While King Micheal and his guards began to dip the tips of weapons of the citizens into the jar of orange liquid, Elsa and Anna walked back to their horses, where Kristoff was waiting for them with good news.
"Hey Elsa, remember how during breakfast you said you would send a guard to smuggle us some food from the ship? Well he showed up while you were in there with some snacks!" He said quietly, holding up a brown bag with food in it.
Elsa took out an apple, Anna grabbed a small pie, and Kristoff grabbed a carrot. Olaf meanwhile was nibbling on a stick.
"So, what did the wizard do for us?" - Olaf
"He gave some kind of orange jar of stuff to King Micheal. The wizard said something about soaking the weapons in it and it would cause them to burn anything they touch, I think. I wasn't paying attention that much" - Anna
"Okay, what else?" - Kristoff
"…..That was it….." - Elsa
"Oh! We almost forgot, It turns out that the wizard is the guy who removed the Ice King's heart in the first place!" - Anna
"Oh yeah. Yeah, the wizard looks just like the guy in the book who took out the Ice King's heart." - Elsa said, eager to change the subject
"Good to know….. So you still want to fight the Ice King?" - Kristoff asked Elsa
Hell no I don't want to fight him!
"Yes, he has to be stopped" Was what she said instead. She couldn't just back out now, she was in way too deep.
"Are you sure? You seem kinda nervous…" - Olaf said, still nibbling on a stick as if it were now a cigar
"I'm a tad nervous, yes…. But who wouldn't be in this situation? I'm still determined, and nothing is going to change my mind" - Elsa said, trying to conceal her true feelings.
King Micheal approached them. "The tips of every sharp weapon we have has been laced with the orange potion that the wizard gave us, are you guys ready for the fight?" He asked them.
Everyone glanced at Elsa, who gave a slight nod.
"Okay, here's what you need to know." He motioned for a guard to come over, who carried with him a rolled up piece of parchment. King Micheal took it, and layer it out flat on an exposed rock in the snow. It was a map that only a single large square and two arrows on it. He pointed to one of the arrows "This is the entrance into the Ice King's castle… He will be somewhere inside, waiting for us when we enter."
"Wait, he knows when we are going to attack?" - Kristoff asked incredulously
He nodded "The locks on the doors keeping him inside are heavy and pretty noisy to remove. Whenever we attack, he immediately knows that we are attacking. Also, we always try to attack him the day before the Winter Solstice, so he is expecting us at this very moment." - King Micheal.
Elsa started breathing more rapidly. Everything will be okay, everything will be okay!
"What's the other arrow on the map?" - Anna asked, eyeing the other arrow that was on the opposite side of the square where the entrance was.
"Thats the door to the rest of the castle, where the Ice King actually lives. We've never made it in there." - King Micheal
"You mean every time you've attacked, you've never made it past the front door?" - Kristoff asked, even more baffled than he had been just moments earlier
The teenage king nodded again "The large room that we enter into is the battle room, where the Ice King fights any intruders. The fight begins as soon as we enter, and since we've never defeated the Ice King, we've never been past the second door….. The second door is only something you should pursue if you cant make it out the front door for any reason." - King Micheal
Elsa's breathing quickened. Conceal it, don't feel it, don't let is show
"So then the plan is to open the front door, charge in, and then fight the Ice King, who is certainly expecting us?" - Kristoff
"Sounds like a good plan! lets do it!" - Olaf cheered, making his way towards the donkey he rode up the mountain on.
King Micheal rolled up the map. "Our strength isn't in tactics or cunning, its in numbers. Its always been the one thing that the Ice King never had….. With you on our side this time, we cant lose"
He handed the map back to the guard who brought it to him. "Send some guards ahead to unlock the door, by the time it is opened, we will be there and we will charge in!" King Micheal ordered. The guard nodded and ran off. King Micheal looked back at Elsa, Anna, Olaf, and Kristoff. "He will be defeated, i'm sure of it" he said with a reassuring smile.
Elsa wasn't so convinced. Neither was anyone else.
But they had no choice, the time had come.
