(Content/trigger warnings for this chapter: depression-like thing, anxiety)
--Ranya--
You know, I'd thought I'd have a plan for how this would go down.
Instead, I stood, mud up to my ankles, sweating under my winter clothes, eyes narrowed at Pitch twenty feet away with no idea how to kill him. I hadn't managed a good hit this whole war. The world tilted under my feet in flashing colors, and Isabelle—muttering—and the hole to the lair hunched behind me.
Fear Angels stood in a large ring around us ten feet deep, towering over our heads like the white mist. I glanced back at Isabelle, but they weren't coming for her. They weren't coming for us at all.
The sky was a bright green in my vision that morning. I tried to push my weight down as best I could and raised my dagger in front of me. Today, I fought for love—for people to actually like me, for the Guardians' lives, and most importantly, for my family's.
"Fight me, Ranya!" Pitch opened his arms wide. "You have no one left!"
I stumbled to the ground as I charged.
---
**Isabelle**
Ranya wouldn't win.
It was clearer to me now than ever.
Where was the Watcher? Where was the soother?
I had to help before they came.
Echoes flashed around me, no longer appearing one at a time, but six or seven, their voices combining, jumbling with one another. The muttering under my breath grew.
Something was off, though. I could sense, during the brief breaks between Echoes, when none of my other powers were active, that time was out of balance in certain places—where I had rewound it. It nearly felt like I could see, in those patches of blood-leafed branches and old animal corpses, faces. Faces with wrinkles and fangs, or half a head of shock white hair, or two pupilless eyes. I thought I saw Lotus once. And I thought, beneath the Echoes, I heard a thrum of voices crying to join them. Or begging me to run. Lotus begged me to run.
My body shook as I turned to the Fear Angels. I fumbled with the zipper on my backpack, nearly releasing the paper flowers with little butterflies on them.
My heart pounded as hard as it ever had. My ears rang when Fear Angels turned toward me, their bodies towering at full height.
And they rushed me. I fumbled with the flowers and tried to control my fear, reason with myself, but my powers erupted from my body like canons. Shields threw the Fear Angels back, blasts of light seared through them, and time reverted them to nothing. They all cried out in pain. They latched onto each other.
Though I could make myself run into the woods toward Pitch's lair, I couldn't calm my fear to shut off this power storm.
"I'm sorry!" I cried. "Stay back! Please! I can't control them!"
The Fear Angels didn't listen.
"Please! I don't want to hurt you! I love you; I have gifts." I gave up grabbing an individual paper blossom. When I tried to fling them together past my powers, prove my love, however, shields and bolts of light blasted them into the ground. The Fear Angels pressed toward me more quickly.
---
--Ranya--
I shouldn't have been alive at this point.
Blood ran from a long gash in my leg, several in my side, and two in each arm. My body stung and burned and ached.
Pitch teleported away. I spun and received a blow to the face, falling back hard as my vision reeled.
What can I do?
---
**Isabelle**
The Fear Angels surrounded me.
"If you back up, perhaps I'll calm enough that my powers will stop!" I told them. They didn't retreat. "I'm not trying to attack you or Pitch! Please back up! I have gifts for you! I know you guys have been lonely."
Ranya cried out in pain from the center of the Fear Angel wall.
When Pitch killed her, or paralyzed her at least, he would come for me next.
---
--Ranya--
His next blow, I blocked with the dagger. Barely. I lunged toward him, and he dissolved into a shadow from the Fear Angel wall. I tripped to the slippery grass.
Though I scrambled away from the next blow of that dark scythe, his face leering, I wasn't able to stand. Wait, I told myself. Just wait.
---
**Isabelle**
My mind could only focus on the danger of the Fear Angels' presence. It couldn't come up with ideas for how to prove I cared about them, or how to convince them to stand back.
I could only repeat, "I'm sorry!"
Then the circle of Fear Angels surrounding me broke open. Pitch stood in the distance, staring through the gap. At me.
---
--Ranya--
I rushed Pitch as he strode toward Isabelle. He's changing targets? Why? But my plan—! The world swerved beneath me. I gritted my teeth and sank my stick hard into the mud every step. But still, I fell and began to bear-run.
The Fear Angel circle began closing in around me. Cutting me off from Pitch.
I ran as fast as I could, my hands squelching and sticking in the mud, but the creatures soon crouched too low for me to pass underneath. They locked their bodies together.
I had too much forward momentum to stop easily, and collapsed onto my shoulder.
When it came to it, I wasn't fast enough this time.
Something cold and hard pressed against the side of my neck. My body went slack as my eyes shut and all my senses faded to static, then nothing conscious at all.
---
**Isabelle**
I shrieked as Pitch strode toward me.
"Did you think your sister would win, Isabelle?" He opened his arms and stepped to the side.
But I couldn't stop watching his whole form, his every movement, making certain he wasn't attacking me. My body shook like giant, choppy waves.
I had to stop being so scared. If I didn't, I would die. That was what I was scared of all along, wasn't it? Death? That dangerous supernatural beings would kill me?
And here one was about to do so. But other dangerous supernatural beings could be my allies, like the Guardians. I wasn't scared of them.
"You don't have to follow Pitch," I told the Fear Angels. "Come follow me. I don't kill, I don't hurt people if I can help it. And I don't make my family fight for my love. I'm your mother; you were made from my fear," I said louder. "And real mothers don't hurt their children."
Pitch vanished, and though I desperately wanted to believe he had left, I knew he most likely wouldn't have. I whipped my head around, searching for him. When I sensed a presence at my back, just out of reach of my powers, I whirled to face his scythe. I barely dodged its slicing swing. He moved quicker than the powers erupting from my body.
"It's too late!" he cried.
My ears rang louder. No!
The world burst into more color than the rainbow held. It consumed my world like fireworks combined with... holiday lights. The world slowed and breathed. Light enveloped Pitch's scythe-holding arm and yanked him back as he hollered.
But a blade sliced through the glowing butterflies surrounding him. He shouted, pushing through the swarm, and started toward me. I turned and ran.
I screamed as a soft rustling came from his direction, and Black Sand wound around my chest and squeezed hard. I couldn't breathe. I clawed at it. Pitch hollered again, and the sand fell to the ground.
The butterflies, once Fear Angels, swarmed the forest. One of them, green, landed on Ranya's back. Her eyes flew open, and she stumbled to her feet. She glanced around, and looked at me, then at the butterflies swarming the air. Her eyes widened in what looked like horror.
A gathering of them flew out of Pitch's lair holding North brandishing his swords. His eyes were open, and his face broke into a smile when he saw me. The butterflies brought out Bunny, Sandy. Tooth and Jack. All with their weapons.
Then Mom, with a beaming smile. Her eyes glistened with pride. Dad, holding his arms open, his body relaxed. And Zachary, laughing hysterically. He jumped up and down. I ran to them.
Butterflies, only a couple of inches long, landed on my arms and head as my powers calmed to a low hum beneath my skin.
But Pitch was still at large.
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