As Nokk and Elsa approached the opening of the fjord and entered the ocean proper, they could already see the robust outlines of approaching vessels on the horizon against the last remnants of colored light. The horse-like spirit charged forward across calm waters and lazy waves. When they were a few yards away, the full moon had emerged, beginning to shine mystically in the growing contrast of the darkening sky.
Elsa hopped from Nokk's back, the sea's surface freezing as soon as her feet touched it. She took a step forward, and another ice cap formed, slightly higher. Jogging forward, each step helped her mount a higher and higher block of ice she commanded to shoot up from the ocean. At last, she came to a stop, standing tall on a large column of frozen water to survey the gathering masses before her.
This was truly a fleet designed for war. Brigs, galleons, and frigates dotted every stretch of ocean before her in an obvious display of strength. They had promised battle, and they had brought it.
She felt her energy flow freely now, like a river, connecting effortlessly to the other spirits. Magic was cold water sloshing at her fingertips threatening to spill over and cover the world in ice. Finally learning how to speak and interact with the others had somehow unblocked something inside her. She did not feel alone.
Gale and Nokk's energies seemed to vibrate with tension inside her head. They too were overflowing with power, ready for her instruction.
Her palms faced up towards the sky. She lifted, and while her muscles tensed against an unseen resistance, she easily surpassed it. As her arms reached above her head, a massively thick wall of ice burst from the ocean's surface from either side of her tall pillar.
The line was drawn. The enemy could not, would not, cross it.
She shouted, "Surrender now, and Arendelle will allow you to leave in peace!"
As her voice echoed and died on the seabreeze, even she felt their meaning hollow in the face of so much blatant force. No admiral would show up with a navy this size with the intention of leaving...especially at the request of one woman.
Elsa swallowed. Maybe they couldn't hear her.
With a crack and boom, cannonballs launched in her direction. She frowned. The metal spheres plopped pitifully into the water as they missed her completely.
Cannons were hard to aim. Or perhaps it was a warning shot?
A swarm of arrows suddenly dotted the space before, stark against the white backdrops of sails, as the onslaught quickly arched and fell towards her.
Elsa heard the telltale giggle in her ear. On pure instinct, ice immediately ensnared her ankles, cementing her to the frozen pedestal. She was almost shoved off her perch as a forceful gust of wind blasted around her. The rapid air swatted away the arrows, twisting them drastically off course to scatter into the sea below.
Definitely not a warning shot.
"Alright, then. Maybe we can just disarm them somehow. Disable the boats? Gently?"
There was a pause. She could almost feel the spirits' doubt, but they acquiesced all the same.
The reflection of the moon shining brightly against the waves began to shimmer and move as the calm seas started churning. Whitecaps formed on the peaks of large swells, moving against the flow of normal tide, causing the ships to begin noticeably rocking.
A rush of warm air swept past Elsa's cheek, heavy and humid, a stark change from the chill of the night. Dark clouds blotted the starlight beginning to dot the sky, and far-off drumming of threatening thunder began to echo. The moon disappeared, and a light drizzle misted down. Despite the loss of moonlight, there was an eerie, grey glow hanging in the air. Elsa sensed the touch of magic.
Distant shouts of sailors could be heard on the wind, and she saw specks against the lantern light from the boats running to make adjustments against the turn of weather. However, the ships still moved forward, even closer to them now.
"That's a start," she sighed, bouncing on the balls of feet, "My turn."
She hopped off her platform, hands stretched downwards, shooting a geyser of ice just beneath her as she fell. Sliding down the newly formed path, gravity forced her to build speed, and she redirected her blast to create a pendulum, flinging her wildly upwards into the air above the nearest ship.
Magic swirled in her palm, and she threw it towards the wooden deck. The snowball made impact and exploded, coating the entire bow in a thick blanket of snow. Elsa landed on the soft, white power with a wet thud, taking the brunt of the fall with her shoulder and quickly rolling to her feet.
