The Kingdom of Ice

Journey Into the Past, Part 1

"Are you sure?" Elsa asked her sister, for the fourth time in the last ten minutes. "Honestly, Anna, I'm doing fine."

"No you aren't, and stop asking me that," Anna replied, standing firm and crossing her arms over her chest. "You need a vacation, and you're going to take one. Kristoff and I will handle things here while you're gone. Besides," she added, her frown turning into a sly smile, "you've more than earned some alone time with Jack."

Elsa's face went crimson for a few moments before she regained her composure, and Anna laughed.

"It's almost too easy," she teased, before pursing her lips in mock seriousness and waving dismissively at her sister. "Now shoo. Shoo! Don't worry, we won't burn down the castle. Go see what Jack wants to do for a few days, Elsa."

"That's easy," Jack's voice broke in from one of the nearby shadows, causing both of the royal siblings to half-jump with surprise. "There's somewhere up north I've been wanting to take you for a bit. Should be fun."

"Stop doing that," Elsa reprimanded Jack as soon as she'd caught her breath. He just chuckled, walking over and flashing the Queen a smile.

"C'mon," he said, "don't try to tell me you didn't enjoy it, not even a little."

"We're not having that conversation right now," Elsa replied, a small smile that only Jack could see taking the sting out of her words. "So, where did you want to go?"

"I'll show you," Jack said, something in his voice sending a quick thrill of anticipation through Elsa. "Follow me, your Highness."

"You know you don't have to call me that, right?"

"I do," Jack insisted, before trailing the tips of his fingers over the ring on Elsa's right hand. "Until we make this official, at least."

Elsa smiled.

"Fine," she said, frowning playfully as she took Jack's hand and intertwined her fingers with his. "Have it your way."

"I always do," he said lowly, sending a slightly different kind of thrill through Elsa this time.

"You're impossible," she replied just as lowly, increasing her pace as they approached the main door of the palace. "Don't make me order you to be quiet for the rest of the day, Jack."

"And miss out on all my charm?" He said with another smile. "That'd be a shame."

Elsa realized that the only way to get Jack to stop would be to stop talking herself, so she fell silent and settled for leaning over and blowing a languorous, chilly burst of air over the outer edge of Jack's right ear. He shuddered visibly, his steps faltering for a few moments before he got himself settled again.

"That," he whispered, struggling not to let his breathing get out of hand, "was not fair."

"That's what you get for letting me learn your weak spots," Elsa whispered back, an edge to her voice that Jack had to admit he loved hearing.

"Well, turnabout's fair play," he said with a smile, pushing open the gates at last. "But first, we have some flying to do."

"Some what?" Elsa asked, unsure she'd heard that last part correctly.

"Flying," Jack repeated, taking a step and a half away from Elsa but keeping his grip on her hand. "You ready?"

"I'm… not sure," Elsa answered, her voice trembling slightly around the edges.

"It'll be fine," Jack said warmly, tightening his grip on Elsa's hand while using his other hand to call a powerful wind. It was swirling around them a moment later, and Elsa felt it lift her feet a short way off the ground.

"Jack?"

"Don't worry," he said, looking over at the Queen and smiling. "I'd never let you fall."

Jack crouched slightly, knees bending, before pushing himself back up with enough force to launch himself off the ground. Elsa came with him, feeling weightless and exhilarated as the current of wind beneath her kept her aloft and moving forward. They were parallel to the ground now, and sure enough, Jack's hand still firmly held onto hers.

"So?" Jack called over to her, his voice slightly obscured by the rushing of the wind as they sped through the air. "What d'you think?"

Elsa couldn't keep from laughing in pure glee at the sensation of flight, her eyes bright with wonder.

"This is amazing!" she shouted back, and the pair laughed in unison as they headed towards the horizon.

It was a few hours before the couple touched down again, kicking up a small swirl of snow around them as they landed in a field of white. Elsa took a few shaky steps as she caught her breath and got used to walking on the ground again, Jack wrapping a supportive arm around her shoulders as she did so.

"Easy," he said. "Take your time."

