Our Fight Is Not Over

by Kurrent

(100/Frozen Crossover) When a mysterious figure creates a portal between The 100's Earth and Arendelle, Clarke and Lexa have to join forces with Anna and Elsa to defeat those intent on conquering both realms. Also CORRECTS 3X07, because I want to do my part in fixing that shit with a solid story. [Clarke/Lexa], [Elsa/Anna], [Harper/Monroe]. Cover from LexaRecovery tumblr.

16. Ch 16: Moments of Criticality

Author's Note: Okay, a brief word of warning. There are a LOT of viewpoint and perspective shifts in this chapter. They're necessary to convey all the stories that are weaving and interlacing here. Take your time as you read. Each shift should quickly indicate which character's viewpoint goes with each section, but if there are any issues with a section not being immediately discernible as to its subject/perspective, please let me know so I can tweak for clarification. There's also some gruesomeness and some very personal violence. It's not excessive, and I don't dwell on it, but it's there. This is war, and it's not pretty.

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 16: Moments of Criticality

You're as safe as a mountain

But know that I am dynamite

-Sigrid, "Dynamite" (acoustic version)

—O—

—O—

Bent Trees wept softly as he finished the brief note his houmon of nearly forty years had written him. She was alive, and she was safe, along with their grandchildren. That meant the other hostages would be safe as well... and that his Heda had done the impossible.

He lifted his head, wiping his tears with his fingers as he did so. "You have fulfilled your promise," he said, looking at Heda. "Now we will honor ours as well."

"I take it John Murphy decided to talk to you after all," Lexa said smugly.

Bent Trees nodded once. "He did," he softly spoke, not bothering to elucidate. The weathered man never had been much for talking, a quality Lexa admired greatly.

"I was uncertain what path he would choose," admitted Lexa. She looked at the wizened Broadleaf leader and smiled proudly. "But I am most glad that he chose the way he did."

—O—

Neither Bent Trees nor Lexa saw the enchanted ebony arrow reach the top of its arcing flight path, tilting downward as gravity exerted its hold on the missile and dark magic continued to guide its path. It fell silently, slowly twisting as the chill air flowed across the jet feathers fletching the arrow, inducing a spiraling motion that stabilized the arrow's flight as it fell unerringly toward its target's unprotected back.

Until it struck a shining white shield and evaporated in a hissing, smoky black haze.

—O—

Astride her glittering horse, Anna turned to look behind her at the older man on the ground below, her left arm still raised and her shield still proudly aglow, burning away the last remnants of oily smoke left from the poisoned arrow.

"That arrow had dark magic in it," she declared flatly. "The cold was screaming to me about it while it was in the air."

Lexa's face grew stern once more. She looked down at Bent Trees while Anna scrutinized the sky for any other missiles that might come their way. "I have told my forces that any who lay down their weapons are to be unharmed. You and any others who disarm will be guided to a staging area off to the side, to be guarded and kept safe until the fighting is over."

"I understand," Bent Trees replied. "Thank you for your mercy, Heda." He knelt before his true leader, tossing his spear aside as he did so.

Behind him, hundreds more did the same, kneeling as they dropped spears, swords, axes, knives onto the ground around them.

And behind THEM, the forces loyal to Queen Nia shouted with fury and charged.

"Quickly!" Lexa yelled. "Through our lines to safety!"

Bent Knees rose on shaky legs and began jogging forward as scores of other Grounders began to run toward them, trying to avoid being caught between the furious Azgeda and the Coalition army. The twangs of bowstrings being loosed were audible far behind the conscripted warriors as the Azgeda archers unleashed a wave of wooden missiles toward the Coalition forces and the defectors alike.

The magical ice making up Anna's modest crown began to flow down toward her ice mail armor, which in turn began to flow upward; the two swirled around her head and neck, forming a gleaming hauberk of ice mail protecting her neck and throat and a crystal helmet that flowed like viscous water to wrap around her head and most of her face.

"Archers loose!" Lexa cried. "Front lines, attack!"

Without waiting, Lexa kicked her horse forward, drawing her sword as she did so. The front lines of infantry cried out and began to run forward, but they were caught and surpassed by the charging cavalry only seconds later, the horse-mounted riders charging through channels through the infantry units that had been carefully planned and patiently maintained.

The volley of Azgeda arrows finally rained down, claiming the lives of dozens of the fleeing Grounders, none of whom were looking back. The Coalition forces were much better prepared, catching most of the missiles on their thick shields with only a handful of mostly minor injuries from the arrows.

The wave of arrows from the Coalition archers struck the Azgeda warriors seconds before Lexa, Anna and the cavalry troops plowed into them, and the fleeting moment between shielding against the arrows falling from above and trying to brace against a horse-mounted charge proved devastatingly brief. Screams and clashing metal and wood erupted from the melee, brief interjections in the rumbling thunder of a thousand hooves pounding the earth.

Lexa steered the wave of cavalry to the right, cutting a swath through the new Azgeda front lines as she maintained their speed and momentum, claiming the lives of at least four herself as her blade flashed up and down to her right. She led them out of the melee in time for another volley of arrows to strike, claiming dozens more before the charging warriors on foot slammed into the Azgeda forces, battered and disarrayed by the sudden onslaught.

—O—

As the initial minutes of the battle unfolded against them, several of the Azgeda in the middle and rear ranks of Nia's forces risked glancing to the sky. Instead of the dark clouds and falling snow and sleet to which they had become accustomed, they instead saw patches of clouds breaking up the orange glow of morning, with some streams of snow blowing above and around but somehow not falling on the field of battle.

The cries of men and women killing and dying, punctuated by the clashing of metal and flesh and set to the thrumming beat of furious hooves, were audible as well as palpable throughout the Azgeda army, unmitigated by the conspicuously absent howling wind that they had come to expect blowing at their backs, driving them forward as relentlessly as it drove their enemies back.

And while their queen's magic seemed to be faltering, the shouts and cries of the Coalition warriors seemed as fierce and spirited as ever. The Heda herself rode at their vanguard, her face furious beneath her terrifying warpaint as her sword flashed up and down relentlessly. And back at the edge of the battlefield, barely visible atop the small rise marking the Coalition camp, Wanheda herself sat atop a pale ivory horse, watching the onslaught. And while none of the Azgeda would dare speak the thought aloud, many of them had already come to suspect that Wanheda's presence on the other side of the battlefield was behind the sudden loss of their queen's magic.

And for the first time since the dark rebirth of Queen Nia over two months ago, the Azgeda began to truly fear something other than their monarch and her sorcerer.

—O—

Atop the small rise across the valley from Nia and on the opposite side of the Coalition camp from Clarke and her unit, Elsa smiled as she felt the cold bend and sway to her commands. She deftly redirected the freezing precipitation back and forth, channeling the wintry spray to the side, evaporating it before it could reach those fighting in the valley below, pushing the bitter gouts of wind upward instead of downward.

Now that they were this close, Elsa could more directly sense Nia's connection to the cold. It felt harsh, and bitter, and hateful, so much so that it brought tears to Elsa's eyes, knowing that a part of her and Anna and their children was being treated so cruelly.

Rather than try to quell the sorrow inside her, Elsa embraced it, letting crystalline tears of ice drop from her eyes and embracing her chest being wracked with heartfelt sobs. The emotion pulsed through her, enhancing her magic, dampening the ache that had been building between her shoulder blades and through her arms. She channeled that sorrow and the righteous anger that quickly followed into her power, speaking soothing thoughts to the cold and ice, wordlessly conveying that she understood the cruel woman was using them against their will, and that soon enough Anna and their friends would make the pain stop.

Until then, Elsa had to continue to patiently battle a part of herself that had been ripped away from where it belonged while still being as gentle as possible, for it wasn't the cold's fault it had been used in this twisted way.

—O—

For the warriors in the Coalition army, their faith and devotion to their Heda was absolute. Seeing the shock and doubt manifest on the faces of the Azgeda forces as their witch-queen's powers failed to materialize and give them the tactical advantage they had come to expect was a visceral gratification as the two mighty armies clashed on the field of battle.

For weeks, the Azgeda had enjoyed the advantage of fighting in the bitter cold that was familiar to them, of watching their enemies struggle to properly grip their weapons as their muscles shivered and their skin grew raw from frostbite.

Today, it was the absence of that weather granting the other forces the advantage. However, that did not mean that the cold was entirely absent from the battlefield.

Rather than follow the bloody path Lexa's cavalry had carved through the Azgeda's front lines, Anna and her mount had split off to the left, cutting their own path through the Azgeda army, leaving a trail of frozen bodies and ice stained dark red with frozen blood in her wake.

Where Anna's glowing shield struck, heads and limbs froze and shattered as easily as did spears and swords.

Where Anna's flashing ice blade swept, blood flew as flesh and leather and metal alike parted to its razor edge, the droplets of life freezing into dark red jewels of ice that arced through the air.

Where Anna's horse galloped, a field of extreme cold froze those in its path, powerful hooves pulverized muscle and bone caught beneath them and a trail of frost blanketed the ground behind, covering grass and bodies alike in silent testimony to the cold's true masters.

The Azgeda saw these things, and they wondered even more why their Queen did not respond in kind.

—O—

Hans made his way to the rear lines of Nia's forces just outside the main camp, to where his horse and the boy tending to the mount waiting. Hans gave the boy, who looked to be roughly twelve or thirteen, a smile that he hoped was more unsettling than reassuring as he retrieved his sword and belt. (His current squire knew not to touch the weapon after the unfortunate situation with the first boy.) The hilt of the weapon was a dull gray, marked with patches of blackness that looked like char but refused to wear away with use. Its blade, long, slightly tapered and flat, looked much the same, only with the barest hint of red in the jet patches that marred its finish.

The blade was as unholy as Hans himself had become, created with an unspeakable ritual he had discovered within the Vile Codex years ago. Forged with metal taken from defiled holy symbols, fired in a flame fueled by human fat, quenched in the blood of children, it was a gruesome thing that delighted in taking life in a way that the former Prince of the Southern Isles himself could not match. Its power had been strengthened over the years, tied to the evil book itself and drawing sustenance from each life claimed by the Codex's possessor.

"With your Queen's magic proving... unreliable," Hans said to the boy as he buckled the belt around his waist, "I might have to assist in the battle today. Make sure the scouts report to me as well as Queen Nia, so I can stay abreast of the situation."