They were on her immediately.
A soldier charged with a shout, drawing the signature cuirass of the Southern Isle. Elsa's arm flew up to deflect the blow, a buckler of ice immediately blooming between them. Her shield burst apart, but the force still sent the sailor reeling backwards from the reflected force. Fingers closed into a fist, and ice encircled the man's ankles, tripping him onto the deck, shackled and immobile.
"We don't want to fight you!" Elsa shouted, only to be met with more battlecries behind her.
She turned as two others advanced, swords raised. Stomping her foot into the snow, she instantly transformed the surface clear and slick as glass. The ice sent the duo toppling over and sliding, blades clanking uselessly on the ground.
Then something dark caught her eye. When she looked across the deck, a figure roughly her size wordlessly stared back.
Essence of the night sky seemed to swirl across its skin, an endless galaxy of black and purple moving and twisting. Two giant stars of brilliant white light dotted its head, the only facial feature making it appear even remotely human. The edges of its body, the vague shapes of arms and legs, seemed to blur, as if the figure itself was unsure of its own manifestation, on the unstable verge of changing. It was the uneven, dark reflection of a person, yet not fully alive. A shadow.
What was this? Magic?
It suddenly lurched forward at high velocity, drawing back a limb that rapidly formed a point. Elsa desperately sidestepped away as the creature was instantly before her and stabbing with the newly formed, black blade of its own arm.
When the sword pierced nothing but air, the other arm formed an oddly balled fist. When the spikes emerged, Elsa realized in horror it was a rough morningstar, ducking as both limbs swung wildly at her.
The miss brought another swing, and unable to maneuver in time, she raised her hand, blasting magic. Obsidian weapons collided and recoiled against the ice, which shattered at the contact. Her success was short-lived, and it immediately charged again, falling into a fast exchange of rebuffs and strikes. Elsa tried to remain calm under the pressure, thankful her magic seemed to counter it.
But its speed was incredible! She struggled to keep deflecting the aggressive blows. When she would fling an icicle towards it, it simply dodged it. Her mind tried to work as fast in her magical designs, parrying with a frosty blade of her own or a flurry to give her an extra push out of the way, but she felt the constant, rapid exchange draining her energy.
Sword swiped at her, and she swatted it away with an ice-coated hand. Mace hastily countered with a backswing, knocking her arm away as the impromptu gauntlet burst. She was wide open.
The next swing made direct contact with her torso, the impact sending her flying backwards, smacking against the railing of the deck.
Elsa rose to a kneeling position, gasping to catch the breath knocked from her lungs, her chest aching from the mace's punch. No mere human could harness power like that, and perhaps it was lucky she was no mere human to have survived a direct blow. She couldn't take another.
Before she could even stand, it lunged toward her, swinging down, and she pushed an icy shield from her fingertips to block the attack. Again and again the strikes plummeted down on the block of ice above her head, and she struggled to keep maintaining the magical flow to restore what was quickly chipped away.
Her eyes whipped around for anything to help. The saber of one of the unconscious soldiers was next to her.
She grabbed the sword with one hand and swiped at the figure's legs. The blade passed through the black void with no resistance, like cutting air. Seemingly unaffected, limbs continued pounding down at her icy barrier.
Another powerful blow slammed down, the ice starting to crack above the single hand holding it up. Elsa grunted under the force, her breath like fog on the cold air.
Right. All she had to do was stay calm and breathe.
Pursing her lips, she blew down on the ground. Wisps of magical frost licked the surface, quickly coating the wood surrounding her in ice. It stretched beneath the feet of the dark shape beating down upon her.
The shield splintered, fragments of Elsa's crystal-like protection spraying everywhere in an explosion. The next attack would pulverise her, and the creature was pulling back, milliseconds way from her demise.
With a snap of her fingers, a pike of ice shot up from the chilled ground, successfully impaling the shadowy entity. It went completely still, frozen mid-strike. Black turned white, and her enemy crumpled into snow around the shard.
