A/N:
Did you think it was over? Not quite...
Warnings: Violence/ Gore/ Blood EVERYWHERE
Suddenly, Elsa became rocked by a familiar scream.
Anna!
She launched herself into the forest, gliding on pillars of ice toward the flashing light she could see up ahead.
"Anna! Where are you?!"
She landed in the clearing illuminated by Bruni's flashing signal. She quickly found Anna laying face down in the leaves.
"Anna?! What happened?!"
She turned the other girl over and saw deep, red marks on her neck just as she started to cough and get her breath.
"Who did this to you? Is there another hunter?"
Still coughing, Anna managed to find her voice through her burning trachea.
"No…. It was…. the wolf spirit…."
"What? That's not…."
"He's cursed Elsa! He…. the wolf isn't the one killing everyone… It's the man. He turned into a man and…. tried to kill me. But someone else… shot an arrow through his arm and he dropped me and ran."
"Someone else? So there is another hunter."
Anna managed to sit up and her coughing subsided.
"I dunno, but we have to find the wolf first. The last arrow in his back… It's the curse. But, just let me at it again and I know I can pull it out. I just have to remember to use the hand with the magic ring on it this time."
"Ok. Can you stand?"
Anna nodded her head affirmatively.
"Bruni!? Did you see where he went?" Elsa shouted into the canopy.
The salamander was up in the trees and flashed an excited confirmation before taking off in a blazing trail.
Before getting a chance to respond, Elsa had swept Anna up off her feet and launched the two of them into the air.
He is running fast, but Bruni is on his trail. We're almost there.
Elsa landed effortlessly on her feet and gently lowered the girl in her arms to stand beside her. Bruni had led them to a clearing where they saw a trail of blood leading up a dirt path and straight into…
"The hunting lodge. He's hiding in the hunting lodge." Elsa had a sneer across her face at the thought of going back inside that place.
"Ready Anna?"
Anna was staring straight ahead toward the wooden doors that were busted off their hinges leading into a now pitch black, two-story coffin sitting in the middle of the forest. The spires somehow seemed more mangled and twisted in the shadows of the moonlight. Dark windows staring at them like open sores of a festering wound on a corrupted tree.
"Ready as I'll ever be."
They slowly crept up the stairs and walked through the ruptured doors into the void of the inner room. Both of them oblivious to the slight pain in their hands caused by their fingers clinging tightly to each other, laced together with resolve.
Anna spied something on the ground and she knelt down to pick it up.
"It's the arrow that was shot through his arm when he dropped me. Are you sure it wasn't Leitch that shot this?"
"I'm positive," Elsa said with more than a chill to her voice.
Anna returned the arrow to the floor and tried to look around the empty room.
"Can you sense his magic?"
Elsa had her hand against her temple and an eye shut with a gnawing pain in her head.
"No… the curse is too strong. Its presence is drowning out everything around us. It almost feels like we are swimming in magical energy."
Suddenly they heard a *BANG* from just behind them. They spun around to face the previously demolished doors, now seemingly repaired and slammed shut.
"What the hell?" Anna slowly backed up and subconsciously placed her hand against the wall. She immediately recoiled as her skin sank into a soft, wet, squishy surface that was no longer made of wood. She looked at her open palm and then realized that the unfamiliar smell of rusted metal had returned.
"Uh…. Elsa….?"
Elsa immediately released a glowing snowflake into the air, casting shadows all around and illuminating the pulsing, vein laden walls all around them.
"Jeesus, the walls are bleeding!"
"The curse is reacting to the raw death that this place is exuding. Manifesting the pain within these walls as sheer trauma."
Elsa had backed up against an adjoining wall, her ear brushing up against one of the severed wolf head trophies mounted now into the fleshy façade.
She felt the hair on her neck start to slowly sway. A slight breeze tickled her cheek. A warm, humid, vaporous air brushing past the side of her face.
Hot breath in her ear.
She ducked her head just in time to avoid the *SNAP* of jaws.
