A/N: I am so sorry I didn't post for two weeks :(((( I didn't mean it, really, but I had horrible writers block and really bad foot pain from my surgery (which got infected) so I really wasn't in the mood for writing. But my foot is on the mend and I can't wait to start writing chapter six! So fingers crossed for a week or less until next chapter! Btw, wow with the reviews and views. Like wow. 14 reviews just for chapter 4!

SHOUTOUTS TO ALL YOU BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE!

Bug349: It made me sad too :( but get used to that, the next couple of chapters will be exceedingly sad

Taranodogirl1: I know! That was my reaction exactly when I wrote that. I almost didn't put it in because I thought it was a little too heavy for this fandom

Michaela95: Thanks! I promise the end will be happy!

Rezzkat: breathe. In and out, in and out. You'll be fine, I promise death is a lot worse than this. Oh and I mostly promise he won't die in this fic too. At least physically *grins maniacally*

Jokermask18: thanks so much! I think I carried the emotion from last chapter into this one pretty well!

Moonshroom420: Wow! A review for every chapter! Props to you my friend and here's another chapter (a longer one than last time) to reward you for rewarding me!

Guest: Jökul is a major work in progress, you will probably see a slippery slope effect with him. As you will see in this chapter, his transformation is not all at once and the full fledged Jökul will take a few more updates to properly mature!

Peaceful Dragon Rose: Thanks so much!

Pandy334: because he's a sadistic jerk face! But he'll get whats coming to him, that much I can promise you!

Sheeijan: Yeah they haven't really been the best caretakers have they? Believe me, Seraphina gets a whooole lot worse in this chapter (and I totally didn't plan that).

A Stripped Tigger: Oh gosh for a moment I thought you were calling me a monster! Whew! It was just Pitch lol. Thank you so much for all the wonderful praise and I hope I can make you cry a few more times before this story is up! Whoops that came out wrong…

8fangirl8: I love the icing too! Jack's all about the icing lol

Doubled-Helix: Poor Jack! I felt so bad to do that! But it was necessary for the storyline, so it had to be done! Sob! It was really sad tho. :(

I.F.T.S: Squeal! Oh my gosh I love your stories and I can't believe you're reading mine! Thank you so much for all the praise and thanks again for the beta! You're the best!

And now without further ado, grab your tissue boxes and stuffed animals because I do not own Game of Thrones.

Chapter 5: The Phoenix

Broken as he was, Jökul's physical recovery was relatively short. The gashes in his palms mended with time, leaving only thin, white scars as a reminder. At Pitch's command, the sand plastered to his mouth receded, allowing only his lips to retain their greyish tint. His feet took the longest to heal. They did not receive any medical attention and the bones mended crookedly. He walked on the balls of his feet for a full six months after he gained mobility because of the pain until Pitch put a stop to it. As destroyed as the boy was by that point, he didn't even fight back when Pitch re-broke and set the bones so he would be able to walk properly. Even so, they had to be wrapped for stability for many years after.

Mother Nature visited sparingly. Just often enough to be sure the sprite was still alive. He expressed only vague interest in her appearances, much more content to simply follow a few steps behind Pitch whenever he was in the lair. It wasn't that he loved his captor; in reality it was quite the contrary. Deep down, Jökul was very confused about his situation, but it took far too much effort to decide why. It was much easier to follow and obey. And much safer.

He never spoke, no matter who was addressing him. After a time, Mother Nature began to doubt that he even remembered how. She tried speaking to him to fill the silence during a few of her early visits. He would just look up at her with grey eyes and press his ashen lips together. Eventually she stopped trying.

She continued to clothe him for many years and fed him whenever she would stop by so he could begin to trust her. The problem was it wasn't his lack of trust she had to worry about. He trusted Pitch about as much as he trusted her and that was what haunted her far longer than his stormy gaze. He held no concept of choice; he treated everyone he met like they were a master.

