Author's Note: Well, it took a bit longer that I'd hoped to get this chapter done, but it's here now! I choose to blame flu season and a vacation for the lengthy delay, though the two thankfully only had minimal coincidence. On the bright side, this is a longer chapter than usual.
If this is the first chapter of this story you've read, you might want to take a moment to read the previous chapter. Otherwise Rose and Aurora might confuse you a bit.
Hope you enjoy!
Cover Art for the story is from the LexaRecovery tumblr. Stay strong together.
I do not own the television show "The 100" or make any claims upon it or its characters. Similarly, I do not own Frozen, its characters or any Disney characters or property. All these characters are used under the concept of Fair Use, and I make no profit or income from using any of them.
Our Fight Is Not Over
by Jo K.
Chapter 8: Unpleasant Surprises
Somewhere outside that finish line
I square up and break the chains
I hit like a raging bull
Anointed by the blood I take the reins
Cut from the cloth
Of a flag that bears the name Battle-Born
They'll call me a contender
They'll listen for the bell
With my face flashing crimson from the fires of hell
What are you afraid of
And what are you made of?
-The Killers, "Flesh and Bone"
—O—
"Holy shit, Lexa!" Clarke said, her arms wrapped tightly around Lexa's waist as if that grip on her wife was the only thing keeping her from falling out of the sky. (Again.)
Lexa smiled, trying to not laugh aloud at hearing that phrase for about the twentieth time since they had started their flight.
Clarke's head continued to swivel from side to side, trying to peer through the clouds to catch glimpses of the snowy ground far below them. "Fuck!" Clarke swore, happy and terrified all at once. She leaned forward, trying to reach the open front of the large hood of Lexa's coat. "How are you not totally bouncing up and down?!" Clarke asked excitedly. "We're flying! On a dragon!"
Lexa turned in the seat, shaped like a saddle but large enough for both her and Clarke to sit on it, Lexa in front of Clarke with her wife tightly snuggled against Lexa's back. Several blankets had been spread over the icy seat to shield their legs from the cold of the ice dragon's body before they had left Arendelle Castle. Ahead of them were Elsa and Anna, on a very similar seat, its crystalline form glistening a pale blue-white in the early morning light. Below them the massive body of the creature that had introduced itself as Icescale, through a brief but oddly polite telepathic conversation, stretched out forward and back as well as side to side through its enormous wings, each large enough to cover a house easily. Hearing its voice deep inside her mind hadn't startled Lexa as much as it had Clarke, as to the brunette the process hadn't felt that different from communing with the Hedas of the past.
"Truth be told, my houmon," Lexa said, turning her head and raising her voice to be heard over the rushing wind, "I'm not saying much because I'm not sure exactly how to... process this." She smiled, proud that she had used the word correctly, but then the smile fell away as she caught sight of the large, ebony-feathered wings beating beside them, as Maleficent flew under her own power, holding Briar Rose in her arms. "Or that," she added.
"Hey, at least we're not going to freeze to death, right?" asked Clarke.
"Yes, that is a most welcome change," agreed Lexa. Before they had climbed aboard the dragon, Elsa had enchanted them with her magic to grant them resistance to the bitter cold, so they could survive the flight to the site of the latest atrocity as well as prolonged exposure to the quite-lethal-on-its-own-thank-you arctic temperature of Northern Arendelle.
("The cold took several of your people, and it came close to taking both of you as well," Elsa had said as the white sparkles danced from her fingertips while she weaved her enchantment over the two other-worlders. "Consider this its apology.")
A slight tilt downward drew both Lexa's and Clarke's attention ahead of them once more, where the thick neck of the ice dragon carrying them had turned toward its right as it began to descend.
They had already visited a small village a few miles south; the entire settlement had been wiped clean of inhabitants, with the humans all gone and the remaining animals slaughtered. Houses had been torched, with the damage already extensive by the time Elsa's ice magic had extinguished the flames that were still burning in a few places. Some of Arendelle's soldiers were still there, assessing the damage and carefully looking for any signs of who might have perpetrated the devastation.
They had left Arista there overseeing the unit of soldiers after she had told them about the ritual site that had been found due north of the ruined settlement. She had pulled all the Arendellan soldiers back as soon as they spotted the first gruesome runes, painted in blood on the snow.
From the air as they descended, the massive circle outlined by the crimson runes was clearly evident, and Clarke wasn't sure if it was a trick of the light reflecting off of the snow or if the eerie characters truly were shimmering with unholy light as she forced herself to look at them. In the center of the circle, which had to be at least fifty or sixty meters in diameter, was a black pool that made Clarke's stomach turn just looking at it. She fought the bile back down, closing her eyes as she focused her willpower on remaining calm.
The touch of Lexa's gloved hand on her own brought a grateful smile to Clarke's face, and the press of lips against her bare cheek helped soothe her stomach as well as her nerves. "Thank you," Clarke whispered, smiling at Lexa's tenderness and thoughtfulness.
"You don't have to do this, my love," Lexa said in Trigedasleng, her voice impossibly gentle.
Clarke opened her eyes, lifting her head to meet intense green eyes looking at her, brimming with concern. "Yes, I do," she replied. "I'm Wanheda. I'm your houmon and a leader of our people. My place is by your side, wherever that might take us."
Lexa smiled back, pride mixed with sadness. She nodded, then leaned her head forward to press her forehead against Clarke's as they stared into each other's eyes.
—O—
"This is seriously creepy."
Five sets of eyes turned to focus on Clarke, raising the eerie sensation she was feeling by a factor of two. "Not helping, guys," she added. "Seriously."
They had landed nearly two hundred meters away from the glowing scarlet runes, felt by both Rose and Maleficent to be a safe distance, sending Icescale back toward the ruined village and Arista for the time being.
"How much blood did they have to use to make that circle?" Anna asked, drawing the attention away from Clarke, for which the blonde was quite grateful. "It's a lot bigger than the last one."
"Several bodies' worth," Briar Rose answered, starting to trudge forward through the snow toward the large circle of complicated runes, hands lifting the skirt of her long dress. "I recommend not thinking too much about the math."
"Yeah, probably good advice," Anna said to herself as much as anyone else, walking forward in the same direction as Rose. After a quick look and smile at Clarke, Lexa set off with Anna and Rose as well.
"What did they do here, Maleficent?" asked Elsa, slowly looking around at the immediate area, which appeared oddly untouched this far from the mystic runes. "And is it a good thing or a bad thing that there are no bodies in sight?"
The tall fairy slowly scanned the scene. Her wings had been folded up against her back, once again hidden by the cloak of her outfit. "My experience with dark magic is that the unknown rarely turns out to be a positive."
Elsa nodded slowly. "I was afraid you'd say something like that."
Clarke walked over to the blonde queen and the raven-haired sorceress, boots leaving a solitary trail of footprints in the ankle-deep snow as she walked. She had already noted that Elsa and Anna didn't leave footprints in the snow, but it appeared that Maleficent had her own magical method of achieving the same result. She checked the pistol holstered at her side; she had reloaded all three of her clips, with a few rounds of ammo left over. Raven would be ecstatic that Clarke was bringing the empty brass back, so they could be reloaded. Clarke would be just as happy not to have Raven swearing profusely at her for "being so fucking careless with that brass, Griffin!" as she had put it the last time.
Clarke had just reached Elsa and Maleficent when Elsa frowned and looked around.
"Something's not right here," Elsa said.
Maleficent nodded. "I agree. Though my senses seem to be less acute than usual. Perhaps the residual magic in the area."
Elsa pointed at the slope just in front of them, rising steeply into a small hill. "Something about this hill..." she said, her voice tailing off. "It doesn't feel right."
Clarke looked at Maleficent, the faerie's aristocratic features bearing a puzzled expression. "Does dark magic normally cloud your... senses?" she asked, curious about how the whole magic thing worked.
Maleficent shook her head slightly, eyes still fixed upon the hill Elsa had indicated. "No, not normally," the tall faerie said distractedly as her mind pondered the possibilities of what Elsa could be subconsciously detecting that her own magic was having difficulty registering.
