Chapter Text
“No.” Bunny looks down his nose at Jack, ears twitching with barely restrained frustration.
“I won’t say it again, pipsqueak. I. Don’t. Do. Snow.”
Jack rests against his staff, smiling devilishly.
“Technically, you just said it again.”
The flick of the absurdly sized rabbit’s ear shows his annoyance, but he says nothing else. Instead, he sits back onto his haunches and folds his arms across his waist.
It seems as though Jack finally frustrated him into silence.
He couldn’t imagine why.
Surely the last two hours of arguing over the semantics of snow on Easter couldn’t have possibly been the reason.
Bunnymund has always been fussy kangaroo.
A shame, really..
It had been such a good conversation too.
Jack turns on his heel before lifting himself up onto the nearest windowsill. He swings his feet idly, the silence between Jack and Bunny settles comfortably as they wait for the other guardians to arrive.
The North Pole is plenty lively enough to keep them entertained without the need to bicker. Bickering is just Jack’s favorite shared hobby with the Easter Bunny.
Yeti’s haul giant bags of supplies and finished toys across The Pole, grumbling to one another and patting the heads of the little elves who are trying (and failing) to help out.
He greets them as they pass, Phil particularly gives him an excited wave. The yeti are frantically preparing for Christmas, the holiday only about six months away.
Something explodes in the distance. Phil turns around and takes off across the room, but Jack doesn’t bother to look.
The likelihood that a few elves decided to have a little too much fun playing with the unfinished toys was… very high.
Jack grins to himself, swinging one of his legs idly.
There’s a certain comfort he finds in The Pole. He can’t quite pinpoint what it is. The warmth. The noise. The constant movement. An enormous, ridiculous, fantastical place existing in the heart of winter itself that always has a place for him if he needs one.
Jack knows, instinctively, why he finds so much comfort in this place. He had been a believer at one point (from what he can piece together in his fractured memories). The image of his sister, of Mary Overland, sitting under a blanket with warm tea and a wide smile sits at the forefront of his mind.
His grin begins to fade.
The warmth of the ship goes with it, and the feeling of forming frost prickles over his skin again.
Before he can think too hard about the past, a fluttering ball of joy smacks into the side of his head.
“Umph- Baby Too-?”
In the next blink of an eye a sea of flittering fairies floods his vision. Before he can make sense of what’s happening he opens his mouth to greet his little friends, and little hands find their opening. The fairies grab his lips and gums, tugging gently as they twinkle and chatter away about his supposed impeccable dental hygiene.
“‘Unn’eh a l’ul ‘elp p’ease?” Jack tries, only teasingly moving his head around.
The girls squeal playfully, causing mass-fluttering amongst the little balls of joy as they cling to his face and hoodie in an effort to stay attached to him.
Bunnymund only laughs.
“Nah, I’m good here.”
Jack shoots him an accusing look.
“Y’ur ‘n’oyin’ ‘is, ‘uh?”
“Immensely, mate.”
The fairies only poke, prod, and fawn for a few moments longer before Tooth breezes into the room and waves them off. The girls scatter, though not before giving him a dreamy sigh.
He laughs as they go, like daughters like mother. Tooth gives him a loving smile, almost as giddy as the fairies. “Hi Jack! The fairies tell me your incisors look especially magnificent today! I hope they didn’t pester too much, though if you need someone to take a look-”
Jack lifts his arms and she rushes to give him a bear hug. “Hi Tooth.” He chuckles.
Behind her a few of the fairies fake-faint into one another's arms. He glances over to his shoulder as she pulls away, the sudden weight settling into the dip of his collar bone being none other than Baby Tooth herself. He gently rubs at her face with his thumb. “Hey, it’s been a while, huh?”
Tooth lets out a sigh that only a mother could let loose.
“Oh too long, truly too long.”
Her face then suddenly lights up. “In that time I’ve collected about 5,724 molars, 7,576 canines, and 2, 454 incisors since we last saw each other and I simply must tell you about some of the more unusual ones because there was this one kiddo in Belgium who had the most peculiar little wisdom tooth and then there was another in India whose canine was almost perfectly symmetrical and then there was one in Brazil who had lost an entire row of baby teeth in the same week and…”
Jack doesn’t follow as she continues with her tooth tales. He’s not actually sure he could if he tried, considering her words are flying about as fast as her wings are beating.
