Chapter 1: Survival/Death

Master Asgeir Swortssen

We write to you with heavy hearts, and regret as that you must receive the news by this message.

Valarton was overrun last night. Several of our brave brothers and sisters lost their lives while trying to mount a defense against the creatures. Ironic, considering we were saving lives as opposed to taking them. Rest assured their deaths will not be in vain.

Now come your new targets. They are assassins of a faraway land sent to kill someone important, and they will not be missed by any in this world. End them, and take the document with their own target's name. Then kill their own target. While the mission your targets have been sent on is a mission failed by many, you are one of the order's most skilled warriors. You cannot, and will not fail us.

Blodet Renner Kaldt

The Council of Voices

My last victims lay down at my feet in a mangled mess. One fool had desperately tried to hold his arm in place after I cut it clean off, and another had a massive hole where his throat was. Both were shining red with blood, drenched all over with steam rushing off them in the snow.

I pulled my mask off my mouth, and knelt down, checking the body for the assassination orders. The Council of Voices had let me know that their benefactors didn't care who would spill the blood of their target, as long as it happened.

At last I found the document. I was partly expecting such an important mission to have such an important client. I checked the body for a sealed envelope, but couldn't find one. After checking another body, I found that these assassins were paid up front entirely, and that the clients were hundreds of peasants throughout the realm. They had pooled together as much money as they could, and it all amounted to a decent dinner, and maybe passage out of the realm. Maybe south to someplace warm. I took the money with me.

At last I found the document with the name of the target. It was a small piece of parchment folded in half.

"So what kind of target demands so many clients and such big a coin?" I said to myself, though I dreaded the answer that I read.

I opened the letter. It had only four words: Elsa, Queen of Winter.

Heading north was hard. The winter winds licked at my face, threatening to kill me in one swift movement, but I carried on. It was like a stroke of impossible luck when I found an inn. They were almost extinct since the winter robbed us of the resources needed for one to work.

I went inside. A few people were in, but many were trying to keep warm by either the one candle, or the small fire going.

"Can't you throw another log on this fire?!" Cried one of the men. "I'm freezing my arse off!"

I scoffed as I sat at the bar, not looking at the man. "Use your brain, fellow. That fire's only going to give you minimal warmth. We all know that."

The man looked at me, walking up to the bar. I could just feel his eyes staring at me without needing to look at him myself. "And who are you to say that, boy? You can't be, what, 28?"

"So? I've lived these past five years like everyone else."

"Ever had to survive on your own before this damn winter? Do you know what it's like out there? To be hunted by wolves and snow monsters, worried that you'll never see the light of day ever again?"

I looked down at the bar table. Someone played a game of tic tac toe with their knife on the table. Another had drawn a happy face. Smiles were extinct as much as dragons.

"I had to survive on my own long before the Days of Warmth. What did you do?" I kept staring at the smiley face, it's blank dots for eyes staring back.

"I served a noble family." Said the man. "But they all met the same fate that most did out there: they froze to death. What of you, boy?"

"Scavenging. I grew up with only an adoptive family, and they taught me to survive before letting me go my own way."

"Orphan?"

"Worse." I replied, carelessly taking my glove off to show my burn mark. A long diagonal slash across the back of my right hand. "Bastard."

"So? You never knew your family?"

"No, I knew plenty of my family. Especially my mother's husband."

"Oh ho! Most would think it was the father who was unfaithful, but not you! Who was she? Your mother?"

I shook my head, still looking at the face in the wood. It was once a nice cherry wood, but chipped and slashed far beyond repair. "I don't tell anyone that. Especially those I just met!" I said.

The man backed away. Three steps, I heard. "Alright." Then he said to the barkeep. "Two ales. Warm as you can."

As the barkeep gave them to us, he asked me more questions as he sat beside me. I just kept staring at the face, not touching the ale. Frost covered the glass. "Forget who she was, your mother, for I won't ask. But what about her husband?"

"He was a true fool. Let his fears get the better of him at every turn. I was almost raised as his trueborn, but I'm glad he found out that I was a bastard."

"Why?"

"I'm now believed to be dead by most who have heard my name. And I would never change what fate awaited him."

The man took a long swig of ale. This conversation would end only one way, but he didn't know it entirely yet.

"What did you do before all this? This Eternal Winter?"

"The same I've done before the winter: find food, water, shelter, and above all else, survive."

"That must be harder than ever now, since we all have to face the blizzard every day."

I looked at him with fury. "That's no blizzard." I said. "And you know it."

The man laughed. "So this fool of an almost-father. What happened to him? Did he freeze out there like everyone else?"

"Oh, god no." I said. "I watched him from afar as I was trained in the same art that my true father was taught in, and then when the time was right, I killed him."

The man stood up slowly, looking at how I had my hand in my cloak. He suddenly saw the fate that awaited him in less than thirty seconds. "Okay...take it easy, friend. I won't hurt you."

"No, you see it's too late for that. You asked the wrong questions to the wrong man. Now you have to die."

