Note: Hey! Because of the utterly unholy amount of snow Chicago has been getting creamed with all day, classes tomorrow were cancelled! So here's another chapter in celebration. Also, by-note: Galmorn will be introduced here. He'd be voiced by David Tenant (of Tenth Doctor Doctor Who fame).
I do not own Frozen. Please review, comment, or criticize. Most of all, enjoy.
In the Old World
Chapter 11
Anna wasn't sure how long she remained in the pit after the twisted vision of Elsa faded, but she wasn't sure of much after what she'd seen. All she knew was, she was curled in a ball at the bottom of the pit for what seemed like hours and hours before she fell into something akin to sleep. She woke up on the cot in her cell.
Her existence for the next day was fairly uneventful. By her standards, anyway. She simply lay in her bed, and occasionally picked at the food that was slid under the door. She noticed that guards weren't coming in with syringes when she didn't eat much, nor was she carted off to another room for more sessions she never listened to. That was all fine by her. It gave her time to think.
She knew that what she'd seen in the pit had to be one long hallucination. There was no doubt. And while the events themselves had been horribly disturbing, it wasn't those that left the deepest scars; that kept her up at night wondering, searching herself.
Nearly everything she'd seen had been drawn from her own anxieties, her own fears. She could recognize that now. Something terrible happening to Kristoff on the job; her failing to save Elsa from Hans; Elsa becoming consumed her powers and leaving Anna behind; Hans returning, somehow, and killing her; and then there were the more… well, even more unrealistic possibilities. Her finding Kristoff with Elsa, Elsa becoming some monstrous, twisted, evil version of herself.
All of those things, those fears, those possibilities, had somehow occurred to her at one point or another in the months since the coronation. And that was the thing about her experience in the pit that left her most unmanned. Everything she'd been shown had been dredged up from within her, and simply magnified.
What did that tell her about herself?
Two days after she'd woken up her cell, the door slid open, and an Acolyte walked in, holding a pair of shackles. Anna, still recovering from her experience in the pit, from what it had forced her to see about herself, didn't resist as the Acolyte slapped them on her wrists. He, and it was rather clearly a he, was admittedly gentle about it, though. He held up another sack and gave an apologetic twist of his head, before he reached up to slide it over Anna's head as she gave him an sad, understanding smile.
The bag came off, and Anna was gazing at probably the strangest place she'd ever seen besides Elsa's ice palace. Jars containing whirling clouds and bolts of colored energy lined shelves that lined the walls all the way up to the ceiling. Other jars contained icky-looking fluids, and even more off-putting specimens and objects sunk in the fluids.
Sitting in one corner was a device with a ball of lightning at its center, brass bands holding circular crystals whirling around the crackling, warping sphere at blinding speeds. There were at least half a dozen other devices as outlandish and utterly magical. One in particular, a large green crystal held in place by several black iron pylons, with a large metal needle pointing a metal chair with leather straps, caught her eye. She shuddered and looked away.
On an incredibly cluttered desk, there was a obsidian cage containing a bird with red and gold plumage. A sphere of energy was shooting up around the cage from a small device beneath it, and the bird seemed to grow older as Anna watched, feathers falling to floor and face growing wrinkled before it exploded into flames and burned into a pile of ash.
Anna covered her mouth at the sight, before a tiny baby bird's head poked out of the ash pile. Within almost a minute, a far older bird was hopping out of the ashes, shaking them off his slowly growing red and gold plumage.
"Archimedes!" A voice cried out from behind her.
Anna twisted her neck to see a man who looked as outlandish and eccentric as the room around her came running in through another door. He was clad in a dirty white smock, with muddy brown gloves and greasy, brown but graying hair running every which way out into the air, as though the man rarely bothered to comb or wash it. The bottom half of his face was covered in a scruffy, uneven stubble. A set of copper goggles containing hundreds of various filters hung on his brow, and incredibly dirty glasses ran over expressive purple eyes.
The man ran to the desk and fiddled with the device beneath the bird cage, the sphere of energy glowing briefly, the bird inside the cage aging a few more years in as many seconds before the man twisted a knob and the device sucked the sphere back into itself.
"Galmorn, you remember-" The Acolyte holding Anna said.
"Corbas, I really must now insist that no-one else have keys to my lab!" The man said, opening the door of the cage and petting the bird, that Anna now suspect was a phoenix. "I am becoming utterly convinced that some of the new recruits are sneaking into my lab after hours and tampering with my devices! In fact, probably better if no duplicate keys exist!" The man was screeching now, his voice climbing to an incredulous, and somewhat hilarious, pitch.
