The coin is undeserving of care, for it cannot return your love.
Henalus Minix; Councilor, upon signing the abolition of currency in the Council.

'Well I can only say that that was quite a tale.'

With the actual tone of his voice lost through the helmet, Anna was unable to tell of what the speaker, or rather, Victus, if memory served her correctly, actually believed of the recount she had just given. There were perhaps a dozen of them, clustered around a table maybe half of the Great Hall's length. It was more than strange that they refused to sit, though the commodity had been offered to the humans present. Naturally, Henrik and his men had refused, and were currently at attention behind Anna and Kristoff, as they completed retelling the events that had gripped the kingdom in the wake of Elsa's coronation. The only one of the black cloaks that was seated was in fact the Battlemaster, and, having only joined them at the table after insisting they do so, Anna was fairly certain he had only done so to remove any feelings of oddity from the pair, as they sat in the home of shadows, at a 'privilege' the black cloaks did not allow themselves.

What was more, though each one was strikingly similar, Anna believed she could find each one in memory; the crests upon each Guardsman's plate being the only identifying marker of the person beneath.

Though she could only suspect such, the shadows that surrounded the table were indeed the same ones, save for Victus, who had previously threatened their lives in the first disastrous meeting between the Fifty Ninth and the Humans of Arendelle.

'I told you truth could be stranger than fiction,' Varro grinned, at a somewhat bemused Ignus, before he turned back to the pair. 'So let me get this straight; your sister froze the kingdom over, and in the process, this Duke of Wessleton sent his men after her in a bid to end the winter?'

'Along with others,' Anna muttered, but Varro wasn't listening anymore.

'But that makes no sense,' he mused, trying to wrap his head around the absurd idea of currency, 'assuming your sister actually pissed him off enough to start a war, why wait three years?

'Delayed reaction?' Tarus offered, without a trace of seriousness.

'Anything over the years?' The Battlemaster asked, ignoring Legion's squad commander, 'Raids, sabotage, anything leading to a full scale war?'

'No,' Anna immediately replied, 'apart from a lot of letters pleading for a lift on the embargo. Elsa just had them dumped in the fjord.'

'Could be enough to rile a pomus Duke up,' Victus noted, but Varro dismissed the notion.

'You don't initiate a surprise assault on a city without a good reason, and I think anyone's grudge will fade by three years. There's something else we aren't seeing.'

'Manipulation? Corruption?'

'They'd offer the most obvious reasons for unwarranted aggression,' the Battlemaster muttered, nodding toward Girius, who had just voiced such possibilities, 'and frankly, it'll play right into Foresh's hands; with the fjord blockaded, he could easily just sit in the mountains and initiate a siege.'

'A siege we'll lose.' No one bothered to even oppose Victus' prediction. The very idea of plunging firepower directed from the mountains surrounding Arendelle, with the route to the sea blocked off by almost thirty warships, was one that did not beckon images of victory.

'So then what? We sink them at sea?'

'I'm considering,' the Battlemaster replied, although, he only turned back to the pair of human representatives at the table, 'but twenty eight ships and their crews; that could be enough to give Foresh a pause. If they aren't already possessed, and still acting on free will, they can be reasoned with, if you could work something out?'

'What?'

'A peace deal, or even an alliance,' Varro began, but he was quickly cut off by the response that hit him at a rapid pace.

'Are you kidding?' Anna spat, 'the Duke nearly killed my sister, and any 'deal' we work out can't end well; he's a crook.'

'Well, first impressions aren't always accurate,' a voice that Varro truly wished would shut up, as it piped in, 'I mean, our first meeting didn't go too well, considering we nearly killed you and your...'

'Thank you for the honesty, Girius,' the Battlemaster hissed through gritted teeth, 'but I don't believe positive memories are best suited with such ideas. Anyhow, Anna, I could advise you to bury what sins lie in the past. Getting caught in a ring is the last option I'll be willing to take in fighting a war.'

