Ice Bound Heart
A/N
Hi, this is my first Frozen fanfic, super excited to publish it, enjoy and remember to favorite and review, Thanks!
-Glaive
Suddenly, he was there again, wandering through that scorched city, ashes littering the blackened cobbles, the fires that had been consuming the city now dying. A man stood awestruck by the totality of the destruction. Not a soul was to be seen or heard, indeed it seemed that the city's heartbeat had been violently stripped of it. His face betrays a long and dark past, scars marring what would have been otherwise fine features. There was no concentrated area where the scars resided, simply scars across his entire face, speaking of a life spent fighting. He takes a step forward, unsure of his surroundings, his senses screaming at him to leave this place. Yet he needs to know more, he was once told that he would find a city of ashes in a shadow of death. He remembers he was told that the clock tower was where the ruin began. He scans the desolated skyline for a clock tower, but sees nothing. Sighing he wonders if what he was told was wrong, then he sees it. A face of a clock tower lying sideways in the middle of a plaza, the surrounding ground blackened heavily. He approaches gingerly, expecting the worst, and when he is not more than 5 five feet from its face, he realizes his imagination mightn't have been wrong. Then, like so many times before, his dream warps and the nightmare begins all over again.
Ennen woke with a gasp, fear still gripping his mind. Struggling, he props himself up against the tree and sighs. The coals of his campfire has long since died, leaving only mournful charred black lumps. After all these years, you're still here old friend, He thinks to himself, shuddering at the memory. He can tell that Artorias is asleep though, he can feel part of his mind being slightly empty. You'd think a man and his ghost companion would be perfectly in sync, he smiled to himself on the inside. He looks up at the sky, judging it to be around 6 in the morning, ideal time to get going. He slid out of his blanket and rolled it up, tying it to his bag, and stuffed heavily wrapped leather book into the top. He then grabbed his pot that he had forgotten to put away last night and attached it to one of the straps on the pack. Some Named you are Ennen, forgetting to put your things away, you've gotten sloppy, he chided himself mentally. He paused and stared at the pot when another person entered his mind, Artorias, the ghost of a warrior king who had tethered himself to Ennen's mind, it was a long sad story. I wonder how long you've had that pot Artorias wondered, as Ennen gazed at it.
"Probably since Nils died" Ennen responded out loud, it wasn't the first time he had appeared to be talking to the silent air.
Huh Artorias responded
"You certainly have deep and profound feelings today don't you?" Ennen mused, as he slid on his pack. And picked up his sword.
Not as deep as thinking about women you haven't seen in 5 years Ennen.
That made Ennen chuckle, he never did get the last word with the King. On that note, he started trudging through the thickening snow, winter was coming on hard, as it apparently always did in this country. Just a couple miles ahead lay the North Mountain, which was a profound landmark in these parts, despite its crude naming, it was hardly the northernmost mountain in the entire land, but apparently the Arendellians liked to think it was. Reflecting on the heavy snowfall, Ennen realized he would likely end up staying Arendelle for the winter, due to the mountain passes being blocked by the heavy snowfall. He didn't like that at all, he had wanted to leave the hell of the North, not stumble 50 kilometers and get trapped in another hellhole. He didn't know much about Arendelle, except for a few cryptic pieces of information about their queen being gifted with powers over ice, but the Nordish weren't always reliable sources of information, so he wandered on. After about an hour or so he found himself passing beneath the shadow of the towering North Mountain. He took a couple of seconds out of his trek to gaze at it, he swore he could see something glinting just off the side of the tip of the mountain, but it was unlikely. He pondered investigating, but quickly shoved the thought aside, he wasn't here to sightsee, and trudged on through the steadily thickening snow. Around half an hour later he heard a strange Shushh sound, along with heavy hoof beats, likely a sleigh being pulled by a horse, but Ennen had no clue who we be silly enough to venture out in weather like this. He stopped his progress and dropped to a knee and listened. He heard laughter, light almost birdlike laughter, definitely a young woman and deeper, throaty laughter, likely a young man as well. Are a young couple actually frolicking out in the mountains in this weather on a sleigh?! These people really have no idea of the mountains true nature… That's when he heard it getting closer, and sure enough a heartbeat later, a massive reindeer came barreling from behind him, overtop the crest of the hill that Ennen had been climbing. Ennen swore vehemently as he was forced to throw himself into a snow drift, the reindeer's horns and metal rails of the sleigh missing his feet by inches. He heaved himself out of the snow, and glared at the sleigh which was now making an abrupt turn in an effort to slow down. He rubbed the snow off his face, his face heating in anger towards this ignorant couple. As he looked on, he saw a young and spritely, pigtailed redhead jumped out of the sled and ran towards him, a look of concern on her face.
"Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry! Are you alright?" She yelped, her high pitched voice almost piercing Ennen's eardrums.
