Day One
"Anja."
Whoa. Fuzzy. Her breathing hitched, she coughed. Her mouth tasted like the third day of an all-things-unholy convention.
"Titanja. You need to wake up."
That seemed like a really dumb idea. It would lead to a whole bunch of awful things. For example, opening her eyes. Nope. The drilling in her skull was bad enough as it was. Pass. She was supposed to be dead, anyway, or next best thing to. Not much point waking up just to watch it come.
"You're out of ox. I need to unseal. We're in breathable atmo."
That took a few seconds to process. Wait, what?
"I'm unsealing our helmet in ten seconds, ready or not. So get yourself together. Honestly, it's like you've never been spaced before."
Well, GARDA was obviously in a mood.
Anja groaned. Everything hurt more than usual. Normally she only felt this bad after going five rounds with Ogre. "OK. Jessasec, where—" Her voice was a whispery rasp.
There was a beep and she felt her helmet shift, bumping her sore head as it retracted. Followed immediately by icy air on her face, ambrosia, her body sucking it desperately into starved lungs. It was really cold and the most delicious thing she'd ever tasted. She coughed again, cracked her eyes open, squinting against the awful brightness. Ow. Definitely not in space.
Grey sky above. Something was fluttering down… wait—she was actually lying on… snow? Definitely dirtside. How? Was she back home? Or just – finally - dead? She checked. Huh. Nope. Didn't seem that way. Not unless people had vital signs in the afterlife. She sighed. Part of her was disappointed, another part relieved. She suspected the relieved part was in the minority. She was just so tired. And cold. Her veins felt like they were full of ice water and there was a frozen lump where her heart should have been, though that didn't seem to prevent it from pounding stubbornly away. She wasn't sure she could feel her hands and feet.
Fine. If she wasn't dead, then…
A lifetime of – apparently still-applicable - hard-learned caution flared. She rolled, groaning again as her body lodged its complaints. She managed a reasonable crouch that slipped into more of a kneel as her vision embarked on some independent acrobatics. Good thing she had nothing left in her stomach to heave up. Wow, she felt awful. Last thing she recalled—
Later. Focus.
"GARDA. Hazards?" She was behind some kind of low solid railing, the surface she squatted on slightly sloped, dusted with windswept snow. The wall gave excellent visual cover, greyish, ice-rimed, carved with intricate patterns. Wait…
Wood? Not possible. She glanced left and right, swept the snow beneath her feet. Planks. Wood as well. Who could afford to make such a huge… whatever this was? Out of real wood? No one was that wealthy.
The HUD in her eye started scrolling.
#Hazard Analysis: Five proximate lifesigns. Three humanoid, probable human-trace. One quadruped, unknown signature. One uncatalogued. Negative Sutili contact.#
A tac-layout popped up on her HUD, showing relative positions. They were grouped roughly twenty metres on the other side of her cover. The uncatalogued lifeform icon kept flickering and seemed to be moving off. One of the humanoid icons suddenly turned red. #Class SIX energy warning, unknown signature.#
"Be careful, Anja. A class six and I'm having difficulty locking on that one uncatalogued lifeform. I also can't locate any beacons. We're operating in the blind."
An inhabited dark world? No way.
"Got it. Keep polling. And hit me with two."
"You are badly dehydrated, not to mention exhausted. You need aq-and-rack, not stimulants."
"Says the Awar who just finished telling me not to be such a bab-"
The cold breeze shifted, bringing a new, faint sound to her attention. Someone was… crying.
And for no reason her heart was racing. Before she could draw another breath her instincts kicked in and she was over the wall.
Mother Night! That's a biiiig drop.
CRUNCH. Ow.
Ice. Thick, hard, smooth ice. Just like home. The latticing in her armor helped with the deceleration, but she'd landed with more weight on her right than she should have. Her knee wasn't happy. Thankfully, planetary gravity felt light.
"Two, GARDA, now."
She felt an instant flood of energy as the stimulants hit her bloodstream. GARDA had also energized her traction spikes on impact, which was fortunate because once more she was moving without conscious decision, sizing up the tactical situation as she sprinted forward across the glare ice. It was like her legs belonged to someone else. No, correction: it was like the part of her brain that said help the crying person was just really, really loud and bossy.