It was the insurmountable pain in her abdomen that finally drew open weary eyelids. Already lightheaded under the influence of the suppressants that had been fed into her blood to prevent the nervous signals of a seven foot Guardsman cutting into her ribcage reaching her head, and killing her from shock, it took the greatest amount of will power to even force a sound from her throat, before Elsa realized a transparent mask had been placed over her mouth and nose. The air was foul; far from cold and natural; rather, it was warm, and nearly recycled in it's artificial nature. Keen to remove the impediment, Elsa tried to raise a hand to her face, only before she realized the limb was incapable of movement; a band of force upon her wrist informing her that someone had evidently decided to strap her to the table for whatever procedure she had just endured in silence.

'She should be up soon,' a cold voice sounded behind steel walls, 'You have five minutes; anymore at this point will probably be too much.'

The words sent a chilling grasp closing about her heart, as she remembered where those voices had haunted her. Recollection was painful to say the least, against the dulling effects of the concoctions that flowed into her veins, but the last thing she could remember was being run through by a blade protecting...

Oh my God, she thought, They got her.

Although the temperature was falling, it was not plummeting fast enough for her liking, as weary limbs were unable to break through the bindings, before whatever was out there could come back...

The door slid open, and Elsa found herself face to face with one of the mysterious black cloaks, though, after witnessing her sister stabbed by one of their number, and seeing one upon loosing recent memory, she didn't know what to think. Then she saw the bloodied blade in his hand, and a surge of horrific images of what surgery could be performed when someone blacked out, cruised through her head. Quite simply, Elsa had never been more terrified in her life, as the red eyed creature calmly turned the sharp instrument in it's hands.

But then, as a familiar voice met her ears, fear vanished into the wind, and the thin sheet of ice that had begun crawling outward from her supine form quickly receded away into nothingness.

'Elsa. Are you okay?'

She wasn't able to put together much of a reply beneath the oxygen mask, but she had enough time to wonder if her sister was about to wrap her arms about her, and kill her on the spot, as a new burst of feeling, and pain, erupted from her torso.

Thankfully, Anna had enough sense to avoid wrapping the injured Queen in a full embrace, and simply chose to wrap her arms about her sister's left arm, which ran exposed on the steel surface, outside the sheet Terinius had covered the grievous wounds with. It took a grave amount of strength to interlock her fingers with her sister's, but as they did so, Elsa could breath a final sigh of relief.

Gently, a pair of plated fingers removed the mask she'd quickly grown to hate, although they lacked the warmth of the close press of her sister's body.

'Anna,' she managed to cough, but whatever else she had planned to say died in her effort to draw breath.

'Shh, it's alright,' Anna comforted her, placing a hand over a cold forehead, 'you're alright.'

'Where are...'

'You got stabbed in the chest,' her sister continued, urging her to hush once more, 'but they were able to rescue you: you'll be alright.'

'You were attacked by an infiltrator class demon,' an impassioned voice added, nearly causing Elsa to leap from her place, not expecting the mechanical tone to break into her thoughts, 'quite amazed they even got you here alive.'

'I can't feel,' Elsa mumbled, 'I can't feel my legs.'

Nervously, Anna turned to face the grim faced Guardsman who was placed well out of Elsa's sight, before she turned back to her sister, the unfaltering warmth returned to her eyes.

'You'll be fine Elsa,' she repeated, 'they'll heal you. I swear, you'll be back on your feet in no time.'

'You always weren't,' Elsa coughed, a thin smile across her face, 'a very good liar.'

The short flash of doubt across her face was all Elsa needed to know, as she sank back into the bed, trying to come to terms with what she now knew to be lost.

Anna simply remained silent. She did not quite know how her sibling would take either variant of the truth, that she was indeed paralyzed, or the fact that she's regain mobility soon, with the minor drawback of cutting into her back again, and installing a module that would no longer make her fully human.

'You'll be fine Elsa,' she whispered, a tear rolling down her cheek, 'I promise you, we'll be able to carry out life together. There's just somethings that need to be done now. But when I'm back, I swear, I'll be right here, to the end.'

How the Guard could stomach the rapid, unpredictable, and violent jolts of the Omen, as it hurtled through the sky, Anna had little to no clue, if only for the fact they were, as Kristoff put it, simply mad. Adrenaline, and an urge to see Elsa reach the safety of medical treatment, regardless of it's location in a dark fortress that did not exactly declare itself a haven, had served to eliminate most of the stomach churning events that had plagued the rest of the guards that had accompanied them.

