Chapter Two
You can lead a person to truth, but you can't make them accept it.
Corona,
Germany
November 2nd, 1843
Evening had fallen. Elsa sat on a little couch in the guest chambers they had been given while Hans paced the floor, the room's window open and letting in a cold wind. The first snows of the season had melted away, but since then the weather had gotten bitter, and then next time snow came, it was likely to last the season. According to Anna and the others, they'd experienced a month of nearly constant rains before Everdark's invasion began, culminating in a terrible storm the night the enemy ships arrived. In ancient times, during Everdark's first invasion of the world, it had possessed the ability to create earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
It seemed that this time, too, the world itself was going to turn against them.
"Maybe Arianna is right," Elsa said. "Maybe this entire idea was stupid."
Hans stopped pacing and turned to look at her, his mouth a thin frown.
"No," he said. "No, it's not a stupid idea. Whether or not people realize it yet, they're going to need us. And we don't have time to waste on politics while we're trying to save the world."
"But is it really different if we just place a gate in Corona and let her do things her own way?" Elsa said. "I mean, do we really need absolute authority?"
"Imagine that we allow Arianna to rule in a separate but equal kingdom," Hans said. "We maintain a portal to her city to use, should we need to defend them, or should they need to evacuate to safer lands. What happens when Arendelle is attacked again? Or any other city that we possess? Is Arianna under the same obligation to respond as we are?"
Elsa knew what he was saying. "Hans, my aunt isn't heartless. She would help us."
"Alright," Hans said, "that's fine. But if we allow Arianna this freedom, then we would have no ability to deny any other ruler the same relationship with us. Even if Arianna would be a cooperative ruler, we can't guarantee that everyone else would be."
"So…"
"So we're not doing this out of the goodness of our hearts," Hans said. "We're not just the reinforcements that pledge to show up and save the day whenever Everdark decides to attack another city. Besides, without the combined forces of many different kingdoms, it's dubious that we'd even be able to do much saving."
Elsa rubbed her face. He was right. The world was stronger together than divided. But Arianna wasn't wrong. They were conquerors.
"Well, what do we do?" Elsa asked. "I mean, what we really need is some way to explain to Arianna how high the stakes are."
"I'm not sure that would work," Hans said, rubbing at his jaw. He walked over to the window and placed his hands on the sill, looking out into the night. A few twinkling glows came from the city below. "After all, your aunt should know full well how dangerous Everdark can be. She lost her husband to it. Half the city's nobility got purged."
That was perhaps the most bothersome part of all of this, to Elsa. Surely, Arianna must grasp the stakes. If she resisted this much to the idea of submitting to imperial rule, then they had no chance at all with nations that hadn't yet seen the effects of the invasion.
"What if Arianna's been dominated, too?" Elsa asked softly.
Hans turned back to look at her. "Do you think that's possible?"
"I'm not sure," Elsa answered honestly. "She still talks like herself. She still acts like herself, as far as I know. Rapunzel didn't look like she thought anything was going on. But I feel like she would have at least given our idea the time of day if something wasn't wrong. She's a rational woman."
Hans nodded. "Well, there's only one way to find out."
"What's that?" Elsa said. "Ask her politely?"
Hans smirked and turned to the open window, peering outside. "More or less."
He swung a leg out the window, and then pulled himself completely out. Elsa sighed.
"Ah. Yes. How I've missed the way you solve your problems."
She followed after him and glanced out the window. She looked around and saw him ten feet below the window, on a sloping, shingled roof. It peaked a short distance away from them, forming the ceiling of a vaulted atrium down below. Hans glanced back up at her and gave a thumbs-up. He started to pick his way over the roof with surprising stealth. Elsa sighed again and swung out after him, her dress fluttering slightly before she hit the roof with a soft crunch, shortening her knees into a crouch.
Hans turned back and raised a finger to his lips. Elsa rolled her eyes and scaled up the roof after him.
