The door shut with a heavy bang, and North did not take the barest second to regret his actions. He knew, coldly and tersely, what was approaching. He was the last left. The final Guardian. That thought was vivid and fierce in his mind, burning with a steady intensity as he lifted his heavy hand from the battered wood of the door, raised his eyes and took in the sight of the hall before him. It would be a futile effort to fortify his workshop, he knew; it was not meant to be a place of refuge, and to defend it as one now would cause more damage than anything else.
There was no winning. He could fight when the nightmares came, and come they would, but until then, all he could do was wait.
The faint sound of scuffling and injured protests rang out from behind the solid barrier of the oaken door, but he paid them no regard. He knew that Jack was too far gone, surely moments away from being turned, himself, and there was no use at all to let him in, allow them to be damned together. It was better this way, he thought. Better to accept the virtual end in a quiet manner, a wise one.
Wisdom was something that North prided himself in. It had taken long, of course; long ages to cultivate the raw energy with which he had lived for so long, gently guide it into a more solid, definite form than the wily roguishness which had always possessed him. He had taken time to coach it towards the steadiness which now filled him, and he intended to carry that triumph to his grave.
For grave it would be, surely. He had seen Sandy and Bunnymund, or at least their burned remnants, and he knew that no trace of his friends remained inside. He had not the vaguest idea of what might happen to their blazing centers when they were whipped and torn into such broken echoes of their former glory, but he was sure that they did not remain. Perhaps they were transformed into something just as dark as the exteriors, or else vanquished like a pinched candle flame. Both, in his mind, were equal to death in their blinding magnitude. His friends had been killed, and he was now headed in the same direction.
He could go down fighting, or he could accept his fate with a bowed head and a steady sorrow.
Perhaps days ago—hours, even, before Bunnymund and Jack—he would have gone for the former. As characterized as he may be into a jolly, even bumbling old man, Nicholas St. North was in all ways a warrior. That identity was heavy in his powerful build and tactical mind, in the sabers still clutched in his hands as he made his way through the dreary workshop. Yet, he thought grimly, sometimes the biggest war was the mental one. Sometimes, the bravest thing to do was to accept an inevitable destiny rather than battle against it.
A few elves still scampered about, clinging to their pointy hats in a futile attempt to suspend the inappropriately cheery jingling. He brushed off their efforts, waving them into silence, and they obediently paused. It was dismal, certainly, to see the usual energetic beings standing in resolute silence, but North couldn't bring himself to become too troubled over it. He wondered, faintly, whether they would survive the night—whether the nightmares, when they came for him, would crush the innocent beings in their ebony wrath.
Keeping that in mind, he paused near the middle of the darkened room, hefting his swords before slamming them powerfully into the floor. A tremor ran through it from the force, and, as he anticipated, all the elves' bright eyes immediately snapped around to fixate on him, the small flushed faces tense with confused alarm. He allowed a second for the confused ones to orient themselves, then began to speak.
"All of you," he declared, his voice low and alarmingly exhausted even to his own ears, "leave, now. Nightmares are coming. You must escape while you can."
The resulting looks, exchanged between the diminutive red-hatted figures, were startled to say the least. A few made unsure movements in the direction of the door, their small feet slipping on the polished wooden floorboards, but the majority remained fixed in place, as if they couldn't comprehend the words that he'd thought himself to have made incredibly clear.
"Go!" North bellowed, swiping a sabre through the air for emphasis. In a rushing sea of jingles, the elves hastened to follow his order, and soon the whole of the workshop was swamped with small figures rushing for the one exit. They were eager, when prompted, to save themselves, even if they didn't understand the full extent of the danger approaching them. It took only seconds for their scurrying forms to filter out, and then the workshop was left emptier than ever, resonant with hollowness. The arching ceilings, usually so full of light and flocked with wondrously colorful and impossible inventions, gave the impression of an abandoned medieval castle, and he could far too clearly envision massive cobwebs stretching across their dulled expanse—a fate that, doubtless, they were to reach after his ever-approaching transformation.
He sighed, and allowed that to be the only sentiment to escape him. It wouldn't be much longer now before they came—he knew that. He couldn't help but harbor a numb curiosity as to which would be sent to the job—whether Pitch himself would take the honors of destroying him, or if perhaps the duty would instead go to one of his twisted friends, if the Nightmare King would choose to make it as personal and painful as possible.
A soft scuffle disturbed the air behind him, upturning his thoughts, and he turned, heavy brows drawn over his crystal-pale eyes.
Standing behind one of the pillars, wide-fingered hands pressed against the worn wood, was a single yeti. The one, North thought, called Phil—one of the most dedicated of the Pole's guards, now looking almost ashamed underneath the fur cloaking his mournful features. His ears were flat against his head, and as North met his gaze, he let out a small, wordless noise—a sort of whining grunt, half questioning and half apologetic.
"Why are you still here?" North mused, the words partially for his own benefit. "I said leave. The rest are gone."
The yeti didn't move, and in that moment of silence, the utter nothingness that the workshop was so full of sent a sudden chill down North's spine, its true intensity only just beginning to press in on him. He swallowed, but made no further sign of weakness, instead stepping forwards and lifting his sword again. It wasn't a threatening gesture, not quite, but an insistent one, an authoritative one.
