The Golden Age. A time of great prosperity, of art and learning and exploration reaching to all corners of the universe. Some beings could only partake of it for a moment, their lives barely lasting a hundred years, a mere blink of an eye in the great spiral of time. Others soared through the centuries, watching the cosmos change, ever learning, ever moving forward. It was an age of sprawling cities glittering under their suns, inhabited by all manner of scholars and artists, merchants and mages.
There was still darkness, to be sure, but it was far from the minds of most. Dark Matter, Dream Pirates, Fearlings, and Black Holes were the wraiths that haunted the far edges of the universe, the stuff of childhood stories told in front of a brightly burning fire. Everyone knew the shadows were kept at bay by the Constellations and their shining armies. The Knights' golden galleons sailed the stars, ever watchful, ready to send any dark things fleeing back to their distant hiding places.
If the planet-bound species of the universe thought little of the darkness, the wandering stars and celestial bodies thought even less about them. They gave no real notice to the great cities, to anything created by those bound to the earth. Sometimes they would encounter the gilded ships and race them across the vast starfields, but the shooting stars would often lose interest after a short time.
It was because they remained so aloof that little was know about these celestial travelers, only the Star Wranglers ever really spoke to any of them. Shooting Stars were fairly common and often passed by the inhabited worlds. Comets were much rarer and tended to avoid getting to close to any planet with a sun. One day, however, a family of comets happened to pass by a small world floating by the galaxy's edge.
They shot over the nighttime side of the little planet, and perhaps because of that they didn't notice the darkness. They didn't see the great nightmare beast that drifted there, away from the watchful eyes of the Golden Armies who were patrolling the more populated worlds. It was a Blackout, a terrible thing that fed on all manner of light, and the cold, frozen blue of the little Comets was more than enough to catch its attention.
The monster attacked suddenly, sending the family scattering in all directions. The oldest of the children tried to stay close to his sister, attacking the thing with every ounce of ice he could muster. He could hear his parents on the creature's other side doing the same. They kept moving, shooting in disorienting circles around it, shouting and fighting back as hard as they could.
The boy succeeded in stabbing one of the Blackout's eyes, enraging the monster enough that it left the others to chase him down. He shot away toward the planet, not daring to look behind, only shouting to his family to fly away. They were all right, they had to be. He'd lead this thing away, maybe toward the planet's sun. If he was lucky, the thing would become entranced with the light like a Lunar Moth to a flame, and incinerate itself. Of course, there was a chance that he too would burn up, but he pushed that thought from his mind. He would make it, he would go back and find his family.
The little Comet prided himself on his speed, even the Shooting Stars had trouble keeping up with him. He was exhausted from the battle, however, and he couldn't seem to fly as fast as usual. He could feel the darkness of the thing behind him. Close, it was too close. Could he even escape this planet's gravity field? Too close. He
He gave a pained howl as a spidery tendril wrapped around him. He could feel it as the Blackout sucked the light out of him, like it was taking out part of his very soul. He snarled, biting and clawing at the creature, sending spirals of ice across the dark limb that held him. It was pointless. The thing was too big, too strong. It was squeezing the light, and the life out of him.
He couldn't let it end like this. He couldn't let this thing devour him and then go after his family again. He had to do something. The little Comet dug his frozen claws into the tendril wrapped around him. He may not have had much light left, but he still had ice. He called it from deep inside him, ice as cold as the farthest, deepest edges of the universe. The Blackout shrieked as blue frost feathered its way up the the dark tendril clamped around the Comet, spreading further and further up its dark body. Still the boy didn't let go.
He didn't know how long it was – minutes, hours, days,- but when he dared raise his head, the Blackout was frozen solid. Drained of ice and light, the little Comet struggled out of the motionless Blackout's grip. He tried to fly off, to rejoin his family, but he had no more strength. He was falling. Their battle had taken them closer and closer to the little planet, and he was trapped, pulled down by the planet's gravity.
The Comet shot toward the planet. He should have burned up, but the Tsars Lunar can tell you that willpower is a strange force indeed. Perhaps it was the boy's determination, or the will of the cosmos, or something else entirely, but the Comet crashed to earth. The same could not be said for the Blackout. The boy landed in a crater of ice and shattered rock, curled up unconscious, but alive.