"This is a remarkably stupid idea," she whispered.
Hans smiled. "I have no idea where your aunt's chambers are." He made a motion with his hand. Lead the way.
Elsa shook her head, but she took the lead and picked her way over the slanted roof, running her hand along the nearby wall as she edged her way down the other side, placing her feet carefully lest she slip. It was startlingly precarious and required a lot of concentration. She turned back and felt a surge of annoyance. Hans moved casually down the rooftop, appearing nonchalant. Even bored.
"When did you have time to get good at cat burglary?" Elsa whispered, reaching the edge of the rooftop and peering around the side wall. A dizzying drop to the ground below extended below them, and only thin buttresses provided a way to move along this wall.
"Well, you know, Elsa," Hans said, "Some of us just have a natural gift for martial exploits."
"You know," Elsa said, still peering around the side of the wall, "Kariena always complains that you have no sense of humor."
"Ah, well, you see, when I'm with Kariena, I'm the straight man," Hans said. "But you're positively humorless, so I have to make sure to keep things balanced."
Elsa rolled her eyes again. "Alright, well, try to keep up."
She stepped off the side of the roof, and a thin track of ice appeared beneath her feet. She skated along it, off along the side of the wall. Hans watched her go, and then slipped around the side of the wall and started to clamber along the buttresses.
They came to a stop on the rooftop of the castle several wings away, beside a large tower that yearned for the sky, several stories taller than the rest of the building. Elsa looked up at a balcony, high overhead. According to the royal family, Rapunzel was kidnapped through that balcony.
"Alright," Elsa said, "Unless she moved, the royal quarters of the palace were in this tower."
"I'm starting to think that we shouldn't have left the window in that sitting room open," Hans said.
"Why?" Elsa whispered, glancing over at him. "You think that someone's going to come into the wing and realize that we're gone?"
"Oh, I have no doubt about that," Hans said, looking up at the balcony above. "I suspect that they're already searching for us. I just wish that we hadn't made it so obvious that we went out the window."
Elsa frowned, and cast a glance backwards. If they were being followed, it wasn't obvious. Not for the first time, she wished for some sort of magic that would let her detect people. Apparently, telepaths were able to sense the magical signatures of other spellcasters, but that would be no good for a more mundane pursuer. She shook her head and tried to focus.
"I should be able to get us up there," she whispered. She had no idea how Mother Gothel had scaled the tower; there was little in the way of handholds or footholds. It was practically a sheer drop.
She called magic to herself and gave it a bit more focus than usual; rather than just a sheet of ice in front of herself, she started to form flights of stairs, meeting at landings along the corners of the rectangular tower and leading the way up to the balcony. As an afterthought, she created a railing along the drop side of the stairs, realizing that to Hans, they would probably be slippery.
Hans whistled appreciatively, and they started up.
On the second landing, Elsa stopped, Hans nearly running into her from behind. She turned to face him.
"This is a really bad idea."
"Probably," he admitted.
"What the hell do you think we're going to find?" She asked. "She's not going to have a diary entry saying 'oh, gee, it looks like I'm evil now.'"
Hans shook his head. "Members of the Cult of Entropy always have some sort of material link to Everdark. Usually an obelisk dais. They can draw their god's attention by spilling blood onto the dais."
A few months ago, Elsa had learned that the patriarch of her family line, the ancient Ceristo Siguror, had been a worshipper of Everdark himself. He had possessed many artifacts that helped to demonstrate his devotion, including a jet locket that Elsa still kept in a trunk by her bedside in Arendelle.
"Okay," Elsa conceded, "but if we're discovered, we'll look like assassins. They'll think that we never meant to negotiate for their allegiance at all, that we were just sent to off the Queen and force the others into submission."
"Well, we best not get caught, then," Hans said, smirking as he stepped past her and continued up the steps. In a more serious tone, he added, "besides, one way or another, we can't leave Corona without their support."
