Thank you to everyone who is reading and reviewing! Your support is what keeps me motivated.
To my Guest reviewers: I haven't read A Frozen Heart yet, but I'd very much like to! As for Anna and Kristoff, we will be seeing very soon in the next chapter. They will be mentioned in this chapter too. Don't forget, they've been in hiding ever since escaping in Chapter 19.
Author's Note: I'm also publishing a set of "alternate ending" chapters. A while back, I PM-ed some of you to ask for opinions on a very controversial idea. Responses were mixed, so I decided to write the alternate ending separately. The link can be found in my profile: s/11595303/1/Love-Never-Fails-Alternate-Ending
Warning: violence and profanity. PLEASE give Elsa a BIG hug before reading!
Chapter 25:
Hans, Henrik and a few Southern Isles guards were crowded into the castle parlor, surrounding a very distressed-looking Kai.
"I'm not going to ask again, you old fool," Henrik's voice was harsh and menacing. "Where has the witch gone? And how did you sneak her out?"
Kai responded through gritted teeth. "I have no idea what you're talking about."
A stinging slap rang out, and Kai toppled over with a groan of pain. A large purple bruise instantly took form on his cheek. The guards sniggered as they watched.
As Kai struggled to stand, Hans punched him viciously in the side of the head, knocking him back down, "Don't play stupid with me, you fat turd. I know what you did. I have my ways of making you talk."
Hans thrust his steel-toed boot into Kai's stomach. The corpulent older man collapsed to the ground, unable to breathe. "You will tell me now! Where is the witch?"
Henrik spoke up, "Your precious Frosty was every bit as stubborn as you. From the very beginning, I promised her great rewards if she would submit to me peacefully. I gave her every chance to surrender. But she didn't. She thought she could resist me. Now look at what's happened to her. She's lost everything she ever stood for."
The guards whistled and whooped in admiration at Henrik's feat. How proud they were to serve under such a strong and mighty King. Not even the witch's phenomenal magic powers or her ironclad popularity could stand in the way of their conquering champion.
Once upon a time, the witch had been ubiquitously loved by her loyal subjects. Praised for her kind heart and wise judgment, and all she had done for the kingdom. Even hailed as the greatest individual to ever bear the crown of Arendelle. But not anymore. Armed with nothing but a scheming mind and a heart full of ruthless ambition, Henrik had felled the mighty Snow Queen. Soon he would have the world bowing before him.
By now Kai was gasping for breath, but his spirit was as robust as ever. He doubled over in a coughing fit, spraying flecks of blood all over the place. "Hell will freeze over before we abandon the proud legacy of our forefathers, and kneel to monsters such as you."
Henrik let out a haughty snort. "That's exactly what Elsa said, before I fucked her into submission!" All the guards roared with laughter.
Then the men became serious again. Hans kicked Kai across the face, getting his full attention. "For the last time, where has Elsa gone? And how did she escape?"
Kai's head was throbbing and he could barely keep his eyes open. But he would not relent. He had been close friends with the late King Adgar, and had faithfully served the royal family for over three decades. No matter what darkness befell the land, his resolve would never quaver. He would fight for Arendelle until his final breath. "I let Elsa out of the dungeons," Kai stated plainly. "And I'm damn proud of it. I have no idea where she went, and even if I did I would never tell you!"
Henrik was fed up with his noncompliance. He nodded curtly at Hans and the guards. "Round up as many volunteers as you can, and go hunt down the witch. She couldn't have gone far, in her condition. Forget about this fat fool. He's not worth our time."
Brian groaned as he finally regained consciousness and struggled to sit. As his eyes fluttered open, they were instantly inundated with an endless field of pitch black. The royal physician blinked several times, trying to make sense of his environment. Trying to remember what had gone on before.
His head ached and he felt hungry, thirsty, and terribly disoriented. Thick coils of rope were wrapped tightly around his wrists and ankles. A greasy strip of cloth from an old potato sack was tied over his mouth, forming a makeshift gag. Brian strained his memory. The last thing he remembered was sitting in his office, poring over books and encyclopedias. He had learned the truth about Formula XIV after a long and painstaking investigation, and was rushing to inform Elsa of his discovery.
Then out of nowhere came a loud crack, and a sharp pain in the back of his head. Everything that happened afterwards was a complete blank.
The scent of fresh soil hung in the air. Brian deduced that he was either in the stables or in a toolshed. He stretched the coils of rope tautly between his wrists, and rubbed them vigorously against the sharp, abrasive iron edge of what seemed to be a horseshoe. He winced as he inadvertently nicked himself on several occasions.
