Wow, you guys really seem to like this story thus far! I got three reviews yesterday, which is astounding! Thank you so much!

This was a little gem of an anonymous review that I received yesterday that I thought I'd share:

"What? Was? That? Cruelty, that's what that was. I have sooo many questions... but all in due time, I suppose.

-Sweets-n-Treats

*chuckles* Sorry for being cruel? I initially wrote this story as three long oneshots, but am now breaking it up into smaller chapters for easier reading. And of course, it makes the suspense even higher, haha. I'm glad you like it. Though I admit that I'm rather curious what your questions are. XD

Anyway, I hope you guys enjoy the chapter!

Disclaimer: Still don't own Rise of the Guardians or the Guardians of Childhood books.

The next thing he was aware of was a bout of confusion. Hadn't he been in the Arctic? Had he finished what he'd been doing there? What had he been trying to do there anyway? Something about a storm. But he always delivered storms, so why did his stomach lurch when he thought about his most recent errand? Something about polar bears.

Polar bears. He shivered, but he didn't know why. Polar bears weren't normally a threat. Though he supposed anything could be a threat if it got angry enough. Or cold enough. Various creatures tended to get angry if they got cold. Jack was sure that the polar bears had a limit too. What would they do if they reached that limit?

They would knock him down and maul him to death, that's what. Jack shivered at the thought. Was that a memory? It was an overreaction if it hadn't been a memory. But if that had happened, then how was he still alive? Where was he?

Jack focused all his attention on his hands, one at a time as each twitched to show he could still feel them. So far, so good. He didn't seem to be in pain either, which was a plus. He then directed his attention to his legs and commanded them to work. Each leg jerked. Okay, he was still doing fine. Then Jack focused his attention on his eyes as he willed them to open. He needed to see where he was. He needed to know how he had survived that attack.

A few cautious blinks and then he forced his eyes open and tried to focus on his surroundings. Everything was hazy and the muscles in his eyes seemed lethargic. It was almost like he had never used his eyes to see before. But that was silly. He was in a polar bear-induced haze, and he would recover from it shortly.

His eyes began to focus, and some of the most confusing sights came into being. He was floating in some kind of weird cylinder. Outside of it, several people pointed at him and began freaking out about something.

He reached out his hand and felt it grace something hard and transparent in front of him. That was strange. Was that there a minute ago? "H-Hey," he said, but he found that his voice seemed a bit hoarse. Or it was being lethargic in the same way his eyes were. In that case, all he had to do was warm up his voice a little by continuing to attempt speech.

"Hey... what am I... what am I doing here?"

If the people outside were able to hear him, they didn't show it. Whatever had spooked them only seemed to continue to do so. Then a man ran into the room, grabbed a small device, and plugged it into the cylinder Jack was in.

"Jack, can you hear me?" said the man.

Jack nodded, then croaked out, "Yes." And then, "what's going on?"

The guy sighed and ran his fingers through his hair as though he'd been through an awful lot that day already. "Look," he said, "this isn't what it looks like, okay? This is all a-a dream. Yes, a dream. So now if you'll go back to sleep, you'll wake up back home and everything will be normal."

That seemed reasonable, so Jack nodded and began to close his eyes. Then he snapped them open again when something pinged in his brain. Something about this situation didn't sit right. Since when do dreams try to convince you that they're dreams? Even his lucid dreams hadn't tried to convince him that he was dreaming. And they definitely didn't suggest he should go back to sleep to solve the "problem" of dreaming.

"What's going on?" Jack's hands began to curl into fists. Funny, he remembered having this kind of interaction before, but when?

"Nothing!" said the man as he dismissed Jack's question with a wave of his hand. "There is nothing to worry about. Go back to sleep and everything will be fine."

"You don't solve a dream by going to sleep," said Jack, "you solve a dream by waking up."

The man bit his lip, cluing in Jack that he was on the right track. There was something suspicious about all this. It couldn't be a dream. Something told him it wasn't, even though he wanted more than anything to believe it was.

A flash entered Jack's memory. Something about the polar bears. They had mangled him, hadn't they? Jack glanced down at his body and saw to his shock that his body hadn't a scratch on it. He didn't even bear scars to show that the fight had happened at all. How was this possible?

Something shifted out of the corner of Jack's eye, and he turned to see what had caught his attention. What he saw made him want to vomit, had he had any food in him that would have been able to come up. There was another cylinder close to his. And it contained a body that would have been identical to his, except for one key difference. It looked as though it had been mauled by polar bears.

Alarm bells went off in Jack's head. He grasped the sides of his head with both hands to try to keep himself from exploding. That other body had been his own. It had to have been. So why was he now in this one? This didn't make sense. It was so wrong.

Jack felt a scream rising in his throat. Was it even his throat? Could he rightfully call it that? Regardless, it sure wanted to scream right then. If he tried to stifle the scream, it would find another way out. He clamped his eyes shut so he at least could cut off the horrifying things he didn't want to see, and he screamed.

How long he screamed, he couldn't say. Time didn't exist anymore. Nothing existed anymore. Even he didn't exist anymore. His body was just floating dead in that strange cylinder thing... what was it, a tank? The image of multiple bodies like his own in identical tanks around the room popped into his head. Another memory he didn't want, and he only screamed the louder.

One thing he did notice was the cracking. It was subtle at first. But after being the spirit of winter for so long, he knew how to tell cracking sounds apart. He could tell the pressure was going to make the glass give way any moment. This may not have been ice, but the sound was still quite clear. He had gotten so upset that he had frozen the condensation in the air outside the tank. The glass was now from brittle from the cold. It seemed he couldn't freeze whatever liquid the tank contained, but that didn't matter much. He was about to get out of this nightmare anyway.

The cracking reached its critical point, and the glass shattered. It spilled all the liquid onto the strange people and carried Jack with it. He landed on the floor in an undignified heap, dripping like a wet poodle. Despite his urge to jump up and run, his lungs had other ideas. He coughed and gasped as he expelled all the strange liquid and took in air for the first time. It might have been the first time this body had ever taken a breath of air. That thought sent shivers down Jack's spine. He had to get out of here.

Da da dum! So there's that chapter. I hope you guys liked it. Feel free to share your thoughts with me. It definitely helps me know whether you like this sort of story or not so that I can know what to write for you guys in the future. I seriously was scared to post this one for some reason, so I didn't post the first arc for over a year. Or heck, I didn't start posting the first arc until I'd written the third arc. :P Go figure. Sometimes I get terrified of sharing weird ideas and I have no idea why.

Anyway, thanks for reading, take care, and I hope to see you next time!