The boy nodded, hoping that his fervent wish for the sorcerer to die during the fighting wasn't visible on his face.

—O—

As soon as the horse-mounted warriors were clear of an area, the Coalition fighters rushed to engage the disheveled Azgeda front lines. The Skaikru gunners embedded with the Coalition infantry remained out of easy reach of the Azgeda, each gunner guarded by at least one Trikru guard bearing a large shield. When an opening presented itself for a sure, clean shot at an Azgeda fighter, a gunner would take it, almost always removing another Azgeda from the battle.

It was a tactic the Azgeda had no experience with and little defense against, and initially the Coalition forces made swift progress through the Azgeda lines.

Lexa seemed to be everywhere, making herself as visible as possible astride her horse, and when she wasn't ripping her way through opposing fighters, she was loudly mocking Nia, telling the Azgeda how Coldspire had fallen and how their Queen's magic had failed them. She was a specter clad in black, leaving death and blood in her path, and as the Coalition lines began to rotate, the survivors of the first wave of infantry falling back and the second wave advancing to press the attack, the morale of the Azgeda hung by a thread.

—O—

Hans and one of the Azgeda messengers jogged through the back lines of Nia's army, moving toward the middle of their lines. The Coalition forces had penetrated deeply into the Azgeda forces here, with two of the Skaikru gunners killing Azgeda left and right behind a bladed wall of Desert Clan warriors, and they were threatening to isolate a significant amount of Azgeda fighters to the west side of the valley and split the Azgeda forces.

That wouldn't do.

"There!" the messenger said anxiously, jabbing a pointed finger toward the muscular men and women forty meters away, keeping the Azgeda at bay while two others in dark clothes aimed devices that thundered and spat fire toward the Azgeda, causing them to scream and die.

"Maunon weapons, carried by the cowardly Skaikru!" gibbered the messenger. "Cursed devices! We have no defense against them!"

Hans grinned. "Oh, but we do," he said, opening his left hand, which hung at his side. He extended his aura of infernal power slightly, enough to capture the nearby pain and anguish of two more Azgeda dying from the strange weapons, as he gathered their pain and turned it into mystic power.

A glowing ball of green-yellow fire appeared in his hand, no bigger than a lemon, hovering in his grasp without actually touching his skin. Smoothly, Hans threw the fiery missile toward the invaders. As soon as it left his hand, it accelerated and shot forward with blazing speed, leaving a chartreuse trail behind it as it slammed squarely into the mass of Coalition fighters. Matching yellow-green flames exploded, coating the Desert Clan and Skaikru alike with lethal flames that rapidly devoured everything but metal and bone.

The smile on Hans' face grew. The drain on him from using such a spell was formidable, but standing in the middle of thousands of men and women suffering and dying, he could draw on the vast anger and pain around him to lessen the strain, and opening himself to that dark spiritual fuel elicited a ghoulish rush that swept through him.

He readjusted the thin leather pack strapped to his back, holding the black book that encouraged him to do more, to slay more, to enhance his power and its power further. But he had listened to that sibilant voice for several years at this point, and he knew better than to overextend himself due to its urgings, for the unholy book would feed on his soul as readily as those of others.

Still... Perhaps a little fun might be permissible.

He turned and looked at the messenger, who looked even more terrified than before, if that were possible. "Show me more of these... Sky-crew."

—O—

Across the valley, Elsa felt the ebbing of Nia's magic through the cold. The powerful current that had been driving the snow and ice toward her had lessened to nearly a trickle at this point. That was a great relief to Elsa, whose ice gown was partially frozen over most of her back from the sweat of her exertions.

She sang patience and relief to the cold, promising that its ordeal was nearly over, and none too soon. The mountains on both sides of the valley were now packed with heavy snow and ice that had been meant to encase the Coalition forces in a wet, frigid death. They sat bearing their snowy burden silently, seemingly proud to have absorbed the frozen deluge Elsa had skillfully redirected.

"Tell Clar— Wanheda that it's working," Elsa said, looking to the Trikru girl who had quietly watched in amazement for the last two hours as the pale, elegant Arendellan had plied her magic; snow, frost and shimmering crystals of ice had formed and flowed around the blonde's arms and body, following her every movement through that time. "Nia's magic is nearly gone. Wanheda and her escorts need to be ready."

With a nod, the slim, boyish girl—Elsa thought she had heard Harper refer to her as Dido—turned and ran back into the Coalition camp, in search of one of the few people as beautiful and terrifying as the fair blonde who could bend snow and ice to her will.

Elsa closed her eyes, letting only the barest bit of her attention continue to direct the channeling of Nia's waning magic away from the battle. She opened her senses, reaching out to feel the brilliant caress of Anna's magic down in the valley below.

The cold continued to surround Anna, acting as weapon and protector alike as Elsa's love wreaked havoc on the Azgeda forces on the west side of the valley. Anna couldn't unleash the full fury of the cold, not within close proximity of friendly forces, but the chill surrounding her and her mount was already freezing flesh on her attackers before the biting of a sword or the crushing of hooves could be numbly registered. Arrows dangled from Anna's clothes, unable to penetrate the ice mail, and jutted at all angles from the snowy body of her steed, but neither of them seemed hindered by the erstwhile missiles.

One of the archers with Nia tried to catch the gleaming white knight unaware with one of the fell arrows, but Anna felt it coming from the moment if left the archer's string, turning and easily blocking it with her shield, which boiled the toxic missile away in another cloud of oily smoke.

She tugged on her horse's reins, stopping him in place as she narrowed her eyes in the direction of the archer shooting those magic arrows.

—O—

"I think it's time to bait the trap," Hans said, lifting his left hand to block the morning sun as he gazed out over the battle. He couldn't see all the way across the field, but it was very obvious that the Azgeda were outmatched. Whomever the fighter was in the gleaming armor on the far side of the battlefield, he was carving a path through the Azgeda to match the one that the brunette Heda girl had gouged through the heart of the Azegda warriors. This Heda had seemed to focus on the east and middle sections of the battle, letting the "rifles," as Carl Emerson had called them, cut a path through the west side, with the mounted warrior sowing chaos and killing isolated Azgeda as opportunity presented... and today opportunity for killing was plentiful.

"Tell the east leaders to pull to the middle. Not all of them, just the ones who were previously notified of the plan." When he looked to see the squire still standing there, Hans scowled and barked, "GO!"

The boy bolted for the nearest mounted messenger.

—O—

As Lexa reached the second lines of the Coalition forces following the latest charge through the Azgeda forces, she tugged on her mount's reins to slow and turn back toward the fighting. When she looked up to survey the field again, she noticed a shift in the forces behind the current skirmish line between the two sides, a line of conflict that had slowly and steadily shifted in the direction of the Azgeda camp.

There seemed to be some momentary confusion, which the Coalition forces were quick to seize and press against, as a significant number of the Azgeda fighters started running to Lexa's left, toward the western flank of the battlefield.

That was where Clarke would be once she made her entrance. Having that side reinforced was unacceptable.

Turning her attention back to her right, the eastern half of the field, Lexa saw gaps in the remaining Azgeda forces, on the edge closest to the mountain. The forces were thinning as they redeployed their warriors, leaving a crucial weakness that Lexa and her cavalry might be able to ride directly into the Azgeda camp itself.

She grinned and called for another charge, sending her horse into motion once more.

—O—

"They're shifting their infantry," Kane said, peering through a set of binoculars. "It looks like they're trying to reinforce where Queen Anna's cutting so deep into their lines."

"Well, let them," Clarke said sardonically. She didn't get a pair of binoculars. And she wasn't pouting about it. Not really. "I still think I could look through them without smudging my warpaint," she said, not turning to direct her words at Octavia, but she didn't really need to.

Octavia lowered her binoculars. She was astride her horse beside Clarke, an escort of twenty mounted Coalition warriors lined up ahead of them, each of them gleefully eager to become part of Wanheda's strike. "God, Clarke. Stop pouting." She lifted her binoculars back up, shifting her gaze toward where Nia stood on the elevated plateau on the opposite side of the valley, much like the one they stood on. "And you'd fuck your warpaint up so badly that I'd have to scrub your whole face and reapply it from the beginning."

Carefully scrutinizing Nia, who appeared livid as she silently shouted and barked something to the Azgeda around her, Octavia laughed softly. "God, she is PISSED," the brunette said happily. "Elsa's got her in a real fit. This crazy plan of yours might actually work. No visible weapons on Nia, either. Looks like that info about her thinking she's too good for ordinary weapons now was right on the money. What an idiot. Like that was ever going to be a good idea."

"What kind of guards does she have around her?" asked Clarke.

"Looks like a half dozen positioned in front of her. Up on the little rise with her, four guys with spears, two archers," replied Octavia. She frowned slightly without lowering the binoculars. "The archers are wearing gloves. That's weird."

Clarke turned to look at Octavia. "What?"

Octavia kept examining the archers stationed in front of Nia. "Archers'll sometimes wear a leather patch over their palm and part of the index and middle fingers, but they generally don't wear gloves. It screws with the way they feel the arrow and bowstring."

"So why would they wear gloves?" asked Clarke.

Octavia lowered the binoculars. "Not sure. Maybe they don't want to get something on their hands? Sap, maybe? Or some kind of resin? Could be newly-cut arrows."

Clarke's gut dropped inside her. "Or poison," she said softly. "Shit. I bet they've got poisoned arrows."

Octavia's head whirled to look at Clarke, whose head itself turned to look at Kane on Clarke's other side. "Who do we have as gunners on this side that aren't currently engaged?" she asked.

Kane grabbed the radio at his belt. "Gunners on the west who can reply, please respond," he said into the device.

"Nathan Miller reporting. On my way up with what's left of my unit."

"Harper here. About to move up with the next change in lines."

Without waiting for further reply, Kane hit the SEND button on his device. "Nia has two archers among her personal guards. We think they have poisoned arrows. When Clarke makes her move, we need you two to get in range and take out those archers. Get as many of the guards around her as you can, too, but the archers are your main targets. Do you read?"

"Yes sir!"

"Yes sir. You want a particular side, Nathan?"

"No diff to me, Harper. You take right, I'll take left?"

"Sounds good. Out."

"Miller out."

There was quiet for a few seconds. Kane lifted his binoculars back up to peer at some movement among the Azgeda forces farther back in their deployment.

