Chapter 3: Troy I
? 1789
There was cotton in my arse. I bet someone from the Astrotia cut my cot open. Some part of me wanted to check, but I was already as warm as I could be that night. Which meant I was so cold, my balls had officially crawled right back up inside.
I heard a sneeze come from the bunk below me. It was Rabbit. He and I hadn't let each other get out of our own sight since we got here. And we had made some friends.
The sleeping quarters in Sript were unlike any prison we had ever seen before. A giant warehouse with the entire walls on every side opening like a hanger door at an airfield in the other world. Not four walls and a roof, but rather four massive doors and a roof. From those doors, you could clearly see the fifty-foot-tall wall of bunks, arranged like cubby holes in the central unit inside the building. Ten units tall, and at least fifty units wide. All connected from the ground with a number of ladders.
I slept right at the top, Rabbit below me, and the rest of our little gang of criminals.
Oaken also hadn't left us alone since we got here. He learned the rules of prison soon enough, but we could tell that he had stayed a family man, and not even this place could take that from him. The man was a bit of a simpleton, but Rabbit and I found him helpful enough. There was nothing he couldn't lift, so he saved our arses a bunch down in the salt mines.
The rest of our little group was basically all the other prisoners the Astrotia had marked for dead. Right on our first day, Rabbit made the mistake of grabbing the wrong pickaxe in the mines. Turns out it belonged to Diab, the leader of the Astrotia, a gang from the Southern Isles. We didn't understand a word that they spoke, because most of them spoke this world's equivalent of Spanish. Which was why they were here: they didn't have pricks the hue of daisies.
I looked up at the ceiling. Above, the whole thing creaked and cracked, the faint sound of the continuous blizzard outside providing the uneasy ambience.
I heard the small door creak below. I didn't need to look down. If the door to the outside was open in the middle of the night, it was either someone going outside to take a shit, or to leave and never come back.
Sript was a prison unlike any that Rabbit and I had ever been to. There were guards, and there were some areas that were caged up like most prisons. But this camp had no fence to keep us in. Nothing of any kind of sort that would keep us from leaving. In fact, we could leave if we wanted to, and try to make the journey back to Arendelle. But with a constant snowstorm always present here, and more than a hundred leagues from the ocean, would you take that chance?
Maybe Rabbit and I would. But now we had friends here. We had the only people left on this Earth that we could fight for with Anna, Elsa and Asgeir dead. We were the last Assassins left in this world, and what good would it be for us to leave this place and freeze to death, never to be seen again?
I closed my eyes, trying to let the whistling wind outside lull me to sleep. But I couldn't; I had cotton in my arse.
There was no airhorn to give the wakeup call. No wakeup call of any kind. The only thing the workers of Sript needed to do to wake us up was to open the doors. Every morning, a small building in the corner of the lot would have it's guard pull a winch, opening all four doors to the sleeping building. Then would come the usual blast of snow and ice in the air. You could get up and work. Or you could stay and freeze to death.
I didn't even wait for the doors to open completely, opting to jump down to the ladder, and down to the ground. As soon as I reached the ground, I put my hand into my trousers to pull whatever cotton was stuck in my arse.
"The hell are you doing?"
The bottom unit of our corner of the quarters was taken up by Nessa. Right now, she was sitting on her cot, looking up at me in confusion.
"Someone cut my cot open." I said. "Now I got cotton in my arse."
"So why didn't you pull it out last night instead of having me wake up to… that?"
"I was already as warm as I could be last night." I replied. "You know how it is. I couldn't move to pull that shit out."
Nessa looked up as Rabbit and Oaken climbed down, Nadine simply jumping right down from her bunk.
"Yeah." She replied. "I do. Still doesn't mean I want to see you pulling shit out your ass first thing in the morning."
Rabbit pulled up his hood on his jacket as the rest of us started gathering up our stuff for the day. It felt colder than normal.
I squinted as I looked out into the lot. From all directions, the compound seemed to go on forever, a white shroud of the eternal blizzard from everywhere. It was also very dark that morning, with no floodlights or any modern prison convenience for us all.
"Alright, wranglers." Rabbit said, jumping down from the ladder, patting me on the back. "Let's get to the mines before the Astrotia get any ideas."
