Those Who Favor Fire

by Antonio Calavera

The Dragon War is over. The Dovah have lost. The Elder Scroll has spoken. Yet when the Tongues banished Alduin the World-Eater, they made no accounting of where he had gone. Now, after hardship, adventure, and loving sacrifice, the sisters who stopped an eternal winter must contend with those who favor fire.

Those Who Favor Fire

The fledgling spirits of Men were strong in Old Times; Unafraid to war with Dragons and their Voices; But the Dragons only shouted them down and broke their hearts

Voice of the Sky, Tablet III, The Throat of the World

~~v~~

The third dragon would be the biggest problem, Kaal decided. Folding his wings close to his body, he jerked out of his pursuers' line of attack and plummeted earthward. Mount Anthor glittered below him in the moonlight. Two of the dragons chasing him took the bait, diving and sending blasts of fire and ice at his tail. Too late, they realized that dragons, for all their power, were not designed for steep terminal velocity dives. They roared, this time in terror, as compressibility induced turbulence shackled their wings to their bodies. But KaalVurShaan was not Flightmaster of Paarthurnax for nothing. Pure power pooled within him. A mere hundred feet above the summit, mind crystal clear, he visualized Change given form, shaped it in his mind, inhaled air, and exhaled flame.

Yol! Toor! Shul!

A gout of flame ten meters long and three meters wide issued from his maw, snapping his body upwards. He strained to keep his neck level as the turbulence suddenly eased, somersaulted in the air, and threw his wings open with a thud that shook snow off Mount Anthor, less than a wingspan below.

The pursuing dragons were not nearly so skilled.

One torpedoed face first into the mountain and detonated in a shower of gore and shattered dragon bone. The other one, screaming in a titanic effort of will, somehow managed to wrestle his wings open, breaking them both with an audible crack. He skimmed off the very tip of the summit, tearing a six meter gash in his belly, bounced down the mountainside once, twice, three times, and crashed straight into one of the watchtowers on the White River, where enraged Nords started hacking him to pieces with their battle axes.

Tearing southwest across the sky at treetop height, Kaal zipped past the familiar ship-hull roof of the Companions' Hall, surrounded by the last desperate vanguard of the Dragon Cult. A flick of his wingtips sent him rolling easily out of the way of the cloud of arrows that reached upwards for him. Angling his tail for maximum lift, he curved smoothly upwards, up, up, and over the Seven Thousand Steps, skimming the ancient rock of the Throat of the World. Just as he came level with the summit, he glimpsed three champions battling the Abomination himself. But before he could help them, before he could roar out a challenge to Alduin, one of the heroes Shouted Something he could not – would not understand. Another of the heroes, a bearded man in grey, took something from his back, unfurled it, and did Something he could not even see properly. Alduin let out a roar of rage and terror – terror! - that nearly knocked him out of the sky, and then the third dragon, plummeting screaming from the the clouds, slashed through the air a foot from his nose and fell dead from shock onto the mountainside. The shock wave of traumatized air in the doomed dragon's wake, the horror of the Something on the mountainside, the roar of he who was once his absolute master – it was too much. KaalVurShaan, Chosen of Paarthurnax, tumbled toward the summit, into a shimmering something that echoed with Alduin's roar, and strayed out of thought and time.

~~v~~

Time to end this, she thought. With a gesture, queen Elsa of Arendelle silenced her sputtering advisers. "Enough! I will accede to this." Elsa ignored her sister's scowl as the members of the council started to nod in relief. She stood abruptly, the light of the fireplace flaring behind her. "But afterward, we are going to have a long and serious discussion about misappropriation of resources, planning behind my back, and," she paused and looked each of them in the eye, "what may prove to be a dramatic trimming of my senior council. You are dismissed, gentlemen."

With a blast of icy wind, the heavy double doors at the end of the room slammed open of their own accord, precluding any response from the assembled councilors. After they filed out, another gust of wind slammed the doors back into place, a hexagonal lattice of crystalline ice forming to bar them shut.

Anna moved to her side and placed a hand on her shoulder. "Are you alright?"

Still glaring at the door, which was now growing a rather imposing set of icy spikes, she closed her eyes, momentarily unable to speak. The fireplace went out.

"Talk to me...," she finally said, "about anything except this."

Elsa stiffened and then sagged as her sister hugged her from behind. Her fists unclenched. They stood there for a long minute, with the queen leaning her head back to rest on the redhead's shoulder.

She stumbled as Anna released her.

"Elsa, you're exhausted! Sit down and I'll read you a story," Anna said, producing the book she'd been reading under the table for the first part of the meeting. Elsa stared at her.

"What?"

And her sister laughed, the first genuine laugh she had heard from her all day. "So I was bored! Elsa! I'll have you know that this is a very classy book!" She watched as Elsa raised a hand to her lips and composed herself, perhaps a little too quickly.

"Thank you, Anna."

"Sure! Er, for what? Elsa, I know that I should have tried to be more useful during that meeting-"

"Read me a story, Anna."

Elsa let herself be led to the couch in front of the fireplace. Anna babbled about how she had found this wonderful book that had just been translated from Portuguese, and how it was actually full of poems and not stories, and that it was a totally legit thing for a princess to be reading, and Elsa drank in every word. "And anyway, it's just like that really long book you were reading to me about the bishop and his flower garden, and how he said that-"

"The beautiful is as important as the useful. Perhaps more so," Elsa interrupted, eyelids drooping. She leaned over, just a little, and when her eyelids fluttered open, her head was in Anna's lap. The redhead's eyes went wide.

"Read," Elsa whispered.

And Anna, suddenly very glad to have the book in her hands, fumbled for a few moments with the book, turned to the first page, and noticed that Elsa was already asleep.

The firelight glinted off Elsa's perfect platinum blonde hair, and Anna forgot about everything. She forgot about the council badgering Elsa to invite her many suitors to a ball. She forgot to feel the need to be useful. She forgot to notice that the fireplace had been rekindled. She forgot about everything except for the sonnet that she had read and reread and reread ever since discovering it in her book the day before.

Bending over her sister, she set the book aside and whispered.

"How do I love thee? Let me count the ways..."

~~v~~

The king was silent all throughout dinner. He had asked to be served in his office instead of dining with his sons – that alone was a bad sign – and brooded in his study, hardly touching his food. Finally, his wife could bear it no longer, and went to him.

"Christian..."

"Where did we go wrong, Maria?"

"What Hans did wasn't our fault."

"Is it? We raised him."

Maria looked away.

"He's a grown man who is responsible for his own choices."

"And we for ours. Some days I wonder if we should have adopted so many..."

"Christian, stop."

"I was never there for him, Maria! It's hard enough ruling an archipelago, but doing that and dividing yourself between thirteen sons? We were never able to-"

Maria stood up. "I'll never regret taking them in, Christian. No matter what the circumstances, no matter they choose. I can't believe I'm hearing this from you."

She stalked out of the room, leaving the king of the Southern Isles alone with his thoughts.

So when the fireball obliterated the dining hall where Maria and his sons were finishing their dinner, he was completely unharmed.

Yol! Toor! Shul!

~~v~~

The crew of the Southern Cross scrambled to make her combat ready. As men unfurled the sails, loaded the cannons, and cast off the mooring lines, Admiral Coleridge glared through his spyglass at the flames engulfing the royal palace. He cringed as another tower collapsed in on itself, crushing a crowd of bedraggled escapees. The crew muttered among themselves. They had all heard the roars. In forty years serving on land and at sea, Coleridge had never heard anything like that. Every ship in the port was taking on refugees. They came in an endless stream from the city... and beyond. There was a great rushing sound, and Coleridge whirled around to see an enormous cloud of black dots rise into the air. It took him a moment to realize that it was the Royal Archer Corps – all of it – firing all their arrows, all at once. Not at any invading army, but upwards. The cloud of projectiles reached towards the flaming palace, and the Coleridge's heart skipped a beat. How could the entire Corps have mutinied without warning?

Then the flames above the castle parted, and he understood.

A great dark thing soared through the curtain of flame. It came unhindered through the arrow cloud, and its maw was flame and screams followed where it passed. He refused to believe it. Such creatures only existed in the fanciful tales mothers told her children. Admiral Coleridge of the Southern Isles Navy was a practical man who had not risen to prominence and Admiralcy of the armada's flagship by being prone to flights of fancy. But he had eyes, and his spyglass had been a gift from the king himself. Slowly his eyes told him what his sense refused to acknowledge, and the words came to him out of ancient myth and tale. For without wishing to know, he knew what the thing was. It was a winged creature: if bird, then greater than all other birds, and it was naked, and neither quill nor feather did it bear, and its vast pinions were as webs of hide between horned fingers. A creature of an older world, maybe it was. It became clear to him why all the common people were abandoning their homes, why all the farmers and fishermen and tinkers and tailors knew to abandon their homes even though the army had never called an evacuation. Because there were certain things in the world that all men knew; instincts buried in the primordial memory of the race. Things that were passed on in fireside tales, never truly believed, but never truly forgotten. Tonight, all the kingdom had seen legend come to life. And so everyone, nobles and peasants alike, left their lives behind without question and raced for the ships.

