Return of The Nightmare King

The Choice That Could Spell Untold Disaster

 Somehow knowing that Jack would return to the Pole once he had the chance to figure things out North, Bunny, and Team Phantom loaded into the sleigh and flew due north for the workshop. As they landed into the icy bay and slowing to a stop they were surprised to see Jack landing right next to them with an unconscious Nyreena, or what looked like Nyreena, in his arms. Completely baffled by the sight North only had to looked in the former rebel's eyes to know that this was a serious situation. Quickly leading them to an empty guestroom Jack laid Nyreena on the bed and saw the first time that her appearance had changed again. The sand had grown to encompass every inch except her left eye and her left arm. Everything else had transformed into a Nightmare version of herself. Everyone was completely baffled as to how this happened Jack looked at them and explained, "Even she and I don't know how this is turning her into one of them. All that I know is that she asked me to fire an ice blast at the gauntlet, she made a shield to protect herself, I fired, but the blast somehow ricocheted off and sent her into the side of the mountain we were on, knocking her out cold. I didn't know what to do so I brought her here for North to help out on."

"Did she happen to say how this started by any chance?," Tucker asked, getting rather curious about this himself.

Searching his memories Jack distantly heard the princess's voice in his head saying something about when it first appeared to which he repeated in his reply, "She did say that it first appeared covering her entire right arm and had started traveling up her neck and head and turned her right eye from blue to yellow. But when I saw her it was covering the top diagonal half of her face as well as her upper body and starting to go down her legs. And now that it's come to this who knows how long she has until she's consumed completely."

Plugging what Jack said into his calculations Tucker continued to think for a few more minutes when it quickly clicked into place and exclaimed, "I got it! It's coming from the gauntlet!

"Huh? What are you getting at, Tuck?," Danny asked, surprised by the outburst and confused by his friend's reasoning.

"It's the reason why she's getting incased," Tucker explained. "When Pitch gave her the gauntlet, he must have designed it to be in sync with her powers so that everytime she used them it would activate its secret power and transform her. And if my guess is correct the more she used her powers in a single fight the faster the transformation would progress."

"While at the same time keep it a secret from Nyreena so that she would be duped into using her powers as much as possible and only realize it when it was too late," Sam added, slowly getting the sneaky suspicion that this was part of Pitch's schemes. "Somehow it was a miracle that she and Jack would end up on the same mountain so that he could bring her here before it was too late."

It was that moment that Nyreena finally began to stir, slowly coming around and getting reacquainted with what was going on. Her left eye blinking a couple of times it showed her expression that something was wrong, her eye looking all around like she was trying to correct her vision but she wasn't able to. Taking her time to lean up she tried to say something and her glowing gaze reflected that she was starting to freak out at the fact that something was really wrong. Her fear quickly starting to esclate it began the power up the black sand causing it to make her act almost erratic. Getting very concerned Jack quickly went over to her, grabbed her shoulders, and told her, "Nyreena, take it easy. The sand is almost encasing you completely but not just yet. You need to calm down and take it easy before the sand makes you do something drastic. You're safe now. You don't need to be afraid anymore. Just don't use your ghost powers for a while. It's the reason why your turning into a Nightmare."

Looking right into Jack's eyes Nyreena instantly took his advice and calmed down right away, the sand losing its power and returning back to its dormant state. Sighing in relief Jack let go of her shoulders and gave her a smile that said everything was going to be alright. Seeing that she needed a way to talk to everyone Tucker handed over his PDA and said, "Here, you can use this to communicate with until we can figure out a way to free you."