Note: So, continuing the horribly draining landscape work while still searching for a job that is less horribly draining physically and in terms of self-esteem. And my older brother coming home for a week as he starts his summer vacation, and the Fourth of July, and spending a day fishing with my grandfather in another state. And more landscape work after all of that. My cumulative excuses in this instance are as stated. I'm also incredibly embarrassed in that I realized after-the-fact that I misspelled a character's name in the last chapter ("Galmorn" improperly became "Galvorn" and will be altered as such.)

Also, I give you all fair warning: shit's about to get very, very real.

I do not own Frozen. Please review, comment, or criticize. Most of all, enjoy.

In the Old World

Chapter 26

Solstice moved through the cots and bedrolls, wondering when the last time she'd ever felt quite so impotent was. Her control of fire had, over the years, been somewhat unexpectedly handy when it came to matters of critical first aid for the Covenant's wounded. Instantaneous cauterization and sterilization were among the applications for a quick burst of fire. And while normally after an attack like the one the monastery had suffered, she'd be at those applications all day, this time was different. This time they'd been attacked by a rightly furious and vengeful drakelord.

She looked at an Ember in a nearby cot, missing a few key limbs to a torrent of stones and lightning, as a medic rubbed in a green salve. She had to marvel at the irony. Rathalos' assault had the benefit of inside knowledge; he'd done more than break down walls and towers and leave half the force mangled. He'd targeted their supplies, too. They'd have been struggling to keep even half the number of people alive that they had, if it hadn't been for her. For Anna. She'd been using her powers to produce various plants, herbs and weeds mostly, on demand. And while Solstice couldn't help but suspect that the princess had some sort of ulterior motive in learning what she needed to produce to ease the wounds from the attack, Solstice also couldn't deny how utterly genuine the girl still was. Couldn't deny the fact that she didn't seem to care at the moment that she was helping people who'd kidnapped her and forced magical powers on her. All she seemed to care about was helping people. It almost made her sick to be a part of the people receiving the girl's help.

She stopped a few lines down, horrible recognition dragging her out of her thoughts. Meredith lay on the cot before her, nearly every inch of the woman horribly scarred by burns and cracks of bone and skin. Yet the worst part of it was the smile on her face.

Solstice leaned in, gently reaching out to set a hand as lightly as she could one her friend's shoulder. She didn't ask Meredith what she was smiling about. She didn't think the woman had enough strength or even physical ability to answer. But she managed anyway.

Meredith raised her right hand, her palm facing up, the tips of her fingers pointed at the ceiling. A white glow flickered in her palm, and slowly grew. Tiny forks of lightning curled off her fingers. The glow built, miniature bolts of lighting swirling around the ball of power now resting in her hand. She'd never displayed this sort of power before. Her smile widened.

Meredith's fingers clenched, and the ball exploded upward, a bright bolt of lighting firing up into the ceiling, melting a jagged hole in one of the bricks.

The glow and magic faded, and Meredith's eyes stopped seeing what was before them. Stopped seeing her friend's sadly smiling face. She'd said for years that she was content with the level of power she could use, which was nothing beyond a tiny lightshow and mild shocks. But something had clearly happened, whether it was the outpouring of power when Rathalos' bonds were broken, or some unexplained side-effect of the drakelord's own magical attacks, and whatever had happened had strengthened her powers, given her the briefest glimpse into what she ought to have been capable of.

Solstice, feeling tears build, saw nothing but joy in Meredith's unseeing eyes.

Diomedes dipped his hands into the bucket, washing away another coating of red and bits he didn't like to think too hard about. The aftermath of a normal battle was rarely ever pretty. The aftermath of a dragon attack was bleak at its absolute best. The aftermath of a drakelord… They'd had to get more of their people ready for burials than weeks on cots recovering. Things would have been even worse if a steady, yet strangely carried amount of supplies hadn't been coming in.

Rats, formed of shifting bark, had been gathering in masses at the center of the remains of the camp. A wide variety of various medicinal herbs, particular kinds suited to treating wounds associated with dragon attacks, had been growing inside their bodies. Diomedes could guess that the princess was the source, though how she knew exactly what to sneak to them, he had no idea. However she knew, though, he and everyone who'd survived was grateful for it.

Though, as his gaze flicked to the still-smoldering portion of the forest, he had to revise his assessment. Not everyone who'd survived was grateful. And there was one who no one even knew as to whether or not they had survived.

Hans had decided that the not knowing was the worst part.

They'd been somewhat panicked after the shock had worn off; no-one wanted to try and move Elsa's frozen form, and half the forest around her had still been burning with dragonfire at the time. The three of them had been terrified that she might melt, and any chance of getting her out of… whatever had happened would be lost. Kristoff and Hans had tried to freeze water with the little residual magic still surrounding her, but got nothing but tiny ice cubes for their efforts. Olaf had absconded with the nearest ladder and tried to wave some of his flurry over her, without success.