Elsa stood, wiping some of the powder from her shoulder with a sigh. It was a bit barbaric, but at least magic truly worked against whatever that thing was. Finally catching her breath, the cuirass was tossed aside. If this creature was impervious to steel and normal weapons, it could never be allowed to reach Arendelle.
She looked across the deck now completely coated in icy remnants of her magic. She had offered peace and tried every alternative she could think of. They had brought monsters to counter her. If they wanted war, so be it. Her magic in battle had always been defensive; taking down one ship couldn't take this long if they hoped to face a whole armada. She had to think bigger.
Maybe it was time to finally become the monster they always thought she was.
She clapped her hands together and twisted them. As she separated them once more, a flat disc levitated in the space between. Eyes narrowed on her target as her arm drew back, palm open, plate of ice beginning to spin in place, growing in size. Then, her hand jerked forward through the air, as if chopping it, throwing the sharp and circular disc whirling toward the thick, tall mast of the boat. The saw of ice cut cleanly through the wood, and the giant log collapsed onto itself, crushing the ship below it.
The boat lurched beneath Elsa's feet; she thought it might be a good idea to start moving.
She turned and ran, launching herself off the railing towards an adjacent ship. Her fingers barely caught the wet side of the port bow. Grunting with effort, she managed to rollover onto the top.
Two sailors emerged, drawing back the strings of their shortbows.
Her arm jerked up as she stood, lifting a wall of ice to block the arrows they fired at her. Her other hand pushed forward, sending the large, frozen rock sliding towards the two soldiers, slamming into them and knocking them down.
The rumbling thunder grew louder, and the rain was falling in full force now.
She waved her arm in a wide arc around her body, tendrils of magic flowing with her. The rain droplets surrounding her stopped completely, hovering in place and crystalizing. The ice mutated into spikes, like darts. With another swoop of her arm, the frozen arrows skyrocketed forward at her will, tearing through the sails, then plummeting down into the body of the ship, smashing through the entire wooden belly. She could feel them as they dove completely through, forcing leaks in the hull. Satisfied, she moved on.
This time, when she charged to the side, she had a plan for her exit. Holding her hand in front of her as she ran, Elsa blasted the ground with ice, extending it beyond the edge of the ship, providing more of a runway. She just needed to walk the plank so to speak before jumping to her next target.
This time, when she leapt to another ship, the distance was closer. She landed easily on the deck, pushing a mate overboard with a gust of frigid air in the process.
Behind her, Elsa heard the crunching and crashing of wood and water. She turned back to find an immense rogue wave pulverizing the galleon she had just weakened and abandoned. The vessel rapidly took on water, surrendering to the depths calling below.
Looking back to the healthy ship below her feet, Elsa nodded with Nokk's apparent strategy. Waves could work.
Jogging up to the pointed front of the bow, she glanced down to the turbulent waters bashing against the sides of the ship as it moved forward. Shouts echoed behind her, but she only lazily turned to glance over her shoulder. More soldiers swinging swords were running towards her.
She simply held up her hands; the waves below halted at her unspoken command, freezing at the height of their crest. The boat violently stopped as it crashed against the huge wall, and the charging sailors were tossed forward off their feet. Elsa wobbled at the sudden momentum change but managed to keep her footing. She could feel the floor slowly tipping forward, no longer parallel as the frigate started to sink, and her gaze eagerly darted across the railing for the next target.
The ground continued sloping in an unnatural direction, and Elsa barely scrambled to the side to hastily jump off. She quickly realized then she had misjudged in her aim. The distance was too wide to the smaller corvette she had hoped to reach.
Laughter twinkled in her mind as she began to hurtle to the water.
A burst of wind pushed against her back, shooting her farther across the gap, safely above the new ship. The pressure, however, did not alleviate as she began to fall downward, and Gale's chaotic idea bloomed in her head as she fell even faster.