Now though, without a dying sibling at her side to hold her attention from the growing sensation that was rising from her stomach to her throat, she felt positively sick.

'Do me a favor,' an insensitive Tullius called from the cockpit, 'try to keep it in the bag, because two times in a day is just rude.'

'You don't have a heart, do you?' she shot back, clutching the safety bar that held her down the seat, the tension in her arms somewhat relieving the sickening feeling in her mouth. It didn't help with the fact Varro, and probably five other shadows, from the Legion squad, continued to amble around as if on solid ground, in low conversation.

They'd been in flight for days on end by now, she reasoned. Or maybe it was just the distortion of time that occurred in accordance to one's ability to enjoy the time. In this case, the hour and a half was simply one long drawn out road to hell, as they continued to climb and climb into the sky. The supposed medication she'd popped in her mouth prior to undertaking the journey certainly wasn't helping.

In fact, the only real consolation was the fact that she wasn't the only one in the sick boat, as Kristoff, Henrik, and his three guardsmen, glanced back at her tortured grimace with equally pale faces.

Then, a moment later, everything went from pear shaped, to downright pitiful, as alarm klaxons blared. For a gut wrenching second, she briefly wondered if that meant they were about to drop eleven thousand meters back to Earth, but if that was the case for the Shadows, they certainly didn't seem unnerved for their situation.

'That's your cue, lads,' Varro muttered, as he finished locking a final strap to another Guardsman's arm, and it was then that Anna realized they had all in fact, been only making adjustments to two of the present Guardsmen. Indeed, it appeared as if the two Shadows' suits were reinforced with significantly larger frames, upon which a fabric was held in place between their drawn limbs, as they readed, for whatever 'it' might be.

'Drop in sixty seconds,' Tullius intoned, 'doors opening, masks on.'

Drop? Anna was apprehensive at best, as to what the word heralded when one was over ten kilometers into the sky.

At worst, she was terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought. So much so that she missed the second call for the sizable oxygen masks they had been issued before ascending into the night, until Varro decided to take matters into his own hands. After experiencing Girius' administrations first hand, Anna shouldn't have expected any more, as the Battlemaster abruptly pulled the hard material over her face, slammed a needle into her arm which would apparently prevent a blackout due to oxygen deprivation, and promptly sounded off an all clear.

Then the doors opened, to permit a perfect view of the clouds below, and the all too terrifying aspect of falling.

Thankfully, her scream was lost in the roar of the wind, as the two appointed Guardsmen stepped forward for the opening in the once sealed structure of the Omen.

'Window for intercept with the fleet is closing,' the Raven continued, 'thirty seconds.'

'You have your objective, Guardsmen,' Varro said, clasping the two clad figures by a cloaked shoulder, 'get in, halt that fleet by any means that doesn't involve lethal force; rip the rudder from the flagship, cut down the sails, whatever it takes, but no one sees you. Clear?'

'Understood,' the two shadows replied immediately, a fist placed against their hearts, 'Great Father watch over you, sir.'

'And may He be your shield,' the Battlemaster finished for them, 'good luck.'

Abruptly, the lights that illuminated the interior of the Omen plunged out into darkness, signalling a storm of feet, as the two figures charged for the doorway. Then, to the great shock of any who had not witnessed a Guard wing suit deployment in the past, the two figures were gone over the edge, into the void beyond.

At that prospect, the second the mask was removed, Anna was finally sick.

It was another half hour, before the accursed iron bird they flew upon began it's inevitable descent.

Utterly exhausted from an unforgiving journey through the turbulent air, by the time Varro switched the lights back on in preparation for the next deployment, Anna was slumped to the side, lightly dozing in exhaustion after two straight hours of holding her guts in protest of a transport she had no intentions of reboarding.

Like always though, sympathy seemed beyond their newfound 'allies', as the flicker of the fluorescent lights promptly took a sledgehammer to any illusion of rest in the coming hours.

'Alright fellas, wake up; eyeballs back up, lets move it!'

For a moment at least, Anna half prayed for her predicament to simply be the remnants of a half remembered dream, only for the loud rap of metal within the close proximity of her forehead to jolt her back to the land of the living.