"Te cortaré las bolas y te las alimentarte como cerezas, Gringos."
Rabbit winced, and sarcastically chuckled. "Ah. Speak of the fucking demons."
I turned to see three Astrotia inmates standing close by. One was scrawny, but he appeared to be right at the head of this pack. I'd seen this clown before and fighting him was nothing new.
"Hey, hombre. Amigo!" I chuckled.
"Don't provoke them, Troy." Rabbit said.
I shrugged, and went back to getting my boots on, and lacing them up.
"¡Oye! ¿Me escuchas?"
"Si." Nessa growled. "He heard you."
"Ahh! Y estas Gringas!"
Nadine and Nessa both eyed the Astrotia down.
"Can you even count, ese?" Nadine snapped. "There's five of us and three of you."
The Astrotia leader looked about the five of us. Even Oaken crossed his arms. I had heard about his dealing with unruly customers in his store. We could indeed take them.
"Órale." He snapped. "Esta noche, pendejo."
They stomped off into the snow, leaving the five of us to head off on our own to breakfast.
"Well, that went well." Nadine said, scowling at me. "You sure know how to pick your fights."
"Yeah, those guys clearly don't know how to count." I said. "I mean, it's three against me? Maybe get like… five more to take me on? And then we'll call it even."
"Those guys were threatening to cut your balls off, Troy." Nessa said. "You think because you don't speak their tongue that you can get away with saying whatever you want?"
"My big brother's gotten every chance to learn their language, girls." Rabbit said, though with his typical hopelessness of me. "He's got his own problems to worry about."
I looked out into the storm. Wind began to blow in my direction, so I pulled my bandana up to my mouth.
"I heard the door open last night." I said, raising my voice as we began to walk out to the next building. It was a good fifty yards away, but the storm would make it an expedition. On better days, I would have maybe been able to see it from here. But it never stopped snowing here. Elsa would have loved it.
"Yeah." Nadine shouted back. "Kris left us. I saw him open the door just as I was drifting off."
"Shit!" I said. "I kinda liked that guy."
There was no other exchange of words as we made our way through. Most of us were trying hard not to breathe and accidentally inhale a wad of snow.
It was the choice that he had made in the night. We were free men and women. Free to leave and die if we so chose to do so.
The mess hall where meals were handed out was the only other building we knew of on the lot. There could have been close to a dozen more buildings here, and we wouldn't know the difference. Though, there had to be some housing for the guards. Despite the promises that we were indeed free men set to live out the rest of our lives as we saw fit, if we started work for the day, those guards were there to ensure that we would work for the rest of the day. And some of those guards made it clear how much they hated it here.
That morning, we sat there, doing our best to ignore the looks from the Astrotia. Some stood on the walkways above, eyeing us down like vultures on the branches. All the rest kept their heads down, doing everything they could not to be called on.
Nadine, Nessa and Oaken sat at the other side of the table while Rabbit and I sat on our side. Breakfast was… you know what, I honestly couldn't tell you what they were feeding us at this place. All I could tell you for certain was that it came in a bowl, and it tasted mediocre; though a hell of a lot better than what it looked like.
"They're going to make you fight again."
I chuckled. "They know how well that ended for them the last time."
Oaken stiffened. He barely had spoken since we got here. It seemed to do him well; no one dared try to mess with someone as big as him.
"If you're lucky, the guards will make you work the heavy loads so much, you'll be too exhausted for tonight."
"And what about you ladies?" Rabbit said. "I've seen both of you fight them once, and never again."
Nessa scoffed. "They underestimate me. They underestimate the whole lot of us."
It seemed a fair statement. Women were seen as inferior in the Southern Isles. What I could remember of our little research here was that half of the Southern Isle princes were married, and none of their wives had really been seen at political events.
"Then take that as a challenge." Rabbit said. "Show them that we're worthy to take anything that they can throw at us."
"Ja." Oaken added, simply. This was typical of him, now. I heard from Asgeir that this guy was a chatterbox back home, but clearly, he was either very afraid, or very angry since he got here to be so quiet. Either one would have made sense to me.
Rabbit glanced over at the table in the corner, while I remained stationary, staring straight ahead.. Everywhere that we seemed to go, Astrotia members dwelt. Things never seemed to improve for us, which in my experience always seemed to lead me to crack more jokes.