"Galmorn-" The Acolyte tried again.
"I don't mind them destroying things like dragon eyes, or dumping my collection of preserved werewolf fetuses onto the floor, nor, I'm fairly certain, drinking the bottled starlight, but I draw the line at toying with Archimedes! Kiln knows how many times the poor girl has died and rebirthed herself already!"
"Galmorn!" Corbas yelled, breaking the man's concentration and ranting. "You were instructed to prepare for an Awakening today. Have you?"
"Yes, yes, yes. I have." Galmorn said, his tone indicating that he would like nothing more than to be done with it so he could get back to more important things.
Galmorn stroked the underside of Archimedes' neck, then shut the cage and turned to Corbas, looking blankly. "Well… where are they?" Galmorn asked.
"Where is who?" Corbas replied, confused.
"The subject!" Galmorn replied exasperatedly. "Where is the subject?!"
Corbas jerked Anna's shoulder, and a look of comprehension dawned on Galmorn, who seemed to suddenly pop into existence right in front of Anna's face, a look of intense interest on his face. He dropped the goggles over his glasses, and twisted several knobs, a one eyepiece extending in and out rapidly. He then rapidly clicked a switch, and dozens of colored lens dropped in front of the eyepiece, one after the other.
Anna just barely managed to stifle a giggle. She couldn't help herself. The man was so silly, so energetic. She felt that, if they'd met anywhere else, she'd have liked him. She realized that perhaps, she still did, despite the surroundings.
"Oh, yes." Galmorn said to himself, with relish. "Oh, I see that I was right. My hypothesis was-"
"I seem to recall Fabius was incredibly dubious, Galmorn. We've risked quite a lot on your hunch."
Galmorn scoffed. "Well, of course Fabius would be dismissive of anything I put forth. He's always had it out for me, the petty, fanatical, psychotic little…" Galmorn walked up to the green crystal held between the iron pylons and fiddled with a device just beneath the crystal, mumbling angrily under his breath. "Strap her in." Galmorn eventually said, before going back to his mumbling.
Anna was strapped into the iron chair by Corbas, who took a moment to check that the straps were totally secure before he quickly walked to the door and went through it. Anna was fairly certain she heard him bolt it shut on the other side.
"Don't mind him." Galmorn said cheerfully, suddenly popping up in front of her again. "Just the usual precautions. Forcibly activating potential magical energies can be an exciting process. And occasionally cause some insubstantial property damage." He gave Anna few good natured pats on her cheek. "Y'know, I'm a little surprised at you. Way I heard it, you had a good deal of fire in you, what with that mess at the port." He looked down at the floor quizzically, before looking back up, his expression joyful. "Hey, maybe by the end of this, that fire will be a bit more literal, yeah?" Anna couldn't help but smile at the man's exuberance and charm, even if this smile was an incredibly nervous one.
Galmorn went back to check the device beneath the crystal, he tinkered for a few seconds before he sighed and stood back up from it. His face was now tight and drawn, a profound sadness on it.
"In all seriousness, I'm sorry." He said. "I've seen far too many sent to me right from the pit, and I can tell them apart from the ones who are just sent to me." He sighed angrily. "I wish every time they'll see sense one day and get rid of that stupid practice. And I wish every day that Fabius and I had never cracked the compound for that damn pellet." He looked so angry, so defeat and disgusted with himself that Anna desperately wanted to reach out and hug him, maybe say something.
But she couldn't reach out, and she had no idea what to say. So she simply gave him a sorry, forgiving look that he clearly appreciated.
"Anyway!" He yelled, his exuberance coming back. "To the matter at hand." He grabbed a syringe full of green liquid off a copper tray and ran back to Anna, sliding into her arm with an apologetic smile and pushing the liquid through the needle. Anna let out a breath as she felt a strange, but not unpleasant pins-and-needles feeling spread through her.
"That wasn't so bad." She said.
"That was the prep elixir."
Anna's face fell.
Galmorn ran back to the device beneath the crystal. He fiddled with it a bit more, then looked back up at Anna.
