The Big Four: Return of the Dark Ages

When All That is Left are Nightmares

Jack Frost curled in on himself as he slept.

He couldn't control his dreams.

They were horrifying, terrifying him in his sleep.

He couldn't open his eyes and wake himself even though he begged to be woken.

He could hear the menacing laugh echo off the night sky, which appeared to be closing in around him as if he was in an ever-shrinking box. It echoed constantly, vibrating off his eardrums and sending freezing-cold chills down his spine. Memories flashed across his eyes, and he couldn't break his sight from it.

He was forced to watch.

The ground trembled below him, causing him to slip and fall; which only made things worse for him as a dark kind of ice protruded from the walls surrounding him, getting larger and longer in length as the seconds ticked by.

If he couldn't escape, he was going to be impaled by his own element.

The screams of his friends reverberated off the walls of his confinement, and he could see them being sucked down through the hungry black hole before his eyes.

He reached out to them, but his arm felt like lead and it wouldn't leave the ground. He cried out, the ground disappearing from beneath him just as the pointy ends of the black ice collided into each other. He fell, and kept falling; stuck in a perpetual state of time and space.

It was just his luck to drop his staff in surprise of the sudden drop, and he watched with sorrow as it tumbled down, down, down into the inky blackness.

Great.

Now he was stuck without an outlet for his powers.

Shadows lingered in every corner of the endless abyss he was falling into, reaching out for him; teasing him softly as their silky black tendrils licked at his extremities.

The echoing laugh got louder as he fell, and his fear left the control of mental thought. Soon, that was the only thing he felt in his entire body.

Fear.

He tried to reach out, grab anything to let him know he was still alive; that he wasn't alone in this empty darkness.

But he only grabbed the shadow's arms, and they slipped through his fingertips like butter.

He let the tears fall, not caring if they froze on his face or not. For all he knew they could be falling upwards in this surreal mess. Water soaked his hoodie as he began to warm up again, and his hair plastered itself to his forehead.

Something tugged at his foot, and he let out an anguished scream; trying to call the Wind to take him out.

But the Wind didn't respond.

The Wind had left him, had died out itself along with everything else sane in the world.

Jack cried, succumbing to the unknown force dragging him under. The pressure increased, and he could feel himself choking on water that wasn't there.

His eyes bulged in shock.

He was drowning again.

He looked up, in hopes of seeing the moon.

It saved him once, maybe it will save him again.

His only answer was darkness.

Jack let out a gurgled cry, trying to swim up in a hole without water. His hoodie was growing heavy, and his lungs were giving out. Black spots danced across his eyes as he tried one last attempt at life.

Golden eyes flashed before him in the dark, but he was too out of it to scream. The black tendrils of the dark grazed against his skin, playing with his hoodie and exposing his bare skin.

White teeth glinted at him as the shadows cut into his skin, his mind swimming with too many unreadable emotions and thoughts to make sense of anything anymore.

He felt no pain, felt no fear.

Only darkness.

He watched as his own dark red blood floated up into the air above him, and he gave out one last spluttering cough.

His eyelids grew heavy, his lungs filled with water. Pressure exerted full force on all sides of his body, squeezing him into what felt like a piece of paper.

He closed his eyes, succumbing to the darkness. The only thing remaining was the maniacal echoes of the dark laughs of that night and the screams of his friends as they experienced the same terrible fate he had.

One thought whispered in his head as everything inside him slowly died.

You've met with a terrible fate, haven't you?