Breath taker

Part 9- Eternal Sleep

Hello everyone! I am on a roll today! This is number three that I'm writing today. Could I have spent this time doing something more productive? Yes. Did I? No. So here's another part :)

They all just stood there, shocked. They knew that he was gone. But what do they do now? Jack was the first to move, toward Azrael.

"So uh, Azrael?" Jack asked, silently asking about the name.

She sighed. "Azrael is my last name. Lorelai Azrael." she said, answering his question.

"How do you even know him? Why do you hate him? And what did everything he said to you mean?" Jack asked her.

"You really are pushy about that aren't you? I still don't trust you, so why do you keep pushing for the answers that I told you that you wouldn't get?" she deflected with a question.

"I dunno." he said, looking down at his feet.

"I've been dead for.... a really long time. Since before the dark ages. The Moon told me my name and then left me alone. With nothing else. Then Pitch found me. He gave me the answers that he knew and helped me find the answers to some of the ones that he didn't know. We were..... pretty close."

"And then what?" Jack asked.

"And then I left. End of story." she finished.

"Why?" Jack asked.

"You're not getting anything else from me yet." Lorelai refused him.

"But why? Why did you leave him? What did he do?" Jack asked.

"Enough!" she silenced him.

"So.... what are we going to do now?" Tooth asked.

"What can we do? It's not like when Pitch took all the tooth fairies and we just took the teeth instead. How can we give kids good dreams?" Jack asked.

"Better yet, how can we stop Pitch from spreading bad dreams?" Bunny asked.

Lorelai paused, thinking "Dreams..... Sleep...... Death is an eternal dreamless sleep......" she muttered to herself.

"What did you say Lorelai?" North asked. She put a finger to her lips and said "Shh.".

She stood there thinking. Sleep is the closest thing to death that living people go to every night. Can I make a dreamless sleep like Death, for a few hours?

"That's it!" she cried finally. "What... what's it?" Bunny asked.

"Death is an eternal dreamless sleep." she explained.

"What does that even bloody mean?" Bunny was still confused.

Lorelai walked to the center of the room, beneath her feet was a mosaic mural of children asleep, now in darker colors instead of golden. As she knelt down by the cloud of dream sand in the center, she drew a dagger from her belt and placed her scythe beside her.

"What the bloody hell are you doing?" Bunny asked.

Could I? She thought. Could I do this?

Raising the dagger, it began to glow with a green fire burning the blade. Lowering it into the head of the child, she closed her eyes and focused. She let her energy flow through the blade and into the world.

Let the children reside in the black world of quiet peace when they enter the world of sleep at night. Nothing may hurt them at this time. Let nothing be able to pull their chains out of the world, nothing but let the morning call of sunrise. Let this command be stronger than one by any other one. Let nothing be able to cancel it out, without removing the catalyst.

While she silently put her command into the world, the other guardians watched her, watched as the dream cloud glowed a faint green, as it spread to the streams of dream sand which lead to the heads of the sleeping children.

The dreams above their heads, which had before been good dreams, now showed nightmares. As the green glow spread to the dreams, it erased the bad dreams, leaving nothing but the green glow behind.

Lorelai opened her eyes and then cried out a sentence that the guardians couldn't understand. The glow became a blinding light, they looked away as the light grew brighter and brighter.

And then it stopped. It faded back to its normal slight glow. The entire mosaic glowed slightly, the knife included. The dreams above the children's heads were blank.

"It worked?" she whispered. "YES! IT WORKED!" she cried out, glad to have not sent all the souls of the children into limbo.

"What the bloody hell did you do?!" Bunny cried, amazed.

"Death, one of the ways people describe death is like someone is sleeping peacefully. Death is an eternal dreamless sleep. Before there was an afterlife, you'd just drift in nothingness, with no dreams and no thoughts. Sleeping gets you there, it's where your soul rests. The dreams that Sandy and Pitch put in their heads, pulls them out of that world and brings them back to their own heads. When that dream is finished, they return to limbo until another dream comes. This process is repeated multiple times throughout the night."

"Okay, what does that have to do with whatever you just did?" Bunny asked.

"I'm the one who puts people permanently into that limbo world. I have some partial control over who can and can't get in. People sleeping keep a chain to the earth, that's what stops them from drifting forever in limbo. The dreams pull them out by following that chain into limbo and pulling them back to earth. This green stuff, that's my barrier. The dreams now, can't get into limbo and they can't pull the chains to drag the kids out of limbo. The only thing that can pull them out is by waking up."

"Is there a way to stop this thing, once Sandy's got his dream sand back?" Tooth asked, slightly concerned.

"Yup, it's pretty simple actually. You just have to pull the dagger out." she said pointing at the dagger.

"That's it? What's stopping Pitch from just taking it out?" Bunny scoffed.

"Another great question. Bunny, would you mind touching the dagger, just for a second?" Lorelai asked, smiling.

"What did you do to it?" he asked her suspiciously.

"Oh, nothing, nothing. See! There's nothing wrong. C'mon, just touch it. Just one millisecond with your pinky even" she held the handle of the dagger, proving her point.

"Alright then." he walked forward, still wary of it despite the fact that she'd touched it without any consequences.

When he touched it though, his fur began to melt away, leaving behind only bone and burned flesh. He pulled away immediately, his entire paw, and some of his arm, melted away. "Argh!" he cried out. After a few seconds though, his fur began to return, back to normal.

"You see, no one can pull it out except me. If they tried, then they'd melt away and then die." she explained to the rabbit who was examining every millimeter of his paw.

"But just in case..." she added as she blew on the ground causing black fog to cover the mosaic floor.

"Now to find it you'd have to trip over it."

The Guardians were amazed at what she'd just done.

Sandman rushed up to her and hugged her legs. "Ookay, my don't touch me rule is still in place little man." she reminded him. The sandman let go of her legs and began to express his thanks in hand gestures. "Yeah, it was nothing. No need to thank me so much, you remember that this DOES mean that you can't do your job as well. Well, if you could do your job that is." she reminded him.

As Jack watched her talk with Sandman, he thought to himself

Whoever she might have been, she's more powerful than any of us ever imagined. Could she even be more powerful than Pitch?