Author's Note:

Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for sticking with TLD for so long, faithful readers! We have come at last to the end of Words of the Protector (stick around for the interludes in this feed, however). I hope that you all enjoyed the ride.

Also, don't call it a comeback. ;) I know some of you were waiting for this for a long time.

Heroes never die.

xxx

Chapter Thirty

Cynical men have said to me that I preach faith as a substitute for action. That I poison the minds of the weak with fanciful visions of their problems spirited away by guardian angels. Now, on the eve of the world's end, as I prepare to allow a good man to die in an attempt to stem the tides of evil, I cannot help but agree with them.

The Bard Rhennalus,

a personal journal, lost to time

The Watcher's Realm,

the Edge of Heaven

October 6th, 1843

A lone hovel, humble and squat, with a thatched roof and a little pen for a flock of three sheep, now let loose to roam and munch the countryside, sat in the mountain foothills at the edge of paradise. Singular underneath blue skies and large, lazy clouds, the little abode was a place of solace, not loneliness. A place where one could become wise, if given enough time to think and enough food for thought. It was a place that should not be.

The Watcher's realm was uninhabited by design, a place where the angel could shepherd souls into heaven, if they were deserving, yet still keep a stoic eye on the events of the world and the Sea of Stars. Home only to the Watcher herself, until recently.

She touched down on the little, cobbled path up to the home, feathers rustling as she folded her wings behind herself. She frowned as she walked the path, wondering how this little hovel came to be. She personally oversaw all who passed into her realm, and she accounted for them all. Her mind was able to remember all those that she had allowed to pass, and all those that she had rejected. But she did not remember this.

She glanced to the east, where the hills sloped gently down into the basin, where the wildflowers grew. The farmer's three sheep were afield, and she could see them, wandering about and bleating at each other occasionally as they perused for juicy stalks of grass. The Watcher's frown did not fade as she stepped up to the entrance to the house. To the side of the door was a little wooden rocking chair that could look into a small, tended garden. It looked oft-used.

She turned and knocked three times on the door.

Several long moments passed. The door did not open. Not only that, she could not hear movement from inside. Frowning still, she turned and stepped over to the small, circular window looking into the house and peered inside.

"Ah. I figured that you'd come looking eventually," a voice said.

The Watcher started and turned with surprise to see Hans Westergaard step around the side of the little house, holding a book under one arm and an empty wine glass in the other. He wore a loose shirt that opened only along three buttons near the collar, tucked into a pair of lived-in looking trousers. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, revealing a set of bronzed and scarred forearms, and he was barefoot.

"Hans," she said, voice tinged with wonder. In late July, when she'd been visited by Odette, she'd said that she hadn't taken his soul to the afterlife yet. The Watcher hadn't known where he'd been. Somehow, it seemed that he had been here, all along.

"Yes," he said nonchalantly, opening the unlocked front door and waving her inside. His hair and beard had been trimmed, but they had grown longer, contributing to the rugged look of a farmer that he now had.

The Watcher stepped over the house's threshold, looking around. There were only two rooms; this one, set with the hearth and the little round dining table, also had a more comfortable chair set next to a bookcase with a great many titles, all leatherbound and embossed with gold coverings. The other room was an austere bedroom, from what the Watcher could see of it from the doorway. She walked into the living room and turned about once.

Where did this all come from? She thought. Then she turned back to Hans, and noticed for the first time the title of the book he was holding.

"The Histories, by Rhennalus," the Watcher said, surprised. "I wasn't aware that any copies of that text still existed."

"I would imagine that they do not," Hans said, setting the book back onto the shelf with the others. "All of these books seem quite old and unknown to the modern world."

The Watcher's frown returned. "Then how are they here? How are you here? Why did it take so long for me to find you?"
Hans walked over to the hearth. Beside it was a little washbasin for dirty dishes, and it was there that he began to clean his empty glass.

Back still turned, he said to her, "Please, take a seat, by the way. The comfortable one. Make yourself at home."