He shuddered, and the word came to him.

Dragon.

~~v~~

King Christian staggered smoldering through the ruins of his castle. There were no screams. There had been no time. All burned. His servants. His wife. His sons. All but one. His sight was dark. His horribly burned left arm hung by strips of sinew from his shoulder, and he limped. In his right hand he clutched a key, retrieved from the scorched corpse of the warden. He could hear the flames raging above him, and still he pressed on into the dungeon and his thought was of only one thing.

One of my sons yet lives.

He stumbled, exhausted at last, into the cell he had never found time to visit, thrust the key in the lock, and turned it before falling to his knees. His crown clattered to the floor. The man in the cell stared mutely at him with no expression on his face, and in defiance of a lifetime of regret, King Christian tried with his last breath to say the words he had never had the courage to say.

Prince Hans of the Southern Isles did not even try to listen, but merely stood up, picked up the fallen crown, stepped over his father's corpse, and walked into the inferno.

~~v~~

Elsa slumped against the wall of the portrait room, shaking from exhaustion. Small footsteps echoed just outside the door she'd slammed, and a voice, familiar but too high and too cold, ghosted into the room.

Elsa! Why won't you play with me anymore?

"Go away!" The words, too familiar, were out before she could stop them. She clawed at her scalp, tearing out strands of white hair. She had endured this every night for months and months since-

Tell me why!

"Because you're dead! I killed you! It was all my fault and I'm sorry! Please!

Don't you want to build a snowman?

Tears streamed down Elsa's face as her small feet took her to the door of their own accord. A familiar knock nearly sent her to her knees from fright, but onward she walked, unable to stop herself. She had to run, she had to flee, to get away from that thing.

But she really, really wanted to build a snowman, and she had killed her sister, and she hated herself, and just like that, she was opening the door.

Shadowed pits stared at her from where Anna's eyes should have been. Blackened, shriveled hands reached out to her as her sister smiled at her with desiccated, drawn-back lips and teeth that were too sharp.

Her hair had gone entirely white.

Ignoring the stench, ignoring the clumps of graveyard earth that clung to her sister's funerary gown, Elsa stepped forward as if in a trance, and let her sister take her into her arms.

"I'm so sorry. If you're here for revenge, it's yours."

She turned her head, baring her neck to the wight's fangs, and closed her eyes.

~~v~~

Anna charged full bore through the castle halls, slipping and sliding on the ice, nearly tripping over the long winter coat she'd taken to wearing to bed. As she rounded the corner, her flimsy slippers swept out from under her and she landed badly, shattering the thin, crystalline ice beneath her. Blood dripped from the hand she had thrown out to break her fall, but she didn't notice as another one of Elsa's screams tore down the hallway. She finally reached her sister's door, threw it open without knocking, and ran into the room heedless of the blast of cold that nearly knocked her off her feet.

Elsa writhed on the bed and wailed and a sob escaped Anna as she ducked the icicles sprouting from the ceiling and took her sister into her arms. The blonde tilted her head away, baring her neck, but Anna cradled her cheeks with her hands. "Elsa! Wake up! It's okay, I swear to you, it's okay, please wake up, I'm here, I'm alright, please wake up..."

~~v~~

Kai had heard the screams and the running last night, and knew what to do. The elaborate silverware and china stayed in their cabinets, and the cook had been given the morning off. Padding quietly toward the queen's bedroom, he opened the door and sighed.

The room was a nightmarish mess of icy spears and ruined furniture. Elsa herself was curled into a fetal position on the bed in Anna's arms. Blood stained the back of Elsa's nightgown where Anna held her, the princess apparently entirely unaware of her injury. Kai set down the tray of tea and chocolates just inside the door and retreated.

~~v~~

"I swear, Elsa, if you apologize one more time..."

"I'm sor- er," Elsa stumbled, and Anna winced. It hurt to see her sister, usually so graceful and elegant, reduced to this. They stood on the roof deck, watching ships pull into the bay. Elsa clung to her sister's arm, careful not to touch the bandage on her hand. She made no sound, but Anna didn't have to look to know she was crying.

The silence was broken by a familiar voice.

"I'm not a love expert like Kristoff is, but you two look like you need warm hugs!"

"Olaf!"

Anna watched as Elsa knelt down and put her arms around the little snowman, then turned her gaze to the bay. The sun was bright, and the snow from the storm the night before was starting to melt. Anna didn't notice.

What she did notice was the gargantuan warship, bristling with cannon, that surged into the bay, followed by several smaller vessels, all of which bore the unmistakable heraldry of the Southern Isles.

~~v~~

Admiral Coleridge stood at ramrod attention on the command deck of the Southern Cross. His command was a first-rate ship of the line, sporting a full hundred bronze cannon, half of them now pointed straight at the heart of Arendelle. Her three masts were reinforced and carried enlarged crow's nests, which now bristled with crossbowmen. Her hull was two feet thick and copper-plated, with iron scantings to protect against enemy cannon fire. Above the forecastle loomed the biggest mortar the Southern Isles had ever fitted to a seagoing vessel. On a cold day a few months before, Coleridge had caught and chastised several crewmen who had been using it as a hot tub. Loaded with incendiary shot, it could tear an enemy frigate or shore fortress apart in one blast. Enormous sails of Indian cotton propelled her faster than other ships half her size. Such warships were the ultimate weapon by all conventional reckoning.

But Coleridge had read the reports, and the power they faced today was anything but conventional.

"Why so tense, Admiral?" Coleridge saluted as Hans walked up.

"I will be frank, your highness. We are not equipped to fight a cryokinetic."

Hans scowled. "I find your lack of faith disturbing, Admiral. The witch who rules this ridiculous kingdom is powerful, but she's no killer. Arendelle cannot stand against the might of the Southern Isles."

Coleridge's hand unconsciously brushed against the burned and tattered side of his greatcoat. He pursed his lips and turned to face ahead. "If you say so."

A hand landed on his shoulder.

"I expect full confidence from you, Coleridge."

"And you have it, your highness," he said, without looking at the prince.

Hans' eyes narrowed, but before he could reply, the Admiral interrupted. "Incoming."

In lieu of a rowboat, the Arendelle welcoming committee was approaching on a walkway of solid ice. Hans grinned as he looked down at them – then suddenly he wasn't looking down at them anymore.

~~v~~

As she and Elsa rose into the air on a hexagonal pillar of crystalline ice, Anna stood at ease, fully armored, with a neutral expression on her face. In her hands she held a halberd, made in the Swiss style, from which fluttered the flag of Arendelle. Beside her, Elsa stood in the midst of her own personal blizzard. In place of her ice dress was a suit of crystalline armor that added a full foot to her height. Jagged spikes jutted from every surface, including the fully enclosed helm, complete with a visor of transparent ice. Shards of razor sharp ice and spiked hailstones whirled around her in a fog that made it hard to see exactly where she was, yet the cape she wore, scalloped like a bat's wings, did not move at all. The pillar they stood on sprouted crenelations and spikes until it resembled a fortress tower.

Anna had never seen Elsa make black ice before.

The tower rocked as its bottom made contact with and anchored itself to the unseen seafloor below. Obsidian black from top to bottom, with Anna in her shining silver armor the only splash of color.

Elsa glared down at Hans through slitted eyes. Her words came out smooth and regal.

"Prince Hans of the Southern Isles. You are in violation of your exile."

Hans cleared his throat. "Your pathetic charade has come to an end, witch. We are here on behalf of the civilized world to return sanity to this kingdom. Your unnatural rule has come to an end, and Arendelle will become living space for my people."

A wind of subzero air pounded into him, driving the breath from his lungs and propelling him thirty feet across the deck. There was a crack as his back crashed into the mainmast, and all feeling temporarily left his lower body. He toppled forward onto his knees and was only dimly aware of his forehead hitting the deck.

"You have not been given leave to speak, Hans of the Southern Isles. However, it pleases us to see you on your knees. As a courtesy, you are being offered one opportunity to leave without incident. Take your fleet and never return. Behold! Your cannon are frozen. If you open fire, they will burst, and you will be responsible for the deaths of all your gunnery crew."