People often go on about how I have a mouth bigger than my brain. I like to think my mouth is what keeps my brain functional. Asgeir and Rabbit have such a serious outlook on life. But if we mean to make life better for the people of the world, shouldn't we live by some sort of example?
"Oi!" A whistle came from above. "Assignments!"
I looked up as guards from posted balconies towards the ceiling of the massive hall gathered around. Many of them dropped writing boards down, where prisoners scrambled to get them. Every morning, new assignments for the day were handed out. But only the ones who grabbed first could get the easier ones. If it was possible to call the other jobs easier. Rabbit got up from his seat with the others, getting ready to take the assignments that fell to the floor beside us.
Rabbit always did what he could to make sure he and I got similar jobs, so we could stay close. The others had been with us since day one, but we were brothers. We had to stick together.
He came back shortly with two writing boards.
"Good news." He said. "You get to grab an axe and pick the salt instead of picking your nose for a change."
I grinned, which was rare enough as it was for a place like this.
Nessa and Nadine came back. "Shoveling snow. What a fucking useless assignment here."
The air that hung about Nessa was as depressing and dreary as she looked. She often looked pale, even for a place like this. Nadine had dark hair, and not as dark skin. I think she was of Agrabah descent or something of the sort.
She tried to go back to her breakfast, but it didn't end up well.
"Oh, gods." She choked.
I stared at her. "Don't look at it!" I said. "That's a rookie mistake!"
It's often strange how one small move you make early in the morning can decide the rest of the day. One of the first swings of the pickaxe into the cavern wall we worked in, I did at a funny angle. It jammed a muscle in my shoulder, and the day only got longer and colder from there. I kept wishing that it would end. Wishing that everything would just somehow come to a close to help us all.
Everything was fallen apart. Asgeir was dead. Zar and Jason were dead. Anna and Kristoff were dead. Everything had now led to us spending the last… I wasn't even sure at this point how much time we had spent here. All that I was sure of was that the world that we had left behind was long gone, and even if we would somehow be able to find our way out of here, the world that we would lay eyes on would not be the same one that we had come to know before.
It was a much simpler world. One where everything was plain and in sight for all of us. We knew our enemies, and we knew our goals. We sought the chance to find King George of Misthaven and destroy him for the enslavement that we had lived with for the early years of our childhoods. That was our livelihood, and now it was all torn apart and burned at the seams, leaving us buried in the snow.
The mineshaft we worked in was one of the deepest that had been recently excavated. Recent diggings had unearthed several new veins of ore, and now we were being sent down to dig it up. We had to be close to a mile beneath the surface, under over a hundred feet of snow after the fact. The depth that we had reached underground caused some heat to pass up from below, but it didn't help much.
In this part of the mine, I axed out the salt, and Rabbit shoveled what I mined out into a mine cart. The boy who hauled the excavations had left five minutes ago, and wouldn't be back until he carried what we had mined back to the surface.
It was hard work, and we were barely even fed enough. It wouldn't surprise me if I found out some people would have just died while working in these horrible conditions, but I might never know: the guards kept everything secret from us while we worked. And I would even bet that some of the other prisoners would be too scared to tell anyone else the kind of horror stories these psychos running the joint were capable of.
This was everything that we had been used to. We fought hard to climb out of this pit when we were children, eventually having our chains broken off by the man himself, Daniel Swortssen. But now we were back in it, with our chains on even tighter to make sure we would never see the light of day ever again. The sun would never shine here in Sript, and the less hopeful side of me was very doubtful that I would ever see it again.
Closing my eyes, I could still remember the feeling of the sun on my face two years ago. Or really, thirty-two years ago. I didn't really care about the difference.
Summer was an especially hot one that year. I remember looking up to the sky, seeing the blazing sun shining through the trees. Sweat ran down my brow as I returned to earth, back with my brother.
Rabbit knelt down into the dirt, examining the tracks we were following, he focused, closing his eyes.
"It went this way." He said. "Let's go."
Keeping low and quiet, Rabbit led the way as we kept following the tracks. Steam rose off the rocks to our right. Today was hot, and it was exhausting. Yet, we were running low on food, so Asgeir sent us off to find food.