He set the now-clean glass with the others and turned back to her, now sitting in the upholstered chair by the bookcase. The angel adjusted her skirts.

"As for those questions of yours," he said, walking over and leaning against the edge of his table, "do you want the honest answer?"

"Of course," she replied.

"I have no idea." He grinned at her.

The Watcher raised an eyebrow.

"But I can make an educated guess," he admitted. "I haven't been able to use magic since I got here. I had bound the souls of two wizards to myself with a tensing disk, and I'm guessing that I lost my souls rather than my life in New York City."

The Watcher seemed discomfited by this. "I'm not an expert on dark magic, Hans, but that's not how tensing is supposed to work," she said. "Some, like the sea witch Ursula, have managed to use souls to extend their own lives, but the same should not have worked for you. Tensing disks were designed to confer powers, but not longevity. After all, Everdark wanted to ensure that even its most powerful servants remained mortal, should they go rogue and need to be exterminated."

"How is the disk inside of me any different from what Ursula does?" Hans asked, frowning.

"She does not absorb the souls directly," the Watcher said. "She keeps them in an enchanted locket around her neck – whenever she would die, the magics take effect, and one of her souls is lost instead."

The Watcher shifted her weight, rustling her wings slightly.

"Now again, I'm no expert on this sort of thing, but here's the way that I think about it. Imagine that Ursula's locket is a shield of souls, around herself. If she would get mortally wounded, the shield takes the blow instead."

"Okay," Hans said.

"You've taken the souls into your body," the angel said. "So you don't have a shield. Wizards with tensing disks die just like normal men. All their souls go with them."

Hans rubbed at his chin thoughtfully. "Well, who's to say that I'm not dead?"

The Watcher shook her head. "I may not be able to say what you are, but I know that you are not dead, Hans. I can see all who pass through my realm. I am the Watcher, after all."

Hans nodded, and allowed the topic to change. "By the way, I have a question about that. In this book," he said, holding up his copy of The Histories, "The author, a man named Rhennalus, calls himself 'the Watcher' as well. Is that an exceeding coincidence?"

The angel shook her head again. "No. The man you speak of, Rhennalus, was a member of the Consulate of Celestus. Their civilization was more knowledgeable of the history of magic than any that exist today – perhaps even more knowledgeable than some of the remaining immortals. They idealized all of the Lost Immortals, but five specifically, including myself. They used the same titles as these immortals to reinforce the connection."

Hans glanced back down at the spine of the book. He had not built this house for himself; the building and all of its contents, including these old books, had simply been waiting for him when he'd arrived. Why?

The Histories had also included a lengthy discussion of special wizards, called archmagi. Rhennalus had seemed to indicate that he was one of them.

"So the members of the Consulate were also archmagi?" Hans asked.

"Not exactly," the angel said. "The Protector was, but there isn't an exact overlap. The archmagi are endowed with certain powers beyond that which normal wizards are capable of. The members of the Celestian Consulate simply possessed particular qualities that their civilization chose to exalt.

"However, the Consulate did believe that they were all archmagi, even though most of them were not. That book does a good job of capturing Rhennalus's uncertainty on the topic, I think." The Watcher frowned to herself. "History is often messy like this."

"I see," Hans said. "Are they… I mean, how important are they? These special wizards? Rhennalus seemed to believe that only they had the power to defeat Everdark."

The Watcher shrugged. "They are, at the end of the day, humans like you, Hans. I think that anyone with the will to change the world can do it."

The will to change the world…

"So what next?" Hans asked.

The Watcher did not have to ask what he meant. "That's an excellent question, Hans. I have always known you to be a fighter. You are not one who gives up easily, and so I would have expected you to already have leapt back into the fight. Yet here I find you, months after you arrived in my realm, settled down into the life of a farmer. What has changed?"

"I don't know how to get back," Hans admitted. "For weeks, I tried wandering in search of a gate. But then I realized that's probably not how this is going to work, is it?"

