Note: Post-Finals-Start-of-Summer-decompression is really the only reason I can give this time around. Well, also being conscripted into my mother's landscape service because I did not also get a job within that week or so of Post-College decompression and preceding week of college Finals. I did however write something extra-long by way of apology for how long it's been since the last update. And also because going extra-long was the only way get this chapter to end on the bit that I wanted it to. Also, quick thank you to the few new favers (that's word now).
I do not own Frozen. Please review, comment, or criticize. Most of all, enjoy.
In the Old World
Chapter 25
They'd passed through the remainder of the Mountain-territory with little incident after the first attack had been repelled by Olaf's presence. Daud chalked it up to word spreading throughout the Mountains that the fleet of outsiders had a god on its side. Whatever it was, Elsa was grateful that the rest of the trip into the territory of the Covenant was uneventful.
Until they nearly hit the chain.
It was barely visible through the ever-present fog, and the ship that had been moving ahead of the Broken Sword had crashed against it. Marius had screamed to the Captain, and the Captain had screamed to the privateer-and-pirate hire-ons. 'Full stop' the word was. Every ship stopped dead in the water, before an rather unexpected obstacle.
Hans looked at the enormous metal chain mounted between two apparently towers, stretching across the length of the river, the same river that was comfortably fitting a dozen ships of various sizes in two three-wide lines, and had to marvel at it. At both the antiquity of the idea, of a giant chain meant to block ships coming in, and at how very effective it was currently being.
"I seem to recall you saying that this path was the least-defended." Marius curtly said to Daud.
"I said 'least-defended' not 'lacking in any defense,' did I not?" Daud asked in reply. Hans supposed it was a point, if not a very fair one.
"Don't play semantics with me, Daud. If it hadn't been for the queen…" Marius didn't elaborate. The ship that had forged ahead and crashed into the chain had split open along the bow. If Elsa hadn't been on deck, if she hadn't quickly frozen solid every ounce of water around the ship, the vessel would've sunk, taking nearly two hundred Knights down with it. Those two hundred knights were now sharing space with the contingent of the Seventh.
Any further argument between the two men was cut short as the door to the decks flew open, and Elsa strode out purposefully. She'd went down to her quarters after saving the crashing ship. As she'd told Hans and Kristoff, she was going to test something.
"Got something planned, your Majesty?" Daud called to her as she made her way to the fore of the ship. It wasn't that the assassin was looking for an excuse to end the conversation with Marius… except that he somewhat obviously was.
"I do, as a matter of fact." She replied, fixing the great chain with a deathly glare.
"Well, I hope you don't intend to freeze the river and have us walk the rest of the way. Not everyone deals with cold so well as you, and we'd lose our naval advantage." Marius put in.
"Nothing of the sort, general." A rather wicked smirk came over her face. "I'm going to remove the chain." That comment brought everyone up a bit short.
"All due respect, your Majest-" Daud began to say before Elsa held up a hand, flakes of snow drifting from her open palm.
"My sister is somewhere on the other side of that chain," She said, turning to fix the ship at large with a determined glare. "And I'm not about to let something as inconsequential as an object get between the two of us. Not ever again."
Hans, Kristoff, and Olaf exchanged knowing looks while everyone else just looked somewhat perplexed. Elsa stood at the fore of the ship, and raised her hands up in front of her. She bent her hands in, forming a ball of pure magic, snow, wind, and ice. Power seemed to visibly flow from her body into the growing, whirling ball of magic and cold suspended between her hands. Ice began creeping over the wood at the bow and railings, snow blowing back into the faces of those nearest her. The vortex of power grew in brilliance, the pale blue glow growing deeper and brighter, like a miniature colored sun was forming in her hands. The fog around the ship began to coalesce into frost, while Elsa herself was slowly obscured by a whirlwind of snow and ice that was itself glowing with the sheer force of her magic. Hans thought he saw balls of blue hail roll down the deck towards his feet.
Suddenly, with a yell of effort from Elsa, everything was projected forward. The bails of hail rose and shot forward like tiny cannonballs, the ice and snow on the ship, the suspended frost surrounding it, the miniature blizzard around Elsa; all of shot forward, whirling around a beam of magic and pure cold that blew the water beneath it back on all sides in frozen rivulets. The beam struck the very center of the chain, and the metal itself seemed to almost transform into ice it became so frozen. The change spread across the entire length of the chain, the water beneath it freezing solid from sheer proximity as the magic shot up and down the metal. Even some of the bricks of the tower seemed to fall prey to the almost transmuting ice.