"Why don't you just have them shoot Nia, too?" Octavia finally asked.

Clarke turned to look at her friend again. "Number one, we don't know if bullets will hurt her. Elsa was shot at point-blank range, remember, and even weakened, her magic shattered the bullet before it could hit anything vital."

Octavia tilted her head slightly. "Yeah, good point."

"Number two, Nia was already dead once. Like, dead dead. And she came back from that. Number three, the whole point of this, what we're doing, is to fight her on an entirely different plane than the physical. Bullets won't get that done. But Wanheda can."

Octavia nodded, returning her attention to the battle.

"And number four," added Clarke softly, "she hurt Lexa. Years ago. And I want to make her pay for that."

"Yeah," Octavia replied softly. "There's another reason, you know."

"What's that?"

Octavia turned to meet Clarke's curious eyes, islands of white and crystal blue amidst the black feathers of Wanheda's warpaint. "She cheated death. That means she cheated you, Clarke." Seeing the look of confusion on Clarke's face, Octavia smiled. "You're Wanheda, Clarke. The Commander of Death. So it's time for Death to reclaim what's hers."

—O—

Lexa cried out, her voice a roar, as she thundered her horse through the over-extended lines of Azgeda. It only took a moment, the slightest bit of resistance, before she was through the surprisingly narrow Azgeda line, in nearly empty space as she and her cavalry rushed forward toward the few Azgeda troops left between them and the enemy camp. And once there, she could charge Nia directly and keep Clarke from having to enter the fray.

But as she drove her cavalry forward, a burning began to manifest in the back of Lexa's mind, in the thoughts she shared with the previous Hedas. Events and occurrences tried to fall into place, to mentally arrange themselves into the solution of a puzzle she wasn't even fully aware of as her own memories and those of the other stored in the Commander's Flame jangled with alarm deep inside her mind.

Something was wrong.

They broken through the enemy lines far too easily. There should have been more Azgeda here, even if they had shifted their forces to the west. No one leaves a flank guarded so lightly.

Mentally cursing her own eagerness, Lexa gritted her teeth and steered her horse hard to the left, trying to turn the charge as quickly as possible and get out of the enemy lines.

—O—

As the lone Azgeda who lay hidden at the base of the eastern mountain watched Heda draw near, he smiled. He quickly touched the oil-soaked cloth wrapped around the end of the unlit torch to the pot of coals he had uncovered when he saw the Azgeda withdrawing from the east.

Instantly the cloth lit with flame, making him smile more. Without hesitation, he turned to the short fuse protruding from the nearest of the large casks, each packed tightly what the damned Maunon Emerson had called "gunpowder," touching the flickering flame to the dry cord, which lit with a hiss.

"For my Queen," he said to himself, grateful he had won the right to strike this blow for the god-woman he followed.

—O—

The blast that erupted from the base of the eastern mountain was so powerful that men, women and horses alike were blown off their feet for hundreds of meters away.

The shockwave of the blast sent Lexa and her horse both into the air, separating them as the roar of the explosion rang through their ears and the impact of the blast tossed them like a vast invisible wave.

—O—

The ground shook nearly half a kilometer away, rattling Clarke's teeth and startling several of the horses briefly. "What the fuck was THAT?!" Clarke swore aloud, turning to look at the plume of brown debris billowing upward from the base of the mountain on the opposite side of the valley. Bodies of humans and horses alike were strewn outward from the blast, which had created a massive crater at the foot of the mountain.

Horses, Clarke processed.

"Lexa," Clarke gasped as her heart momentarily stopped. "Marcus, do you see Lexa?" Clarke said, barely able to breath as her heart resumed at a frantic pace. "DO YOU SEE HER?!"

"Clarke!" Octavia barked, only to be ignored. Trying to ignore the nausea that had sprouted in her own abdomen, Octavia reached over and grabbed Clarke's left arm. "CLARKE!"

The Clarke that whirled around to look at Octavia was almost unrecognizable. For a brief moment, a handful of seconds, utter despair and wild abandon blazed in Clarke's blue eyes, the color nearly swallowed by the looming black of her wide pupils, nestled in the inky feathered design over her face and forehead.

And then, as Octavia watched, the panic in those eyes was replaced by a cold, hard look that was entirely different. And in that moment, Octavia was truly afraid of the woman staring back at her, because it was decidedly not Clarke Griffin.

It was Wanheda.

"We strike now," Wanheda spoke, a forced calm in her voice that still dripped with anger. She looked over Octavia's shoulder. "Sound the charge!" she yelled to the handful of drummers, then she returned her attention to a suddenly pale Octavia.

"My houmon is alive," the blonde spoke. "And I will find her once this battle has been won. But the battle has to be won first, and she understands that."

And as the large drums began to boom behind them, Wanheda turned and kicked her horse into motion.

—O—

Echo had just emerged from the tight confines of the underground passage when the very ground shook beneath her. It was too much for her aching legs, and she briefly sprawled to the ground, immediately beginning to scramble back to her tingling feet. The other Azgeda were right behind her; despite her head start, they had nearly caught her in the tight cavern, and so even with her eyes barely able to open in the brilliance of the sunlight once more, she turned and began to stumble in the direction of the worn path she could see ahead of her, turning and attempting to run down the inclined roadway toward the valley below. She was nearly out of time, but Wanheda had to be warned about the assassins.

—O—

Bellamy lifted his head up from where he was placing used medical instruments in a basin to be sterilized. Had he finally lost his mind?

Then he heard his name again, faint, like it was coming from somewhere far away.

He walked away from the partially-assembled suture kit and quickly walked out the large tent's door.

Seeing the motion, Monroe lifted her head from where she had just finished applying bandages to a deep leg wound one of the Coalition warriors had suffered. "Bellamy?" she said, trying to get his attention, but he was looking off into the distance and didn't seem to respond.

Great. If he wandered off, he'd get killed.

"I'll be right back," she said to the young boy helping her, handing him the gauze and iodine. "Clean the other cuts, like I did." When he nodded, she smiled, turned and hurried out the door.

She found him standing just outside the door to the medical tent, staring up at one of the mountains, the western peak.

"Bellamy?" she asked, unsure what was going on.

Then she heard it, a voice that sounded like it was coming from far in the distance: Bellamy Blake, faint but audible, coming from the road going up the west mountain they had used to get into the valley.

Bellamy broke into a run, and Monroe was right behind him.

—O—

The only sound Lexa could hear was the oppressive ringing in her ears as she quickly leapt to her feet. A look ahead showed a wave of Azgeda running toward her; apparently they had been far enough away to suffer only minimal damage from the explosion. She scanned the ground around her, darting over to grab her sword, then snatching up another one close to it, taking the new weapon in her left hand.

The ringing began to dampen as her body healed with its unnatural speed, but being able to hear the cries of the charging Azgeda wasn't much of an improvement, in her opinion.

A look around and behind showed that much of her cavalry was in similar shape: rising to their feet, some drawing weapons and preparing for melee, others trying to tend to injured horses or retrieve riderless mounts. The rearmost riders remained on their horses, but it would likely take them several minutes to regain control and bring their mounts back into the fray.

She turned her attention back to the Azgeda so eager to claim her life in battle. And with a cry of her own, she charged directly toward them.

—O—

By the time the first horses in the group surrounding Wanheda hit the level plain of the valley, they were nearly at full speed. Clarke could feel the pounding of the massive drums behind them despite most sounds being drowned out by the thunder of horses' hooves churning at the grassy turf beneath them.

The snapping and popping of Wanheda's banner was evident, however. Stitched together from hundreds of obsidian feathers that refracted light into an iridescent spectrum of colors when examined up close, the shimmering black banner fluttered and flapped atop the long pole that one of the riders to her left proudly held aloft despite them riding at full gallop.

And behind the grim visage of Wanheda, Clarke smiled.

Death was coming. And she was coming for Nia.

—O—

"Cut a path!" Harper yelled over the sounds of metal and leather clashing, of men and women shouting and screaming. "Wanheda's coming! CUT A FUCKING PATH!"

She shouldered her rifle again, squeezing off a shot at a monster of an Azgeda woman just a few meters away from her, then shifting targets as that one began to fall, firing again, then shooting a third Azgeda before the first woman had stopped rolling lifelessly across the ground.

Some distance ahead of them, Harper watched Anna and her sparkling horse slice through the Azgeda's middle ranks in a direction perpendicular to her squad's movement, moving from Harper's left to her right as she cleared out a path ahead of the squad Harper was paired with, leaving a coating of frost and snow over the bodies that fell to the ground in her wake. The Arendellan queen continued her charge across the battlefield, likely on her way to save any Coalition forces she could after that fucking huge explosion had erupted on the other side of the valley.

Awesome. Anna was on it. Nathan's group was farther ahead, so he'd be in range to take his shot any minute. Now Harper and her squad just needed to get close enough to Nia for her to take out the archer that was her target, all before Clarke got in range of their longbows.

Yeah. Easy.

Harper grimaced, shooting another half dozen shots in less than ten seconds, sending another five Azgeda toppling to the bloody ground. "CUT A PATH!" she screamed again.

—O—

If the Azgeda charging Lexa were shocked by their once-Heda charging them in kind, they didn't indicate it.

What DID shock them was Lexa abruptly taking the second sword she had picked up and hurling it at one of the Azgeda with a side-arm motion as they closed; the sudden attack caught the man completely off-guard, allowing the blade to slash into his torso while the hilt smacked the man beside him in the ribs.

Lexa took advantage of that brief confusion, leaping forward and slamming her body mostly into the gap between the two men, dragging the sharp edge of her sword's blade across one's throat as she burst between them, now on the back side of the charging warriors.

She turned and slashed at the closest Azgeda to her left, catching her before she could fully turn; the woman's neck yawned open bloodily as Lexa's blade nearly cleaved her head clean off, and with a blur of motion, Lexa had picked up the dying woman's blade in her left hand, positioning it as a main gauche as she faced the now disheveled warriors who had foolishly chosen to attack her.

There was a brief pause as the Azgeda began to reconsider the wisdom of their tactics, prompting Lexa to smile mirthlessly in return.

And then an enormous rumble began to reverberate overhead, deep and nauseating in its low frequency.

Lexa didn't risk a glance to her left for several seconds, not until all of the Azgeda had turned to look upward, but at that point she did take a quick glance, only to wish she hadn't.

