Gothel peered out across the water through the lens that had been handed to her. What she saw made her flat out growl in anger. Her aged and withered hand curled tightly around the bronze metal tube in a way that might have cracked a few of the glass disks inside, if she were not so dilapidated. She was mildly aware of the tall man standing next to her who was now beginning to inch away slowly. It was good that he had brought this too her attention, but what it was made her blood boil.

The Queen of Arendelle was standing on top of the wall around the castle, her crystalline dress sparkling in the little sunlight that was making its way through the clouds. But that wasn't the thing that angered her so much. What set her blood on fire was the dark figure standing next to her with his arms folded, whispering something to the Queen. She recognized the figure, how could she forget? He had stabbed her mere hours ago. She didn't know how he had beaten them back, but he had.

Her eye wandered to the rest of the city. There were guards posted at every possible point, cutting off any real invasion that she could've even hoped on mounting. She pulled the spyglass away from her face and threw it at the man who had handed it to her. He was barely able to catch it in time to stop it from clattering to the floor, and said in a concerned voice "What should we do, Mother? Should we stick to plan?"

She turned away from the castle and stomped away back towards the captain's quarters, calling over her shoulder "Speed this ship up! We're going to breech the wall of the castle and take it by force!"

Alex's voice cried out to the rest of those working the deck "Hurry this thing up! It doesn't need to survive this impact!" The ship lurched slightly as those who were generating gas and blowing it into the sails redoubled their efforts. If they hadn't known that the ship was on a ramming course, than they did now.

Gothel placed a hand of the door to the captain's cabin and looked to the sky. Her cloud of gas, a spell so meticulously prepared and specialized, had been blown away by a sudden gale. At first she was willing to attribute this to bad luck but now it seemed something else. The storm that appeared to have conjured the winds appeared much too quickly. That had been the first stage of her plan, and it had been completely negated in what had seemed an instant.

But now with the appearance of the assassin who had tried to kill her almost guaranteed that the wind was not a natural occurrence. So he had tipped them off. She couldn't help but wonder what was in it for him. How much was he being paid? Certainly she could double it, if not triple it. And if she couldn't, than it would be an easy thing to bluff, than stab him in the back. Her mind dredged up the memory of the letter from Tillman, the man that had offered himself up for her use, and had served her well enough while he had been alive. It had mentioned something of a new bodyguard the Queen had gotten, and about the possibility that he could have magic powers similar to the Queen or herself. The assassin had certainly demonstrated magic powers. He had used ice powers, much like the Queen's. Gothel wondered if the Queen had found some way to share her powers similar to how Gothel made her followers more potent. If she had, than Gothel could expect much more resistance form the guards than she had originally thought.

A great cracking sound was heard, and she turned to look behind her just as the ship gave a lurch far greater than the first one. The ship almost felt like it was thrown from the water, and Gothel was thrown to the hard wooden boards of the deck. Her frail body almost broke against the deck, and she felt the wound that the assassin caused reopen and start to leak again.

As she fell, a string of curses and swearing exploded from her mouth and continued after she hit the floor. Only seconds after she fell someone was picking her up as gently as they could. This did very little to quell Gothel's mixture of anger and surprise however.

She pulled herself up using whoever had tried to help her, practically throwing them to the ground in the process. The spyglass that she had been holding only moments before rolled across the deck and hit her foot lightly. She bent down and picked it up. Straightening up as far as her old back would allow, she could see the cause of the disturbance without even using the tool.

The water from the shore to the ship had frozen solid. It wasn't the kind of frozen that she had seen in Corona occasionally, covering only the top layer of the water and leaving the majority of the rest liquid. Instead the solid ice was at least six feet thick, maybe more. She could only imagine the damage that the ship must have taken from such a sudden stop.

She brought the spyglass up to her face and peered back at where she had seen the Queen. She was looking to her side at the person that Gothel assumed to be her bodyguard. Something else caught her attention, though. A glint of light reflected from something metallic. She shifted the position of the spyglass and saw a bright polished cannon coming to bear on the ship.

