Sisters of Westfall, Part 3: Sacrifice

Content warnings: blood and gore, violence.

Westfall

The sisters ran down the dirt road away from Sentinel Hill, Elsa barely keeping up with Anna's peak physical conditioning. From time to time she'd have to cast her blink spell, accelerating her over a short distance.

"Remind… me why… you can't teleport… us there…" Anna breathed as she ran.

"Can't… without… permission," Elsa gasped, her face flushed, every muscle in her body aching from the exertion, her lungs on fire. She envied her sister's fitness from all her army training as she tried to keep up, and wove her fingers shakily to cast a frost spell over herself, making the exertion more manageable.

The sisters ran past Saldean's farm, momentarily stunned to see one of the farmhouses ablaze. They doubled their efforts to get home, terrified that they'd see their home equally aflame. As they approached the farmhouse, Anna pulled her sister to the side of the road, down in a shallow gulch.

"Look, in the shadows… looks like 3 or 4 guys at least. Shit, Elsa… my armor and sword are at the barracks. What are we gonna do?" Anna mumbled, assessing the situation. Despite not being a formally sworn knight, she had all the training and skills of one, and she didn't like the odds they were facing. With her armor and sword? Sure, she could take on a few bandits pretty easily. In her platoon she had many nicknames, but the one she was most proud of was Red Dervish, for her ability to roar into battle, whirling her broadsword around her like a storm of iron.

Elsa peered over the dirt berm. "What if I take down one of the ones furthest away? There's a bandit just behind the smokehouse, and I don't think the others can see him."

"Can you take him down without any noise?"

"Maybe," she murmured. "Definitely two shots, maybe one if I'm lucky. I haven't learned the more complex spells yet for this sort of thing - they don't teach them to apprentices until after we become adepts. And… I've only done this on training dummies, but my scores have been at the top of the class?"

Anna gently squeezed her shoulder. "I believe in you, Elsa. I always have. You can do this."

Elsa closed her eyes and reached for the magic in the air surrounding them, her hands beginning to glow a faint blue color. Tiny snowflakes dusted from her skin as she concentrated her mind. In one hand a ball of white frost energy appeared, looking like an ethereal snowball; in the other hand, a wicked shard of ice levitated above her palm.

Elsa reached out with the ball of frost energy first, casting a frostbolt across the road and hitting the bandit behind their home. Just as it landed, she flung the ice shard behind it, the icicle speeding to its target like a bullet.

The bandit fell over dead, his head blue and cold, the shard of ice buried in his heart. Elsa swallowed loudly as Anna grabbed her hand and they ran to the downed man. She looked in shock at the body, cold mist seeping from it, and suppressed the urge to vomit. In all her life, in her four years of training, she'd never had to kill someone. She'd never even imagined having to kill someone.

Anna clasped her hand, knowing what was going through Elsa's head. "Hey. You did what you had to, sis. Remember, this is about saving Mama." Elsa nodded wordlessly as she watched her sister remove the bandit's armor.

"It'll have to do," Anna whispered, donning the man's leather vest and grabbing his sword, a slightly rusty one-handed sword that had clearly seen better days. She quietly reached over to the barrels outside the kitchen door and grabbed one of the garbage can lids, using it as a makeshift shield.

Elsa forced herself to conceal her emotions, to avoid feeling the guilt and shock of killing someone, so that they could save their mother. She peeked around the corner briefly. "I can't see if Mama's okay, but it looks like there are four left in front of the house." Dread filled her heart; while apprentices had practiced the basics of magical combat, she'd never had to use her skills in actual fighting - and certainly not in life or death stakes with her family.

Anna nodded, a grim smile on her lips. "Back me up. I'll grab their attention - you try to take them down while I keep them busy, okay?" She began to purposefully hyperventilate, forcing as much air in and out of her lungs as possible to ready herself for battle. "Ready?"

Blue and white frost began to gather around Elsa's hands as she nodded at her sister.

"FOR THE ALLIANCE!" Anna screamed as she charged out from behind the house, sword held high, startling the bandits. Two of them ran towards her, swords drawn, while another two reached inside their coats for weapons. Anna clashed with the swordsmen, parrying their blows easily with the trash can lid and running one of them through immediately. True to her nickname, she looked like a whirling dervish, spinning in circles as her blade forced the attackers to retreat.