He nods along though, letting her expend a small part of her endless passionate energy.
“That’s amazing, Tooth.”
She clasps her hands, smiling wide. “Ugh I know! Not many people understand the value of a smile anymore, Jack.” She reaches for his cheek and pats it gently. “I know you do.”
The warmth creeps into his soul again.
The hand is familiar. A gentle caress and reassurance, scrapped knees and torn clothes all patched up with a warm embrace.
He realizes he’s taken a moment too long to respond, but Tooth’s hand is still there. She gives him a soft smile and then pulls away again. Before he can say anything, even if he didn’t know what he wanted to try to say, a loud crash echoes from across The Pole.
A large, booming laugh erupts from the door to North’s workshop. Despite being on the other side of The Pole, North’s voice is clear as day.
“FRIENDS!”
He lumbers his way to the center of The Pole, standing near the globe and beckoning them down to meet him. “Glad to see you all here! Not often we get to meet like this.”
Jack lifts up from the windowsill, hopping over the banister as they all exchange their hello’s. North pulls him close and leaves a weighted hand on his shoulder as he greets the others.
It could be the beard, or maybe the accent. Somehow North has the ability to always make him feel at ease.
The hand shifts to his head as North scruffs his hair. “Jack, I have missed you.”
The warmth begins to bleed into his chest again, but despite it he smiles. “I’ve missed you too.”
The moment is brief, cutting off as Jack looks for their missing piece. “Hey, where’s Sandy-“
The sound of twinkling sand comes from somewhere above him. Descending from the highest window is Sandman on his golden cloud of dreams.
Pictures dance above his head as Sandy grins.
A symbol for each guardian as an individual hello.
A sleeping figure.
A cup of coffee.
Jack chuckles. “Tired?”
Sandy nods, yawning as he does so. Though he waves off a hand in dismissal. A final symbol appearing over his head.
A moon.
North hums. “Yes, yes. Now that all of us are here, we shall see what Man in Moon called us here for, yes?”
The globe glistens as they pass, the shining lights of believers across the world. When it turns just right, his eyes lock onto a particularly bright light.
Burgess.
It’s summer on Jamie’s side of the earth, so it’s been… a while since he’s seen his staunchest believers.
His only believers, actually.
He sends a glance out the window to the snow gently falling outside. Winter may be a fleeting season, and Jack Frost may be a fleeting tale, but he’s slowly come to accept that there was a beauty in not having to rely solely on his believers for existence.
It gives him a sort of freedom that the other guardians don’t explicitly have.
He is Jack Frost.
He is Winter.
Winter arrives when it’s ready, painting delicate patterns along windowsills, making rolling hills of green to powdered mounds of white, leaving children grinning from ear to ear with joy as they spend their days playing.
He comes and he goes.
He is to winter, as winter is to him. Same as the moon to the night and the stars to the sky.
Speaking of the moon, a beam of light slowly aligns directly through the gaping window at the top of The Pole.
North had designed a separate crystalline device for the moon to convey messages, rather than the one that reveals new Guardians. It’s much smaller. A delicate metal frame covered with intricate stars and swirling patterns resembling cosmic dust encircles a crystal nearly as clear as ice itself.
Bunny’s foot taps rapidly.
Tooth’s wings beat slightly faster.
Sandy begins nodding off.
North… is rubbing his belly.
Jack smiles fondly at their individual antics. Manny tends to take a while to convey any sort of message. Which, he supposes, is impressive in itself considering the moon is talking to them.
The light strikes the crystal and luminescent beams bounce around the room in a dazzling display.
The crystal shifts.
Spins.
Frantically aligning to the whims of the moon’s intention every moment. Then just as the light display nearly blinds the guardians with its brilliance, the crystal clicks into its place, and on the floor just in front of the guardians is a single symbol.
A symbol of… something.
Jack side-eyes the other guardians, who have similar levels of confusion washing over their faces. He then taps Sandy’s back with the end of his staff, to which the smaller man turns to him.
“You’re the expert on symbols,” Jack whispers loudly, “any ideas?”
Sandy gives him a scowl, and frantic symbols fly over his head.
Jack squints. “Are those… curse words?”
Sandman rolls his eyes and leaves it to a headshake.
Jack huffs, both at Sandy’s playful frustration and the absolute dumbfoundness that the Man in the Moon always seems willing and able to deliver.