The crying person – apparently an h-trace female - was draped over and half-hidden by some kind of… statue? OK, very odd. The other two bipeds appeared to be h-trace males. They were shouting angrily at one another, language unfamiliar. One of them held a stubby bladed weapon and was moving toward the woman while taking energetic swipes at anything that came near, yelling as he did. Foreign language or not, he sounded unhinged. The other man was unarmed but nevertheless standing between the blade wielder and the woman, obviously trying to stop him from approaching closer. The ungulate was hopping about beside the unarmed man, making odd honking noises and moving in little rushes at the bladesman, darting forward but shying away whenever he took a swing at it.
Crazed or not, the blade wielder looked like he knew what he was doing. The two defenders very obviously didn't. He was backing them up rapidly, only a few metres remaining between him and the sobbing woman. Anja felt a twinge of irritation at her. Standing around blubbering wasn't a particularly impressive course of action, especially when your hapless defenders were about to get shanked.
The bladesman had his back to her. A conviction nudged her mind. He was the obvious threat, but on top of that, something in her didn't like him. Not at all. The choice of target was easy.
The unarmed man and the animal processed her presence at about the same instant. They both stopped dead with their mouths open, their expressions almost comically identical. Their sudden change in demeanour must have confused the blade wielder because he paused his wild swings, affording her enough time for a leap that carried her the last four metres and into position. The bladesman, perhaps warned by the others' gazes, had barely started to turn around when Anja's armored boot, at the end of a spinning back-kick, crashed into the side of his head. He dropped to the ice with a dull, neutralized-sounding thud. If he was indeed human-trace and he wasn't dead from that hit, he'd be too busy vomiting his guts out when he woke up to be a threat.
One down.
The other man and the animal didn't look dangerous, but she wasn't trained to take stupid chances. Usually. The woman was still draped over the statue crying like a trooper and just didn't process as a threat, even though either she or whatever she was hugging had to be associated with the class six power sig somehow.
The man didn't look like he'd be a problem but the ungulate was pretty big, if stupid looking. She herself wasn't in any kind of fighting shape. She could feel how close to collapse she was, her body horribly weak. Her head was still spinning from the rotation of her kick. She had no idea how long she'd been spaced, but it must have been a while. She was less frigidly numb now but as soon as the stims wore off she'd probably be out of action. She opted for talk. She hadn't understood what the men had been shouting at each other, so she tried Trade Chant.
"Stand down! I don't want to hurt you."
She'd instinctively unsheathed her claws when she'd attacked. She debated retracting them but caution said that the ungulate was just too big a risk. And she realized that she'd lost track of the fifth lifeform entirely. It was nowhere on her HUD. She could opt for her sidearm but given how primitive everything looked, they might not even understand what an erg pistol was, or could do. No, she decided, the blades stayed out. They'd understand those. She was mostly confident she could take the large ungulate if it charged, as long as it did so really soon. It was the oddest creature she'd ever seen, and though evidently adapted for the cold, was obviously not trained to fight. Then she swayed, suddenly dizzy, and hastily compromised. She'd pull her gun if she couldn't sort this out in the next few minutes.
The man hadn't moved, which was encouraging, but neither had he replied. In fact, he seemed to be in shock. Now that she had more than a half second to spare, she realized just how primitive all of their garb was. The male she'd flattened was dressed more elaborately than the one in front of her, but it still looked like he was wearing some type of organic fabric.
She began to get a horrible feeling in the pit of her gut. If this was a fully precontact world… ugh. She could be seriously screwed both legally and survival-wise. But there were no h-trace precontact civilizations in Concordat space, almost by definition. It didn't make any sense.
She risked a quick glance around. They seemed to be in the middle of a frozen lake. They were surrounded by several of the large wooden structures similar to the one from which she'd so vigorously catapulted herself. Something tickled at her mind about these. She'd seen something like them once, somewhere.
Focus.
"GARDA. Can you translate what they were saying? Also, any beacon?"
"Negative on the language. I'll need a larger sample, especially if I'm blind. I'm still polling beacons. No response."
Curse it.