After seventy-five years of little to no change, Mother Nature began to find every excuse to stop coming. She knew Pitch had begun to train the child-spirit; the evidence of his lessons manifested themselves in bruises and welts all over his body. He had never regained his wintry abilities and the lack of their manifestation was the usual cause for any number of punishments dealt by the Nightmare King. Even so, his training in hand to hand combat was anything but optional. Powers or not, Pitch was not going to waste his investment.

After a stretch of ten years with no visits, Mother Nature shamed herself into regular check-ins. After finding hoof shaped bruises on his chest and a wheezing in his breath she resolved to increase their frequency. It was during one of those more frequent visits that she witnessed a training session.

Jökul was placed in a deep ditch in the bowels of the cavern, overhangs creating more than enough shadows to hide the less than benevolent creatures of the night. He circled the makeshift arena a few times, poking into the shadows with a gnarled stick Pitch allowed him to use to defend himself. By its shape, Mother Nature knew it was not his staff. He looked very frightened even from their perch, thrusting the stick into the darkness and tensing at even she smallest of noises (most of which Pitch was responsible for).

Mother Nature tried to cry out and warn the boy when he did not notice the writhing of a shadow just a few feet behind him, but Pitch would have none of it. She was forced to watch the rest of the fight with his ashen hand clapped tightly across her mouth. If it were not for her fear for the boy, she would have fought back a little harder against her imprisonment.

She watched in silence as a massive creature emerged from a shadow behind the sprite, stalking the boy as he prodded the hiding places of the others. It's shape looked vaguely like a horse, a little too ethereal and wispy to properly identify its form. It followed a few feet behind until impatience got the better of the beast and it snorted. The boy spun to meet it, swinging his stick like a sword as other beasts emerged and forced him towards the center of the arena. No frost came to curl around the stick in his hands. There was no magic in it or its wielder. The shadows grew, expanding the hiding places for the assailants as their victim slowly lost hope. There were too many to fight off this time.

Jökul swung his stick around and took out as many of the creatures' legs that he could reach. It was a last ditch effort, really, but there was something in him that wouldn't allow him to just curl up and hope they didn't hit anything vital. So he swung all the harder and crippled any that dared to come close enough to cripple him. They whinnied in protest—the sound more akin to screeches than the noise of Shetland ponies—and one rushed him from behind. It bit him hard on the shoulder, his cry of pain enough to rile the rest into a frenzied attack. Biting, kicking, and trampling, they tortured him to feed off his potent fear.

Mother Nature wrenched herself away from Pitch and flew towards the lip of the arena. A strong hand wrenched her back from the edge.

"Let me go!" She cried, hair sparking with electric charge. The air around them crackled with feral energy. "If you do not help him he will die!"

"And what do I stand to loose if that happens?" The Nightmare King drawled. Realization dawned on the Mother of the Elements.

"This isn't training for him," she murmured. "This is training for them! He's just the punching bag!"

"Ding, ding, ding. We have a winner. The boy is useless to me without his ice. The least he can do is make himself useful training pets that can actually meet my lowest expectations."

Mother Nature cringed at the sound of a snap and a barely human cry from down in the pit. She couldn't tell if the sound had been his arm or his stick.

"Pitch, please! You only wanted him for his power, its gone now! Let me take him with me."

Pitch scoffed to the tandem of the sound of more cries and scuffles. His crooked jaw was already unhinged to reply when the temperature in the room dropped twenty degrees and a crackling from in the pit preceded a flash of blue that silenced even the most dangerous of nightmare shrieks.

Mouth still hanging open, Pitch let go of his daughter and bounded over to the side of the pit. Curled up in the center of a frozen cage of black sand legs and manes lay Jökul, his eyes still clenched shut and his clothes frosted over. The boy had no idea what had happened, but all the noise and the hurt had stopped and it was blessedly cold.