After what felt like an eternity, the ropes were finally loose. Both wrists were scraped raw and very noticeably bruised. But he had done it. He was free.
The doctor groped about blindly in the darkness, until his hands found a pair of gardening scissors. Brian quickly sliced through the ropes tied around his ankles.
Then he pressed his eye against a thin gap in the walls, peering intently. No one was around. Wasting no time, Brian kicked and pounded furiously against the plywood slats, trying to break down the door. After several minutes of bruised knuckles and sawdust-filled breathing, he succeeded at last. The door splintered and Brian tumbled out into the light of day.
The doctor stood up straight, cracked his knuckles and flexed his stiff cramping legs to restore circulation. If only Elsa were here to soothe his aching muscles with her beautiful, magnificent powers. If only Elsa were here to—
Elsa! How was she taking the news regarding Formula XIV? Where was she? Did the Westergards hurt her? Did she miss him?
His questions were answered before he could perseverate further upon them. The soft clip-clopping of footsteps rang out in the distance, creating a most ostentatious rhythm. Henrik was making his way across the courtyard in long, purposeful strides. "Well, will you look at what just crawled out of the sewer?"
Brian ignored him. "Where is Elsa? What have you done with her?"
The King of the Southern Isles put on his most repulsive smirk. "Frosty and I have been getting better acquainted with each other, that's all. In other words, Frosty thought she could say no to me, and I respectfully disagreed. I fucked the witch even harder than I fucked your whole kingdom thirteen years ago."
Brian ground his teeth in fury as he absorbed these words. He seized a rake from the toolshed and clutched it tightly in his fists, both hands trembling with indignation. It took every ounce of willpower to restrain himself from rushing forward and tearing that smug, malevolent face into shreds.
"You son of a bitch!" The royal physician was so enraged, he could hardly speak. A lifetime of hatred against Henrik was pounding in his veins. "How could you?"
Henrik continued to smirk. "Why do you care? You're such a pussy, you'd never get laid anyways. Silly Lard Butt. What makes you think that gorgeous, perfect Frosty would ever want a loser like you? The witch is looking for a real man to be her King. You think she'll choose someone who once got his own kingdom destroyed? Someone who couldn't take a stand for anything, if his life depended on it?"
There was a time when those words would have completely crushed Brian's spirit and sent him hiding away in shame and defeat. There was a time when the mere mention of his past, and the mere sound of Henrik's voice would have him shaking, sweating and hyperventilating. But that time was over.
"You know what? You're right." Brian's voice boomed with a strength and confidence he never knew he possessed. Even Henrik seemed taken aback. Who was this brave, gallant warrior who now stood confronting him? Where was the cowardly, pathetic Lard Butt he once knew? "I'm not good enough for Elsa, because no one is. Angels should not fall in love with men. I don't know if Elsa loves me, and I don't know if she ever will. But I can tell you this. You can turn the whole world against Elsa, but I will never stop loving her, and I will never stop trying to rid the earth of people like you!"
As Henrik's guard was temporarily lowered, Brian lunged forward with herculean speed and strength. The nine-tooth rake flashed through the air in a deadly arc. Henrik moved to parry the blow and dodge aside, but one of the sharp little spikes caught his ear. He roared in pain and spat out a vicious string of profanity, as his entire right ear was ripped loose, and blood gushed down the side of his face. But the King of the Southern Isles was a tough, hardy man and he recovered quickly. Henrik swiped furiously with his sword, but Brian had already stepped far out of range.
"You may have the upper hand right now, Henrik. But Elsa has more strength and courage in her pinky than you do in your entire body. You wouldn't survive one week of what she endured for thirteen years. There is nothing—and I mean nothing— Elsa wouldn't do to protect the ones she loves. But of course you don't know that, because you don't know the first thing about love."
Brian threw down the rake and raced for the castle. Kai rushed out to meet him. The doctor gasped as he glanced over Kai's severely bruised face and broken nose. Before he could inquire, Kai waved him off. "Hans and Henrik have convinced the whole kingdom that Elsa is responsible for setting this plague upon Arendelle. They also accused Elsa of murdering her own family. Right now she is badly injured and in hiding. To prove her innocence, you have to show everyone that Anna and Kristoff are alive!"
Doctor Helmholtz reached for his shoulder. "Kai, we have to take care of you first. Come, I can have you fixed up in five minutes."
The older man shook his head vigorously. "Not a second to waste! Hans is leading a mob to hunt down Elsa this very moment, as we speak!" Kai clutched at a stitch in his chest and struggled to breathe. But his eyes were smiling and serene. "You love her, don't you? Take care of Elsa for me."
