Chapter 14 – Magic versus Magic

Ah, the endless nightmare of the school holidays is over and things go back to being relatively normal for me . . . Except for the endless commission work. Don't do freelance, kids, its hard work. Get a real job.

"Anna," Elsa said softly, startling her sister out of her daydream.

Anna had been sitting on one of the baloneys for the last few hours, gazing out across Arendelle, in the direction Kristoff should be returning home from.

The city below was bathed in an unreal glow, the moonlight refracted strangely through the icy sheet covering the kingdom, and the rain still drumming above it made marbled patterns on anything the moonlight touched.

"It's getting late. Come to bed."

Anna sighed, her chin resting on one hand. "He's taking too long."

"The path is flooded," Elsa said softly. "Sven can't run fast on it. We know he's going to take longer than normal."

"This wasn't how this night was supposed to be," Anna said, keeping her head turned away from Elsa. She rubbed at her eyes with her free hand.

"I know."

"I'm supposed to be married. It's supposed to be a beautiful night with the sky awake. Now everything is underwater and there's a sheet of ice over my head."

Elsa couldn't help but look up. She had thickened the ice just after she had eaten – at Kai's insistence, and with him watching her, because he knew Elsa didn't eat when she was busy or stressed – and was confident that it would hold through the night. "Come on. Let's go to bed."

"If he's not here by morning, will you send someone after him?"

"If he's not here by morning," Elsa said softly, "I'll send Ace after him. You know we can trust him."

"Doesn't he have work to do?" Anna heaved herself to her feet.

"Yes. He's out right now. But I told him to come here first thing, if he could."

Anna was half asleep; it had been an exhausting and disappointing day. She was leaning on Elsa as they went back to Anna's room. They fell into a fatigued heap together, and for once Anna kept still throughout the night.

Elsa woke up when Anna pushed her out of the bed and she landed on the floor in a surprised puff of snowflakes. "Wh . . .?"

Anna was still asleep, dangerously close to falling off the bed onto her sister.

Elsa stood up and gently rolled Anna into the middle of the bed. It was hard to tell what time it was, with the rain clouds blocking the sun and the icy canopy distorting the light. Elsa got dressed quickly and went downstairs.

It was very quiet, but Ace was in the kitchens, having breakfast alone.

Elsa slid into a seat opposite him. "Morning."

"Good morning, Queen Elsa," he said brightly. "You're up early."

"Am I?"

"It's five in the morning."

"Then why are you here?"

"You said to come first thing. I was up anyway, resuscitating a goat that got caught in the flood."

"Did you sleep at all?"

"Of course. For about four hours. What do you need me to do today?"

"If Kristoff isn't home, I need you to go after him."

"He's not home." Ace sounded definitive.

"How do you know?"

"Because Sven isn't here. I was in the stables this morning. No reindeer."

Elsa felt a knot forming in her stomach. "He's not home?"

Ace shook his head. "Definitely not. When do you want me to go after him?"

"Right now. Before Anna wakes up." Elsa twisted her hands together nervously. "Do you need a horse?"

Ace grinned, "I brought my own. Figured if I was going to be spending much more time here, I better bring my pride and joy with me."

"So you can go now? Right now?"

"Right after breakfast," Ace promised. "And I'll find him, don't worry."

That was a waste of breath, because Elsa was already worrying. She sat with Ace for a few minutes longer, then couldn't stand being still anymore and got up, wandering off.

Ace's horse was a big, black stallion with four white stockings and a white blaze. The ice canopy over Arendelle did not extend into the forest, and Ace had to squint through the unrelenting rain to see the path Elsa had told him to follow.

He couldn't gallop, the ground was too slippery to risk it, but he was going as fast as he could without jeopardising his horse. Ace was slightly surprised to find himself suddenly in a small patch of ground with no rain falling on it.

It was a very distinct circle of dry ground, dotted with a few trees and rocks, and-

"Kristoff," Ace dismounted his horse, rushing forwards.

Kristoff was lying on his side, perfectly still, with Sven snuggled up against him, the reindeer's head curved protectively over him.