Clarke considered Maleficent's words for only a few more seconds before alarm bells began to sound in her mind. "Lexa!" she shouted, as she turned and began to run toward the other trio of women, walking toward the perimeter of the rune circle. "LEXA!"
—O—
It was uncertain whether it was Anna's or Rose's foot that triggered the ward, as they were both barely a step ahead of Lexa as the three of them drew near the massive circle delineated by the bloody runes.
A hiss spurt forth from beneath the dirty snow, causing all three women to halt in their tracks as they watched a dome of crimson light spring upward, enclosing them, the entirety of the runic circle and a significant area outside the runes. At the same time, the glowing runes making up the mystic circle rapidly faded from their faintly glowing red to pitch black, while the red light filtering through the dome of mystic energy now tinted the snow-covered ground blood-red. Then the oily pool at the center of the circle erupted with gouts of black filth.
Lexa's sword was drawn and in her right hand in just over a second, just about the time the first oily spatters began to rise from the snow and wetly flow into the shape of shadowy figures, anthropomorphic in having a head, a torso, two arms and two legs but otherwise lacking any details beyond a glistening but featureless ebon uniformity.
With the blink of an eye, one of the shadowy spirits was in front of Lexa; out of pure reflex, she darted to the side, dodging a spray of steaming black goo from its head before her mind could even register that it had happened. The forehand slash with her sword was similarly sudden, striking the thing at what passed for its neck. There was no resistance like that of a human body as the blade cleaved through the shadow, but no sooner had the blade left the creature's form than the shade shattered into a thousand inky shards.
Lexa turned to see a trio of the shades spraying the same viscous fluid at Rose, only to have the oily spray disintegrate in the glow of brilliant yellow light coming from the palm of the blonde's hand, brandished in front of her; the shades themselves met the same fate only a moment later, withering into wisps of smoke in the magic's fearsome light.
A noise somehow combining a growl and a hiss seized Lexa's attention; she shifted her sword into a guard position as another shade slid toward her, not walking so much as gliding in her direction. She remained ready to leap to the side, only to be surprised by the creature's jet-black chest suddenly fading into a dull white as the tip of a gleaming white blade jutted outward. The creature shattered only a second later, revealing a very angry Anna.
"I do not like it when people set traps for us," Anna grumbled as she turned her back to Lexa, shifting her shield to block one shade's clawed fingers as it swiped at her while slicing her icy sword, the length of its slim blade glowing a bright blue-white, through another shade's body.
"It's incredibly rude!" Rose called out from where she was nearly surrounded by the ghoulish creatures, although the pitch and inflection of her voice sounded more like Aurora's to Lexa. Despite the shades vomiting filth at the blonde and slashing at her with their claws, they seemed unable to penetrate the glowing pink bubble now surrounding her. "These spirits have no manners whatsoever!"
Anna quickly looked to Lexa. "You take the left, I'll clear the right," the redhead said, twin braids still swinging from her motion, then she was surging forward toward their friend without waiting for a reply. Lexa grinned with excitement as she followed, angling away from Anna and swinging her sword in a powerful but controlled arc as she reached the shades encircling Aurora. Two of the ghostly creatures shattered as Lexa's sword drove through them, quickly followed by another, then another as the brunette danced around Aurora's shield, her sword's blade cutting lethal arcs and angles through the monsters until she met Anna only seconds later, on the opposite side of Aurora from where they had started.
The luminescent bubble disappeared without even a pop, revealing the blonde princess, her features cast in unnerving crimson from the glowing dome surrounding them. "Thank you both," Aurora said politely, smoothing the skirt of her dress before a vexed look spread across her face. "Oh, bother," she said, looking back toward the circle of runes and the pit of filth in its center.
"Snowballs," Anna added, her voice laced with frustration as she stared in the same direction.
Lexa only glowered as the scores of jet-black shades erupting from the center of the now-inert ritual circle continued to swirl into being.
—O—
"Shit!" Clarke shouted as the dully-glowing crimson dome snapped into being, trapping Lexa, Anna and Rose inside it while she watched. Her pistol was in her left hand as she ran toward the dome, but she hesitated to shoot at the dome in case the bullets might pass through and harm the women inside.
She stopped just short of running into the dome, placing her left forearm and open right hand against the shimmering surface, aglow with scarlet light. It felt smooth, similar to glass but with a peculiar quality that made the fine hairs on her right arm begin to prickle upward. She balled her right hand into a fist, then slammed it in to the dome, which gave nothing against the blow.
Clarke pounded again and again, stopping briefly to shout, "LEXA!" against the dome, her lips tingling from just the proximity to the dome's surface without actually touching it. Not hearing a reply from within, she took several steps back to get a running start. If she had taken the time to consider the feasibility of a magical prison strong enough to contain her wife yet fragile enough to shatter with Clarke slamming her body into it, Clarke would have realized that what she was about to try would almost certainly be pointless, but she had to try.
Until the hill now well behind Clarke, the same one that Elsa and Maleficent were examining more closely, exploded.
—O—
The force of the explosion blew Elsa and Maleficent off their feet, the sudden impact partially stunning them even as Elsa's powers reflexively froze the air in front of them into a shield, deflecting a significant portion of the blast. The two landed awkwardly on the snow, which cushioned Elsa's fall significantly more than Maleficent's but was unable to do much about how Elsa's left arm was painfully bent beneath her as she landed.
Elsa's vision snapped back into focus moments later, barely in time to see the rocky debris falling onto them. Her arms shot upward as silvery-white magic sprayed forth, almost in concert with the greenish-yellow wave of power that erupted from Maleficent's fingertips. Elsa did her best to push through the shooting pain in her left forearm as the two streams of magic slid around each other, Elsa's frosty magic striking the smaller rocks and larger boulders alike, turning them into lighter crystals of ice and snow, while Maleficent's magic weaved itself into a convex shield over them and the dome behind them, guiding the shower of frosty debris away from them until the rain of rocks and dirt had ceased.
"What was that you were saying about unexpected occurrences and dark magic, Mal?" Elsa asked, still lying on her back in the snow, her heart pounding with adrenaline as the throbbing of her left forearm clamored for her attention more strongly.
There was a long pause before Maleficent's distinct voice replied from beside Elsa's position. "I think, perhaps, that my dear Rose might have competition over who gets to kill the Codex's thief first."
Despite the danger of their situation and the shooting pain in her arm, Elsa couldn't keep from laughing.
—O—
By Lexa's count, she had personally dispatched over twenty shades by now. She had no idea how many Anna's sword and Aurora's magic had destroyed, likely in the scores from the glimpses she had been able to catch, but the monsters showed no signs of their numbers thinning.
"Time for a different strategy!" Anna shouted from Lexa's left.
Lexa drew her dagger, wielding it in her left hand as a main gauche while slashing another shade with her sword. She turned to see Anna run toward the glowing dome, stopping just short to plunge her icy blade into the dome itself, shoulder-high.
Anna gritted her teeth as she tugged the magic sword to her right, dragging it through the fiercely resisting field of blood magic, a shower of white and scarlet sparks spraying with each movement. But only moments after the glowing icy blade had carved its path through the magical construct, the crimson magic reformed behind it.
"My sword's cutting it, but it's reforming!" Anna shouted.
An aggrieved shriek came from Lexa's flank, but the brunette was unable to spare even a second's focus as she dodged between the combined assault of four shades, twisting and ducking while striking back when the opportunity presented itself. After she had eliminated three of the quartet engaging her, Lexa lunged toward the last only to stop short when a gleaming green tendril wrapped around the shade's throat. There was just enough of a pause for Lexa to register that the glowing cord had actually taken the shape of a slender vine, thorns jutting along its length, before the vine suddenly retracted at blinding speed, sawing through the specter's neck and causing it to explode into the now-familiar ebony shards that littered the snow-covered ground.
"I hate shades," hissed Briar Rose, hands glowing with emerald light that seemed to warp and sway around her, fury writ across her fair face. "Lexa!" she shouted, pausing just long enough to meet the warrior's intense gaze. "We'll need you to shield us while we carve our way out of this damned trap!"