Spinning around on her heel she threw a blast of cold energy toward the body-less head as it snarled and snapped its jaws dripping with spit and blood from the walls. Just as it was frozen back into a state of inanimateness, the remaining mounted heads sprung to life.
Anna felt a warm liquid drop on her head as she stared up and saw the gnashing teeth of a mounted wolf above her.
She released a scream, not paying attention to the hand coming out of the wall behind her.
"Ah! Shit, Elsa something's got me!"
Elsa turned her body toward the scream and saw an arm, soaked in blood, protruding out of the wall with its slick fingers grasping tightly onto one of Anna's braids.
"I'm coming, Anna!" She ran over there just as the ginger and white braid was pulled, and sucked straight into the wall.
"Ah, God this feels nasty!"
She could feel the hot and moist muscle against the back of her neck, liquid oozing down her skin.
"Hold on, I'll cut it off!"
"NO! Don't cut off my braid! I'll die without it!"
"You're going to die with it! I'm cutting it off!"
"Els, let's not be hasty...there must be another way!"
Before Elsa had a chance to ignore her, another hand came out of the wall and slithered over her mouth, pulling her entire body through the vacuous membrane.
"Anna!" She pounded her hands against the wall, frozen blocks of ice forming against the sinew where her fists made contact. She tried stabbing the flesh with her fingers, desperate to pry it open.
The hair on the back of her neck began to sway again.
Her head twisted and through the corner of her eye, her vision was flooded by the red-eyed hunger of a man's face hovering over her shoulder.
She tried to swing her arm up to defend herself, blasting cold energy the entire way, but he was too close. She felt the hard bones of knuckle smack into her cheekbone, sending her flying through the air spinning and landing into the wooden tables on the other side of the room.
Ew. It's squidgy. And I can't move. Now I know what food feels like when it goes down my throat. I apologize to all of those chocolate truffles I've inhaled over the years.
Anna felt a tickle in her dress as she looked down and found a pair of salamander eyes staring up at her.
"Hold on, Bruni. If you light up now, you'll probably light me on fire too. No, let me figure out another way out of here."
Her body was completely smothered in flesh with blood sloshing around her entire body. She tried flexing her hand, getting the fingers to open up and press against the wall.
She felt a slight warmth on her finger where the dwarven ring was activated against the dark magic that was trying to suffocate her. The muscle and ligaments quivered and recoiled at the touch of the enchanted metal. She swore that she also heard it scream.
Well, that's disconcerting. Screaming flesh. At least I know I'm unpalatable to someone.
The gap allowed her arm to reach up in front of her and begin to push her meaty prison away from her. Using both hands, she clawed her fingers through the pulsing, slick, and sticky membrane. Squeezing her legs through the gap being made with her hands as blood lubricated her skin.
Elsa shook off the impact and tried to get to her feet, but the cursed spirit was right on top of her. He pummeled his fists straight down, elbows and arms intending to snap her spine.
She twisted at the last second, her shield appearing out of thin air between her body and the solid forearms falling toward her.
The magical strength was daunting. Repeated blows smashed against her shield, pressing her back into the floor. As he brought his arms up for another strike, she froze his feet in place and rolled out of his reach.
He snarled at her as he tried to break free from his icy bonds. That's when she saw the white arrow still sticking out of his back. She froze his hands as they came into contact with the blocks of ice around his feet. Then she ran around his back and grabbed hold of the arrow with both hands.
Red lightning erupted around her arms and sent her flying backward through the air.
She lay on the ground, body spasming from the magical repellant. The outburst caused his bonds to shatter and he twisted his snarling body toward her still prone and twitching on the floor.
He grabbed a pair of nearby antlers off of the wall and lumbered toward her like a predator going in for the kill of it's wounded prey. He slammed the antlers down, bringing out a high pitched scream. One point into her shoulder, and another piercing the muscle in her abdomen. The sharp bone punctured all the way into the wood floor below.
He pushed the bones harder into the ground, deeper into her body. She could feel that hot breath hitting her face as she fiercely tried to fight off blacking out.