'No exceptions for royalty in the field,' a Guardsman grinned, before he unlimbered her safety lock, 'we've all got an equal chance of ending up at His side, after all.'

Groggily, and nearly teetering over the precipice of a craft she had not realized was still open, a steel plated hand arrested her movement toward an early grave.

'Now are we even?' a familiar voice asked, even beneath the vocal filters. It was then that Anna recognized the sigil of the lilith fox emplaced upon the Guardsman's chest; Girius, the same one that had nearly killed her, saved her, and then nearly indirectly killed her again, with putting her in a disability with four demons howling for her blood.

Although her resent for the first and last man who had attempted to end her life had hardly faded, a small voice in her gut told her the Guardsman's efforts were hardly that of a snake's.

Then again, that was the same voice that had willed her into the serpent's arms three years ago.

'Thanks,' she quickly mumbled, withdrawing her hand as quickly as she could, without placing herself too close to the precipice of death again. Thankfully, Girius simply turned back to the work at hand, locking bands of blades, and small metallic cases to his chest and belt, each dulled the same matt black his carapace was, giving no reflection to an observer.

Unlike the others though, the was one notable difference in Girius' armement, in that the long barreled rifle he strapped to his back was easily twice the size of even his Battlemaster's. What's more, he had a similar frame to the first two Guardsmen who had exited mid flight strapped to his back...

She realized what was happening nearly too late, and a panicked dive to one side stopped her from being tackled out of the airborne transport, as the Guardsman hurled himself from the ship, through the space she had just occupied, limbs splayed apart, before the fabric deployed, turning the hulking figure into a small bird that promptly disappeared into the night.

'Out of interest,' she asked, clinging to a steel support for a guarantee to remain aboard the descending vessel, 'how do they land?'

'Er, you hit the ground.' The shadow was so deadpan, she could have almost thought him to be serious, when Varro gave her a sidelong glance. It didn't take a genius to see the massive grin behind that mask, combined with the silent rise and fall of one of their compatriots heads, in suppressed laughter.

'And what happens if we fall out, without that thing?' Anna tried to mimic the strange contraption upon the' backs of the previously departed Guardsmen, but, with one hand refusing to leave the metal rail, it looked more like an impersonation of a chicken, as the wind continued to tug her toward the opening. Luckily, most of the Guardsmen assembled had not set eyes on a fowl, so the impression was an easy matter to guess. Not that their reply was any more encouraging.

'Then you hit the ground,' Varro answered, 'except, at a far higher speed.'

'How fast?'

'Enough to turn you into a paste,' the Battlemaster replied offhandedly, before he turned back, to address the uncaring Raven in the next compartment. 'Tullius? Time to landing?'

'Dropping us fast,' the reply came, 'but I don't have an LZ; ropes in five.'

'Alright, gather round,' Varro instructed, pulling the small group of humans around the table his Guardsmen had previously surrounded, 'we're not going to be able to land directly, so what's going to happen is this; we'll deploy four ropes, we'll grab them, and descend. Clear?'

'How far are we talking about?' Kristoff asked, already apprehensive over the answer.

'Low drop,' the Battlemaster mused to himself, 'means less than fifty feet; maybe ten meters, or less.'

In theory, in comparison to diving off a two hundred foot cliff with a cut safety line, it would be a walk in the park.

Truth be told, Varro was hardly expecting the Princess of all those present, to be the first to throw herself off the perch, following the Guardsmen's deployment, as the three remaining black cloaks fanned out in rapid order, rifles raised, eyes fixed to Storm Nodes and still lines across digital displays. Content that their position was secure for now at least, Varro had signalled Ignus and Quintus forward in a standard search pattern, only to turn about to see a single person descending in the wind.

Although a desperation to leave the sickening vessel probably played a part, a brazen lack of fear could not be denied by the Battlemaster. Unfortunately, aside from the Prince by marriage, who was in the mid process of reaching for a line, there was a lack of progress down the drop lines that continued to compromise the Omen's presence with every second it remained uncloaked.

'Tullius,' he growled softly over the comms, 'you tell them that if they wait any longer, you have my blessing to throw them off.'