"Thank you," Elsa replied, smiling. "I should be fine from here, though."

Jack stepped back, looking around at the nearby mountains and rock formations.

Yeah," he said, "this is the place. Just give me a second to open the door."

Elsa looked around, confused, but knew to give Jack the benefit of the doubt when it came to things like this. A few moments later, Jack was standing with purpose at a point that seemed completely unremarkable, his face screwed tight with concentration into an expression that Elsa had never seen from him before.

"Come on," she heard him say intently under his breath, holding his hands out in front of himself parallel to the ground, his hands close together and tensed like they were trying to pull apart something invisible. "Open up, you stubborn little piece of—"

Before Jack could finish his thought, the air in front of him was cut through with a jagged slash of blue energy. It solidified to ice in his hands, before sliding apart and gradually revealing itself as two large, icy barriers. Looking through the new gap created by the parting of the previously-invisible door, Elsa could see a landscape of ruins stretching far out into the distance.

Ruins that, when she looked outside the door to where they would be otherwise, didn't seem to exist.

"Welcome," Jack said, "to what I used to call home. The Ice Mages' ruined kingdom."

He reached out, an unspoken request for Elsa's hand. She gave it to him, and they walked through the portal together. It stayed open behind them, and Elsa pressed on without fear.

Huge castles were standing in the distance, dilapidated shells of their once-proud selves that still managed to dwarf anything Elsa had created.

"This… this is incredible," the Queen breathed out at last, her eyes lingering over a spire of pure, gleaming ice that hadn't seemed to have lost its luster after however many hundreds of years it had likely been standing. "Your people built all this?"

"Technically," Jack said, "our people built all this. But yeah," he finished with a bitter sigh, "the mighty, pure-blooded Ice Mages created everything here. For all the good it did us. We could build all this, but in the end we tore each other apart anyway."

Elsa moved next to Jack and wrapped a comforting arm around his shoulders, kissing him on the cheek. He leaned into the embrace for a few long moments before sighing again, offering Elsa a weak smile.

"Thanks," he said. "But I didn't bring you out here so I could mope," Jack continued, renewed strength in his eyes as he took a step away. "There's something I want to show you. Come on!"

Elsa followed where Jack led, through the beautiful ruins of the long-dead kingdom.

"Here's a story, to pass the time," Jack said as they walked. "The story of how all this started. Legend among the Ice Mages said that our power wasn't natural—it was given to us by someone else, even more powerful than us. Someone who almost definitely wasn't human.

"Some of the people who would become the Ice Mages thought it was a gift," Jack said, grimacing as the pair passed a mound of preserved skeletons, "and others thought it was a curse. Between you and me, Elsa, I think the guys who thought it was a curse had the right idea. Or at least, that it was some kind of test. A test to see what we'd do… what would happen to us.

"Turns out," Jack mused as they passed by a house and he smiled distantly, as if revisiting some long-ago memory, "that we weren't too different from most people. We just had a lot more power. Which meant a lot more of everything: emotion, passion, ambition, desire, greed, idealism, you name it."

"And this… person, the one who gave you your powers," Elsa said, pausing briefly to marvel at a large shard of colored ice that still clung to the ruined window-frame of something that had once been a cathedral, "did you ever see them again?"

"No," Jack said, his pace quickening. "At least not that I was ever told. Most I heard was that they were a man… or sometimes a woman. Young and old, kind and cruel. Whoever our benefactor was, they were certainly interesting. Probably a powerful sorcerer, bored with doing whatever it is sorcerers do all day. C'mon, we're almost there."

The pair hurried through the ruins, and Elsa only slowed when she caught sight of a huge skeleton that definitely wasn't human. It looked vaguely like one, but that was were the similarities ended.

"What… what is that?" she asked, and Jack slid to a halt to take a look. A few moments later, he heaved a heavy sigh and walked over to the skeleton, placing a hand against part of its skull with reverence.