Hans struggled to his feet. The moment he was on his feet again, a gust of wind forced him back down. Frost clung to his clothes, and he started to shake. None of his crew moved to help him. None of them could. Their feet were encased in solid ice up to the knees, frozen to the deck. With a burst of effort that made his head spin, he rose once again to his feet.

Only to be slammed once again to the deck.

"We do not hear you giving the order to retreat, Hans. Perhaps you have something to say? You can say it just fine from down there."

"M-m-madness!"

Beneath her helm, Elsa raised an eyebrow.

"Madness? This is-"

"ANNAAAAAA!"

The anguish in Hans' voice echoed across the gap between ship and tower. There was a moment of silence, and in this moment Hans knew that he would have to use the one weapon he thought he would never have the strength to use.

"Anna... I'm sorry."

And on the tower of light-devouring ice, Queen Elsa and Princess Anna glanced at each other in confusion.

"I was wrong to trick you," Hans said, eyes downcast. "I was wrong to manipulate you, to try and usurp your kingdom. I was wrong to try and kill you and your sister. I had thought to use strength and intimidation to accomplish my goal here today, and I see now that I was wrong there as well. But if you have no mercy in your heart for me, please spare a thought for my people." He waved a hand at the fleet.

"What you see here is the entire remaining population of the Southern Isles. These are not ships of war – they are a convoy of refugees. A dragon, a creature out of our worst nightmares, attacked and destroyed everything, and we are all that is left. We need refuge and have no supplies. You are the only hope my people have. If you give us shelter or even enough food to sail to another kingdom, I swear that my kingdom will never again trouble yours, and you need never see me again."

Marshmallow, Elsa's personal snow golem, emerged from his hiding place and leveled an icy javelin forty feet long at Hans. It was only when she was satisfied that his aim was true that Elsa turned to her sister. "You know him better than I do, Anna," she said quietly. "What do you think?"

Anna stared at the ships. They were all much smaller than the flagship, they rode low in the water, and there were no visible cannon aboard. There was enough room on the fleet for a thousand people, maybe more.

But there was no such thing as dragons.

Then she remembered the feeling of ice spreading outward through her body. The shame. The despair as Hans smothered the fire and told her that no one loved her. She thought of her sister, manacled in that horrible dungeon. From the night before came memories of Elsa, trapped in a nightmare, wailing and begging her for forgiveness. She looked at Elsa now and hated, hated the sight of her beautiful magic turned to the creation of terrifying weapons of ice that were harder than steel and blacker than night. Her voice rang cold across the water.

"He's lying! It's some kind of trick!"

Elsa turned back to face the Southern Cross, all business once again. "Your words are fair, Hans of the Southern Isles, but we see past them to the frozen heart within. Take your ships and your lies and depart, or thou shalt surely die."

Hans stood up and clenched his fist. "I'm not going anywhere!"

With a flick of her wrist, Elsa sent a spike of ice flashing into Hans' chest. The razor sharp ice slid easily between his ribs, into his heart, and out the other side. The shock of the impact drove him once again into the mast. He wanted to slump to the deck, but could not – the icy spike had pinned him to the oak.

"There is only one way now in which you can survive, Hans of the Southern Isles. A frozen heart can only be thawed by an act of love. Your pathetic fleet, like everyone in your life, is bound to you only by threats and authority. Your only hope is to go home and hope that any of your family still feels anything for you. Go home to your mother! Or does she think you invisible as well?" Elsa remembered how Anna had cried when she told her about what Hans had said to her, and her voice took on a mocking tone.

"If only there were someone out there who loved you."

Hans clenched his fists. Shaking with the effort, he roared and pulled himself off the mast with a titanic effort of will. Blood trickled from his nose and mouth as he stalked forward with eyes slitted and shoulders hunched. "You have become the monster everyone believes you to be. Fire!"

The crew complied, and the entire side of the Southern Cross exploded. Shards of frozen bronze ricocheted around the interior of the hull and reduced the eight hundred crew below deck to fine paste. The whole ship, all three thousand five hundred tons of her, heeled over, throwing the crossbowmen in the crow's nests into the sea. There was a great crashing clatter as a hundred tons of splintered wood bounced without effect off the walls of the ice tower. Water poured into the chasm in the hull, and the ship heeled back over and began to capsize.

In the moment that the hull was level, Admiral Coleridge, battered, blood leaking from his ears, pulled the trigger on the heavy mortar and sent a fireball that eclipsed the sun roaring toward the heart of Arendelle. Elsa fired a stream of icicles at it so fast it looked like a solid spear of ice, but all melted before the flame.

Marshmallow moved.

Swinging his pillar of ice, he leaped up and pole-vaulted straight into the path of the fireball. There was a blinding flash, and the flame was no more. A fine mist hung over the water where it had been, and evaporated.

With Marshmallow no longer covering him, Hans whipped out his father's broken crown, touched the jewel on its crest, and disappeared.

Elsa stamped a foot onto the black ice of the tower, and the ice at its base expanded to engulf the fleet. For a moment nothing happened, and then, with a great splintering of wood, the ships rose upward and imploded as the ice crushed their hulls. The ice retreated as quickly as it had come, leaving behind water a fraction of a degree above freezing. The shattered remnants of the ships sank into the bay.

And then the screaming started.

~~v~~

Kristoff and Sven tore across the ice. Behind them, the ice-men of Arendelle fanned out across a hundred trails of ice that webbed across the bay. Beside Kristoff, Anna shivered and stared at the people in the water. Women. Some children. Men in tattered clothing. Many of them were still in their nightclothes. There were no soldiers.

What have we done?

Kristoff's men pulled half-frozen refugees out of the water and loaded them onto their sleighs. Elsa seemed to be everywhere at once, conjuring rings of floating ice and sending them towards the survivors. She had shed the heavy armor and was using her personal blizzard to propel her at dizzying speeds back and forth across the bay. Everywhere she went, the survivors cursed at her. Some refused to let her rescue them. These were the ones Anna and Kristoff were picking up.

Anna ran to the edge of an ice trail, knelt down, and reached out to a man who was struggling to climb up. The man grabbed her arm with one hand... and with the other, he took the piece of timber he'd been clinging to and swung it at Anna. The wood cracked across her head, too slowly to do any real harm, but painfully enough to knock her down. The next thing she knew, she was on her back with the man looming over her.

"Witch! Monster! Dragonspawn! You sent that monster to burn my family! You wanna try and finish the job? You die!"

He swung the piece of wood down in a killing blow and was promptly knocked unconscious by one of Elsa's hailstones. As the wood clattered onto the ice, Anna curled up and shook. She was vaguely aware of Kristoff holding her, of Elsa saying something about getting her back to the castle. Mostly, she was aware of the screams of a thousand people trying not to freeze to death.

~~v~~

Midnight.

Elsa stumbled up the staircase toward Anna's room, bruised and shaking. She moved to open the door and swayed on her feet when she found it locked.

"Anna?" Elsa leaned her forehead to the door. From inside, she thought she heard what might have been a sob. "Anna, please, please let me in."

No response. "All right," she said, and the cheer in her voice sounded fake even to her own ears. "I'll just stay out here and... tell you about my day."

So this is what it feels like.

"We saved a lot of people, Anna. Hundreds. Maybe more. Kristoff and his men are with them now, sorting them out. He's really good with kids, you know. He helped a bunch of them find their parents." Tears began to trickle down her cheeks.

"They were scared of me, Anna. They didn't want me to rescue them. I sent Kristoff and his men to help them. I think they got them all." She paused, sniffling.

"No, no that's not true. There was an old man, he called me a monster, said he'd rather die. When I tried to get a life ring around him, he dove under and... didn't come up. I managed to save a little boy, though. That felt good. I put him back in his parents' arms, they kept calling out to him. I went to help others and when I looked back... they'd thrown him away. He was just sitting there on the ice, crying. They wouldn't touch him... because I'd touched him. Anna, Anna please open the door..."

A howling wind rattled the windows as she sank to her knees.

"The Admiral... his name is Coleridge... he said they left so quickly after the dragon attack, they weren't able to take a headcount. So there's no telling how many went down when I sank the ships. Do... Do you think I'm a monster, Anna? Kristoff says I'm not, but... The storm is getting stronger, Anna. Stronger than anything we've ever seen. Anna, we know what fear does to my powers, but this... this is even worse!" The sound of glass shattering echoed down the hall, and the temperature dropped precipitously.

"Maybe they're right. No matter what I do I just can't stop hurting people. Do you hate me, Anna? I hate this stupid door. Anna?"

~~v~~

"Anna."

~~v~~

"Anna."

~~v~~

"Anna? Do you want to build a snowman?"

