Note: My second Disney fic, and of course I decide to put an overly mature, dark spin on the property. Like I did with WALL-E (which I still need to eventually finish). But hey, inspiration struck, and I'll do my best to keep this from being completely serious and out-of-tone. I do not Frozen. Please review, comment, or criticize. Most of all, enjoy.
In the Old World
Chapter 1
So far, the coronation party was a splendid affair. Everyone marveled at the new queen, and marveled for completely different reasons at the Duke of Weselton's dancing with the princess. Then there was the slight loose gossip as the princess ran off with the unlucky thirteenth son of the Southern Isles.
There was one true out-of-place oddity at the party, however. A tall knight, clad in a mixture of highly ornate armor and heavy green cloth. A helmet that he hadn't seen fit to remove covered his face, and what looked to be a sort of pelt was draped over his shoulders. A large rectangular shield hung over the pelt, and a rather large sword was belted at his waist. He didn't drink, or talk, or dance. He just stood there, looking at all the guests.
"Who exactly do you think that man is?" Kai whispered to Gerda as the woman passed by, leading several servants to restock a portion of the buffet.
"Oh, probably some dignitary's bodyguard. You know how paranoid some of them can be."
Marius kept his position at the edge of the party, slowly gazing at each noble, each dignitary, each visiting lord and lady. He did his best to keep his use of magic hidden, quickly turning his head if anyone looked to directly at him. Discovery now would be disastrous.
Seeing that most were simply throwing annoyed, condescending glances his way, he decided to risk it again. He let his right hand drift to the small amulet hanging on his belt, and as his gloved fingers touched it, his eyes began to glow softly, and his sight changed.
A visiting queen who looked like she was from the far west had apparently had something magical happen to her hair years ago, though its effects had long since faded into uselessness. The woman's natural aura was… intriguing, though. Another man, an incredibly small one at that, seemed to be carrying some sort of enchanted ring in one of his suit pockets. There were a few other tiny sources, but none were the ones he sought.
Then, at last, he found what he was looking for. A seemingly ignominious noble, parked the whole night by the punch bowl. Marius was amazed he hadn't seen the noble before. The kind of man with an air of mild importance about him. For the briefest second, the very frame and appearance of the man blurred in Marius' gaze.
Marius quickly started forward, taking the time to surreptitiously grab and spill a glass of wine over the front of his armor, and clapped his arm around the man's shoulder when he reached him.
"By the gods, Marko? Is that you?" He said, making sure he was almost yelling, putting a slight slur to his words to make it seem like he was just what everyone assumed he was; a overly drunk boor of a bodyguard. "What's it been, five years? Six?"
"I'm sorry?" The noble replied, his face the picture of confusion.
"Oh, come on!" Marius moaned theatrically. "It was that business with the East Trading Company! We were on the same ship, pirates jumped us, I lost my sword, asked you to toss me the nearest one, and you panicked and threw me a swordfish that the cannons had blown out of the hold. And then you drank me under the table when we got back to port and celebrated our fortune at running across the most incompetent bunch of pirates to ever live." He laughed and slapped the man on the back. He grabbed him around the shoulder and started leading him out of the room. "But come on, surely you've had some better stories since, and I can only imagine that the really good ones are the ones you'd rather all your fellows not hear."
Marius lead the noble out of the main building of the palace, into a secluded area that contained a few high ledges above a pool fed by several waterfalls. He roughly shoved the noble near the edge, then drew his sword and pointed the blade straight at the man's chest.
"Are you mad, man? Do you know who I am?" The noble demanded haughtily.
"I know exactly who you are, Acolyte." Marius snarled. "Your illusions won't help you anymore." He tapped his amulet, and this time, a small wave of energy spread out over the noble, and his image fractured and burst away from him like shattered glass. In its place was a man clad from head to toe in dark leather armor, his faced and eyes obscured by a white mask with an ornate, black fire etched beneath the left eyehole. "Whatever it is you've planned to do here, you won't succeed."
"How very little you understand, General." The Acolyte hissed before he drew his sword with inhuman speed, knocking Maruis' blade away and swinging for the warrior's throat. Marius ducked beneath the swing and grabbed the Acolyte's arm and twisted, trying to hold the assassin's sword arm behind his back. The Acolyte twisted and contorted his arm impossibly, so it was back in front of him. But Marius still held a strong grip. The Acolyte backed up quickly, forcing Marius hard against a wall, then driving his free elbow up into the warrior's helmeted face. None of it was enough to hurt Marius, but it was enough to let his assailant slip free. The Acolyte thrust at Marius, but Marius ducked beneath the blade, and grabbed his arm, twisting around and wrenching the arm down across his shoulder, snapping the elbow. The Acolyte didn't make a sound. They'd been in fierce combat for over a minute, and he wasn't even breathing heavy. As though all the old human habits had been drilled out of him. Marius released the Acolyte and spun around, thrusting his sword through the man's chest. The assassin took a few steps back, dragging himself along the blade's length. He was at the very edge. Suddenly, he reached up and seized Marius by his shoulder plates, and tugged backward, dragging the two of them over the edge.
The Acolyte reached into one of the many pouches on his person, and withdrew a vial full of black, frothing liquid that somehow glowed with a unearthly light. He twisted the top of the vial.
Marius, realizing what the Acolyte was doing, twisted in midair and kicked downwards, launching the assassin off his sword blade down into the pool below. The body sank beneath the surface and was briefly visible for a few seconds before the vial exploded and a dark swirling substance engulfed the pool.
Having no intention of landing in the now vile deathtrap of a pool, Marius reached into his own pouches, and quickly lamented at his haste as several rare supplies tumbled down into the murky blackness and dissolved into sludge. He finally found what he was looking for; a similar vial, full of what looked like clear liquid silver. Marius twisted the top of the vial and hurled it down into the pool. He was just above the surface when it exploded up to meet him, the blackness washed away in a swirl of light.
After spending a few minutes in the pool's depths, making sure the Acolyte had been consumed by his own weapon, Marius dragged himself up to solid ground. As he emerged, he noticed he felt… cold. Too cold, considering it was the middle of summer.
That was when the night clouds suddenly darkened to an unnatural degree, snow almost instantly piled up on the ledges above him, and all the water and wet patches of his armor and clothes, which was just about everything on him, froze.
"Well that's just perfect." He sighed.
A day later, Marius shouldered his pack over his relatively thawed-out suit, and began the first leg of his journey out of Arendelle, heading for an actually usable port to reach his next destination.
Cold hadn't truly bothered him in years, but that didn't mean he still didn't find it grating for whatever reason. He was almost glad that Stilicho had sent an urgent request for him to come to the Dreadlands.
Almost. Stilicho needed help because he had found the hidden nesting grounds of the last of the Drakelords.
So, yeah. The impersonations of drunkenness and Marius' spun tale, the freezing armor, the discovery of the last of the Drakelords (for this to make sense, think of the way Tolkien fancily describes dragons as Fire Drakes. Drakelords would, in this case, be massive, multi-millennia-old dragons that can breathe/secrete everything) are all intended to create a lighter atmosphere against the intrigue and stabbing and dark-magic-acid-poison and arm-breaking. How much humor I'll be able to work in when things really get going, I'm not too sure. But I'm not going to not try.