Mother Nature floated down into the pit, ignoring her father's cackling as she glared into the shadows, daring them to try and throw anything at her. They shrunk back and cowered the moment her slippers touched the dirt. She felt no pity for those creatures of the night. For those shadows that preyed on the innocent and destroyed childhoods that had only just begun. They chose their side and she chose hers, the freedom to decide had been given to them all. Some just chose wrong.

Mother Nature shook her head to clear it of hundreds of years of memories and knelt on the dirt to lure the restored winter spirit out of his prison. When it became clear he either couldn't climb out or wouldn't, she grabbed a piece of the splintered stick and used it to break the shins of a few of the ice statues and pulled him out amongst the shards. The moment she touched him ice shot up her arms, so cold it caused the mistress of all the winter winds to shiver.

She half expected him to look up at her with eyes as blue as ocean ice, but even though his power had returned his mind had not. Eyes still grey; they only held pain from his injuries and fear. She melted the ice from her arms and began to take inventory of his injuries. He was bleeding from several places, but the ice crept up to cap off the blood flow as it caked heavily over the broken bones to keep them straight. He seemed to just let the ice do its work, lying still until even the bruises had a soothing sheen of ice to bring down the swelling. His body was healing itself.

Still cackling, Pitch emerged from a nearby shadow and ran his fingers along a frozen mane. "Well, Seraphina, I think I will have to decline your offer, he's still quite useful. But honestly I wouldn't have let him go even if he was worthless."

Mother Nature caught him in a stare, her jade eyes boring into his yellow ones.

Pitch chuckled again and nudged the sprite with his foot. Ice shot up his leg and he shivered unconfortably. "Did you really think I only wanted him when he was powerful? No, child, I wanted him when he was weak. I wanted and still want to destroy him all over again because he is mine! Just because his strength was useless doesn't mean I didn't feed off his misery and weakness, no, this boy was an eternal meal. And now, he is my means to victory."

"A victory," Mother Nature retorted and tried to help the boy stand. "If that, Pitch. He might help you win a battle but you could never win the war." With her initial help, Jökul stood without support, eyes catatonic and ice creeping from his feet.

"Oh, Seraphina you think far too highly of yourself and your so called chosen side. But your allies are weak and your link to them is tentative at the most. Face it, you're not a child of light and deluding yourself into believing otherwise is sad at its best and dangerous at its worst."

"No, I wasn't born into that kingdom, but no one is. All choose to enter and I have entered, father. You know that!"

"Then it's a good thing you're my daughter or I would include you in the slaughter."

"Oh believe me it won't be us that go to the slaughter."

Pitch's eyes narrowed dangerously, but he knew better than to cross his offspring when he was not at his peak. So he took his revenge for her insubordination in a less obvious manner. With a snap of his fingers, Jökul limped over to his side, leaving her without so much as a glance. Pitch squeezed the boy's shoulder and smiled as he watched the hatred grow in her eyes. But his revenge was short lived; he had to remove his hand within seconds because of the ice that crackled across his palm. He watched with wide eyes as frost grew and receded with the sprite's every breath. It crept across the floor to incase the nightmares more securely then spread to freeze anything in its path. Grey eyes grew cloudy as the boy himself began to freeze and the air chilled far past the place of comfort. Pitch began to feel unease as an unearthly wind broke into the cavern, carrying shards of ice on its wings. The nightmares shattered, spewing black sand and ice in every direction.

Mother Nature was the first to move, striding through the blinding sleet and hail to meet the boy where he stood. She gripped him by the shoulders and tried to break him free of the trance he had fallen into by the power that threatened to consume him. Ice spread from wherever she made contact with his skin and she grew desperate when his milky eyes only continued to stare forward into nothingness as the storm grew in strength. Even her authority could not corral this rogue power.

Suddenly she was knocked aside and ashen hands and a black robe took her place at the boy's head. Pitch knew enough not to touch the boy—his stinging hand a stark reminder of what this powerful being was truly capable of. No orders could be heard over the tempest, and Pitch knew the milky eyed spirit before him would not be able to hear them even if the storm raging above was not trying to rip apart his cave at the seams. So he chose a much more internal route.