The reaction from the irate Raven must have been immediate, judging from the very fact that only a second after the last word had left Varro's mouth, the unlit aircraft's exit port was filled with the panicked, quickened movements of four more shadows that tumbled out in tight order along the four lines that thinly connected the Omen's belly to the ground beneath it.

'Last man out,' Tullius reported back, with a grin all too evident under the helm, 'pulling out now; I'll be on station if you need me, Varro.'

The Battlemaster simply replied with an outstretched thumb raised to the ascending shape, as it faded once more into the night, leaving the small company, shrouded in the darkened clearing.

Instinctively, one man at Henrik's side reached for a lantern held at his side, but an iron grip stopped the motion.

'It pays to not start a parade march,' Varro whispered softly, 'until we know we aren't being watched by Foresh, we maintain a low profile.'

Then, like it's counterpart in the sky, the Shadow Guardsman dissipated into the dark, ghosting the movements of his former brethren who had already become one with the night.

It was another hour later when the nerve wracked half dozen reached the sanctuary of an old enemy. For what she'd heard of it, Wessleton was hardly the flowing marketplace Anna had been expecting from rumors, with the absence of any more vessels from the city state. Indeed, aside from the sentries that had permitted their arrival, and now flanked their progress through the dim lit streets, there was nobody in the dank streets. Few houses were even lit by fireplace, as lights flickered gloomily from only the occasional window, and for the most part, the town was silent. Silent and clogged with the stench of undrained sewage. Whatever had happened here, Anna thought grimly, the once great hub of trade in the West had truly fallen from grace.

The guards at the keep were hardly as welcoming as their counterparts at the gate and, with some apprehension, Henrik proceeded to hand over the royal seal once again. Well, to indeed call it a royal seal was guilty of a crime, in that, with Elsa unconscious, they had been unable to add the sigil of the Queen's authority to the hastily scribbled letter approving Anna's authority to act in her place, considering her seal was not the normal wax. Rather, it was a product of her own magic, and without another Stormcaller over the power of winter to step in, they'd been left with less scrupulous means to accomplish the supposed authority of Arendelle's monarch.

The result was still a near replica, thanks to Plinus' discreet prowess in forgery, but even so, Anna sweated. Coming under Arendelle's colours had given the Duke's men enough thought to toss them into the dungeons. An apparent attempt to impersonate an envoy simply gave them an official excuse.

After a terse few moments of scowled glances at the uncommon sigil, the parchment was finally rolled back up and thrust back into Henrik's chest, before the two sets of wooden doors were allowed to part, admitting an equally hostile bastion to the Guard Firebase they had ventured into only hours ago.

Somehow, Anna realized gloomily, she'd be a fool to expect a friendly reception here.

'You have quite a nerve to show your face around here,' a snide, familiar voice echoed off the wooden interior of the Castle's equivalent of Arendelle's Great Hall, 'considering the mess we find ourselves in is the doing of your kin.'

It was a reflexive chill that rippled through her spine, as Anna recalled the same voice that had spread the infectious paranoia across the buried city in a matter of minutes after her sister's 'incident', as they referred to it now a days. To think one could so easily give the order to end another's life, based on a simple belief the storm would end with death.

Well, she managed to ponder briefly, as she composed herself for her first real negotiation, at least the Duke wasn't mad enough to take the killing into his own hands, like another sociopath that was quickly, albeit with great difficulty, expelled from Anna's mind.

Truth be told, such was hardly the first deal of haggling she had enacted in her sister's name; with so many relationships needing repair after the revelations of sorcery at the coronation, and Elsa's inability to exist in a dozen places at once, Anna had already traveled on a number of delegations in her kingdom's name, but to believe this to be a straightforward affair would be folly to say the least.

At worst, failure on her part in the past meant a broken trade route that, with Arendelle's existing net of commerce, truly spelled greater issues for the opposing nation. Now though, the price of failure could well mean a war her people could not hope to win.

'Duke Ambrose Cyneric' she started, suppressing the inbuilt hatred that burned deep at her core as best she could, 'a pleasure to meet your acquaintance again.'