The symbol looks somewhat reminiscent of a robot… with horns… and big teeth. As far as Jack can tell, it means nothing to the other guardians either.
At their apparent confusion, the crystal shifts again. It spins and whirls a few times before clicking into place.
This time the symbol seems easier to discern. It forms into something of a curling figure, wings protruding from its back, a long tail.
“Oh!” Tooth gasps.
“Dragons! Dragons! He’s talking about…“, Tooth suddenly pauses.
Her eyes flit to the other Guardians.
Then to Jack as a sudden realization hits her.
She covers her mouth and muffledly speaks, “Does he know about those?”
Jack blinks.
Bunny lets out a surprised laugh. “Nobody thought to tell him? Looks like I was right about the Guardian totem pole, Frosty.”
Instead of a snarky remark Jack simply shoots him a glare, still a bit distracted by the groundbreaking topic at hand.
“What do I not know? Why do you make it sound like-“
Bunny, who is still beside himself with laughter, groans. “Yep. They’re real.”
“No- no no no you’re saying…”, Jack blinks again.
North hums. “Be nicer to little Frost than you were to me, Bunny. You, Tooth, and Sandy are much older than us new guardians. Introduction to Dragons is bit much to us who are not older than mountains.”
The pooka and the fairy seem to bristle at the mention of age and a few of Tooth’s fairies chirp with disapproval.
“Wait.” Jack points from Bunny to North. “You’re older than North?”
“By a bit.” Bunny grumbles.
Jack turns to tooth, but her look tells him not to even broach the topic of age with her lest he keep all of his pearly whites. He doesn’t look to Sandy (who fell asleep sometime after the dragon reveal).
He shakes his head. “Okay, okay, back to the uh- the dragons?”
Bunny picks at his fur with a grim, distant look. “Glad those buggers went into hiding. Can you imagine how hard it was bringing joy to children when you have two-thousand-kilo lizards comin’ down from the heavens to eat you for dinner?”
Jack shakes the frost from his brain as he tries to catch up with the conversation. “Wait so- so dragons are… real? Like fire-lizard dragons?”
Sandy shakes away his sleep and lazily flicks through multiple symbols.
Fire.
Water.
Poison.
Ice.
The last one he’s… unsure of. It just looks like an explosion.
Jack lets out a breath. “Not just fire?”
Bunny shakes his head, reaching up and putting an arm around Tooth. “That would’ve been too easy, mate. Those things could spit out just about anything.”
“Anything?”
“Yeah, and it only got worse for us once those things were domesticated.”
Jack… stares.
Before Jack can even process that, Tooth sighs. “Oh, Jack, and you think dogs are bad! Dragons can be just as friendly or just as nasty.”
Though, her eyes suddenly light up. “Some of them had the most beautiful teeth, though. I wonder if the magic in them inherently affected their enamel because there were some species with remarkable variations and I always wanted to study the relationship between their diet and tooth structure because there was one particular breed whose incisors were almost perfectly aligned and…”
North claps his hands. “Nyet, nyet! You are forgetting point again.”
He places both of his hands on Jack’s shoulders, startling Baby Tooth into ducking inside his hood to avoid being squished.
“Long story much shorter, Dragons had to go into hiding to protect themselves very long time ago.”
Jack frowns. “From humans?”
North solemnly shakes his head. “Humans. Hunters. Other dragons. Magical spirits. They were not well accepted creatures. Very few loved the dragons.”
He gestures towards the crystal. “Only Manny knows where their hidden world is. Most other magical beings, like you and I, were born after hiding of dragons. Beings born before choose not to search, out of respect.”
“And… now?” Jack whispers, his voice getting caught in his throat.
North places his hand back on Jack’s shoulder and gives it a gentle squeeze. “It seems Man in Moon wants us to find Dragons again, ya?”
The Guardians turn back to the crystal. It clicks and shifts.
The symbol is… a snowflake.
Jack raises an eyebrow. “Me?”
He looks to the others, who are also equally as confused, then scratches his head with his staff. “Manny, I don’t know if you were listening, but I just learned about the giant people eating lizards like five seconds ago.”
Tooth puts up a hand.
“Oh they actually didn’t do that anymore after domestication-“
Jack hold up a finger. “I’m circling back to the whole domestication thing. But, first… why me?”
The crystal shifts quickly, images layering over one another to creating a moving picture.
A wave in the ocean.