"When I said the Ice Mages had built all of this," he said slowly, "that didn't mean we didn't have help. The sorcerer did more than just give us powers. They created a race to help us build our kingdom, or maybe they'd always been there and the sorcerer gave them a language we could understand. Who knows, with myths like that. But the point is, they were creatures called Jötunn. In the language we use today, I guess the closest thing to call them would be 'Frost Giants'."

"And… what happened to them?" Elsa asked gently as Jack walked over to rejoin her, sensing that the answer would not be a happy one.

"We treated them like slaves," Jack said, the bitterness in his voice more sharp than mournful now. "And they revolted. Then we murdered them. No treaty, no attempt at even making one. We just… butchered them. And then we kept building our kingdom over their bones."

Elsa moved over to Jack slowly, tenderly pulling him into an embrace. When the tears came, she let them fall onto her breast without a word. She stroked his hair comfortingly, but didn't even know what words she could begin to offer in sympathy.

Jack's sobs ended in one final shudder, and he stepped away with a slight sniffle.

"Sorry about that," he apologized, forcing a weak smile. "I didn't mean to—"

"Jack," Elsa cut him off, her voice gentle but firm. "Never apologize to me for something like that. Never again. I'm here for you, remember? Just like you were there for me. That's what this means," she finished, holding her ring up to the sunlight. "Right?"

"Right," Jack said, nodding seriously. "I just… I can't understand why we couldn't have found another way. There had to have been one."

Elsa smiled.

"That's why you'll make a great King," she said. "Arendelle's just as lucky to have you as I am."

"Thanks," Jack said sincerely, before pointing over off to the right. "That's what we came here to see, by the way."

Elsa followed his finger, and soon found her eyes resting on a small house made of ice that seemed quaint compared to the majestic structures all around it.

"When an Ice Mage turns ten," Jack explained as they walked over to it, "they have to build something to show that they're worthy of continuing to live in the kingdom. This house," he finished with a smile, puffing his chest out with pride, "was mine. It's not much, but it was home."

"Well, I think it looks quite lovely, Jack," Elsa said as she entered behind him, gazing around at the simple but cozy space. She saw that the pillow on his bed was covered with a layer of snow, and smiled.

"I never thought of doing that," she said. "I just slept on the ice in my castle. Very clever, Jack."

"Thanks," he said with a smile, his pride still in his voice. "I just thought you'd want to see where I came from. I wasn't thinking about... all the other stuff," Jack finished, his expression turning sad for a moment before he pulled himself back to normal. "But yeah, this is the place where your ancestors came from, Elsa. I'm just sorry none of them are still around to teach you about your powers."

"That's fine," she said, smiling at Jack. "I've got you."

"Not sure how good of a teacher I'll be," he said, "but I guess it's worth a shot."

They stood in the main room for a few more contented, quiet moments, before Jack broke the silence between them.

"Well," he said, "should we go?"

"Sure," Elsa answered, and the pair exited the house, moving back into the sunlight as it shined down on the empty ruins.

It took them a few heartbeats to realize they were no longer alone.

A man stood in the clearing nearby, clothed in plain black and green robes that still managed to look somehow majestic. A single gold band hung down from his neck, wrought solid and the only outward sign that the man was not a commoner. His hair was long, black and unbound, his eyes a piercing green that Elsa and Jack could see even from where they stood. He looked like he could have been in his thirties, forties, or totally ageless. He held a staff in his right hand, a gnarled, wooden thing with a slight curve at the top. But even as warped as the wood was, Jack could tell at a glance that it held great power.

"I was wondering when you'd show up again," the man said, speaking to Jack with a smile that was at once both friendly and ominously jagged. "I was worried you'd gone and gotten yourself killed, Jack. Couldn't have that, what with you being the last of your people."

"Who are you?" Jack asked sharply, immediately on edge. "How do you know my name?"

"Oh, come now," the man said, his smile widening as he approached them, his green eyes glinting with something that wasn't entirely humor. "Surely you can figure that one out, Jack. After all," the man continued, shifting his staff from one hand to the other,

"You're the one who just spent the last ten minutes talking about me."

Jack's expression slowly turned from one of anger into one of shock as understanding dawned on him, and he gazed at the man in stunned silence.