Lexa nodded, breaking into a controlled run toward Rose while Rose turned and sprinted toward Anna, a green glow lifting Rose's skirt up to her thighs to allow freer movement for her legs. Midway there, more magical "vines" shot forth from Rose's hands, these glowing a darker jade, directed at the tiny sliver of space Anna's icy sword was carving through the mystic prison covering them.
Lexa stopped about ten feet away from her two companions, turning her back to them as a wave of shades crashed against her. She slashed with both her dagger and her sword, weaving a wall of blades against the encroaching specters that stopped their forward rush.
When they suddenly split to go around her, however, a change in strategy was required.
Lexa lunged to her left first, driving the blade of her dagger into the nearest shade's head. She didn't wait for it to shatter before surging back to her right, reaching backward slightly before sweeping her sword forward, dispelling the shade who had nearly reached Rose and Anna, their backs still turned as they worked on breaching the crimson dome; Lexa used her strength to power through two more shades as she completed the broad sweep with her slim sword, lifting the blade to pass over their heads as she used her momentum to complete her spin.
When the shades began to press from directly in front of her again, Lexa found herself impossibly pressed, incapable despite her vast skill of both protecting her friends and guarding herself from the icy claws of the spirits throwing themselves against her. She tightened her jaw and focused less on defense and more on destroying the shades, ignoring the piercing, chilling strikes to her arms, her chest, her legs, as they began to accumulate.
These things would NOT have her new allies, Lexa swore to herself. They would not have Clarke. They would know the cruel bite of her blade and her unbreakable will, and they would be smashed between the two. She smiled grimly in the face of death, and she kept slashing.
Behind Lexa's guard action, magic continued to hiss and spark. As Anna's frost blade and Rose's magic wreaked havoc upon on the enchantment enclosing them, the once-crimson glow of the dome's blood magic steadily faded to a dark gray at the site of the mystic struggle, the color shift blooming outward like ink dripped into water, spreading over a large portion of the dome before the structure finally broke, shattering and effervescing into nothing.
As the dome disappeared, the shades melted into nothing with it, much to the relief of Lexa, whose chest and throat were now completely numb but continued to burn with pain. Her aching arms fell to her sides, just as numb as the rest of her, but she had held her ground. Her friends were safe. Clarke would be safe.
"Nasty piece of work there," Anna grumbled, glancing around. "Almost—"
Rose's rejoinder died on her lips as Anna suddenly ran past her; Rose turned just in time to see Lexa's stiff body hit the snow face-first, just before Anna's outstretched arms could grab her.
After tossing Lexa's dropped dagger to her other side, next to the brunette's slim sword, Anna scooped her hands beneath Lexa and rolled the brunette over onto her back. "She's not breathing," Anna gasped.
"She's paralyzed," Rose muttered, extending her hands and her mystic senses over Lexa's chest. "Gods, she should be dead from the damage she took protecting us. She's a tough one."
"Can you save her?" asked Anna, her freckled cheeks now lightly flushed with concern.
"I can't," Rose said, shaking her head, her cheeks an intense red.
Anna felt her breath catch in her chest like a jagged blade.
"But I know who can," Rose added, a hint of hope in her intense blue eyes.
Rose closed those same eyes, holding her position for two, three long seconds before her blue eyes popped open again. Immediately a glow of violet light appeared at her hands, growing deeper in color but not in brightness as Aurora concentrated, channeling her healing magic through Lexa's body.
There was no blood, no marks on her skin; instead, the damage from the shades had been done to the warrior's spirit, making the wounds considerably more difficult to heal. After nearly three minutes the violet glow faded, and Aurora's arms dropped to her sides while the blonde took in a deep, weary breath. "She'll wake any minute," Aurora said, slumping against Anna before starting to cry softly.
"Aurora?" Anna asked, confused. "What's wrong? Are you wounded too?"
"No," the blonde mumbled wetly. "It was our fault."
"What was your fault?"
Aurora gestured weakly toward where Lexa lay still, now sleeping instead of dying. "Her getting hurt," she said. "My magic couldn't free us, and Rose's magic wasn't fast enough. We—"
"Oh, freeze that!" Anna spat.
Aurora's eyes widened as she shifted to look at her friend. "What?" she asked softly.
Anna's face was now flushed with anger. "What hurt her was those gods-damned shadow... things! Not you, not Rose, and not me!" Seeing the uncertainty on the blonde's face, Anna continued. "Lexa knew we were eventually going to be overwhelmed unless we broke the enchantment, and she fought like Hel to make that happen! She was willing to sacrifice herself to buy us enough time to break the spell. None of that is your fault."
"She's right," wheezed a soft voice. Slowly Lexa rolled onto her right side before carefully pushing herself up into a seated position. "I would have been useless against any magic."
"Well, now, don't sell yourself short on that," Anna replied, a quirky grin on her face.
Lexa blinked her eyes a few times, staring at Anna's amused face. "What do you mean?" she asked, honestly confused, although whether that was from Anna's coy words or almost dying was unclear at the moment.
Anna gestured around them. "The shades. What do you think they were made of, Lexa?"
She couldn't help but giggle slightly at the look of comprehension that dawned on Lexa's face.
—O—
The force of the explosion, though well behind her, still knocked Clarke face-first into the snow. A quick look toward the dome showed the blast didn't appear to harm the magical construct at all.
Again the yearning of her heart, Clarke pushed herself up and climbed to her feet, then she turned her back on the dome and started running back to Elsa and Maleficent. Lexa could take care of herself, and so could Anna and Rose. In any event, Clarke's best chances of getting inside that dome lay with the two women that appeared to be picking themselves up from the ground, and that fueled her sprint even more.
Elsa was holding her left arm as she climbed to her feet, while Maleficent didn't appear to be hurt too badly as she likewise regained her footing. Clarke had almost reached Elsa when a terrifying shriek came from the cloud of black, oily smoke covering what was left of the small hill that had exploded.
"What the hell was that?" she shouted as she stopped beside the other two women, where Elsa appeared to be creating a cast of ice that covered her left forearm from elbow to hand.
Maleficent turned to look at Clarke, one eyebrow raised and a queer smile on her face as she looked at the blonde. "I fear your question to be more accurate than you might have guessed," spoke the tall faerie, her normally-calm voice holding a hint of dark humor deep inside.
A host of blurry black forms erupted from the dark smoke, hurtling in seemingly all directions at once, a continuous spray of fluttering shadows before coalescing into streams, which then bent and shifted direction—shooting themselves directly toward Clarke, Elsa and Maleficent.
Clarke's pistol was already in her hand, but the... things, whatever they were, remained too far away to hit accurately. Grimly, Clarke realized that wouldn't be the case for much longer.
A shimmering orange-red bolt of power sizzled over Clarke's head, striking one of the approaching streams and reducing much of it to ashes which slowly fell down to the snow below. A second bolt of magical power vaporized even more, but a few of the shadowy things survived, though scattered and apparently directionless for the moment. Twin streams of silver-white magic lanced through the sky, so cold that Clarke could feel its bite against her face and neck through her magical protection despite the blasts being several feet away. Elsa's ice blasts reduced the sooty looking things to ashes and frost, just as Maleficent's magic was incinerating them. However, a few of the shades managed to slip through the magical blasts, and they quickly converged on the position the women had taken up next to each other.
Clarke's pistol rang out, the sharp report of each shot sounding oddly muffled to Clarke's ear, but she noticed both Elsa and Maleficent jumped and looked at her with the first gunshot, quickly going back to their work neutralizing the shades as soon as they realized what the sharp noise had been.
"Shit," Clarke swore to herself as she put four shots into the nearest shadow, now only meters away and clearly possessing a vague humanoid shape, including wickedly long talons on its hands and feet. However, despite her definitely hitting it with her last two shots from close range, the bullets had no visible effect; the creature continued to drift toward the three of them slowly, almost teasingly.
"My shots aren't hurting them!" she cried out, after switching to another shade circling them and having the same lack of effect as with the first.