A rock formation.
A chasm.
Waterfalls.
Tunnels.
Then a flame.
Then a snowflake.
North, who has yet to release Jack’s shoulders, pats him gently. “I think he wants you to find it.”
Jack looks up at him, the older guardian laughing. “I can tell.”
He smiles, resisting making a joke about North’s gut feelings. Instead he steps out of North's grasp and stretches out his arms. “Okay, find the hidden lizards.”
“I can do that. What is this? Some kind of house call? Do dragons need house calls?”
The crystal doesn’t shift.
Manny apparently doesn’t find Jack’s joke funny, not that he ever actually responds, and the light coming through the window slowly disappears.
“Tough crowd.”
As the final moonbeam fades, the other guardians begin moving apart.
Tooth turns to her fairies.
North beckons for Phil.
Sandy is… sleeping, again.
Bunny is the first to look at him, moving from his haunches to his feet. Jack quickly beckons to the wind and allows the breeze to lift and float him in between the others, hanging lazily in the air.
“So, before we all disappear for another few years, anyone mind telling me where I can find dragons?” Jack prompts as he floats past Bunny’s face.
The pooka lightly bats him away. “Like North said, kid, Manny is the only one who knows where the scaley buggers went. Pretty sure he made you a nice picture of it too.”
Tooth nods.
“We may have seen the dragons but we have no clue where they disappeared. Choose not to look. Though, they were mostly located up in the northern regions, so I suppose that’s not the worst place to start?”
The wind playfully lifts him over his friends, so Jack flips onto his stomach to look down at them. “So I just search until I find a big hole in the ocean?”
He pauses.
“Shouldn’t be too hard.”
Sandy gives him a very enthusiastic thumbs up, then immediately follows it with an arrow pointing upwards before he drifts off into the night.
North shakes his head and laughs boisterously at the smaller man’s sudden departure. “Let us know if you need help Jack. We are all busy with our holidays and nightly affairs… but Manny had us all here for reason.”
He points to the window. “Go, then call if you need help, ya?”
Jack throws him a pathetic, half-salute. “Sir, yes, sir.”
North waves him off playfully, turning to go back into his workshop.
“Call anytime Jack! Anytime!” Tooth flits up to his face, then reaches out a hand so Baby Tooth can fly out from his hood and onto Tooth’s palm.
The little fairy gives him a smile and solemn wave, and he waves back.
“The girls all miss you,” Tooth pauses. “I miss you, so stop by the palace again sometime, okay?”
He nods. “I will.”
She gives him one last smile before her and her giggling entourage set off into the night the same way Sandy left.
He looks over to see Bunny simply give him a wave. “Don’t get eaten, kid.”
The the pooka disappears through a tunnel. So in the end he’s left only with North, who had paused to talk to one of the yeti’s, and the wind.
The lumbering Russian warrior gives him a warm look. “Your first big solo mission as Guardian. How do you feel?”
Jack lets the wind gently place him on the windowsill that the light from the moon had just shown through. He shrugs half-heartedly. “Well, considering it’s to find a species that I didn’t know was real until a few minutes ago and has been in hiding for centuries…”
He pauses, for dramatic effect.
“I- I don’t know.”
North lets out a hearty chuckle. “You will be fine Jack, we all believe in you.”
His eyes soften momentarily, and he looks at Jack with the same warmth that he so often sees in his eyes while making toys for children. “If you need anything, please call for us.”
Jack swallows the warmth that spread through him like wildfire. He’s felt this warmth far too often for his liking.
With every hug, clap, brush of hair, word of advice… the world seems a little warmer.
Some distant part of himself finds a comfort in the warm, as if it’s a puzzle piece slotting itself into place.
Yet, Jack Frost is accustomed to the cold.
The cold is silent.
The cold does not ask anything of him.
The cold reminds him of his role, where he belongs.
This warmth, so foreign and new, scares him.
North meets his eyes, watching his face as Jack come back to himself. “You know we care for you, yes?”
A fleeting smile tugs at his lips. “Thanks, North.”
Jack watches as North’s smile dims, almost as if the man could read all of Jack’s most twisted internal thoughts. He falters, then waves his goodbye to North, and tips backwards out the window.
The wind cradles his descent, lifting him into the frigid night air. For a moment he floats on the current. He looks back to the workshop, meets North’s eyes that track him across the sky, the turns away.