Elsa stood rigid on the deck, hands still outstretched, fingers splayed, every pore of each hand glowing with energy. She slowly brought her hands closer together, clenched her fingers in. Hans thought he saw the chain shift, bend in upon itself while dragging through the frosty air towards Elsa.
Elsa suddenly relaxed her hands and thrust them away from each other, her palms coming to rest behind her hips, facing inwards.
Hans, and likely everyone else in the fleet, could only watch dumbfounded as the icy chain shattered into thousands of pieces that melted into rough, brown water that sloshed into the melting river below.
Fabius slouched in his chair, considering the options at hand.
They'd been under siege for two days now; a landing party of Lion Knights, backed by a dozen incomprehensibly armed ships had somehow forged through the Lowering Mountains. Fabius supposed he owed them all some respect for that achievement; the pass they had used to reach the grounds leading to the monastery from the river had never been traveled since the meager defense had been put in place, at a rather substantial cost of personnel thanks to the Mountain-folk. All other routes to the monastery were well-guarded by the Covenant's forces and allies; the path through the Mountains had natural protection in the form of the Mountain-folk. Never had anyone imagined any sort of force would be brave or skilled enough to survive the trek through their territory. A lack of vision that was now catching up to them.
True, the Knights were not climbing the walls of the monastery, swords in hand. But they were barely two hundred yards away from doing so, and the frightening speed with which they had come that close in so little time since making landfall was all the more worrying.
True, Solstice had been able to keep the worst such variables like the anchored, over-armed fleet of warships from doing as much damage as they surely could. She'd certainly kept the queen from ending the entire affair in a matter of minutes as all knew well she could, loosing fire and magma to match the young woman's ice and snow. But the queen, much like her sister somehow still was, was a very determined individual. And all of Fabius' attempts to use the parasite Mortemer had slipped into the Isles Prince had been utterly ineffectual. He couldn't even bring the princess to bear, for he could not back up his threat, and that was all it was now as opposed to the promise it had once been, so truly when the woman had an army at her back and no reason to restrain herself.
True, the Lion Knights still numbered barely a thousand strong, whereas the Covenant had a large supply of Acolytes and Embers, a few more exotic tools to put in play, and innumerable allies to call on. Yet the Knights were, and remained to those few who knew the order still lived in the near-thousand camped so nearby, regarded as some of the deadliest warriors of civilization in history. A thousand Lion Knights, fifty years ago, would have caused mass panic in whatever unfortunate kingdom had brought about their wrath. They likely still would, though the panic would be less knowledgeable.
In all considerations, the odds seemed fairly set against them. They needed something their attackers could not expect, could not prepare for, could not possibly defend against or defeat. His thoughts drifted to the Black Sentinels, slumbering in the dungeons beneath the surface of the monastery, but he discounted the thought. The few remaining devout of the Covenant saw the Sentinels as holy, remains of the guardians of their king-god, sacred relics to be protected. Sending the Sentinels to battle, and likely to destruction, would inflame tempers within the monastery. Fabius could only guess what the reaction of the believers would be were the Sentinels to return in shambles. Unrest in the ranks was the last thing they needed.
Fabius' mind drifted further, to the great door, the long tunnel, and what lay bound far, far beneath the earth.
A wicked smile grew across his face.
Rathalos fixed his gaze on the tunnel. He knew exactly who was coming down to meet him. He'd caught the infernal man's scent the instant the doors far above had opened. He'd caught other scents as well. Blood; decay; sweat. The more abstract smells of tension and battle tinged his mind. He could guess why the man was coming down. What would be asked of him. He snarled to himself in helpless rage and self-disgust.
Fabius walked just short of brazenly through the mouth of the tunnel, into the enormous cave that housed the creature he'd come to bring to task. Looking around, he was still amazed at how they'd managed to create such accommodations so quickly. When his gaze settled back on the dimly-lit center of the chamber, he saw the great yellow eyes glaring at him with a fury so great that Fabius would have been, loathe though he was to admit it, terrified for his life were he not sure in the binds placed upon the beast.