~~v~~

Inside, curled in a fetal position in front of the door, Anna heard Elsa let out something that was both a scream and a sob. There were running footsteps, and as they faded she covered her ears.

~~v~~

Kristoff handed the last of the blankets and the firewood to the refugees and took the stairs up to a watchtower on the castle wall. The ice-men had been busy, and now all the survivors were gathered within the castle gates. Strategically placed bonfires, fed by the last of Arendelle's firewood reserve, burned behind scaffolding that shielded them from the worst of the wind. Hastily constructed igloos dotted the area, with more being built every hour. Hot meals were being served by the palace staff, who were dressed in full winter clothing and carried torches so no one would get lost or injured in the near-zero visibility. The women, children, and injured had been moved to the ballroom and the castle's guest rooms. Sipping a hot mug of the kingdom's finest chocolate – a gift from the princess – he appraised the hard work and grit of his team and shook his head.

Everyone here will be dead within seventy-two hours.

The state-of-the-art barometers and thermometers he carried – gifts from the queen, imported from London's Royal Society for Improving Natural Knowledge – told the whole story, their needles pegged and unmoving. His men stood guard uneasily, their hands on their ice axes and igloo carving knives. Several of them had been attacked by refugees convinced that they had been rounded up so that Elsa could freeze them to death.

Moans erupted from across the frozen courtyard as another wave of cold struck. From atop Sven, Kristoff squinted and saw Elsa running across the frozen bay, running in a very familiar direction. He looked down at Sven to see the reindeer giving him that look. "I know, I know. It's time to go find Anna."

~~v~~

The ice castle glowed red as she approached. Elsa didn't even notice, didn't bother to close the doors after she threw them open. Her tears trickled off her cheeks, froze in midair, and shattered with small tinkling noise at her feet. Arms crossed over her chest, she walked onto the balcony and leaned on the rail. She could see Arendelle very clearly from this side of the castle, frozen beyond anything anyone had ever seen. As she watched, a flock of birds approaching the city slammed into an invisible wall of cold and simply fell out of the sky. "Marshmallow, if you see anyone approaching, tell them..."

Oh. Right.

There was no one to talk to, so she talked to herself. "I'm so sorry, Anna. I loved you so much. I loved our kingdom. Now you think I'm a monster, and Arendelle is dying."

She leaned over the edge. The slopes of North Mountain glittered hundreds of feet below her, easily visible now that the wind had stopped. "I've been afraid of losing that love for so long... which I guess I've lost."

She stepped onto the ledge. Her ice dress shone as she stood in the light of day. "Well if that's love, then it comes at much too high a cost."

There was only one thing left that might end this. The castle's angry red glow faded to blue, and Elsa felt warm for the first time in forever. I think I'll try...

"Don't do it, child."

Elsa's eyes burst open. She leaped backwards off the rail, arms raised, scanning the area, searching for the source of the voice that was too loud and too deep.

Then she looked up.

The enormous gray dragon perched easily on the roof, wings folded.

Elsa fired a wave of icy spears at it. The dragon said... something... and the spears rebounded as though pushed by an invisible force.

"Please don't attack me, little mortal. I am trying to prevent you from doing something very foolish."

Ice skates formed on Elsa's feet, and she raced inside before the dragon could react. The creature hopped lightly onto the balcony and stuck his head through the door.

"What would you know about foolish, dragon? You're responsible for all this!"

The dragon tilted his head. "I beg your miniscule pardon?"

"You burned the Southern Isles! You're the reason Hans brought that fleet here! Why Anna hates me! If not for you, none of this would have happened!" Elsa waved her hand, and the ice at the top of the doorway collapsed toward the dragon's head. It moved out of the way just in time. "Enough! Yol! Toor! Shul!"

The dragon's flame blasted an enormous gap where the door had been. It surged through the gap a moment later, but Elsa was already running out the entrance. Too late, she swung around, but the dragon was already outside and opening its maw...

A ball of flame flashed through the air and struck the dragon full in the face. Elsa whirled around to see the source-

Anna stood atop the ice staircase, staring in shock at her own hands. She looked up as the dragon pivoted toward her and fired another blast of flame. This time, the dragon dodged it, ducking its head with arrogant ease and letting the fiery projectile slam into the ice castle behind.

Elsa swayed on her feet. "Anna?"

The dragon tilted its head. "So this is Anna. She doesn't look like she hates you at all."

"That's right," Anna spat. "Get away from her, you worm."

"My name is KaalVurShaan. You are really testing my patience, magic children. I do not know of this Southern Isles of which you speak, but I have done nothing but sit on this mountain for weeks!"

On the staircase behind Anna, Kristoff recovered his wits. "Anna, the refugees spoke of a black dragon..."

The dragon spun towards him. "What did you say?"

The tension in Anna broke. "Enough of the lies!" Flames erupted at her fingertips, and she cast another fireball at the dragon.

It was already in motion. Light gray on the underside and darker above, the dragon was hard to track against the snow. She had to hit it before it could take to the air-

"I have spent years fighting for mortals," growled the dragon, "and see how I am rewarded. Did you think fire could hurt me? I'm a dragon! One way or another, you will listen to reason. Iiz! Slen! Nus!" A wave of icy air erupted from its jaws, struck Anna, and froze her solid.

With a bloodcurdling shriek that echoed halfway to Arendelle, Elsa struck. Sven dragged Kristoff back down the staircase as a thousand lethal shards of ice erupted from Elsa's body and swirled into a cloud too thick to see through. The dragon roared as icy spikes tore into its hide. It tried to lift off and was promptly seized by a gale that grew stronger the more Elsa screamed. Tears streaming down her cheeks, Elsa threw down her enemy and smote his ruin upon the mountainside.

~~v~~

Kristoff staggered up the staircase and found Elsa sobbing over Anna in the midst of a wasteland of icicles. The blizzard had toppled her so that she lay on her back, and Elsa lay draped over her, bleeding from the half dozen shards of ice that had embedded themselves in her body. "Elsa... Elsa, don't give up! All it takes is one act of love..."

"You think I haven't tried? I've told her a dozen times how much I love her... but I don't think my love counts. Kiss her, Kristoff."

So he did.

Nothing happened.

Kristoff sat back defeated onto the snow. "I don't think love works on dragon magic."

Elsa couldn't even summon the strength to scream. She sagged and held Anna, and it came to her then, clear as perfect ice. There was only one act of love strong enough, only one sacrifice potent enough. Anna had known it, all those months ago when all hope had been Frozen. Now she knew it too. Ultimate cost... for perfect value.

She whispered in Anna's ear. "I love thee with the breath, smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after..."

Her hand found an icicle, placed its sharpened tip against her heart. I love you, Anna.

Behind her, Kristoff understood immediately. "Elsa, no!"

Inside the icy statue, Anna thought, Elsa, no!

Already she could feel the ice melting. It needed only a minute...

Elsa turned to Kristoff. "It's the only way. I've always wondered if I could do for her what she did for me. Now I know. Take care of her, Kristoff."

"Elsa..."

"Be honest with yourself, Kristoff, you want her alive more than you want me alive."

Kristoff swallowed. "We both love her, Elsa, so we both know it's what she wants that matters."

"How could she want me?"

"Elsa, she broke up with me."

The stricken snow queen whirled to stare at him, eyes wide.

"She was too kind to tell me the real reason, but I've known for a while. Do you?"

Oh.

Oh.

Elsa gazed into her sister's eyes. Saw something there. "And so it seems I have tempted you into sin as well. I really am a monster, aren't I? But since I'm going to hell anyway..."

And she kissed her, full on the lips.

Kristoff averted his eyes and saw the sun shining on Arendelle.

~~v~~

Elsa broke the kiss, trailed her lips over Anna's cheek, down to her neck. She inhaled the scent of her hair and pressed her lips against the pulse point where Anna's neck met her shoulder. Embracing her sister with one hand, she raised the ice spike to her own chest with the other. "I love you, Anna."

"I love you too, Elsa."

The icicle fell from the snow queen's nerveless fingers as Anna kissed her on the lips. She held on long enough to feel her sister's heartbeat against her chest, and then fainted dead away.

~~v~~

Beneath them, recovering his strength from Elsa's onslaught, KaalVurShaan heard everything, and understood at last why Paarthurnax had thought these mortals worth fighting for.

~~v~~

"Show me! Do the magic, Anna!"

Standing at the foot of the bed, Anna let out an exasperated sigh and looked down at her sister, bundled up in a bunch of blankets and pillows Kristoff had brought.

"Elsa, we should be asleep!" Then she paused. It was all... so familiar.

"Elsa? We've had this conversation before, haven't we?"