Asgeir had been quiet this morning. When we went on this trip by Matthew's suggestion, Asgeir planned the route out himself. He kept to himself as soon as he asked us what day it was. It had been the middle of Julyt. And now we were reaching the peak of this blazing summer, our water running low. Asgeir said he had gone off to find a spring, but some part of me doubted it. All he seemed to be doing this trip was brooding.
Rabbit and I kept to the trees, following the tracks along a point in the forest where the trees were cut off to a clearing. The tracks began to look fresher and fresher until…
"Stay low." Rabbit whispered.
From the clearing I could see a stag grazing on a patch of grass. Rabbit pulled an arrow out of his quiver, while I drew my hatchet.
"And what do you plan on doing with that?" He asked.
"I'll throw it, and see me drop him." I replied.
"Not likely." Rabbit replied. "Not from this distance."
"And you think you got the shot?"
"I know I do." Rabbit shot back.
The stag was starting to move away from the grass he was grazing at. His ears began to twitch, and I knew that he was starting to hear me and Rabbit arguing quietly. With no other option open for me, I finally opted to shut up and let him do his thing.
Rabbit began to draw his bow. He had his focus, and he had his eye on the target. I had two flintlocks that I often used to kill, but never to hunt. I was not a good shot with a bow, which was a hard pill for me to swallow.
Suddenly, as I leaned back, I heard a loud snap.
Rabbit spun around, fire in his eyes as he saw the broken twig I stood on. The stag also heard the twig, and began to trot away. Throwing all caution to the fire, I stood up with the speed of a cat, and tossed my hatchet.
"Troy, NO!" Rabbit cried.
The wind must have caught the tomahawk in mid air. It curved wide of the mark, and landed a few feet from where the stag had been standing as he began to gallop away.
Rabbit smacked me upside my head as I began to curse the tomahawk for curving so widely. I was about to go run over to grab it and try again, when a loud shatter broke through the trees.
The stag was almost out of site, but now it slumped right over, falling straight into the muck.
From the trees came our other brother. Tall, black shaggy hair and face as grim as his nickname, Asgeir had his flintlock raised, smoke rising from the barrel as he looked over at us.
"Who scared that stag?" He demanded. "Who was it?"
Rabbit immediately pointed right at me.
Asgeir groaned, grabbing my hatchet and placing it back in my hand.
"You can carry him back to camp, Troy." He said. "I'm not having Rabbit go through exhaustion for your stupidity."
Not saying another word, I knelt down into the forest ground, picked up the stag by the legs, and hoisting it over my shoulder. He weighed a ton, but I continued with my silence. I would have spoken back, but Asgeir had been in a much more grim mood than normal, so I knew that I was already skating on very thin ice with him.
The fire that Asgeir had started back at camp was still blazing when we came back. It was beginning to get dark.
"What were you doing?" Rabbit asked. "We're off hunting the stag and all of the sudden we see you driving a shot through his dome."
"I got bored." Asgeir said. "Needed to keep my mind busy is all. Thought you guys could use some help."
Rabbit glanced back at me. "Clearly."
I threw the stag down. Blood trickled out of the bullet hole Asgeir had left in the stag's face.
"I don't need nagging from both you guys today." I replied. "The wind caught my tomahawk and that's why I missed."
Rabbit opened his mouth to retort, but Asgeir held up his hand.
"I'll handle this, Rabbit. Can you clean him?" He pointed down at the stag.
Rabbit nodded, and Asgeir beckoned for me to follow him.
"You're not the expert hunter you claim to be, Troy." He said as we kept walking.
"I do alright for what we got."
"You're sloppy. You can't seem to admit where you need improvement. Humility lies in even the greatest Assassins. You think Ezio could hunt the way Connor could?"
"I'm neither Ezio nor Connor. I am Troy, and I don't need you to compare me to them."
Asgeir glared at me. "Maybe. But if you can't admit where your limits lie, then you stop yourself from pushing those limits."
He drew his dagger, walking to a nearby tree and carving a big "X" into it's trunk. It was difficult to see with the darkness filling the forest, but I could still make it out clear enough.
"Hit the X." He said, walking back over to me.
I eyed him curiously, then drew my tomahawk. I'd show him. Rabbit mocked me regularly, but I am the older brother, and I would show him to be a smart arse with me.