One shadowy bandit dressed in a dark cloak snuck past Elsa but couldn't help catching her eye as the bandit opened the door to their home…

… while the fourth bandit pulled out a pistol and took aim at the back of Anna's head. Had she been wearing her Stormwind armor, it would have been relatively inconsequential. Unarmored, she was in mortal danger.

Time stood still as Elsa was forced to choose. Take down the bandit sneaking into their home, or take down the bandit about to shoot her sister? She cried out in her mind; either choice meant someone she loved would be hurt or killed. Finally, she weighed the odds. Anna was unlikely to survive a shot at point-blank range, whereas the intruder in their home was an unknown.

She made her choice and pushed her hands forward, sending frost and icicles at the bandit about to shoot Anna. He fell, knives of ice impaling his body. Anna finished off the last swordsman and ran back to her sister.

"Anna!" Elsa ran towards her sister. "Someone's in-"

A bloodcurdling scream echoed from inside their home.

"Mama!" both sisters shouted, sprinting as quickly as they could to the home. There was no sign of the fourth bandit as they crashed into the farmhouse, but Iduna lay slumped over the table, a dagger lodged in her back.

"No! Mama, no!" Anna cried, grabbing her mother's limp form before her body could fall over. Blood had begun to drip from the wound, staining Iduna's dress. She looked up at her sister in anguish. "Elsa, do something! Can- can you heal her somehow?"

Elsa shook her head as tears flooded her eyes. "I… I'm not a priest, Anna. I can't heal, mages can't heal. The best… the best I can do would be to freeze the wound for now, so we can get help." She reached deep inside herself, thinking of the runes for using frost the way she'd been with her icicles and frostbolts. As an apprentice, she knew very few spells; her studies had been mostly about learning how to channel energy and work with the arcane, not applying it, and certainly not under the duress of battle.

All her life, Elsa had had an affinity towards magic, but frost magic most of all. From even early on as a child, she'd been able to conjure little snowmen, so when she applied to the Kirin Tor, Archmage Elandra herself had evaluated the young blonde's talents and found her natural talents to be robust, worthy of acceptance into the Kirin Tor as a novice.

In the back of her mind, Elsa heard a gentle voice, almost a siren song, and with it came runes she'd never cast before. In her mind's eye, they were smooth as glass, blue ice begging to be set free. She had no idea what spell it was, no idea how she even knew it, but she touched the ice and felt the magic come rushing from the ether, through her hands, and to her mother.

Iduna's body was suddenly encased in a giant block of blue ice, protected from harm and frozen solid.

"Elsa!" Anna shouted in alarm. "What? What is this?"

"I… I think it's a more advanced spell. I don't know, Anna, I was just wracking my brain, trying to remember all the book learning we'd done in year 2 about the different spells that existed, and I… felt this magic inside me, so I let it out. I think it's an Ice Block; it's something battle mages do in combat when they're grievously wounded," Elsa said, touching the ice as tears ran down her cheeks. She could feel the subtle energy, the magic holding the ice in place. Until she released the spell or her magical power reserves were depleted, it would remain solid.

"Is Mama alive?" Anna asked, stunned at the solidity of the ice surrounding her. "Can she even breathe?"

Elsa nodded. "Yes, she's alive but frozen solid. Though the moment that the ice fades away, she'll be in mortal danger again. We need to get her to a healer, and quickly. My magic can't hold forever."

Anna turned her head, looking in the direction of her barracks. "There's… Priestess Anderson at Sentinel Hill - she's our squad's medic. She could help!"

"It's too far, Anna. I don't think my magic will hold that long," Elsa said, shaking her head. She considered her options, her scowl deepening with every mental choice, until she settled on one. "I… I'm going to get in a lot of trouble for this, but I know where we can take Mama to be healed, and quickly. Take my hand?"

Anna clasped her hand with Elsa's as her sister began an incantation. Violet energy spiraled around her and the frozen body of her mother, crackling like lightning, and then her stomach fell through the floor as reality slipped away.


Author's Notes

For those who do play World of Warcraft, I've basically put Elsa and Anna at roughly level 20 characters. That's my mental idea of someone who isn't a knight/full mage but has been studying a while. As a result, Elsa would know the basics, but Ice Block isn't a skill we get until level 22. Technically portal isn't until 24, but we get teleport at level 11, which is what happens at the end of this chapter.

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The Usual Disclaimer

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