Her sister nodded, giggling. Anna grinned, then waved her hand. Instantly, her hair was heatlessly aflame. Elsa gasped, then clapped her hands. "Elsa... I remember! I remember everything! When we were kids, I would wake you up... and you would do the magic! We'd set off snowstorms and make snowmen in every part of the castle!"

Elsa gasped and sat upright. Anna walked up to her, putting her hair out, and pressed her back into the pillows, taking care not to touch the bandages. Elsa raised a hand to cradle her cheek. "How?"

"I think I can answer that," came Kristoff's voice from just outside the room.

"Oh! Come in, please."

Kristoff smiled at them. "When Grand Pabbie sealed away your memories of the night of the accident, he did it to save you. But in the process, he also sealed away any magical potential you might have had. It's not really surprising. You're summer," he indicated Anna, "and you're winter," he bowed to Elsa. "But recent events have obviously changed that. Pabbie always told me, 'Love finds a way... Love Ignites.' Anna, it makes sense that love would return your power and your memory to you. I've never seen you in love like this before."

The sisters traded a look, then leveled their gazes at him, and he saw fear in their eyes, and a plea.

"I won't judge, don't worry. And I'll never tell. After everything you've both been through, you deserve some peace for yourselves... whatever form that might take. Just... please, don't blame yourselves for what happened out on the bay. You did everything you could. You're not monsters."

Anna enfolded him in a hug and kissed him on the cheek. "You really are a love expert."

Before he could reply, Elsa raised a hand and beckoned him forward. "Kristoff Bjorgman."

"Er... yes?"

"Kneel."

Even sitting up in bed covered in bandages, Elsa at this moment looked every inch a queen. He knelt, and all of a sudden, there was a sword of pure ice in Elsa's hand.

"By the power vested in me as royal sovereign of this land and all within it, in gratitude for extraordinary services rendered, and in recognition of surpassing strength and nobility of character, I hereby dub thee a knight of Arendelle. You are the first true knight in this land in over a hundred years. Bear it well." She cupped a hand under his chin and kissed his forehead. "Thank you, Kristoff."

Kristoff took a moment to marvel at the sword, the most perfect ice he had ever seen in his life, then enfolded Elsa in a hug.

"Um, well, er... With your permission, miladies..." Anna stifled a giggle. "I need to return and help my crew with the thawing of the kingdom. And you need some time to yourselves. Rest well."

"Kristoff," said Anna, "Now that Sven is a knightly steed, he's entitled to as many carrots as he can eat."

"Heavens, don't tell him that! It'll go to his head! Sweet dreams!" He gave them a big smile and left.

"He's gonna make some lucky girl really happy someday," Anna said.

And then they were alone.

~~v~~

Elsa held out her arms and Anna slid into them, and marveled at just how easy it was. She looked her sister in the eye and said, "You will not believe how angry I am at you right now." Elsa averted her eyes.

"No, look at me. I saw you on the ledge, on the way up here. Before the dragon showed up. What. The. Hell," she clutched her sister until her fingernails dug into the other girl's back, "Was that?"

"I didn't know how else to stop the storm. And... I killed a lot of people, Anna. I thought myself a monster. Then you wouldn't even talk to me, and I became convinced that you thought me a monster too. After that, jumping was easy." She ran a hand through Anna's hair, then clutched at it until her fingernails were digging into her sister's scalp. She fixed Anna with a glare. "So maybe I have reason to be angry too."

"Elsa, what happened on the bay was my fault. I was so angry at Hans that I couldn't believe he might be telling the truth. You counted on me to make the right judgment. I let you down and people died. How could you expect me to face you after that?"

"Anna, I am the sovereign. Final responsibility falls to me-"

"Which doesn't change the fact that I was there and things would have gone differently if I hadn't been so selfish. And don't think you're off the hook, sister, I've seen you choose death twice now and we are going to talk about it."

Elsa turned over, her back to her sister. "Thrice."

"What?"

"Back on the day of the Eternal Winter, just before you saved me, Hans told me that I had killed you. I heard him behind me. I knew he would execute me." She shivered, but found herself unable to cry again. "And I didn't care. It was a relief."

Hot tears started in Anna's eyes as she reached over and turned her sister to face her. "No. Elsa... no, no, no, how long have you felt this way?"

"Anna, I know what you're about to ask me, and the answer is no. Don't ask me to live in a world where you don't exist, or where you think I'm a monster. I can't. I won't."

Anna rested her forehead on Elsa's. "That means a lot to me, really, it does, but Elsa, that's not fair to you. You shouldn't slave your will to live to anyone else... not even me. It's... It's... It's not healthy!"

Elsa kissed her. "I'll stay healthy for as long as you do. Is that fair?"

"Alright. Alright. No more firefights with dragons." Anna returned the kiss, which lasted a long time.

After awhile, Elsa said, "So that's it? We're okay?"

Anna stroked her. "Yes. We're okay."

Elsa smiled despite herself. "Is it really that simple? Open the door and talk to the one you love for a few minutes and just like that everything's okay?"

"Yeah, but because we're both idiots, we had to get hidden magic powers and ice castles and dragons involved. I know they make for a better story, Elsa, but can we just do things the boring way from now on?"

Elsa laughed. "And they say I'm the wise one."

"You are, it's just that I hang out with knight captain Love Expert more. He loves you, you know. Lots of people do."

Elsa placed her head on her sister's chest and listened to her heartbeat. "None more than you."

"None more than me."

~~v~~

Elsa woke up and felt Anna's teeth on her neck.

For a moment, she panicked and thought of wights and monsters, but then a soft tongue lapped at her pulse point and she clung gratefully to her sister. Then she kissed her. And then...

"Whoa, slow down, my queen." Anna smile down at her. "We need to check your bandages first."

Elsa pouted, but let Anna fuss over her. The younger girl gasped. "Elsa... your wounds!"

Elsa looked, and saw her skin unblemished, the wounds entirely gone.

Anna gaped. "How..."

Elsa kissed her. "You're summer, Anna. Growth. Healing."

"Passion," Anna breathed. And with that, Anna pressed her onto the bed. "We've talked enough."

The first kiss was brief.

The second was longer.

Elsa opened her eyes to see her sister panting over her, her gaze dark with desire. Anna reached up and undid the ice clasp holding her hair in place and suddenly Elsa couldn't breathe. Anna's lips pressed into hers as the younger girl ran her hands through her hair.

Elsa writhed under her touch and breathed a small moan into Anna's ear, and before she knew it her tongue was in Elsa's mouth. The queen's eyes went wide and her whole body tensed, then melted under hers, and the blonde suddenly broke the kiss.

Anna opened her eyes and realized what else had melted.

Elsa's ice dress was almost gone, and she herself was wreathed in a cloud of mist as the dress thinned and turned to vapor in just the right places. Elsa flushed and averted her eyes, then gasped as Anna disrobed.

As her dress landed on the floor beside the bed, Elsa's burst into a thousand snowflakes that swirled spiraling upwards and faded.

"Oh, you're beautiful..." The queen's nipples stood erect and Anna, unable to resist, lowered her head and began to suckle. Elsa gasped as unfamiliar sensation surged through her breasts, and she moaned and could not tell if it was from pain or pleasure.

After a gentle, agonizing eternity, Anna lifted her head and smiled, but Elsa couldn't spare the attention. Her gaze was locked onto her lover's heaving chest. When did they get so big and oh are those freckles- and before she could complete the thought she had thrown herself forward and rolled so that Anna was beneath her and she was returning the favor. Anna let out a moan that echoed hers and Elsa brought her hands up to caress those perfect, anguished breasts as she suckled and kissed and felt more loved than she ever had in her life.

A leg found its way between hers and Anna felt a fire ignite within her. Elsa withdrew from her chest, and before she could beg her to continue Elsa's lips were on hers again and their nipples touched and Anna cried out.

The sound had a palpable effect on the older girl – Anna felt rather than heard Elsa's gasp and something like a roar forced itself between her lips as she rolled over so that she was on top again. She pressed her leg between Elsa's and fought not to pass out as she felt wetness and warmth there. Elsa's hands found their way to her hips and the blonde pressed down and Anna felt something enormous inside her, pulsing and cramping and stinging and growing and she couldn't hold it, she couldn't and Elsa rolled her hips and Anna let out a sob because she couldn't hold it, it was too big, she was going to burst, she was going to die and the world darkened and narrowed down to her sister pleading for her by name.

Anna surged into her and Elsa felt warmth cascade through her lover's body, and then hers. "Elsa, Elsa, Elsa-ah, aaahh-" Anna's whole body writhed and shook and clenched into hers and Elsa had only a moment to realize what had happened before her moment came and she threw her head back and screamed as within her dawned an invincible summer.

