AN: This chapter is a little "boring", but I'm afraid it was necessary! Sorry guys! It took me long enough, that's for sure. Enjoy, read, and review! /AN

Chapter 3 – A Discovery

Years Earlier

Pitch was brooding.

It had been decades—no, centuries—since he had been beaten by the cursed Guardians after the glorious Dark Ages; he spent this time alone in his lair, the company of his shrieking Fearlings getting old. How he longed for the screams of children instead, or even better, of the Guardians as they realized the very last lights were being snuffed out. The pure anguish they would experience when they came to know the meaning of the word loneliness. Pain. Suffering. Any and all of these words described the pain Pitch had been plagued with for the many, many long years he had been cursed with this desolate existence.

No doubt the big four, as vain as had become after the Dark Ages were abolished, were certain the Boogeyman was hiding away underground, licking his wounds and cowering in his domain—fear—but oh how wrong they were. He was underground, of course; the hole under a broken skeleton of a bed had been his hideout for many centuries, but cowering was not something Pitch was good at. He wouldn't allow himself to accept a loss.

Instead, he had spent these weak years planning, calculating, and scheming.

Pitch had reached one conclusion-the Guardians would be more than familiar with the ripping agony he felt every time a child ran through him; they would experience it firsthand soon enough. That was a promise from Pitch Black himself.

These thoughts, these promises, served as the spark that kept him going all these years and until this very moment as he descended a cracked, shadowy-black stone staircase within his lair. He rounded a corner, heels making a muffled shuffling sound on the cold floor as he reached the end of the steps. This was not your normal staircase, however; where a regular flight of stairs would end where they connected to the floor below, this one just ended-quite literally. Below the end of the staircase was simply…nothing. It dropped off into shadowy oblivion, a bottomless pit shrouded in darkness so thick that the brightest light could not pierce its tainted heart.

It was here that Pitch would learn of a being in existence, another spirit not unlike himself; one that lived in loneliness, in solitude. One that craved what he did; to be believed in.

Perched nonchalantly on the very edge of the staircase, toes hanging off the edge as if there were solid ground to catch his next step, the Boogeyman stretched out one long arm and held out one grey, spider-like hand. Like hounds responding to their master's call, Nightmares poured out from the depths and pressed their sandy muzzles into his open palm, fighting for his touch and whinnying shrilly in ecstasy and anticipation of the dark spirit's next command. Glowing yellow eyes shone like headlights as they broke through the shadowy brine that was their home.

"How are the nightmares coming along, my fearlings..?" Pitch murmured as he stroked through the sandy mane of a writhing Nightmare absentmindedly. Because of its origin, Nightmare sand shared a few of the same properties as the Sandman's golden dream sand; it allowed it's commander to catch a glimpse of the dreams—in this case, the nightmares—that it slipped into the subconscious minds of children fast asleep. The process of viewing them was simple, and Pitch liked to check up on the dark sand every couple hundred years to make sure there was enough fear in the nightmares it sparked. It had been a while since he had taken an inside peek at his precious creations; but today, he was bored. Without so much as a flick of the wrist, he gathered a handful of shimmering sand from the mane of the Nightmare he was petting and quickly withdrew his hand to avoid a nip from the horse-like creature's sharp teeth. The Nightmare let out a bloodcurdling shriek in protest, and then dissolved, disappearing into the writhing mass of hooves and tails.

"Shhh." Pitch whispered harshly, waving the whirlwind of Nightmares away. After he was satisfied with the noise level, the Boogeyman brought the dancing, shifting handful of sand closer, squinting his amber eyes and focusing his energy on the shimmering grains before him. After a couple of seconds, the sporadic twisting of the sand slowed and formed images that flickered before the Nightmare King like slides on a projector. Pitch let a razor-thin smile sneak across his angular face and coaxed the nightmare sand in his hands on with a gentle, hot breath, careful to blow softly enough as to not disturb the sand as it formed more vivid images. "That's it," he murmured. "Show me."

One by one, children's nightmares flicked across the palm of his hand, changing dreams every few seconds. They were similar to what they had been a couple hundred years ago; the fear wasn't as strong, of course, but it was there. It would always be there. Pitch let his smile linger a moment more at this small comfort.

