Meltdown
by Concolor44
Author's Note:
First of all I want to thank everyone who has reviewed and Followed and Favorited. Your support means a lot to me.
Second, I wish to apologize for the purely ridiculous span of time since my last post. Life has been kicking my tail, and MOST days I just haven't had the emotional energy to write.
Lastly, I'd like to quote Rapunzel as regards the events of this chapter: "Don't freak out, don't freak out, don't freak out!"
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Chapter 34: Violation
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Monday 02 August 1841, 5:35pm
"Under no circumstances."
"But I need to be there in order to …"
"Absolutely not."
"Mikael, be reasonable …"
"Reasonable!" The old gentleman was obviously containing his wrath by the slimmest of margins. "Was it reasonable when you hared off looking for the Princess by yourself?! Not even a word to the Guard! It was nearly three quarters of an hour between the time someone realized you were gone and the point where the watchman spotted your … that … ice thing. My God in Heaven, Elsa! We were all out of our minds with worry! I had never before felt that you were entirely reckless, but today you have out-done your sister, and that is a difficult feat. To be blunt, your performance deserves a spanking!"
The Queen's mouth fell open.
"And now, on top of that, you want to put yourself in harm's way again?! You already know this man is a killer and uses the Forbidden Arts in his evil! How in Hell's nine levels could you even entertain the notion that I'd let you within sight of that stable?!"
Drawing herself up to her most regal height (and the top of her head still barely reached Mikael's chin) she gave him a penetrating stare. "Admiral. You are not considering all the ramifications. In the first place, we need this man alive if at all possible."
"Yes. You said that. You want to extract the secret of that poison from him."
"Precisely. And while your men are well trained in dealing death, capturing this 'Jan' without loss would seem problematic. I don't want you to lose anyone else. You already told me two good men in your Rifle Corps had fallen. I'll not have the Marines suffering on my account as well."
"That's why we have to craft a plan and carry out the attack with stealth. He'll never even know we're there until …"
"How do you know that?"
"I have several Marines who are extremely good at moving around undetected."
"Undetected from magic?"
"… Ah … hummm. … Well, as to that …"
"This is my issue with your plan, Admiral. We know that 'Jan' is using sorcery. I don't know how proficient he is. I suspect he is new to the game since he chose to use such crude methods in his attack, but I do know that he can employ Infernal magicks to a degree. How will you counter that?"
Mikael stroked his chin, his other hand clenched at the small of his back. "Perhaps Torvik would have something we might use."
"I am sure the Bishop would be happy to help any way he can. I am also sure he has never come up against anything like this before."
"And you have?"
Elsa fought the urge to rub her temples in frustration. "Mikael … I can fight magic with magic. I can encase this man in solid ice from a distance. I have my wards to protect me against any weapon that might come my way. I have no intention of-"
"The wards, as I am given to understand, did not protect Senor de la Maria from the magic on that bolt."
Savagely did she suppress her gut reaction to that statement. She didn't have the time or the luxury for a mental break down. Not just yet. Drawing a long breath to try to center herself, she countered, "His wards were … not as strong. He had to craft them himself because the ones I put on him were quickly absorbed. My personal wards do not have that deficiency."
He adopted a more formal tone. "Your Majesty … for all practical purposes, you ARE Arendelle. My duties to my kingdom and the office of the Queen Regnant inform my decisions. I am not allowed to allow you to put yourself in danger."
"Be that as it may. I will not be getting any closer to him than I absolutely have to until he is immobilized. But I will be with any force you field. So it comes down to there being three choices available to you: You can either put me where I can be the most use to you, as part of the attack; you can hold back and let me do it all myself; …"
"Elsa, please!"
"… or you work around me as best you can manage. But one way or another, I will be there when this man is taken."
About half a minute passed while he tried to stare her down, finally signaling his defeat through a tiny slump of his shoulders. Sighing deeply, he said, "You'll need your horse."
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6:48pm
The plan was sound. Mikael and Jørgen both said so. They had confidence in it, even given the small amount of time they'd had to put it together, but then that's what practice drills were all about.
It was supposed to be straightforward. Simple. Easy, even. After all, they knew where he was, knew a good bit about what he looked like, and knew how he was sure to be armed. All they had to do was sneak up on the building with battering rams, knock the front door down and simultaneously crash through the (rotten) back wall and into the room 'Jan' was using for his inner sanctum, let the Marines storm the place, arrest this 'Jan' character, and begin planning his execution while Elsa extracted the secrets of poison manufacture from his brain. However, as the saying goes, no battle plan survives contact with the enemy.
'Easy' disappeared in the unbelievably heavy fog that suddenly shrouded the building.
'Simple' got dragged up onto the bank and gutted before they even had the old stable surrounded when a crossbow bolt streaked out of the gray opacity and took one of the Marines through the leg.
From where Elsa sat her horse some hundred paces away (and surrounded by the Queen's Own Guard at Mikael's implacable insistence) it looked like their perfect plan was falling to pieces. She hazarded a glance into the astral plane …
… and recoiled in horror at the leaking pustule of unalloyed evil squatting in the dilapidated building. Gasping a quick breath, she screamed, "GET BACK!" and then threw up a hurried wall of ice between the men and the monster.