The eyes shifted, and the creature slowly emerged from the shadows, glaring down at Fabius.
"I'll make this quick, drake," Fabius said. "We are experiencing a rather dire issue; our oldest enemies have found their way to us, and are very near to breaking down our gates and butchering the lot of us."Rathalos snorted, flames shooting from his nostrils.
"And tell me why I should care that my captors, those who have taken my being from me, are on the verge of destruction?"
"You shouldn't," Fabius admitted. "But whether you care beyond taking pleasure in our potential destruction is irrelevant. You do not need to care about our fate to obey us." Fabius uttered a short sentence in a different language, the language he had used in the binding sigils as one of command. The symbols on the drake glowed, and with an expression that suggested he found death preferable to his current action, the dragon slowly laid down in front of Fabius. Another command sent him rolling over across his back. "I could force this issue, Rathalos. I could command you to go from this place and destroy the enemies at our doors." A smile grew across his face. "But I will not. I always find better results are achieved from unwilling subjects when they are presented with sufficient motivation." Fabius held up a small cluster of papers. "The foes besieging us are the Lion Knights," Fabius withheld further explanation; he could see Rathalos understood quite well who exactly had come for the Covenant this time. "and while they are of far greater interest to us than to you, there is one particular incident we noted, several months ago." Fabius spread the papers on the floor. "They were in the Dreadlands, hunting down the last known female Drakelord in the world."
Fabius' smile grew all the more as Rathalos' eyes widened. The ancient creature leaned forward, scanning the reports from the Covenant's observations of the Knights activity in the Dreadlands. They'd spent nearly six months there, hunting down small brood produced from the last safe nesting grounds in existence, before they finally tracked the mother down and gruelingly butchered her and her offspring deep beneath the surface.
A rumbling growl built in Rathalos' throat. He stretched his head up, loosing a furious roar the shook the cave, and began quickly stomping his way up the tunnel.
Elsa reached her hands up to cover her ears as a deafening roar sounded from the direction the monastery. She quickly ran out of her tent, and was astonished to see what was apparently a dragon fly out over the walls.
"When did they get a dragon?!" Kristoff screamed. He turned to Daud. "Did you know they had a dragon?"
Marius held up a spyglass he'd borrowed from The Captain, and brought it down after a cursory glance. Though Elsa couldn't see his expression through his helmet, his eyes conveyed all the worry she needed to see.
"That's not just a dragon." Marius said, as Knights began running past him, dragging a cart. "That's a drakelord."
"And that's what?" Elsa asked. "Even worse than a dragon?"
"Much." Marius said, turning to the scrambling camp. "Get a party back to the boats; load off the windlances and get them ready to fire as quickly as you possibly can." He turned back to Elsa, worry still etched onto what little of his face she could see. "Drakelords are even tougher, stronger than ordinary dragons. And they don't have the fortunate weakness of being restricted to a single element of nature they can vomit at you."
Ratahlos swooped over the camp, fury still burning and clouding his mind. He leaned his head down and unleashed a torrent of fire, scorching the land down to the roots of whatever plants may have lived before he came. He banked around and dropped down, crashing into the center, sweeping his tail along a line of tents while he reached with one arm to uproot a burning tree and smash it down into another three. Satisfaction shot through him as he saw red pulp explode beneath the trunk.
Then, his rage calmed ever slightly. He looked closer at the camp around him, lifted the tree and tents to see the bodies within. They smelled wrong. As though they had been dead for days already. They smelled like… the Mountain-Folk.
Just as he realized he'd been duped, an enormous knight made of ice crashed through the trees on his right and swung a frosty mace into his jaw, sending him sprawling. He faintly heard the catch release and whistling of great arrows on his left before several iron shafts nearly the size of tree trunks smashed against his scales. One struck between the scales of his hand, and punched through. He roared in agony and turned to release a burst of fire into the mass of trees. The ice knight reached out and yanked his head up, sending the blast of heat skyward. Rathalos thrashed and struck out with his left arm, crushing the ice knight's arm to fragments. It reeled back and Rathalos released a torrent of fire. Yet the knight, somehow, remained, re-freezing as fast as the flames could melt him.