The wind caught my tomahawk again when I tossed it. It landed much to wide and much too short of the tree. Asgeir shook his head, sighing.
"It was the wind!" I tried to explain.
"The sooner you admit what it really was, the sooner you can understand that you're not ready to throw that thing." He said. "You don't have the aim or the arm to throw that hatchet for the kill. And what happens if you choose to make that move when the other guy is holding a pistol?" He took a step forwards. "Better yet, what happens if you try to throw it when a Templar is holding one of us?"
The way how his brow creased with frustration, I knew exactly what Asgeir was talking about. Years back we tailed him while he went on a mission to hunt down King George. Both Rabbit and I were arguing when George had Asgeir at knifepoint, and now Asgeir sported a scar that framed his face. From his right cheek, up to his left eyebrow. I never thought about it that much. It never seemed to shake me.
Asgeir walked over to the tomahawk, kneeling down and picking it up.
"We're Assassins, Troy." He said. "We don't take unnecessary risks. We don't gamble."
He held out the handle to me.
"What do you propose I do, then?"
He thought about it for a second. "Train. Train for the day that you will need to throw that axe. And in the meantime, find an alternative."
"I have an alternative." I replied, proudly tapping my flintlocks.
"Loud, clumsy alternatives." He shot back. "You want a proper weapon? Take a page from Rabbit's book. Go for a bow. It's quiet."
I was about to retort, when something fluttered down and landed on Asgeir's cheek. It settled there for a moment before melting. Wait… was that a… snowflake?
Asgeir and I both looked up in puzzlement. Suddenly, snow began to come down thickly and in almost sheets. Confused, I looked back at Asgeir, whose face suddenly turned grimmer than ever.
"Elsa."
We returned to camp to find Rabbit shivering by the fire. Not three hours ago he was sweating his balls off, and now he was regretting removing the sleeves off his hood.
"Grab everything you can carry." Asgeir ordered. "We're going."
"T-t-the bl-oody hell are y-you going on about?" Rabbit stuttered.
"We need to get to the fjord." He said. "Don't ask any more questions."
Elsa. I remember Matthew saying that name before. She was Arendelle's crown princess. Rabbit and I rarely kept track of the names of the nobles here in Arendelle, spending so much time in Misthaven trying to track down and kill King George. But everyone in the kingdom had been talking about this for weeks. How her and her sister were making their first real public appearances in three years on the Summer Solstice… and that was today.
"Cripes." I muttered. "Is something going on with Queen Elsa?"
Asgeir looked back at me, fire almost sparking up in his eyes.
"You both don't know the kind of mess that could be following her. Have you two ever seen snow in July?!" He pointed to the sky. "Whatever is going on, we need to get to the fjord before someone does something stupid!"
Asgeir was being nothing but vague and confusing. But I knew that neither of us were going to get answers, so I kept quiet as we followed our brother.
The snow was coming down in further sheets. Rabbit kept rubbing his bare arms, now looking stupid enough for me to feel a bit better for his mocking of me with the stag. Such a waste in the end, since we had to leave the thing half-cleaned at our now abandoned camp.
I had never seen Asgeir so clear focused on anything before in his life. He had the things that he was chasing after; what Assassins didn't? But this seemed to be on some whole different level. The grim expression that would have suited a skeleton more than him was now more present than ever on his stubbled cheeks, which were now growing red with the cold coming in. I pulled my hood further over my head as we made our way to the edge of the fjord.
Ice. Ice everywhere. The entire fjord was frozen over in the middle of summer. Rabbit and I could even see entire ships trapped right in the middle of all the ice, tipping uneasily in precarious directions. Asgeir's breath caught in his throat as he looked out at the entire fjord. The town was dark and quiet, as was the palace. But torches were suddenly lighting up over the bay, and men were beginning to make their way across the ice. Sleighs were being drawn out by horses, the men grabbing more torches and… swords?
Asgeir didn't say another word. He just ran. One minute we were coming to the fjord from the Northeast, the second he shot off heading directly north. Rabbit and I followed, watching our brother skim along the shoreline of the forest.
He stopped suddenly, looking out at the sleighs that were shooting off across the water. Indistinct yells could be heard from their drivers as Asgeir began muttering to himself.
