't be enough to face Pitch.
"You ruined my plans, Jack. The children dealt the final blow, but you were the spanner in the works, the fly in the ointment. You tipped over the first domino, didn't you - and what I wonder is why."
"You had to be stopped," Jack croaked weakly, eyes narrowed.
"Because of the children. Of course, because the world needs hope and light and fun. But that isn't the way the world is, Jack. It's not a place where those things belong. You can see that now, can't you, how the darkness is inevitable?"
"Not inevitable," Anansi grunted as he tore himself free, shredding his dashiki on Pitch's blade. He shot a strand of web onto Jack, and flung him onto the walkway overhead, safely out of the way. "Only insidious. Let me tell you a story..."
Pitch swiped jagged blades of nightmare sand in Anansi's direction. The spider dodged every blow and Pitch swept his scythe back into his hands.
"Before you say another word, you should know that I'm not interested in your bedtime stories. What a shame that they're all you have, then, isn't it?"
"Oh, I would not accuse myself of shame," quipped Anansi, thwipping webs out to trip Pitch up. They were small, but surprisingly effective bursts - sticking the handle of his scythe to the ground when it swept low enough to touch it, or the tip to a piece of machinery when it drew too close, making Pitch have to pause to break the strong, sticky silk just long enough to slow him down enough for Anansi to talk. "Anyway, what makes you think the Great Anansi is reduced to idle bedtime chatter?"
"Because I know your greatest fear," said Pitch, grinning a toothy grin, his voice as smooth as the silk of Anansi's webs.
Anansi fought on, unphased, throwing out stronger webs to bind Pitch's scythe in place.
"I'm nearly as old as you, Pitch, and I've spent just as much time in the dark. You're right that I have few true believers anymore. I survive on the little blinks of time that children believe my stories are true, that I am still real. But I've learned a few things in my time that you have not."
With Pitch stuck, pulling his scythe from the webs, Anansi jumped in to grab the weapon. He wrestled for control of the scythe, leaning in close enough to say in a voice too hushed for the others to hear, "What I've learned is that fear matters very little. It can be overcome. You may know my fears, but I know your story, and the past - what I know - cannot change. But the ending of your story - even now, you can write a better one."
Pitch kicked Anansi in the stomach, and he sprawled backwards. "What about my story could you possibly know that I don't?" the bogeyman sneered.
Anansi flipped to his feet again, his voice still hushed. "I know about the locket you keep hidden away in the dark."
Pitch's eyes went wide. He froze in place long enough for Anansi to whip out one of his spider's legs to smack him in the face.
"I know you're comforted when you dream of butterflies even though you don't know why."
Pitch reeled back from the blow, eyes still wide. "Shut up!"
"And I know why the only nightmares you have are of a little girl screaming in the dark -"
It was the wrong thing to say. Pitch's expression changed from shock to rage with the speed of gasoline being set on fire.
"I said shut up! You know nothing! Nothing!"
A wave of shadows surged forward from behind Pitch and slammed Anansi into the wall so hard that he slumped to the ground unconscious.
As the spider myth thudded to the floor, Pitch turned away, shrugging off all that he'd said like it was nothing more than a bad dream.
Jack stood on the walkway, upright with great effort, but he stumbled a little as Pitch suddenly shifted from one shadow on the floor to emerge from a shadow falling over the walkway.
"Jack," said Pitch. The anger melted off his face like winter ending, and sympathy grew there like it was spring. The scythe melted away. He held out his arms, gesturing to the whole of the winter spirit with a helpless shrug. "You can't hope to fight me like this."
"I won't - I won't let you -"
But Jack was empty, his last burst of energy flowing away, taking his life with it. Jack fell to his knees.
The others couldn't help him. Bunny fought the chains that bound him above the floor. Anansi lay unconscious. Sandy banged away at the shadow-pinned vat, while Tooth grimaced against the noise, unable to free herself from Anansi's webs.
North wasn't a factor to consider anymore.
"I'm not going to kill them, Jack." Pitch's voice, usually so oily and sly, had gone flatly sincere. "That would be counterproductive, since I doubt you'd listen to me if I did."
"Why - what do you want?"
"I came for you, of course. My dear boy, it's always been about you."
Jack could only look at Pitch in confusion.
"I told you that the cold and the dark went well together," said Pitch, a shadow of a smile on his lips. "You weren't the only one who could provide half of the equation, and Old Man Winter believed I hated humanity enough not to interfere with his plans - but we both know Old Man Winter's winter isn't the winter the world needs, don't we?"
"I don't understand."
"I want them to live in fear," Pitch said, glee rising on his face as he stepped closer to Jack. "Live being the key word here. I can't have that if everyone has frozen to death. So I've come to offer you a chance to fix this - and to fix yourself. You don't have to die, Jack. You scratch my back, I scratch yours. How does that sound?"
"How can you help me?" Jack asked, his voice brittle like an ice floe breaking into the sea.
"I can kill Old Man Winter for you. All this fear has made me strong enough to do it. If he dies, the power of the shards dies with him. They'll melt away, and you'll be safe and sound, free to take over where he left off."