"They're shades," Maleficent hissed, turning to send a bolt of chartreuse energy directly into the nearest creature's chest, reducing it to ashes and cinders with a dry sizzle. "Spirits! Pieces of souls, animated by dark magic." Her intense green eyes met Clarke's gaze, irritation seeming to bore into Clarke's psyche. "You can no more harm them with metal projectiles than punch the wind!"
"Well, sorry!" Clarke snapped back, her hackles rising at the condescension in the sorceress's voice. "It's my first time being attacked by shadows that want to eat me!"
A second blast of yellow-green magic from Maleficent's fingers eliminated the second shade approaching, then another blast vaporized a third that had made it close to them after dodging Elsa's streams of icy magic. She turned to look at Clarke again, taking a moment to tamp down her frustration with the situation and her worry about her love trapped inside the crimson dome nearby. "They want to consume your soul, not your body," she finally said, her voice still cool and aloof but not as haughty. "They're creatures of spirit and magic. They must be fought with the same."
"Well, that's great," Clarke huffed, running her hand over her head in a gesture of frustration. "I don't have any magic to wield!"
Maleficent's right eyebrow lifted in a quizzical manner; a sly grin just barely crossed her dark red lips. "No, but spirit you do have... in abundance."
Another shadow swooped down toward them, but despite looking directly at it, Maleficent turned back to Clarke, gave her a thin smile, then quite deliberately turned her back on the blonde. She once again rejoined Elsa in repulsing the larger waves of shades, who now were breaking up into wider groups instead of the previous streams. Red and green waves of magic joined Elsa's silver and white blasts shooting up into the sky, leaving Clarke staring at the shade that was now flying directly toward the three of them, faster than the earlier attackers.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck," Clarke muttered as the shade closed to within thirty meters. "Projectiles don't work," she said quietly to herself, replaying Maleficent's words in her head.
Going against what her hard-won survival instincts were screaming at her, she holstered her pistol. Her eyes never left the shadowy figure, which seemed to be steering itself at Elsa and Maleficent, not directly at Clarke. "So I'm not a threat, huh?" Clarke spoke quietly, drawing the long dagger Lexa had given her earlier, gripping and regripping it in her left hand nervously until it finally felt just right in her grasp. She waited until the creature was nearly upon her friends, then she launched herself forward in a lunge, driving the knife's blade into its chest, where a human's heart and lung would be.
It wasn't exactly the same impact she would have felt had she been stabbing a human, but Clarke felt a clear resistance, though much less than flesh and muscle would have produced. But the second her blade struck deep, the creature seized up, shuddering momentarily before crumbling into ashes and soot, which slowly trickled down to the snow.
Clarke stared at the dark particles fluttering downward for a few seconds before she looked up, barely in time to see the next shade barreling at her. Reflexively she managed to get her knife between her and it, with the creature's momentum impaling itself upon her blade right as she began to feel the stinging, creeping cold of its touch brush against her arms and chest.
She swallowed thickly, heart pounding and her mind aware of how lucky she had just gotten with letting herself get distracted during a fight. She adjusted her grip on her knife and quickly scanned the area around her and her two friends, identifying the next shadow to evade the magical artillery of Maleficent and Elsa and positioning herself to intercept it.
Clarke was not going to die, not with so much ahead for her and Lexa, and if these shadow spirits and whoever sent them thought otherwise, they were about to be proven wrong.
—O—
After while felt like an hour but was likely only minutes, the sky around them was once more clear, much to Clarke's delight.
She was soaked with sweat, despite the arctic temperatures, and she had shed her thick outer coat about halfway through the fighting due to needing more mobility to intercept the shades that made it close enough for her to fight them, but Lexa's training in melee combat had served Clarke extremely well, with only a few minor wounds on her arms that burned yet felt frozen at the same time. Maleficent and Elsa had proven extremely effective at blasting the shades from the sky, with only a small number of them getting close enough for Clarke to dispatch them.
"Is that it?" Clarke asked, taking in a few deep breaths as she tried to slow her heart back to a normal rate.
"It appears so," Maleficent said, again perusing their surroundings carefully, appearing as calm and unflappable as if she had spent the entire morning at tea.
"Something's shimmering over there," Elsa said.
Clarke and Maleficent turned to look at the blonde queen, who was pointing with her right arm at what remained of the destroyed hill that had concealed the shades. "I can see light reflecting off the edges of the crater," added Elsa. "Something's in there."
"Hopefully it's not any more of these things," Clarke said, wryly kicking at the ashes collected on the snow around them.
When the ashes swirled away from her, however, she jumped backward with a slight yelp (which she would vigorously deny later, to no effect).
Elsa turned to look at Clarke, but the small wave of ashes blowing around and past her claimed her attention instead. All three women turned and watched as the ashes and cinders that had turned the snow around them gray built up mass, increasing in volume as they all swirled together into a massive cloud, growing larger by the second as more and more remnants of the shades coalesced.
When the roiling smoky cloud was nearly thirty meters tall, Clarke flatly stated, "No way I'm sticking a knife in that thing."
Elsa instantly snorted with laughter. Then Maleficent laughed, the sound rich and full-throated, increasing in volume after she turned and saw the serious expression on Clarke's face.
The three of them turned back to the enormous cloud, just in time to see the blowing soot suddenly surge inward with a roar like that of a flash flood. In an instant, the smoky mass was gone, and standing in its place was a monstrous behemoth, nearly as tall as the highest spire of Arendelle Castle, with a horned head like that of a bull and a toothy maw like that of an alligator. Its body was thick and powerful but relatively short, more reminiscent of a dog than of a bull or horse, and its coloration was the same ebon darkness the shades had been. Unlike the shades, this creature's eyes glowed a simmering red, like that of angry coals left behind after a fire's flames had been extinguished.
"CLARKE!"
Clarke turned to look for the shout that had come behind her, and her heart leapt as she saw Lexa running toward her, Anna and Rose trying to keep pace but unable to match Lexa's speed. "Oh my God, Lexa!" Clarke cried, running to meet her wife.
Elsa saw the towering creature shift its gaze toward Clarke, whose back was now turned to the behemoth, noting Anna, Rose and Lexa approaching them as well. Elsa's right arm shot upward instantly, just before the creature opened its maw to spew forth thick, steaming black goo toward Clarke and the others. Her ice wall materialized well before the bubbling filth, blocking it easily. The ice hissed and steamed where the viscous fluid struck it and slowly slid downward, but the wall held easily.
"Enough of these games!" Elsa heard Maleficent shout behind her. The blonde queen smiled knowingly at hearing that tone of voice from her friend, while she kept her concentration on shielding her wife and their friends from the behemoth's attack.
Now these shades had gone and done it.
—O—
Clarke reached Lexa just as the steaming black filth struck Elsa's ice wall behind her. The sound startled the blonde, but Lexa's tight one-armed grip held Clarke against her securely. Clarke turned in Lexa's embrace to watch the thick black fluid spatter across the transparent ice wall hovering in front of and over them for several seconds before the stream ceased, letting the goo slowly seep down the steeply-angled ice barrier until it dripped onto the snow.
With a brilliant shimmer, the ice wall briefly glowed, then the muck was likewise enveloped in the bright glow. In less than two seconds, wall and filth alike dissolved into effervescent flakes of frost, drifting upward as all of it faded from view, revealing the gigantic shadow beast looming over Elsa and Maleficent, standing nearly a hundred feet high, its eyes glowing like hot coals as its coal-black body stood in eye-popping contrast to the light sky and white snow all around. It seemed to be considering which group of women to attack first, as its wedge-shaped head looked from one group to another.
Anna and Rose kept running toward Clarke and Lexa until Anna stopped abruptly, sheathing her sword as Rose kept running toward Lexa and Clarke, who were now moving forward at a careful pace toward the shadow behemoth.
After only a few seconds later, an ear-splitting roar made Clarke and Lexa look back up to the massive creature, where the glow of its left eye was fading rapidly. A shimmering patch of white was visible over part of the now-dark red eye, and Lexa thought she could see a silvery arrow protruding from the damaged area. She looked behind her to see Anna taking aim with what appeared to be a longbow made entirely of ice, down to the glistening white string and argent arrow nocked and held in position to be fired.
