To Ally with the Guardians

Chapter 5: Attack

 Matt took in the room before him and Duran. Lights hung from the ceiling. On one side of the room, there was a crackling fireplace between two sets of tall windows and behind four wooden columns that formed a square around a mostly red rug. A large globe, twinkling on the continents and spinning slowly, and its control board sat opposite the hearth. There were bookshelves on either side of the rug, and Bunny gestured to them.

"This is where we keep all our records of everything. North's naughty and nice lists, our wars, experiments..."

"Experiments?" Matt repeated.

"Like I said, we tried to find a Fearling cure ourselves for a long time. We also did some...other things. Back when Katherine and Ombric were with us." He paused, and it took Matt a few seconds to realize that those two people had to be the Guardians who appeared in the book series but not the movie. Haven had guessed something must have befallen them. "And some things just...happened."

Bunny's eyes glazed over. "After we thought we had defeated Pitch the first time, North's spells started acting real funny. Turning against him all the time. We didn't know what was going on, but Sandy finally stumbled on the idea that we didn't know exactly where their magic was coming from. They did the spells, but what made them work?"

Duran furrowed his eyebrows, and Matt frowned. This didn't sound good.

"Ombric had thought the spellcaster made it work. Katherine, too. She knew a few but didn't use them very much. North stopped casting them as they got more violent, and Ombric hadn't used any for years. But one day, he just disappeared. Gone. We don't know for sure what happened to him, but most of us think he's dead.

"We did our best to protect Katherine before this, and before she had strength of her own. We tried to give her powers, or at least train her in self-defense, and we experimented with things. One North made worked, but it made her veins burn every time she used it. The others all failed, so we trained her in combat.

"Jack killed Pitch, we thought, but Pitch returned, alive, as well as his Fearlings. We don't know how they came back to life, maybe the corruption did it somehow, but they must've known of our weakness with Ombric gone, and Pitch struck one more time before hiding away for thousands of years. Many people died, including Katherine, and others that you don't see around anymore. Jack lost his memories in that battle and stayed away for a while until he was re-chosen to be a Guardian when Pitch returned again, and Jack got his memories back."

Bunny rubbed his temples and continued, "We brought many things she had written here, so we have records of wars, experiments, weapons, and changes, and we also have a lot of maps, like one of Pitch's lair that Tooth's fairies put together after being trapped there for a little while. I was thinking of showing you the book about the Fearlings and Nightmares' battle strategies, though. You need to be prepared the next time they strike. I don't know how much you know, but I can't tell you myself because the other Guardians want to hold a meeti..."

He stopped talking. He was cut off not by a sound, but rather a lack thereof: the Fearlings' silence. It had never occurred to Matt that the Guardians would be as familiar with it as the L.E.R. was.

*/*/*/*

Mallory sprinted through the halls with Whisper right beside him. "I need to...get my kids in here," he said between breaths. The Guardians were in the workshop, so that was where it would be safest.

"What do they look like?" Whisper asked as they screeched to a halt into the cage-like wooden elevator. The Yetis looked at them strangely at first, but when Mallory began to explain his children's appearances as he and Whisper descended, he saw one of the creatures run into the area and shout, making the rest stop working and start hollering as well. They knew something was coming, too.