Another shaft bounced off the back of his head, while another found its mark in one of his hind legs. The ice knight took advantage of his pain to strike him with the mace again. A shaft whirled past his head and buried itself in the knight's chest, sending chunks of ice flying and cracking the knight's torso in a great spidery pattern. Yet the knight simply yanked the shaft out and let the ice that made up its form regrow.
Rathalos realized he would need to switch tactics.
Elsa watched from the highly relative safety of the surrounding forest as the drakelord charged her knight again. She could faintly make out a glow building within its stomach, and watched as the knight raised its shield.
Yet instead of fire, which Elsa was surprised at how well the knight could withstand, what poured from the drakelord's maw was a veritable avalanche of earth that solidified into massive boulders as it passed the beast's lips. Tons upon tons of rock smashed into the knight, shattering its shield and driving it to the ground. The drakelord reached into the mass, which dissolved into earth at its touch, and pulled the knight's broken, still-repairing body out, shifting to use it as shield to catch the next volley of projectiles launched from the mounted windlances that the Lion Knights had set up on the opposite end of the forest.
The drakelord roared and lifted the now flagging ice knight high above its head, then brought it down, shattering an arm and part of its torso against the ground. The drakelord pulled back slightly, and the glow built within it again. This time, Elsa could see, the glow was blue.
Lightning poured out of the creature's mouth, swarming over the struggling body of the knight. The forks of light picked the ice creation to pieces, blasting chunks off than reducing those chunks to splinters before the splinters melted, the intensity of the attack proving too much for the self-freezing creature. Another round of windlance shots came whirling out of the forest, but the drakelord ignored them, focusing all of his attention on destroying the magical creation before him.
Rathalos turned from the dying construct and released a torrent of lightning into each side of the woods in turn. The effects were quite dangerous and quick and gratifying. Trees violently exploded into flame, burning chunks of wood hurled at dangerous speeds, while he could smell humans blackening as thousands of bolts of lightning cooked them in their armor. He turned his head back toward the right wood… and felt a giant spike of ice scrape across his left eye. Snapping his eyes shut in pain, he roared furiously, and opened his eyes to see a small pillar of ice rising out of the forest before him, a human standing atop it.
Elsa fired another spike of ice as the drakelord took off, barreling towards the small tower she'd formed to get a better angle on the beast. It flapped to the side and released a torrent of rocks from its mouth, shattering the tower beneath her feat.
Elsa gestured quickly, forming the thousands of falling shards into snow that she harmlessly sunk deep into as she neared the ground. She had a hard time moving herself to get the effect she wanted, nestled as she was inside a tiny tunnel in a great pile of snow, but she got the mass raised above her, and coalesced it into a ball of ice. She launched the ball, leading the drakelord as it circled back. The ball smashed into its face, sending it tumbling to the ground mere yards from her. For a second, she thought she'd done it. Maybe she'd somehow knocked it out. Then it burst up, catching an errant husk of a tree on one of its claws and uprooting the entire thing as it furiously got to its feet and glared down at her, a bright orange glow building in its mouth.
The flames flowed out from between the drakelord's fanged jaws, and Elsa reacted instinctively, raising a hand and releasing a beam of almost pure ice magic that somehow held the wave of dragonfire at bay.
Yet, Elsa could feel that it just barely wasn't enough, as her beam was slowly pressed further and further back by the seemingly unending exhalation of the drakelord. They were both, Elsa realized with a start, beings of magic. She simply faced one that likely had centuries to practice and grow in power. The beam pushed back even further, barely a foot beyond her hands, yet somehow pressing the flames back around her. She could feel sweat pouring down her head, her lungs choke on burning air. She was somewhat certain she could feel her ice dress melting around her. Then, everything seemed to slow as the beam of magic was pushed back into her hands, which were blown back to her sides by the sheer force.
She thought she heard an explosion in the air as the flames overtook her, and reflected for a second that they felt far colder than she thought they would.
The Captain watched as the dragon tore through a large pillar of ice.
"We set, Burke?" He asked.
"Aye, captain." The quartermaster replied. The Captain had given the order throughout the fleet of presumptive hire-ons and treasure-seekers to load up everything that could possibly reach the beast ashore, and fire on his signal. Burke rubbed his bad eye, a result of shrapnel from a job on another ship decades before, and scratched his greying red beard. "You sure this is a good idea, sir?"