He met Elsa's gaze. "Right?"
He was right. She sighed.
"Alright. Just be careful."
She flicked her wrist and followed up after him, the steps behind her dissolving back into water vapor.
They came to Arianna's balcony, and by now they were no longer whispering to each other. They stepped over the marble banister and onto the structure itself. Elsa dismissed the last bits of the icy staircase behind them. Hans stepped forwards towards the double-doors that let into the sleeping chambers. They were heavy oak, with a firm lock on the interior, installed after Rapunzel's kidnapping. They would be difficult to breach with anything conventional.
The night was very clear, and by pale moonlight Elsa could make out the keyhole. She knelt down and placed her finger against it. Ice filled the lock, and she flourished her fingers to finish a key-like handle. She twisted, and there was a soft chunk. She placed her hand on one of the heavy handles and tried to pull the door outwards. Nothing. She tried to push the door inwards, and it budged slightly before stopping again. There was a heavy bolt on the other side in addition to the lock.
She stepped back, pantomimed a bolt against a door to Hans, and he nodded.
Then he slipped through the door. His form blurred, for a moment, and he passed through the heavy oak as though it weren't even there.
Hans had been born as a mundane human, but during his service to Hades he had gained the powers of two wizards using a dark magical device called a tensing disk. Apparently, those souls were partly why he did not die several months ago when he was stabbed through the heart. In any case, the powers that he had once had were gone, but they had been replaced with something else. Hans had been brought back as an Avenger, an archmage, like Elsa.
He was still getting a handle on his new abilities, but one of them was this. He could make himself incorporeal for a few, brief moments. He could literally walk through walls, a few times a day. It was less taxing than speeding himself up, one of the previous powers he had possessed, but took more concentration than shielding himself, which had come practically effortlessly. Being without the ability to force bullets and magic alike astray left Hans feeling exposed during a fight, but he supposed that he was just going to have to learn to play to his new strengths.
The Avenger, he was learning, was clandestine, and shadowy. His powers were secretive and deadly, to complement his role as an infiltrator, and an assassin. It suited him well.
There was a very faint scraping as Hans moved the bolt, and then the door opened silently inwards. Elsa was grateful that the hinges seemed to have been oiled recently, and she stepped over the threshold to join Hans in the darkened chamber.
They glanced around. There was practically no ambient light, save the sliver trailing in through the cracked doorway, but Elsa remembered Rapunzel telling her that Arianna and Frederick no longer used this room as their bedchamber, after the kidnapping. They'd moved that to another room in their wing, and now this one was some sort of –
A light blazed to life, hurting Elsa's eyes. She winced as the lantern came un-shuttered, revealing Queen Arianna and Rapunzel sitting in chairs on the other side of the room. There were no soldiers with them, and they weren't armed to fight.
"Well, well, well," Arianna said, voice surprisingly harsh. "Imagine my surprise when I find a pair of political ambassadors and friends revealing themselves to be villains of the lowest caliber. What did I tell you, Rapunzel?"
Rapunzel stared at them, mouth slightly agape. Her eyes were disbelieving, stricken with fear. Arianna continued.
"Assassination seems to be your only calling, dear Hans. And I expected more from you, Elsa. I really did."
She waved a hand dismissively. "We have no one here to protect us. We have no wizards, and I know full well that I could field as many normal men as I like against you and I'd only succeed in getting their blood on my carpet."
Elsa realized, with sudden horror, what they saw her as. She wasn't Arianna's niece, Rapunzel's cousin, any longer. She wasn't a beloved member of their family. She was a killer. Someone who overthrew governments. It didn't matter that Frederick had been dominated by Everdark, because he'd still been Arianna's husband, and Rapunzel's father. He hadn't stopped being those things just because he'd fallen to the service of darkness.
And Elsa and Hans had taken him from them.