When the Comet awoke again, he could remember nothing. He dragged himself out of the crater, prismatic eyes blinking in confusion. He didn't know who he was, or even what he was. What was this place, and how had he arrived here? There was nothing around him but rocks and trees, and the star-filled sky above. As he stumbled through the darkness, he saw a faint glow ahead. The closer he got, the brighter the cheerily flickering orange light became.
It was a village. The Comet crouched behind a bush, watching. There were people there, though few of them as it was late. They were little humanoids, and they didn't look anything like the Comet. He looked down at his own claws and pale skin, nothing like the tanned creatures he saw before him. Why didn't he look like them?
They didn't seem threatening, so he rose and moved slowly toward the village. All activity stopped, eyes turning to him in wonder and fear. He tried to ask them where he was, and who they were, but they didn't seem to understand him. He was still exhausted from everything that had happened, and his slender legs suddenly gave out. The boy collapsed, trying to grab a nearby railing to keep himself from falling.
Ice shot from his fingertips, coating the side of the building and causing the people gathered there to leap back in surprise. There was muttering among the villagers. "I didn't mean it-" the boy said, trying to pick himself up off the ground. He ended up sending another blast of ice around him, and the muttering turned to shouting.
He yelped as something struck him, why were they throwing things, he didn't mean to do it. Didn't these people know what ice magic was? Some of the villagers grabbed torches, and the Comet's eyes widened in fear of the burning orange flames. They chased him, and he darted back toward the darkness of the woods, away from the angry villagers and the heat of the flames.
The boy didn't stop until the orange glow was far behind him, and the only light came from the stars above and his own faint glow. They were afraid of him. He didn't belong there. He stared at his clawed hands, his long tail. If not here, then where? He wandered until he found the crater, and curled up again inside it. Once his frantically beating heart calmed down, he let sleep claim him.
He tried going back the following morning, but they spotted him and didn't allow him anywhere near. He took to keeping to the forest, only approaching the village in the evening to steal food. He watched the people, and even though they didn't allow him near, he learned from them. He learned to hunt, and to make fire, though he hated it cooked food did taste good. He realized very quickly that he was faster and stronger than them, and that, while they were bound to walk the ground, he could fly (he'd forgotten this as well when he crashed.) Sometimes he felt that he should be able to fly up to the stars shining above, but he could never get that high.
The boy took to wandering, traveling the world, moving from village to village in the hopes of learning something. Although tiny, some of the villages had starports. The boy saw great shining ships descend sometimes, though it was only once in a great while. Beings would come down off of them, ones that looked different from those that lived on the planet. They would trade things, and then the newcomers would ascend back onto the fantastic vessels and disappear once again into the sky. Sometimes the boy thought about trying to sneak onto one, he had become very good at sneaking, but the ship's occupants seemed even more frightening and dangerous than the villagers. So he stayed in the shadows, longing blue eyes fixed on ships as they vanished into the heavens.
One other thing the boy noticed was that while the people around him seemed to grow, change, and eventually die, he remained the same. Years passed. He learned their language, but even when he could speak to them they still feared him. He gave himself a name, Jack. It seemed a common name in many places, and he liked the sound of it.
His powers were still unreliable, and they manifested themselves at the worst times. Jack realized that his appearance was just as frightening to many of the planet's inhabitants as his ice. The word they used was "monster". Monster was a bad thing, and Jack decided that if that's what he really was, he didn't want to be one any longer. Eventually he learned to suppress his magic, and change his form to look more like them, though he retained his pale skin and snowy hair. He could still fly, and use his ice in this form, though to a much lesser extent, and he tried not to do anything frightening in the presence of the planet's inhabitants.
Even so, he sometimes lost control, and when he panicked he changed, became that monster again. Jack hated it, he wasn't a monster, and the more panicked he became, the harder it was to change back into a person. That's what he was, right? A person, like them. Sometimes his ice would hurt people, though he never meant it to. He was chased out of village after village, and they became aware of his human form too. They called him Jack Frost because of his ice, and blamed him any time there was a terrible fall storm or particularly harsh winter. Jack Frost was bad luck.
He gave up trying to fit in, building himself a home in the woods near his crater. Centuries passed, and he became something of a legend. The Ice Monster, the spirit of winter that dwelt in the deep woods and froze unfortunate travelers. Every evening Jack's arctic eyes turned toward the stars, to the place where he felt he belonged. The starships came and went, and one year slipped into the next. Nothing ever changed on this backwater little world.
Nothing, that is, until the arrival of the golden-armored Celestial.