"What happened?" Ace dropped to his knees.

Kristoff groaned slightly. "Who's there?"

"It's me, Ace. Queen Elsa sent me to find you when you didn't come home. Have you been here all night?" Ace's keen eyes were assessing and analysing. "You're not breathing well. Can you tell me what happened?"

Sven made a mournful sound, still keeping his body wrapped around Kristoff.

"Not your fault, buddy," Kristoff said softly. He winced, and managed to roll onto his back. "That stupid magic thing was here. Ow!"

Ace was running his hands down Kristoff's limbs, checking for broken bones. "Nothing broken yet. Woops, here's the problem."

"OW!"

"You've broken several ribs."

"I know that. Stop touching them." Kristoff coughed, and then groaned because that was very, very painful.

"And possibly punctured a lung. I suppose that's why you couldn't get home again. I imagine you're quite bruised, but I'll need to do a proper examination to-"

"I'm fine," Kristoff moaned breathlessly.

"Really? Your body is telling me otherwise." Ace's hands were gentle, checking Kristoff's hands for broken fingers. "What did Kagami do?"

"You know he can control bodies?"

"Yes."

Sven groaned again, sounding pitiful.

"He took control of Sven. Made him attack me."

Ace didn't know reindeer could whimper, but Sven did, burying his nose in Kristoff's chest.

"That would account for the broken ribs. And the bruising. And these shallow scrapes." Ace's fingers touched lightly at the bloody marks on Kristoff's clothes. "Now, I'm wondering how we should get you home."

"Help me up and I'll walk."

"Ha ha, nice to see your sense of humour isn't damaged. As amusing as that is, it's not going to happen. You can get up onto Zephyr here, and he'll carry you home."

Ace's horse snorted proudly.

"Um, no thanks." Kristoff squirmed slightly. "I don't like horses."

"He's smoother than Sven, and he's been trained for this sort of thing," Ace explained patiently. "Also, Princess Anna is worried about you and wants you home as soon as possible. Zephyr will get you home faster."

"But Sven . . ."

"I will walk with him," Ace said. "He'll be fine. He'll be right at your side the whole way. Zephyr?"

The big black horse came forwards, ears twitching at Sven. The reindeer stayed exactly where he was, stubbornly blocking Kristoff from any (more) harm.

"Sven," Ace said gently, rubbing one of the reindeer's ears. "We need to get him home. I know you're upset and you think this is your fault, but it isn't. You've done well keeping him safe through the night, but now he needs more than just your warmth and love."

Sven's eyes were pleading and moist.

"You have done nothing wrong. Kristoff will be fine." Ace looked directly into Sven's eyes. "Trust me, please. I helped you before, and I will do the same for Kristoff."

Sven heaved himself to his feet, keeping his nose just gently touching Kristoff.

"Thank you." Ace smiled at him. "Right, Kristoff. Can you get up?"

"Yeah, I told you, I'm fine." Kristoff struggled to sit up.

"I see that," Ace said agreeably, and Kristoff would have made a face at his patronizing tone but he couldn't quite summon the ability. "Breathe slowly. I'm not sure you haven't punctured a lung yet."

It was difficult and painful for Kristoff to get up and clamber onto Zephyr, who lay down obediently. The horse stood up very slowly, without jolting Kristoff at all, and started the long, rather wet walk home.

Sven stayed close, his side brushing against Kristoff's leg as he walked.

Anna shot out of the castle at a speed that shouldn't be possible when she saw Ace and Kristoff approaching, and was already shouting before she was out of the door. "What happened? Is he alright? Do we need help?"

Ace held up both hands to ward her off. "Settle down. He'll be fine."

Kristoff nodded. "Yep. I'm fine."

"He will need a doctor, though," Ace continued, and Anna nodded.

"No, I don't," Kristoff said, trying to sit up straighter, but finding it to be almost impossible with his ribs aching and very bruised. "I don't need a doctor, really."

"Why do all the blonde people in your family have an irrational hated towards medical intervention?" Ace asked.

Anna shrugged. "No idea."