Lexa turned her attention back to where she and Clarke were going, with Rose just a few seconds behind them while the trio trudged through the calf-high snow. A whistling noise shooting over their heads told Lexa that Anna had fired the arrow she had seen her aiming, but this time the foul behemoth lifted a massive paw, intercepting the arrow aimed for its remaining eye. The arrow still struck the creature's paw, though, eliciting another angry bellow as a silvery stain spread out from where it had struck.
The monster slammed its paw back onto the ground, causing the area to shudder powerfully enough to throw Lexa and Clarke off their stride and send Rose stumbling into the snow. The creature then flattened itself slightly, not unlike a panther preparing to pounce.
Seeing what was about to happen, Anna's arms fell to her side as her stomach plummeted inside her. "This is bad," she said to herself, before breaking into a run to her left, trying to shift the angle of the monster's almost-certain attack far enough away to spare her friends, who were trapped between her and it.
As the behemoth lunged forward toward Clarke, Lexa and Rose, Lexa pushed Clarke to the side, shouting, "Get clear!"
Clarke, however, ignored her wife's request in favor of grabbing Lexa's right hand and pulling Lexa toward her as she tried to reach Rose, who was still pulling herself out of the snow. Lexa lowered her head and braced herself for the crushing impact of the creature trampling them, when a crashing smack, followed by a deep, angry roar, rang out above them.
Lexa and Clarke looked up to see a gigantic black dragon, its underside a greenish-purple, drive itself into the shadow behemoth, the brutal impact sending both of them rolling across the tundra, tossing snow and dirt in all directions. The dragon wasn't quite as large as the behemoth, but it was still massive, and as Lexa and Clarke watched, the dragon's long neck slid out of the path of one of the shadow-beast's swipes, then the black dragon opened its jaws to blast the behemoth with a gout of brilliant green flame.
The behemoth threw itself to the ground with a resounding crash, once again shaking the earth around it, but the dragon clung tightly to it, slashing with front and hind limbs as well as biting deeply into the behemoth's back.
As the two titans rolled toward them, Lexa realized their position was still quite hazardous. "We have to move," she said, helping Clarke pull Rose to her feet.
Clarke met Lexa's worried green eyes and nodded. "You okay?" she asked Rose, who angrily brushed snow from her face.
"Yes," Rose replied quickly, looking over to assess where the two monsters thrashed back and forth. "We can help her in a minute, once we're out of danger of being crushed," she said, her eyes locked on the battle and her voice slightly distant. She turned back to Clarke and Lexa. "Is Anna alright?" she asked, looking around them once more.
"Yes!" Anna shouted as she reached them, only now slowing her run. Her bow was still in her hand and her cheeks were a rosy pink from exertion, but she appeared perfectly fine. "Sorry about almost getting you—"
"Later!" Lexa said, gripping Clarke's arm enough to get her attention, then releasing her as she started to run away from the beasts and toward Elsa, who was maybe a hundred meters away. The others followed her, reaching the blonde queen quickly.
—O—
In her dragon form, Maleficent ignored the burning wounds in her back from the shadow-beast's talons, focusing instead on trying to burn the creature's head off completely as she unleashed another gout of fiery breath directly into its face. However, that kept her head still long enough for another of the creature's paws to gouge her throat.
She pulled her neck away, tucking it along the behemoth's other flank which raking with her own claws across the monster's sides. Then she felt a cooling sensation settle over her body, a familiar sensation that made feelings of happiness and comfort begin to flitter across her insides as her wounds began to close and the pain from them receded.
—O—
Aurora stood still, her hands glowing a soft lavender as she used her magic to heal Maleficent from afar. Around her Anna, Elsa, Clarke and Lexa continued to watch the dragon and the shadow behemoth brawl.
Clarke was transfixed by the surreal sight. She wished she had a camera, because no one was ever going to believe this without hard proof.
Lexa turned to look at Elsa briefly. "Would your powers be effective from here?" she asked, curious.
Elsa nodded, not taking her eyes off the battle as Maleficent's rear talons opened a huge crimson gash in the behemoth's side. "Absolutely," she added. "But Maleficent would get offended if I directly helped her in a one-on-one battle like this."
Lexa considered the monarch's words and nodded, understanding without further explanation.
"But..." Elsa said, now turning to smile at Lexa. "There are other ways of helping without being quite so obvious about it."
"My healing, for one," Aurora said politely, lowering her hands once the light purple aura around them faded.
"Annnndd... that," Elsa said, prompting Lexa to turn to look at the brawl again.
—O—
Maleficent dodged another flurry of swipes at her face, trying to ignore the stinging that the behemoth's rear claws had opened up in her flanks. She snapped at the creature's throat, but it was able to extend its head just far enough backward to dodge the razor-sharp teeth of Maleficent's dragon form.
Then a blast of icy magic struck the creature's head from the side, as a large glittering white dragon soared to a stop just above the two beasts locked in combat, flapping its wings to hold its position in the air while it pounded the shadow-beast with a relentless stream of burning-cold frost against its head.
Seizing the opportunity, Maleficent unleashed her own fiery breath again, striking the shadow behemoth directly in its face this time. Feeling the blood magic empowering the creature beginning to buckle under the two-pronged mystic assault, Maleficent forced even more power through her fire breath as Icescale did much the same. Finally, after interminable seconds, the creature's head exploded into an oily cloud, with its body doing the same an instant later.
Maleficent instantly shut down her fire breath, collapsing on the snowy terrain. Beside her, Icescale dropped to the ground as well, plodding over to carefully examine the black and green dragon that was even larger than him, taking care to not actually touch her. While his mistresses enjoyed affection and touch, not everyone did, and Icescale knew to respect the intimidating faerie's personal space, regardless of her form at the moment.
"Go to her," a smiling Elsa said to Aurora, getting a look of relief flashed her way before the blonde turned and ran toward the two dragons. Elsa watched carefully, but there was no sign of any further activity among the shadows or from the crater in the mountain.
"We walked into a trap too," Anna said as she squeezed Elsa's right hand. "Is your arm going to be okay?" Anna asked, bending over to examine the ice cast encompassing Elsa left arm from the elbow to the hand.
"It'll be fine," Elsa said, running the fingers of her right hand through Anna's bangs gently. "Now that I know all of you are safe."
As they, Lexa and Clarke watched, Icescale moved back at Aurora's approach. The blonde's entire body was surrounded by a nimbus of lavender light as she knelt beside the black and green dragon, and that soft glow quickly extended to encompass the dragon's body as well. After several seconds, the dragon began to shrink, as black and green scales shifted, reforming into a black cloak beneath Aurora's touch. The lavender glow remained intense for several more seconds, then it too faded quickly.
"Should we go over to her?" Clarke asked Elsa.
Elsa shook her head, with Anna copying her action almost exactly. "We'll let Aurora and Rose get her stabilized," Elsa said quietly. "Then they'll come join us."
"I'm a healer," Clarke said, feeling a bit underutilized. "I might be able to help."
Elsa turned to look at Clarke. Her smile faded as her face turned carefully neutral. "I'm sure you could help," Elsa spoke carefully. "But Maleficent might not take well to the implication that she might need help."
Clarke turned to look at the tall faerie, now slowly standing with the help of the shorter blonde with her. She sighed softly. "God, people and their egos," she mumbled.
Lexa bumping her hip occurred at about the same time as Anna giggling softly behind Clarke. "You shouldn't say such rude things about someone who turned into a dragon to save us from being trampled," Lexa said to Clarke, a soft smile on her face.
Clarke nodded, finally beginning to acknowledge the numb giddiness that came with the fading of adrenaline and the knowledge that she had survived yet another encounter with someone or something trying to kill her. "Good point," she admitted, turning to look at her wife. "You're not just pretty. You're smart too," she said teasingly, caressing Lexa's right cheek with her bare hand.
"Sorry about almost getting you killed back there," Anna said, looking at Lexa and Clarke with a guilty expression.
