This chapter is more like several scenes from different time periods explaining why the trolls were evil. The first scene is a young Kristoff's capture, second is a young Elsa, third is right before the parents' deaths, fourth is Hans's mind controlled state. This chapter has 2K words, one of the longest chapters I've ever written. I really hope you enjoy my view of the trolls!
A young boy was perched atop a small sled pulled by his baby reindeer, devouring a bunch of dusty carrots. The boy's rosy face was red with cold, his clothes were splashed with ice, he was shivering, yet he had a big grin on his face. He had finally hauled enough ice for Maul, the head ice harvester, in exchange for the bunch of carrots in Maul's wagon.
"These dusty things?" Maul had said in disgust as he held up the withered orange carrots. "All right, fifteen blocks."
"Deal!" Kristoff had cried. He couldn't remember the last time he'd had anything besides packed salt herring, potatoes, and skinny game they sometimes caught. He had worked the whole day to procure fifteen blocks of ice large and square enough to count, and with a grunt Maul nodded and tossed him the vegetables. It was early spring, and the harvesters were frantically traveling from lakes to lakes chopping as much ice as they could to store in underground storages before spring's warmth melted it. Kristoff had tagged along with them after running away from home a few years before.
He was about to take another bite when a horse swiftly galloped by, spraying Kristoff with sludge. Kristoff yelped, but his eyes grew wide.
"Ice? he cried. Sure enough, a trail of ice was forming behind one of the horses.
"Go, Sven, go!" Kristoff yelled. Sven made a sharp turn and they raced down the trail of ice to follow the horses.
He followed the horses at a close range but not too close lest he be caught. The horses galloped on for several more minutes into the deep woods and finally stopped at a large clearing dotted with perfectly round stones about the size of big watermelons the harvesters sometimes cracked open on hot summer days. He watched, wide eyed as a man, a woman holding a bundle in her arms, and a shivering girl with silvery blonde hair contrasting to her parents' brunette heads dismounted from the horses and approached the stones, which burst forth into moving bodies. Kristoff gasped. The rocks looked exactly like the trolls in folktales the harvesters had told him about that did bad things to humans but pretended they were good. He hadn't believed the really existed until now.
The man spoke to a withered looking troll with glowing necklaces, who consolingly patted his arm. Then the shivering girl clutched her hands tightly together and came forward and he spoke to her, before laying a hand on the bundle the woman held. Kristoff suddenly frowned. Those people were the royal's of Arendelle! What were they doing out in the woods in the middle of the night? He squinted at the bundle the queen held. Was that Princess Anna? Questions swam in his head.
After a while the family left, and a few minutes later Kristoff emerged. Maybe the trolls had answers for the mysterious trail of ice he had seen.
"Uh, 'scuse me Mr. Troll?" Kristoff called, walking towards the old troll, warnings about the dangers of these magic creatures forgotten. "Who were those people?"
He was surrounded immediately. He noticed that up close the trolls were in various sizes; some small and smooth- children, and others big and wrinkled- adults.
"Why, so young!" A voice called.
"So strong looking!"
"Nice blonde hair."
"Where are you from, boy?" An older looking troll asked.
"I travel a lot-" Kristoff suddenly remembered the evil stories of the trolls and he tried to back away. He turned around to see Sven looking alarmed at the edge of the clearing. "Wait! You guys are evil."
"Evil?" They chorused.
"Yeah! You drug people, curse towns," he tapped his chin to remember. "Steal children-"
"Who told you those lies?!" A troll cried indignantly.
"T-the ice harvesters?" Kristoff said in a small voice. He tried to step back again, but the trolls were too tightly pressed against his legs.
Yet he did not get a step farther before he felt a sharp pain on the back of his head. He slumped forward onto the grass, and the last thing he recalled was Sven galloping towards him, neighing- and the hard earned carrots lying forgotten on the trail of ice.
"We could use him." A voice suggested.
A little blonde girl sat by her window, legs crossed and her head propped up on her hands, staring outside the window at the sky streaked with multicolored auroras. On a table next to her sat a half eaten piece of chocolate cake stuck with an extinguished candle and a few unwrapped presents. She was dozing off to sleep, watching the slow moving bands of color drift across the night sky. Her sleepy eyes lit up as a blue arch bent and formed a figure of a girl who sprang up and held out her arms, snowflakes tumbling from her hands.
"She's just like me!" Elsa murmured happily, but her smile was immediately crushed when two bands of red and purple amalgamated to form a large red shape- a monster, that sprang up beside the girl and in one movement devoured her into darkness. A wave of icy cold passed through Elsa at the sight and she gasped, scrambling off the windowsill in fear. The auroras were no longer enchanting and beautiful to her anymore.
It will only grow more powerful, a voice boomed in her head.
Elsa shuddered and to her bed, pulling the covers over her head. Little did she know on every birthday she would see that same vision on every birthday as Pabbie renewed her ice curse every year.
"She's doing too well." Bulda said as she frowned into the portal. A magical formation of stones and woven magic well hidden in a grove of ferns served as a portal to the outside world, particularly to the face of the Queen to be, Elsa. Although the sound was wavering the images the portal blazoned were enough to be understandable. The lady troll frowned into the flitting image the portal cast, in which a blonde teenage girl wearing an expensive looking day dress was happily talking and laughing with a couple of other well dressed girls that looked like her friends. They appeared to be sitting at a lovely garden outside sipping tea except for Elsa, who's hands were tightly clasped in leather gloves on her lap, but her face was relaxed and smiling.