He raises his staff, the cold bleeding the warmth from his chest into the night, and lets the wind carry him away.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
The search isn’t going well.
Which is saying the least.
Jack spins idly along the wind currents as they carry him over the thrashing ocean waves. Sea spray peppers his skin and fills his nostrils with the scent of salt and storm.
The air is much cooler out on the water, a light mist hanging in the air with an uptick in the strength of the wind currents. Rainshowers were forming in the distance, moving slow through open skies.
He’d crossed into a region where it was warmer more seasonally, the temperature not suited for a winter spirit at this time of year, but the wind was kind enough to give him cool relief.
The warmth doesn’t melt him or anything. It’s just uncomfortable. If he could actually melt Bunny would probably have a field day.
Luckily, the wind is friend, so he doesn’t have to worry about melting or being uncomfortable.
Jack groan, flipping onto his back and staring up at the sky. “Any ideas?”
The wind answers with a playful gust that nearly rips him sideways.
“Oh really? That how you’re going to play it?”
A light breeze ruffles his hair, then a quick gust smacks his cheek.
“Right. Right. So, still at square one?”
The wind swirls around his ankles and up to his arms. He laughs and lets the breeze mess with him a moment more before shaking it away.
He’s spends hours chatting with the wind. The silence is large, but not empty. They’ve spent enough lonely nights side by side underneath the starry sky for the wind to be more than just a lingering presence.
Jack nearly calls off the search before something faint in the distance catches his eye. A small rock formation juts from the surface of the water… at first. It’s nothing particularly out of the ordinary.
He pauses.
There.
A flash of light catches his eye.
Quick.
Glittering.
It’s like a sunbeam reflecting off of a piece of metal, before it disappears.
It catches him again, making him squint before darting away.
“Huh.”
He signals to the wind, the current pulling him along faster.
The light appears again, blinding him for a moment before he shoots forward.
It’s drawing him in.
Jack laughs. “You clever thing, playing tag?”
The light crosses his face and travels down to his arm, then it flickers twice before vanishing again.
An odd but familiar feeling washes over him, similar to what he feels when playing snowball tag with the Burgess kids.
A smile teases at his lips at the thought of the kids.
“Fine. You win.”
The light flickers across his face then shoots off onto a rocky outcropping.
He swoops lower over the rolling waves.
The wind whistles playfully in his ear and Jack lets out a building laugh and the light beckons him still.
Water churns over itself beneath him.
The rock gets larger as he approaches, the light flickering faster and faster as he slowins his descent for a landing.
But his smile drops off as he reaches the rock, eyes widening. The light jumps away, to a different rock, but Jack does not follow.
Beneath him is a chasm.
The maw of the earth so wide it swallows the ocean as raging waterfalls. The bottom of the chasm is covered in a thick mist from the crashing of the water below.
He blinks.
He’s found it.
The light assaults his eyes again, teasing him.
He reorients himself for a moment before finding where it’s leaped to one of the waterfalls. Its form shimmers and ripples with the waves, then it descends into the mist.
Jack looses a breath. “Well… I have to follow it, don’t I?”
The wind twists a breeze around his waist like a comforting hug. Jack hums. “I’ll be okay. Promise.”
He takes a step forward onto the very ledge of the rock, then lets his weight carry him backwards. The wind slows his fall, and he descends into the mist.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
The humidity inside the ocean cavern is warmer than he had expected.
Much warmer.
He’s reconsidering the thought of not being able to melt. The possibility seeming more real with each passing second.
The heat makes his hoodie stick to his skin, sweat beading along his brow as he searches through the mist for his guiding light.
Sound assaults his senses almost as much as the heat. Waves crashing into stone, echoes ringing through darkened caverns, thunderous amount of water rushing through the air.
Orange light glows dimly from cracks in the cavern flooring. Jack can still see, thankfully enough. The mist isn’t so different from snow in that sense, and the orange light helps slightly.
Though, not nearly enough as he almost runs face first into a particularly large stalagmite.
A flash catches the corner of his eye and he spins.
The little light flickers at him, then quickly darts away between the stalagmites peppering the cave floor.
“Hey! Wait-“
He calls out, but decides it’s be better to catch it first.
Giving chase is easy enough, until the cavern begins to dim further with the setting sun. The light still evades him. Running away and teasing like it’s playing a game.
He stops in the air a moment to catch his breath and look around.