"What?" Lexa said, beating Elsa and Clarke. "You were trying to kill the shade-beast! There is nothing for which you should apologize!"
Clarke nodded, resting her right hand briefly on Anna's shoulder, where the Summer Queen's green cloak covered her ice mail armor. Even with Elsa's enchantment protecting her from the cold, Clarke could feel the bite of the magical armor through the cloak. "Lexa's right, Queen Anna. Any regular creature, an arrow to the eye would have killed it, or at least incapacitated it. You were trying to protect us all. You're not responsible for what it did after that."
Elsa put her hands on Anna's shoulders before stepping forward and kissing Anna's forehead. "We all worked well together," Elsa said, smiling happily when Anna closed her eyes and stepped forward, leaning into Elsa's embrace. "Despite someone setting multiple traps for us."
"We need to examine the ritual site closely," said Maleficent as she and Rose approached the others. The blonde had insinuated herself beneath Maleficent's cloak, tucked against the tall faerie's left side in a show of rare public intimacy from the two of them. Only Rose's head and part of her chest could be seen, as she had drawn the ebony cloak around the two of them much like Maleficent normally did when walking.
"No splitting up this time," Elsa said.
"Indeed," Maleficent nodded. "We must proceed with extreme caution, in case there remains a trap yet to be sprung here."
"I'm pretty sure that rune circle went dead," Anna said, having turned without leaving Elsa's embrace; now Anna's back was to Elsa's chest, with the blonde queen's arms around Anna's waist as Anna leaned back against her partner. "Setting off the trap seemed to break the enchantment, which set free all the shades that had been bound inside that black pool."
"I agree," Rose added, looking up to Maleficent. A quick grin flashed across Rose's face, then she quickly lunged upward to place a kiss on Maleficent's pale cheek, causing the taller woman's eyebrows to shoot upward. Grinning as she returned to her previous position snuggled against Maleficent and pointedly ignoring the curious look the taller woman was now giving her, Rose turned back to address the others. "When we were approaching the ritual site, I could feel a tremendous amount of power still trapped in the circle. Obviously, now that we know better, it had to be the shades as well as that dome, designed to hold us in place until we were overwhelmed. Nasty piece of work, that.
"Once the dome was down, though, the anchored spells collapsed, releasing the remaining shades from where they had been bound. After that, I couldn't feel any power still present, inside the ritual circle or without." Considering what else she had noticed inside the charnel pit in the center of the circle once the filth had dissipated, she hesitated briefly before deciding that their friends needed to know the grisly truth about what had happened to the missing villagers.
"There's more I need to tell you about that circle," Rose sighed, "but it can wait until we see what's still inside what's left of that hill. What's left in the circle doesn't present an immediate danger at this point. What's over there," Rose said, pointing toward the sparkling light now visibly shining over the lip of the raised, ragged small caldera, "we're still not sure about."
Rose looked up to Maleficent, her sapphire eyes meeting the faerie's emerald as Rose wordlessly inquired if her mate was up to any more exertion at the moment. Seeing the steely resolve she had expected to see in her lover's gaze, Rose smiled sadly, giving Maleficent a gentle pat on her slender chest before turning back to their friends.
"Let's go see what's left in that rubble."
—O—
With Maleficent not trusting herself to fly just yet, it was a short hike up the side of the caldera to the lowest point where the earth had been torn away.
"Well, you don't see that every day," Anna said as she looked down into the depression, having beaten the others to the top, although that was only because Lexa stopped to help Clarke after the blonde slipped on an icy patch on the modest slope.
Lexa and Clarke were next, with Elsa, Rose and Maleficent all climbing at a less competitive speed (and quietly laughing about the other three trying to show off).
"That's like the portal that brought us here!" Clarke shouted as she spied the tall, shimmering vertical circle of light at the bottom of the caldera's basin. Before it dozens if not hundreds of footprints had stomped the ground nearly clear of snow, the prints mostly filled with mud and dirt now.
"This hill isn't natural," Maleficent said, fingers splayed out and held over the ground as they trudged up the side of the hill, finally reaching the top to join the others. "It has the taint of blood magic, just as those shades did."
Elsa turned to look at her. "Do you mean to say it was created by whomever set those traps for us?"
Maleficent nodded slightly. "That would be my theory, yes."
"But as a trap, or to hide this portal?" asked Rose, the tip of her index finger lightly touching her chin as she thought.
"Why not both?" asked Clarke. Seeing the others look to her, she continued. "Conceal the portal long enough to make us curious, mask any traces of dark magic to draw us in close, then blow it up in our faces."
There was silence for a few moments before Elsa spoke. "It very nearly worked," she said quietly, taking Anna's hand unconsciously.
"With a nasty second trap around the circle itself, in case the first one didn't kill us," Anna added.
"This portal is unstable," said Maleficent, her voice distinct in the momentary silence.
"It's collapsing?" Clarke asked, noting that while Lexa was content to let Clarke do the talking for now, her wife was carefully listening to and considering every word being spoken. It was cute, when she got all analytical.
Maleficent lifted her arms, and tendrils of blue-green magic streamed from her fingertips toward the shimmering pool of light. After a few seconds of consideration, she nodded. "Yes. It's unstable, but it feels like it is in no immediate danger of collapse."
"We also have to consider the possibility of the portals working in both directions," Lexa spoke, her voice clear and firm. "So we should secure this portal to prevent any others from returning through it while it remains open."
"We should stabilize the portal first," Rose said, her right hand extended toward the portal with her fingers extended. "Could last a few more days, could be a few hours. I can't really say for sure. Do you have any better sense of it, love?"
Maleficent was still for several seconds before shaking her head slowly. "Unfortunately, no better estimate than yours, Rose," she said. She turned to Anna and Elsa. "How long did the original portal stay open?"
"We have no idea," Elsa said, with Anna shaking her head in the negative as well. She turned to look at Clarke and Lexa. "You were the only ones here who went through it. Do you have any idea as to how long it was open?"
"No," Lexa answered for Clarke. "We only observed it for a few minutes before we had to go through it, and it faded almost immediately afterward."
After quiet contemplation from the six women for a few moments, Maleficent's voice finally broke the silence. "I do believe it would be best for you to stabilize the portal, Elsa," she said calmly.
"ME?" Elsa asked as her head leaned forward to look around Anna toward the tall faerie.
Maleficent nodded. "The portal was created using the blood of your people, deep in the heart of your lands. It should respond to your magic more effectively than mine."
"A logical idea," Elsa admitted, lifting her arms slightly. "I've never attempted this before, though."
"No matter," replied Maleficent. "Your magic is as much instinctive as it is deliberate, Elsa. It knows what you want it to do."
"It's a part of you," Anna added quietly, smiling at her wife. "Just like it's a part of me, and of our girls."
"Yes," Maleficent agreed, allowing a small but honest smile to cross her ruby lips. "I shall help guide you through this process."
Elsa nodded, as Anna grinned and patted Elsa's shoulders before stepping back slightly.
"Begin by encircling the portal with your magic," Maleficent spoke. Elsa complied by raising her arms; streams of glistening ice and frost streamed in ribbons from her fingers, swirling into twin streams of white and pale blue as they flowed around the portal, surrounding it with a perimeter of softly glowing white.
"Very good," said Maleficent, her tone not unlike that of a tutor addressing a pupil. "Be cognizant of the feedback through your magic. Listen to what it is trying to tell you."
"It feels accepting so far," Elsa said, having to raise her voice slightly over the hissing of her magic interacting with the portal. "Nothing that feels catastrophic, at least. But there's a tension I can feel."
"Their blood demands vengeance, Elsa. It wants to help you find and stop the ones who committed this atrocity. Now visualize your magic weaving through the perimeter of the portal, interlacing itself with the blood-stained fabric of the gateway itself." She gave Elsa a few seconds, then continued as she felt Elsa's magic quickly begin to overpower the portal's dark underpinnings. "Good. Now you must use your magic to freeze the portal's edges, to affix it in place as well as time, while leaving the middle of the gateway untouched."