"Why would I wanna take over where he left off?"
The corners of Pitch's mouth tweaked up. "Because you'd have to. You'd make an oath. One the Guardians have long since given up trying to get me to swear to."
"The Enkidu Oath. You want me to swear I'll join you in terrorizing the kids."
"I do need insurance. After all, if I were to go kill the Old Man, what's to stop you from reneging on the deal?"
Jack gripped his staff with a sudden burst of furious strength. "I won't do it."
Pitch dusted his nails on his long coat, like he was explaining the terms of a dry contract, and not practically ordering Jack to swear his center away. "You don't really have a choice. You stand no chance against me - none of you. North is dead- " Jack winced - "Jokul's winter is choking the life from the world, your heart is nearly frozen, and even if you die before he can devour your heart, that leaves just four Guardians to fight him when six couldn't finish the job. I am the only chance you have."
"And I'm the only chance you have," Jack said, catching onto that point like a lifeline. "You said it yourself. You can't have fear if there are no people here to fear you."
"True enough, but I wasn't lying entirely when I told Jokul I'd let them all rot. I'm not a Guardian, Jack - if the whole world dies, I still won't fade away. I'll wait - I'll travel the shadows - maybe find a new world to terrorize." His jagged teeth gleamed in a sudden, terrible smile. "Go on, Jack - do the heroic thing and save your world. Your winter may cast the world in darkness, but at least they'll be able to live in it." He held up a finger. "I'll tell you what. I'll even give you a reprieve once in a while - you can let the children play sometimes, Jack. The occasional snow day."
Jack thought of the planet as the icy wasteland Old Man Winter wanted, devoid of life, himself and the Guardians faded, and knew Pitch was right. With Old Man Winter as strong as he was, joining Pitch might be the only way he could save humanity, even if it was to live in a world of fear.
He sucked in a deep breath as he gripped his staff. He could always disobey. After Old Man Winter was gone, he could refuse Pitch's orders and let the conditions of the oath strike him dead. The Guardians might be able to defeat Pitch if all the world's children weren't freezing under stormy skies.
Unless Pitch found some other leverage to hold over his head, first. And he could. If Pitch was strong enough to defeat Old Man Winter, then he was strong enough to defeat the Guardians - possibly quickly. Possibly - and more horribly - slowly.
"I won't do it."
Pitch's smile flickered out like a candle flame, his hairless brows knotting in frustration. "Why persist in caring for them? The children lost faith in you, Jack. They think you're capable of murder."
"He made them think -" Jack protested feebly.
"Jokul didn't make them do anything. They chose to believe in you, and then they chose to believe you'd terrorize the world. Why try so hard to curry for their favor when they're so fickle in the end?"
Jack opened his mouth to speak a reason - but just then, with his heart so cold, and all the world so dark, and the empty pit in his stomach still full of children speaking his name with disappointment - he couldn't find an answer.
"They're innocent," he said. "They didn't mean to do this."
"Children aren't innocent," Pitch spat. "They're human. They grow into petty, small-minded adults who watch the world fall apart without lifting a finger to stop it. Some of even grow up to tear it apart with their own hands."
"Not all of them."
"But enough of them," Pitch insisted. "Old Man Winter was a child once. The Tooth Fairy collected his teeth and the Sandman gave him his dreams, and look at what he is now. It's better to be feared than loved, when love is so false. Just because they can see you now doesn't mean they're going to remember you. They're going to grow up and forget you, and become the selfish, self-serving adults they were always destined to become. They're going to do everything they can to make the world ugly - and you can't ignore that ugliness anymore. Why do you think I take pride in giving them fear? I've lived long enough to see what they really are, Jack, and they're not worth this."
Jack stared down at the metal grating. A sharp, icy pain built in his chest as he sank to his knees. Pitch knelt down beside him.
"I wasn't lying when I said I believed in you." His voice was as soft as silk, as insidious as doubt. "You defy me, but you impress me - and I would much rather have you by my side than see you die."
It was right then that Bunny finally broke free of his chains, and dropped to the platform they stood on. Pitch surged to his feet, the shadows loomed up around him, and for a moment, Bunny looked at Jack, his expression pained.
He leapt off the grating before Pitch could attack, into a tunnel and out of the foundry, disappearing quick as a flash.
A strangled noise erupted from Jack's chest as the tunnel closed behind him, a cry too devastated to be a sob.
After all that Bunny had said, all the promises to defend Jack, he'd abandoned him the first moment he had the chance. To survive to fight Old Man Winter, no doubt - but it meant everything he'd said wasn't true. The promises meant nothing. The apologies, the overture of friendship - still, nothing.
Jack's heart constricted.
Pitch looked after the disappearing rabbit without surprise. "You see? Even the Guardians think you're disposable. Given the chance, they'll all abandon you in the end." His voice became soft again, like a parent trying to soothe their child. "But I will never leave you, Jack. I will never abandon you. I did all this - just to have you by my side."
The soft promise - the soft threat - hung heavy in the cold air.
Jack wheezed now, his chest numb and constricted, his view blurred through the tears nearly frozen in his eyes.