"C'mon. C'mon. How do I stop them?"
I looked down at the ice. Pebbles on the beach were visible right below the surface, but if the ice was thick enough to hold the sleighs, my hatchet would not be anywhere close enough to be able to make a dent.
Asgeir wasn't paying attention to either of us. He simply shot off again, running faster than I had ever seen him run before. It almost seemed like he was chasing after something.
"What do we do?" Rabbit called.
I didn't know the answer to that, and if Asgeir did, he wasn't stopping to tell us. We kept cutting through the woods, dodging branches and pines, vaulting over fallen trees and running up others. Asgeir needed to stop the sleighs, but we didn't know how. Not without drawing attention to ourselves.
Suddenly, we reached the road. The shoreline to the fjord was not far off, and Asgeir suddenly stopped right in the middle.
He knelt down at tracks in the snow. They were fresh.
Squinting his eyes, he looked around at the tracks. I felt my own focus manifest, and saw a shape form in the tracks.
A young woman. Hair tied up in a tight bun behind her head, long dress and train trailing behind her.
Asgeir didn't say anything else. He started kicking away all the tracks.
"The fuck are you…?" Rabbit said.
"Start kicking up the tracks. Cover them, lead them somewhere else, I don't care!" Asgeir ordered. "We need to lead them off course!"
Rabbit and I did what he told us, not asking any further questions. We didn't have long, so I ran off to cover up the tracks leading far away from the road as they headed from the beach, to the road, and then to the base of the mountains. From up high above, I could see the peak of the North Mountain, ice and snow frosting the top fast enough, most of it there year round.
"Troy!" I heard Rabbit whisper.
I understood, and ran back to the road, darting into a bush. Asgeir climbed rapidly up into a tree as the sleighs finally made their way from the frozen bay to the beach, finally arriving at the road intersection we were hiding.
"Hold!" one of the guards called. "Where do the tracks lead us, men? She must have headed this way!"
Guards jumped out of their sleighs, looking around the road. Only confused murmurs returned to the one who stood at the front.
"If I may, Halldor." A bald guard spoke up.
"What is it, Admiral?"
He chuckled. "We're being a bit haste here, aren't we? We act as though we know everything, like we're going to catch Her Majesty with this kind of gesture that we're going for. All the muskets, all the sleighs, and we're after one person. She's our queen."
Halldor stroked his goatee. "Whatever sorcery I saw back there in the square, it threatens all of us in Arendelle, Henrik. I will do my duty as a sworn protector of Arendelle and find the truth."
Admiral Henrik shrugged. "As will I. What I'm merely suggesting is that we take a second to breath, regroup, and figure out the best way to catch her."
"By the time we do that, she'll be long gone. In all this snow, she must have left her tracks behind. The sooner we track her, the sooner we find her."
"And then what?"
A guard came back. "Sir, the tracks… they're going in random directions! She's somehow managed to drift the snow in separate directions! No idea where she is going!"
Halldor was about to respond, when another horse suddenly came up from the beach behind the large group of sleighs.
"Admirals Halldor and Brovold!"
"Yes?" Halldor replied, stepping down from the sleigh.
"Prince Hans requests that you stand down on Princess Anna's orders." The guard on the horse replied. "Fall back to the castle and let Her Highness handle this."
"There. You see?" Henrik chuckled. "Our Princess Anna can take care of this herself."
"She is just a child!" Halldor shot back.
"And you're free to tell Prince Hans that you went out of your way to disobey Princess Anna." Henrik replied. "But me, I'm taking the rest of us back to the palace. Princess Anna is a tough cookie."
Halldor was on the verge of protesting, but when he saw the looks that all the rest of the guards were giving him and Henrik, he growled, and called out.
"Very well. Fall back!" He ordered. "We're heading back to the palace! We're not going to find her in this mess!"
The sleighs and the guards carrying them took no time to clear off. Soon they were on their way back across the bay, left to weave back and forth between the stranded ships, and the three of us to stay behind and figure our next move.
"What the hell is going on?" Rabbit asked.
"Elsa lost control." Asgeir muttered, clearly to just himself. "Before long they'll hunt her down and butcher her."
"Asgeir, you better start explaining this stuff beyond some fucking vague bullshit!" I snapped, feeling my arm tense, nearly releasing my blade.