The Watcher shrugged again. "I don't have the answers, Hans," she said. "This has never happened before. Perhaps you weren't ready to return, or perhaps you aren't meant to at all. Would that bother you? Being unable to go back?"
Before, Hans would have immediately said yes. Yes, he wanted to get back into the fighting and do what needed to be done. But now, he finally found something that he'd been looking for. Peace. Serenity. Wisdom, perhaps, in time. It should have bothered him to leave Elsa, and Hades, and Kariena behind, but for some reason, it didn't. For some reason, he was content enough to not care.

That's a bad thing, some part of him said. You're giving up. You're growing weak.

"I'm not sure, anymore," he admitted.

The Watcher was silent for a few moments. "You remember the first time you visited me, now?"

"Yes," Hans replied. "I recognized where I was as soon as I arrived here."

Years ago, before the return of Everdark, before Mallory had died, Hans had been gravely injured fighting army deserters in the north of France. He'd passed to the Watcher's realm, where she'd told him that it wasn't time to die yet. In addition, she'd taken painful memories from him. In exchange, she'd said that she would make him a coward until he'd proven himself again. It wasn't that she'd wanted to exact a price from him, but that was the way the Watcher's magic had always worked. She could give, as long as she also took away.

"I always imagined that I lost my cowardice that night in London, when I first fought the Cult of Entropy," Hans said. "But maybe I still hold on to it. Maybe it's coming back, now."

The Watcher frowned. "I don't think that's it," she said, "now that I'm really considering it. A coward would fear returning. You do not?"

"No," Hans said. "I feel… apathy. Like I can't bring myself to care that I abandoned them all."

The Watcher stood up. Her wings ruffled slightly as she said, "Well, then, Hans, I suppose that I'll leave you to your thoughts. You have a very important decision to make."

Hans was surprised. Had he offended her? "You're bothered," he said, walking with her to the door. "You think that I should choose to return."

The Watcher stepped over the threshold and turned back to face him, smiling in an ethereal sort of way. "You mistake me, Hans. I am not aligned to either side of this conflict. I would certainly not be so improper as to pick favorites.

"On the contrary," she continued, "I simply understand that the decision to return to a world of pain and hardship will be a difficult one, one that should not be made lightly. You must make it yourself. Look inside and find the answer."

She turned without another word and, with a powerful flap of her wings that buffeted at Hans's clothes and sent the door swinging, she took off, quickly fading to a pinprick in the sky. Hans watched her go with one hand raised to shield his eyes from the sun. One of his sheep had wandered its way back up the path, and now it stopped beside him and bleated. He glanced down and scratched at it behind the ears.

Why do I feel peace while the world crumbles? Why am I content to sit here and tend a garden while people fight and die for the same things that I once did?

Finally thinking about it like this, he knew the answer.

When he first entered Hades's service what felt like so long ago now, he'd wanted… this. He'd hoped that one day, after his debt to the master of the underworld was paid, he would be rewarded with peace and solitude. Release from the pain of his past, freedom from the judgment of those who did not understand him. It had felt like such a faraway goal back then, and before long it had been pushed out of his mind by a legitimate desire to do what was right. Now, all these months later, he'd all but forgotten the plan he'd originally had in mind.

Is this still what he wanted?

No, he knew. No, it's not.

What did he want?

At various points in his life, Hans had wanted peace, acceptance, love, and revenge. There were many men in his past, and he had been them all. He had always been working to be a better man, to walk a better path. If any one constant bound these men together and made them Hans Westergaard, it was that they were all determined to do better. To be better.

Now it was time to be that man again.

Hans smiled. It was time to get back to work. Not as a warrior, fighting for a master. But as an avenger, to bring honor to the names of those he had lost and those he still hoped to save.

Suddenly he became aware of something within himself. An inner glow, something that had always been there, though it was just now igniting. He spoke the Words naturally, like the words to a familiar song.

"I am the Avenger. The shadow cast by the light, the knife that strikes in the darkness. I will bring justice for the loved and the lost, and I will not rest until my work is done."

