"Frozen Again: 'Faith, Hope, and Love"
Act III
Chapter 51
"An Officer and a Gentleman"
The fishing villages that dotted the rugged coastal regions of the scenic Lofoten archipelago island of Moskensoya appeared from the air lofted distance both peaceful and quiet to the casual observer. But the nearer King Agdar and Prince Hans, astride their pair of flying mares, approached, the less tranquil the misleading scenery looked against the imposing mountain backdrop of this sub-arctic region.
"Thank God fishing season has ended." From where the pair had been scouring the horizon for any signs of the wicked Draugen's whereabouts, Hans' keen ears hear King Agdar mumble the bittersweet sentiment under his breath across the air stream way.
The royal ruler who tried to keep himself abreast of every area of activity concerning his people, apparently knew his kingdom and the local workings of it well. It was breaking his heart, as both he and Hans begin to survey the disarrayed path of destruction, that the foul monster had left terror in its rampaged wake northward.
The startled red-haired Prince dutifully follows the Norwegian Admiral's lead horse down to the Moskenes area where the two mares land on the sandy beach of the small unpopulated village of Å (pronounced Uh) at the archipelago's southernmost tip.
Down into the low elevation valley of only 10 meters at its highest, the lovely village of Å was thankfully sparsely inhabited, especially when the spring's busy fishing season had concluded The fisherman would seek out their catch to harvest in other more northern coastal locations, following their swimming underwater livelihood upstream.
The red fisherman cabins on stilts called 'rorbu,' were well-built to weather the many sea storms and remain sturdy and lasting for the seasonally frequented workstations of the fishers near the shore.
But looking upon them now, the broken down and smashed to smithereens painted red traditional rorbu were anything but sturdy.
The strong birchwood hewn cabins and sheds near the coast meant for hanging the skrei - the codfish catch that were preserved and salted to make stockfish for the rest of the year- had been torn apart and disassembled stick by stick and crushed roof shingle by shingle when something far worse and far more malignant than any passing sea storm arrived in Å.
"Are there any injured?" Horrified, Prince Hans leaps his agile long legs from his white steed to rush towards the devastated row of red cabins. There, King Agdar was delicately using his ice magic to sift through the pile of rubble where many proud fishing cabins once stood.
"Only the few beyond our help, now."
In his young life, Hans had seen some severe shipboard accidents and heard of foul weather, catastrophe related damage back home in the Southern Isles that had caused much injury and tragic suffering before. But none as thoroughly devastating so close up and personal as this savage attack.
The young man swallows back hard as he watches the knit-brow King bow a reverent head and murmur a soft prayer over the unresponsive form of an old fisherman who was either too stubborn or too slow to even try to leave his sea edge post when the massive sea monster reared it ugly head close by his cabin.
The old fisherman's worn and beaten down bloodsoaked body displayed a cracked open skull that had been crushed by the huge weight of the Draugen's plunging webbed feet, as the careless beast stepped on the shore, crunching whatever lay within its fearful path.
"Oh, no! Your Majesty, there's more!" Surveying the macabre scene, Hans' eyes trace the large lizard-like clawed footprint cast where the sea monster had dug into the shore's mud from the poor fisherman's demolished hut down its continuing razed trail. Soon thereafter, it must've been challenged by a pair of brave middle-aged men who were just docking their overturned fishing boats near the shore when the awful monster struck.
Their strangled, mangled and seaweed eviscerated forms were lying in pools of blood mingled with the mud and sediment the innocent men had been smashed down into. It appeared they had been torn asunder and then squashed under the evil sea creature's gargantuan feet, as if the courageous souls were no more than infinitesimal insignificant insects to be crushed under the Draugen's cruel, heartless foot.
Hans leans over the mashed corpses to check for any pulses or signs of life, although his mind screamed they were lost already. And graciously so, in their dismembered, compressed and pulverized states, he thinks as the Prince kneels, aghast at how terribly gory and horrific their deaths had been at that wicked insane pirate turned malignant sea demon's grisly domination.
"All of these innocent people… We were too late…" Hans' lyrical voice genuinely was moved to emotion behind the lump in his throat at the gruesome scene and many more like it surrounding the Draugen's vicious charge run amok.
