Secret of Frost and Moon

A Favour for Odin

Alaia Skyhawk: Well, here it is lol. Enjoy :D

Disclaimer: I don't own Rise of the Guardians, the Guardians of Childhood, or any related characters etc. This story is written purely for entertainment purposes.

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Chapter 104: A Favour for Odin

It had been a week since the graduation incident, a week of emotional ups and downs, regrets and celebration. But while he'd hidden it well, for Jack it had struck a bigger impact than he'd let on. He was thrilled that Jamie was now a Constellation, but the image of Sophie dead before her revival continued to haunt him. It likely haunted Jamie as well, and Sophie's friend Alicia, but for the Spirit of Winter it held a different degree of pain.

Jack was no stranger to members of the Bennett Family dying young. He'd seen it often enough in previous centuries, in the time where vaccines didn't exist and childhood illnesses took all too many young lives. But as technology had grown, and medicine had improved, young deaths had become less and less common. He'd started taking it for granted that the chances of a member of the family dying early in life were almost nil.

And then Sophie had been shot at the age of just twenty-one.

Jack gritted his teeth at the thought and pushed it aside, channelling his emotions into the storm he was shaping over Antarctica. Southern Winter may be the quietest of his two weather-working periods, and it might be true his Lieutenants could have easily handled this particular storm. But he needed a distraction... Something to do rather than think of the temptation to follow Sophie around once she started tracking down the fanatics, just so he could freeze them solid as he felt they so justly deserved.

Except vengeance against mortals was something forbidden to immortals. Immortals were too powerful, even the weakest ones, and mortals had no real defence against them. Wizards were capable against the weaker immortals, but even one of Ombric's calibre would have no chance against an immortal as strong as a Spirit of the Seasons. Petty-level retaliation, akin to pranks or simple expressions of displeasure, were the limit of what was allowed. Except pelting the fanatics with mere snowballs wasn't going to improve Jack's mood.

And so instead he let the winds throw him around, riding their fury through the heart of the icy storm. It was the best distraction he had, with their being few places in the South of the World where it was cold enough for him to go have snowball fights with children. He still had four and a half months to wait before the earliest he could do that up north.

When the shaping was done he retreated to the airways above the clouds, although not all the way into the far upper reaches. Instead he lingered where he could skim across the cloud-tops, and gaze upon a night-time misty world lit by star and moonlight.

It was there that the trio of immortals found him. Each approaching in a chariot pulled by a black dragon of some sort. Yet the glare they received for intruding on Jack's solitude, prompted all three immortals to employ the ability to fly on their own and send the chariots to a discrete distance.

It was Odin and his two remaining 'sons', Thor and Loki. The last remaining members of the Norse Pantheon; they were usually isolationist and rarely went beyond the borders of their joint home base around the Odin Archipelago. And as Jack watched them approach, he couldn't help but feel irritated and angry that they'd intrude here in Antarctica which was indisputably his home base.

He narrowed his eyes at them, his voice edged with warning.

"What do you want?"

Loki drifted forward. Of the three he actually had a comparatively friendly relationship with Jack, due to being a Winter Legend. Not that they'd ever interacted much beyond the obvious occasional warnings from the Spirit of Winter, with regards to unscheduled or excessive storms over the old Norse territories. Jack had granted him a degree of leeway, somewhat similar to what Peboan had been granted, but Loki had edged close to the limit of it frequently enough that he wasn't Jack's favourite Winter Legend either. Thor wasn't much better off, given he received similar scoldings from Ariko and Achieng for his propensity of creating sudden thunderstorms over inhabited regions of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. Even Oisin had reprimanded him once or twice. It was only the fact the pair were to all intents and purposes doing their jobs, that had protected them from worse punishments than verbal lashings.