High atop the mountain on the east side of the valley, all of the tightly-packed snow and ice that had been diverted from the battlefield was now churning down toward the valley, a vast avalanche triggered by the blast at the base of the mountain.

—O—

"Oh, snowballs," Elsa swore softly as she watched the deluge of snow and ice begin its white cascade down the steep mountain slope.

In only seconds the avalanche would strike, and from the slope's angle and height plus the sheer amount of precipitation that had accumulated over the last few hours, the resultant wave would likely swallow a third of the battlefield, at least.

Elsa dug her ice flats into the ground beneath her; frost and ice coalesced upward, encasing her legs to just below her knees to provide support. Taking a deep breath, Elsa braced herself and then pushed outward with all her might, throwing her arms forward and bending her upper body nearly parallel to the ground as she unleashed a blast of power like she had never tried to channel in this magic-barren world.

Rather than try to conjure an ice wall large and strong enough to contain the avalanche, the glistening stream of white and silver magic that shot across the face of the eastern slopes instead evaporated the heavy ice and snow as it washed over the falling wave, transforming what would have been lethal, suffocating amounts of snowmass into relatively harmless bunches of soft white flakes as they rolled onto and partly across the valley floor, hitting the helpless Azgeda and Coalition forces alike with all the force of a gentle, cool breeze as the remaining snowflakes swirled around their legs like white dust devils for several seconds before finally settling to the earth.

And on the south end of the valley, the ice supporting her shattered as Elsa blacked out and collapsed, a cushion of snow forming just in time to partially break her fall.

—O—

Hans's observation of the roaring avalanche that had just begun was interrupted by a stinging impact against his chest, followed by the crack of one of those "rifles."

Several more similar reports could be heard firing across the battlefield, but Hans's anger tuned those out as he first glanced down at the black ichor oozing out of the small hole in his left chest, then looked up to find a woman in a navy blue outfit roughly twenty meters away from him, pointing a rifle at him.

Another sting, another report from the weapon, another hole, this time in his abdomen.

Hans bared his teeth in a snarl and conjured another ball of yellow-green fire in his hand, hurling it at the woman and the Grounders battling around her, Coalition and Azgeda alike. All of them vanished in the eruption of green flames around them, the licking tongues of fire casting eerie shadows of red and purple for the seconds they blazed.

The screams were brief but soothing to his ears as he channeled their dying agony into healing his wounds.

—O—

Anna was over halfway across the battlefield when she saw Elsa's magic sweep across the mountain, turning the lethal avalanche into a sparkling dusting of snow. She felt Elsa's surge of exertion followed by her going still; immediately, Anna pulled her horse to a halt while she carefully searched her feelings for any sense of pain or injury to her mate. She ignored the thunks of arrows impacting her shield, which she had lifted to protect her face temporarily, and her armor; the stings she could feel from the impact were minor while she extended her awareness toward her true love, eagerly feeling for any indication that something was wrong other than Elsa overexerting herself and likely passing out temporarily.

Anna wanted to go to her. Absolutely she did. But Elsa was being watched and protected by their friends and allies, and she would be taken care of. And Anna was needed right here, right now.

She had just lowered her shield and looked up when an eruption of yellow-green flame sprang to life ahead of her, just over a hundred meters away. She watched as roughly two dozen men and women vanished, incinerated in a gout of unholy fire.

She hurriedly looked away from them, back toward the Azgeda camp. Standing alone just a short distance away from the green flames, a man spread his arms and threw back his head, and as Anna watched, she could feel a dark power flow from the immolated men and women into the man's form.

With a grim smile, she kicked her horse into motion, steering for the sorcerer.

—O—

As Clarke rode her horse at full speed toward Nia's position, she was amazed at how the battlefield opened ahead of them. Packs of combatants either shifted to one side or split down the middle to gave way to the charging unit, and many of them were still staring at the flag of black feathers with stark fear on their faces as Clarke glanced at them while riding past.

No one stood in their path, not Coalition nor Azgeda. All parted before Wanheda.

Clarke smiled as they closed on Nia's position, already nearly across the battlefield in just minutes.

—O—

Harper abruptly came to a halt from her frantic run forward, shouldering her rifle as the Coalition warriors with her—she seemed to have an escort nearly twice as large as the other gunners, from what she could tell—took up position around her, viciously hacking and swinging at the crowd of Azgeda assaulting them.

She took a few seconds to try and slow her breathing and her heart rate as she aimed at the only standing archer with Nia, the archer she had chosen for her target. He was still nearly three hundred yards away, much farther out than Miller's unit had driven, but this was as far as they could press in time. She hoped Nathan and his unit had managed to pull back safely after he took down his target, but movement from her target wiped all other considerations from her thoughts. The Azgeda archer was drawing an arrow, she could see through her sight, now lifting the bow to take aim.

She breathed out, stopping her breath at the end of her exhale as she estimated the drop of her shot for the distance between them, lined up the vertical component of her gun's crosshairs with his body, then softly squeezed the trigger.

The sharp bark of the rifle only barely registered in her screaming, ringing ears at this point, after going through four clips of ammunition already. She watched as the archer flinched and dropped the arrow but didn't jerk or fall.

Dammit. She had missed. But she was close.

She readjusted, trying to ignore the chaos of fighting death swirling around her, which seemed to be collapsing toward her. She blew out her breath, then fired again.

This time the archer actually ducked, grabbing at his head, but he seemed unhurt.

Screams were now audible around her, but Harper tried to block them out, readjusting her aim, dropping her crosshairs' horizontal line closer to the archer's head as he quickly picked the surprisingly dark arrow off of the ground.

The circle around Harper began to buckle under the relentless onslaught, but Harper made everything else go away as she breathed out, halted her respiration and gently pulled the trigger.

The archer's head exploded in a burst of crimson, and then the bodies began slamming against her, knocking her to the ground.

She tried to roll out of the way, lifting her rifle and shooting an Azgeda woman running toward her, a knife in each hand, but a heavy body was across her right leg, pinning her in place. As the Azgeda screamed and jerked backward, blood flying from the hole through her chest, Harper twisted as best as she could toward the cries coming from behind her.

She couldn't quite bring her gun around to bear on the giant of a man who stormed toward her, and as his right arm shot forward to throw a short axe at her, one of the Coalition fighters, a girl not much older than Harper screamed, "JUSDONISR!" and threw herself in front of the axe.

The dull, wet sound of impact and the cracking of ribs in the girl's chest was painfully audible to Harper's injured ears. The girl fell backward from the forceful blow, landing on her back in front of Harper, the point of the axe's head and its handle jutting out of her chest.

"Jus... dono... sir," the girl wheezed though her ruptured lung as she looked at Harper, concern for the blonde that last emotion her face would ever show.

Unable to vocalize, Harper just screamed her frustration and twisted her body, feeling something pop in her ribs as she partly freed her leg. She pointed her rifle at the Azgeda man and fired, three times in quick succession, hitting him all three times in the chest and sending him tumbling backward.

Harper gasped and heaved, her body quivering with adrenaline and fury, and with another effort, she finally jerked her leg free.

And she realized that no one around her was moving.

The Coalition warriors remained in battle stances, legs bent, muscles taut, weapons readied as the sounds of battle roared around them, but the Azgeda were no longer attacking. All of them instead were staring at Harper with widened eyes.

Harper pointed her rifle at one, a man who never moved or looked away from her. She twisted toward another, feeling a lance of pain in her left side but ignoring it thanks to the endorphins and adrenaline surging through her body. He, too, never made so much as a twitch in reaction.

She continued to turn and scan, but everyone around her was still, save for a few nervous shuffles and adjustments from the Coalition warriors who yet stood, uneasy in their stillness.

Two of the Azgeda threw down their weapons and dropped to their knees. Moments later, the other followed, the dull, moist thuds and thumps stark to Harper's disbelieving ears.

The sound of approaching thunder interrupted the surreal scene; Harper turned to see a dozen mounted riders barrel past her position, flying a shimmering black flag that looked like it was made entirely of feathers, and in the middle of the pack was the blonde head of Clarke Griffin.

As quickly as they had come, they were past, mud and churned grass falling to the ground in their passing.

"Finish it, Clarke," Harper breathed out, her heart racing and chest pounding.

—O—

"BELLAMY BLAKE!"

Echo screamed his name again as she ran down the sloping path, mouth dry and metallic. She could hear the footsteps of the other Azgeda behind her, slowly growing louder. She had caught flashes of movement to both sides, so they were trying to flank her, but the ridges on both sides of her were shielding her from that tactic so far.

She was fast, and she was lighter than most of the others that had been assigned to her unit, but her lungs were burning and her legs were going numb. When she fell, she'd be dead in seconds. But she had to warn them, to tell them about the passage, not only to protect Wanheda but also about how they could cross the battlefield and kill Nia to end this macabre horror story.

—O—

Bellamy heard his name being screamed again, and part of his brain recognized the voice but couldn't identify it yet.

Behind him, Monroe was falling back, her breathing labored and unable to keep up with the frenzied pace with which Bellamy ran. As someone's footfalls caught and passed her, Monroe turned to see Indra, the only survivor of the massacre she had helped perpetrate. The older woman ran with seemingly no effort, back straight, head up, her crippled left arm held to her chest in a sling. The sword hanging at Indra's waist barely moved, the result of the way its scabbard had been affixed to her thick leather belt.

It was all Monroe could do not to stop and gawk. She had known that the dark woman was one of Lexa's generals, but she had never seen her fight, because almost none of the Trikru had raised a hand to defend themselves that grim night, due to Lexa's orders against harming the Skaikru. After that, she had been recuperating from her injuries, among them the near paralysis of her left arm and the shattering of her confidence. But now, she appeared to be ready to fight once more.

Suddenly Monroe was very afraid for Bellamy.

—O—

Echo was about to scream Bellamy's name again when she saw two Trikru men jogging toward her, swords drawn and faces dark with painted designs, and one Skaikru woman wearing a dark shirt and pants and carrying a weapon like the Maunon wielded.

"I must speak to Bellamy Blake!" Echo cried out, not slowing her pace. They were about fifty meters apart and closing quickly when the two men and woman stopped. One man sheathed his sword and unslung a bow from across his back, pulling an arrow from a quiver at his hip, while the Skaikru woman took a knee and raised her forbidden weapon.

"STOP!" one of the Trikru yelled.