They didn't dwell on it; it seemed more important to get Kristoff inside and comfortable than to discuss his and Elsa's aversion to doctors ("Maybe if the doctor was a rock or a snowman . . .?"), and Ace left soon afterwards to chat to Sven.

"He's a bit down," he explained, leaving Anna and Kristoff arguing over doctors, "I'll just make sure he's coping."

"You need a doctor," Anna insisted, completely ignoring Ace's good bye.

"No, I don't," Kristoff said firmly. "I just need some ice."

"Doctor!"

"Ice!"

"Doctor!"

"Ice!"

"Fine!" Anna shouted. "I'll get the damn Queen of Ice!" She stormed out of the room, incensed that Kristoff didn't want to be nursed and coddled. If she had taken more than a second to consider that it would have made perfect sense; Kristoff wasn't exactly a 'lie down and be coddled' kind of guy. But Anna had spent a sleepless night thinking something had happened to him, and now that she discovered something had happened she wanted to stay at his side and watch him like a hawk.

"Elsa!" Anna trumpeted, tripping up the stairs. "Kristoff is home, but he's hurt!" Anna went to Elsa's study first. "Oh, there you are- what are you doing?"

Elsa hadn't looked up; she was staring intently at a book, one hand following the text, the other hand holding up a little swirl of snow and ice shards.

"Elsa?" Anna came into the room carefully.

"Don't move," Elsa said, quietly but firmly. She finally looked at the snow suspended above her hand, eyes narrowing in concentration. The snow started to shake, then separated into even smaller flakes, an abundance of tiny white floating in a sphere shape.

Anna stretched forwards, on her toes, trying to see what was happening without taking a step forwards.

The white snow changed again, this time turning into a powdery blue whirlwind that sparkled and twisted. Elsa glanced at Anna, just briefly, then turned her concentration back to the blue floating in her palm.

"What's that?" Anna asked.

"Come and see," the tension in Elsa's voice was giving way to wonder. "This is magic . . . I changed my ice into pure magic."

Anna tiptoed closer, "And this helps us, how?"

"Kagami can be destroyed by magic," Elsa's eyes never moved. "But whenever I used mine, he can just phase into his, um, smoky form and be unaffected by it. But this," the blue powder swirled in time with Elsa's words, "Should still affect him, in every form."

"Wow," Anna said softly. "So that's how you're going to defeat him."

"If I can get the hang of it," Elsa's concentrated frown slid back into place. "It's a bit tricky to do, and I'm not sure how long I can-"

The blue powder reformed into snow, and exploded into a large flurry that hit both Elsa and Anna in the face.

"I see," Anna wiped snow from her eyes. "Can you take a break from magic making and see Kristoff?"

"What happened?" Elsa immediately rose to her feet. "Is he alright?"

"Not really. Ace says he needs a doctor, but you know Kristoff." She paused, then added quietly. "Kagami attacked him."

"What?" Elsa ushered Anna out of the study. "Why? Where? How?"

Anna shrugged. "I have no idea."

Elsa overtook Anna on the way back to Kristoff, who was squirming around trying to get comfortable and failing utterly. He blinked in surprised when they both came into his room. "I'm fine, by the way."

"Anna said Kagami attacked you," Elsa said, sounding shocked.

"Yeah." Kristoff rubbed a hand through his hair. "He did."

Elsa's jaw tightened. "Excuse me for a minute, there's something I need to do."

Anna jumped out of her way as Elsa left the room, looking thunderous. She peered cautiously after her sister. "Um . . ."

"Follow her?" Kristoff suggested.

"Maybe in a minute." Anna turned back to her fiancé, looking worried. "Are you sure you're alright?"

"Yeah. There's nothing you can do for broken ribs, you just sort of leave them and wait for them to heal." Kristoff cleared his throat, suddenly looking even more uncomfortable. "Look, I had a lot of time to think, last night, lying on the ground."

Anna's expression was guarded.

"You shouldn't have doubts, when you're getting married," he said, and Anna assumed he meant 'you' plural. "Not even little ones. And if you do, well . . . well, that's something to think about."

Kristoff was mentally berating himself because he clearly sucked at this sort of thing. Anna was looking hurt and confused, and he tried to make his meaning clearer.