"Don't do this to yourself. Join me, and I promise, you'll never be alone again. You'll never be abandoned. You'll never feel unloved. I can be like a father to you, Jack."
Jack looked at Pitch with wide eyes, blurred with half-frozen tears, pain and loneliness building in his heart like a wave to sweep him away.
A voice from his past suddenly came to him, paired with the memory of a body. A calloused hand, held in his own. His mother weeping.
"Your father loved you, Jack," said the mother of his memory, her voice filled with tears. "He loved you so much. I know this is hard but what's most important is that you know how much he loved you."
Just as North had said.
"Either way, only one thing is important, only one thing matters..."
"What? What thing?"
"That you know you are cared for, Jack. That is worth a life."
He shut his eyes on warm tears.
"I already had a father," he said, "and I think - I think I maybe already had someone else who was just like one." He looked up at Pitch, defiant even through his pain, fear, and exhaustion. "He said he'd wait for me."
Pitch's entreating expression dropped.
Jack shook his head. "I won't hurt people and live as something I'm not. I'd rather die like North - as what I am."
Pitch breathed in a disappointed sigh. "I'll admit, that's not the answer I was hoping for."
With a movement almost too quick to see, he slapped Jack's staff out of his hand and slammed Jack to the grating, hand around his throat, choking him just enough to hurt.
"If that's the case, then I'm going to deliver your frozen heart to the Old Man myself," Pitch hissed, as he pressed his fingers into Jack's throat. "You brought this on yourself. It didn't have to be this way. But since this is your choice -" Pitch leaned in close, with all the intimate affection of a parent about to kiss their child on the forehead when tucking them in. He looked into Jack's eyes as if he planned to watch the life fade out of them -"I want fear to be the very last thing you -"
He didn't get to finish the sentence, because a boot hit him in the head.
Pitch let go of Jack's throat as he fell away, gobsmacked outrage on his face. Jack couldn't help it. Even as he lay wheezing with breathless pain, he laughed - harsh, croaking laughter - at the Nightmare King's expression.
"I remember something like that from last year, too," called a familiar voice, with a familiar Down Under accent.
"Leave him alone, Pitch!" shouted another familiar voice, and the sound of it set a brief blaze warming Jack's heart. He looked behind him, his expression suddenly bright.
"Jamie!"
"Oh, for the love of -" Pitch lifted a hand to the bruise on his face. "You again?"
Standing over to the side, sans one snow boot, looking incredibly, protectively irate, was none other than Jamie Bennett. Bunny stood next to him, arms crossed, grinning.
"Seeing as we were all getting stonkered, I thought I'd bring in a little backup."
Jamie launched himself at Pitch. The Nightmare King pulled his scythe together, the shadows sweeping into night-mares and monstrous creature-shapes, but Jamie barreled through, each touch of his hand stripping away the fear that held them together. The horrors dissolved into golden dreamsand. As Jamie closed in, Pitch swung his scythe, but even that dissolved into a spray of gold as the blade came down on Jamie's hands.
Pitch stumbled back, weaponless, as Jamie picked up Jack's staff, and proceeded to smack Pitch with it.
Repeatedly.
"Ow! Stop it, you miserable - ow!"
Jack shook, sobbing, where he lay on the floor. Bunny lunged over and knelt beside him.
"Jack, mate, you alright?"
"Go help the others," Jack sobbed.
"But you're - "
"A mess right now, I know," Jack gasped out. He rolled onto his back, convulsing - but not with sadness. "Did you see Pitch get hit with the boot?"
Bunny couldn't stop the grin that stole over his face. "Too right I did."
"That was -" Jack paused to laugh, his raucous hysterics easily mistaken for sobs. "Hilarious. Go help the others."
Bunny loped off, as Jack once again got a full view of Pitch being beaten with a stick by a nine-year-old boy. He rolled on the floor in mirth.
"Ow, stop! I said - stop it! You miserable little - ow! I'm the King of All - ouch, would you stop that?!"
"You!" Thwack! "Are!" Thwack! "A big!" Thwack! "Giant!" Thwack! "Jerk! Stay away from Jack!" Thwack!
"Listen, boy, I'm -"
"You're finished, Pitch," said Tooth. She flitted over, free and armed again, hovering beside Jamie. By the vat that still held Sandy, Anansi rubbed his head as he returned to consciousness, and Bunny stamped a tunnel between them and the interior of the vat. Sandy emerged in less than a second, his fingers tight around his sand whips. The ferocity on the little man's face as he stormed forward would have frightened even the most stoic of enemies.
The Guardians advanced on the Nightmare King, now bruised and bleeding from Jamie's assault, but it wasn't he Guardians he seemed to fear the most - not even Sandy. It was Jamie that he tried to keep his distance from. He had led the other children in destroying all his nightmare sand - and was now older, stronger, and even braver than before. This was a boy far less hesitant to go on the attack. (Clearly.)
The Guardians Pitch could handle, but the Guardians and one child who had already conquered fear - not so much.
"And when this is done, after we've taken out the Old Man," said Bunny, gesturing with his boomerang. "You're next."