"You're the sorcerer?" Elsa asked, picking up Jack's slack. "You're the one who gave the Ice Mages their powers?" She looked closely at the man, who was now only a few yards away. "You don't look very old."

"Time passes differently for my kind, Elsa," the man said, smiling in a way that didn't make Elsa feel quite so uneasy as before. "Days to you are blinks of an eye to us; decades, mere hours. And my appearance is, well…" he paused to smile theatrically, "whatever I wish it to be."

"And for what it's worth, Jack," the man continued, shifting his gaze, "you did have the right of it, earlier. I gave your people their power as a test. Humans fascinate me, really. Such short lives, such fragile bonds, and yet your instinct to destroy is amazingly strong."

The sorcerer's words jolted Jack out of his stupor, and his expression snapped back to its earlier anger.

"You played with us?" he asked accusingly. "Used us? We're not your toys!"

"Used you?" the sorcerer echoed almost scornfully, sounding completely unfazed by Jack's outburst. "Hardly. I was giving you a chance to prove me wrong. To show me that you could rise above your baser instincts." He shrugged. "I might have also had a bet going on with my brother about it, too. But the fact remains that you failed," the sorcerer continued, his voice growing pointed. "Everyone in your entire race failed, Jack, and they all died for it. Everyone, that is," he said, his voice losing most of its edge, "except for you. You alone survived. You alone proved me wrong.

"Fortunately for you," the sorcerer finished with another half-jagged smile, "I still won my bet."

"Why are you here?" Elsa asked, fixing the sorcerer with a level stare. "Why come back now?"

"Finally, an insightful question," the sorcerer said. "Those are so dreadfully rare these days. Actually, I'm here to give this to you, Jack," he continued, tossing the wooden staff to Jack. "I think you'll be needing it soon. Consider it a final gift from the creator to its created. Your reward for lasting this long."

Jack could feel the raw power coursing through the staff as he held it in his hands, and the feeling was just shy of intoxicating.

The sorcerer smiled again, as if he could see into Jack's innermost thoughts.

"Thought you might like it," he said, making to say more before a sharp cry in the distance interrupted him.

"Did you hear that?" the sorcerer asked. "Sounded like it came from that cave over there. I'd go take a look, were I you."

He turned and began to walk away, only to be stopped by the sound of Jack's voice.

"Who are you?" he asked. "Can I at least know your name?"

The sorcerer looked back over his shoulder, his green eyes alight with mischief.

"Who I am is far less important than what I am, Jack," he said. "Call me whatever you like. I've been given many names throughout time, and I doubt a few more will make a difference."

The cries from the cave had intensified by now, and there was the sound of a peal of thunder ripping strangely through the cloudless sky.

"You really should get going," the sorcerer said. "As for me, it sounds like my brother wants a word. Safe travels, you two," he finished, his final parting smile putting both Elsa and Jack on edge all over again.

The sorcerer's body melted away into snow and vanished on the breeze, carried off to somewhere no mortal being could go.

"He scares me," Jack said after a few moments of awkward silence. "Here's hoping we never see him again."

The cries sounded again, and Elsa began to walk towards the cave. Jack followed, his new staff clutched tightly in his right hand. A few minutes later, the couple had reached the mouth of the cave. Jack tried to channel his power through the staff to create some kind of light, and was surprised when the swirl of pure, primal ice energy that sprang to life at the top of the staff was so bright it was almost blinding.

"Ow," Elsa said, reflexively shielding her eyes. "Can you dim that thing a little?"

"Sure, sorry," Jack apologized, focusing for a moment and withdrawing some of his energy from the staff. The light dimmed, but they could still see into the cave.

And what they saw at the other end of it made both of them gasp.

Huddled against the far wall, wounded and bleeding, was a creature with deep, dark blue skin, long white hair and eerily piercing red eyes. It looked to be a young female in her late teens, but was still at least three times the size of any human her same age.

"It's a Jötunn," Jack said at last, his voice quiet with awe. "A real, live Jötunn."