She rapidly channeled all her energy towards her legs. Stalactites of ice gripped her calves, sharp points sticking into the air past her feet. Elsa pulverized into the boat.
Puncturing the deck, she pushed easily into the hull, shattering through another floor below. In a blur, Elsa found herself below deck, amongst crates and barrels, water rising swiftly around her feet from where the bottom was cracked in her attack. Everything was happening so quickly now.
Another thought that wasn't her own brushed again against her consciousness. Unquestioningly, she blasted the wall with a strong surge of magic, creating a large opening beside her. Ocean powered forward to claim the unoccupied space.
Elsa closed her eyes and took a calming breath against the onslaught of water quickly flooding the belly of the boat, already at her waist. Six-fold radial symmetry of snowflakes. Hexagonal and crystalline. It was all patterns and balance. Ice and snow.
No fear, just balance.
Her eyes ripped open, she swung her arm above and around her head. As she flung it forward, a chain of ice whipped in the same direction, crystals interlocking in repetition.
A translucent shark with Nokk's glowing eyes swiftly darted by the opening, biting down on the chain she had just tossed. With a final breath, the water already at her chin, Elsa was immediately pulled out into the open sea. They were a flash of movement as the salt stung her eyes.
The large fish jumped from the surface, Elsa dangling along behind it and gasping for air as they broke the surface. The spirit crashed back down and pushed forward, fin cutting the water with precise speed. Its trailing rider struggled not to inhale seawater. Her energies focused at her feet; tension and resistance began to mount as ice pushed against water. The woman's form rose from the ocean as they pushed forward, balancing on a long, thin block of ice. Like Kristoff and Sven with their sled, Nokk pulled Elsa on a large ski, now gliding along the surface.
She shakily adjusted her weight to maintain balance before starring ahead rather than at her feet. The shark was weaving them in between columns of the fleet. Elsa smirked, gripping the chain tightly in one hand.
Punching the air beside her with her free hand, an extended, thick trail of magic hardened into a lance. Much like a charging knight, she jabbed the large weapon, only rather than another jousting cavalier, her target was the side of the nearest ship. She grunted against the friction of ice dragging through the walls but managed to withstand the force. The entire starboard carried a gaping, long hole after they passed by, water quickly flooding and overtaking the vessels.
They continued down a line of ships, Elsa sideswiping them all, forcing them to submit to the rough seas and start to sink. When she looked up at their trajectory, she realized they were beelining towards the back of one of the boats.
With a final smash to a ship beside her, she cracked the ice spear from her arm and left it sticking out from her last target like a harpooned whale. Then she released her tether to the watery spirit. Once the chain was dropped, Nokk's shark turned, fin dipping beneath the surface to wreak havoc elsewhere. Their previous momentum still carried her forward, board-like platform skipping along the top of the water barreling toward the stern of the frigate before them.
Hands splayed wide before her, snowy magic darted forward, halting the waves, elongating them against the wooden walls as a solid slope. Then she threw her hands behind her, releasing a polar wind, shooting her forward even faster. She tensed in the brief second before her miniature sled hit the new ramp of ice.
She slid up the incline and shot upwards. By some miracle her plan worked, and Elsa soared up and up even higher than the vessel she was boarding. Her chunk of ice smoothly dissipated into a flurry.
At the peak of her jump, as gravity started to push against her, she sprayed icicles across the ship below her. Sailors screamed as they ran for cover, just as she had hoped, as she needed them safely out of her way.
As she landed, a bolt of lightning struck a ship to her right in a blinding flash of light, and the wooden vessel erupted into flames too hot to be tamed by the rain.
Her and the spirits had to keep pushing harder.
Elsa assessed the multitude of the navy still before her on the open ocean from her new vantage point and took a deep breath. Feet shoulder width apart. Inhale. Knees bent. Exhale. Arms slack and palms up. With her next breath, she began to lift.