"You're going to regret this, Jack," Pitch called. He retreated, through the broken wall of the foundry, into the shadows it cast on the snow.
"Nooo I'm not," said Jack flippantly. "Boot to the head. Worth it for the boot to the head."
"He's going to devour your heart," were the last lingering words that filtered back from the shadows. "Winter will never end!"
Jamie lifted his left foot, dropping Jack's staff on the floor within easy reach of the winter spirit. "I have another boot, you know!"
The last of the black sand drifted away, and Pitch was gone. Bunny raced to the edge of the wrecked foundry wall, sniffing for a sign of him.
"He's run," he said, with confidence, turning back just in time to see Jack stand, leaning heavily on his staff,
"That was great. You guys are great," Jack said distantly. His smile was thin and wispy, and the tears of laughter on his face froze solid again. "I think it's okay now. I'm freezing over, but I think it's okay. My heart might not freeze now."
He fell, the last of his strength giving out all at once.
"Jack!" Jamie dropped the staff and knelt by Jack's head. The brief moment of triumph shattered as the Guardians all gathered around him. "Jack, hey, come on, I just got here. We still have to figure out the saving-the-day stuff, okay? And that includes the saving your sorry frosty butt stuff. Again."
"Sorry, kiddo," Jack said faintly. "Not this time."
Jack reached out with his frost-covered hand and weakly mussed Jamie's hair, leaving some of the frost behind like snowy dandruff.
"I'm so proud of you. You're so brave. I wasn't just being schmaltzy when I said you were a Guardian, too, y'know."
The ice crept farther over Jack's body, and the others all gathered around as if it were something they could ward off with the warmth of their own bodies. But their presence did nothing - the ice continued to creep.
"No," said Bunny, horror in his voice. Jamie, heroic little Jamie with one boot off and one boot on, had already started crying. Jack could see him folded up in Anansi's legs, like the spider Guardian was trying to protect him from Jack's death.
Jack barely felt Bunny picking him up. He shifted Jack away from Jamie and Anansi, breaking the ice off Jack by hand. It was only a sign of how deep the cold had reached, that Jack couldn't feel - anything, not the paws melting ice from his hair, or the ice being broken off his skin.
But it touched him, even if he couldn't feel it. The part of him that could not be warmed anymore still saw Bunny trying to hold back what couldn't be held, clearing ice that was only a symptom of the curse that would kill him.
"It's okay," Jack whispered, his lips numb, his words slurred softly around them. "It's alright. You can stop."
"Like hell I can. We're not losing two Guardians in one day."
His voice cracked on the "two." Their tragedies had come too quickly to be dealt with in the time they deserved.
Still, this was the harshest language he'd ever heard from Bunny, or at least the harshest that wasn't some nearly unintelligible Australian slang. It actually made Jack laugh, a little bit.
"Language, Bunny, there's a kid here," he said. "I don't hurt anymore. I don't feel anything. I just know I should feel - happy. That you care. That all of you tried - that you're trying so hard now -"
Tooth buried her face in her hands. Her face was wet with tears when she looked up. Bunny had stopped scraping, his expression stricken.
"I don't feel anything," Jack repeated, his voice faint, floating. "But I know if I could - if I could feel anything right now - I'd feel loved. I don't know what we were supposed to do...but if it was as simple as just loving someone, I know - I know it's not because you don't. It's because we missed something."
With sorrow deep on his face, Sandy released a handful of sand into the air above their heads. The sand coalesced into tiny stars and orbiting planets that dissolved into birds that plunged into a sea and came out again as dolphins. There was still some beauty in the sight, and Jack knew that was the whole point. Sandy's last gift to him, a final comfort.
The very faintest ember flared in Jack's heart, and for a brief second, he wished he could dry Tooth's face, and stop the tears welling in Bunny's eyes. He wished he could comfort Jamie, sobbing quietly behind him, or do something to counter the sorrow on Sandy's face. That empathy vanished with the spark. But at least he'd gotten to feel it, even as the end pushed at the edges of his vision
If he did feel anything at all, it was a strange sort of happiness he knew it probably wasn't normal to feel when he was dying, but it was a novel thing to him, being loved enough to be missed. There had been times that Jack thought it was something he'd never have, and it made him so happy that he almost didn't mind the dying part. That probably said some pretty revealing things about his psyche, but whatever. No time to worry about it now.
"No," Bunny insisted again, bundling Jack to his chest, doubled over him like he could still thaw him out. Jack could hear his heart, beating frantically, a sound so full of life as he was so close to death. "Jack, there's still hope. There's still hope if you just hang on. Hope never dies. It never stops. It never leaves you alone - and neither will I."
"Bunny," said Tooth, softly, putting her tear-soaked hand on Bunny's paw. She flinched back when proximity to Jack froze the tears on her skin.
"Not like this," Bunny insisted, looking at her as he scraped the ice from Jack's arms, his defiance and desperate sadness threatening to boil over. "Not to him -"
The next words came out in a heart-sick croak, "Not again."
Tooth pressed her hands against her streaming eyes and Jamie's sobbing redoubled.