Unlike Anna, who gave the slightest curtsy in a common sign of respect, and little else, the Duke was positively fuming at her very presence, as he marched the length of the Hall, flanked by a dozen bodyguards. It was little surprise to find the pair that Elsa had identified as her would-be-killers, were present amongst the company, still as impassioned as the day she'd set eyes upon the pair.

'I wasn't informed you were sailing for Wessleton,' the Duke hissed, nearly accusingly, 'nor was I informed you arrived from the port; that you came from the Northern Road?'

'That is correct, Duke,' Anna replied tersely, for once bothering to recite the story they'd agreed on with Varro to cover the paranoid authority of the city state. Her tendency of letting her thoughts leave her mouth before they were actually considered proved comical at times, as Kristoff had comforted her, but here, it could well spell doom for them, as well as all those on the other side of the sea. 'We landed at Newport, before we took the road South.'

'And I guess there is a reason behind this, deception, hmm?' The last word was spat with venom.

'A precaution,' Kristoff interjected, eyes slit in fury at the disrespect the slight man displayed for the Princess of Arendelle.

'I asked the one fit to answer,' the Duke retaliated softly, 'not a peasant.'

It would have been the equivalent of asking a rock to produce blood; to request the mountain man to refuse being stifled at the insult. Indeed, he had never flaunted the advantages of royalty, choosing a humbled life over one gold could provide, and after all, he was an orphan, in a court of rulers.

However, he would have been foolish to assume his wife would have allowed the slander to go unanswered.

'Brave words for a coward who hides behind others to enact his will.'

There was a ripple of metal on leather, as a set of blades partly left their sheaths.

So much for diplomacy.

'Perhaps I spoke too hastily,' the Duke conceded, though his features gave no trace of any actual regret at his words, 'but these are harsh times upon us all. Now then, perhaps you could share with us the reason for your visit?'

'Oh,' Anna cut back, feigning serenity, 'it's just the matter of why twent eight of your warships are headed for Arendelle.'

The Duke's jaw simply hit the ground.

How did they know? He raged inside, how had the sorceress and the brat of her sister found out?

Too late, he realized the moment had been witnessed.

'That is absurd!' He screamed at the top of his lungs, opting for sheer volume of protest over finess, 'I will not court lies in my own home; if you have proof, present it!'

The last words were spat in fury at the small formation. Presenting a calm she certainly did not feel, Anna crossed her arms, and let a grin cross her face.

'We have eyes, Duke,' she muttered as mysteriously as she could, deciding ambiguity would work to her favor, 'and besides; Wessleton houses the largest navy in the Northern sea. Your harbor speaks for itself.'

There was little Cyneric could say to that. The docks of the city, though massive in scope, were in fact empty, save for perhaps three vessels. The ghost town of a port that should have been teeming with military vessels was enough to drop the Duke's deception like a house of cards though, Anna noted with some curiosity and irritation, the Duke refused to admit a direct defeat.

'Ever since you cut trade links with our city,' he hissed, 'Wessleton needed a new means of generating a revenue to run the nation. Don't forget, Princess Anna; it was your sister that plunged my people into a depression.'

'Because you were willing to kill to turn a coin.'

'Gold is what makes our world turn, Princess. Whether you like it or not, it is what keeps us all alive. That is why we enacted what we had to; our ships have been on hire for others seeking protection, whilst lacking a suitable navy to protect their assets on the high seas. We make the waters safe, and receive a cut of the profits in turn: it's the only way we survived.'

Anna was willing to bet there was more to the Duke's tale than met the ear. It was no secret the seas were becoming more and more dangerous as the days wore on, as pirates and criminals toured unprotected trade routes in increasing numbers. With the Duke's plan in place to profit off those unable to protect themselves, it was a fair guess to predict the Duke had 'directed' at least some of the cut throats to the right places. Without anything other than speculation though, Anna was forced to drop the accusation, unvoiced.

'And so now what? You've come to take a torch to my home?'

'Occasionally, a client state may ask for, military aid in exchange for financial concessions. I don't ask what they're doing, I get my ships back in one piece, and the world keeps spinning. If the ships we loaned out are headed for Arendelle, you can look for the client; the ships and their crews are only answerable to their employers alone for the course of the contract.'

'You greedy son of a...' Henrik got no further, before he found a blade beneath his throat, cutting off the curse.