"Anna, if it's not right . . . not completely right . . . then maybe we should wait a bit. Things moved quite fast between us, and I don't want you to feel like you have to do something when you don't. I'll always love you, no matter what we decide."

"What are you saying?" Anna asked, feeling completely at sea with the conversation. "You don't . . . want to get married?"

Kristoff didn't know why she sounded so shocked; she had been the one to originally bring it up. "Of course I do, but everything is going crazy right now . . . I mean, if we're meant to be together, why is there always something in the way, you know?"

"I don't . . ." Anna wondered if she was panicking because this didn't sound right. Was Kristoff suggesting they don't get married, because he had doubts? He felt that it wasn't right?

"Waiting 'til spring wouldn't be so bad," he continued softly, staring at his lap because looking at Anna was too painful. "If that's . . . what you want."

Anna was shaking her head, but she didn't know why. How could Kristoff even say this? Had she been wrong about him? It wasn't a secret that love was an area she didn't know much about. She needed to think, because this was all too much to handle.

"I've got to go," she stammered, backing away from him, and he looked upset by that comment. Then her brain latched onto another thought: what if that wasn't Kristoff? What if that was Kagami, trying to put ideas into her head and ruin everything, again? And if it was him . . . where was the real Kristoff?

The door to Elsa's room slammed shut, the handle coated in frost, and she stormed into the very centre of the room, feeling anger bubbling under all the ice in her veins. "Kagami!"

He slipped into her mind, not even slightly visible, and his presence was dark and heavy. "Yes, Elsa?"

"What the hell did you do to Kristoff?"

"I didn't do a thing. I think you'll find his little reindeer attacked him."

"Do not play with me," Elsa hissed. "I know it was you."

"In a manner of speaking." The magic finally formed, a wispy purple cloud floating in front of her. "I like the roof you've made. It's very secure."

"Kristoff wasn't a threat to you at all and you just-"

"Wrong." Kagami sounded so disinterested that Elsa nearly missed it.

She hesitated. "What?"

"I know about those trolls. They have magic too. And remember, it's so much easier to take when people agree on it. So I suggested to Kristoff that he hand his family over to me."

"You . . . suggested . . ." Elsa didn't even know how to process that.

"But he was not very receptive to the idea. In fact, he was quite annoyed with me."

Elsa huffed. "Why don't you leave everyone else alone? This is between you and me."

"No, it's not. This is between me and the magic in Arendelle. Which is mostly you, but not all. People need to panic, because panic reveals more magic. You should know, that's how you first outed yourself."

"Flooding Arendelle won't get you more magic. It will only make me angrier."

"I know. And then you'll freeze everything and everyone will suddenly think, maybe it's not such a good idea to be ruled by an ice tyrant. And when everyone wants you gone, I'll come and help them."

Elsa pondered that for a moment, suddenly realising that every move Kagami had made so far was to turn people against her; even Anna had doubted her sanity (pot kettle black, Anna). There were two frozen people that she had no idea how to help. There had been snow over Arendelle. There had been the inexplicable cancellation of a wedding.

The last few days had proven that Elsa was a monster, and could not be trusted. "You . . . you want them all to hate me."

"And it's so easy," Kagami purred. "Even your own sister hated you."

Elsa's face was stony. "You said that you would never lie to me?"

"That's correct. You and I are the same. You don't lie to the people who are like you."

It was supposed to hurt, and it did, because Elsa had lied to Anna so much. "Tell me how to kill you."

"Is that all?" Kagami's purple and black cloud paused. "My body can be destroyed by magic, in its solid form."

"Yes, but how?"

"I am a mirror," Kagami said cryptically. "To destroy a mirror, you need to get rid of the thing it is reflecting."

Elsa was considering that very unhelpful piece of advice when Anna came flying through her door, without knocking, and nearly crashed into her.

"Elsa! I need to talk to you, and it's urgent and – what are you doing?"

Before Elsa could do anything, react in any way, Kagami had formed beside Anna, his long body curving around her and blocking her from Elsa. Anna screeched, taken by surprise.