"I can't!" Echo yelled back. "They're right behind me! They're trying to kill Wanheda! You have to warn her! You have to—"

It was only a slight stumble, but it was enough. Echo tried to get her legs back under her, but it only succeeded in her taking two long, awkward strides before she fell forward and rolled down the path, a half dozen lightly clothed Azgeda only meters behind her.

Bellamy watched the scene unfold before him, and he surged forward, calling all the speed he could as he ran toward the Trikru guards ahead of him.

The Trikru archer fired his arrow; it shot forward and hit one of the Azgeda in the chest, causing him to skew to the side, falling to his knees as he clutched at the shaft protruding from his ribs. The Skaikru woman fired her gun twice, both shots hitting one of the Azgeda men, then she shifted to aim at a woman closing in on her until an arrow drove itself deeply into her neck, stabbing downward at an angle into her chest and severing her aorta.

Bellamy turned to look up; he spotted the man atop the ridge to his right, still holding his bow in front of him as he admired his shot. The two of them broke their locked gaze with the Azgeda reaching for another arrow and Bellamy diving for the rifle, only to have it kicked to the side out of his grasp, back toward the Coalition camp.

He looked up to see a furious Indra looking down at him, sweat gleaming on her face. She screamed, "If you touch a Skaikru weapon again, I WILL KILL YOU MYSELF!"

The next running Azgeda ignored Echo, leaping over her prone figure to engage the existing targets. The Trikru archer's next shot hit home on another target; this time the arrow drove itself deeply into a man's chest, sending him collapsing to the ground before he could reach the exhausted and helpless woman.

The first Azgeda to reach the guards charged Indra, who had already drawn her sword; his off-balance running swipe was easily batted away, which put Indra's own sword in perfect position for her to slide it across his neck as his own momentum cut his throat, sending him sprawling to the ground behind her.

The thunk of an arrow was accompanied by a shout from the Trikru archer. With an arrow embedded in his right shoulder, he tried to turn to aim at the archer positioned above them, but his right arm refused to obey. One of the Azgeda tackled him, sending them rolling across the dirt path as he viciously stabbed the Trikru in the side and gut repeatedly.

The next Azgeda was more skilled; he took a second or two to halt his momentum before striking at Indra. A few thrusts and quick dodges followed as he tried to take advantage of her immobilized left arm, but she kept shifting her position, never letting him press the attack from that side.

Bellamy clambered to his feet, taking several hard steps and driving his shoulder into the next Azgeda to reach them. The move caught the woman off-guard, and the impact of his body into her abdomen was hard enough to force the breath out of her lungs and make her drop her sword. She punched him in the side of the head as she went backwards, but when he drove her into the ground and his weight fell atop her, it stunned her again. Bellamy scrambled off of her, grabbed the sword and turned; as the woman was drawing a knife and rising to her feet, Bellamy slashed the sword through her neck, sending her flopping to the ground.

An arrow just missed Indra as she lunged away from her attacker's next strike; she cursed loudly as she spun, briefly presenting her back to her attacker before she completed her rotation and drove the pommel of her sword into the Azgeda's head, sending him to his knees long enough to decapitate him with a downward swipe. "We must get closer to the ridge!" she shouted at the Skai fool Bellamy. "He'll kill us before we can reach him otherwise!"

Bellamy risked a glance at Echo; seeing the last Azgeda, with the broken shaft of an arrow protruding from his right side, running toward Echo lying exhausted on the ground, he yelled, "NO!" and charged the injured man. With a wild swing of the appropriated sword as the two of them reached Echo at nearly the same time, he made the Azgeda withdraw or risk Bellamy slamming into him as he jumped over the helpless Echo.

The man grinned evilly as Bellamy shifted the grip on his sword, then tested a controlled slash that the man easily avoided by stepping back. Bellamy tried a thrust, but again the Azgeda stepped back, still grinning but not attacking.

Bellamy was trying to determine his plan when a stabbing pain drove into the side of his left leg, sending him to that knee. He groaned as he looked down to see an arrow sticking out of his thigh; he turned back to the Azgeda, who seemed to be in no hurry to close and finish him off, instead walking forward calmly.

Indra was splitting her attention between the remaining two Azgeda on the ground, blocking one while shifting and jumping around the other, trying to keep them both on one side and prevent them from trapping her between them, when the sharp crack of a rifle firing sounded behind her.

A grunt of pain sounded above them; Indra lunged to her left, away from the two Azgeda, as the archer's body slammed into the ground only meters away from the three of them.

Another gunshot, and the Azgeda stalking toward Bellamy stopped his forward progress as a third of his head vanished, replaced by a spray of dark red marked with ivory specks.

Another gunshot, and the Azgeda on Indra's right cried out as the impact of the shot striking his chest knocked him to his knees.

Indra took advantage of the distraction by thrusting forward and driving her sword through her other assailant's abdomen, slashing slightly outward as she jumped back out of reach. Only a moment later, he too went spiraling to the ground, blood trailing from a shot to his chest, as another gunshot split the air.

The Azgeda on his knees fell to the side and began to crawl away, only to be stopped short by Indra driving her sword point-down through his torso until it hit dirt. She quickly jerked the blade back out and assessed the situation.

Bellamy was kneeling over Echo, who was weakly moving her legs. Neither of them had any apparent injuries. The two Trikru and Skai woman were all dead, judging from the lack of movement, as were the Azgeda.

Indra turned to look back toward the Coalition camp.

Kneeling in the dirt, tears running down her face, Monroe held the rifle to her shoulder, smoke rising from the gun's barrel as her chest rose and sank as rapidly as a bird's. With a choked cry, she flung the rifle to her right, sending it clattering away from her as she weakly shifted to where she was on both knees, covered her face with her hands and broke down in convulsing sobs.

—O—

Anna drove deeper into the Azgeda forces, adjusting her approach to come at the sorcerer from just behind him; she knew she was far from any assistance this deep in enemy lines, but it was a risk she was willing to take. She was hoping the chaos of the fighting would keep his attention, and it appeared to be working as she saw him present even more of his back to her and hurl another ball of green fire at a group of warriors locked in combat.

They likewise exploded in hellfire that rapidly consumed them fully, and as the sorcerer drank in their souls, he turned enough for Anna to see his profile, and wide, rich auburn sideburns that seared themselves into her eyes.

An explosion of emotion erupted inside Anna, and as Hans turned to react to the rider he finally heard charging him by diving to the side, Anna saw that he was going to escape her sword's strike.

So she dropped the ice blade and launched herself off of her horse, pulling her feet from the stirrups, turning on the saddle and bracing her boots against her horse's body to launch herself to her right, slamming into him bodily as he hit the ground.

The impact was brutal with him caught between Anna's flying body and the hard ground, and Anna felt and heard several of his bones snap under the force of the impact as her momentum sent her rolling several times across the grassy field.

Hans channeled his newly-stolen magic into healing the agonizing injuries from the unexpected impact; his fractured arm, leg and ribs reknit as his broken back realigned and repaired itself, but the searing agony brought inky tears to his eyes as he focused his fury at the knight in full armor who had knocked him to the ground.

He growled as he conjured and hurled another infernal ball of fire at his attacker, but when the knight batted the fireball away with a glowing white shield, time seemed to stop for a moment as his scattered thoughts strove to come back together, to make sense of what was transpiring before his eyes.

And then the knight reached up with a free hand and pulled off the helmet, to reveal...

"YOU!" Hans shrieked, anger and rage and resentment suddenly boiling white-hot as the long twin red braids spilled out of the helmet to hang down over Anna's chest.

Anna smiled coldly at the furious former prince. "Me," she said calmly, stretching her right arm to the side and opening her hand to let the handle of her sword slide itself back into its master's grasp.

—O—

The lead riders in Clarke's escort reined their horses to skidding halts, leaping off their mounts and readying weapons to deal with Nia's remaining guards. Six of the Azgeda remained on the same level as Clarke and her riders, with another two still in position in front of Nia where she stood atop the raised area ahead of them.

Clarke, however, drove her horse farther than her escorts had planned, going past her dismounted guards before pulling her horse to a similar skidding halt and jumping off, cold fury burning in her face.

The Azgeda guards on her level hesitated when confronted with the feathered warpaint and blonde semi-curls of the woman who was angrily walking toward them, and they were easily cut down by the Coalition fighters, Octavia claiming one of the kills herself. All the while Clarke continued to walk forward, her eyes fixated on Nia and her last two guards; she appeared entirely indifferent to the Azgeda being hacked to death around her as she kept striding toward their reborn queen.

Clarke stomped up the gentle slope, frowning when the last two Azgeda both stood in front of her, visibly shaking all the while, the tips of their drawn swords wobbling like children trying to hold weapons that were too heavy.

"Get out of my way," Clarke growled at them, "or I will kill you and EVERY PERSON YOU LOVE!"

She smiled when the two of them dropped their swords and ran.

Nia's mouth opened and closed silently as she tried to process what was happening, why her powers were failing her, why her army was dying, why this stupid pretender Skai girl was here, not dead in a pool of blood.

Nia's arm shot forward, commanding the cold to obey her and strike down the brazen girl, but the sparkles that formed around her hand were sparse and faint, and the resultant missile of cold that flew forth weakly fluttered toward Clarke, striking her chest and bursting into light snowflakes with all the force of a spring breeze.

Clarke smiled as she barely felt the projectile impact her chest. She had been right, thanks to any gods who might be listening, and she made a mental note to do something nice for Maleficent and Rose if she ever saw them again.

Nia tried again, this time using both arms to attempt to blast Clarke as she done to others many times, but only weak puffs of frost and snow spat forth, just going a few centimeters before feebly evaporating.

"You cheated Death, Nia," Clarke said, reaching down and unbuckling the belt holding her holstered pistol and sheathed sword. She pulled the end of the belt to unhook it, letting the belt fall to the ground as she continued steadily walking toward Nia, her eyes never leaving the Azgeda ruler. She stopped briefly to lift her left leg, pulling a knife from the sheath at her ankle and tossing it to the side before she resumed her patient approach toward the stricken queen.

Nia tried to conjure an ice sword to defend herself, but only a wisp of pale frost appeared briefly before it vanished as well. She looked up, and Clarke was nearly there.

"You owe Death a life," Clarke said calmly.

Nia tried again, panic thrumming through her body, but not even a single crystal of ice formed in her palm.

Clarke was now visibly smiling. "And guess who's collecting?"