Images of monsters in closets and under beds, wild animals and the like darted about, confined to his open hand as if alive. The nightmares that the sand revealed were starting to bore him, however; children were so terribly sheltered these days. Not one of these brats had ever tasted real fear. That will change soon, he thought, tangible malice in the form of nightmare sand swimming about in his mind. Tired of the repetitive images, the Nightmare King prepared to discard the sand back into the depths of the bottomless drop-off, but one dream, different from the rest, stopped him in his tracks. Pitch leaned in closer to get a better look; what he saw perplexed him, to say the least. The nightmare sand had taken the shape of a boy, but not just any boy. The lanky figure, who looked to be a teenager, had snow-white hair. Pitch frowned—his nightmare sand never changed color like that, but there it was-a messy mop of white hair on top of the boy's head. Were human children even born like that? Pitch didn't think so. Furrowing his brow, the Boogeyman continued to watch the nightmare intently. The boy was falling slowly through something thick—water?—and tiny sand bubbles made their way out of his open mouth. Why wasn't he struggling? It took a moment to realize the child was most likely unconscious. The surface of the nightmare sand rippled and wavered, signaling the approach of another dream. "Not yet," Pitch hissed, intent on letting this strange nightmare unfold. At his command, the sand nightmare flickered once more but remained. The boy continued to fall, closer and closer to the Nightmare King's shadowy grey palm, and he gingerly let the little figure come to rest limply in his hand. As it did so, something in the atmosphere changed—a chill like an electric shock shot through the air around Pitch. With a series of sharp cracks that echoed in the abyss, white, glossy flecks of frost shot out from the tiny figure the second it touched down on his hand. Pitch hopped back in surprise as the cold flakes bit at his fingers, but he kept his palm open and watched, puzzled, as the figure in his hand froze. Yes, froze. White crept from the boy's hair across his body and to the rest of the scene with a final, sharp crack, and it was then that he flung the now solidified sand-ice sculpture from his hands and let it smash against the nearest wall. Shards of ice and bits of frost rained downwards where they began to melt in small puddles on the floor.

Of one thing was the Nightmare King certain as he frowned at the blemish that now marred the cracked, grey wall; that was not the nightmare of a mortal, let alone a human child. It had to be that of a spirit—a myth, like himself.

Pitch clenched his jaw, dissecting in his mind what he had just seen. He was certain he had kept tabs on all the other immortals in existence; how could this one have escaped his eye? That wasn't good. Was he missing other things as well? No, he thought. This spirit is probably young—maybe just a couple hundred years or so…It was true that he hadn't checked on his nightmares as often as he should have. That was usually how he came to know of the existences of other spirits; he would find them through their bad dreams. They always seemed to have unique qualities that discerned them from mortals' dreams, and this nightmare was definitely unique. Pitch exhaled sharply, the disciplined side of him kicking himself for his negligence. "Go," he hissed to the Nightmares in the shadows. "Find the boy. Come back when you know what he is." With that, the hoard of Nightmares shrieked in unison and galloped past the black-clad spirit, sending ripples running through his cloak and disappearing into the darkness behind him.

Years Later

Pitch learned of his name—Jack Frost. The boy was a mischievous winter spirit with a bad habit for causing trouble wherever he went; but he couldn't do much damage when no one could see him. No one could see him. He had learned this about Frost by accessing his nightmares, of course; the fears kept in the darkest crevices of the boy's mind revealed themselves to him without resistance. Pitch did this as easily as and thoughtlessly as if he were going through dresser drawers.

During all these years, Pitch was certain he was alone…no one could possibly know the pain he felt on a daily basis. It was agony, a raw, dripping wound that never healed, one that only a fellow spirit could understand. But this boy…he had been living for 300 years. Of course, that was nothing compared to Pitch's lifetime; but Jack Frost knew how he felt. The weak, cowardly Man in the Moon had dropped him off on this cursed Earth, no doubt without an explanation; a purposeless spirit. Two lonely souls wandering without reason, without believers…together, they could be great. He had to get to Frost before the Guardians did. The Nightmare King knew all too well how much they liked to interfere.

After learning about and watching the winter spirit quietly for years, he was finally ready to make his introduction. And oh, would it be grand.