The doors into the Ice King's castle were massive. They rivaled that of the size of the Royal ship that Elsa and Anna had come to Houkkaville on, and were several feet thick, carved out of solid ice too. The doors were decorated with a portrait of a giant mask, the one that Anna and Elsa had seen the Ice King wearing in the book they found in King Micheal's room. The eyes were blank, and from the eyes there were a bunch of zig-zagged lines moving away from the eyes in a symmetrical pattern. The doors themselves were braced shut on the outside by about a hundred planks of solid wood, each with one end anchored into the ground and the other holding the door shut. The Guards had already removed about 3/4ths of them by the time the army arrived.
Elsa was shaking in fear now. It was pretty nerve racking to go up against a foe who was undefeated, had all of her powers, maybe even more, and was literally heartless… But the giant doors to his castle and all the preparations needed just to keep him in there made him seem much more than just some outlaw…. It made him seem like he was a literal monster the size of a dragon.
C-c-conceal it….. D-Dont feel…
She couldn't even finish the thought. Her mind was all over the place and she could barely concentrate…. The only thing that was keeping her together was that she was managing to keep all of it in. No one else noticed that she was a nervous wreck. To everyone around her, Elsa looked as strong and determined as ever contrary to what she was truly feeling, and her apparent confidence inspired them to be confident too.
King Micheal addressed the group one last time. "The citizens will charge into the battle room first, which is large and open with lots of space for fighting. The only think that will be in the room will be whatever defenses that the Ice King has decided to use. Once they all charge in and buy you some space, you guys can go in and do whatever you gotta do to defeat him."
He paused, looking all of them in the eye. Elsa, then Anna, then Kristoff, even Olaf….
"You guys ready?" He asked them.
Elsa didn't respond this time. She couldn't say or do anything, she was now paralyzed with fear.
"We're ready" - Anna finally said, noticing that Elsa hadn't responded.
King Micheal nodded. "Good to hear. Guards! Open the gates!" - He bellowed behind him, and the giant doors creaked open. The doors opened up just enough for the people to pour inside. The armed citizens charged in, all of them yelling battle cries of all sorts, hellbent on fighting whatever evil lied inside. After a few seconds though, the battle cries died down, and were instead replaced with casual and confused murmuring, much to the surprise of King Micheal.
"King Micheal, there's something you need to see!" One of the guards yelled, motioning for him to come over. King Micheal jogged over, with Anna, Kristoff, Olaf, and finally Elsa following behind him.
The mob of people inched back outside the doors so that King Micheal could make his way through to see inside the castle. Anna and Elsa also made their way through the crowd to see for themselves, wondering what was going on.
"Oh no…. He didn't…." King Micheal whispered in disbelief, gazing inside the doors into the castle.
Anna and Elsa made their way through the mob of people until they were both standing next to him on either side. They too gasped in disbelief at what they saw….
Inside the doors in the Ice Kings castle, sunlight from the outside poured in, revealing what lied inside the the castle. Inside, the Ice King had constructed gigantic walls of ice around the entrance that led to a much smaller and narrower entrance, with no other way around it. Within this other entrance were more walls made of ice that stretched all the way up to a lower ceiling, each of which zig-zagged all over the place out of view.
It was a maze! ….The Ice King had constructed an actual friggin maze made out of ice inside the entrance/battle room!
"Now what do we do?" - Anna finally asked after all of them were done gawking at what laid ahead of them. There was no way to go around the entrance to the maze, and it looked like they were going to have to go through it…
King Micheal turned to Elsa. "Do you think you could, maybe, blast through the walls with your own powers?" He asked. The request startled Elsa, and she looked down at her hands wondering if she was capable of doing something so powerful. She had created with ice and defended herself with ice before, sure, but she never had to blast through solid walls with it….
She didn't have a choice anymore though. She removed her gloves, and her breathing calmed as she walked forward and stood at the entrance to the maze. Anna and King Micheal pushed back the crowd of people behind her to give her some space.
She breathed, and set her feet, concentrating on controlling the ice that had pooled through her fingertips. She didn't need to control it though, she only needed to release it.