Asgeir glanced back at me and Rabbit, almost with a sense of grim mockery. "This snow… it's all coming from her. My half-sister Elsa."
"What?" I said.
"My mother was Queen Gerda. Those two princesses are my half-sisters." Asgeir said. "I'm one of the only living souls who knows why the gates of that castle have been locked for the better part of fifteen years!"
He looked up at the snow clouds. "Something… I don't know what… it touched Elsa when she was a child. Matthew told me all of this. Whatever happened today, she's let it all out. And now it's winter in June."
I glanced at Asgeir. All this time he had family other than me and Rabbit. Maybe he never saw me and Rabbit as his brothers, but we had been his family the longest. Even after Daniel had his head chopped off by the King of Arendelle, we had stayed his brothers. These girls that he had been keeping an eye on… they were his only living blood left.
I felt a twinge of jealousy, but said nothing else. I let Rabbit say what we were both thinking.
"So what do we do?" He asked.
Asgeir looked back in the direction of where Elsa's tracks were leading. She had ran from the castle, across the fjord. And now she was heading to the North Mountain.
"Nothing. We've done enough. We've thrown the guards off the trail for now, and that'll have to suffice."
"Why?" Rabbit asked. "We covered up her tracks, we could follow her, we could protect her-"
"Her family has had enough shameful secrets unveiled for one day." Asgeir shot back. "We nearly broke the most important tenet today to protect her. And she will never know about it. I promise."
I glanced up at the North Mountain with unease. The cold wind rattled the woods as we stood there. Rabbit shivered again.
"Then can we go get some hot ch-chocolate?" He stuttered.
The six months that followed and Asgeir kept to the shadows of Arendelle, protecting those girls. Hans turned out to have been a Templar all along; Charming nobles rarely weren't. While Rabbit and I returned to business as usual after we survived the Eternal Winter, Asgeir stayed in Arendelle to protect those girls from threats that they would never see coming. The invisible shield that they clearly needed more than anyone would give them credit for. And when the Templars tried to pin an assassination attempt on us, Asgeir had no choice but to come out and reveal himself to those two girls.
Of course, I felt jealous about it all, but Rabbit and I coped with it by simply running back to Misthaven to find King George. Asgeir obsessed over this fantasy family that he held with those girls. They were bound by blood, but the three of us were bound by the Brotherhood. We stayed with him for years, even after Daniel lost his head to his sisters' father. All the same, this was only the beginning.
Following the assassination attempt on Anna, Asgeir held off two more attacks against the royal sisters. Once against the Gemini Twins of the Southern Isles. Political tensions were high against Arendelle and the Southern Isles because of Hans' efforts to seize the throne, and they nearly toppled over into all out war when Asgeir killed Prince Fritz. It was a miracle that Elsa and Elias were able to publicly negotiate a temporary truce before Hans would seize the throne once more years later.
But before that came Ryan, a Rogue Assassin. He came from Corona to kill Elsa, believing her to be a danger to us if we were to enter a secret alliance with the Arendelle crown. By Assassin laws, Asgeir had full clearance to kill him, and yet, things would never be the same between us and our brothers to the south in Corona.
Asgeir had fought long and hard to establish our roots in Arendelle once more. It was a dream of his father's before he died. And now he was missing, most likely dead, along with the rest of the Assassins. Elsa was also long gone, most likely dead. And Anna and Kristoff were both very dead, rotting at the bottom of the ocean because Rabbit and I failed to protect her the way that we swore to her.
I spiked another bit of salt out of the cavern wall. The cart that we were filling up with salt was nearly full, and by my count, the kid who would be pushing it back up to the surface would be coming back around soon. Everything that we fought for, everything that we lived for, was now buried along with us at the bottom of the coldest isle in all of the Southern Isles.
Slamming my pickaxe into the wall of the cavern, I felt my shoulder twinge. I groaned as I fell back, falling flat on my arse. I don't know how long we were down here for, but it must have been at least half the day. Lunch buckets had been brought down at some point, and now Rabbit and I were back to work.
Rabbit silently grabbed my hand, helping me back up. He and I knew better than to speak down here. The last person to show anything close to lip with one of the slavers down here was rewarded with his pickaxe being swung right into his face. They carried his body back up the shaft with the axe still in.