"What happens if something goes wrong?" asked Clarke, her curiosity about what she was watching overriding her restraint.
Anna immediately turned to look at her. "It won't," the redhead said quickly, her tone not harsh but clearly not inviting further discussion.
As they watched, the outer rim of the portal crystallized; Anna let out a small victory cheer, only to stop as the ice began to encroach inward from the outermost edges.
"It is a delicate balance," Maleficent said encouragingly. "A trick that even the most experienced wielders of magic have difficulty with at times—to seize command of another's gate without dispelling it. Quite difficult even for relatively short distances spanned, and this portal spans a vast distance indeed."
Elsa grimaced as she altered the flow of her magic slightly, summoning thoughts of hope and comfort to enhance her control as she tried to restrain the magic tugging at its metaphysical leash. However, it felt as though when she pushed the magic back in one dimension, it tried to surge in another. It was much like trying to stuff the ocean into a box, and Elsa felt her control beginning to fray as the frustration mounted over long minutes of delicate adjustments.
When she felt warmth encircle her chest, in the form of Anna's arms, Elsa closed her eyes; knowing immediately what her wife was about to say to her, Elsa stopped struggling with her magic and relaxed her control.
"Good," she felt as much as heard Anna whisper in her right ear, the warm breath tickling the fine hairs closest to Elsa's ear and making her skin tingle. "I don't even have to tell you any more, do I?" Anna continued, punctuating the sentence with a gentle kiss just behind Elsa's ear. "Just feel me, my love, and let your magic do the work. It may be headstrong at times, but nothing can resist us when we're together."
As Anna hugged Elsa tightly, her ice mail and Elsa's ice dress transmitted every sensation between the two mates' skin, allowing Elsa to feel Anna's softness and heat as if nothing stood between their bodies. Elsa relished the warmth, the safety, the acceptance, the passion, the love that Anna gave her as no one else possibly could. She totally lost sense of her magic and what it was doing, instead enthralled with all she felt from Anna and the fierce love that forever bound them together.
With a crisp crackling noise, the ice locked into place around the portal as it also stopped flowing from Elsa's hands, leaving a gleaming blue-white frame in place around the portal, which continued to shimmer and flow inside its new border. Elsa's hands immediately settled over Anna's arms encircling her chest, gently pressing down on them in a loving manner.
"Thank you," Elsa whispered, knowing the words were unnecessary.
"Anytime, and always," Anna replied, knowing it too.
"Impressive," Maleficent said with a notable aching of her left eyebrow as she inspected the stabilized portal. She turned to her side, to see Rose giving her a rather smug I-told-you-so look. It took all of Maleficent's legendary self-control to not send a stinging charm directly into her partner's trim rear, but she managed to restrain herself in front of the others.
"Thank you, Maleficent, for talking me through that," Elsa said, beaming at Maleficent, although the faerie suspected her happiness was at least as much due to being held in her lover's arms as it was sense of accomplishment.
Maleficent stood a bit more tall, pointedly ignoring the teasing look on Rose's face. "It was my pleasure, Elsa," she said, allowing a hint of informality to creep into her words. "Would you like to seal this off for now, or would you like Rose to do it?"
"Oh, I'd love to take care of that little matter," Elsa said, her grin darkening as she thought of the vicious surprises that had been left for her friends, for her... and for Anna. She lifted her hands, with the air shimmering before them as a thick, opaque dome of ice materialized over the portal, extending into and through the ground beneath it to form an impenetrable sphere enclosing the gateway between worlds. As a final touch, she chilled the air inside the sphere to near-lethal levels as her own unpleasant surprise for anyone who might attempt to skulk back into their world.
"That should keep us secure for now," Elsa said, lowering her arms. "Now let's see what we can learn from whatever these monsters have left behind."
—O—
Hours later, the sextet of women who finally walked through the main doors of Arendelle Castle late that evening looked considerably more haggard and world-weary.
As Hilde, their castle's head of staff, approached them, the pleasant words of greeting that had been on her lips died as she registered just how exhausted her queens and their friends were. Even the elegant, aloof Maleficent, who had never presented as anything other than intimidating and perfectly composed, looked as if she could have used three days' sleep.
Quickly gathering her wits, Hilde smiled. "Welcome home, Your Majesties, Your Highness, Ladies!" she said, trying to inject some positivity into what had obviously been a grueling day.
"Thanks, Hilde," Anna said, mustering a smile for the ashen blonde. "Arista should be back tomorrow. She wanted us to let you know that she loved you and missed you."
"She's fine, just dealing with... what happened," Elsa said, managing a tired smile of her own. "She's looking forward to being home tomorrow."
Despite her eyes becoming wet with unshed tears, Hilde kept her smile on her face. "As am I," she replied honestly. "I miss my wife when her work takes her away, but I'm proud of her."
"And I know she feels the same about you," Elsa replied. "Could we please have some dinner brought to my study upstairs? We have a great deal we need to discuss."
"Of course, Your Majesty."
"Oh, and Hilde?" Elsa spoke quickly, catching the friendly blonde in mid-turn. When Hilde spun once more to look at her Queens, Elsa smiled. "Thank you. For everything you do."
Hilde blinked twice. "Of... Of course, Your Majesty."
Though the smile stayed on Elsa's face, other emotions swirled in her bright blue eyes. "We just... don't tell you enough. We don't tell any of you enough." Elsa blinked a few times, and the frosty tears that slipped out and slithered down her cheeks were unmistakable. She closed her eyes for several seconds, finally reopening them. "We'll be in Anna's study until dinner is ready. Please come get us yourself when it's time."
"Y-yes, Your Majesty," Hilde replied, momentarily dumbfounded. She stood still as the six women made their way past her, the other four less visibly upset than her Queens, but there was a definite pall surrounding them. What in the name of the gods could have afflicted them so? thought Hilde.
—O—
As the door to the modest study connected to Anna's office upstairs closed, the six women looked at each other briefly before moving to the sturdy wooden table and the chairs surrounding it. It was surprisingly plain but well over a hundred years old, its dark staining occasionally marred by nicks and small gouges but still possessing a weighty gravity to it.
As the six of them took their seats, Anna and Elsa found it difficult to tear their eyes away from the safe, neutral surface of the table. Neither wanted to be the cause of the other crying again after what they had seen that day. Finally Anna stood up and unbuckled her belt, placing it and the shield and sword attached to it in a leather chair positioned next to the wall. Then she walked back over to the table, pulled her chair out and moved it next to the wall, and finally settled on Elsa's lap, placing her head on Elsa's shoulder.
"Anna, Elsa..." Rose began, hesitantly. "We're so sorry for what happened to your people."
"All of them," Anna mumbled weakly. "All of them. Even..."
"Shhhh," Elsa said, trying to comfort herself as much as Anna as she held her mate tightly, placing soft kisses on Anna's coppery head of hair. She could still taste the bile at the back of her throat, despite both her and Anna rinsing their mouths with snow after they had finally stopped vomiting. Only Anna's constant presence for the last few hours had kept her magic from running wild, so frenzied were her emotions. "We've freed their souls now, and we're returned their bodies to Arendelle itself," she managed to say, her voice wet with sorrow. "That much we were able to grant them."
"This ritualist, whomever he or she may be, is quite clever," Maleficent finally said, a note of begrudging respect audible in her words. "Holding the Vile Codex for this many years is quite extraordinary. It tends to burn through its readers quite rapidly."
"How do you know it's the same person who stole it from the faeries?" asked Lexa, her face the coolly neutral visage she wore so well when calmly discussing matters with those she considered friendly peers. Around those she considered unfriendly peers, she didn't use nearly as much self-control.
"Only someone who had studied the Codex for years could have designed and executed—"
Maleficent stopped short, looking over to Elsa and Anna. "My apologies," she said calmly, lowering her voice in a show of respect to her friends. "Not the most considerate choice of words on my part, I must admit."
"No harm intended, Maleficent," Elsa replied, giving her friend the best smile she could manage at the time. "And no offense taken."
"That goes for me too," Anna added. "And I'm sorry for being a big baby. Just..." She sighed. "Seeing those children, and what he—or she—did to them, it just..."
