"Blind, oh, now I see
Truth, lies, and in between
Wrong, cant be undone
Oh slipped, from the tip of
Your tongue."

"Blue on Black", Kenny Wayne Shepard Band

Chapter 5

"My first battle with Pitch? That's the fight Manny thought would be the big one? Are you serious?!"

"Yes," Tempus nodded, the red cloak bobbing in the motion. "See, no matter what any Guardian might think, Moon-boy is still fallible. He can make mistakes, and has before. Big ones. You are the perfect example."

Jack scowled angrily. "Hey!"

"No, kiddo, not that he made you. How he made you, is the problem. You see, to create a being so powerful as you, Manny had to give up an equal amount of power. Its the same for all the other Guardians. Oh, not as they were at the height of their powers, the belief of the children certainly supplied all of that energy. The initial level of power they had when they first became Guardians is what he had to give up. But for you, it was different.

"Did you never notice it, Jack? the difference between you and the other Guardians?"

Jack blinked in confusion. "Notice what?"

"For 300 years, you didn't have a single believer. Not one."

"Yeah. I noticed that," he said flatly. Seriously, did everyone have to bring that up?

Tempus sighed. "And yet, despite that gross handicap, you could conjure blizzards from the moment of your 'birth.' You could create ice and snow, frost anything, animate ice into moving creatures, call upon the North Wind itself to help you like some kind of trained dog, and that never struck you as a little different from the other Guardians? No other spirit in the Earth's history has been able to do anything so powerful without some kind of beliver's energy supplementing their own supply. And only those nature spirits worshiped as gods for years came even close to what you could do from the moment you were 'born'. And your power stayed this constant, without a single, solitary believer. For hundreds of years."

Jack was stunned speechless at that. His blue eyes were wide and his jaw dropped in shock, having never thought of that before.

Tempus ignored Jack's fluster. "How is this tied in with me, you ask? Don't worry, I'm getting there. You see Manny, oh, Manny did not have the kind of power he would need to make something like you left to him after creating so many spirits and immortals over the last five millenia. So how could he create such a powerful being as yourself? The answer is simple; he had to sacrifice a powerful ability of his own, cannibalizing his own magic, in one last gamble to create a being capable of defeating Pitch Black once and for all.

"But, you see, he didn't use the right power. To make you. Oh, he sacrificed power, quite a lot of it, but not what he had intended to use. And as you can see, it made all the difference in the world." Tempus leaned in, Jack drawing unconsciously closer as if to hear a secret. "He made a mistake. He accidentally sacrificed the power I gave him. The power to see the future. He created you with my power, and forever lost the ability of precognition. So you, Jack Frost, are not a child of the Moon, like the other Guardians. You never were. You are a child of Time."

"So...its...my fault?" Jack asked, his voice soft and absolutely wrecked.

"What?"

Jack looked down at his hands in his lap as he spoke. "You said that Manny gave up that pre-cog stuff to make me. He couldn't see the future to help us anymore, or warn us what was coming. So, its my fault that all of this-"

"NO." Jack looked up, startled at Tempus' angry tone. "No, Jack, none of that is your fault. The Lunarian made a mistake, it was not your fault. How could it be? Did you deliberately try to suck power out of Manny as you were being formed?"

"No! I-I couldn't have, I don't even remember being made into a winter spirit!"

"Exactly, kiddo. Manny lost that power on accident. It was not your fault. None of this was your fault. The blame lies with Pitch Black, and don't you ever forget it."

Jack nodded, trying to take those words to heart, but he was unable to ignore the dark little voice in his heart that whispered that it was his fault.

~!~!~!~!~!~!~!

"Now, kiddo, back to the explanations. As I said, you are one of mine, forged with my power. So when this world ended, I used my power to collect you from it. That is why you're here now."

"But..." Jack tried to collect his thoughts from where this conversation had thrown them. "But if you could collect me, why didn't you do it sooner? Why tell me now, when the world's ended? Why didn't you come when I was new?! Why didn't you help me?! Why didn't you help us?!"

"I couldn't, kiddo," Tempus said quietly, soft regret filling the voice. "I'm not allowed to leave this Realm. I cannot enter the mortal world. In this place, Time and Space are not together, and for good reason. This mist you see around us, its is the stuff of Time. What Time itself is made from. And," here Tempus seemed to be a bit embarrassed again, "it loves me. I can't quite phrase it any other way. It gathers and forms wherever I go, constantly swirling around me. And if I step outside this tiny bit of existence, Time will rip itself apart to get to me. It always has done so, and nothing I do can stop it. I will leave it to your imagination what happens when Time rips itself apart, from every living thing around you."

Jack stilled at the thought, then shuddered, his imagination fueling quite the horror show at that.