Somewhat thankfully, their efforts had turned out to not be needed. The literally icy figure of Elsa didn't seem at all affected by anything around her. And this was where the not knowing came into the equation. None of the Lion Knights had enough experience with magic to be willing to offer help, and Galmorn, even with his goggles and his fold-out pouch and years of experiments, could only guess as to what had happened. The theory everyone seemed to agree on as the most likely was that Elsa's powers had reacted with her on an unconscious level, like when she'd frozen Arrendelle in her terror over her powers being revealed at the coronation. Her magic had acted beyond her control to preserve her, and it was, according to Galmorn's theory anyway, down to her to get herself back.

But that was all it was. A theory. A guess. Galmorn couldn't say for certain he was right. He couldn't even say for certain if Elsa was still alive. He simply didn't know. No one knew.

Hans thought back to the Captain's advice concerning Elsa, and couldn't help but think to himself that he, Kristoff, and Olaf weren't the only ones who didn't know something important.

The not knowing really was the worst part.

She'd gone from being an potential asset to a potential threat. Fabius could finally see that. In truth, he should have seen it far sooner than this. He should have seen it far before everything had spiraled out of control, and now it would take only a single sentence to set the girl at all their throats. Her being in the monastery had brought down all the recent trouble. She was, whatever her talents, someone that could easily become a threat.

He didn't intend to give her the chance.

Solstice watched the girl slump back in the chair she'd set up purely for slumping back exhaustedly into. Her suspicion that Anna was up to more than simply growing supplies for the Covenant's wounded was all but confirmed. The girl shouldn't have been so tired, even with how much she'd been producing since she'd learned the kinds of plants needed for the wounded. Solstice knew every leaf produced in here was going to the Covenant's wounded. For Anna to be as drained as she was, she had to be working at something else.

Solstice wasn't about to pry, though. The girl had been providing care for her captors. She'd earned the right to go behind their backs. She'd had the right the second she'd been kidnapped, as far as Solstice was concern-

Every door in the room swung open, and Acolytes poured in. On one side, Fabius followed. On the other came Horus, grand master of the Embers, clad in armor from the corpse of one of the Blackened Knights.

"Restrain her." Fabius said, pointing to Anna. Four Acolytes moved.

And stopped dead as Solstice stepped between them and Anna, fire visibly building in the palms of her clenched fists. Horus reached down with one hand and drew one of the two greatswords belted to his waist. Bright yellow lightning and blood-red flames swarmed up and down the length of the enormous blade that the warrior held effortlessly with one hand. Solstice slowly began to raise her right fist when she felt someone clench her shoulder. She turned her head to see Anna, up from her chair, hand on Solstice's shoulder, a pleading look in her eyes.

The look nearly set Solstice off, but she waited, and looked deeper. Looked for the true meaning. She found it. And let her fists open, the magical fire burning away to embers as she let the power bleed away. Anna gave her a smile that was half sadness, half thanks before the Acolytes grabbed her and hauled her away.

Anna let the Acolytes drag her towards the tower, which was by some miracle still standing after the incredibly angry dragon with everything-breath had attacked. She let them drag her without resistance because she was focusing on something far more important than refusing to dragged off somewhere, even though she was helping. The thought had crossed her mind, but she realized something even more important in the few moments she'd had, that Solstice had given her.

She needed to know why. Which was why she was currently trying to transpose the vision of the tiny plant creature she'd formed on one of the chair legs. It took a few tries, none of which were helped by the Acolytes yanking her when she spaced out, but she got it down enough that she could faintly hear what was being said and still manage to walk.

"None of this would have happened if it hadn't been for you, you know that?" Solstice hissed furiously. "You and your damn need to have absolute control over everything."

"I clearly don't have control over everything, my dear, or you wouldn't be speaking to me in such a manner." Fabius shot back.

"Oh, shut it. What in the name of the Scaleless is going on? Anna was helping us. Why are you treating her like-"

"What I am doing, I do as a precaution. I'm locking the girl away because if she learns the extent of what happened during Rathalos' attack, she'll do her best to kill us all." There was nothing after that. Nothing for a long time.

"What exactly happened?" Solstice's voice came in a cold fury.

"Just before Rathalos' bonds were broken, he was engaged in a battle with the queen of Arrendelle. As far as we have been able to ascertain, the queen is dead."

Anna was fairly certain she kept up the connection, but she wasn't consciously aware of it. She heard the rest, but didn't register it. The near-exploding slap and slam of a door. A voice she didn't recognize asking Fabius why he put up with Solstice. Fabius replying that it was because he had no intention of seeing if she could reduce them all to ash as easily as Rathalos could have.