"Hey," Jack said, "I've got plenty of hope. For you. We didn't get to have those laughs, like you said - but I would've liked to. I hope you'll get to have those laughs, even if it's not with me. I hope - I have hope you'll get to have fun with someone, even after I go. Otherwise Old Man Winter really will have won. You were pretty fun, too - don't let him kill that, too, alright?"
Bunny's expression was utterly stricken, but he stopped trying to hold back the ice, his paws raw from the cold, fur frozen, shivering himself. He still didn't let Jack go.
Jack felt he frost creeping. "I need..."
"What do you need, Jack?" asked Tooth.
"My heart. I need - something -"
"It may help you keep your heart if you think about something in this world that is still beautiful to you," Anansi offered gently.
Slowly, Jack's eyes flickered over to Tooth's face.
Moved by this, more tears rolling down her cheeks, she took his hand and pressed a gentle kiss to his fingers. The cold burned her tears into solid ice on her skin, but she held his hand as she wept.
Jack knew some writers had written about how beautiful girls were when they cried. It was just a thing in some stories, beautiful, sad girls. Jack understood it less than ever as Tooth wept. He was glad she cared that much about him, but he hated that she was in pain. He hated that she was going to lose two people she cared about today. She was much more beautiful when she smiled and he was never going to see her smile again.
But she was still beautiful. Despite the shards, despite the snot and the splotchiness, despite the shadows creeping in on his vision, she was beautiful. As far as last sights went, he couldn't think of anything he wanted to see more than Tooth looking down at him, her head crowned by golden stars floating overhead.
The frost settled, suddenly, deep into his flesh. His body stiffened, his eyes still open, as he felt the last creeping cold begin its final penetration to his heart. Whether his heart froze or not, the rest of him was about to.
They all leaned in, each holding their breaths, whether they needed to breathe or not.
His eyes froze open, a thin film of ice rendering his vision wavy, turning his friends into blurs as darkness crept in from the edges of his vision to cover his sight.
No one spoke as Bunny curled around Jack again, holding his stiffly frozen form close, head down to cover the tears welling in his eyes. Tooth covered her face again, her feathers already soaked. Her crying was raw, her ability to reign it in completely stripped away by the losses they had endured today.
Jamie buried his face in Anansi's shoulder.
His human arms were still protectively around Jamie, but Anansi was looking at a few strands of web stretched between his spider legs, frowning.
He looked up from the tiny story and sighed audibly out.
"Well," he said, relinquishing Jamie to Sandy's care. "- At least you brought him hope before he died."
A moment of silence balanced on a spider's web between them.
"My friend," said Bunny, slowly, his voice laced with unspeakable despair and rising anger - "is dead in my arms, and you think anything can make me feel better?"
"Well, hope is your thing," said Anansi. "Think of how much sadder this story would be if you hadn't managed to give him any."
Bunny choked back a sob. He curled around Jack again, and the tears that had gathered in his eyes finally fell, landing in Jack's open, staring eyes.
The tears didn't freeze on contact.
In fact, they melted the layer of ice over Jack's eyes.
Then they melted more than that.
Jack blinked, once, twice, as the hateful shards melted away with the tears leaking from the corners of his eyes. He sucked in a ragged breath, reaching for Bunny and Tooth.
"Jack?" Bunny said, leaning back to look at the suddenly-living spirit. The ice all over Jack's body cracked and slid away, melting through the holes in the grate. Tooth wiped the ice from his hair as they crowded around him hopefully.
Jack blinked twice more in confusion, and looked up at them all.
"I'm kinda not dead." Kinda because, after all, he had already been dead to begin with. "What's that about?"
Tooth laughed in delight and wrapped her arms around him in a hug, one that became very crowded as Bunny and Sandy started hugging him, too.
"Holy Dooley! Jack, you're alright! You're alright!" Bunny exclaimed joyously. Ice slid off him as Bunny pounded on his back like he was trying to break Jack free of Antarctica.
Sandy and Jamie crowded the hug too. Jamie whooped and accidentally stomped on Jack's foot with (fortunately) his own unshod one.
"Seriously," Jack said, muffled by the mass of people hugging him. "The not-dying thing. What happened there?"
"The tears! Of course!" Anansi exclaimed. "They're an expression of grief, derived from love. Yemaya's domain is water, so of course she'd understand this was so. But to tell you that was the cure might have made the cure impossible. How does one shed tears of love on command, after all?"
"So wait, I blanked out at the end of it there. Who cried on me?" Jack sat up, looking expectantly at Tooth and Jamie.
"We were all crying, but Bunny was the one that cried in your eyes," said Jamie as he pulled back enough to be heard, the frosty material of Jack's hoodie adhering momentarily to his cheeks.
Jack looked at Bunny, his expression threatening to brim over with touched emotion.
And sarcasm.
"Aw, you really do care," Jack joked. "Since all this came on with me being hurt, should I maybe limp a little to keep the friendship train a'rollin?"
"Rack off, you overgrown popsicle," Bunny jibed back, but he couldn't keep up with the faux annoyance for more than two seconds before he was hugging Jack again.