She returned her attention to the man and tried Trade Chant again, "Can you understand me?" Nothing.
She tried Delassian. The man shook his head and said a word, questioning. It sounded a bit like her bond-name, but oddly emphasized and accented. Not that that was possible. She'd never met him. There was no way he could know something like that. He turned and glanced back at the – amazingly - still crying female, then said something to the ungulate. He sounded confused.
She tried her native Holt. As she'd expected, no glimmer of understanding. Not a Cursed lot of Holt speakers left. The man reached out a hand toward her and said something else. She backed up a pace, holding her stance.
In desperation she tried Sutili, which earned her raised eyebrows but no sign of comprehension. No surprise there; the language sounded like chewing on hullmetal at the best of times and her spoken Sutili was unavoidably terrible – she just didn't have the right physiology. She'd probably invited them to dine on her grandmother. Maybe they were just speechless with shock.
Curse it. Nothing but blank incomprehension and confusion mixed with obvious nervousness. The man kept looking at her, at her blades, and then behind him at the woman. Maybe there was something wrong with his brain. The animal was no better. They were obviously well matched.
Wait. Something had changed.
The woman had stopped crying. Anja's instincts went berserk.
Her HUD flashed. #ALERT Proximity ALERT#
Oh Mother Night. The unknown life-form was right behind her. It was low to the ground, moving silently and very fast. It warbled a crazed warcry as it attacked.
"Onna! Du lever!"
She spun, slashing down on an angle with her claws. She felt them connect, the SL-blades as expected with barely any resistance, but her sword-bayonet with equally little. The unexpected lack of resistance combined with her dizziness was enough to throw off her balance just as the creature's impact took her low on the side halfway through her spin. With the loss of her center of gravity her own angular momentum hammered her down onto the ice like she'd been ground-pounded by a dropship.
Her hip hit the ice first but her unprotected skull showed good hustle and got there second, slamming enthusiastically into the unyielding surface. Darkness exploded across her vision, along with a bitter metallic pain that pulsed violently through her head. Instantly she began losing focus.
She couldn't see, couldn't think. Where the hell were her arms and legs, why weren't they obeying? Someone was making a frustrated moaning sort-of noise. Ah. Of course it was her. Awkward.
Come ON. Get up, Arundel. El would laugh herself silly at you, being such a soft-shell.
"You need to get up, Anja. The female is coming closer. She's definitely the class six. I can't stim you again, you're too weak. Get up."
Trying, GARDA. Trying.
There! She could feel an arm. Then another one. Full complement. Yes, and her legs; there they were. She shook her head, trying to clear her sight, rewarded only with another white stab of pain through her skull. Her vision stayed blurred even as she scrambled to get upright. Her blades were no help, skittering and hissing against the ice, hampering her efforts. She made it as far as her knees, but she was swaying dangerously. If she stood she'd just fall down.
The blurred figures that she could make out were all well out of blade reach. For a second nothing moved. Then three nearby blurred mounds of snow slithered together into a taller blurred mound that giggled ominously, said something incomprehensible and waddled over to the blur she felt might be the woman.
She had evidently hit her head very hard.
The possible-woman blur started coming toward her, slowly. In her current state she wouldn't have been able to hit the side of a planet if she fell on it but she kept her blades out anyway.
She tried again. "Stay still, all of you!" Her voice was thin as paper. Blackness edged farther inward.
The blur paused—
-Somehow she'd lost a few seconds and the blur wasn't a blur anymore, but a person, right in front of her. She got a clearer view. Her breath caught as her heart lurched. In a panic she pulled in her claws.
"El?"
For a glorious instant, she was looking at the beautiful face of her bondmate. Impossible hope blossomed inside her.
But then the moment passed and she was looking at an h-trace female, not a Delassian. Anja slumped back onto her heels as the hope died, transforming instantly into unwelcome fuel for her aching grief.
For an instant she hated the woman. But just as quickly as it came, the fury evaporated. Hate took energy and oh, Mother Night. She was tired. She just wanted to sleep, to rest. Preferably forever. The pounding in her skull was awful.
Her HUD scrolled. Even that was hard to keep in focus.
#Neural activity patterns indicate mild concussion. We're out of options. Get low, Anja. You're going to lose consciousness. I will keep you safe.#
"'Kay."