Jack has… no idea where he is. Great.
A glowing orange crevice sits below him, giving him just enough light to see his hands in front of him and the vague outline of the surrounding obstacles.
The light reappears again, flicker and darting back and forth in a playful motion.
Though before he can give chase, a low rumbling noise sounds from behind him.
Jack paused, whipping his head around to find-
To find… nothing.
Jack moves slowly towards the light once again, and the rumbling returns, but there is nothing in sight.
The shadows around him suddenly feel larger, nearly suffocating him with their weight.
A high pitched squeal sounds from somewhere at his side, like a sharp whistle. Light bursts from where he’d been going to chase after his guide, a soft roar in what sounds like protest echoes from the light.
Then the stalagmite to his right explodes, and Jack falls.
He reels through the air, feels the wind lose him as he descends into the glowing crevice. Hot air clings to him, making it hard to breathe as he screams.
His staff, which and been blown away from his hand, is nowhere to be seen. He grasps at the air for anyone, anything.
A protruding rock catches his side.
Pain explodes through his ribs and back as he cries out.
He tumbles away from the rock, his grip not catching, and crashes to the cave floor.
The heat is immediate.
Dizzying.
Searing.
He’s screaming. Jack puts his hands to the ground to try and move away but heat eats through the skin of his palms.
Jack tries to stand, but the same goes for the soles of his feet. He feels as if he’s stepped into molten lava.
Screeches echo off stone, he can no longer tell if they’re his or some kind of beasts that’s come to take him while he’s vulnerable.
The heat suffocates him, his cries waning as the pain radiates through his entire being. His vision swims as he collapses, the burn eating away at his side as his tears evaporate from the waves of molten radiation.
He can feel his body reacting, ice encapsulates his skin and frost shoots out around him in every direction… though it melts almost immediately.
A clatter nearby catches his fading attention. With a shaking hand he reaches out for the staff that’s clattered onto the stone.
Too hot.
Too hot.
His fingers shakily meet the wood, though he can hardly feel it through the blisters forming on his skin. He pulls it close to body with a desperate whimper.
“Please.”
Suddenly, something tugs on the staff. It lifts him off of the stone as he clutches onto his staff like a lifeline.
He can no longer see clearly. Something white fills his vision. A large… something pushes him onto the white surface before him, and relief rushes through him. Something cool and hard lay under him, shifting as it brings him out from the crevice.
Jack’s vision fades further, his breaths feeling easier as the wind panickedly rushes to snuff out the warmth from his burning body.
Someone is… speaking.
Jack cannot listen. He tried, something in his mind telling him the voice is of importance. The pain overrules.
He lets the cool relief of darkness pull him in. The last thing he sees is a familiar symbol, and head of brown hair.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
He’s drowning.
His hands reach forward, grasping for the light peeking through the ice but meeting only water.
A voice unknown to him speaks, a calling. A destiny, it tells him.
His breath escapes him, catching and making him writhe.
He can’t.
Not again. He can’t do this again he can’t-
Trickling water is the sound he wakes to.
For a long moment he’s still there. Still sinking.
Soft lighting fills his blurred vision as the world slowly returns.
The water that he could hear is running over his skin, refreshingly cold but still panic inducing. He tilts his head to the side, feeling his cheek meet the surface of the water… but air fill his lungs.
He looses a breath, then raises his left arm to look at his… perfectly… normal hand.
Jack blinks.
Did he… imagine burning alive?
He moves to lift his right hand but his ribs flair in pain. The pain quickly brings back the memories, the burn.
Jack sits up far too quickly, his ribs stabbing his side with the motion. Water runs down his body before slowly freezing and sloughing away to melt back into the stream.
The area he’s tucked away in is dimly lit, strange glowing glowing dots line the walls. He pushes himself up to stand, noticing the absence of his hoodie and the pain that still radiates from his feet. He ignores it, stepping out of the steam and hissing as his feet make contact with stone.
He’s still a bit dizzy, wobbling on his feet as he approaches one of the walls. It acts as his support as he limps onwards, making his way towards what looks to be the mouth of the small cavern he had been in.
The bioluminescence grows brighter the father he goes, and then as he reaches the cavern entrance, his vision explodes with color.
Jack stares in awe, pain momentarily forgotten.