~~v~~

The next few months were a haze of joy. The trip back to Arendelle had been uneventful, the wolves turning tail and fleeing when Anna brandished flame in their general direction. The days were spent dealing with the refugees. Some, happy just to be alive, were offered jobs as farmer's assistants and ice harvesters. Some, including many who had lost family on the day of the attack, would not deign to live in a land where Elsa ruled, and these were sent off in a ship with Admiral Coleridge with enough supplies to try their luck elsewhere. None would ever forget the evening when Anna had revealed her powers and Elsa had explained the cause of the unusually warm and sudden summer. Anna had simply raised her hands and lit every torch in the courtyard at once, then set her hair alight for effect, and Elsa had had to fight off a mad temptation to run her hands through the flame.

A ball was out of the question so soon after the disaster, but Elsa danced with Anna every night in the ballroom when everyone else was asleep, spraying snowflakes and tongues of flame as they twirled together and laughed.

Crocus flowers bloomed across Arendelle, in the fields, on the mountainsides, and in pots the sisters spread around the castle. Elsa walked into her bedroom one night and saw that her bed had been strewn with them, and had only a moment to appreciate them before Anna ambushed her from behind the door. The flowers blazed in every color and never wilted and Anna would thread one every morning through her hair.

There were still nightmares, fits of melancholia, and anxiety among crowds, for the wounds of a lifetime do not heal with one epiphany or one lovemaking, but Anna held fast to her through good days as well as bad, and if on some days Elsa clung to her a little more tightly, no one but they and Kristoff noticed.

Olaf skated about Arendelle handing flowers to the townsfolk. Sven rolled his eyes and consented to have crocuses set on his antlers. Kristoff earned himself a kiss when he presented the sisters with records of dance music for their phonograph. He earned another one when he suggested that they use Anna's powers to plant cacao trees. The resulting plantations and chocolate workshops provided jobs for the three hundred refugees who had opted to stay in Arendelle.

One evening, Anna cried out in ecstasy and sent rivulets of heatless fire dancing ticklishly along the queen's arms. One morning, Elsa dressed her sister in a gown of ice that sparkled and gleamed in the sun and didn't feel cold at all.

Peace-filled nights turned into love-filled days, and when one day a ring with a gem of unmelting ice appeared on the princess's finger and a ring with a tiny tongue of undying flame appeared on the queen's, the people took it to be ostentation and nothing more.

One day, almost a year after the battle with the dragon, a couple took their newborn child to the queen to be blessed. Elsa had looked at Anna as she held the baby, looked at her in a way she never had before, and Anna felt fear and joy and hope and other things for which she had no name.

And all in Arendelle savored the perfection of the days, until one day Kristoff burst into the throne room and reported that a black dragon had been spotted off the coast.

~~v~~

Anna stood beside Elsa in the black tower once again. In the city, Knight Captain Kristoff and the ice-men stood ready beside the castle's snowmelt reserve, weapons sheathed and loaded with buckets of water. The city guard had done the same. There were only two powers in Arendelle that might conceivably match the dragon from the survivors' reports. All others were committed to defense and firefighting.

A sheet of ice covered the bay as Elsa called her armor into being, not black this time, but blue as Arendelle's sky. Beside her, Anna gripped her shoulder, shook with effort, and was suddenly cloaked in flame. A roar echoed off the mountains, and the sun went out and the sky turned red. A deafening roar nearly knocked the sisters off their feet, and Elsa threw Anna to the ground as something smashed through the ice directly behind them. Anna's cloak of flame flickered and died out and Elsa's armor turned ruby red as the dragon shoved its head into the gap. An icy spear flew from Elsa's hands and bounced off the monster's forehead, and Anna's supporting stream of fire washed off with no effect. The dragon snapped its maw once and Anna cried out in terror, and then it was gone and a fireball came from the sky and shattered the entire tower like glass.

Elsa conjured a pile of powdered snow for them to land in, but before they could get up, another fireball knocked them back. Elsa gasped as her armor melted off her body. The crocus bud in Anna's hair wilted and blew away. The sisters clung to each other and for the first time, Anna noticed what the fireballs were doing to Arendelle. A shadow fell upon them, and they looked up and screamed.

The black dragon hovered above them. A creature out of nightmare, the sight of it sent a wave of shock and revulsion through Anna and she fell to her knees and emptied her stomach onto the ice. The creature roared at them, and Elsa clapped her hands over her ears and screamed. Anna turned away and sobbed as she saw the entire castle engulfed in fire.

And then the dragon spoke.

"Zu'u Alduin, feyn do jun. Zok sahrot do naan ko Lein!"

Monstrous shadows snaked across the ice as every last tree on the mountains around them erupted into flame. The ice underneath the dragon shattered. The mountains around them roared as avalanches swept down their sides and buried farms, towns, and the remains of the burning forests.

Tears streaming down their cheeks, Elsa and Anna helped each other to their feet, shared one last embrace, and screaming as one, unleashed the full force of their power. A pillar of blue flame issued forth from Anna and engulfed the dragon. The tortured clouds above shattered into a thousand spikes of ice and rained upon its head, and the sisters collapsed bleeding onto the ice.

Fus! Ro! Dah!

With the last of her strength, Elsa clung to her sister as they flew through the air and crumpled, utterly defeated. With the last of her strength, Anna lifted her hand and placed it in the queen's.

"Mey. Mal mey. Only now, at the end, do you understand. I am Alduin the World-Eater! Dii qah med pogaan spaan, dii joti zahkrii, dii viing strun, ahrk dii su'um dinok!"

The ice quaked. Through a red haze, Anna saw something enormous erupt from beneath the ice. It was gray, and it had wings like a bat, and with a shock Anna recognized the dragon from North Mountain as it barreled through the air and sank its jaws into Alduin's left wing. The black dragon thrashed in midair and fell roaring to the ice.

The gray dragon landed beside them, without a sound, without even shaking the ice. It loomed over them and shouted.

Mid! Vur! Shaan!

And just like that, Elsa and Anna were on their feet. The air around them chilled as Elsa wiped blood from her nose, and a tongue of flame leaped to life in Anna's hand. The dragon tilted his head.

"Truce?"

Elsa nodded. "Truce."

And the three of them turned to face Alduin.

"Wo kos hiu, boziik dovah?"

The grey dragon said nothing, and placed himself between the sisters and Alduin.

"A dovah serving mortals? Paak! Disgusting. Who are you, wyrm?"

"I am KaalVurShaan, and-"

The black dragon smacked its tail into the ice with a crack like a thunderbolt, and Elsa and Anna went to their knees again.

"No. That is not your true name. You were once something awe-inspiring. Something transcendent, before you became kaal se joorre, a nursemaid to tiny, short-lived vermin! You do not even deign to speak your own tongue. Tell me now before you die, what was your real name, in Vus from whence we came?"

"You will never know. That dovah is dead, Alduin."

"Yes. Yes he is!"

The black dragon launched itself into the air. The gray dragon followed, spewing flame. Alduin roared and and twisted left, but the other dragon flew onward and upward, twisted his tail just so, and was suddenly behind him again. Alduin roared, and a fireball streaked down from the heavens straight into Kaal's flight path. The dragon twisted out of the way just in time, and suddenly Alduin was behind him.

It mattered not. Kaal had spent half the Dragon War with other dovah on his tail. This was ease itself. He swept into a perfectly coordinated high speed turn that put some distance between him and his pursuer and pointed him straight at Arendelle Castle. As the World-Eater opened his maw and spat all-destroying flame, Kaal whipped his tail upward and then left and threw his wings open, shifting the left one just a little more than the right. The air whipped at him as his whole body twisted into a perfect snap roll, up, up and over the astonished Alduin.

Yol! Toor! Shul!

Engulfed in flame, Alduin barreled straight into the burning spire of the castle, out the other side, and through one of the towers. There was a spray of shattered stone and splintered wood as he tumbled to the ground. Struggling to his feet, he set the nearby houses on fire, turned his head skyward, and shouted Kaal out of the air.

Fus! Ro! Dah!

KaalVurShaan crashed face first into the ground, leaving a furrow a hundred feet long and grinding to a halt in front of an astonished Kristoff. The black dragon loomed over them and Kristoff found himself muttering words from a fairy tale Pabbie had taught him a long time ago.

"Sword of truth, fly swift and sure, that evil die and good endure!" And he threw the sword.

The sword of perfect ice sailed through the night and embedded itself in the World-Eater's chest.

The dragon let out a roar that shook the whole city. The sword flew through the air and landed on the ground at Kristoff's feet. One of the castle's towers collapsed. Elsa and Anna, limping toward them, fell to their knees yet again.