"Just look at her. She's maintaining control of her powers now. The curse is no longer taking effect!" Bulda sighed. She turned to Pabbie, who had just parted the ferns big enough for his dumpy body so he could enter. The old troll frowned at the image and shook his head.
"At her next birthday I will strengthen the curse once again." He decided, reaching for a weathered looking book on a shelf that contained the ice curse. But Bulda shook her head.
"Elsa is eighteen now. The curse has been strengthened to it's maximum potential. There is no point in making it stronger! Look at how easily she is around people now. Even at the curse's maximum, she has it almost all under control." She pointed to Elsa, who was giggling to some joke her friend had told. She swiped the screen with a gnarly hand, and several images of a confident looking Elsa doing everyday royal things with ease flashed before them.
"May the gods curse her father for training her so well!" Pabbie groaned. "Our plans are thwarted."
The two trolls stood in silence for a few minutes looking at the portal when Bulda quietly cackled.
"What if we took the parents on a little trip," she suggested gleefully, "that they'd never return from? That would surely give a blow to Elsa's mentality. Imagine that! The loss of her parents would result to her ascension to the throne once she reaches her twenty first birthday- but with the shock of her lost parents hopefully her upper hand on her powers will be knocked over." She waved her hand over the wall, and a tumultuous image of a grand ship succumbing to a storm at sea flashed before their eyes.
"And fear not, in the time between their deaths and her coronation, little Arendelle will be open and vulnerable to attack from other countries only protected by a couple of weak mercenaries! Elsa will be frazzled. She is almost completely dependent on her parents still for control on her powers."
Pabbie grinned. "Good idea." He said. He lumbered over to the bookshelf once more and pulled off a dustier than usual volume on the top shelf that clearly had not been used in a long time. Opening it, he scanned down a page before stabbing his finger on a paragraph. "Aha! This one has not been used in three hundred years. The spell of Storm. 'Cast on opponent while he is at sea. A great storm will arise and confuse the enemy, leading to their demise,'" he translated from the ancient troll runes. "I don't remember the exact translation, but I can ask around the elders. I haven't used this one in so long..." He grinned once more.
It was a cold wintry day, but a very unnatural one. People- royals and simple villagers of Arendelle huddled in silence in the Great Hall, where frost crept up the windowpanes and across the floor. Ominous spikes of ice poked down from the ceiling getting larger as the temperature continued to abnormally drop. This was no ordinary winter day. Queen Elsa had frozen over the whole kingdom and run off to the mountains on her coronation day and Princess Anna had gone to go after her, but ever since then the kingdom had been trapped in almost subzero temperatures and an ever growing blizzard.
In the castle library near the hall, a young redheaded man was pacing up and down, muttering to himself. A few other dignitaries sat around the roaring fireplace, trying to keep warm. Yet the cold could not be penetrated.
"Prince Hans, calm down. The princesses will find there way back." Someone said.
"Oh, but Anna!" She seemed so unfit for such a journey. I should have demanded to go with her." He said in frustration. "What if she's frozen solid this moment? We don't know what Queen Elsa is capable of!"
"Stop worrying." A duke called Weselton said, annoyed. He picked up an apple from a fruit bowl to examine it. "This is a sisterly spat that will be over with in a couple days time!"
"Sisterly spat?" Hans shouted. He wheeled around to face Weselton. "Arendelle is frozen over!" He and the others were startled back when the meeting room door suddenly burst open with a loud bang.
A few servants clutching a white faced Anna stumbled in. Hans gasped. Anna's strawberry blonde hair was streaked with thick streaks of white.
"Anna!" He cried.
She stumbled into his arms. "Hans, you have to kiss me now." She demanded. He was dimly aware of the others leaving the room to the two of them to be alone.
"What?"
"Elsa. She froze my heart. Only a true love's kiss can thaw me." Anna explained.
Hans gently led her over to the couch near the fire. He then leaned over to kiss her. Her lips were a millimeter from his when suddenly a hot flash ripped through his body. Suddenly Hans was unable to move.
Wait, what? Hans thought in his mind.
His lips moved without his brain thinking. "Oh, Anna. If only someone loved you." His mouth said.
No. No! His cried brain thought furiously. He tried to stand up and slap himself even, but he was paralyzed in that position.
What in the gods' names is going on? He shrieked internally.
Suddenly his limbs strode forward, grabbed a pitcher of water, and sloshed it into the fire. The whole time he was telling Anna things he's never say in his life, insults hurled at him from his brothers year after year.
No! What am I doing?
He suddenly spotted a shape just inside the window. A big rock? When his eyes focused, it was a troll he had heard so many myths about. His eyes widened. The troll had a book in front of him, and he was controlling Hans' every move with a stick doll in his hands. Every time he lifted the doll's arm, Hans' arm shot up and so on.
Hans was jerked to the back of the room where he slammed the curtains shut and walked out of the room, locking it and stumbling down the hallway, Anna calling pitifully after him. He reached a meeting room a few doors down where the guards and dukes had relocated.
His mouth opened again and words that were not his own tumbled from his mouth uncontrollably like vomit. "Anna- Anna is dead."
You know, I don't see why Hans is bad. He was honestly too good to be made into a villain, like who volunteers to go after your pyscho ice wielding sister who will probably kill you when he secretly wants to overtake your kingdom? Just a thought.
Next chapter: Part III, a continuation of mind controlled Hans that will end the Evil 'Love Experts'.