"Yeah, thanks in no part to you" he said, hostile, "Maybe try a little more precaution next time before I end up a bloody patch on your sleigh"
She was taken aback by his outright hostility, and she didn't really know what to say, other than something rude, but that wouldn't help any of them. Meanwhile Ennen was readying to give her a piece of his mind on his opinions on sleigh driving, but Artorias stepped in. She's just young, lad, the young are prone to mistakes, I remember you were, so go easy eh? Who knows maybe we'll get a ride into town. Ennen bit back his un-chivalrous comment that he was prepared to send her way, and apologized.
"Ahh…" he mumbled, "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have been so hasty, it's just been a long week, and I'm hungry so I haven't been in the jolliest of spirits recently, I do hope you accept it" He said, humbly.
Again she was taken aback by his sudden change in personality, and again didn't really know what to say.
"Oh…" She said, "Well, it's alright, I'm sorry about it anyhow. Anyways, my name is Anna"
The young man had finished with the sled and now ran over to Anna and looked at Ennen
"Hey, I'm sorry about that are you alright? It looked like you took a nasty fall there, my sleigh didn't clip you or anything did it?" He asked anxiously, nervously checking over Ennen.
"No, I'm fine as I was just telling Anna here" Ennen gave a wan smile.
"I see you two have already been introduced" The man said, smiling slightly, "My name is Kristoff, yours?"
"Uh…Ennen" Ennen replied, glancing at the sleigh,
"So!" The girl suddenly burst out, apparently full of energy again "Where are you headed for?"
"Well" Ennen replied, unsure of himself, "I guess I'm just headed southern, I haven't really made up my mind. You two are from Arendelle yes?"
"Yup!" The girl replied "We were just heading back there, would you like to join us on the sleigh?"
The man, Kristoff was clearly taken aback by this, but visibly shrugged to himself in defeat. Oh, I like this girl Artorias interjected into Ennen's thoughts. She has this poor young man wrapped around her pinky finger, hm. Ennen was also slightly taken aback, and just like Kristoff, shrugged to himself.
"Sure, I'm always grateful for help, it's so seldom out here" Ennen replied, and knelt over to grab the pot that had slipped from his pack, and with a start he realized he still had his sword. That might be hard to explain to a couple who considered falling and scraping oneself to be the most violent thing they had ever witnessed.
Unfortunately though, the girl noticed the gleam of his sword in the sunlight, and stepped forward to see it, and gasped upon sight. Kristoff who had just turned around to get to the sleigh, quickly turned around again, and saw it too.
"Well," Anna said, "I see you are certainly prepared for everything…"
Ennen decided to be frank with her.
"Well, the north is not as welcoming as this place, a sword is a staple of the Nordish" Ennen stated blankly as he wrapped the sword in seal skin.
"Who?" Kristoff was now curious.
"The Nordish, have you never heard of them?" Ennen asked, genuinely surprised.
"Uh…no"
"Oh my…really, you've never been told of what lies north of Arendelle, none of you"
"Well, I was taught" The girl spoke up, "But I haven't ever heard of the Nordish, or any civilization beyond Arendelle's northern mountain ranges."
"Haedrigs teeth…." Ennen said awestruck at the apparent ignorance of the two, "Where were you taught?"
"I was taught by a tutor"
"I daresay he was not a very esteemed one"
Kristoff winced at this comment, awaiting the tirade of indignant responses from his girlfriend.
"I'll have you know sir, that he was and is the best scholar in the land of Arendelle! How dare you speak of our education system like that!"
Ennen then made a very unwise decision.
"In that case I fear that your scholars are worse than the Nordish, and we rely solely on word of mouth to spread our history!"
Anna was brimming with anger at the point Kristoff decided to intervene, and likely save Ennen's life. Apparently though he was not watchful enough, as Anna was able to slip past and peg Ennen straight in the face with a snowball.
Ennen was completely taken aback and flustered. Then the reality of what just happened hit him. He had been arguing over and education system with supposedly a teenager and she had hit him with a snowball. Something snapped inside him, an emotional dam of supressed tension and fear. He sat and started laughing, he simply could barely get over the ridiculousness of his situation. He sat and laughed and laughed until he could barely breathe his sides were shaking so hard. He wiped his eyes, and glanced up at the pair, they were looking at him like he was a madman, and that set him laughing again. When he finally was able to get a handle of himself, he started to apologize to the shocked couple.
"I'm," *GASP* "I'm sorry, it's just, the situation was so ridiculous, but I shouldn't have laughed like that but, but this has likely been my first interaction with a human being in a year, and just the way it ended up going was so strange and convoluted." He choked out.
"Um…well, thanks I guess" Kristoff responded, nearly convinced he was speaking to a psychopath
"No no no, thank you Anna, you helped me do something I haven't done in a long long time, laugh."