The Corrupted One (a Choose-Your-Own-Path Christmas RotG Fanfiction)

8.2

"Thanks," you tell him. "I bet you'll be good, too!"

"I can't wait for my turn!" he exclaims.

Once everyone's all ready for another game of freeze tag, they all stand up, and who's going to be the tagger this round is discussed. All of a sudden, however, the Warrior Eggs' faces turn to angry. There's something amiss in the Warren. Everyone prepares for a fight and stands around your brother, the only defenseless one there. North hands you one of his swords again as you prepare to fight whatever evil is here. You begin to hear a faint cracking noise and scan the area, searching for its source. Your e/c eyes fall on some tiny cracks that are forming in one of the walls of the Warren, and, soon, those cracks get bigger and more numerous as they form a circular formation. Everyone else notices them as well. You all quickly go over to the gigantic pile of corrupted coins, ready to defend it.

Suddenly, the cracked rock breaks and crumbles down onto the bright green grass, showering it with its dust, and a landslide of other rock crumbles follows it, revealing a newly-made tunnel. Pitch comes out of a shadow formed by a rock near it, and Órfhlaith appears next to him, seeming to have teleported. Down the tunnel come five more teenagers, and they land on top of each other at the bottom on a pile of rocks. They all shout in discomfort and attempt to sort themselves out. As they do so, both Pitch and Órfhlaith seem to be impatient with them.

"I told ya," the latter says to the former, "dat dat spell was not a good idea."

"Well, since you refused to teach them how to teleport, calling the spell too 'complicated' for beginners, there were very few other options," Pitch retorts. You, Uaithne, Shannon, and the Guardians don't make any moves yet. You personally are waiting for the others on your side to start fighting first, and they seem to be waiting to see if Pitch and Órfhlaith will mention anything else about their plan. Otherwise, you're sure that they would've attacked by now.

The five unknown enemies manage to get free from one another and stand up, with dust on their clothes, scratches on their faces, and corrupted coins visible in their front pants pockets. Pitch and Órfhlaith have employed more Luck Masters. But this can't possibly be their plan, can it? To just make some kids have bad luck so that they can tell which ones are Luck Masters and which aren't? If Órfhlaith can already sense power in people, why make children unlucky?

The teenagers then look at Pitch and Órfhlaith, as if waiting for them to tell them what to do. Their two commanders give them exasperated looks.

"Just attack dem already!" Órfhlaith shouts at them. They all turn to look at you and the others. The sound of spells being spoken soon fills the air as both sides attack.

You fly up into the air, hoping to get a better view of the fight so that you can develop some kind of battle strategy. As you observe the starting blows of the battle, you realize that these five new teenagers seem to have practically no clue what they're doing. They're in fact "beginners", as they were called. One of the girls, the one with long, curly light blond hair and green eyes, keeps on looking back at Órfhlaith, as if asking "Am I doing this right?", and one of the two boys, the one with red hair and brown eyes, also looks particularly unconfident in his abilities. You decide to use this to your advantage as Pitch and Órfhlaith join the fight.

"Hey!" you shout to the boy when he's in the middle of saying a spell. His concentration is broken, and his eyes fill with fury.

The boy is clearly aiming his next spell at you, but, before you can move out of the way or distract him again, one of Bunny's egg bombs explodes near him, blowing him back about five feet and onto his bottom, disorienting him and giving you time to get away.

It seems like your side is going to win. That is, until Nightmares start pouring in through the tunnel. They cause the battle to be a lot more chaotic, and, soon, you become so disoriented that you can't tell where you are in relation to anyone else, neither good nor evil. Their dark sand and yellow eyes are now nearly the only thing you see, and their scream-like neighs are nearly the only thing you hear. You try to cut through the layers of them that are surrounding you, but more Nightmares replace the ones that are destroyed. You soon hear Órfhlaith's voice cut through the dark masses, and you find your vision going dark. The ground collides with your body as you fall from standing, and then everything goes black.

***

You wake up to Bunny shaking you.

"Wake up! Wake up, mate!" he shouts at you, and you open your eyes to prove that you're awake. He backs off and walks away as you sit up, head hurting and body aching, and try to get a grip on your surroundings. You're still in the Warren, but everything is destroyed. Warrior Eggs are cracked in half, rock fragments that spread from their original place by the tunnel are everywhere, the dust from them has dulled some of the landscape, and all of the corrupted coins are gone. You then look at the other beings in the area and notice that only Tooth and Bunny are conscious, both not looking like they're in the best shape, and they're trying to wake up the others. Carefully getting back up on your feet even though your pain persists, you join them. First you wake up your brother, which takes a while, and then you wake up Shannon, which only takes about half as long. By then, nearly everyone else has been woken up. You all join together to help wake up Uaithne, who is the only one left unconscious and takes twice as long to wake up as b/n. He seems to have been hit with the spell the hardest.

"It takes two-and-a-half minutes to say dat spell," he says once he's fully conscious. "Very powerful. We should've kept her distracted. I didn't even know she knew it."

"Alright," Bunny says. "We're goin' ta North's place now."

"What?!" North exclaims. "But what about making sure toys aren't destroyed in an attack?!"

"There's like, what, four months until Easter?" Bunny retorts. "It's gonna take me ages to clean this up!"

"I can help wid dat," Uaithne mentions, but Bunny and North don't seem to notice.

"Well, there's only two days until Christmas Eve night!" North shoots back, "unless we've been out for long enough! In that case, there would only be one!" They continue to fight as everyone watches, your minds still too muddled to comprehend what's going on very well, much less to have an educated opinion.

"Stop it!" b/n finally shouts. "Just stop fighting! Shouldn't we be more worried about what the Boogeyman is doing to those coins?!" This catches everyone's attention. "And I say that we should go to North's workshop so that we can make sure that everyone's presents are made in time for Christmas and so that we can make sure that it's not attacked. Anyway, weren't you guys saying that you needed more information? You have it now! So stop fighting and do something!" You aren't really sure how the new information can help you guys, but maybe Uaithne, Shannon, or one of the Guardians has an idea. Or maybe your brother.

Everyone's silent for a few seconds.

"I guess you're right," North admits. He opens up a portal, and everyone but Uaithne and Bunny goes through. You assume that those two are cleaning up the Warren as you go take a shower, washing off dust, dirt, and a bit of blood. When you return to the living room, there are crackers and a pitcher of hot chocolate with some cups next to it on the coffee table. It appears that a few others have washed themselves as well, and Uaithne and Bunny are back. Uaithne hands you you and your brother's things that you two left at the Warren, which, thankfully, haven't been covered in dust or demolished, as you sit down on one of the large red couches in the room.

"Well," North says. "I think it's time to get to work."

Go to 9.4.