By the time Hans looks up from the brutal barbaric scene to scan the Midnight Sun skyline for the perpetrator, Agdar, in far more livid tones, was already icing up.
The Ice King's pale eyes glow with that unearthly blue-white light, his very sub-zero breath smoking from his flared nostrils and frosted mouth as he speaks.
"No more." The Ice King breathes the two simple words as his indignant anger begins to overwhelm his vast mental frozen control. Ice spike formations suddenly jut out along his wide stately shoulders and arms and travel all the way down his incensed back to pierce through his Navy blue royal tunic.
"So help me God, I swear that this foul-stenched vile creature will be eradicated from this earth!" Irate Agdar's low baritone announces his seething wrath upon the murderous Draugen for cutting short so viciously the lives of any of his precious citizens, no matter how elderly or unknown, each life was important in his eyes.
"Sir! I believe I have spotted the monster on that distant mountain range up there!" Just then, Hans' proficient keen gaze notices the preternatural being slithering up the distant mountain.
"It appears to be making its way north along the coastline, as if it requires not to be away from the ocean for more than a short stint of time." Hans intelligently extrapolates from his swift assessment of the Draugen's monstrous footprints that were becoming gradually more clumsy as the saltwater creature moves further away from the shore.
Indeed, the further it moved from the sea, the grasping creature had lost its dizzied bearings as it stumbled up the mountain. In fury and rage set upon this bright country that had wronged him, the black-hearted, vengeful old pirate rampaged obliteration techniques before its bodily functions made it desperate to search for an entry inlet back into the seawater down the other side of the mountain. There, it could recharge before going on its vengeful aggressive attack again.
"Then it will not be allowed to see the ocean again, just as these good seamen never again will." Enraged, the frost breathing King leaves a trail of ice behind his incensed, anger-unleashed path as he strides purposefully across the land.
Frightening, spike-backed Ice King Agdar mounts his flying steed as he digs his sharp as ice boot heels in to urge the Snow Queen's borrowed mare to quickly surge forward.
Ice particles spill down in his chilled subzero wake as Agdar wordlessly heeds his second-in-command's directional indication.
Hans swiftly follows suit on his own flying horse, keeping as close to his Norwegian leader while managing to stay a few lengths to the side continually and maneuver just out of range of the King's deadly sharp intractable ice streaks unloosed to scatter across the open air.
Wisely choosing his moment when the ice exuding from his flying companion had somewhat calmed, Hans calls out after several minutes of high-speed high flying through the empty skies in a direct course toward the quickly nearing peak.
"Your Majesty! I feel compelled to forewarn you that Queen Elsa's ice powers were apparently impotent against that malignant creature before." Feeling the need to voice this chary circumspect to the Admiral bearing his icy wrath for all to see, Hans was already thinking of the battle campaign ahead, once they had commandeered the sea monster.
After all, devising masterful plans on his feet was one of the erudite Prince's greatest strengths.
And, if the King's ice magic blast failed to defeat this contemptible menace of a merciless enemy, Hans Westergaard would have to pool all of his cognitive intellect and innovative resources to lend his support to the struggle.
"My daughter, sir, is but a child. And certainly not a naval man, as you and I. We have been trained to be prepared to improvise in fierce battle." Agdar did not intend to sound so condescending, pompous, or patronizing, but being from the old-school, where serving as an officer and a gentleman meant a great deal to a man's psyche, the cool detached demeanor his ice manifestation brought about in him often chose his frosted words.
As for Hans, he quite astutely decides to merely nod, though he himself did not consider Queen Elsa of Arendelle either a child or anything less than his intellectual equal.
And when it came to her vast ice powers, Elsa certainly was far his superior in creativity and capability more than any officer he had ever served under before, and Prince Hans was savvy enough to recognize it.
But, for now, Prince Hans wisely keeps his own counsel, as his horse soars beside Elsa's traditionally conservative father's ice tail blazing one.
After airborne miles of travel by way of the dusky clouds, Agdar and Hans side-by-side, look up towards the intensely scanned scenery ahead. They frantically try to track the deep ilky green monster as it blends in with the tall trees of the dark forest, before it reached the next, more populated town on the other side of the mountain's high peak.
The pair of the Snow Queen's mares soar towards the distant mountain range named Reinebringen several kilometers to the northeast on the southernmost Lofoton island of Moskensoya where the King and Prince were in hot pursuit of the villainous fiend.