"Now," He said carefully. "Everyone reacts a little differently, but they've all agreed that the process is a tad unpleasant. The degree apparently varies, but if, by some chance, it's ever-so-slightly horribly excruciating, could you do me a favor and try to keep the screaming to a minimum?" Galmorn jerked a thumb back at his phoenix's cage, the bird itself now flying lazily around the room up in the rafters. "Archimedes can't stand screaming, and I can't stand to see her upset." He took Anna's wide-eyed stare as confirmation. "Great! Now, let's get it started!"
He gave the device beneath the crystal a kick. A beam of energy shot up into the crystal, which began to glow and radiate tiny streams of green lightning. The needle connected to the crystal began to glow, as though it was being held in the middle of a roaring flame.
A beam of energy shot out of the needle and struck Anna in the chest. She gasped at the force before she blacked out.
Anna woke up on a small cot, still in the lab, Galmorn's eager face looming over her.
"You were great, case you were wondering. Not a peep out of your. Have you been hit with magic energy before?" His face mellowed at Anna's expression. "Sore topic, I got it. Won't bring it up again." He shifted back into his giddiness. "But, come on, get up. We've got to see what you can do!"
Galmorn practically dragged her to her feet. She could see Corbas standing off in a corner, looking fairly grim. Or as grim as she could tell, since she couldn't see his face beneath his mask. She briefly reflected on the fact that she didn't feel any different. Maybe a bit like half her body was asleep, but not what she would have expected if she'd suddenly gained magical powers.
"Come on, then! Try something!" Galmorn cried.
Anna held her hands out in front of her, and concentrated, trying to reach within her and make something happen.
But nothing happened. Absolutely nothing. No glow, no little burst of light, not even a little spark of magic.
"If I might offer a bit of advice;" Galmorn said, laying a hand on her shoulder. "Don't try and force it, and don't try and hold it back. Just let it come, and let it go."
Anna nodded and simply held out a hand, waiting to feel something, for whatever was supposed to happen, happen, embracing what she felt had to happen. She shut her eyes, and tried to let whatever she assumed she ought to feel or do happen.
But nothing came. Nothing happened.
"I… I can't." Anna finally said. Galmorn's expression became utterly crestfallen, and Corbas shifted uneasily on his feet.
"But… that's not possible. Your Potential, the ritual, everything was done exactly as it should have, you were…" Galmorn was at a loss for words.
Corbas started forward, reaching for the sword belted at his waist.
"What. Do you. Think. You're. Doing?" Galmorn hissed furiously as he suddenly popped in front of Corbas' face.
"You know how this works, Galmorn. If they fail to display any aptitude after the Awakening…" He gave Anna what appeared to be a sad look, but she couldn't ignore what he was saying, or the sword he was holding.
"I'm not about to let you-" Corbas shoved Galmorn back against his desk.
Anna's hand moved of its own accord, as though she didn't have to think about what she was doing. She wasn't even thinking, she realized. A ball of green energy shot out of her palm and struck the floor between Corbas' feet. For a second, nothing happened.
A mass of green vines exploded out of the bricks of the floor, shooting high into the air at a frightening speed, wrapping around Corbas and slamming him into the ceiling.
Galmorn pulled himself off his desk and gazed in wonderment at the vines now creeping across the floor and ceiling, flowers beginning to bud and bloom across their length.
"Oh, now that is absolutely… fantastic."
Well, so much for the 1,800 word limit. Although this does technically count as one of those times I had a good thing going and just wanted to keep everything in one chapter. And I wasn't going to hold the magic reveal for another update. That would just be cruel. I save cliffhangers for when they really serve the flow of story. A cliffhanger concerning Anna's powers would not serve the flow.
Bit of a developmental insight: Galmorn as I originally conceived him was as far from Galmorn now as is possible to be. He was disfigured, he was sadistic, he was an evil dark alchemist, and he wouldn't have been voiced by David Tenant (he'd have been voiced by Mark Hamill doing a less mirthy Joker). But I felt that, especially after that last chapter, the story needed something a little light and silly. So Galmorn became an eccentric, kooky good-natured mad-scientist/magician who really only works for the bad guys because they'll let him do all the crazy experiments he wants so long as he also occasionally does what they want him to.
Also, surprise surprise! Anna doesn't have fire powers. She has nature powers instead. I'm personally far less in favor of Anna having fire magic. I get that it's the polar counterpoint to ice magic, but fire never really struck me as being… Anna. But maybe that's just me.
On another topic/shout-out, if you want to read an absolute fantastic "Anna has nature magic" fic, go read "Idun" by A. Kingsleigh. It's near (or at) the very back of the Frozen section and is completely worth your time.