Sandy tapped Jack to get his attention and a complex series of flickering images appeared over his head. For once, Jack was able to parse it, especially since one of them looked like a dark cloud over a figure that looked like Jack, signifying all the darkness he'd seen in the world under the influence of the shards.
"I'm okay, Sandy. It's gone, all of it. I can't say I'm feeling one hundred percent here, but my sight is back to normal. Bunny's tears did the trick, I guess."
Jack suddenly froze in place, but it wasn't from the shards this time. "The cure was tears. The cure was tears. If the cure was tears then -"
A crack of lightning struck outside, halving the sky. A massive, snowy figure loomed by the broken wall of the foundry. The Guardians jumped to formation, ready to fight Old Man Winter's snowmen -
- Then the figure shook itself, snow flying every which way, falling from red fur and a long white beard.
"Jack," said North, "why you leave me in snow?"
Laughter bubbled out of Jack, with unrestrained joy. He launched himself at North, throwing his arms around the old saint's shoulders.
"North!" Tooth exclaimed, flying over happily to join the hug. The Sandman bounced over to do the same, patting North happily on the back.
"I thought you were dead!" Jack exclaimed.
"Interesting thing," said North reflectively, as if pondering a riddle. "I was thinking that, too. Then suddenly I am awake, and finding my way back through storm. Very difficult in such visibility. What happened?"
"The cure was tears," said Jack. "When I thought you were gone, I went crazy with the waterworks. I must've walked away before you really woke up."
"Ah, love of friend for friend! Very powerful thing," said North, giving Jack and extra-hard squeeze. "You're feeling better yourself?"
"Thanks to Bunny, I'm right as rain - which, for now, is a big improvement over snow."
"Bunny, get over here," said Tooth.
"Don't have to tell me twice," said Bunny. He hoisted Jamie onto his shoulder and bounded down, the boy whooping with delight as they bounced from machine to machine and into yet another Guardian group hug.
The crushing despair that had threatened to overwhelm them - and had overwhelmed them - was blowing away, like so much powder in a gale. It was hard to believe that they had stood up underneath the weight of it - elation filled Jack like a gust of fresh air, and the sense of being whole, himself again, was almost too much to endure without laughing, whooping, crying. Too much, in all the best ways.
Jamie pressed his face into Jack's midsection, and Jack ruffled his hair affectionately. "Not bad, for your second Guardian mission."
Jamie giggled. "So what's my center, smacking Pitch with a stick?"
Laughter bubbled from Jack like a stream, flowing beneath swiftly melting ice. "Right now, that seems like the best center anyone could have."
He sensed something behind him, a prickling of the hairs on the back of his neck, and he looked over his shoulder to see Anansi, again eyeing the Guardian group hug like it was prey he hadn't yet figured out how to catch.
Ah, why not?
"You get in here too," Jack called, letting go of North to open his arm to Anansi. After all, Anansi had taken a beating in his defense. Maybe it was time to let the spider in on the group hugs. Anansi beamed his gleaming grin, and threaded his human arms around North and Jack - then wrapped all eight of his spider legs around all the Guardians at once, compressing them in a firm, hard-shelled hug.
"Haha, you see, I have won at hugging," he crowed, as he gave the whole group an affectionate (and competitive) squeeze. "I can hug all of you at once, whereas each of you can only hug a few with your two arms!"
"It's not a competition," Jack said, his voice muffled where his mouth was pressed against Anansi's shoulder.
"And it is not a competition in which the Spider triumphs again," Anansi declared. Bunny groaned in the background.
"So, you're Anansi, right?" Jamie spoke up. "Are you a Guardian too? Or are you just helping out?"
Anansi released the group with surprise, caught off-guard for the first time Jack had ever seen.
He knelt down, lifting his sunglasses to his forehead to speak to Jamie. "How is it that a boy so far removed from my lands knows my name?"
"After last year I started reading up on myths," said Jamie, "just in case. My school library has this book of African Spider Stories - the legs kind of gave it away."
Anansi smiled, and again, it was the first time Jack had seen him smile without looking even the slightest bit the intimidator.
"Brilliant boy," he said, his voice rich with appreciation. "Yes, I am a Guardian. The Guardian of Stories. And I should tell you, there are many who will know your story, Jamie Bennet, and admire it as I have."
"Hey, thanks," said Jamie, beaming under the compliment from the ancient mythic figure - a circumstance he was becoming accustomed to. "Can I tell my friends about you, or is it a secret?"
"The Guardian of Stories is a secret no longer," Anansi said to the boy. "You may tell whoever you want."
"Okay," said Jamie. "But - maybe you guys should go back to making sure I get to tell everyone?" He looked from Guardian to Guardian, a shadow of worry back on his face. "Things are getting kind of bad back home."
Tooth shivered.
"He's right," she said. "I can feel it from my fairies. Whatever we do next, it has to be soon. The temperature's dropping and the weather's starting to hurt my fairies."
"If it's hurting your fairies, it's hurting people," said Bunny. "That means we need to act fast."
"Then we gather our forces, attack now," said North. "I will recall Yeti, Bunny, you will summon giant egg-stone-things, Tooth -"
"No," Bunny interrupted. "It won't work like that, North. Remember what happened last time."