"I hope we can locate that polluted monster soon. We're moving into an area that is ideal for a precision offensive strike-point, if we can lure it here. Mt. Reinebringen is uninhabited at this high level." As King Agdar's flying horse hovers past the valley's small fishing village of Reine and moves towards its connected high-altitude misty mountain, he could clearly see the path of devastation that the massive, over 120 foot tall by now Draugen monstrosity had wreaked upon the peaceful landscape.
Agdar had always wanted to visit this beautiful, widely untouched scenic area ever since his youth, when dutiful young Crown Prince Agdar made it his business to know about each and every inch of his country intimately.
But now look at it…
Agdar despondently shakes his frozen cold head, finding his only solace in the fact that the wreckage here had no casualties, the elders of the town having evacuated in time.
Just then, the alerted King glimpses the creature's wriggling seaweed appendages just disappearing around the over 3000 foot tall mountain bend. He knew instinctively he must move with all haste.
"I will ask you not to accompany me, young man. Please stay here and assure there are no evacuation stragglers. And please attend to any wounded victims that may be in the village until I return." The King orders quickly as he readies his steed for flight.
"But, sir –" Hans starts to protest.
"My ice deluge will be, no doubt, overwhelming once I confront the beast. I cannot be responsible for your well-being during my intense frozen onslaught incursion." With that expressed order, the King loftily directs his rearing horse straight upwards to the sheer rock face side of the mountain peak at such a sudden rapid speed any normal human would be dizzied with vertigo by the sudden rise upward.
But Agdar Bernadotte of Arendelle had discovered long ago, that he himself was far beyond normal.
No, he was gifted with powers beyond his imagination, if he only learned to control and wield them to use for good when called upon in hours distress, in defense of this country.
Such as this.
The naval Admiral who was accustomed to doling out orders without any impertinent backtalk does not wait for any as Agdar prompts his magic flying horse over the still freshwater lake partway up the base of the Reinebringen mountain to scale the windward side of the over 3000 foot tall mountain peak, leaving Hans in his proverbial 'snowdust.'
The King and his horse continue to climb at such an increasing breakneck speed that a normal human head, not depressurized with a thickly layered ice encasement that instinctively formed around Agdar's skull, would be traumatized by the sudden, abruptly ear-popping change in altitude.
But the Ice King had discovered in his self testing youth, years ago, that through a great deal of learned control, he could withstand much more than any normal man with many clever innovations, such as this, that came along with his developed ice prowess.
Swiftly up the mountain rise, Agdar and his pure white steed climb, racing against time before the abnormality to nature, in its ravenous unquenchable thirst for raw energy and need for depraved revenge on this great nation, escaped this choice location for the naval man's pitched battle against his vile enemy.
And even now his cryokinetic energies had already been spent in saving his younger daughter's husband from that terrible cave-in collapse just a half-hour or so before, King Agdar would never let his people down.
For more than royal King, more than hereditary sovereign, more than nation ruler or naval leader, Agdar was crowned protector of his citizens. With all the ice magic abilities his Creator had placed at his command, King Agdar would give the last breath of his noble body to serve his countrymen well.
"CAPTAIN CORNELIUS JOL!" The righteous warrior in Agdar of Arendelle would never stoop so low as to shoot an unarmed foe in combat in the back, unannounced.
Although, the clever King uses that moment of the monster's startled, off-balance movement, to take precise aim at the immense creature's turned, more vulnerable, frontal area.
SZZT! SSZZT! SSZZZTT! SSSZZZTTT!
A quad-shot volley of fierce ice blasts at the Draugen directly to each of its four writhing algal attached limbs, to its ending appendages until they were frozen still as solid blocks of ice. The Ice King simultaneously releases the flurry of pelting hail to rain suffering down on the Draugen's multiple extensor projected eyeballs so he couldn't see where his attacker was coming from, until it was all over.
R-RR-OO-ARR—GG-RR-OW-LL!
Knowing his thick verglas engulfed ice blocks would not long survive the vicious creature's wild thrashing and slashing at it with its lacerating multiple haptera cords, Agdar was just biding his time.
Now that he had the sea monster's appendages imprisoned, it could not make a rush towards the vulnerable, populated village within eyesight just at the base of the leeward side of Mt. Reinebringen.