"It made me think of our daughters too, my heart," Elsa said soothingly. "And there's no armor which can protect from a sight like that."
The sound of wood grating against stone drew everyone's attention to Rose standing from her seat. She calmly walked around the table to where Anna and Elsa sat, then she bent over and carefully wrapped her arms around both of them.
No one spoke for several minutes, with just the sound of soft crying and sniffing occasionally audible. Finally Rose stood upright, reaching out and taking Elsa's right hand with her left and Anna's left hand with her right. "Anna," Rose said. "Elsa. Mal and I do what we do to prevent things like what we saw today from happening. And when we can't prevent it, we do our best to put down the monsters responsible... permanently."
She smiled, and though it was warm and friendly, there was an undeniable sadness behind it as well. "I've done this for decades," Rose said, her words seemingly at odds with her youthful appearance. "And Mal's got considerably more experience than me. But things like what we saw today, well... It still bothers us, too. We're just better at hiding it."
Beneath the table, Clarke was squeezing Lexa's hand so hard that Lexa expected at least one of them would have bruises in the morning. Lexa knew this conversation about what they had found inside the center of the ritual circle was dredging up heavy, bitter memories of what Clarke did inside Mt. Weather, what Lexa had practically forced her to do by breaking their alliance. But despite the horrific nature of what went on inside that living tomb, there was still a world of difference between what Clarke had done as a terrible last resort and what this evil sorcerer had done.
Lexa leaned over and placed a lingering, gentle but clear kiss on Clarke's temple. The public display of affection was so out of character for Lexa that Clarke turned and stared at her as if she had grown a second head. Lexa felt her heart break slightly at the redness of her mate's eyes, at the anguish that was still all-too-fresh, even nearly a year after what happened inside Mount Weather. She lifted Clarke's right hand to her lips and placed a gentle kiss across the knuckles before she spoke.
"We have all done terrible things, Clarke," Lexa said, trying to keep her voice calm but allowing the very real emotions she felt to seep into her speech. "But what you did to the Maunon-de... You had no choice in that." Tears trickled down Lexa's cheeks as she stopped fighting her emotions for control. "I left you no choice in that." She blinked the tears away, hating the way the heavy drops made her eyelashes feel heavy and ponderous but wanting to show Clarke that she could allow herself to be emotional, to be vulnerable, for her and her alone.
Elsa met Maleficent's glance across the table; Maleficent and Rose had not yet arrived at the castle when Clarke and Lexa had had that particular conversation with her and Anna. Anna saw the communicative glance between her wife and their friend, so when the subtle touch against her mind brushed her thoughts, she immediately opened her thoughts to Maleficent, letting the faerie quickly share her and Elsa's memories of that conversation as well as to link them to Rose as well.
After a few minutes, Maleficent cleared her throat, drawing Clarke's and Lexa's attention toward her. For long seconds she simply held Clarke's gaze, her expression stoically neutral.
"What you did, Clarke of the Thirteen Clans, was indeed terrible," Maleficent said calmly. "But it was done to both save your people and to bring an end to decades of atrocity and predation perpetrated by the people beneath the mountain. Their children of yesterday had grown up to become the killers and butchers of today, and the same cycle would have occurred over and over again had you not taken the actions you did."
"Not all of them were like that," Clarke argued, her voice hoarse and thick. "Maya was—"
"The dark-haired girl was an exception," Maleficent spoke sharply, cutting Clarke off. "And an exceedingly rare one, at that. Her life being lost was a tragedy inside a tragedy, but she understood. She accepted it, as payment for her having been an accomplice to the abduction and butchery of those outside."
A rare compassionate smile spread across Maleficent's lips. Despite what had been said or written of her over the years, it wasn't that the imposing faerie was heartless, far from it; it was just that she had little tolerance for fools, liars or thieves, and most of her interactions with humanity over her lifetime had involved some combination of the three. "Similarly, Clarke, you accepted the burden of living with the decision you made, so that those whom you cared about would not have to bear that terrible weight themselves," she said.
Clarke wiped her nose with the sleeve of her shirt, eyes burning with tears both shed and unshed but unable to look away from the faerie's intense green gaze. She felt Lexa squeeze her hands with both of her own, and Clarke hungrily drew as much strength and support from her partner as she could.
Maleficent glanced to her left, to Elsa and Anna, then to her right, to Briar Rose. "It is not our place to judge you for what you did, Clarke of the Thirteen Clans. Nor is it our place to forgive you or offer you absolution. Such is beyond even our capabilities." Then she leaned forward ever so slightly, but it felt like the very air itself grew still and silent as it waited for her to speak once more.
"But I can assure you that what you did in the depths of that slaughterhouse, no matter how grim or gruesome, was leagues apart from what atrocities were committed upon those poor Arendellans in the icy wastes north of here."
Clarke looked like she was about to completely break down, and only Lexa's strong arms wrapping around her kept the blonde from completely sliding out of her seat and onto the floor when her body's wracked with sobs hard enough to shake both of them.
Maleficent continues, raising her voice (and possibly using a touch of magic) to make sure Clarke hears her. "Clarke, you did not torture those people for hours, brutally prolonging their suffering while the others watched, bleeding them dry as part of an unholy ritual that completely subverted life, nature and magic itself. What you did to those beneath the mountain killed them quickly, and you only did it because there were no other options left to you. It was not anything good, not at all, but it was certainly not the depths of evil either."
Lexa lifted Clarke enough to slide her mate onto her lap, where she held Clarke to her body, guiding the blonde's head against her neck to let her cry in a modicum of peace. She took a few long moments to gather her own composure once more, as she knew her own feelings had been flayed raw over the last few minutes as well. Finally, when she felt she could trust her voice once more, she looked to Maleficent.
"Thank you," Lexa said, her own bright green eyes blinking away tears. "Thank you for telling my houmon this. She needed to hear it, to banish the dark thoughts that have been brought forth today back to the past where they belong."
"She will never be entirely free of them," Maleficent said, her voice quiet once more.
Lexa nodded once, careful to not bump Clarke's head while doing so. "I know," she said, her throat tightening again despite her best efforts. "And neither will I."
Maleficent smiled, this one obvious in its sadness. "None of us ever can be," she said, reaching for Rose's hand and grasping it tightly as the blonde offered it to her. Beside her, Anna's right hand found its way into Elsa's left, with Anna gently rubbing the icy wedding ring on Elsa's finger. "But we have all been fortunate enough to find someone who loves us regardless."
"Yes," Lexa whispered, to herself more than the others. "And now we find ourselves needing to deal not only with this sorcerer, but with a reborn Nia as well, now empowered with dark magic of her own."
"It's not true magic," Rose spoke, her right index finger tracing a vague line through the air in front of her. "Not like Maleficent or Elsa and Anna have. It's more like... the empowered faith of her followers, bound to her by that horrifying rite they carried out. But the sheer power harvested from all those lives sacrificed was staggering, and in your world, where magic itself is weaker, the power this Nia now possesses will retain its potency, making it even more dangerous."
Lexa fell silent as she considered all that Nia had accomplished with her intelligence, her scheming, her iron-clad rule over her people. She had threatened not just Lexa but the very alliance of clans itself more than once, and now she had a pet wizard and eldritch powers of her own.
"Nia must be slain," Lexa said, her voice cold and hard as iron.
"And her sorcerer," added Anna, her own voice uncharacteristically cold. "For what they've already done here, and what they're going to do to your world."
Elsa looked at Anna, staring deeply into Anna's blue-green eyes for several seconds before she turned to Lexa. "Arendelle will honor our alliance with the Thirteen Clans," Elsa said, feeling Anna squeeze her hand in silent support that would always be there.
"We're coming with you."
—O—
Author's Afterword: So this chapter took forever to get up. Hopefully the next one will come out more expediently. But now we're about to switch worlds again, and I am most definitely looking forward to the change. I have SO MUCH planned for this longer stretch of the story, and it's burning my mind to get it all out there.
Hope you've enjoyed this chapter, and I'll see you soon!