"HIYAAAAAA" Elsa yelled with a ferocious scream, and a powerful blast of ice exploded out of her hands and into one of the walls of the maze! She had given the blast everything she had, summoning every ounce of nervous strength within her and muscling it into the blast. The force of the blast threw her backwards by several feet, where Anna and King Micheal caught her before she fell. They all looked up at the wall Elsa tried to bust through…. But it still stood.
The blast, though undoubtably powerful, failed to burst through or even crack any of the walls of the maze constructed by the Ice King. Instead, a coat of fresh blue ice was plastered all over the walls that Elsa had tried to annihilate….. She had given it her all, but in the end she didn't even close to succeeding.
King Micheal, thinking fast, turned to the crowd of citizens behind him, who were awed at Elsa's power, but also horrified that it had no effect on the Ice King's creation. "My people, it appears that we have no choice but to explore the maze ourselves….. Everyone group up into 5 or 6 people each and make your way into the maze, make sure to go down a path that another group hasn't gone down before if possible. If you come across the Ice King, yell out that you've found him and we will all converge on your location. Remember, we still have strength in numbers!"
The citizens grouped up and slowly made their way into the maze, King Micheal pulled out a dated sword and stayed behind with Anna, Elsa, Kristoff, and Olaf. After all the citizens and guards entered the maze, King Micheal turned to Elsa and Anna.
"Looks like its our turn now" He said with a slight chuckle, before inching his way into the maze. Olaf followed behind King Micheal, and Anna and Elsa followed him, with Kristoff watching out behind them. As they made their way deeper into the maze, the light from the entrance began to dim. Before long things were pitch black, and the group had to light a torch.
Elsa could hear her heartbeat in her ears, and so could everyone else. All of them keeping their eyes and ears peeled for any sign of the Ice King. Elsa glanced up towards the ceiling, which was made of ice just as solid as the walls. She could only see her own reflection on the ice, eyes wide in fear along with everyone else's, wondering what they had really gotten themselves into.
Everything will be okay, everything will be okay, please, please let everything be okay.
The Ice King stood perfectly still, watching the peasants enter the maze underneath him. One of the many tricks he taught himself over his years in solitude was how to construct ice that operated the same as a one way mirror. Ice that could be seen in through one side but not the other..… He stood on the ceiling over the maze and watched as King Micheal's armed citizens cautiously and nervously entered his creation, not knowing or seeing that the Ice King himself was watching all directly overhead. He could see them, but they couldn't see him. The Ice King stood there thinking about how this was going to be such a one-sided battle, King Micheal's strength in numbers meant nothing now that they were spread out everywhere with no way to readily assist one another…..
But then something caught his eye. Or rather, someone.
King Micheal, the coward as always, was the last one to enter the castle, like he had done so in many battles before. But this time instead of being surrounded by his usual band of inept guards, he was being escorted by a far different group of people…. A snowman wearing an oversized helmet, some burly mountain man carrying a sack of something, and two beautiful young women, one of which was carrying a frying pan…. But it was the other woman he found very interesting.
Well, well, well…. Look at THIS pretty face. He thought to himself, getting down onto one of his knees and eyeing Elsa through the ice ceiling as she entered the maze….. Even through the eyeholes of the mask he was wearing, he could easily see that she was beyond nervous, even petrified. Like everyone else in the group with her, they all had no idea what lay ahead of them, or even just above them. But something about her was, different….. She was unique…. Special….. Just staring at her was entrancing…. He couldn't quite put his finger on it, but for some reason he became fascinated by her, something that had never happened to him before over anything. She stared up at the ceiling searching for something, and he stared right back into her eyes without her even knowing.
'I'll make sure not to hurt you precious… But i'm afraid that I cannot say the same for everyone else in my maze' He thought to himself. He then casually walked over to another side of the maze away from Elsa and her group, and with a flick of his wrist, a hole opened up in the ceiling of the maze.
The Ice King then jumped down into the hole, and began making quick work of King Micheal's armed citizens.