"Where things like that are concerned, Burke, there are no good ideas. Just ideas that maybe kill them."
The Captain waved his cutlass over the edge of the ship and screamed the signal. Dozens of canons and mortars fired off at once, nearly enough to utterly deafen men and women who'd spent their lives hearing such things. The Captain watched from atop the rail of the deck as the salvo exploded onto the dragon that had been intently breathing fire on something.
Rathalos felt the barrage of steel and burning iron and fire bare down on him. None of it would be enough to break his armor, but…
The world slowed as a ball exploded above his head and propelled chunks of iron down against the scales of his head and shoulders. He felt the iron fragments bite into the sigils, felt their power over him weaken. As he was consumed by a wave of fire and metal, he felt it tear away at the bonds holding him.
Before, he'd felt nothing but rage. Now, something was added to it.
The feeling of freedom. Of, after so long, being a dragon once more.
Hans and the others watched, disbelieving, as Elsa was consumed by the drakelord's fire breath. Hans was only vaguely aware that he'd tried to run out, and that Kristoff had held him back. Then the barrage from the Captain's fleet had dropped, and in the middle of the explosions and whirling bits of wood caught by them, an magical explosion had erupted. Tendrils of energy curled off the drakelord and withered away into nothingness as it stood up, stretching as though it had just awoken from a long sleep. Power seemed to radiate off every inch of the creature. It opened its mouth wide, pure magical energy pouring over its fangs.
"Zeim hinn lost krii dii Dov, zeim hinn fen aus ahrk ag, til ar nust zok balaan ol dii bah." The unfamiliar sounds poured out of the drakelord's mouth, without its lips moving once between any words. It clambered forward and launched itself into the air, flying towards the Covenant's monastery, spewing fire and lightning and earth and frost from its mouth all at once.
Hans and the others, excluding the Lion Knights and Galmorn, all of whom looked rather terrified, ignored the sudden shift in the drakelord's behavior. They ran through the trees, moving to the patch of forest the drakelord had left, one that was still burning in many places. The explosions of the barrage had sucked away much of the air and fires by extension, but enough remained for the area to be dangerous.
Hans' breath caught in his throat as he saw the one bit of color in the burned area.
Elsa stood in the center of the devastation, hands blown back at her sides, hair hanging in the air, swept back by the force of the battle of magical powers. Around her in a circle, the ground was covered in ice. Yet even from a distance, he could tell something was wrong. She wasn't moving at all. He hair hung in the exact place, every fiber of her dress holding fast against the wind.
As they all neared her, it became clear why.
She stood so perfectly still, so undisturbed, because she'd frozen solid, as surely as Anna had on the fjord all those months ago.
So, I'm going to save you all a lot of confused reviews and googling here:
1. The sigils on Rathalos break because they're hit with tons upon tons of iron shrapnel, a common anti-magical element in a ton of fantasy series (The Bartimeaus Chronicles is the one I can name off the top of my head, which is an excellent series by the way).
2. Rathalos' end-speech is given in Skyrim's dragon language, though dragon language here is more reserved for when they mean complete and utter business (like oaths of death and vengeance, as in this case) rather than violently, magically arguing with each other. I had to BS a few words that didn't technically exist, but it effectively translates as "Though you have killed my kind, though you will suffer and burn, there are others more deserving of my wrath."
3. The Black Sentinels are another little Dark Souls reference, to the personal army of Dark Souls' king of the gods, the Silver (and later Black, after they get trounced by an army of demons) Knights of Gwynn.
And yes, the windlances were another Peter-Jackson-Hobbit influence; I really like the idea that you need incredibly specialized weapons to even hope to hurt a dragon. And the Lion Knights being the Lion Knights, they have a stock of the things for emergencies. I also figured they'd be pretty good at wrecking things that aren't dragons, besides. Cause they're, y'know, built to shoot thing so hard they pierce dragon scales.
As to why Elsa did most of the heads-on dragon fighting, I felt like I hadn't given the headlining girls enough to do as of late. Also, I really don't think anyone would look at the person with super-powerful ice magic and ask them to stay out of a fight with a dragon, even if it can breathe stuff besides fire. I really can't stress enough how much I enjoyed writing the bit with the chain and the whole dragon attack.
As for whether or not Elsa is still alive…
No comment.