It was as if the Arctic slept when Pitch made his escape. The night, at least in the black void of the empty mine, had been especially cold. Pitch had woken up to the uncomfortable frozen atmosphere when he found that a certain miracle had taken place. The prison door was unlocked. He didn't know how or why it was unlocked, but he wasn't going to question this gift. He quickly got up and wasted no time in escape.
He arrived at the large door; red paint now chipping off the old wood. He tried the door, but it wouldn't budge. Instant panic rose and was quickly washed with relief when he realized that the door was just swollen with age. Shoving it open on its painfully loud hinges, he quietly peered out in a dim workshop. It was a rest night, the night when work stopped and well needed rest was given to the hard workers and old Saint Nick himself. How convenient. Pitch crept across the floor boards—their creaking like an alarm in the night. No one stirred. He was about to leave through the front door (the front door!) when he realized he still had the blasted cuffs around his wrists. Now where would the key be? There was no time for looking; or was there? No, he wasn't going to chance it. He walked towards a work bench and snatched a hammer. That's when he saw it, his bow and arrows. On it was a small note that read: you may need these.
Retrieving his things, he opened the door and stepped outside. The cold that hit him took his breath away. The desolate landscape offered no warmth or familiarity as Pitch set out. The wind howled across the frozen landscape, trying to force Pitch down. He was so cold and the wind was so brutal. The boogeyman, a black speck on a blank canvas of white, looked behind him to see North's prison disguised as a safe haven twinkle in the night like a star on Christmas Eve. The only good that this wind had was covering tracks up way before morning; if the sun ever made it. Pitch made it to a jagged incline whose crevices opened up like gaping, frozen wounds. He hobbled numbly inside the cave of ice till he found the smallest nook he could hide in. There he sat down, and with North's hammer, went to work on the cuffs.
"Where is Pitch!?" North roared as he stormed up and down the hallway that led to the deserted mineshaft, "I had one job! One job!" he was furious, not so much at the elves or the yetis, but at himself, "How the hell did he leave? How—" His face brightened as he got an idea, "He still must have had the cuffs on…so he can't get that far!"
He bolted to the 'garage' that held his sled and led to the takeoff ramp, "Phil!" The yeti accompanying him along the way, whether it was Phil or not, stood alert, "Go and get the yetis and elves to search the mineshaft, he can't have gone too far." He yelled at his small, arctic minions to prep the sleigh; the energetic and frustrated deer, with clacking hooves and snorting, did not make things easier. He grabbed his jacket, and in his flurry, jumped onto the sleigh and was off in a heartbeat.
The sun stretched its golden rays across the stark landscape. All that remained was an eerie silence that was so vast it seemed surreal. It was morning in the northern most hemisphere. It was a harder task than the frozen spirit had imagined. With bloodied wrists rubbed raw from a nights worth of frustrating, numb work, Pitch tossed the cursed cuffs. The noise against the ice cavern was loud and intruding in the quietness of the vast domain. Nothing stirred and the silence was driving him mad.
Then he heard it
Sleigh bells riding on a windless sky; suddenly Pitch wanted the silence back. A thunderous cry roared through the sky as velvet hooves graced the atmosphere. Jolly Saint Nick was not jolly at all. Pitch cringed in mute horror as he heard the sleigh land roughly above him. Bits of snow and chipped ice, like glass, fell through the splintered crevices and into the small nook where Pitch hid. Heavy boots crunched in the hardened snow, the sound elevated against the hard walls. Where were the shadows? Where were they?
Sun illuminated the cave, bouncing off the blue walls