She felt herself tipping sideways, tried to catch herself, but her Cursed limbs were wandering off again. The blurring was getting worse. Maybe this was finally it. Please Mother Night let it be the end.
Suddenly the woman was holding her, saying something over and over, crying yet again. A champion tear-jockey, this one. Anja tried to move, push her away, but now her entire body wasn't listening to her. Why wasn't GARDA reacting? The woman was literally crushing Anja to her. She smelled really… strange. White.
So sorry, E—
The black flooded in.
xxxxx
It wasn't the sudden silence that made Elsa turn around. The men's shouting had stopped. She had barely even processed it while it was happening. That odd friend of Anna's was trying to protect her, perhaps. It didn't matter. Anna was gone and it didn't matter. If she got lucky, Hans would finish her off and it would be done.
"I've been talking to Kristoff a bit, you know, to give you a break. He says hi, by the way. You two never got properly introduced."
Elsa flinched. That had sounded like Anna's voice? Now she was hearing voices?
Then from behind her a woman shouted something. The voice was angry, raspy, tired. Whatever she was saying was incomprehensible. But the voice itself had just spoken to her. The woman shouted again, and then again, making the oddest sounds. It was enough to reach through the choking veil of indifference. Elsa raised her head, looked behind her. Shock.
"Anna?" she whispered.
Hans was on the ground, unmoving. Anna, her sister Anna, was shouting something at her large friend. And Anna herself… she was wearing, what? And… swords?
Just then, Olaf came scurrying up behind Anna, stick-arms held wide for a hug.
"Anna! You're alive!"
Her little sister moved so fast that it was impossible to follow. One second Olaf was behind her, the next there was a spinning flicker of metal and light and three piles of snow were flying through the air to land with a splat on the ice. Followed by a much louder crash as Anna, losing her balance, went down hard. Elsa screamed as she heard Anna's head slam into the ice.
Elsa started forward, desperate to get to her sister's side, but then stopped, wildly confused. None of this made any sense. She checked behind her to make sure Anna's frozen form was still there. It was. So how…? She looked back at the other Anna, who was shakily trying to get up, muttering dazedly to herself as she did so. The sight was too much. That Anna needed help. Elsa took a few, conflicted steps toward her.
Movement caught Elsa's attention as Olaf pulled himself together with a giggle and came waddling over.
"Wow, Anna seems tense," he remarked cheerfully, "She's never trisected me before. Where did you send her?"
When Elsa looked up, Anna had managed to get to her knees. She was obviously dazed, barely staying upright. She kept those lethal-looking blades held out. Anna shouted something else and then her eyes went glassy. She was going to collapse. Elsa threw caution to the wind and rushed forward, crouching down to her sister's level and stopping just clear of the waving blades.
Up close everything made even less sense. Anna was wearing a strange suit of armor, like a knight. And she wasn't actually holding the odd swords. The left-hand blade, a straight wide length of wickedly serrated greyish metal, actually protruded from the back of her hand at the wrist through a small opening in the armor. The right-hand blades were even stranger, two slightly curved planes of what looked like glowing dark green glass. They too extended forward from the back of Anna's wrist, but with thin ridges that continued back up the outside of her forearm as well.
Just then Anna gave a shocked cry. The blades vanished, the glowing ones disappearing in a blink and the metallic sliding up into the back of her hand with a hiss.
All of Elsa's confusion – all thought, really - vanished as she looked up and found Anna staring at her. In an instant, everything stopped. The universe went aquamarine. No one had ever looked at her with that kind of intensity before.
"El?" Anna's raspy voice was quiet, filled with… things.
Anna's eyes held her. She couldn't move, couldn't look away. That expression… an enormous terrifying heat exploded in her chest as if Anna's gaze were a window into a blacksmith's forge, pulling her in and burning her to a cinder. It almost hurt, it was so intense. She didn't dare even breathe – if she breathed she was certain something monumental – good or bad - would happen.
And then Anna blinked. The fire was doused so violently Elsa actually stumbled forward, smacking her knees painfully on the freezing ice. Everything inside her that had been burning instantly went cold and dark. The loss ripped a gasp out of her throat. For an instant, Anna continued to look at her, expression devastated. Then her entire face went grey and she slumped back onto her heels, eyes closing.