Despite his spent powers that he had not exhibited to any degree even close to this in a dog's age that usually took days to recharge, King Agdar focuses his mind and steadies his hand glowing with ice. It starts to power up with all the monumental amount of frozen cryokinetics at his disposal. Agdar closes his eyes as he prepares to relentlessly coat the entire Draugen with a debilitating ice blast. He would then use all the rest of his energy – every last bit of it – to freeze the despicable enormous aberration of the dark devilish entity into a solid block of ice that would, with any blessed luck, crack and shatter apart in a thousand icy pieces under its own weight.
And finally be rid of from its scourge upon this world, as, no doubt, he, King Agdar, in stretching himself beyond his ice limits until they devour him utterly, too, would be…
But for the sake of his adored nation and the safety of those he loved, Agdar would give it all…
As he moves his flying horse in closer to get a better direct shot that was so supercharged as his never exhibited before, it would certainly deep freeze the malevolent creature, once and for all –
GR-RR-OWWLLL!
But that's when the Draugen erupts in that terrifying deafening reaching roar that instantly sends the on icy edge Norwegian King, who was too close to its double rowed yellowed teeth mouths, back in an instant earsplitting headache of pure throbbing pain behind his rigid brainwaves and frozen temples until King Agdar's blueblood starts to spill from his hemorrhaging ears.
But as the ice King and his disoriented mare tumble listlessly through the thin air above Mt. Reinebringen, the vicious Draugen, though still pinned to the ground due to the ice at his feet, is still able to use the seaweed tentacles attached to his chest to reach out and grab the man off his horse in a stranglehold.
The Draugen mercilessly squeezes the winded life out of Agdar's brave neck, after the King had come so close to single-handedly defeating the legendary otherworldly demon monster…
The Ice King's previous ice wracked sorties and unforgiving attacks had left the frozen thin air high above Mt. Reinebringen so thick with utter cold moisture's accumulation that it had to be cut with a knife to proceed through.
Fortunately, there was one ace swordsman whom the cold never bothered anyway who arrives upon his flying steed as if on cue. He obliges with panache and style that belied the bone-chilling freeze that tried, but failed, to dissuade this extraordinary – yes, warm-blooded – mortal young man from fulfilling his duty.
"Your Majesty!" Fearlessly entering the bitter smoking cold battlefield's lower stratosphere's other subzero temperatures, that's when Hans Westergaard's experienced masterful sword, clashing down to the rescue as it cleanly chops off the deadly strangling haptera algae vines that were cutting off the King's circulation with their poisonous energy draining inducement as well.
Hans takes off more than a few of the tender chest wriggling vines for good measure, leaving monster screaming in pain as he moves into the higher altitude to save King Agdar's life.
EE-EEEKK!
The sea monster squeals in pain as it begins to try to swipe back at the just-out-of-reach rescuer on horseback with its still rendered immobile ice cube coated digits.
Cough! Cough! Cough! Agdar sputters for breath as Hans pulls the spiky-backed frozen King onto his horse to sit behind the rescuing redhead.
The actual bluish blood that had run down from his hemorrhaging ears was stopped when his innate ice thankfully coagulated the blood, but the look in the Ice King's bloodshot blue eyes was anything but complimentary.
"I thought I told you to remain at the mountain base, young man. Did I not?!" The angered vivid blue flashing eyes and raised frigid ice threatening voice would be enough to scare the pants off many a fainter heart.
But clever and witty Prince Hans simply smiled back at his passenger wryly.
"Yes, that is correct. You did instruct the 'young man'. However, you did not command your Vice Admiral to abandon his commanding officer in his most urgent hour of need." The Danish Prince retorts in a haughty manner of speech as he deftly maneuvers his white steed around the vengeful variety of venomous sleep inducing seaweed vines that were thrashing wildly at them as the creature lashes out in unmitigated pain.
Otherwise, it just stands there in screaming aggravation, yet immobilized by the King's ice.
"Besides, I promised Princess Anna that I would have your back, your Majesty. And a gentleman's pledge to a lady is sacrosanct." Hans Westergaard flaunts his high breeding with a saucy reply as he tosses the droll colloquialism over his shoulder to the very father of the young woman in question.