"Yes, but now we are prepared," North said, gesturing to Jack and Anansi. "We have our ranks restored - we even have new force among us. The time has never been better to strike."
Bunny shook his head. "I wasn't talking about that last time."
They all looked at him blankly, but Tooth's eyebrows quirked up with understanding first. Jack caught on a moment later.
"Last time, there was someone out there bringing everyone hope," Jack put in. Bunny nodded to him. "It made Old Man Winter weak, made him go to sleep."
"If we want to stand a chance, we have to bring hope to the children again," Bunny went on. "Hope that spring will come - or at least, that they'll survive the night."
"Then you will go and do this," said North, thinking he'd caught on. "While Bunny is again bringing hope to the world, we will wear Old Man Winter down, same as before! Plus one," he added to Anansi. "We are sure to succeed."
Bunny shook his head again. "No. There's another way. I can't be in more than one place at once, but all of you can. And people need help right now, in a lot more places than one."
North stopped trying to advance his tactics. "Where are you going with this?"
"Someone's got to help the people," said Bunny, "and someone's got to keep Old Man Winter distracted. We have to do this, the same as before. Only this time -" he looked meaningfully at the other Guardians. "I need your help to bring me hope. Only one of us has gotten a good crack in on Old Man Winter since he woke up, and it's not any of you."
Sandy shook his head. Yellow pictograms appeared over his head, showing Old Man Winter at the center of a vicious storm, the depths of his power clear. Bunny fought him and while it was a valiant fight, he was struck down and then Old Man Winter struck down the other Guardians, one by one.
What he was trying to say was clear: Old Man Winter was too powerful, and if Bunny faced him alone, they'd just be struck down one by one. Sandy clearly thought Bunny shouldn't face Old Man Winter alone.
"No," Bunny insisted, "he won't kill me, Sandy. Not if you're out there, backing me up. Tooth, you can feel what's going on out there - can you tell me honestly that if we all go and face him, right now, that people who need your help won't freeze without it?"
"We can't let you do this," Tooth insisted. "I can't even begin to imagine how much you must want to get revenge on him, but this is not -"
"I never expected to get back at him," Bunny insisted. "I never expected - Tooth, revenge is not something I ever hoped for. Revenge and hope don't go well together."
He took her hand with one paw, and looked her dead in the eye so she could see - not how much he was looking forward to this showdown, but how afraid he was to do it.
"Even if I'd ever thought I could get revenge on him one day, what good would revenge have ever done me? It wouldn't have undone any of his damage. This isn't about vengeance. This just makes sense. He was weak in the foundry, and he wasn't holding back, but I was - now that he's refused the Oath, I don't have to. Spring overcomes winter - I don't know if I can overcome him, but I think I can hold him off long enough for the rest of you to save everyone."
Tooth stared at her friend eye-to-eye, pressing her lips together as she considered the information from her fairies, shivering in places where they shouldn't have been anything less than balmy.
Sandy and North drew up behind her, their expressions equally drawn.
"C'mon," said Bunny. "It's just like before - just the other way 'round." He cracked a smile that quickly faded. "I need your help."
"He's right," said Jack to the others, trying to draw them over to Bunny's point of view. "He's got to do the work of all the Guardians, but he can, and we've got to do the work of one little Bunny - which will take all of us to do. 'There's a time for everything and everything in it's time.' Certain things need to just be sometimes, and last time he had his role and this time he has it, too. It's time for winter to give way to spring, just like Yemaya said."
Bunny looked at Jack with gratitude. "We've got to get you taken care of, as well," he said. He loped over to Jack looking apologetic. "I know I said I'd stick around to make sure Old Man Winter didn't get to you, but -"
"Someone's got to keep the Old Man busy," Jack finished. "I can't do much to help anyone right now, if I don't do something about Old Man Winter having all my belief. But I think I've got an idea about that."
He turned to Jamie. "So I already owe you after you gave Pitch the boot - literally - but I need your help again."
"Okay, but if it involves throwing more boots, I kinda want to get an extra so my foot isn't cold."
Jack laughed. "No, this involves something else. Do you think you can gather up your friends if I take you back home?"
"Actually, everyone is stuck at school. That's where Bunny got me. It's snowed in."
"That's perfect. Everyone's in one place. See, I had this idea. Belief makes us powerful, but it can also change what we can do," he said, looking at Bunny. "With Old Man Winter's ego being what it is, then this plan might actually work..."
"Centuries before, the Guardians took flight in another snowstorm, but not to seek Old Man Winter.
The Sandman, the Tooth Fairy, and Nicholas St. North followed a smaller, fainter trail than the one plowed by Old Man Winter from one pole to another. Their quarry's trail was left in flowers peeking through the snow, eggs on windowsills, tiny footprints that disappeared beneath the falling snow so quickly that they were almost impossible to track. Only when they saw the little prints vanishing quickly did they know they'd come within finding distance of their quarry.
The snow fell in the leafless Romanian wood silently, the wind, for the moment, still, and the snow was almost beautiful - it would have been beautiful, if the snow were not three feet deeper than it should have been on March the 23rd.