Everything, quite literally everything that she had done in order to get to the Queen had been ruined by this impudent little assassin. Months of planning, months of waiting, all undone in an instant. The second that he had entered their camp, all of her plans had been ruined. He had forced her hand, made her throw out all of her careful planning, and put all of her faith into a foolish headlong charge. And now not even her hurriedly calculated charge would work.

"Everybody charge!" she shouted as loud as she could. As soon as the words left her mouth, those of her number who were blowing gas into the sails refocused their energy on getting off of the ship and making their way to the castle. Those on the deck of the ship simply leapt off, falling at least twenty feet to the hard ice below. Gothel knew that their "improvements" would protect them from the danger of the fall, but she did not bear the same effects. No, she preferred to not have to put up with the drawbacks that those pearls brought with them. True that she might have never told them about the limitations that they had, but they had never asked.

.

.

.

Nathan said over to Elsa. "See, I knew you could do It." in as pleased a voice as he could manage. He looked away from the now solid fjord to Elsa's face. She was looking down at the ice with an expression of mild horror. He looked again out to the ice in an attempt to see what had her so worried.

She whispered almost too quietly to hear "That's not what I'm worried about. I'm worried about unfreezing it."

Nathan's smile faded slightly. He wasn't entirely sure how to respond to that. He cast his gaze back to the ship and noted the increased movement from those on the deck. They started to spill over the sides and drop to the solid ice below. A few of the orbs that he knew were accompanied by the gas forms of those who had pledged themselves wholly to Gothel. He turned back to Elsa and said "Get inside, find Anna, and hole up somewhere."

Elsa gave him a worried look, but nodded and turned to leave. Nathan gestured to her as she walked away and said to one of the guards near him, saying "Go make sure nothing gets to her, alright?" he nodded and set off, trailing behind Elsa.

Nathan shifted his attention back to the ship and said to the Captain at his side "Are you ready for this?" The man looked on at the charge starting from the ship, and Nathan heard him gulp nervously. "Its not like I've much of a choice, do I?"

Nathan laughed and pulled out one of the altered charms. The Shroud of Shadows charm thrummed in his palm, and he gripped it tightly for a moment before going to clip it to his bandoleer. He stopped just a second before it was on and said "Well? Are you going to move to engage?" gesturing out at the ship that was just beginning to disgorge its foul cargo. Without answering Nathan directly, the man shouted at the top of his lungs "Charge!" and his cry was taken up by countless other men.

All at once a wave of guardsmen rushed forward from the coast and across the plane of ice. The Captain was to stay in the castle and guard it from any who got through, but Nathan was held by no such obligation. Clipping the bone charm fully to his bandoleer, he took one step forward and dropped off of the wall. The startled cry of the Captain brought a smile to his face, though he doubted that anyone would see it even if anyone were looking at him.

He dropped for a moment, simply letting the howling wind rush through his ears and sap his outer layer of warmth. Than after that moment was over he braced his body, and a wind, not the kind Elsa had summoned, but rather a temperature-less and noise-less gust, blew against his body, forcing him against the wall and slowing his fall down significantly. He felt what he imagined were a few bricks come loose from the bizarre nature of the descent but ignored them. The hard rocks that the castle were built upon rushed up quickly at him, but he steeled his nerves and braced his legs.

His feet met with the unyielding rock and thankfulness for both his powers and his well-designed boots flooded him. Without the two, he was sure that the impact would've broken his legs, but as it stood he had only a deep ache in his ankles. He straightened up and glanced up at the wall. He hadn't left any kind of trail to mark his maneuver, and he wondered briefly how many people would not believe him if he told them what he did.

The sound of a musket going off snapped his mind back to attention. The guard had set up a firing line along as wide an area as they could, and were beginning to shoot Gothel's people down. Nathan doubted that the line would do sufficient damage to completely stop the charge, but it would certainly blunt it. a few of those charging fell from the volley, but the majority kept on running.