Tempus nodded solemnly. "Normally, I could create a Guardian of my own to interfere on my behalf, but I was blocked somehow. I do suspect Pitch had something to do with it. And to my everlasting sorrow, I could not reach you. So no, dear Jack, I could not have helped you as I wished, or come to see you. Because you had a destiny, Jack, the one you were created for. I am the Guardian that makes sure that things are done in their proper Time, and I couldn't bring you here until your work was done."

The winter spirit curled in on himself, looking much smaller in the large chair. "But I failed!" Jack cried, fingers clutching his staff's pieces. "I lost to Pitch! I lost everyone!"

Tempus waved the black staff, and a large orb of water rose from the mist. Light filtered through it, until an image could be seen within. "You did not fail entirely, Jack. Look."

The orb filled with the image until it could be seen in perfect clarity.

Pitch pushes off Jack at full strength, granting Jack's wish and pushes his body down enough to spear him through the heart. Jack dies, almost in Bunny's arms.

Pitch is seething as he pulls back from the moon crystal's pieces, forever denied the being he wanted to possess the most. But something was happening. The dark king found ice forming on his robes. Small sharp spears of ice begin to form out of his body, faster and faster, and each spear has trapped copious amounts of black Nightmare Sand. Pitch grew alarmed, and keeps pulling out spears of ice from his arms, chest, legs. He keeps pulling, and pulling, but more and more sand is trapped in the ice.

This was Jack's secret attack, the last of his power fused into his final act of defiance against the Nightmare King. This ice's power was fed by the cold of nuclear winter, the North Wind's icy temp, and the snow of Santoff Clausen. This is growing diamond ice that will never melt. Slowly, it encases every last piece of Pitch Black's nightmare sand and every bit of his smoke-form, freezing it with stabbing knives of ice forever.

Pitch Black is dead.

The Nightmares collapse into black sand that dissolves to ash.

The evil spirits fade away, drained of their power to stay on this plane of existence.

The Nightstalkers wail, screaming and clawing at their bodies as they unravel, and nothing is left but warped bones and ash.

The magic that had sustained Jack's fortress, Bunny's gardens and lakes; all of it was gone, and in the face of the hellish nuclear winter and radiation, all they had protected swiftly died. The world had not one living thing left in it now.

Nothing that can sustain Hope, feel Wonder, recognize Memories, sleep to Dream, or have Fun.

There is nothing left to sustain life at all. The nature spirits die. Mother Nature herself falls.

Earth dies.

Jack felt tears once again slip down his pale face, his heart aching as it mourned. Even Tempus bowed a cloaked head in respect for the fallen. "What good is 'achieving your destiny', if you lose everything?" the winter spirit asked, his voice lost.

Tempus sighed quietly. "I agree. That's why I've brought you here."

"What do you mean?"

"Time fell out of order. The Nightmare King was meant to fall the day you accepted your Guardian's oath, destroyed by his own Nightmares. But he was not. Pitch was not destroyed when he was meant to be destroyed. He reached out to the Spirit Realm, sacrificing the life of an innocent child he found near his lair to sustain his own powers and draw out the darkness."

Burning blue eyes suddenly met Jack's, the winter spirit gasping silently. "He denied his own Time. This gives me a chance to try and help."

"But you...Wait, you're the Master of Time! You can do it! You can fix it!"

"Jack, that's not what I-"

"You can turn back time and stop Pitch, you can stop him from being made, or stop him from hurting the kids, or-or anything!"

"Jack, listen to me-"

"You can save them! You can bring them back, you can bring back Aster!-"

"JACKSON OVERLAND FROST, BE QUIET AND LISTEN TO ME!" Tempus roared, magic slamming out from the staff. It sent a wave of mist crashing over Jack, knocking the sprite head over heels from his chair. Jack trembled in shock and fear as he slowly stood up, the broken pieces of his staff in his hands in defence.

Tempus glared at the spirit, then slowly took a deep breathe to calm down. "I cannot. There are such things as fixed points in Time, events that I cannot alter or change in any way. The creation of Pitch Black is one of them. I cannot break the Laws of Time, Jack."

"Can't? Or won't?" Jack spat. "What good is having all that power over Time if you won't even use it?!"

"I can not do it. I can only interfere through an agent, a Guardian of Time, and I had none! Only now can I use my power back to the time you were created, for you are my only Child of Time in this realm. That is how it has to be or I will unleash Chaos! I helped write those laws with Death herself, and I am bound by them. I cannot break my own laws, Jack."

Jack looked into Tempus's eyes, doing his best to read what he found there. He couldn't help the sadness that rushed over him as he lost the last hope he had of seeing his family again. The Last Guardian slowly moved back to the chair, sitting back down with a defeated 'fwump'. "Can't blame a guy for trying," he muttered.

Tempus gave a short nod. "Indeed not. Ah, but I'm getting off track again. I brought you here because Time fell out of order for this world. I cannot change what happened, but I can turn back the clock for the one who can. I can give one person the chance to change it all.

"Now here, dear Jack, is where you come in."