Anna barely even realized she was at the door to her room, barely even heard Leopold hissing and batting at the feet of the Acolytes as they dragged her inside. She didn't even notice the connection breaking as they slapped the magic-draining cuffs on her and locked her inside. Her gaze drifted to the mural of flowers she'd grown over the wall, to the figure of Elsa, forming the snowball of petals.

She sank to her knees and began crying.

She didn't know how long she spent there, letting her grief overwhelm her, curled up on the floor, shaking with sobs, Leopold nuzzling against her with a look of deathly concern on his face. Years ago, when news came that her parents' ship had been lost, she'd managed to hold off the worst of it; she'd had a responsibility then. To the kingdom, to Elsa. But now, she had now responsibilities anymore. She had no one to suck it up and be strong for. Elsa was gone.

Elsa was gone. Elsa was gone. That thought kept running through Anna's head, yet the longer it did, the more it seemed to change. As she let herself feel everything, her perspective seemed to slowly shift. She'd gone through something similar when her parents had died, when she'd realized a few days later that she had to step up, for her kingdom and her sister. Only what was building in her now wasn't a realization of responsibility.

It was anger. Fury, even. And the scariest part was that she could understand exactly where it was coming from. Elsa had been taken from her, and she was in the middle of the people who were responsible for it.

Realizing where the anger was coming from seemed to make it that much stronger. Sorrow was rapidly being overwhelmed in her mind as the anger fed a furious resolve. Her sister's killers were out the door and down the steps. And she had powers to reach them.

She drew herself up off the floor, and focused. Let all her feelings pour out and into herself, feeding into her magic. Her hands began to glow like green candles, and the cuffs around her wrists seemed to almost frantically attempt to suck in all the magic she was generating. She shut her eyes and focused harder, felt harder, let all the things she'd planned to do and see with Elsa run through her head, to make herself feel that much more at how they'd never happen. She opened her eyes and saw that virtually every part of her was glowing with power before the cuffs exploded in a burst of light.

Anna blinked away the spots in her eyes, then turned toward the door with a malicious smile on her face. She waved a hand and released a small green misty ball of magic that lightly landed before the door. In a burst of light, enormous vines smashed through the door, crushing the wood to splinters, and wrapped around the four Acolytes standing guard outside. Anna strode through, fixing them with a glare. She let the anger direct her power fully this time, and watched as thorns grew all over the vines, stabbing into their captives.

She waved her hand again, causing another set of vines to grow within the bricks of the stairway wall. She pulled her hand back, and the vines followed, tearing the wall away. She could see the Covenant forces slowly assembling a few dozen yards beyond the ruins of the monastery walls, the few able-bodied fighters setting up preparations to get back to fighting. Anna let power seep into her hands, building until it looked like she was holding lanterns in her palms. She threw the power through the gaping hole she'd created, and it split, arcing out into the forests and burying into the dirt surrounding the meager camp.

She was vaguely sure she heard Leopold hissing angrily at something, but she didn't look back to see him gnawing at the vines holding the gasping, screaming Acolytes. She was focused on the trees coming to life, on the soldiers of roots and bark and earth rising from the ground, and how they charged into the midst of the camp, smashing soldiers flat and pouring burning sap and firing burning bolts of wood into them.

She felt a savage smile grow on her face, and started down the stairs.

Told you shit was going to get real.

Also, for those of you wondering how Anna can hear through her magical constructs, I refer you to when I set that facet up in Chapter 15, when she can (unwillingly) just barely hear and see what the tree-beasts and root-men are doing to the Lion Knights.

I play the long-term plot game! *nefarious cackle*

In all seriousness, there are more than a few stories in the depths of this site where Anna gets powers (almost always, from what I've read, fire powers, because of course they're fire powers) and at some point goes totally kill-crazy-psychotic apropos of nothing other than at some point getting her to have a magic fight with Elsa. (Though, if any of you are interested in reading about an angry, fire-powered Anna who has truly well-written, tangible, relatable, believable motivation to want to go on a rampage and attack her sister, let me recommend Blitz by Banana Kisses.)

What I wanted to do here was create, what seemed to me anyway, one of the few plausible situations which could cause Anna to go an angry magic rampage. Anna was, in the movie, willing to die to save her sister; I figure it's not that far fetched she'd go rather medieval (relative, given the time period) if someone actually killed Elsa and was within her reach. I'd actually had this planned way back - like, before I'd even come up with a name for Rathalos and Rathalos was still just a plain boring old non-drakelord dragon - way back. This needed to be something that made actual sense for Anna to do given the various circumstances, and I truly hope I pulled it off as well I meant to.