Brian nodded stiffly. "I will." Without another word, he mounted his horse and burst through the open gates, feeling more alive and invigorated than he'd ever felt. Henrik briefly tried to apprehend him, but Brian swept past without eve turning his head. He would've dearly loved to battle Henrik to the death right then and there, but he had more important things—and people—to attend to.
"There's a brave young woman fighting for her life out there. I'm gonna go and fight by her side."
Elsa had been stumbling through the outskirts of the kingdom for an indefinite length of time, when a loud racket of angry voices sounded behind her. She tried to quicken her pace, wanting to make it to the forest where there was an abundance of hiding places. But in her incapacitated condition, every step was a painful exertion. Her clothes were caked with dried blood, and fresh streaks of crimson continued leaking out from the shredded fabric.
She was getting colder and colder by the second, and her vision blurring. The frigid December wind was like a blade of ice against her chapped cheeks. Her fingers and toes were completely frozen by now, and marred with the tenebrous hue of frostbite. Several of her nails had split in half. The icy wind sheared mercilessly at the exposed flesh and chilled her to the bone. Threads of ice crawled further up her fingers, encasing her palms in a fine layer of frost.
Out of nowhere, a crossbow whizzed through the air and impaled her through the crook of the arm. A torrential spurt of blood drenched her clothes, as her arm was completely amputated from the elbow down. Elsa collapsed to the ground in a bloody heap.
In no time at all, she was surrounded by a mob of thousands of angry citizens, with Hans standing at the forefront. Hans stood tall and proud as he reiterated the charges against her. "There she is! The wicked witch who cast this horrible epidemic down upon Arendelle. The one who murdered her own sister and brother-in-law. Today we bring her to justice!"
The mob screamed their approval. "Kill the witch! Cut her heart out! Burn her at stake!"
Elsa forced herself to stand, clutching pitifully at the bloody stump of her arm. "Please," she managed to protest through chattering teeth. "Don't believe him! I've done nothing of the sort! Hans and Henrik are the ones who—
"Liar!" Hans shrieked. His hand sprang out and slapped Elsa viciously across the face, knocking several of her teeth loose.
"I'm innocent!" Elsa forced herself to scream. The blonde's face contorted in pain as a fresh wave of ice tore through her chest, causing her knees to buckle. Tears trickled down from her beautiful sapphire eyes; radiant even in the face of death. "I love this kingdom and its citizens. If I could, I would switch places with any one of those poor people. You have to believe me! I would never do anything to—"
The mob instantly drowned her out. "Enough with the lies! Kill the witch!"
An enormous guard who stood six and a half feet tall and weighed three hundred pounds stepped forward. His face was a solid mask of stone, and there was not a trace of empathy in his eyes. With a curt not of Hans' head, the man stretched out his arms and flexed a short, heavy whip with nine leather thongs. Each one had a small ball of lead fastened to its end. "I'm sorry, but you really brought this onto yourself."
Elsa screamed in agony as the cat-o-nine-tails sliced through her flesh. At first, only the skin was broken. But by five strokes, the flagellum was gouging deep into the subcutaneous tissues and unleashing a cataclysmic outpouring of blood from arteries beneath the muscle tissue. Hans' expression was pure bliss as the guard gave a particularly adept swing, and smashed her entire left ribcage with a single blow. The arches of bone could be seen peeking out from bloody crevices carved into her torso. Dozens of long, frayed tendrils of mangled flesh hung from her body like earthworms. Flecks of blood catapulted through the air and spattered all over the ground in a five-meter radius, as the scourging continued. Liter after liter of crimson streamed from the huge gaping wounds that covered her legs and torso, pooling around her body in a veritable ocean of blood.
Finally, the instrument snapped in two. Hans patted the guard on the back, nodding in smug satisfaction as he watched the lifeblood ebbing out of Elsa's broken, mangled body. Aside from the faint rising and falling of her chest, Elsa lay completely motionless.
"Shall we kill her?" Someone in the crowd inquired.
Hans shook his head. "The witch enjoys making people suffer. She doesn't deserve a quick death." He raised a heavy iron club over his head and brought it down across Elsa's knees with all of his might. A loud, earsplitting crack reverberated through the air for several miles, as the bones splintered. "She won't be going anywhere, now. Leave her to the wolves."
Soon the skies grew dark and the sun retreated beneath the western horizon. The mob dispersed, muttering words of savage vindication. Justice had been served. The wicked witch was gone. Frosty's reign of terror had been put to an end.
More to come! Remember to give Elsa a hug; she really needs one.