'Your crews still answer to you,' Anna insisted, trying to ease the tension, before the burly bodyguard at the Duke's side could push the sharpened edge into flesh, 'send word to them; it's not too late.'

'How could I do so?' Cyneric scoffed, drawing Anna's brows together, contort with fury, 'I couldn't reach them in time, even if I wanted to.'

'You go through with this,' Kristoff snarled, 'and it'll be an act of war.'

'Not much of a war,' the Duke muttered, 'as far as I can see, you won't last a day. You see, Anna, when you play with fire, you make enemies. I don't know what your sister's been doing, but her time on the throne is over. Her demons won't protect her forever. Not while they kill my people.'

Too late, Anna realized someone had already beaten them to the accusation of harboring the forces of the damned. Coupled with his existing fear and paranoia of forces he could not understand, the Duke would almost certainly be assured he was acting in the right to end the threat, even if it meant wiping out those who were trying to contain it.

'You don't understand,' she began, 'Elsa had nothing to do with...'

'Send my regards to the witch,' Cyneric cut her off, a zealous pride hidden in his glowering eyes, 'if she's still alive when you get back. Guards.'

There was a sharp stamp of feet, as the assembled men threw themselves upright, into the rigid structure akin to a fortress wall, rather than a line of men.

'Get them out of my keep. And if they give you any trouble, you can send them back to the witch a piece at a time.'

The second the words left his mouth, everything changed, very quickly. A hiss of steel resounded in her head, as blades left scabeths, only for it to be followed in rapid fashion with the strange clatter of iron ricocheting off the ground, as a weapon, or rather weapons, hit the ground, rebounding several times before coming to a stop, as their owners were sent reeling backward into the floor. At the apparent snap of a finger, one guard had simply gone beserk, hammering his sword's pommel into the face of the man at his flank, whilst an elbow broke the nose of his left hand partner.

Shocked at the sudden betrayal, it took a moment for the rest of the Duke's escort to even realize what was happening. It was only the matter of a split second, but by the time the first sword stroke fell upon the traitor, five men were already sprawled across the floor.

The downward strike simply cut through thin air, as the mad man slipped to the side, and promptly slammed a boot backwards, instinct guiding the savage strike straight into his aggressor's groin. At the same time, the remaining men leapt into the fray. With four swords swinging in at the same time at varying angles, there was no way the assassin could survive.

Well, that was if one excluded the fact that their opponent had legs. Before it had even landed it's outstretched lower limb, the traitor had pivoted about to face his opponents on a single limb, before the extended one flicked out again. The strike cracked noisily against a flanking man's wrist, dropping the blade with the crack of bone. At the same time, the berserker's free hand flew out wards in a single, fluid fashion toward the other man who threatened to encircle him, this time from the left. A blade that had not previously existed on his person seemingly materialized as it left his hands, and promptly pinned itself through the swordsman's right hand in mid strike. There was a holler of agony, and the rattle of another blade hitting the ground. In the same moment, the single blade drawn in the traitor's right hand was raised until the blade was held vertically, tip pointed to the ground, to greet the closest of the surviving blades. Then with an ominous strength, it simply flicked it's wrist, swinging the two locked blades in an arch across his body, catching the second sword aimed for his chest, before he had pulled it back to the blade's original, downward facing stance, albeit at a slightly lower elevation, with two blades now locked against it's edge, each on the opposing side of the blade from his body. Their own hands twisted and knotted in the sudden one hundred and eighty turn, the two inept guardsmen had barely enough time to realize their predicament, before a fist laid them both out on the ground.

Only pausing to hammer a fist into the skull of the bleeding guard, sending him into an uninterrupted slumber, the man turned upon the Duke, and the small company of Arendelle beyond him.

As his gait slowed though, something that could only be described as sorcery claimed the man. There wasn't another word to it; the mortal man, in the blood red jacket of Wessleton, simply faded away, like a morning mist dispelled by the slightest breeze, only to reveal a monster beneath. A hooded, armored figure covered in head to toe in plated carapace, with the only red remaining in it's appearance being the two slanted lenses at it's eyes. In fact, the creature appeared to grow from where it's host had previously existed; where the betrayer had only stood at maybe five and a half feet, this thing easily reached seven. All the while, a large rolling mass of darkness seemed to materialize at it's back, until it's fluttered movements finally revealed it's fabric nature; a cloak of the night.