A hail of black spikes came roaring out of where the front of the building would be, punching at least two dozen holes in Elsa's ice, but the men, now alert and retreating, managed to avoid getting skewered.
"GET AWAY!" Elsa screamed again. "RUN! HE'S COMING!" Her horse and three of those near her all shied and bucked, their eyes suddenly wild. The Queen pulled hers back hard and jumped off, ran between her Guard and the evil fog, and erected a tall triangular fort around them all, the acute angle pointed at the peril.
None too soon did she complete that task. The black bolts flurried out again, only this time centered on her. Most of them SPANGED off to either side, deflected by the shallow angle of incidence, but two stood quivering in the very point. In a few seconds the ice around them whiffed away into vapor, dropping them onto the ground.
The darts carried the contamination with them. Elsa could feel the evil magic involved. The familiarity was terrifying; she shuddered violently as images of torture and death and blood, blackened and blistered skin forced themselves into her mind. Her legs buckled …
"Yer Majesty!"
Haunted eyes locked onto those of two of her Guard.
"Just pick 'er up! We gotta get th' Hell outta here!"
A few moments of close contact and bumping along over the Guardsman's shoulder helped her regain her senses. "Alred, please put me down."
"But, Yer Majesty, I …"
"Now, please."
"But th' Adm'ral said …"
"I have a very good idea of what he said," she muttered, "but if you don't put me down, I'll freeze your boots where you stand."
He set her upright; she held his forearm while regaining her balance. "Thank you." Turning back to look at the stable, her brows drew together. The fog bank had grown to at least ten man-heights tall, and was now a muddy, roiling mass streaked with reddish-black. Quickly shaking out her arms, she allowed her magic to invest her hands.
Erupting from the ground some twenty paces in front of the abandoned building, a colossal wall of ice quickly grew to overarch the evil mist. Another rose to meet it from the other side, creating a glowing, crystalline arch. Then the ice grew from the side of each wall, curving around to completely enclose the ramshackle, mist-shrouded structure. Elsa concentrated on making it thicker, harder, impenetrable …
A red lance of power streaked up out of the fog and blew the top off the arch. Dozens of cracks appeared in the ice.
The Snow Queen staggered back two steps, bumping into a Guard, who steadied her and kept her from falling completely. She squeezed her eyes shut against the sudden pain, drawing deep breaths to try to focus.
Well, that didn't work, went her logic. Looks like containment's out. I need to shut him down before he hurts anyone else. She looked up at the fracturing tower of ice, frowned in thought for a couple of seconds, then made a quick, downward-slashing gesture. Half a thousand spikes grew out of the ice, all pointed inward, all advancing quickly to the old stable, crushing the roof, breaking the walls …
A storm of stone answered her thrust.
Growling out of the ground in gouts of dirt and gravel, the whirling column sucked in the evil fog, growing red as blood. Two yellow eyes, purulent boils of hate, opened near the upper end. Limbs like stony clubs grew from its center, smashing into Elsa's arch and sending huge chunks of it flying in all directions.
Gritting her teeth, the Queen banished the arch and all its fragments, then a sweeping gesture brought a field of blue, translucent spikes spearing up from all around the eldritch thing, piercing it over and over and over …
It recoiled briefly in what might have been mistaken for pain, but then swung ponderously at the spikes, shattering some of them, and losing significant pieces of itself in the process.
"Come on, you abomination!" Elsa's scream echoed across the distance. "Come and try your hand for real!" She made several swift gestures, muttering to herself. A soft golden glow outlined her form, seeping into the ground and stretching toward the golem. Smaller streams flowed to either side of her, creating small, bright pools.
Turning its attention her way, it gave a rasping, hollow cry, growing taller and more massive, and lifted its 'arms' high, meaning to crush and kill …
… when a wide and deadly blade of hardened water sliced up out of the ground in front of it, and neatly bisected it. The two halves fell away into separate piles of rubble. As the dust began to settle, the stable (what was left of it) came back into view, quite a bit the worse for wear. A figure could be seen staggering around among the debris.
"Captain! There he is!" Elsa was, at this point, more than willing for her soldiers to take it from here. It wasn't that she was tired or drained, but she was deeply and emotionally disgusted from having her magic interact with that of the sorcerer. Her soul felt like it had been dragged through a midden. What she ardently desired just then was a long, long bath. Maybe two.
Several Marines ran toward the man in the building. He noticed them. Lifting a massive book that he was holding, he began reading from it.
The gravel golem came back to life and stood. The Marines skidded to a halt.
Narrowing her eyes, Elsa declared, "Oh, no you don't." She offered up a very quick prayer, gathered her power in front of her chest for a long moment, concentrating it and forming it to her will, then launched it at the thing threatening them.