Towering spires of illuminated rock stretch as far as the eye can see. Glowing crystals pepper along the ceiling of this hidden world, revealing moss covered ground, nests, soft water falls, and… dragons.
Hundreds… and hundreds of dragons.
They glide through the air with grace and ease. Wings folding and twisting as they dive, arching through the air so smoothly Jack can hardly take his eyes off of them.
Though, a flicker of light catches his attention.
He turns and finds the flickering light settling beside him.
Jack hesitates, then reaches out a hand.
The light does not move for a moment, then darts to his hand. It encircles his fingers and travels up his arm.
He smiles as it dances around him for a moment longer before moving back to his side.
Then in a blink, a dragon stands before him.
“Oh- oh, I- I didn’t know you were a-“
The dragon leans forward, and bows its head.
It’s beautiful, unlike anything Jack had ever imagined. Its scales are brilliantly white, like freshly powdered snow. A long, powerful tail extends behind it, flicking with patience as it waits for him to reach out.
So, slowly, he extends his hand again.
The dragon lifts its head, and places its snout in his palm.
Jack smiles, a fundamental understanding of trust sweeping over him as he feels her shift against his palm.
Memories come back to him in a blur.
His hands shift, and he places one on the side of its head and one on the top. “You saved me, didn’t you?”
The dragon opens its eyes, and stares at him. Then flicks its ear.
Her ear.
Jack lets his hands roam, gently stroking his hand over her scales as she moves closer to his side. She sits beside him, then sticks out her tongue.
Before Jack can react a giant dragon tongue licks him across the face like an overeager dog. The shock makes him pause, then burst out into laughter.
“Hey, you must really like me, huh? Why else would you cover me in dragon slobber?”
She looks almost offended at the statement, clicking and grunting before whacking his feet with her tail.
Jack turns to her, prepared to tease the dragon even further.
A low rumble erupts from behind them. The same as before.
Jack spins around, reaching for a staff that isn’t there. He recognizes the loss and takes a step backwards, the pain in his ribs a reminder of how he’d gotten here.
Though the rumbling stops as the dragon at his side spread her wings. She half-wraps him in her wing and curls her tail around where he stands. Her eyes narrow, but despite the protective air she portrays Jack can tell she means no true harm to whatever is lurking in the shadows.
Then, within the shadows a flicker of fire bursts into great flame.
Jack feels backwards, colliding with the dragon’s body in his panic.
She steadfastly lets out a series of rumbles and gnashes her teeth, tail curling further around him as a sign of protection.
The flame grows closer, emerging… walking out of the cavern. It comes closer, close enough that Jack can feel its heat.
The fire stares at him, he stares back.
The dragon protecting him does not move to harm the flame, but continues to gnash her teeth and rumble.
The flame’s attention is pulled from Jack to the dragon. It watches the dragon, as if listening, then its heat diminishes.
Before he can get a good look at the person beneath the flame, the shadows of the cavern shift and curl. Smoke from the dissipating flames and extending shadows gather and form a great black dragon, almost an exact opposite to the one protecting him.
His eyes widen, breath picking up as the black dragon growls softly.
“You were supposed to stay in the cave.”
Jack looks back to where the flame once stood. Eyes green as mountains in summer stare back at him. A man stares back at him.
His form has a lingering faint glow, like light from within pouring out of him. Deep brown-ash covered hair littered with small braids consumes the man’s head. The freckles on his face also have a faint glow, the light dissipating and reappearing like molten flame beneath a layer of stone.
The man tilts his head, a comforting smile crossing his face. He then nods his head toward the white dragon. “A friend of hers is a friend of mine. Toothless will apologize, but first, we should get you back to the water.”
Jack feels the panic wane, though his senses go with him. Perhaps it was the combination of shock, pain, and dragons that sent him over the edge.
Whatever it was, it makes his legs give. He collapses into the white dragon, her concerned chitters filling his ears.
The man of flame and ash hovers over his face, hand hesitating before pulling away.
A familiar feeling of being lifted by the white dragon comforts him. This whole ordeal is so much more than he’d bargained for. Thanks, Manny.
His thoughts drift away from the accursed moon as he feels the relief of cold prickle against his skin. He flinches at the realization of being in water, but does not have the energy to resist.
His fading vision finds the man’s eyes once again. Concern riddles the flame’s face, but Jack has no will in him left to discern the reason.
The darkness pulls him in once again, and the cold welcomes him with open arms.