Nathan started running off. He was to the side of the firing line, so he had to stay out of the main fight until the firing stopped to avoid being hit. He reached up as far as he could without putting himself in the line of fire and waited.

Instead of just sitting idle and wasting time, Nathan took the time he had to pick out figures in the crowd. The first one that he tried to find was Gothel. He expected this to be the easiest one, given her hunched stature and cloaked figure, but she turned out elusive amongst the running waves of those in her thrall. He realized that she must have stayed aboard the ship in an effort to protect herself. Shifting his focus away from Gothel, though resolving to keep an eye out for her, he went about marking other targets in his mind. He recognized the tall form of Alex among those in the charge. He was behind the main charge, and seemed to be driving them forward. He was yelling and screaming all kinds of profanities, some of them in languages that Nathan wasn't familiar with. As he did so his mouth became a fount of green gas that poured out over his lips and polluted the air around him. His mouth wasn't the only source of gas. It was like it poured directly out of his skin, veiling him and all those near him in a shroud of what Nathan could safely assume was toxic gas.

Alex wasn't the only one giving off toxic fumes, however. Every single one of the people charging was leaving behind a trail of toxin behind them. It was billowing up and off into the distance quickly, thanks to Elsa's wind magic, but Nathan knew that that wouldn't matter much if they got into melee range. And they intended to get into melee. He could see various weapons clutched in their hands, ranging from ornate looking objects like candlesticks and pieces of fine wood that might have once been part of some furniture, to blades and cudgels that all looked either wicked sharp, dangerously heavy, or both.

Nathan could see that they were nearing the firing line now, and decoded that an attack from the back would be a welcome assist for the men in the front. Sprinting off again, he got around the back and ran along the same path they ran, staying to the side slightly to avoid their gas. The two forces, fanatics and guardsmen, clashed against each other with cries and shouts that echoed mightily around in the fjord. Just as the real fighting started, Nathan clipped his altered Burning Gaze charm to his bandoleer, figuring that if he was dealing with both weapons and gas than he would rather his targets stand still. He cast one eye back to the ship, still disturbed by Gothel's lack of appearance, but dismissed the thought. If she was in there, than she wasn't going anywhere. She would be sighted by those on the wall the second that she poked her head out.

As Nathan entered into the fight the whole world seemed to change. The air was warmer than it had been just a moment ago, and the air smelled rancid. The noise of the howling wind that had filled Nathan's ears seconds ago was replaced by the clashing of metal on metal, and in some cases metal on wood. The thing that caught Nathan's eye the most was soldiers at the front line of the combat gagging and choking. Nathan knew that this was the same issue that he had tried to prevent using Elsa's wind, but it had been countered by the close formation the fanatics were sticking too. As Nathan reached striking distance of one of the larger men, the mark on his hand blazed to life through his glove and a blue light shimmered in his palm for a moment. Than throwing his palm out towards the mass of fighters, he resisted the urge to let out a cry and pulsed his power through the spell. The effect was immediate. Those fighting with melee weapons slowed considerably, making easy targets for the guardsmen. The haze of gas that surrounded the group was cleaved entirely in two, and the guard was quick to take advantage. They worked their way between the two now separate groups and started advancing, pushing them away from each other.

Just as it seemed sure that the force had been divided and doomed to fall, the cloaks fell away from the shrouded figures and the gas forms attacked those who were holding the line between the two. They choked and stumbled away, some fell to the ground, and the mob of Gothel's minions reunited. It was now that Nathan decided to dive into the fray, swinging and striking like a madman.

In spite of the spell used to divide them, the mob still seemed largely unaware of Nathans presence. Those who were aware fell quickly, with startled and terrified expressions on their faces. Nathan could only imagine what he looked like, cloaked in a twisted and writhing shadow and with eyes so full of what Anna and Kristoff had said to be anger and hate. His movements were quick, sped by his adrenalin and determination, but not by the altered zephyr charm. He figured that the worst thing he could do was get knocked down by something he didn't see and be stunned in the middle of a toxic cloud.

