Warning: Lif was a very good boy. But villains be villainous. :( Sorry in advance.

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Now that they knew exactly where they were, Elsa and Hiksti began their trek to the specific mountain she'd found from Ahtohallan. They kept up their disguises, though Hiksti complained a few times that the boot over his prosthesis was slowing him down a bit. Lif stayed with them, but they did end up sending the horses back with the men along with a sealed letter for the magistrate asking her to see the horses back to the royal stables in the capitol. They carried what they needed on their backs.

They fished in the streams they passed, and Hiksti took down a rabbit once, which he gave to Lif, and they were careful with their dried and preserved food, hoping to make it last in case they had to walk back out of the mountains again. Occasionally they'd stop and gather berries - Elsa stumbled on a patch of wild strawberries, much to their delight, and she used her magic to chill the sweet fruit for a delicious dessert.

The idea of sleeping beneath the open stars was romantic, but not practical, so at night Elsa made them a low-lying, strong dome of ice, and Hiksti carefully covered every inch of it with leaves before she sealed them in with just a few small air-holes close to the ground. And every night Lif woke them with a low, warning growl, which prompted Hiksti to slink out with the dog and patrol in their immediate surroundings until Lif relaxed again and they could go back to sleep.

It was the early morning of the day they would get to the mountain when Lif disappeared. He'd run into the bushes to chase a fat brown rabbit, and never come back. After whistling for him for over an hour, Hiksti had gone in search, Elsa trailing just behind.

They'd found him with a broken neck at the bottom of a small ravine. Elsa cried, Hiksti even got a bit teary-eyed. "It's okay," he told her. "He didn't suffer. And I have this personal theory that all dogs go to dwell with the gods in the heavens, with an endless supply of rabbits to chase, bones to chew on, warm fires to sleep by, and scratches behind the ears."

Elsa sniffed and nodded. She took the time to magically dig a grave for him, much as she had done for Loki's son. Then they had no choice but to move on.

Finally, they reached the foot of the mountain, and Hiksti cast around, looking for a path. "Here," he said. "Look."

"What?" Elsa asked, looking around. She didn't see anything.

"No, there's… look, see how there's a thin trail without anything growing? It's an animal trail."

"...yes?" Elsa said dubiously.

"I'm going to have to teach you how to track," he muttered to himself. "Just follow me," he said, reaching his hand toward her. She took it and they carefully began their ascent.

It took them four hours of climbing with an occasional magical boost before they made it to the large overhang that Elsa knew housed the door. "This is it," she said, resting her hands on her knees to catch her breath.

"You alright?" he asked sympathetically.

"Just… that last bit was steep," she puffed. "Give me a minute."

He held the water canteen out to her and she drank gratefully, taking the time to look out at the view. The overhang they stood beneath had a wide and generous ledge beneath it, before it dropped down into a precipitous cliff at least a hundred meters tall. The mountain sloped down below them, carpeted in lush trees and summer vegetation.

"Now that we're here, we can be ourselves I suppose," he said, and sat down to take off his boot.

Elsa raised a hand and pulled it through her hair, and as she did the dye came out, carried away by a cold flurry. "That's better," she sighed.

"Yep," Hiksti agreed, tossing the superfluous boot aside.

And that's when a man rappelled down from the overhang and knocked into Elsa, sending her sprawling with a grunt. Before she knew it he had his arm around her and a knife was pressed against her jugular. "If you try to use your powers I'll slit your pretty little throat," he hissed into her ear. The rancid smell of his breath washed over her and her heart pounded like a drum beneath her ribs.

Hiksti was on his feet, his sword in his hand. "You," Hiksti said with narrowed eyes, recognizing the man who'd first ambushed them so many days ago and taken them to Helmut's encampment. "How's the bite on your leg?"

"Just fine," the man replied. "Don't move, or she dies."

"If she dies, you die," Hiksti promised. "Screaming, just like Helmut."

"My brother," spat the man. "Didn't deserve the end he got."

"He deserved worse," Hiksti countered, inching to one side.

The man, Helmut's brother, pressed the blade a fraction into Elsa's skin and a drop of red blood dragged its way down her throat. "Don't move," he growled over Elsa's whimper. Hiksti froze.

Hiksti cast about for something to distract the man. "The dog," he said. "Was that you?"

An ugly chuckle escaped Elsa's captor. "Yes," he hissed. "Couldn't have him alerting you to my presence, now could I? That curr has been keeping me away every night since I've been following you. But don't worry, I made it quick. I'm not a monster, after all."

"What do you want?" Elsa asked, trying in vain to pull his hand away from her. It was difficult, as his own merciless hold was effectively pinning her upper arms to her body.

"I want your husband to die!" he shouted.

"No!" Elsa cried. Her power gathered in her but she made it stay down, made her hands remain warm, for fear that a hint of cold would send the knife point into her vein.

"I'm not in a hurry to do that," Hiksti told him. "Why don't you stop cowering behind my wife and fight me, man-to-man?"

"You wish," the man growled. "Jump off the edge."

"No!" Elsa shouted, struggling against the iron hold, kicking, even trying to bite him, to no avail.

"If I jump there's no guarantee that you'll let her live," Hiksti said. "So I can't jump."