Twice before, and twice only, had she done this, the first time when she and Carlos were experimenting with their newly-enhanced powers. She had been disappointed with the result at the time because it wasn't as flashy as the corona-bright beam her fiancé could produce. She'd thought it something of a dud at the time. Later, though, Carlos had opined that perhaps it simply needed a target. After all, he'd pointed out, she was able to freeze an entire mountain solid to stop the volcano he accidentally made. She'd given that a lot of thought, and then tried it on a large boulder near the outer wall of the palace garden.
The result had made an impression on her. That's why she was doing the same thing now.
Most of the larger rocks in the center of the evil creation suddenly glowed blue for about half a second before violently exploding. The top half of what was left fell down into the bottom, scattering debris for fifty paces in all directions. Elsa hoped that a stray rock would knock the sorcerer senseless, but luck was not hers. Instead, he was surrounded by a shimmering dome of energy that deflected whatever came his way. Through the distortion, Elsa could see him frantically flipping through the large tome he held.
Oh, ho! Maybe all his ability comes from that book. So thinking, she took another quick glance into the astral plane: it glowed with an evil so intense it nearly blinded her. Slamming the portal shut, she gathered more of her power, then thrust it straight at the man and the facinorous thing in his hands … and that's when the real battle began.
It tried to grab her magic, but only managed to deflect it, not hold it. The two forms of power were just too different. After a few breaths, a pair of dark tentacles appeared, stretching toward her, the knobbed ends a collection of hooks and spikes and razor edges.
Elsa had suspected such an attack. As soon as she saw them, she gestured to either side where the golden energy had puddled: sudden swirls of icy crystals popped up and then vanished, leaving behind a pair of … Guardians. Taller at the shoulder than three men, the things gave Death a physical form. Each long, crocodilian head sported jagged jaws that could swallow a man whole. The sleek bodies, reminiscent of great cats, were carried on six massive, clawed legs. Appendages not unlike the striking limbs of the praying mantis sprang from their shoulders, and their long, jointed, prehensile tails ended in wicked spikes.
Leaping forward, the Beasts attacked the evil tentacles, rending and shredding, stabbing and stomping. Jan's attempted strike vanished in a puff of smoke.
"Go get him," she whispered to them, sorry that it had come to this. She had no illusions about how much of 'Jan' would be left when they were done with him. That meant she'd have to rely on her own magic to save Carlos, and that prospect frankly terrified her.
But … that isn't what happened.
'Jan' didn't fight the Beasts. Instead, he turned on his heel and raced away, his legs lengthening monstrously. Still, Elsa's creations gained on him.
Afraid of losing sight of him, she re-created the huge, spidery thing she'd used to ride back to the castle, stepped up on it, and followed the battle at speed.
"Your Majesty! Come back!"
She ignored them.
Alred laid his hand on his companion's shoulder. "She ain't list'ning to ya."
The other man slumped. "Ol' Tough-as-Nails is gonna crucify us."
"Can't be helped now." He watched as the Queen's form dwindled. "Honestly, though, didn' SHE save US just a minute ago?"
"… Well … yeah."
"And even if she'd'a took us with 'er … what'd we be able to do?"
"… Okay. Good point." He looked back at Alred. "Did you see those – those things she made?"
"Yeah."
"Did you ever …"
"Nope. Never. Didn't know she could do that. But, y'know, considerin' what she done a week ago? With those guards made o' snow? I'm not a BIT surprised."
Elsa, meanwhile, was gaining slowly on her Beasts, who were gaining slowly on 'Jan'. They ran silently, all of them, and the sorcerer looked over his shoulder every few seconds. He was streaking along the fjord shoreline, clearing boulders and pools, bushes and bracken with breakneck speed. But Elsa's two creations were single-minded in their pursuit … so much so that they ignored everything except their target, even when the target stopped, and turned, and raised his hands.
Elsa was maybe three hundred paces behind them when the Beasts attacked. She didn't see what 'Jan' did, but she saw the result. Large pieces of each Beast simply whiffed away into steam. They flopped down on the rough beach, still trying to get closer to their prey, even with only half a body. A very un-royal phrase flitted through the Queen's head. Again she gathered her magic to herself, advancing on her adversary with frightening speed.
He turned away again, but this time he didn't run. Instead, two pairs of translucent wings sprang from his back, and he took to the air, veering off over the fjord and gaining altitude steadily.
With a scream of frustration, Elsa guided her spider to the water, freezing it and jumping down onto the ice. Pouring her power into the fjord, she threw up a long, long, long spire of ice, aimed at the fleeing sorcerer. His flying was slower than his running had been, but he was already forty man-heights up. The ice gained on him … closed in … tapped one foot. He skewed away, dropping a little but adding some horizontal distance. Elsa strained, pushing her ice after him, bending the top of the spire …
When both were nearly sixty man-heights in the air, the ice at the base of the spire cracked and heaved, and the whole structure fell ponderously over.
"No." It was hardly even a whisper. Tears pricked Elsa's eyes as she watched her quarry fly slowly away to the southwest, finally vanishing over a mountain. She sank to her knees, cheeks wet, and bowed her head.
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