"Then, I suppose I owe my Anna a debt of gratitude, sir, although, I do not condone any officer who disobeys the direct order of his commander, even if the offender has all the proper terms to defend himself with." Agdar responds, the Ice King warming a bit more to the young rapscallion than he, as jealous Papa, intended. But there was an undeniable appeal to the capable young man that he could see Elsa's point of…
"Now, shall you and I finish this foul beast off?" The King asked with a glint behind his ice blue eyes as his snapped fingers call upon his own white horse to fly over alongside so he could transfer over to ride for himself again, as any self-respecting warrior in combat should.
"I am ready now, under your command, Admiral." The Prince dutifully bows his head in a more respectful way now, and Hans send his razor sharp sword to draw from his sheath, fully prepared to start slicing and dicing seaweed into green laver ahead.
R-RR-OO-ARR—!
Right at this moment, the vindictive Draugen roars back to life, livid that it vital chest vines had been sliced off to writhe over the edge of the mountainside. It was somehow able to free at least one of its hands as the Ice King's ice cube hold starts to crumble when it smashed against the rocks.
GG-RR-OW-LL!
Its ferocious scream hits King Agdar again with a blood curdling auditory sound wave that disrupts the rigid brainwaves of the King, momentarily at least. The royal ruler's horse too sinks back down to the mountain's lower elevations, as Hans watches with pressing angst-ridden apprehension.
"Argh!" Agdar cradles his pounding ears and throbbing head in his hands as he settles mindlessly onto his steed's saddle, just about able to hold on and not plummet down the thousands of feet below his airborne equine's ride.
"Your Majesty! Are you all right?" Hans asks in distracted worry, as he watches King Agdar sink down below.
The Dane's racing mind realizes their tactics for a successful victory were limited. Hans had gleaned from his own and Kristoff's last encounter with this Draugen monster, that its magical algae tentacles, not to mention its arms and legs he himself had chopped off as well, grow back.
Its vitally pierced body, that would instantly have killed any other creature in nature's normal scheme, rejected both steel blade and stone tipped arrow. Even its plunged out eyeballs had been re-grown into the far more frightening incarnation and multiplied as the result of Kristoff's plucked out arrow.
As for Ice Queen Elsa's frozen attacks, the energy draining monster even seemed to feed off her very ice's cryokinetics.
So why would her father's frozen magic react with results any differently?
There were very few options left open to the quick study tactician as the halted monster starts to pull each of its ice implanted weighed down feet up from the mountaintop's muddy ground sloshing beneath its massive webbing.
And the gigantic ghost of a decrepit old vindictive seaman was about to exact the revenge it now lived for upon the despised King of Arendelle, who was still recovering his sonic scream addled brain to function where he was exposed on the Reinebringen cliff side.
As the creature strains to pull forward and trudge its rapidly melting ice blocked feet closer to the ledge to where poor King Agdar was just coming to his senses, Hans moves in.
The valiant Prince on his fearless flying steed zips around from the starboard side of the Draugen and charges it head-on –
"Vice Admiral?!" Agdar's shaking head clears just in time to glimpse the daredevil stunt that Prince Hans of the Southern Isles madly attempts in an all out frontal assault on the humongous beast over twenty times Hans', in comparison, puny six foot two human male height.
After concise swift swipes of his punishing sword slices up several more of the beastie's algal weeds that were fending off his incoming blade, Hans arrives at the place where his audacious attack plan fashioned in an outrageous stratagem that none but the bold would ever dare.
And if everything else was lost, the disowned, degradated, disinherited Prince of the Southern Isles, Hans Westergaard, still retained his daring boldness.
Just moments before the ferocious sea monster exacts its evil intent of vengeance upon the weakened King on his knees on the mountainside ledge, Hans slashes left and right its attacking algae vines with a sword tossed back and forth between his ambidextrous grip.
Then Hans makes a diving leap from his white horse's in-flight back to roll in between the Draugen's stocky short legs. They were even more gargantuan sized than the last time the swordsman had sliced off its foot pediments.
And for a repeat double encore performance, this time, as, with two long strokes of his broad naval sword, Hans deducts the monster of its two webbed feet entirely. Its frozen and heavy with ice feet were still stuck to the ground without the rest of the now freed Draugen.