"She'll live," he promised. "Because she's still worth a queen's ransom. I'll knock her out and carry her back and she won't know the time has passed until she wakes up safe and sound in her own bed. But you… you have to die."

Hiksti seemed to consider this. Then he looked at Elsa, slid his eyes to the cliff, and back to her. "And if Elsa wakes up she'll just kill you. It's not a risk you should take."

"She won't be able to use her powers if I cut off her hands," Helmut's brother snarled. "My brother was brilliant, a great leader, the best man I knew… but a pretty face was always his weakness. He should have cut off the source of her power the instant he had her under his control. I won't make the same mistake."

There was a very long pause as Elsa's blood turned to ice water at the idea of losing her hands and she could see the gears turning in Hiksti's mind as he thought through the situation.

"If I don't jump, you kill Elsa, then I kill you, and then I kill myself. We all lose," Hiksti explained slowly. "If I do jump, I'll die, but Elsa will live..." He sighed. "Seems like you're taking a pretty big chance, though. Can you really knock her unconscious before she can freeze your heart? I don't know what you were thinking, man." Again he looked at Elsa, slid his eyes toward the cliff, and looked back at her, squinting a bit. "Tell you what, Helmut's Ugly Brother, If you leave now, we won't kill you right away. We'll give you time to run, and you may even make it somewhere safe before we get you."

Elsa looked, too, then closed her eyes and lowered her hands away from Ugly Brother's constricting arm. She wiggled her fingers and then nodded very subtly at Hiksti.

"It doesn't matter much if I die," Ugly Brother said. "You already took everything from me. I haven't got much to live for, other than my revenge. Though a royal ransom will do wonders for my outlook, I'm sure." He pressed the knife harder against her throat and she could feel a renewed rivulet of blood flowing across her skin.

Hiksti's eyes filled with pure hatred, but he bent his head after a moment and walked to the cliff. For a minute he looked down, and the wind whipped upward, wildly flinging his hair all about. He turned to look at Elsa. "Remember, I will always love you," he told her. "Meeting you saved my life, and I am grateful for every second we've had together."

Then he stepped off.

Elsa let a scream wrench from her throat and then went limp in the man's arms as if she fainted. He gave a short, ugly laugh and dragged her to the edge of the cliff so that he could look down and see Hiksti's broken body.

What he got, instead, was an arrow through his eye. He'd quite forgotten to disarm Hiksti at all.

Soundlessly Helmut's brother toppled over the cliff and Hiksti grabbed Elsa before she could be pulled over with him. They pressed their backs against the stone and watched his body fall. Elsa turned away before she could see it land, but she distantly heard the sickening thud.

"Raise us up, if you please," Hiksti said quietly to Elsa, and she lifted her hands to elevate the ice shelf she'd built for her husband to jump down to. They stepped back onto the stone of the mountain and scuttled against the vertical wall beneath the overhang, clutching each other and in general just reassuring themselves that they were still alive. "Let me see," he said softly, tipping up her chin to look at the cut on her neck.

"I don't even feel it," she said, watching his reaction.

"It's not bad," he said. "But let's get you cleaned up and put some medicine on it."

She nodded, and they did just that, and of course she used her powers to remove any trace of blood from her skin and clothes. After that they rested and processed their journey here, until finally Elsa took out the ruby from her satchel. "Are you ready?" she asked.

"I've been ready for almost fifteen hundred years," he answered with an excited smile.

They stood up and faced the wall.

The spell was really very simple, a few Latin words, and using the ruby to catch the light of the sun and reflect it off of a certain patch of rock, and Elsa fed a little crumb of her magic into that ruby light. And suddenly… there were doors.

Rising up toward the overhang almost twelve meters tall, the doors were wide enough to drive four large wagons through side-by-side. Enormous bronze handles flanked the seam where they met, and Hiksti and Elsa each grabbed one, and pulled.

The doors swung open silently and easily. "Well-balanced," Hiksti observed, impressed.

Just through the doors a velvet blackness yawned, as if light simply stopped there, and a brisk, warm breeze wafted over their faces, carrying an indescribable scent with it. Some kind of flower, and the smell of decay and renewal that all wildlife has, with something Elsa couldn't pin down. An earthy, almost sulfurous smell without being so bitterly pungent, mixed with a faint animal musk that sent an involuntary snarl up her nose.

"What is that smell?" Elsa asked.

"Dragons," Hiksti whispered. "It smells like dragons." He looked for all the world as if the smell were ambrosia.

Elsa reached out for his hand and threaded her fingers through his. "Let's go meet them," she said.

Together, they stepped through the portal and into another world.

Reviews time!
Mark of Arendelle: Yay! I'm glad my story inspired you a bit! That's why fanfiction is so awesome, because we're all inspired by things that we love, and our stories can inspire others, too! It's a never-ending cycle of inspiration and creativity!

Guest: Thanks for the historical fact-check. That being said, this is a fantasy story. With magic. And dragons. So I feel fine with taking a bit of liberty on Hiksti's age. :) I'm glad you enjoyed the story other than that! Thank you for leaving a review!

Demona Evernight: Thank you for leaving a review! :) I hope you enjoy the next chapter - I just posted it!