Nia looked frantically from side to side, but the swords from her guards were out of reach, and—

She looked back at Clarke just in time to see the woman's fist drive into her face.

—O—

Lexa slid behind her latest attacker, preparing to use her dagger to open his throat when an impact drove into his chest, knocking her slightly back and to her right; at the same time, the crack of a gunshot hit her ears. She looked up, quickly scanning ahead of her until her eyes settled on someone pointing a pistol at her.

Carl Emerson.

Lexa shoved the dying Azgeda forward and broke to her right. Emerson pulled the trigger again, but his second shot clipped the Azgeda's right arm, sending a spurt of blood flying well behind Lexa.

Emerson turned his body, trying to follow the brunette, who was moving inhumanly fast. His next shot still missed, though it was close enough that it clipped off a lock of dark hair. Lexa darted behind another Azgeda, driving her dagger into the muscular woman's back and using her as a living shield to block another shot that hit the Azgeda woman in the shoulder as Lexa closed ground between her and Emerson. Lexa shoved the dying woman forward, feinted to her right, then broke to her left. The movement succeeded in getting Emerson to fire another shot at where he thought Lexa was going, and by the time he had corrected for his mistake, she was in the air and on top of him.

Lexa's body slammed into Emerson at the same time he wrestled the old revolver, which he had found in the remnants of a demolished house along with a few precious bullets, back in her direction; as they fell down, he savagely pulled the trigger.

The revolver fired, the impact from the shot to her chest driving Lexa back, resulting in her awkwardly landing on her feet as her forward momentum was countered by the force of the bullet hitting her. Her legs were momentarily wobbly as Emerson hit the ground, but only for a moment, then she was lunging forward, ignoring the blooming ache in her left chest as she fell on top of him, straddling the man's chest and using her mass to drive the air from his lungs as he pressed the revolver to her side and pulled the trigger repeatedly, only to hear clicking each time.

She held the blade of her sword to his throat, the edge of a weak trickle of blood that happily slithered its way across his sweaty skin. When he tried to hit her in the head with the empty pistol, she used her left arm to strike his forearm so hard that a stinging numbness shot all the way through his hand, making him drop the weapon. She then forced his arm down, pinning it in place with her left knee. When he started to swing at her with his left hand, she slid the blade a centimeter across his throat; the burning pain made him freeze where he was.

"At least I got you too, you bitch," he croaked, trying to move his jaw as little as possible.

Lexa tilted her head slightly as an amused smile crossed her lips. "Oh, I think not, Carl Emerson," she said confidently. She reached up with her free left hand and hooked her index and middle fingers into the scorched hole in her shirt, then jerked downward to partially tear the fabric.

Emerson's eyes shifted to see the familiar brown of one of Mount Weather's bulletproof vests, marred by a flattened bullet with a ring of burned material surrounding it.

"It was yours," Lexa whispered, enjoying the stricken look on the last Maunon's face for two seconds before she pressed down and smoothly sliced through skin, muscle, blood vessels and cartilage as she pulled her sword across his throat, tipping her head back to avoid being sprayed in the face with blood as she pushed herself back to her feet.

—O—

"HOW ARE YOU HERE?!" howled Hans as he tried to fathom how, in all the possible coincidences in all the worlds of existence, he could be facing the woman who stood before him now.

"You killed hundreds of Arendellans," Anna said, light on the balls of her feet in her preferred combat stance, four meters away from him. "Did you really think we wouldn't hunt you down?"

"Well, one can hope," Hans said agreeably as he drew his own sword, the hissing of metal sliding across metal having a ghostly moan to it as the blade's nearly black surface emerged. "You're too deep in enemy territory, you know," he said as he felt the bite of the redhead's cold magic began to gnaw at his exposed skin. He pulsed some of his plundered soul energy into countering the damage. He could offset that, but not indefinitely.

The smirk that crossed the redhead's lips was infuriating. "Am I?" she asked all-too-cheerfully, gesturing for Hans to look around them.

Taking the chance, Hans saw a ring of observers, most of them Azgeda but quite a few of the enemy forces as well; they had gathered just outside the circle of frost that had formed with the Arendellan queen at its center and encompassing him, hovering at its edge but not daring to breach its perimeter.

"See?" Anna chirped before her eyes narrowed angrily. "Nobody likes you." She lunged forward, the smile wiped from her face as he swung his sword up and met her strike; the two blades rang as they met, sparks of frost and flame leaping from the point of impact.

Anna raised an eyebrow as she regarded Hans' blade, which seemed unharmed from her own strike. "Magic sword?" she asked casually.

"Of course," Hans replied smugly, shoving her back as the two of them stepped away from each other. "I expect you're not used to a fair fight."

"Oh, that really stings, coming from you," Anna retorted sarcastically. She jabbed forward with the tip of her sword; when Hans slid to his right to dodge, Anna stepped toward him, swinging her shield with a backhand motion to knock his sword wide to her left and his right, following up with a quick slash that laid open a line through his jacket's sleeve and left arm alike.

Hans took several steps away, growling as the stinging cold from the wound on his arm caused him to divert more of his stored magic toward healing both the actual laceration as well as the tissue damage from the magical chill. For her part, Anna found her eyes drawn to the slowly spreading stain on the fabric of his sleeve, somehow a red so dark as to be nearly black but also bearing a greenish sheen to it.

"What have you done to yourself, Hans?" she asked, a mixture of disgust and surprise audible in her tone. "Was power really worth," she gestured with the blade of her sword toward his arm, "all this?"

Resentment boiled inside him at the hint of pity he could detect in her voice. He stepped forward, body turned to present less of a target, thrusting and jabbing at her defenses, turning her deflection with the blade of her sword into a swift riposte that the redhead had to block with her shield, then tip her head backward to dodge Hans slashing upward with the tip of his sword at her face. "What would you know about the cost of power, you little bitch?" he spat at her.

"I know that in our arrogance and ignorance, Elsa and I nearly destroyed our entire kingdom," Anna easily replied, shifting from a more powerful slashing attack to careful, probing thrusts and jabs, forcing Hans to quickly parry and shift to prevent her from penetrating his defenses and scoring a vital blow; as it was, he still felt the burning pain from two new minor wounds after the prolonged exchange of strikes and parries, one on his left chest, the other on his right forearm. Neither was deep, but both were enough to draw blood and require the use of ever more of his precious store of magic, carefully accumulated through the battles of the last few weeks.

Silently chastising himself for letting the history between him and the redheaded brat rattle his composure, Hans stepped back to refocus his attention on his dueling technique. As much as he had tried to use it to insult Anna, he had also grown used to having an unfair advantage during swordfights in the form of his own enchanted blade, adding accuracy, speed and the ability to inflict grievous wounds with otherwise minor blows, and he had let it make his own technique sloppy.

The next few blows exchanged were more even, with neither of them able to score a hit on the other for a few minutes as they carefully re-evaluated the other's stance and level of aggression, until Hans began to feel the gnawing of the mystic cold at his own magical defenses. His personal stores of magic were limited, and the accursed Arendellan woman didn't seem to feel the same limitations. That meant she had the advantage of time. She could be patient as she slowly wore him down, and as much as he hated admitting it, she had learned the value of patience over the years. He had witnessed that firsthand years ago, at their last meeting, so he knew that it was up to him to goad her into becoming careless and making a mistake.

"So how has your marital bliss been?" he asked, smiling lasciviously. "I must say, thinking about you and your sister and the way you must rut against each other has given me several wonderful fantasies over the years."

The flash of anger that crossed Anna's face nearly made Hans laugh, but the fact that the redhead maintained her guarding stance position rather than angrily rush him, as he had been expecting, was more than a bit irritating.

He was thoroughly blindsided when instead the youthful-looking redhead smiled brightly and said, in the sweetest tone, "Oh, I promise you, the way Elsa touches me, and kisses me, and makes love to me is a thousand times more intense and beautiful than you could ever imagine."

She was still smiling innocently when she suddenly lunged forward; the abrupt attack was so well-disguised that she very nearly succeeded in running the tip of her sword through his face, and only a reflexive jerk to the side saved Hans' life. Still, it came at the cost of a significant chunk of his left ear, the top of which was severed by the magically keen edge of the ice blade.

With a snarl, Hans's left hand flew up to cup his wounded ear as he retreated to his right. "You BITCH!" he shouted, only to have his next retort cut short by a flurry of swipes and stabs that he just barely succeeded in avoiding through a combination of blocks and short retreats. He tried to mount a counterattack, but each riposte and strike seemed to be deflected well before he ever drew close to connecting, usually with another shallow cut or glancing blow from her shield, which froze his skin even through his clothing when it connected.

Ignoring his sense of conserving his magical reserves, he summoned a shroud of reddish-green flames around his left hand, swiping at her coppery head as she deflected a blow from his sword; she ducked the off-hand blow, driving the pommel of her sword into the side of his right knee as she crouched. He ignored the sharp jolt of pain, risking his leg buckling as he supported himself on his right leg and kicked her in the hip with his left foot, eliciting a grunt of surprise and sending her sprawling onto her side and her shield.

The injury to his right knee prevented him from pressing the attack, however, and by the time he was swinging his sword down at her back, she was already rolling away, using the momentum of the maneuver to regain her footing and return to a guard position, sword and shield both between her and him.

He extended his left arm forward, and the shroud of flame around his hand turned into a gout of angry green-yellow fire, licking toward her head and face. Her shield lifted to block the attack, its brilliant white glow intensifying as it met and resisted the hellfire.

Hans pressed the attack, charging while her shield was raised and blocking her vision, only to have to leap backward when Anna suddenly crouched and her glittering silvery-white blade swiped outward toward his legs. He was quick enough that the blade just missed, but he then found himself on the defensive when Anna launched herself as much forward as upward coming out of her crouch.

He quickly swung his blade and shifted his body to parry the flurry of strikes, but he registered the sting of one small nick or cut after another as the very edge of her blade seemed to find its way through his guard pattern, practiced so many times that it was second nature to him years ago. The redheaded queen used her shield to force his blade out of position repeatedly, and only Hans using his stolen soul energy for speed and agility kept her from scoring more than minor hits to his body.

He swept his left arm across his chest, creating a roaring wall of flames that finally made the vixen retreat momentarily. She stood still, regarding him with clear amusement on her face as he took stock of the half-dozen stinging wounds on his arms and torso. It was taking more effort to heal the injuries at this point, and he began to wonder if that was her game, trying to play out the battle between them to deplete his magical reserves.

