Ice Dust

[letskicksomeice]

[cw: mild gore, death.]

Okay, guys, I think we're almost done here. Everyone's reported in that all the cell blocks are just about cleared. I'm checking one of the last sections.

[He flits towards one of the secure doors, casually tapping his staff against the security panel housing the ID reader and lock, freezing it until it fritzes out. He pushes through the doors and lands, anticipating that he might have to duck low behind something for cover.]

We've already overstayed our welcome and we shouldn't risk them bringing in backup from outside, so start snowglobing to the Po -

[What he sees on the other side of the door makes him freeze and stagger back as if shot to the chest. Most of the science labs had been emptied in the ruckus; the myths within were quickly dragged back to their cells. But with the base overrun, it looks like this lab was one of the ones quickly abandoned, without the scientists cleaning up after themselves.]

[It is a macabre tableau. On one giant examination table there is a vivisected unicorn, clearly dead, rainbow blood flowing over the sides of the table. It is an ugly sight, something so pure and beautiful, its white coat glossy like pearl, paired with such brutality.]

[But that's not what gives Jack pause and makes it look like he's been punched in the heart. What gives him pause is the other myth, strapped to a table, lots of painful-looking devices and tubes attached to her. The nymph is still an otherworldly beauty. Her skin is still a brilliant mix of blue and green and gray like the ocean meeting a stormy sky. Her face is delicate and her hair is a curly tangle of flowing vines. When she opens her eyes they look like blue marble, blended with cloudy white.]

[But she is dried out, skin cracking like tree bark in places, the leaves and flowers in her viney hair wilted and brown.]

[She is not meant to be dried out. Her skin is meant to glisten like it is perpetually sprinkled with drizzle. Every one of her movements is meant to scatter droplets over the woods like morning dew. She was one of the ones to bring gentle storms to the slopes of Mount Nysa, after all.]

[Seeing slight movement, Jack flies forward, placing his staff against the side of the bed. He starts pulling devices and straps off of her, careful to not yank anything that looks like it'll hurt if he pulls suddenly.]

Aesyle, Aesyle, it's gonna be okay. It's gonna be okay.

["Jack Frost," she breathes it out in a relieved sigh. "I should have known the Guardians would come. We - we lost hope, many of us. That we would be found. But...but I am found." The relief and peace she feels at this flows from her expression and water pours from her eyes an unnatural flow, like exuding water is in her very nature.]

[Some of the devices give him trouble and has to dismantle them carefully, freezing components that need to be weakened and broken.]

You are. I found you. Are your sisters here?

["My sisters were here," she says, eyes closed. "But they walk with our brother Hyas now."]

[Agony falls over Jack's face. Devastation. In the space of a sentence, he has lost fifteen friends at once. His eyes temporarily squeeze shut but the tears stream out anyway, freezing on his cheeks in a fine smattering of ice dust.]

I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry we didn't get here sooner.

[He manages to fight past it and gets the last device undone. He quickly has a globe out, and whips out a portal to the Pole, all business despite the heartbreak. He hefts her up, staff grasped awkwardly in one hand.]

I've got you, though. [His voice cracks.] I'm taking you to the Pole, we can call Epione and her daughters -

[She suddenly reaches a hand up to his face holding it gently but tightly, commanding his attention. He stops flying, knowing, knowing with a sinking feeling, that it's too late. Knowing that she needs to be seen right now. She wanted to be found and she is; he can give her that at least, more of being found. He kneels with her on the floor as if the weight of her and what's about to happen are suddenly dragging him down.]

["You always made our rain so beautiful, turning it into snow, spreading your frost over the trees of Mt. Nysa." She locks eyes, expression filled with long-held longing, unspoken. "I wish...I wish we could've danced one last time, but my sisters...Hyas..." Her eyes gently drift shut. "Hyas waits for me."]

[He hand drops in a last caress, she breathes out a last breath that sounds like a breeze through the trees and finally fades from the world, her body suddenly melting into a gentle flow of water that passes uselessly through Jack's violently shaking hands. His body is so cold that some of it freezes there in a glaze over his fingers and palms. He holds his hands to his chin, bunched up, as if the touch of her essence there will somehow be taken inside himself, preserved.]

[Where his knees touch the puddle frost spreads out on the floor and there could be uglier things left in her place but at the very least the frost lines are beautiful, spiraling outward in an elegant pattern, vaguely shaped like a humanoid form, with spiraling lines where the vines of her hair had been. This brief memorial is ephemeral. It will be gone soon, melted and evaporated into the air. But for now, the place of her death is marked with something that's at least a fraction of how beautiful she'd been in life.]

[The tears on Jack's face will be there for longer, frozen in streaks. Shaking uncontrollably, his watery expression changes from agony to one of barely contained rage. The wind picks up in the room and ice starts to crystallize on every surface.]

[His voice is as hollow as an empty tomb when he finally speaks to the team.]

Get the last of the myths out and get to the Pole. [The myths, not the staff of the Project, but they've already had plenty of time to run. Anyone left - anyone being sent in to try to retake the facility - has made a very serious mistake in not getting out while they could.] Tell me when you're done.

[The plan had just been to run after everyone was out. Jack could never be described as "prudent" in the past, but that was when he didn't have a whole team he was trying to keep alive while in deeply over his head. Many of them were powerful, but blowing that huge a facility on their own would've been a stretch and while there were some hefty power sources within in it, none of them were fully centralized, and some were on closed circuits. No easy way to just hack a bunch of power cells to overload.]

[But...the plan has now changed. Circumstances have changed. The wind briefly shrieks like its being murdered, and the doors Jack flew in through slam off their hinges so hard they embed themselves into the opposite wall.]

[The steel wall.]

[Around him, the metal hallway walls start to frost over, groan, and then crack. The irises of his eyes seem paler and almost lit from within.]

I'm bringing this entire place down.