He felt cold for a moment, and then there was a rush of something warm. A new flame, awakened.

He closed his eyes, and felt paradise fade away, replaced with screams of death and the fires of war. The Avenger had returned.

xxx

Elsa was pain. She felt as if her entire body was being crushed by some omnipotent force. She'd stolen magic. She wasn't even sure how she'd managed to do it, but she'd used the magic in the air the stone rather than her own, and it seemed that the universe was repaying her theft in kind. She wondered if she was still alive.

Maybe Elsa had died trying to draw the power into herself, and maybe this was Hell. She couldn't see, or smell, or hear anything beyond a muted hum. She was nothing but sensation, floating somewhere beyond reality.

For some indeterminable length of time, she knew nothing but this. Then, almost as if the noise had always been like this, she began to hear her own name.

Elsa.

…

Elsa.

Elsa gasped awake, head throbbing. She turned over and coughed, forcing herself to her hands and knees. She'd been lying in the muck just behind the crumbling walls around her city. Her arms wobbled perilously, threatening to drop her back into the mud. Her head felt like it had been pounded with a hammer, and her vision swam. The voice came again.

"Elsa."

She continued to stare down at her hands, brain slowly processing her own name, rolling the voice over and over again. It was a familiar voice, but not one she expected to hear again.

"Hans," she gasped, turning and gazing up at him, standing tall above her. He extended a hand and grinned.

"Something tells me that I have you to thank for this giant dome of ice hanging over half the city," he said.

Elsa slowly, uncertainly took his hand, almost as if her hand would pass right through him. It didn't.

He pulled her to her feet, and she pulled him into a hug.

"How?" She whispered.

"I don't know," he admitted. "Something to do with the souls that I'd taken. Whatever it was, I'm glad to be back. It looks like we're just getting started here."

Elsa suddenly felt a horrible wave of guilt. Part of her wanted to wait, to tell him after all the fighting in Arendelle was done, but she forced herself to speak.

"Hans, wait."

He'd already begun to turn back to Arendelle, where the fires were still spreading, and citizens were still being slaughtered. He glanced back at her.

"I killed Hades. And his servants. All of them."

For several seconds, he stared at her, face blank. So she continued.

"When I saw you die, back there in New York, for a second, I let everything down. I couldn't think. I… I didn't protect myself. I got dominated, and I was under its control for a long time. It was one of the first things that it made me do."

"They're… dead?" He asked, voice hollow.

Elsa nodded, unable to form any more words past the lump in her throat.

"What about the others?" Hans demanded, voice suddenly frantic. "Is Kariena safe?"

"Nobody else," Elsa said. "Not yet. I haven't seen most of them in a few hours, though."

Hans worked his jaw for a moment, almost as if he were speaking silent words over his fallen friends. For a moment, he looked down to his feet, and then he raised his head again and blinked twice, forcing away tears. He would have time to mourn later.

"Well, then let's go make sure we don't lose anyone else."

Elsa turned and followed him back into the fire and brimstone.

xxx

The bright rays of a midmorning sun were just beginning to break through the clouds still hanging heavily over Arendelle when the fighting finally stopped. Many of the fires still burned, though by now they had burned themselves through their most fearsome stages, and now were mostly just great columns of smoke rising to the heavens.

Odette stood atop a little building near the north of the city, looking out towards the horizon, now largely obscured by the great mass that was the frozen tsunami, still looming like a specter over half the city. The last she'd heard, a few groups of soldiers were still doing rounds in the streets downtown, evacuating anyone who was still inside to the northernmost octant of the city. Even Elsa didn't know what was going to happen with the great dome of ice. If it started to melt, pieces as large as a soccer pitch could start falling onto the buildings below like super-massive hailstones. Nobody wanted to be around when that happened.

She still couldn't believe that they'd made it. She also couldn't believe that this was Everdark's first jab, the first strike meant to test humanity's mortal defenses. It had come within an inch of crushing them. The next few years were going to be very difficult to make it through.