Without the blaze of those eyes, it was easy to see that Anna was a wreck. Her face was drawn and tired. She looked older than she should, her face pared down, that of an adult, albeit a young one. Her hair was more grey than red, the white streak not discernable. It was long, braided tightly into a complex pattern of knots at the back of her head.
She mumbled something without opening her eyes and started to tip sideways. Instinctively Elsa grabbed her before she fell, pulling her into a tight hug. The actual physical contact snapped something inside and she began crying again, calling her sister's name over and over as Anna's weight grew steadily heavier, her body going fully limp within Elsa's grasp. Anna's face where it rested on her shoulder was so cold it made Elsa shiver and for a terrible instant fear the worst, until she felt the small puffs of breath against her collarbone.
Anna's armor, too, was icy cold, the odd metal freezing to the touch. She'd die of exposure out here. They had to get her back to the castle.
The castle. Oh God. People. The kingdom. She couldn't handle any—
As if on cue, the wind brought the sound of voices to her ear. She looked up. In the distance she could make out a squad of soldiers heading in their direction. For a moment she was convinced that they were Weselton or Southern Isles men, come to finish her off, but eventually she made out the familiar crocus motif emblazoned on their armor. Still, what were they coming to do? Who was running the kingdom?
Anna's friend, his odd reindeer pet and Olaf obviously shared her concern, moving to stand between her and the approaching group. It was a brave gesture, enough to coax a brief ember of warmth from the chill inside her. But she couldn't allow them to be hurt on her account.
No. She wasn't going to allow any more people to get hurt. Anna was, bizarrely enough, alive. Somehow she'd been given back to them, changed by some fantastic happenstance, but alive. A true miracle. The young man would look after her. Elsa was sure of it; she'd seen how he'd looked at her back in the ice palace. Hans seemed well out of the picture. They would all be ok.
It was time to leave.
She allowed herself one final look at her sister, trying to memorize everything about this new, changed Anna in the seconds she had. She leaned in and kissed her carefully on the forehead. Anna's scent was unfamiliar but comforting, sweat and sweetness intermingled with an amalgam of strange light metallics. Out of nowhere the white-hot fire inside her flared up again. It was painful. It hurt, God did it hurt, like it was burning her soul. She deserved every ounce of that hurt. Suddenly Elsa didn't want it to stop; it felt like it could burn her to ash, burn her clean.
But no. A lifetime of self-denial made pulling back easy. What she wanted was of no consequence. What mattered was Anna, and the kingdom. In exactly that order.
"Be a great queen, Anna. Be happy. I love you."
She laid her sister down carefully and stood up. The breeze was picking up, chilling her, pulling at her gown. The soldiers were close, but moving awkwardly on the ice. A problem she didn't share. Without a word, she turned and ran.
She made it three steps.
And then she was sliding uncontrollably across the ice, windmilling her arms frantically as she tried to regain her balance. It was no use. Her legs went out from under her and she slammed painfully onto the ice, sliding to a stop in a heap of heavy cloth and winded, bruised body.
Wait, what? Cloth?
Her ice gown was gone. Once again she was wearing the heavy coronation dress that she'd donned a few days and a lifetime ago. That wouldn't do – the garment was enormously heavy and would slow her down drastically. Instinctively she reached for her magic in order to switch it back. For an instant everything felt normal. Then her power gave an odd stutter, something slammed and-
Elsa screamed. It felt like razor-shards of ice were flowing through her blood, slashing every vein in her body to ribbons. She convulsed once, twice, muscles going rigid. She was paralyzed with pain, unable to even breathe. It felt like her heart had seized.
And then, between one instant and the next, the agony stopped. She felt completely normal once again. Confused, she reached inward again, cautiously feeling for her magic. And found a door. It blazed in her mind. White, with a twin blue snowflake pattern. It was her door. Firmly shut. She touched it and was instantly rewarded with a snapping, searing spark of agony that brought tears to her eyes. The message was clear enough.
Go away.