"Your false power will not hold me back long, insolent children. Mulaagi zok lot! This world is small and cannot endure my presence. Already it churns and breaks around you, but I will outlast you all! I am immortal! I cannot die!"

There was a blast of hot wind, and the sun was shining again, and Alduin was gone.

~~v~~

It was a full week before either of the sisters could use their powers again. Elsa had tried to call a snowstorm to douse the flames, cried out, and fallen unconscious to the cobblestones as Kristoff's sword shattered in his hands. Anna had rushed to her and passed out as soon as she laid hands on her. Kai and Gerda had been occupied running the evacuation, so it was up to Kristoff and Sven to coordinate the firefighting efforts. With the castle reservoir demolished, the ice-men had resorted to setting up bucket brigades direct from the bay. Despite their efforts, more than half of the city had burned to the ground.

Miraculously, Olaf survived.

Kristoff walked into the makeshift shelter he had built inside one of the towers of the ruined castle. Inside, the sisters slept in each others' arms on some blankets spread on the ground. From her singed portrait, Joan of Arc, the last survivor of Arendelle's royal art collection, looked down at them. Kristoff gazed at them for a moment with shoulders slumped and turned to leave when a voice interrupted him.

"Kristoff?"

He spun around. "Yes, my queen?"

"The farms... the settlements... did..."

He sighed. "Not gonna lie to you, Elsa. We lost a lot of people. My crews managed to get out there and dig out many survivors, but the avalanches and forest fires did a lot of damage. We had real trouble just finding the villages because the ground's all torn up. Our maps are useless. About the only thing we've got going for us is that Kaal has been doing survey flights, pointing us towards groups of survivors so we can get to them before they starve."

"He has Arendelle's gratitude. Thank you, Kristoff." Her eyes shut and her head sank back into the blankets.

Anna's voice was small and trembling as she spoke to her sister. "It's alright, Elsa, oh please don't cry..."

Kristoff spoke. "She's right. We've all cried enough, haven't we? Come on, I want you to see something." He helped the pair to their feet.

Careful to let them both lean on him, Kristoff walked them out of the ruined gates, now forever open, and beheld hundreds of flowers that had been left for them by the survivors of Arendelle. Crocuses, roses, and tulips of every color were piled on Kristoff's broken sleigh, and amongst the flowers were dozens and dozens of notes, all saying the same thing.

Thank You.

~~v~~

"It seems we owe you an apology, noble dragon."

"Drem. I deserve neither the apology nor the accolade. It is good to see you on your feet again, Elsa Snow Queen. Most who stand against the World-Eater do not stand again afterward." KaalVurShaan perched atop the tower, than hopped lightly to the ground in front of the sisters.

"I heard many things after you threw me off the mountain, snow queen."

Elsa tensed. "Please, call me Elsa. What... what did you hear?"

"I heard you prepare to make zahrahmiik, a human sacrifice of yourself." Kaal sat lower on his haunches. "The very thought of it brought an entire winter to an end. It was... vonmindoraan. Strange. Foreign to me. And yet strong. So strong. A dragon's nature is to dominate. Truth for us lies in power, yet your truth lies in something else. My old master, Paarthurnax, tried to teach this to me, when I asked him why we were fighting for mortals, but I could not see it."

He paused, then turned to regard the little snowman standing beside him. "I have spoken to Olaf. He has made many attempts to explain to me the source of your power, this thing you call love. It puzzles me. He puzzles me."

"Ah, Olaf. He was the first thing I created when I let go and used my powers, made from my memories of my love for Anna without my even realizing it."

"Krosis. I apologize. I have not given proper respect. I did not know that he was your son."

Elsa gasped. "He's not- I mean..."

The dragon raised a scaly eyebrow. "He came from your body, conceived without your realizing it from the love you shared with the one you care for most. Is this not how humans reproduce?"

Elsa's whole body turned red. "P-please excuse me. We'll talk later." And she fled with Anna giggling behind her.

Kaal turned to Olaf. "Folaas. I have missed something."

"Well, you see, when two people love each other very mu-"

"Aaaaaaaaannnnd it's time to go ice skating," said Anna, hurrying back and yanking the snowman back with her.

"Don't worry, you haven't missed anything, no one will tell me the details," Olaf yelled as he was dragged away.

Kaal regarded them and shook his head. "Hmmm. Another secret it seems the dovah are not meant to know."

~~v~~

There was a flicker of disturbed air, and Hans materialized amidst the ruins of his father's castle. The broken crown fell from his hands, its gem crumbling to dust. He looked around and found himself face to face with Alduin.

He did not scream.

He did not freeze.

Green eyes took in everything. The World-Eater was slumped on the rubble, surrounded by the walking corpses of the citizens of the Southern Isles. Glowing spikes of magical ice jutted out of his skull. Black blood trickled from a wound on his chest. Ah. An opening.

"It seems the sisters of Arendelle have bested you, dragon."

The dragon stared right back at him. Its eyes flicked to the broken crown. "My name is Alduin, little mortal. I killed your father. Prepare to die."

"But then you would never get to hear my offer. I am Hans of the Southern Isles, and I have dealt with the sisters before and lived."

When the dragon did not vaporize him, Hans continued. "The snow witch has laid a curse on me, but I know how to beat her. You can raise these corpses, but you need a general to lead them into battle."

"Obviously you wish me to cure your curse in exchange."

"I want more than that." Hans's eyes narrowed. "I want this kingdom. And I want Arendelle."

The dragon regarded him. "There is no cure for your curse, mortal. But if it pleased me, after you die, I could raise you. You would be my foremost worshiper, granted power above all others. And you would be immortal. Are you afraid, Hans of the Southern Isles? The cold of the grave awaits you."

Hans looked at his frosted hands, then up at the World-Eater. "The cold never bothered me anyway."

To Be Continued

Afterword

This is the first full work of fan fiction I have written in half a decade. It is about twelve thousand words and forty pages long and took me nine days to write. It was finished at the end of February, but the idea had been fermenting in my head since I watched Frozen in early January. The movie has proven a hit among the students at my university, particularly the AB Literature freshmen whom I teach. It is great fun sneaking quotes from the movie into my lesson plans. I like to tell my Introduction to Fiction students that there is more characterization in the three minutes of "Let it Go" than there is in some full-length films. But enough gushing – if you haven't watched the movie, you need to fix that!

I cannot be certain if studying Literature makes one's fan fiction writing better, but I can confirm that it makes it more fun. The great advantage of fan fiction is that you can put in all kinds of references to other works without worrying about copyright. "Those Who Favor Fire" is not merely the product of my love for Frozen and Skyrim, but of all the many books, plays, films, and games I have encountered and studied.

This is a fairly short fan fiction. It is nowhere near the length of Zoeyz's "The Contract" or kaiserklee's beautiful, beautiful "The Tempest," but I have endeavored to make every line pull its weight. While the story is designed to be enjoyable on its face, trained or especially perceptive readers will find much more to enjoy beneath the surface. For example, the title is a reference to "Fire and Ice" by Robert Frost:

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

This is one of several foreshadowings of Anna's power.

It is always risky to create an original character. There is the danger that it will become that most dreaded of fan fiction entities, the Mary Sue, a character that is too perfect. This is even more of a danger when your OC is a dragon. Dragons are powerful. All the greats – Fafnir, Smaug, Beowulf's Bane – invariably dominate the stories they appear in. Paarthurnax spoke true: it is in the nature of a dovah to dominate. Skyrim's dragons are not mere firebreathing lizards – they are fragments of Akatosh, king of the gods, wielding what are essentially the console commands of creation, the thu'um! Just putting one into the story instantly renders fire and ice powers redundant, and adds many more besides. More than that, dovah are centuries old. It would be foolish to have one who had no wisdom. In fact, putting Kaal on the side of the angels meant having to make him wiser than Alduin, who has fallen from grace and wisdom. And all this before any unique characterization takes place!

My solution was to make KaalVurShaan a fragile aerobat. He is no match for the World-Eater toe to toe – we see Alduin knock him out of the sky with one Unrelenting Force shout! But no one can match him in the air. Like all the greatest combat pilots, he is an ambush predator. Erich Hartmann, Hans Ulrich Rudel, Saburo Sakai – they all advocated high speed surprise attacks, opening fire only at point blank range. Even Kaal's color scheme reflects this: he is countershaded in the manner of a great white shark. Hartmann (352 victories) famously regarded dogfighting as a waste of time, and we see this in Kaal's tactics – when cornered, his instinct is to extend and escape, using his superior speed and airmanship to lead his opponents on a merry chase.