The resistance was immediate and immense. To create enough ice to lift her quarry would require more energy than she had previously expended. They were extremely heavy, and pain seared through Elsa's arms as she strained against them. Her power was draining, the cost of every inch her arms moved up was an expensive one.
But what would become of Arendelle if she failed?
Struggling with the massive, psionic weight, she fell to one knee. The wood began to buckle and splinter beneath her as the exchange of energies, the cosmic balance of gravity and space dueled through her very bones.
She heard Anna's playfully chastising voice. She could build an entire castle from nothing. She couldn't lift a few ships?
Honeymaren's assured smile was still fresh and sweet in her memory.
Love outweighed her fear.
Energy poured through her veins, allowing her to stand. She grunted, eyes tightly shut, past the throbbing of her muscles, arms steadily rising in the seemingly open air before her. With a triumphant shout, her hands rose victorious above her head.
Even in the chaos of a stormy battle around her, she heard the distinct glacial cracking she knew so well.
When she opened her eyes, over a dozen ships were now marooned on an island of thick ice, massive spikes buried into their hulls, crushed beyond repair. Elsa doubled over in relief she had succeeded in eliminating so many at once.
As she leaned over, hands on her knees and panting in exhaustion, flashes of trees blurred her vision. The pines stood as dark silhouettes against a field of flame. The other spirits were tired but victory felt close.
Elsa screamed as a sharp pain cut across her forearm, the ship and sea returning to her field of view. A shocked sailor stood before her, mouth agape, an unloaded crossbow in their hands.
The sorceress looked down to see where the bolt had merely grazed her and left a thin, red line. They had missed. She looked back up, and the attacker immediately began fumbling to reload the bow. With a flick of her hand, a pile of snow dumped on the archer.
She turned and ran toward the railing preparing to leap to the next vessel. As she pushed off into the air, a pressure wrapped around her ankle.
Suddenly anchored, her body swung down, shoulder crashing against the side of the ship, narrowly avoiding splitting her head open. With a wheezy breath, wincing at the torment of her aching limbs and odd disorientation of being upside down, she tried to glance back up to the top of the boat.
Another creature of dark, swirling mass was gripping her leg and dangling her overboard. It felt as if burning claws were beginning to sink into her skin. Elsa hissed against the searing agony.
She looked down to the water far, far below, quickly calculating, and glared back up definitely at the monster.
"There's a reason I used to wear gloves. Touching isn't wise."
The shadowy arm gripping her ankle was suddenly frozen solid in opaque ice, and the being howled in a cacophonous screech. Its shoulder cracked, severing completely from its body, and Elsa started plummeting to the ocean.
As she fell, her mind felt as if it was floating. The icy appendage attached to her leg shattered away into snowdust. Her own spirit felt the presence of the other four, still aware of their sentience. They were all so exhausted, but so, so close.
She calmly outstretched her hand towards the rapidly approaching water, impact imminent. A spinning tendril of saltwater stretched up from the sea, the small waterspout reaching up to greet her.
When she broke the plane, her movement oddly did not slow. However, she did not fear her fate as she sank. The momentum of her fall pushed her forward, and a current funneled her down into the depths at blistering speed. She felt Nokk's energy surrounding her, propelling her into a wide arc, swinging them back up to the surface. The pressure began to build underneath her as they stretched upwards, and she shared her power in unspoken understanding.
They burst forth at a breakneck speed, spraying salty mist into the rain-drenched air, charging towards the gusting, howling heavens. Elsa's surroundings grew blurry at the velocity, but her body no longer fought the turbulence. She was a part of something much bigger now, and when their movement finally settled, her eyes calmly scanned the horizon.
She towered above the tallest ships' masts atop the head of a giant ice dragon.
Nokk's eyes shined brilliantly as they roared, serpent tail swinging violently and decimating a row of boats. Tidal waves devoured nearby crafts from the sheer might of the blow.