Many fell to Nathan's blade. He continued to lunge, parry, and slash countless opponents. There were a few close calls where he had only just been able to knock a blade away or to slip from a firm grasp. As he kept slicing and cutting away the cloud grew thicker and thicker. The gas from those who had fallen didn't dissipate as quickly as the rest of it had, and Nathan soon found himself battling against his own lungs as much as against Gothel's people. His lungs strained for fresh air and made his vision blur.

He leaped backwards out of the fray and gasped for air. His muscles felt heavy and his mind was clouded. In spite of the harsh conditions of the fight, many of the guardsmen were still fighting on. It seemed that the charge that Gothel had started had been halted completely. Despite this, there were still too many fighting to consider the battle even close to over.

His attention turned to the wall of the castle, and what he saw made his heart sink like a rock. The old, hunched, cloaked form of Gothel was hovering above the wall, the entire bottom half of her body a swirling mass of gas. She was blowing fumes all over the courtyard, and Nathan just saw the Captain's head fall behind the parapets.

Gothel looked down at him, and the broad smile on her face fell quickly. Her actions sped up and she seemed to get a little desperate. The lower half of her body reformed and she dropped to the wall, than leaped down into the courtyard and out of sight.

Nathan cursed under his breath. She could fly? That was not something that he had been anticipating. He cast one last look back at the fight just in time to see a man shoot a floating pearl point-blank with his musket. A loud cry split its way across the ice, barely audible over the wind and the battle. The gas that had been holding the pearl up in the air seemed to spasm, than it floated down to the ice and dissipated. The shards of the pearl were scattered over the rest of the battle. Nathan felt some measure of assurance from this, and turned his focus to Gothel.

He hurriedly clipped the altered zephyr charm to his bandoleer and started sprinting off towards the shore. A few stray shots from the fight slammed into the ice at his feet, nearly hitting him, but he ran on. The shots were likely from a few guardsmen who mistook him for one of Gothel's troops. He wouldn't blame them if he looked half as monstrous as he thought he did.

His feet, a blur to even him, hit the hard stone of the harbor and almost made him stumble. He caught himself on the iron chain that served as a guard to keep people from falling into the water and started running again. As he approached the bridge from the city to the castle the guards posted there, apparently not aware that Gothel had already infiltrated the wall, formed a line and readied their weapons. Not wanting to waste the time it would take talking to them, Nathan simply leapt over them. He went soaring over their heads, propelled by the same wind that had kept him on the wall earlier. His feet met with the stone flatly, making Nathan cringe slightly. He was thankful that the impact had not stunned him.

As he reached the end of the bridge and entered the courtyard, the sight that he found almost stole his breath out of his chest. Everyone who had been in the courtyard was down flat on the ground. Nathan didn't take the time to check whether they were breathing or not. That wasn't what was important now. What was important was Elsa. He had to make sure she was alright.

He removed the Zephyr charm from his chest and pocketed it. The speed it granted would do him little good in the cramped hallways. In the distance the sound of the battle on the fjord continued, serving as a reminder to Nathan what would happen if Elsa fell. It was likely Arendelle would too.

He wiped the blood off of his sword with his sleeve. The splinters of bone and viscous fluid dripped off of his arm slowly. He gripped the handle of the great door and pulled it open. The warm air flooded out invitingly, but it didn't hide the trickling of green along the floor and around Nathan's feet. He walked inside the now dark building, ready for anything.

Authors thing:

And here is the stuff i said would happen.

apologys for the short chapter, finals are upon me and its in my best interests to pass my classes.

aside from all that, tell me what you think! I always feel like emotions in my story come across pretty heavy-handed, and that kind of annoys me.

Review! Follow! whatever you want!