The creature before him—a wintry phoenix in his own right—may no longer be under Pitch's control, but the sand he had forced down the boy's throat so many years ago was. Gripping ahold of its remaining power, Pitch expanded his corruption, rolling the sand through the body and feeling for a way to turn off the deluge without drying up the river. The sand explored the deeper regions of his mind, no longer searching for opposition but placing barriers to block this release of power until he wanted it unleashed. He burned synapses and built up new ones, creating links between memories until he had tailor made a control switch the devil himself could not have fashioned better.

The initial result was only a froth that bubbled out past the boy's clenched teeth as he convulsed on the ground and the storm lost its driving force. But the final product was a clear eyed, barely conscious youth lying in the midst of his own destructive force while the power that had been corralled strained against its leashes and gates.

Mother Nature dared not touch him for fear that she would unleash the ice age once again. The boy was a force of nature, but he was one that she could not control, and this frightened her.

Pitch's shoulders seemed to slump a bit from his exertion, but his smile as he picked bits of ice and snow from his hair betrayed his satisfaction. He glanced at Mother Nature and chuckled.

"What's the matter, Seraphina? Did he not listen when you told him to calm down? Did he not smile and clutch at your skirts for comfort? No? Well then I guess you're quite useless aren't you?"

Nature couldn't find it within herself to respond to his jibes. He was right, and the boy lying on the ground at their feet deserved better than her.

"You see, Seraphina," The Nightmare King continued, "He no longer feels for you. He doesn't even have the capability to feel. He craves a master's touch; he's an animal, nothing more. His humanity took a vacation fifty years ago and never came back, Seraphina, you know that." Pitch paused and knelt to run his bony fingers through Jökul's hair. The boy leaned into the touch briefly and became still as the nightmare sand his master had released found its way into his eyes. Pitch looked up at her before standing to match her height. "He is a force of nature. But not one of yours. Nothing goes together better than cold and dark and when I have my wielder of the ice age at my side and an army of nightmares at my back—and believe me I will have both—then I suggest you find some cave to crawl into because the phoenix herself couldn't match this boy for power if the sun infused her with its full power. Ice will cover the world and dark shall rule it. You cannot even hope for the smallest of victories."

Desperation wound its icy fingers around Mother Nature's heart. She knew how this would end, had seen it in visions hundreds of years ago, and it was not the ending Pitch was hoping for. But doubt has its way of twisting even the most comforting of sound evidence into ethereal nonsense and disillusionments. She was scared.

She was scared and no matter how much she wanted to wipe the smug grin of victory from her father's mouth, she knew she didn't have the strength to do so. Not on her own, and not with her own power. So she left her ice boy one last time. Left him in hell because she didn't think she was strong enough to save him and somewhere in the back of her mind she didn't think the moon or its Commander were strong enough to do so either. If they were then Jack would have been freed far before he became Jökul.

This angered her so that she said her goodbyes to the residents of the kingdom of light, gave them proper warnings on what Pitch and his Ice Prince were capable of, and went about her business, alone and unaided. She was done being a soldier of light in a world of increasing darkness, and she was done being a mother to shadow children who would only break her heart when they died.

She remained bitter for well over a century, living up to her image as the destroyer of civilizations. She controlled the powers of Nature with grace and fury, pounding the land with its necessary storms to keep it pruned and in tune, never trying to calm the calamities for the sake of mankind. They would need to be tough to endure a world of cold and dark should her father have his way.

But her eyes and ears were always open and searching for signs that Armageddon was close at hand. And when the sounds of screeching nightmares filled the air, she wept in mourning. For the day of their reckoning had come.

I'm sorry! This story has kinda taken on a mind of its own and its very angsty. But I promise there's a purpose behind all of this and if you look hard enough by the end you will see the meaning threading all the way through. SOUND OFF BELOW I LOVE HEARING WHAT YOU THINK! Till next time kiddies!