"Well, she won't be alive for much longer if we don't help her," Elsa said. "Is there anything you can do?"

"I don't know," Jack said, "but I'll try."

He walked toward the creature, who was understandably upset at seeing an Ice Mage advancing on her with a weapon. She lashed out, snarling and throwing a spike of ice at Jack's head. Elsa was quick to stop it with a wall of ice, and ran forward to put herself between Jack and the injured Frost Giant.

"Please," she said, "we're here to help you. You don't have to trust us, but please understand that we don't want to watch you die."

The creature seemed confused by an offer of peace, and looked at Elsa with suspicion. Before she could attack again, however, she clutched her side and let out a pained groan as she slumped back down to the ground.

"Jack, do something!" Elsa insisted, and Jack took a few wary steps forward. He was soon within range of the Frost Giant, and tentatively pointed his new staff towards her wound. He closed his eyes, focusing all of his concentration on something—anything—that would heal the wound.

"It's working," he vaguely heard Elsa say. "I don't know what you're doing, Jack, but keep doing it!"

Jack focused until his head started to ache, and he slumped to the ground in exhaustion. He stayed awake just long enough to see that the Frost Giant was healed, and fell into unconsciousness looking into Elsa's concerned eyes.

"Jack?" Elsa asked, worried. "Jack!"

"Calm down," the Frost Giant said, looking down at Jack. "He's alive. Just sleeping."

"Can you carry him?" Elsa asked, receiving only an incredulous stare in return from the Frost Giant. "Fine," the Queen continued, "I guess I'll do it myself."

She picked Jack up and moved him as gently as she could into a carrying position over her shoulder, and then Elsa picked up Jack's fallen staff.

Elsa had made it all the way back to the mouth of the cave before she realized she was alone. Looking back over her shoulder, she stared questioningly at the Frost Giant.

"Are you coming?"

"You think I'll go anywhere with you?" the Frost Giant snapped back. "Your people are the reason I wound up in this mess!"

"Well, would you rather stay here, or go somewhere that doesn't feel like a graveyard?" Elsa challenged. "You're lucky the sorcerer even told us where you were, or you'd probably be dead by now."

"Sorcerer?" the Frost Giant repeated, her voice now curious instead of angry, and tinged with something like fear. "What sorcerer?"

"The one who gave Jack this staff," Elsa said, holding out the ancient piece of wood.

The Frost Giant's eyes went wide.

"That staff," she breathed. "I recognize it now. It is—it was—sacred, among my kind. If this 'sorcerer' gave it to you, if he judged you worthy of it… then I will follow you, and protect you if I can."

Elsa remembered Jack's words about how the sorcerer supposedly gave the Frost Giants the gift of speech, and understood why he would hold such sway over them.

But still, it was not a position she had any desire to exploit.

"Do you have a name?"

The Frost Giant nodded.

"Hela," she said.

"My name is Elsa. Pleased to meet you, Hela," Elsa replied. "But if you're going to travel with us back to Arendelle, you will do so as an equal. Not as my servant."

Hela looked surprised for a moment, but mastered it quickly.

"Thank you, Elsa," she said, sounding sincere. "It has been a long time since an Ice Mage spoke in that way to one of my kind. I will remember it."

Elsa nodded, smiling.

"Well then," she said, "let's get out of here. I think I've had enough vacation time to last me another five years."

…

…

A/N: So hey, here's the first of my post-"Kindred Spirits" Jelsa one/two-shots. Or at least, the first part of the first one. It was originally going to be mostly fluff, but then my inner myth nerd ran away with me. Still, I hope it was enjoyable all the same.

And yes, that cameo was by exactly whom you think it was by. My love of Norse mythology knows no bounds, and if you give me a Scandinavian setting then all bets are off. But I figured I'd go with the most recognizable modern incarnation of the character, because he's a total badass.

The plan is to post one- or two-shots under this story in an anthology style whenever the mood strikes me to write them, so expect something of an erratic schedule when it comes to these.

Thanks for reading, and I'd love to know what you think so far!

- JP