He did. No words were able to escape his throat before I slid one of my daggers across it. His blood poured out like anyone who met my steel before: rushing fast down his reddening shirt in bright crimson. Some of it splattered out quick onto the bar, drowning the smiley face in blood.

I grabbed my bow, and in quick succession, shot all the remaining men in the room. The barkeep as well. No one can know my real story and live, no matter how much I tell them of it.

I walked around the bar table, and pulled the arrow out of the barkeep's chest, then grabbed a bottle of ale. It may sound insane to think that pint the man bought me was poisoned, but I could never be too careful. I bit the cork, yanked it out, and took a swig. Then I went back around, pulling the arrows out of my victims. Ammunition had become almost as rare as diamonds. With the winter freezing the branches and making them too weak, and resources like steel and feathers running dangerously low, it became regular procedure for all of us to take our arrows back from our victims.

One of the men I still hadn't killed entirely. He was straining just to breathe.

"Why did you kill me?" He said, crying under his breath. "All I wanted out of this live was to make something of myself, but then the world had to freeze and show it's true colors to us all."

I kneeled down, and looked him right in the eye. "I'm not a looter. I had to grow up as a thief to survive, but I will not steal from this inn. I only killed you because anyone who would know who I am would do whatever it took to kill me."

The man laughed with his dying breathes. "The world has gone to shit. We wake up wondering if this will be our last day in this world, having to worry about freezing to death, or bandits, and I die from a paranoid traveler. Why couldn't this blizzard take me?" He nodded down as the life left his eyes, the air rushing out of his mouth.

I ran my hand down his face, closing his eyes. I grabbed my stuff, and into the store room. There was plenty of food in there, and I would take some. Despite my promise to the man, this world was one where only liars, thieves and scoundrels would live. All the rest would freeze or be killed by bandits.

But the food wasn't why I was in there. Store rooms of inns throughout the realm were more insulated than any other room in the inn for obvious reasons. I opened my bag, grabbing the book to look back one last time before I set off for my death.

Ninety-two percent. That was how many people of the realm's population died in the past five years. This world has gone from it's fair civilization throughout the kingdoms into one freezing hell. The nobles and royals are all but dead. Most of the dead left this life in the cold, if the bandits and thieves didn't kill them first. I still did what I had done since I was a kid to survive: spill blood of others for money. I was born of the Voices of the Blade. We were the most feared assassins in all the realm, and no one alive had ever heard of us. Anyone who ever did wouldn't have the chance to tell people. My father, my real father was the leader of the Voices for the latter part of his life. He left me behind the heritage which I truly belonged to when I was found by my brethren. My mother indeed had me as a bastard, and it wasn't until her husband discovered that I wasn't his son that he did what anyone of his royal status in the kingdoms would: he took me from my mother, branded me with the Bastard's Mark on my right hand, and then left me in the woods to die. Those who expected me to come out of my mother's womb were told that I was stillborn, and ever since then my mother was kept a close eye on by her husband.

My brothers knew the truth about me: that I was not of pure born, but was abandoned by my would-be alleged father. They found me, and took me in as one of their own. When I was four, they began training me to master the blade and truly see what it meant to wield it. I killed my first man at nine, forged my own blade at twelve, and at fourteen, concocted my own unique poison to act as my rite of passage into the Inner Circle of the Voices. I had now reached the age of 28, and ranked high among the brotherhood. We keep no tabs, but I could count how many lives I took from this world: five-hundred and forty-nine, one-hundred and seven after the beginning of the winter. Now I had one more target: Elsa. I wasn't the first to try, but I would be the last. She killed hundreds of people like me, including thirty four of my own brothers.

I doubted I could make it home alive, but I knew one thing: out of my mind, out of options, and on a one way trip into the heart of the storm with only one one thought in mind: I. Would. Kill. Her.

King Agdar of Arendelle, Elsa's father, wrote a journal which he kept hidden away from everyone. My brothers in the Voices and I found this when we recovered the treasures from the wreckage of the ship which he and Queen Idun died in. I kept it, as no one else could see the potential value it held. I felt it could contain secrets about Arendelle's military, had it's own secrets to show, and could prove to be worth much coin. The entries I found were not helpful up until this point...

Winter, 28 years ago. Entry #753

The winters grow colder here every year. I find that with each passing year, the cold seems to put pressure on my ability to rule. My wife Idun is expecting our firstborn to come in a month or so. She suspects a boy, but I think a girl would be a better heir for me. Tradition in Arendelle follows that the oldest, boy or girl, will be the current monarch's heir. Not very traditional, but then again, neither is Arendelle's history. A queen would be a change, as we have had four generations of kings in a row, myself included. Idun seems to be taking this expectation for our daughter very nervously. She stirs in the middle of the night, muttering and shivering. She wakes up, ice cold and tears in her eyes. Every night I tell her that everything will be perfect for our daughter, and nothing will go wrong. She will rule Arendelle with compassion and justice.