Of course, they would be doing it with one more wizard on their side. Just past four in the morning, Odette had seen Hans for the first time, miraculously returned in their hour of need to save them. Odette still didn't know what to make of it. People didn't cheat death like that. After all, with what the Watcher had told her…

Death is immutable, little one.

Apparently, heroes never die.

In any case, Kariena was certainly happy to see him. Odette smiled to herself. She always imagined Hans as stony and emotionless to herself, so it was sort of nice to see someone with the ability to make him feel. She'd left them in a powerful embrace below.

"Anna is alive, and so is Montaigne," Elsa's voice came from behind. "They're with the Jotun."

Odette turned to see the beleaguered queen step climb through the trapdoor and walk over, heavily favoring one leg. The other was heavily bandaged from a bullet wound earlier in the night, and Elsa also bore a dozen other more minor wounds. It hurt Odette to see them, but she didn't have the strength to heal right now. Once she did, she promised herself, Elsa would be the first.

"That's good to hear," Odette said, releasing a breath that she hadn't realized she'd been holding. She wrapped an arm around Elsa and laid her head into the queen's shoulder. "Does she know yet?"

Kristoff's death had been one of the first things that Elsa's scouts had reported back on when she'd sent them down the path to Anders. They'd found a slaughter only a few hours from Arendelle, by carriage. Pregnant women and babies, rounded up and shot like animals. It made Odette sick to think about, and only served to remind them that their enemy had no reservations, and no mercy.

From the accounts, he'd had a noble death.

"I don't think so," Elsa said, reaching up to wipe at her burning eyes. "But I'm scared for when she does. She… she loved him. I don't know how she'll go on."

Odette nodded, all too familiar with the feeling of losing the one that she loved the most. First her mother, to her father's anger. Then, Elsa, to Everdark's domination.

"Anna's a fighter," she said softly. "It will be hard for her. But she'll make it. Somehow, she will.

For several minutes, they lapsed into silence, holding each other and staring out into the ruined city.

"Hans told me that something ignited inside of him," Elsa said eventually. "He thinks that he's an archmage now, too. An Avenger."

"I…" Odette started, then stopped again. How to explain this? "After Hans died, I had a vision. Like I was swept up and taken somewhere not on this world. An angel lives there, called the Watcher. I know this sounds crazy, but –"

"Hans said something about this place too," Elsa said. "So no, I don't think that it's crazy at all."

"She called me a Mender," Odette said, voice small. "For a long time, I just thought that she was using another colloquialism for a healer, but then something started to change. I… I think I'm one, too."

Elsa glanced down at the brunette. "Is it the same for you, too, then? Hans said that he swore an oath, like I did."

Odette shook her head. "No, it's different. I can't really explain how, but it's different. It… you have to form bonds. I don't think that does it justice."

Elsa glanced down at Odette. Some time, she'd need to probe further, try to learn more about what made them all the same, and what set them apart. But now wasn't the time.

"The Protector. The Avenger. The Mender," Elsa mused.

"We sound like pieces in someone else's game," Odette whispered.

"Everdark said something like that, in Corona," Elsa remembered. It felt like a lifetime ago. "When it was speaking to us through King Frederick, it said that we were just pieces in a game. But it's not like that. The last time, Ashanerat was the only archmage. She had to try to stop Everdark by herself. But we won't have to do it alone. We have each other."

They were quiet again.

Finally, Odette said something that had been on her mind for quite some time. "Elsa, I want you to marry me."

Elsa's eyes widened, and she turned to fully face Odette. "Are you proposing to me?"

Odette characteristically flushed red. "I mean, not really. I don't have a ring, and, well – it's just that after everything that's happened, I thought – "

"You're right," Elsa said, smile widening.

Fluidly, she lowered herself down onto her good leg's knee and took Odette's hand, a pristine and beautiful ring of ice materializing in her fingers.

"Odette Marie Novare, will you marry me?"

Odette nodded, biting her lip and letting the tears run.

For a moment, they were happy.

The End of Arc Six

of Trials of Light and Darkness