Deciding to no longer play her game, Hans felt it necessary to gamble. Extending his left arm toward the ground, the bloody ichor seeping from his wounds began to increase its flow, dripping into a steaming, seething puddle on the frozen ground. The greenish-red fluid began to swirl and coalesce, taking shape into a clutch of serpents that abruptly burst forth, wriggling and squirming toward the Arendellan woman.

Despite all she had seen and survived, there was still a deep-seated instinctual revulsion at seeing the nearly two-meter long oily serpents slithering toward her at breakneck speed, dripping a revolting dark goo as they quickly closed ground on her. She shifted her sword toward the ground, taking another look up at Hans to see if he was going to try to throw another fireball at her, then looked back down just in time to see the snakes scatter, with most of them going to both sides to try and attack her from all directions at once.

Anna intensified the magic in her sword and shield, broadcasting intense, bitter cold as she lightly dug the tip of her sword into the ground and quickly spun in a circle; the first strokes beheaded the serpents that reached her first, and the increased cold helped slow the others—whether it was due to their forms taking on the reptilian susceptibility to cold or just one type of magic countering another was unimportant in the moment—enough for Anna to sever their bodies before they could reach her feet and legs, just barely so in the case of the last two.

Still rotating as she came back around, Anna caught a flash of green light as Hans threw another ball of fire, this time angling it toward the ground, so that it would strike and erupt before she had a chance to deflect it with her shield.

Grimacing, Anna lunged forward, throwing her whole body into a roll similar to a cartwheel; she pressed her shield down onto the fireball just as it struck the ground, muffling its fiery explosion as she pulled her legs up out of the range of its reduced blast radius. She used the momentum of her roll to launch herself at Hans again, lashing out with a thrust that succeeded in shallowly penetrating his abdomen and freezing part of his intestines before he wildly channeled a blast of fire toward the ground, launching both him and Anna backwards in a desperate attempt to prevent her from skewering him.

Anna felt stinging pain over her lower legs from where the heat of Hans' blast had managed to penetrate the protection of her ice mail, but she refused to give him any indication that he had managed to score at least a minor hit. Instead she rushed forward, interrupting his obvious attempt to heal himself with a thrust of her blade, then a jab from the edge of her shield as he lifted his sword to block her attack, forcing him to block that as well. That in turn left him open for another swipe from her sword, causing him to flinch and roll his left arm out of the way, allowing her to press forward and use her strong legs to drive her shoulder into his exposed left ribs with an audible crack.

Hans spun around, sweeping his sword at her head with a powerful backhand, only to miss her entirely when she ducked. While crouching, she slid the tip of her sword forward across the back of his left knee, severing one of his hamstring tendons as easily as the blade cut through the fabric of his pants.

Hans dropped to his right knee, reflexively clutching at his wounded leg. He turned his face toward Anna, who was readying a decisive blow until she halted in mid-swing as Hans' eyes glowed and his mouth yawned open. Surprise registered on her face as black bile began to spew from his throat toward her, and she only just managed to reposition her shield to catch the spray of caustic black goo after the first few drops flew toward her, striking her in the chest. The tarry material immediately burned its way through the tunic she was wearing, and even though it couldn't penetrate her ice mail, its infernal heat still managed to burn her skin through the magic armor before she could scrape it away with the edge of her blade.

Hans lunged backward, channeling more of his dwindling reserves toward healing the crippling injury to his abdomen and his left leg; if he couldn't maneuver around her, he was as good as dead, and both of them knew it. She was no longer the shallow, naive girl she had been when they had first met over two decades ago. Still, she didn't know everything.

Trying to gather his mystic strength again, Hans launched into an advanced series of sword strikes that had taken months to master. His dark blade wove a deadly pattern through the distance between them, striking at points both vital and minor in repeated attempts to injure his opponent, but her own glowing sword and shield were blurs of white light, intercepting each of his thrusts and swipes before they came close to touching her.

Pausing for a moment, Hans maintained a strong guard stance, sword raised in ready position between them. "How are you blocking this?!" he asked incredulously. His speed and power were both amplified by his weapon, so likely hers were as well, but still.

"What, surprised a little princess from the tiny country of Arendelle can hold her own with someone who trained with a sword from the time he was a boy?" she asked smugly.

Hans looked a bit taken aback. "Well, …yes, in fact," he admitted. Her words were almost exactly what he had been thinking to himself, disturbingly.

Anna smiled again. "Easy. I asked your brothers who trained all of you growing up. Then Elsa and I found him and hired him." She easily adopted a fighting stance he sickly recognized as his own. "Paid him for over two years to first show me how you fight, then teach me how to take it apart. I'll have to rub it in to Elsa that those lessons finally paid off. Oh, and she's not bad with a rapier herself now."

The realization of exactly what she had been doing begin to register, and he felt the anger in his tainted blood beginning to boil. "You've been toying with me!" he snarled.

"No, not really," she said, but the amused look on her face didn't exactly bolster her argument. "I'm going to kill you. That's just how it is. You've been doing a pretty good job of fighting for your life. I certainly haven't been really pressing the attack, because I know I can wear you down, but I'll take the opportunity to kill you as soon as it presents itself." Now Anna's face softened slightly, even verging on the edge of pity, and that made Hans even angrier. "I have no need to drag this out to humiliate you, because, to be painfully honest, there is NOTHING I can do to you that's even half as bad as what you've done to yourself, Hans."

His vision turned red as he allowed his anger to surge. Forgoing technique, since using it would actually play into her strategy, he instead alternated between throwing blasts of hellfire with stabs and slashes of his sword, forcing Anna to parry with her sword, block with her shield and twist and jump to dodge his wild attacks for several seconds as she gave ground before his offensive, the circle of frozen ground and ring of spectators just outside of its bounds both sliding with them as the positions changed.

When he extended himself too far, Anna used her sword and shield together to slam his right arm and blade to his left, sliding her body to the side and lifting her left foot to trip him as he pressed the attack; as he stumbled by her, she swiped her ice blade across his back, slicing a long gash through the bottom of his leather backpack.

Hans shrieked in agony as he felt an intense surge of agony across his lower back like nothing he had ever felt before. He felt dark tears spring to his eyes as he used his fall to tumble forward, rolling as far away from Anna as possible to prevent her from mounting her own counterattack.

He felt inexplicably lighter as he regained his footing, resisting the urge to check his back for what had to be a sheet of blood pouring out, judging from the furious agony he was experiencing. But when his eyes locked in on Anna again, she wasn't looking at him at all.

Instead her blue-green eyes were firmly fixed upon the black leathery cover of the Vile Codex, bleeding a stream of oily blood from a long cut across its leather face, where it had fallen upon the frozen ground.

—O—

Anna's thoughts whirled as she tried to both process what she was seeing and not throw up as she got a long, stark look at this twisted, macabre object. An eternal howl of pain was still visible upon the barely discernible features of the man (or woman) who had been skinned to make the leather cover for the Codex, and the combination of that horrific realization as well as the full effect of the malign tome's dark, evil aura struck Anna with all the force and none of the redeeming qualities of a tidal wave.

But beyond that instinctual revulsion at laying eyes upon the book and hearing its soft, buzzing whispers for the first time, something jangled in Anna's mind even more fiercely.

The Codex was bleeding.

It couldn't be that simple. Could it?

After a quick glance at Hans, which revealed he was nearly paralyzed with shock as he likewise regarded the surreal situation, she tried to fit the pieces together in her mind.

"The Codex can only be destroyed by its polar opposite," Maleficent had said.

An object associated with peace, but used for evil.

A lethal tool of war, wielded for good.

Knowledge, used to corrupt and prey upon others.

Action, used to defend and protect those who cannot protect themselves.

An object of utter hate, created in an unholy ritual of pain, death and fear.

A creation of purest love, forged in a shared embrace of joy, life and acceptance.

A book so dark, so corrupt that even now it began to corrode the ice and ground around it, turning the pristine white into a sooty black.

A sword so bright and pure that where the tendrils of soot and smoke drew near, its light vaporized them instantly.

—O—

Hans broke into a run toward the Codex, dropping his sword as he scrambled to reach the source of his power before Anna.

Flipping her sword so the tip pointed downward, Anna lunged at the Codex, drawing her arms back over her head as she reached the book in only a few powerful strides. Hans was still several meters away as she fell to a knee and drove her sword downward with both hands wrapped around its handle, shifting her weight on top of the blade and driving it deeper and deeper until her sword's crossguard hit the book's cover.

As the gleaming white blade drove through the malignant tome, it screamed and howled in agony. Anna clambered backward away from the terrible keening, just in time to avoid the gout of black blood that began to spray upward.

When the first drops hit Hans and ate through his clothes and sizzled against his skin, he pulled back as well, watching numbly as the Codex caught fire, the flames licking a brilliant white, blue and gold instead of the more familiar green and red he was used to seeing. He turned to look back at his sword, only to see it dissolving into a boiling, sticky mess of tarry goo.

Anna lifted her right arm to shield her eyes from the bright light of the mystic conflagration as she tried to see what was going on with her sword and the Codex. She never saw Hans as he slammed into her from her right side, driving her onto her back and knocking the wind out of her.

Not wasting a moment, Hans shot to his feet and drove a fierce kick into Anna's right side, eliciting a grunt and a pained gasp. Using some of the last bits of his pilfered blood magic, he covered his hands with a coating of thick, dark blood, then grabbed Anna's shield and wrenched it off her right forearm. The corrupted blood sizzled away from the contact with the magic device, but it served its purpose by protecting his hands as gleefully flung the shield as far away from them as possible.

He dropped to a knee on her chest, ignoring the ice mail burning his knee in favor of savoring the sound of the air being forced from her lungs. He shifted the last dregs of his magic to protect his legs and groin as he sat on her chest and wrapped his hands around her throat.

"You have taken EVERYTHING from me!" he shouted into her flushed face, cheeks aglow and eyes closed as she struggled to draw in a breath as he began to choke her.

Despite being winded from the blow to her ribs and her chest, Anna managed to tighten the muscles in her neck as soon as she felt him to squeeze around her throat. The ice mail protected her from most injuries, but it remained as flexible as fine cloth to allow her maximal movement and comfort.