"We have no intention of being slaughtered by you," Arianna said. "So yes, we submit. You may do as you wish with our little kingdom. Just please, don't hurt my daughter."
Elsa couldn't move. All she could see was the fear in their eyes.
I've become a monster.
xxx
Odette sat at a little desk that she'd had put up beside her bed in Sadden's manor, a candle puttering its way into nonexistence beside her as she shuffled through a sheaf of old papers. The standing clock beside the wall chunked rhythmically. The world was quiet. Everyone else had gone to sleep, it seemed.
She glanced back down at the pages, and for a moment she had to struggle to get her eyes to focus. What am I even reading?
It was incredibly futile, poring over old texts from the cathedral's stores, desperate to find some ancient, hidden clue about wargates that somehow hadn't been considered important by the generations of monks who'd kept the texts throughout the centuries. Obviously, it was a wild goose chase. But what else could she do? She had no way to discover what the sages of Celestus had known. She had no connection to a past so distant –
Except she did.
Suddenly stunned that she hadn't thought about it before, Odette jumped up from the desk, nearly tipping a pot of ink over in the process and scrambled to the bed. She fell to her knees and threw back the sheets, digging around underneath until her hand hit a large trunk. She pulled it out and sat back, growing less confident with her decision.
The last time she'd touched Ceristo Siguror's locket – well, the only time she'd touched it – she'd been made sick. It was flush with dark energy, and even now, sitting beside the closed trunk, Odette thought she felt it.
No, that's just your mind playing tricks on you, the rational part of her said. It's been under your bed for months, now, in this trunk, and you haven't felt a thing. You're just scared.
There's nothing to be afraid of.
Odette undid the clasps to the chest with shaking fingers, and slowly pulled back the lid. Inside were several neatly folded dresses – they were Elsa's, most of them from before her parents had died. For some reason, she neither wore them, nor let anyone get rid of them. So they lay in the bottom of the chest, neatly folded, slowly accumulating dust. Nestled in their folds on top was Ceristo Siguror's medallion. The metal of the casing and chain gleamed in the flickering candlelight, almost brilliant. However, the jet seemed to eat the light, so dark that it appeared formless.
Odette gulped. Now she felt it. A strange, aberrant energy, making her throat feel tight, and her fingers cold. She slowly reached out and brushed her fingers against the chain. Nothing. She trembled as she closed her fingers around the cool metal, waiting for the wave of nausea to overpower her.
It didn't come. She took one deep breath first, then another. Then something else came.
Unbidden, the story Anna had read to her earlier filled her mind. Odette opened her eyes, and was surrounded by horrible, gaunt streaks of shadow, flickering and flowing about the chamber around her. One extended a withered arm towards her, and she screamed, falling backwards onto the floor.
The things were upon her, dancing in twisted, inhuman ways. Odette realized that she still held the locket in her left hand, fingers closed like a pale white vise. It took a surprising amount of concentration to open her fingers and let the jet fall to the ground. Odette was surprised to see a bloody tear along the palm of her hand where the chain had touched. The locket bounced once, and then rested, and the room was filled with horrid screams as the gwyllions were sucked into the locket, the gemstone eating their shadowy forms.
There was a moment or two of silence, during which the only sound was Odette's ragged breathing. Then light seemed to flood the chamber again as the candle on the desk came back to life.
"Jesus," she whispered, arms shaking as she knelt on all fours on the floor. She moved her right hand, leaving a bloody handprint on the hardwood. I need to bandage this up, she thought vaguely.
A deep rumble came to life in the chamber. It felt as if the very floorboards below her were shaking.
"I apologize for the fright you've been given," Everdark's voice said. "But this is a dark object. An object of your worst fears. Of your nightmares."
Odette looked up, still shivering. The light was gone again, and the room had grown very cold. There was a seeping darkness filling the other side of the chamber.
"You have far more emotion than your lover," Everdark said softly. "So much fear. I can see it. I can see it all."
