Chapter 9 – Or Is It?

The wind howled through the graveyard as the sun set in the distant harbor. A women dressed in black stood over a fresh grave. The headstone was made from strikingly white marble and near the top an intricate snowflake was carved into it. A person could spend hours staring at that snowflake and still have not seen every detail. The woman in black knew that snowflake by heart. The grave read:

"Here lies Queen Elsa III,

"Killed by her own hand,

"1998 – 2022"

The fallen leaves crunched as a blond man in a thick winter coat walked up to the grave. For a time, he stood alongside the woman, but eventually he spoke up. "Anna," he said to her. "Come back to the castle. It's getting cold out. They're calling for snow tonight."

"The cold never bothered her anyway," Anna said, eyes still locked on her older sister's grave.

The man looked at her with sadness in his eyes. "Anna, it's been weeks since the funeral," he said. "Don't you think your sister would want you to move on at some point?"

Anna smiled as a single tear slid down her cheek. "No," she said, remembering the abuse she suffered from her sister. She reached over to her left hand and touched where she lost two fingers to frost bite as a child. "I don't think she would."

Anna knew that Elsa killed herself to punish her. At least, that's what she thought at first. Before she discovered her sister's research into the occult. Perhaps she had discovered something that would have allowed her to fulfill her dream of conquering Scandinavia. A foolish dream, Anna thought. Arendelle was better off without her. So why did Anna miss her? After everything she's done? Maybe, just maybe, if Anna continued Elsa's research, she could find a way to revive her. Elsa would be ecstatic. And then Anna might finally get the one thing she's always wanted. Her sister's love.

Anna started to quietly laugh. "Anna?" the man next to her asked, sounding concerned. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine Kristoff," Anna said. "Come, let us return to the castle."

Anna couldn't sleep. That's not anything new for her, but tonight her mind was racing. She slipped out of bed, careful not to wake her husband. She didn't need to worry though. Kristoff was always a heavy sleeper. She made her way out into the moonlight hallway and started walking to the castle library. Within the library was the secret entrance to the room containing the Arendelle royal family's darkest secrets. Primarily, their generations-long obsession with magic. Elsa wasn't Arendelle's first witch queen.

Anna swiftly passed through the library and opened the hidden door with a switch that had been cleverly disguised as a book. She entered through the door, which closed behind her, and started down the long, steep, spiraling staircase, cold stone against her bare feet. At the bottom was the royal family's private archive. The archive contained vast quantities of occult knowledge and was one of the largest stores of it in the world, second only to the Vatican's archives.

One of the most skilled practitioners of this knowledge was none other than Anna's mother, the late Queen Iduna, who, through a series of blood rituals, imprisoned an ice spirit and stripped it of its power, which she then placed inside her newborn daughter, Elsa. Growing up, the two sisters had been told that Elsa's powers were gifts from the gods. Anna only discovered this recently, when she began pouring over the texts that had consumed the last few years of her sister's life. It was this exact ritual that Anna aimed to recreate.

Anna finally reached the bottom of the stairs and entered into the archive. It wasn't a large room, but there was still plenty of space. The walls were lined with bookshelves and in the middle of the room were a couple of long tables and a large open space meant for conducting rituals. Within that space was a ten-foot-wide circle drawn from blood, containing a whirling cloud of ice shards and snow. An ice spirit.

Anna crossed the room, snatching a rune-covered knife as she passed one of the tables before coming to a stop in front of the ice spirit's prison. There was one step left to the ritual. The blood of the power's recipient. Anna lifted the knife and slit the palm of her left hand, careless of the permanent damage she was causing. Damn thing was useless anyway with only three fingers.

Anna held her hand out over the circle as blood quickly poured from the gash and dripped its way to the ground. Anna waited several seconds until the runes laid in the blood circle began to glow and then pulled her hand back. She leaned over to the book open on the nearby table and began to read out the chant that would complete the spell.

"Furtum virtutis. Furtum fortitudinis. Da eis quae sua sunt," Anna read.

In an instant the runes flashed brighter than ever before going dim. Anna felt her veins turn cold as the ice spirit began to swirl faster, clearly panicking as it was stripped of all magic. The power continued flowing into Anna, leaving her in a state of near ecstasy. Soon, the spirit was reduced to nothing more than mundane mist, which had already begun to disperse. Anna chuckled as magic flowed through her body. Her magic. As frost danced across her fingers, she wondered if Elsa would approve. Even if she didn't, there wasn't much she could do to harm Anna now that she enjoyed the same powers.

Anna forced herself to focus on the next task. She froze the gash in her hand shut and sat down at a table covered in books. All of these books were on the topic of death. Her whole life, she only ever cared about Elsa's attention. If she managed to bring Elsa back to life, then surely her sister would finally love her back. Even if she had to sacrifice the entire planet, she was getting her sister back.

And if for some reason she can't, may God have mercy on whoever stood in her way.