"Foolish boy! What have you done?! It's no use to just cut off any of this mystical creature's depraved parts, young Westergaard! They will simply grow back, even more in size and magnification! And now my ice hold has been wasted!" The frustrated King berates Hans like a father to an errant son, as a power exhausted Agdar recalls the legendary tales of old that spoke of this dreaded monster a.k.a. the Bielgomai of Saami folklore that only grew larger and multiplied with every sliced and diced blow.
"You're absolutely correct. Had merely impairing the fiend been my intention, Admiral Bernadotte. Now, if my calculations are correct…" Hans enigmatically answers the exasperated King in both a respectful agreement and self-righteous dismissive manner. The Danish Prince was confident, if not in his, at times, tentative heart, at least in his quick-adjusting, hands-on ability of deduction and projected judgment. He helps Agdar to his feet with a slung arm around the King's shoulders to move the downed man back away from the monster, writhing in pain.
As the screeching Draugen's self-preservation capabilities kick into play, the extra lizard like toes that expand by number upon its newly re-grown feet, explode their ice encasement that King Agdar had slowed it down with earlier.
Consequently, the ice unchained monster rushes forward towards the pair of men whose backs were dangerously close to the edge of the precarious mountain's deep abyss below—
"Pardon me, your Majesty." After carefully removing himself from propping up the battle weary, exhausted King, Hans suddenly strong-arm shoves a shocked Agdar harshly to the side.
Next, the Danish Prince whips out his weapon of choice in one flowing motion and once again makes a dashing chop of the lower appendages of the monster veering imminently towards him.
"GRRR! HIYAHH! YAHH!"
SS-LL-II-CCEE!
Hans Westergaard's raised sword is thrust down upon the Draugen's ankles straight through to the heel of its foot at such an accurate downwards 45° angle that the monstrous creature pitches forward. Its speeding forward killing momentum sends the top heavy, shaved off, foot caved-in creature to plunge headfirst over the cliff's sheer, craggly rock edge.
Screaming and careening out of control, the monster's black weedy body lands in the heretofore still pristine lake below in a tremendous foaming splash and resulting tumultuous wave.
Hans had dashed over to the steep ledge to look down over his handiwork where he witnesses the upside down wriggling underwater sea monster thrashing about, still disoriented by plummeting from that great height onto its rounded dome head.
"Now, Sire, if you are able… Can you, perhaps—?" Hans' gaze then turns to where he had rudely shoved Arendelle's monarch to the side of the cliff's edge.
But King Agdar was already on the case, silently appearing directly at Hans' left side with cold streams of ice exuding from every building pore of his being –
And without a word, the powerful sovereign of this great country directs his collected frozen power blast to deep freeze the entire mountain lake where the knocked down sea monster was pawing and struggling to the surface, just as Hans' scheme envisioned.
ZZSSTTT!
The Draugen's deep green tentacle wriggling hand reaches out in one final spurt of energy before it is all frosted in a crust of blue-white ice, right down to its frozen monstrous fingertip. That is all that's left to be seen of the vicious monster beneath the opaque frosted white lake as even its ear-shattering scream is interrupted beneath the fresh water now frozen solid to ice.
Huff Huff "Yes, indeed!" Huff Huff "You and I work well in conjunction" Huff Huff "with one another, young man." Huff Huff
King Agdar admits to Hans in between breaths as the slender, elegant, regal pair of fatigued, royal men gasp for deep breath, doubled over and bent to their knees together in this exhilarated triumphant moment of rest.
"Thank you," Huff Huff "Your Majesty. I believe we do." Hans respectfully adds with a grateful smile and pleased sigh as he surveys what the cooperative might of their skill and powers, and cleverness, accomplished.
"Especially considering that you are a Dane." Agdar smirks as he lets off some tension in a tease at this most remarkable young Prince who hailed from the neighboring country that the Norwegian King had always considered as lordly and uppity conquerors more than civil friendly allies.
Nonetheless, there was much about this redheaded knave that King Agdar was just starting to learn about, as the warily impressed older man gazes upon the scene that the combined brains and talent of sons of the oft contentious nations had wrought together, working sword hand in icy glove.
And as the two royals catch their breath, silently trying to conjecture what the other man was thinking, beneath the frozen lake, five pairs of ebony black eyes begin to dilate back to bloodcurdling life…