"Don't do anything to her," Elsa warned, feeling a twist of ice forming around her hand.

Kagami growled, levelling his gaze at the Queen. "If you attack me, there's no way to avoid hurting her."

Anna was staring, largely in awe, at the creature surrounding her; he was a different size every time she saw him. Now his shoulders were the same height as her elbows, the long hair down his spine rising to obscure her vision, and his whole body moved like a wave, up and down in a gentle rhythm.

The ice in Elsa's hand was changing, turning from white powder into sparkling blue light, shining against her skin.

"Be careful," Kagami said, watching her. "Magic can be very unpredictable."

He had barely finished speaking when Elsa suddenly felt the magic sitting in her palm bolt away from her, towards Kagami. The second the magic touched him, the rain outside stopped.

It was immensely satisfying to hear him suddenly shriek in pain, twisting in spirals, the size and shape of his body contorting and morphing into a thousand different forms in mere seconds.

He shot across the room, towards Elsa, and she instantly, involuntarily, surrounded herself with sharply pointed icicles. Kagami smashed through them –why didn't he just change forms? – and Elsa could see the ice cutting into his flesh. But he seemed to be in a frenzied pain, and he twisted through her ice, suddenly slamming his entire body into her.

Elsa was thrown onto the floor; she was aware of a sudden warmth pooling on her arm then her vision went blank and she felt an unbelievable pain in her skull.

Kagami was writhing around her mind, she could feel his pain and panic, the same resounding thought for once going from him into her. Pain, pain, pain, throbbing around her head, twisting into coils of deadly pressure and Elsa was going to go mad if she had to feel that for one single second longer-

Then Kagami flashed away, and Elsa was aware of her ragged breathing, harsh gasps for air, lying on her back on the floor and oh god, was that icicle right through her arm?

"Elsa!" Anna was kneeling next to her, her warm hands flitting from Elsa's face to her arm and back. "Elsa, can you hear me?"

It took Elsa a good minute to realise that the ice stuck through her arm, while painful, did not seem to be bleeding. She was staring, fascinated, because one of the broken tips of an icicle had pierced her upper arm, she could see the slight bulge in the flesh were the ice had penetrated.

"Don't move," Anna said, "It's okay, it's fine, it'll be alright."

Elsa closed her eyes again, turning her head to the side so that her cheek was against Anna's knee, because Anna was warm and all Elsa could feel was the throbbing in her arm and the pounding in her head.

"I'm here," Anna said, uncertainly, unsure of whether or not Elsa could even hear her. "Elsa?"

"I . . ." It was hard to speak, her throat felt raw. Had she been screaming? She knew Kagami had . . . she focused, on Anna, and the warmth from her sister, and to her relief the ice around her started melting away.

It stung her arm, she could actually feel the ice changing shape and starting to disappear. When she was brave enough to open her eyes, her arm was unharmed. No mark, no blood. And then she couldn't see anything because Anna had enveloped her in a hug.

"Are you okay?"

"I . . . think so," Elsa was unsure. She shifted carefully, seeing if everything was in working order. She managed to sit up, testing her weight on her arm. There was a trail of blood across the floor, showing Kagami's path towards Elsa, and the front of her dress was splattered as well.

"You were screaming," Anna said. "Did he hurt you?"

"No," Elsa pressed a hand against her forehead. "I hurt him."

"Good," Anna breathed. "Where is he now?"

"I don't know." The room spun, Elsa clutched Anna for support. Everything was hazy, drifting in and out of focus.

"What was he doing here?" Anna asked.

"Trying to . . . trying to get everyone in Arendelle against me."

"But why attack Kristoff?" This was bothering Anna.

"Because he wouldn't hand over his family." Elsa, with a little bit of help, got to her feet. "That's all. I think."

"It's not raining," Anna finally noticed, staring outside. "It's stopped."

Elsa sagged in relief, nearly dragging Anna back onto the floor.

Oh, and I think I've figured out the ending to this story, but if you leave a review feel free to leave a suggestion for the ending (or PM me, whatever) because it's not set in stone.

SpicedGold