The sound of unnatural, high pitched cries of tormented flesh echoed in Anna's ear as she squirmed her way out of the oozing cavity and nearly collapsed onto the hardwood floor.
"Ew, ew. It's in my mouth. I think it's in my mouth. Bleh!"
She halted her hacking when she heard a different scream. She looked over just as a pair of red eyes broke from one prey to gaze at the next. She saw the cursed spirit, hunched over, naked, and covered from head to toe in blood. And beneath him, with her arms grabbing hold of the antlers buried into her body….
"OhmyGod! ELSA!"
At the sound of her voice, Elsa looked up and saw her attacker was no longer focused on her. She let go of the antlers and instead took hold of his hands still trying to jam the bone through her body. Ice enveloped both his arms and hers, locking them together in a frozen embrace.
"Anna! Get the arrow!"
"Oh shit! Get the arrow, get the arrow! I'm on it!"
She ran over to the two bodies on the ground. It snarled and snapped its human-shaped jaws but Elsa had him firmly held down, even as she grit her teeth through the pain wracking her entire body.
Use the ring hand, use the ring hand!
Anna wrapped a hand around the shaft of the final arrow. The ring glowed bright blue at the contact with the cursed object. Magical forces colliding in a struggle of power and will. Red lightning shot all around, out of the wound, around her arm, trying to shatter the dwarven presence imposing its strength onto the dark magic.
Anna was forced to shut her eyes from the strain as she pulled with all her might.
Why is this arrow not budging?! It's like it's fighting me. Like it's holding on tighter and tighter and refuses to let go.
Despite the pain she knew would hit her, she grabbed the arrow with her second hand. Red magical energy immediately erupting around the shaft and swirling around her arm like bolts of lightning through her nerves.
The arrow finally started to give.
She heard a new scream. This one deeper and gargling. She cracked one eye open just in time to see the man's head thrashing around as if his neck was no longer attached to a spine. Then it twisted in jerky motions until those red eyes came over it's back and met her fear, wanting to devour every last drop.
"HOLY freaky head twisting FUCK! "
With a final surge of strength, aided by the sudden shock and horror, the arrow came flying out of the spirits back, blood gushing like a geyser into Anna's face.
Her ears rang with blood-curdling screams and she was terrified at the fact that she couldn't tell if it was the spirit… or Elsa.
She wiped the blood from her eyes in time to see the spirit shouting into the air, his face still turned over his back and staring right into her soul. His body began to glow red. The skin ripped apart into swirling orbs of magic that exploded in all directions, leaving no trace of the man behind.
For a mere second, the two women were alone. Dusted in the magic light of a snowflake. Anna sat on her butt, and Elsa on her back with a cage of bone still stuck into her flesh.
"Holy shit, Elsa! I'll pull out the horns, hang on." She got to her feet and ran over, nearly tumbling ontop of the other girl.
Elsa coughed up blood in her response. "Antlers…"
"Huh?" Anna said as she yanked on the bones with her tired arms as they were firmly rooted in the floor.
"They're not horns…. They're antlers…"
"Don't correct me when I'm trying to save you! No one knows the difference anyway."
"It's not that hard…" she wheezed out just as she was interrupted by her breath suddenly leaving her along with the sharp intrusions from her skin.
Anna was breathing heavily at the exertion and also from relief as she saw magical energy already swirling around Elsa's wounds.
Her relief was slightly subdued by the sudden shaking all around them. The next thing she knew, she had two strong arms wrap around her back and pull her down to the floor as she was engulfed by a sphere of ice.
The walls melted. Blood pooling into the ground, muscle being torn and squishing under the sudden weight of the wooden castle it once was. Cursed magic no longer able to sustain it, the castle came crashing down. The foundation that was rendered into soft meat was crushed under the falling spires and shingled roof.
Severed heads and scalped antlers fell into the soup below, no longer snarling with hatred and hunger.
The cavernous void of glorified death collapsed in on itself, crushing everything save for a magic ball at its heart.