She became aware that she was shivering. The cold, both inside and out, felt painful. She felt cold. It was completely alien. Her mind rebelled at the realization that even her curse had betrayed her. It was the last straw. She gave a cry of distress as the last remnant of her beleaguered will collapsed with a sad little snap.
I can't do this. It's too much. I give up.
Too much didn't make sense. Too much hurt. Too much was awful. She was cried out, tapped out. Too much had happened too quickly. She found that she couldn't even muster the will to stand up. Perhaps it was for the best, to stop fighting. Yes. Give up, be passive, let others make all the choices. Every choice she'd made, every action she'd taken since her coronation had been wrong. Had hurt, maybe killed others. The distress faded away as she felt a profound sense of emptiness settle over her. Who was she, anyway, to act? To even exist? None of it mattered at all.
And besides, it felt best just to lie huddled in on herself. She was cold.
xxxxx
"Your Majesty. Are you well?"
As the soldier straightened from a careful but deep obeisance, Elsa vaguely recognized her. It was like looking at someone down a long tunnel. A name eventually presented itself. Franskjold. Her captain of the guard.
By all accounts a good soldier. Elsa didn't care. If she ignored her maybe she would go away.
"Your Majesty?" Franskjold knelt down beside her, expression concerned. "By your leave, we need to return you and the others to the castle. It is far too cold to stay out here."
That sparked a response from somewhere inside her. Anna. She looked up at the soldier and willed her mouth to move, to make sounds like a human. "Yes – please look after the princess. She needs medical attention right away. She's your sovereign now, Captain. Take care of her."
Franskjold's eyebrows shot up. "We're attending to the princess, your Majesty, don't fear. And, begging your pardon, but you remain our Queen, as far as I know. So please, may I help you up? We must return to the castle."
Elsa sighed, struggling to muster the will to speak. "Just leave me here, Captain. I am not fit to rule. Everyone knows that. You see what I've done. The princess will be an excellent monarch. Let my reign be short and forgotten. I hereby abdicate in her favor." Besides, when I die, my curse and this winter both die with me.
"One moment, please, your Majesty." The captain got to her feet and moved over to the knot of soldiers clustered around the others. There was a brief, quiet flurry of orders and activity and then Franskjold was marching carefully back over to her. She squatted down onto her haunches.
"Your Majesty, my men are returning all of the others to the safety of the castle to get warm. A runner has been sent to summon a doctor for Princess Anna. She's breathing well, fear not. The others will be held as guests, if it pleases you, including the reindeer and the snow creature."
A trickle of relief went through her. Anna would be safe. Good.
"Prince Hans will also receive appropriate attention. Under friendly but heavy guard, if you will take my advice? A team has also been assigned to sledge the… sculpture of the princess safely back as well. Unless you wish it otherwise?"
Unwelcome chaotic thoughts and emotions returned at the thought of Hans and, far worse, of frozen Anna, filling the quiet fog in her head with noise. The last few days had spiraled so far out of control, culminating in this last hour of horror. What had happened to her sister? What had her magic done to her? And Hans... the thought of him and the danger he might pose threatened to crack her apathy, but only for a moment. No. Hans didn't matter.
"That's alright, Captain. Do as you think best. Protect my sister, that is my only wish. Now Go. That's an order."
"I agree, your Majesty, it's time to go. And, please, forgive me this affrontery." With that, Franskjold scooped her up into her arms with almost no effort, standing up carefully on the ice.
Elsa was so shocked she didn't know what to do. Before she could speak or try to break free the Captain murmured gently, looking straight ahead, "Please, your Majesty. I cannot leave you here. You know this. I don't claim to understand the happenings of these last few days, but the fact remains that you are our Queen and you still live, despite the plotting of foreigners. Know that I stand by you. As do my men. Your men. Arendelle needs you."
The captain started walking, stepping with utmost care, her arms cradling Elsa with no sign of strain. A traitorous corner of Elsa's mind took pleasure in being held so firmly. It felt safe. It also felt very nice to let someone else make the decisions. She couldn't summon the will to object.
Besides, if they let her live, even if they locked her up for life as punishment for her crimes, maybe she'd be able to see Anna again.
At the thought, some tattered remnant of her spirit stirred. Seeing Anna again mattered.