'We aren't going anywhere, Cyneric,' Varro growled.

There wasn't much of a reply from the petrified aristocrat, as the Battlemaster deactivated the holo-cloak that had previously shielded his infiltration, at least, until a sharpened edge was beneath his collared neck.

'You address those that are trying to combat the threat, Duke,' the shadow hissed, uncompromisingly, 'And your ploy to end this madness will only play into our foes' hands.'

'You're a...' If there were anymore words, they were lost amongst the stutters, and the gentlest press of steel against flesh.

'...monster, yes,' Varro admitted without a trace of uncertainty, 'and yes, I am not your shining knight at the break of dawn, because those who fight in the light cannot defeat those in the dark.'

As the words left his mouth, a fist snapped upwards, straight into the Duke's mouth, sending him sprawling backward into an unconscious sprawl of limbs.

'After what you told me about him,' Varro muttered toward the small group of standing personnel from Arendelle, 'I had doubts if anyone could turn him back, so we're going for the next best thing.'

'What?' Anna asked bewildered, 'you just declared war on Wessleton!'

'Nah,' Varro consoled her, as he pried the Duke's signet ring from his finger, 'we're just bypassing authority.'

Duke Ambrose Cyneric was furious.

There wasn't another word for it, as he rubbed his bruised jaw, trying to alleviate the pain that hammered in his head.

'I don't care if you have to burn down the city!' He tried to roar at his aide,but, with a swollen jaw, most of it simply came out as an incoherent splutter of rage. 'Find them!'

Trembling, the man bowed his acknowledgement, before he took flight, unwilling to be on the receiving side of the Duke's wrath, leaving Cyneric alone, as he mumbled his loathing for the sorceress across the sea.

Well, he mused, if what the Princess had spoken was true, and his client was using his unmarked ships to wage war on Arendelle, it was only fitting that his old foe was ended, with a coin in his purse nonetheless.

Such a thought almost made being struck in the face worthwhile.

Almost.

Amid his rolling thoughts, he never heard the door creak open again, at least until the stumbling aide announced his intentions at a far faster rate than necessary, probably still intent on getting out of the direct line of fire from the Duke's explosive fury.

'Your grace, the final payment is here.'

'You can show yourself out,' the Duke hissed, 'now.'

'My lord,' the man stuttered, clearly cursing his misfortune at being placed under the unpredictable noble, 'his eminence himself is...'

'Get searching for that blasted band of mongrels,' he spat, rounding upon the quavering aide, 'or I'll have you swinging from the gallows beside them, if there's anything left of them! I might as well just line them up in the bay for target practice, and you can join them too if you don't get out of my face!'

Sensing distance was his best hope for survival, the poor man was sent scarpering off into the bowels of the castle, hoping to find some duty to attend to that would find some fast redemption in the duke's eyes. That was, if he didn't run through the doors, and nearly smash head long into the man he was meant to be introducing.

'Whoever in the blazes you think you are,' Cyneric began, already preparing to vent his frustration at the new unfortunate, 'you can show yourself out; I've got a band of psychopaths somewhere in the city, and...'

'Perhaps you'd benefit from some assistance, then?' The familiar voice offered. 'You don't look too good yourself.'

Cyneric was on the verge of drawing the blade at his hip, when he realized the newcomer's hand was already gripping the golden sword hilt tucked away at the edge of a sheath, though, Cyneric knew it not to be in fact gold; a long time with the substance had given him enough experience to realize it was only the thinnest veneer of the rare material that, while obviously valuable, fell short in it's use in battle. He'd once contemplated even commissioning a golden blade, but he'd quickly been advised against it, due to the metal's suitably weak nature.

Thankfully, the blade was hardly drawn in threat; rather, it was an act of readiness, as the old hilt was removed to admit shining new steel; a weapon reforged after the untimely demise of it's edge. A hilt clasped in clean, crisp, white gloves.

'As a last act of good will to seal this alliance,' the silk voice continued, behind emerald eyes, 'it would be an honor.'