Rabbit suddenly looked down at where I had dropped my axe, looking puzzled down at it. I spun around and knelt down.
Beside my axe, something had fallen out onto the floor beside the broken salt fragments I had mined out. It was a peculiar little thing. It was white, almost with some sort of metal inlay. It almost looked like bronze was carved right into the object, which was shaped almost like a Y; three prongs in separate directions.
I picked it up, and suddenly hissed. It was very hot to the touch, almost burning. It made the whole area feel a tad warmer, but not by that much. Rabbit looked uneasily at the object as I pulled ym sleeve over and placed the object over my sleeved hand.
There was indeed some sort of dark tarnished metal that was inlaid with the object, but it was now clear that most of what made the object was actually bone. Some sort of ivory, but I couldn't tell of what. I nearly prayed that it wasn't human bone that made this thing.
Hoping dearly that whatever this thing was didn't burn in my pocket, I quickly slipped it right in there. Rabbit gave me a knowing look as we heard the stomping of one of the slavers coming around the corner.
We were under strict instructions to give anything interesting that we found to the slavers. Whether or not this whole mine existed for the purposes of finding such a thing, Rabbit and I were not sure of. But all I knew was that I didn't want to give this thing to bastards who reminded me of dark places. Dark familiar places of our childhood. Sometimes, the slavers even had the same face to me, and I could remember that sense of helplessness I felt when I would provoke the guards to hit me instead of my little brother.
They had the same face. And they definitely had the same eyes.
I smirked as a fist came flying right at my face. I was expecting the punch, and it didn't exactly tickle, and yet this was what I had been looking forward to all day.
Almost every night a fight broke out. Most prisons would discourage all this fighting, but to the guards, this was their nightly entertainment, to see their inmates kick the crap out of each other.
An invisible ring had been assembled with all the inmates cheering the fight on. This ring had me and Rabbit taking on the Astrotias that we had seen this morning.
The short one who had been leading them smirked as he held up his hands.
"Vamos gringo! Quiero verte sangrar!" He chuckled.
I cracked my neck. "If you insist, pendejo!"
Shorty jumped forwards, weaving back and forth rapidly. I gave a quick jab out front, but he was waiting for me to make a move as he charged me. He ducked, spinning around and hooking me right in the-
"HUAGH!" I groaned, feeling my insides churn. A good strike to the balls, and everything was going blurry and painful. The pain is immediate, and then it grows over time when a man is struck in the crotch.
"Hahaah!" Shorty cackled. "¡Te lo dije!"
Suddenly, Rabbit jumped out from behind the two guys he was taking on, and landed right on top of Shorty. His legs right on his shoulders, my little brother began hammering his fists right onto Shorty's head. The Astrotia leader winced with pain as the crowd kept cheering everyone on. From above in the rafters, I could see guards throwing coins at each other, clearly trying to keep track of the bets that they were putting on this brawl that was taking place.
"HIJO DE PUTA!" Shorty screamed. "Obtener este bastardo!"
Still reeling from my balls being hit, I tried to steady myself with a table nearby, and then got right back up. Rabbit was still on top of Shorty, throwing punch after punch to his head. I nearly puked as I stood up, the whole hall around us spinning. The noise of the cheering crowd was unbelievable, but then a big shape came from behind the crowd, and steadied me.
"Let's get these turkeys, Troy!"
I squinted my eyes to see Nadine and Nessa suddenly come out from behind Oaken and take on the other Astrotia that were ganging up against Rabbit. Oaken remained silent, looking down on me.
"I'll be okay, big guy!" I cried. "Go get 'em!"
Shorty was now looking even more angry than scared as Oaken joined in the fight. Or was it the other way around? Rage and confusion painted his face like Jackson Pollock. It was now evenly matched by numbers with the five of us taking on him and four of his guys.
"¡Todo el mundo!" He screamed. "¡tiralos afuera!"
When I was fully steady, I saw more Astrotia invite themselves into the ring. The crowd of people was now forming up thicker than ever, and I knew that this fight would last long into the night. All started because Rabbit and I were the "bad guys" in this prison according to the guards. Bad guys who needed a lesson in manners.
I cracked my knuckles, and joined in.