North broke the silence with a sharp yell of triumph as a grey blur whisked past him into a stand of stones, and he galumphed in the direction of the movement - "Toothy! Sandy! Eyes over - ow!"
North touched his temple where a smallish wooden projectile glanced off his forehead and spun away, pausing just long enough for the small grey blur to shoot past. But the Tooth Fairy and the Sandman had already zipped into place and the little streak of movement stopped between them, a tiny rabbit, glancing from one to the other for signs of escape and seeing none, before even looking to see what he was escaping from.
"Back off!" it shouted, raising a rabbit-sized boomerang, standing in the snow on its hindquarters, other paw outstretched between Tooth and the Sandman and the egg-filled basket slung around its midsection, which was too big for it. "I know how to use this!"
"And I am believing it," said North, touching his head where the boomerang had raised a small goose egg. "I was not expecting such a foe in an opponent who could fit inside my boot."
The rabbit-shaped creature shot a quick glare at North, but his eyes widened further as he recognized who he was threatening.
"You're the Guardians." He stepped back, lowering the boomerang with a lot of surprise and a little bit of awe. "What are you doing here?"
The Tooth Fairy moved slowly closer, snow sparkling in the veiled sun as it landed on her feathers. "I think we're looking for you," she said, and when the rabbit backed away a step, twitchy and nervous, she knelt in the snow. "Are you the one who's been leaving gifts for the children?"
The rabbit nodded. "They found them?" His voice was hopeful. "The gifts - the children found them all right?"
"They found them," said the Tooth Fairy, her smile reassuring. "They're very grateful. My fairies overheard their thanks."
"I was afraid the snow might have covered them as soon as I left." The rabbit's relief was palpable. "Thank you." But the moment of relief was short lived, as his ears twitched nervously, and he looked around. "Look, it's an honor, but I can't stop to talk. Excuse me –"
"Wait, please," the Tooth Fairy requested, and the rabbit paused, already half-departed between North and Sandy. "Who are you? One of the pookas, right? Are the rest also out working?"
North and Sandman crowded in closer behind Tooth, as the rabbit, stricken, shook his head.
"It's just me. Old Man Winter attacked the Warren. The rest –"
He trailed off, and all three Guardians inhaled in shock and understanding.
He looked at the egg cradled in his tiny paws, and in spite of the work he had to do, remained still a moment. "It's a miracle the warren is producing anything, even a little."
He paused. "Who am I? I guess I'm the Easter Bunny, now."
Unspeakable loss was written on his features.
Tooth lifted her hand to her mouth, considering for a moment the idea of having to work without – or worse, to live without – her them, her duties would have been tremendously more difficult, and her palace, unbearably lonely. Because of them, she felt the shadow of the rabbit's devastation more clearly than the others – better than Sandman, who had always worked alone, and North, whose helpers were allies, not family.
She felt how difficult it must have been for him to keep on doing what he was – carrying out the work of a thousand.
The Easter Bunny shook himself out of his fugue. "I really have to go."
"Of course," said Tooth, rising from the snow. "But – Bunny, wait –"
The rabbit turned back one more time.
"We'll keep Old Man Winter distracted," she said. "If we keep him busy and you keep doing what you're doing – we might have a chance."
"Teeny chance," echoed glared briefly at him, the same time the rabbit did. "But still! A chance at all is good!"
The Easter Bunny looked back at the Tooth Fairy, and smiled, with real encouragement.
"That's the hope, isn't it?" he said, and was gone.
The Tooth Fairy clenched her graceful hands into fists around the hilts of her swords. None of the three of them had any illusions that there would be no hard battle against the King of the Cold Mountain in their future, but the sudden reminder of his cruel ambition, and the scope of his evil, steeled all their resolve.
"Is very much work," said North, scratching his beard, looking after the rabbit tracks, which were already fading beneath the falling snow. "For one small bunny to be doing. Even I cannot make Christmas without help."
"Then let's help him," the Tooth fairy had said, ferocity in her expression. The snow all those years ago blanketed the world as the Guardians went, together, to face Old Man Winter, and the last pooka faced the task of an Easter by himself."
"Anansi," said Tooth as she flew alongside him, the Spider floating on a web parachute bearing him through the sky, while the Sandman carried North beside them on a dreamsand cloud. "Who are you talking to? We already know that story. We were there."
Anansi, fresh off his tale telling, beamed his gleaming grin. "Forgive me, dear Queen. The timing screamed for it."
Now, in the Warren that was green and growing again, the Easter Bunny knelt and spread his paw across the grass.
"There's a time for everything, and everything in its time," he murmured, as much to the Warren as much as to himself. "And it's time for us to give it all we've got. Like we never have before."
The Sentinel Eggs stood at attention in a semicircle around him, swaying slightly, their neutral faces ready to spin on a dime. They stayed poised by the tunnels that lead to the world as Bunnymund stood, armed again with two boomerangs.
The bringer of countless springs was no longer small and no longer frightened – and as before, as he charged from his home to bring hope, he wasn't alone.