Elsa rose her hands to the grey void, heavy rain dripping water down her fingers. As the winds brushed against her, they transformed under her magic into something cold, hard, and sharp. Deadly. A newly birthed blizzard of crippling hail and sleet sliced down to masses below. The resulting whiteout made the spell-touched, frozen wyrm below her glow almost blue in contrast.
Squalls surrounded her, and she knew Gale was with her now too. A whirlwind levitated her even higher.
The final act was upon them.
As if turning a great wheel, Elsa's hands began to move and twist, around and around, summoning a vortex. The already thundering skies mixed with the savage seas. Their energies fused, water, wind, and ice blistering the world around them with magic as they became the eye of a superior storm circling the entire fleet.
Elsa grimaced against the sheer force of the hurricane building around them. Overwhelming sound like a crashing earthquake vibrated through her skull. Her sight continued to flicker uncontrollably between the physical and the spiritual as the spinning tempest fed on her power. The ominous, black clouds that closed around her reflected the mirror images in her soul, of Gale and Nokk's beings clinging to hers. The Giants and Bruni were with them now, linked together for better or worse.
The storm kept taking more and more. She needed to hold on, it was almost done. All of it was almost over, if all five of them, together united, could just hold on.
Elsa stood as the central anchor, as if the focal point of a scale. The chant was familiar now in her head as multiple voices called out with her. Fear and love. Fire and water. Air and earth. Light and dark. Balance. The four clung to her vitality and she to theirs.
Suddenly, the scale tipped and lurched, and the balance was lost, flinging them into the darkness.
Each spirit was ripped away from her, each loss sending stabbing shocks of pain through her chest. Their connected consciousnesses were sharply cut, yanked away, leaving a terrible, profound emptiness in their place. Elsa screamed in agony.
And then, it was quiet. Everything went still.
Her lingering energy hung by a thread. The cyclone enveloping her was slowing, and the clouds easily parted, spent of the magic that had summoned them. Stars twinkled in a clear sky.
Glancing dizzily below her, the wreckage was almost unfathomable. Splintered wood littered the water's surface more abundantly than seafoam. As far as the eye could see, across the ocean, there was destruction and death, and Elsa at its center, its cause. But she felt nothing.
She turned back to Arendelle, across the fjord, to see the castle untouched under the moonlight.
Then her world went black.
Honeymaren paced back and forth across one of the two windows in the queen's sitting room to the sound of rain clunking against glass. While the tower provided the ideal height to observe the ocean beyond, the storm had made it difficult to see anything since Elsa rode out.
She paused and looked again. It kept getting worse.
"She's fiiiiiine. It's just drizzling!" Olaf crooned chipperly from the floor beside her.
A crack of lightning with an immediate roll of thunder did nothing to waiver his smile. Honeymaren had to admire his optimism. She offered him a small grin despite the knot in her stomach and glanced at the others in the room.
Anna's eyes were locked on the other window, nose practically against the glass. Kristoff stood behind her, his arms wrapped around her waist. Her knuckles were white as she clung to him, the engagement ring on her finger glinting in the flashes from outside.
Honeymaren turned away with a grimace to Yelana. She sat cross-legged on the couch, eyes closed, palms up and resting on her knees. As much as the herder didn't want to admit it, she too felt the magic pricking the air. Like thick, humid fog, it permeated everything like a dreadful premonition. Even in the forest, they had never felt it like this before.
Yelana's eyes snapped open.
Anna's gasp broke the silence of the room. "Elsa!"
Darting back to the window, Honeymaren's mouth dropped. The storm had completely disappeared. It was impossible.
Not a single cloud blocked the night sky now, and the full moon was bright with an accompaniment of stars. One in particular beamed impressively bright.
No. She squinted harder. It wasn't a star.
It was Elsa. Hovering...and glowing?
Then, she was falling.
"No!" Honeymaren screamed, hand slamming against the glass.
She watched helplessly as the love of her life plummeted into the sea.
A/N: Thanks for reading, as always. Please comment with your brutal honesty so we can keep making it better together!