Writing a dragon battle is so much fun when you have a pilot's license, because you know how the maneuvers work! Over the course of the story, we see Kaal perform an Immelmann turn, a snap roll, nap-of-the-earth flight, and a couple of low speed silent landings. He is imaginative – we see him using dragon's breath for thrust vectoring. The compressibility trick from the first dogfight is a real issue that plagued World War II pilots. It was caused by transonic airflow locking up the control surfaces at high speed. In story terms, this means that Kaal flies really, really fast. We see him cover the distance from Mount Anthor to the Throat of the World in only a couple of paragraphs. He's no slouch offensively, either – the narration of the first time he breathes fire is based off that of Paarthurnax's meditations on the words of power. The astute reader will notice that this means his flame is stronger than normal, but more importantly, it is a sign of his loyalty to his old master, who is now literally worlds away.

This is my original character. Morally upright, hypercompetent, and still in over his head. By limiting his exposure, giving him a bit of social awkwardness around humans, and showing that he still has something to learn of wisdom, I hope to have made him more than the sum of his character sheet and the hours of research that went into creating him.

For all that Kaal is important, this is really the story of the sisters of Arendelle. Author Chris Claremont once wrote, "You want to know how to write a good story? You take a group of interesting, likable, wonderful characters. And you turn their lives into Hell on Earth." There is a great deal of happiness in this story, make no mistake, but Elsa and Anna go through agony to get there. In the story, I made it a point to explore Elsa's psyche – co-director Jennifer Lee has noted that she suffers from depression and anxiety. These are the two most common mental illnesses on earth. I have many students who have suffered from both at one time or another, so it was important to treat the issue with respect. Elsa spends a lot of time in this story crying, hating herself, and worse. The challenge was to make her do so without descending into whining or pointless angst. There is a reason for every nightmare, for every negative emotion she has. Anna too was a wonderful opportunity. Take a person, a genuinely good soul, and force her to watch as a moment of weakness on her part – a very justifiable one – leads to catastrophe and death, and you will have drama of the most meaningful kind. Anna here plays out a Greek archetype that has endured for thousands of years – the fatal flaw, the tragic mistake. Each of the sisters was written with a motif in mind. Anna's is love. Elsa's is sacrifice. But how can one love if love opens the door to both good and evil? What is the point of sacrifice when we sacrifice what matters most? I hope the sisters' answers prove inspiring. I love Elsa and Anna, and one of the greatest privileges of writing this has been getting to know them better.

I ship Elsa and Anna. This was a surprise to me. I do teach at a Catholic school, and while we celebrate our lesbians, the incest taboo is very much in place. The more I applied my teacher's perception to the movie, though, the more natural it seemed. Jennifer Lee, to the delight of Disney's many LGBT fans, has deliberately kept Elsa's sexuality ambiguous. "Let it Go" works very well not just as a sexual awakening, but as a coming out song. Look at that walk. Look at how that dress is slit to above the knee. Look at the way she pumps those hips. The first thing that happens after she decides not to be society's perfect girl is that she becomes fabulous. From a psychological perspective, being separated at a young age means that the sisters do not have an active Westermarck effect – they can feel romantic attraction to one another. Every line the trolls sing about love makes as much sense when sung about Elsa as when sung about Kristoff, if not more. The Act of True Love that is the climax of the story is between Elsa and Anna. The "I love you" they share is the most romantic line in the movie. And when, exactly, does Elsa lose it? When Anna tells her that she wants to spend her life with someone. Else.

So, Elsanna shippers, this is a professional collegiate lecturer telling you that you're not deluded. This is just one interpretation, and it's every bit as valid as the others (my other favorite is Elsa as an allegory of mental illness. For all their good intentions, her parents were simply not equipped to handle a special-needs child). As a straight male with no female siblings, I am also grateful to Disney for showing so beautifully how powerful the bond between sisters can be. Tolkien once said that a really strong story has what is called applicability. It can mean different things to different people, with all the interpretations being meaningful. For this reason, I stand by Frozen, even though it's not really fashionable for a Literature scholar to put such popular culture on a pedestal.

In my head, Elsa and Anna adore each other, stand in awe of each other, would live and die for one another. I have written their relationship with a strong sexual element, but it is not the dominant one. Again, love and sacrifice. And building snowmen together.

The book Elsa read to Anna about the bishop and his flower garden is Les Miserables. I have taken mild liberties with the timeline, but the art style of the movie comes from roughly that era. The poem translated from Portuguese that Elsa and Anna whisper to each other is of course Elizabeth Barrett Browning's famous 43rd Sonnet, originally published in the collection "Sonnets from the Portuguese." Anna gives us the first line, and Elsa gives us the last, because this gives us a pleasing symmetry, and because it tells us that Elsa heard every word when Anna all but admitted that she loved her in that way. The first line is about love, the last line about death, and here we see the sisters' themes of love and sacrifice again.

The Southern Cross is modeled on the HMS Victory, and its terrifying heavy mortar is inspired by the ones deployed against Elsa in "Frozen Fractals" by the fan fic author of the same name.

Coleridge's first scene is interesting. Throughout, I have attempted to write in the style of Ernest Hemingway, and his famous Iceberg Theory is a key technique in my arsenal. Dialogue-laden and only minimally descriptive, it works for fan fiction because you, as a fan, already have Elsa and Anna in your head, and so your interpretation of their conversations is as much your creation as mine. But when Alduin first shows up, the narrative goes straight into Lovecraft mode. Tolkien fans will also notice that Coleridge's – and the readers' – first look at Alduin is the passage from The Lord of the Rings in which Tolkien describes the Fell Beasts of the Nazgul.

Have I mentioned how much I love fan fiction yet? You can play with all the authors' toys. Tolkien is all over this fic. Kaal does not merely go through the Time Wound, he "strays out of thought and time." Elsa did not merely defeat him, but "threw down her enemy and smote his ruin upon the mountainside." Alduin is a fountain of these. Skyrim players and those learned in the dragon language will notice that he quotes Emperor Palpatine and Smaug the Golden when he taunts the sisters. Putting these references to other works in English was too on the nose, but they work just fine in Dovah.

The quotes are good outside battle scenes too. Albert Camus's famous quote "In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer" forms the climax (pardon the pun) of Elsa and Anna's love scene.

I am cautious of waxing lyrical in a fan fiction, but the balcony scene where Elsa first decides to give up her life, to truly let it all go, has lines from the lyrics of "Let it Go," "For the First Time in Forever," and, of course, "Defying Gravity." It is the most musical moment of the story, and so gets the musical treatment.

Kristoff gets the Sleeping Beauty quote, because Kristoff is basically awesome. In a story with so much girl power, I wanted also to show what a stable, comforting presence a genuinely good-hearted man can be.

Alduin is strong. Ridiculously strong. Mulaagi zok lot, as he so boastfully claims. This is intentional. For all of Elsa and Anna's power, they are not like the battlemages of Skyrim. The sisters' powers are always at their best when used as acts of love. Every single time Elsa and Anna use their powers in direct combat, Bad Things happen, and they have to fall back on the power of love and the power of friendship to save the day. There may be sex, violence, and suicidal ideation in this story, but in its deepest heart, it is still a Disney fan fic.

Alduin is the shadow over this world. He is a product of a brawnier fictional universe, and this world is literally not big enough for him. Reality cannot endure his presence – objects and egos crumble literally everywhere he goes, because, like the Mighty of Tolkien's Legendarium, conflicts with him are settled through manifestations of "might" and "countenance" rather than equipment and tactics. This is why, of all characters, it is Kristoff, armed with the power of fairy tale, who deals the decisive blow to Alduin, for, as Gandalf says, often are preserved in children's tales things that were once necessary for the wise to know.

Little more needs to be said. The scene where Anna reads to Elsa is inspired by Caris August's "Awoken." Elsa's nightmares are inspired by "Unto Death" by Julchen M. Lidell. The ballroom dancing scenes are inspired by the immensely lovable "Shall we Dance?" by Yamino, who inspires envy by excelling in both fan art and fan fiction. I am indebted to TV Tropes for both story tools and fan fic recommendations.

To all aspiring fan fiction writers out there: Write! Pour your love onto the page. You can only get better with practice.

To all aspiring fan fiction writers out there: Read! Love will give you power, so encounter as many works as possible so you can fall in love with as many as possible. The genre doesn't matter. The medium doesn't matter. Literature, musicals, poetry, fan fiction, video games, web comics. Stories are stories, and when they are good, the heart knows it. Homer, the Mahabharata, and Shakespeare all lasted for a reason. And they all started with an author with something to say.

Thank you for adventuring with me! I have just finished statting out Hans' Dragon Priest Mask. We haven't seen the last of this story.