"There is no job here for you. Your work is done. It is over."
Still, no move.
"Over, you understand? Wonder is no more. Pitch is coming. You must leave."
The yeti considered him for a few more brief seconds, conflicted expressions tearing over his heavy, furred features in rapid succession. Then, with a massive huff of breath that trembled his shaggy shoulders, he dipped his chin in a nod, and limped towards the still-swinging door from which the elves had so recently fled. His hulking silhouette paused in it for a half-instant, buffeted with the snow-thick wind, then departed, the door thudding shut behind him.
North wasted no more time. He had no doubt now that the workshop was entirely empty, and he paced over to the beaten lift with his feet as heavy as his heart. It started up creakily, the shudders and whines of its unoiled gears echoing off the dark walls, and the melancholy noise made the ascent feel far too long, far too unsteady. Still, when the scuffed platform did line up with the second floor, it took a massive amount of willpower to coax himself out onto the ground. Every movement was taxing, emotionally more than physically, but both regardless. He could feel the weight of disbelief beginning to chip away at his usually mighty stature, and he found his shoulders to be hunched, his breath coming just a bit too fast as he limped towards his own room.
Unlike the rest of the workshop, it wasn't changed in the least. The ice sculptures which he'd been working on so dedicatedly before the insanity with Pitch even began remained in place, glittering silently, and the vibrant, warm colors of the wall and furniture were precisely as he remembered them. However, the softly welcoming interior couldn't put aside the massive darkness pulsating outside the wide, frosted windows—for there it was, thundering over the barren expanse of the tundra.
Nightmare sand.
It was a yawning, massive entity in and of itself, throbbing with power and producing an audible roar as it hurtled ever closer. Blue and purple streaked through the all-consuming black, its twisted currents occasionally leaping into the macabre forms of Pitch's emaciated horses, whinnying icily and tossing their heads in disfigured imitations of grace. The animal-like figures bobbed and melted, shifting back and forth from existence, some of them leering out in disgusting half-formation, but all remained tethered to the haunted cloud of darkness. It was a single thing, really, ferocious and deadly and powerful, and it was rushing straight towards the windows of North's last refuge.
Continuing to breathe steadily, he moved towards the chair in front of his worktable, settling into it with a slight groan as his joints ached and adjusted. He folded his hands on the table before him and let his head sink, eyes barely glancing up to keep track of the demented creatures' progress. They rushed closer, and the howling rose to a deafening level, so that he could hear nothing else, think nothing else.
This was it. The end had arrived.
And, in an odd, inherently contradictory but nonetheless undeniable way, he was not frightened.
Fear itself was pouring towards him at an ever-quicker rate, condensed into a solid form caught somewhere between liquid and gaseous ebony, pulsating with sick mightiness. He was instants from defeat, from virtual death, and yet he could not bring himself to be afraid.
He was sorry. Regretful. Ashamed that he and the other Guardians, in the end, had proved too weak to withstand the return of their greatest enemy.
Jack was surely turned by now, he acknowledged in some unimportant corner of his steady mind. He was the last one. Their last hope, their last dream, and this was it. He was past the point of so much as trying.
The nightmares collided with the wide windows.
Immediately, the shriek of shattering glass filled the air, and it exploded into the room in a gale of deadly sharpness. North didn't move, even as a stray shard flicked under his eye and left a stinging trail of blood behind, inching down his worn and into the tangles of his beard like a crimson tear. He lowered his head, making no move to stop the nightmares as they assaulted the delicate ice sculptures to which he had devoted so much glorious time, casting his masterpieces against the walls and washing the ground in a coldly sparkling sea of broken glass and ice fragments. Darkness crashed upon every surface and rushed towards his own hunched figure, swarming about him with grossly pressing proximity. He shuddered unwillingly, but made no other move as the freezing sand began to pour within him, seeping through his mouth and nose and ears, creeping around his eyes with a horrible burning itch that he could not bring himself to swat away.
It started as an ache, slow and steady, at his very center. Numbly cold, frostbitten. With the sort of even constancy that only came with confident pride, it began to creep out, filtering through his veins and muscles, shifting and transforming each hint of his being, reaching up into his throat, suffocating him. He could no longer feel his limbs, and wouldn't have struggled if he could. The black winds howling in his ears seemed to twist and morph until their sound was a high one, like the eerie laughter of children—a foolish metaphor, surely, for laughing was the precise opposite of what action the world's youths were soon to be consumed in and controlled by. And he, North, would assist in that. Because he had failed. Because they had all failed.
Still, no fear. Only hollow hopelessness. Bitter defeat. Sickening weakness.
The darkness writhing within him rose ever higher, overcoming his ears, rearing up behind his eyes and leaking over the tapestry of destruction that his beloved workshop had become. There was nothing, nothing as it leapt up to consume his very mind, stabbing and tearing away, wrenching him apart and piecing him back together like a battered ragdoll—taking nothing from his consciousness, but rather reforming it, morphing it into a wrecked imitation of its former magnificence, ripping apart his sacred, treasured wonder and tossing it back in a shattered mound of devastation.
It was a whirlwind of power that he couldn't have battled even if he was absurd enough to try, and in moments he found himself completely overtaken.