"But at least I can finally KILL YOU!" Hans continued to exhort, manic delight on his face as he fought against her efforts to protect herself. "Oh, think of the utter ruin that'll be on your damned sister's face when she sees your lifeless body! It's almost worth bringing you to her myself, just to see her completely destroyed forever!"

Anna's eyes shot open. They almost seemed to glow as she locked onto Hans' wild gaze, his pupils so wide as to nearly eclipse the thin rim of blue surrounding them, as emotion erupted through Anna's body.

He felt Anna's right hand slam against his throat and begin to squeeze in turn as she matched his furious gaze with one of her own. He tightened his grip, ignoring the burning cold that began to seep through his protective magic and sear his fingers and palms, but he found her throat inflexible despite him squeezing harder.

Anna managed to smile slightly as she felt the pressure around her windpipe ease slightly. She chanced a breath, savoring it before blowing it back out, visibly frosty as it left her lips, much to Hans's consternation.

"NO!" he shouted. "You don't have your sword or your shield! You're helpless without them! You have no magic of your own!"

Anna tightened her own grip on his throat, not bothering to add her left hand. She squeezed harder, smiling as Hans began to gasp, his exhalations now visible as his windpipe began to freeze. She maintained the tension in the muscles of her neck despite the ache screaming in the now-bruised fibers, and as she watched, Hans' eyes began to grow glassy, then opaque as they froze, the right eye cracking a second before the left did the same while rimes of frost blossomed over his skin.

As his hands stopped squeezing, Anna forced them away from her throat; reflexively Hans reached to his own throat, trying to dislodge Anna's grip but without success. He clawed at the ice that was now his ruined throat, his last moments of consciousness spent in a primal terror of suffocation.

Anna scooted out from under Hans as the rest of his body collapsed, his legs weakly convulsing about once a second but the rest of him forever unmoving. She slowly rose to her feet, reaching up to assess her neck and wincing in pain as she lightly touched her injured throat. She looked around, seeing scores of Coalition and Azgeda alike watching her with a mixture of fear and awe, all of them still as statues.

She looked back down at Hans' body. With a quick stomp, she brought her right foot down on his frozen head, smiling with grim satisfaction as it shattered into dark fragments under her ice boot.

—O—

Clarke had always prided herself on trying to solve problems with her mind first. Which was why she really, really didn't want to admit that sometimes, solving them with her fists could be fun too.

She punched Nia again, this time using her right hand to hit the older woman squarely in the jaw as the Azgeda ruler tried to regain her footing. Clarke's knuckles were abraded in several places, but most of the blood on the backs of her hands wasn't hers.

"This is how it was always going to be, Nia" Clarke said smartly, stepping backward and tensing her abdominal muscles—a lesson Lexa had drilled into her—to dampen the impact of Nia punching her in her stomach. She drove a left into the back of Nia's neck, nearly at the base of her skull, sending the woman immediately to the ground again as her limbs briefly went limp and a flash of pain seared through her spine.

It might have been an ethical violation for a doctor to use a knowledge of weak spots in the human body to cripple an opponent in a fight, but Clarke had never officially completed her medical training.

And this was the Ground anyway.

Nia swung her arm outward, catching the back of Clarke's right heel and knocking her foot forward and her leg out from under her, bringing the blonde sprawling to the ground. Contrary to what Clarke had expected, Nia didn't talk much during a fight, focusing instead on what mattered. So as soon as Clarke hit the ground, Nia was already moving to press the attack by throwing herself onto the younger blonde.

Clarke managed to get her right leg pulled back against her chest, so that instead of landing on Clarke's chest, Nia instead landed on the bottom of Clarke's boot. Clarke smiled at the snarling Nia as she uncoiled her right leg and kicked upward, HARD, launching Nia backward through the air.

The impact of Nia's body hitting the ground knocked the wind from her lungs, made worse by the stab of pain when a large rock she landed on cracked at least one of the ribs on her right side. Nia rolled over, an instinctual attempt to protect her head and face as she curled into a ball and began to scrabble at the rock embedded in the ground, trying to get her fingernails and fingertips beneath it to pry it loose while her body shielded her activity from Clarke's view.

Clarke dropped forcefully onto Nia's back, forcing a sharp cry of pain from the older woman as her broken rib cracked further. It felt like the younger woman had slid a dagger into her side and was twisting it, so intense was the pain, but Nia's mind dulled the burning agony as she felt the rock begin to shift from her desperate efforts.

"How old are you anyway, Nia?" Clarke taunted as she drove another punch into Nia's left side. "Mid-fifties? Late fifties?" Now a right punch into Nia's injured ribs; Clarke wasn't aware of the broken rib, but the gasp of pain she heard and the way Nia squirmed beneath her when her fist drove into the older woman's side made her smile cruelly. "I'm nineteen, Nia," Clarke continued between blows to Nia's body. "I'm younger. I'm stronger. I'm in the prime of my life. There's no way you—"

Nia rolled beneath Clarke, bringing the fist-sized rock clenched in her hand up in an awkward swipe at Clarke's head. Clarke saw it coming just enough to try to evade the blow, resulting in the strike to her head being a glancing one rather than direct, but it still stung and burned where the rock clipped the left side of her forehead.

Angrily, Clarke drove a vicious left-handed punch directly into Nia's trachea, striking not just with her arm but with her entire upper body; predictably, the sudden blow to her windpipe stunned Nia, leaving her momentarily struggling to move air and causing her to drop the rock beside her.

Clarke instantly seized it, examining it for a moment as she shifted it in her grasp before she returned her attention to Nia, whose face was reddened as her mouth gaped open in a desperate attempt to breath. Clarke brought the rock up over her head, then she immediately drove her left arm downward, slamming the stone into Nia's face before repeating the same action again, then again.

She shifted to grip the rock, now slightly sticky from Nia's blood mixing with the dirt on it, with both hands before she continued to pound savagely at Nia's face, over and over and over. There was no higher thinking left in Clarke's mind as she reverted to a primitive thought process, one so deeply embedded in the parts of her brain that reason and restraint were nowhere to be found. Instead there was only survival... and death.

After some time, Clarke finally stopped the motion of her arms. She could numbly register the stinging pain of her hands and fingers, the ache and burning of her arms, the throbbing of her left forehead and temple, the burning of a split lip and the iron taste of blood in her mouth.

For several seconds, she struggled to make sense of the bloody, misshapen mess beneath her that used to be a face. It was no longer recognizable as such. Blood was everywhere. Skin had been peeled away, exposing glistening off-white with a hint of yellow in various places that had once been a forehead, a cheek, an eyebrow. Teeth that had been brutally broken loose were scattered in the remnants of a mouth, and the whole gruesome tableau was made more surreal by the new concavity of what Nia's face had been, something that even the most basic parts of Clarke's reasoning mind understood should not be.

Clarke didn't register the handful of tears that trickled from her eyes as she numbly dropped the bloody rock on Nia's chest and shakily rose to her feet. The tears slithered over the greasy warpaint without disturbing Wanheda's visage, and they mixed easily with the blood smeared on Clarke's face, making it as if they had never been there.

Clarke turned to regard the Coalition fighters standing some distance away. All of them were staring at her in amazement, with looks that would be more befitting regarding a god than a simple woman fighting for not just her survival, but the survival of her people. Her friends. Her woman.

"The bitch is dead."

It took several seconds for Clarke to realize that the words had come from her lips.

—O—

Author's Afterword: Sorry about the cliffhanger at the end of the previous chapter. I was trying my best to get part of what was shaping up to be a massive chapter up and published, and that was the most natural place I could find for a break. Now that you've got the rest of the chapter, I hope this assuages any stressed neurons. I don't like cliffhangers, but sometimes it's the best way of managing a large hunk of text. And this was a LARGE hunk of text. The chapter was over forty pages long when I decided to break it, and after finishing this current chapter I expect these last two put together have surpassed fifty pages of writing on my word processor. So, yeah, it would have been a massive chapter if I had kept them together.

Next we get the end of the battle and the aftermath. Take a deep breath. The hardest part is over for most of us. Current estimate is four more chapters, including an epilogue.

I'd also like to take a moment to reiterate that stories can take on a mind of their own.

For months when I was working through the layout of this chapter, Bellamy was going to die. He was going to die protecting the others from the sneak attack, sacrificing his life by detonating a grenade inside the cavern to kill the Azgeda and seal off the passage. (Probably. The details could have changed, but that's what I was planning.) But then that just didn't feel right, so it became Indra who was going to die, sacrificing herself in a delaying action to allow Bellamy and Echo to escape and warn the others. But that didn't feel right, either. I wanted to show Indra as the warrior we all knew she was but never really got to see and admire in action, and fighting a battle only to lose didn't really convey that sentiment.

Still, I wanted there to be some kind of price that was paid for saving Echo and stopping the Azgeda sneak attack. Even though Clarke wouldn't have been there for the attack, even a small pack of Azgeda could have torn through the noncombatants and the few Trikru left to guard them, because Lexa really did commit damn near everything to the field of battle in this fight. Even without their main target, the Azgeda would have claimed a bloody price had they been allowed to reach the Trikru camp. Stopping that called for someone to sacrifice something precious, something that mattered.

Then I remembered that not all sacrifices have to be blood ones.

I love Monroe and Harper. I seriously do. This story has become almost as much about them as it has Anna and Elsa and Clarke and Lexa, and I'm proud of that. It hurts me personally to make these characters I love suffer, but that's part of telling a story and making it resonate. In this chapter, Monroe was willing to sacrifice the fragile peace she had made with her past to save others, at great personal cost to herself. THAT is heroism, just as much as Lexa charging into the face of steep odds, or Clarke risking herself to carry out a plan to drain Nia's magic, or Elsa having to out-skill Nia rather than overpower her, or Harper ignoring her own safety to take out the last archer, or Anna facing down her very first nemesis (and in case you missed the single line in this chapter indicating it, she and Hans HAVE faced each other again after the events of Frozen and before he stole the Codex—but that's a story for another day) for the final time.

I never intended to make part of this story about post-traumatic stress disorder, but it was there, and I felt it should be acknowledged and addressed respectfully. I hope I have been able to do so. There is no right way to deal with PTSD. In a way, Harper is in over her head in trying to help Monroe through it, because she's certainly not trained or experienced as a counselor or psychiatrist. But in a more profound way, Harper is exactly the right person to help Monroe, because she's the one who loves Monroe and whom Monroe loves in return. She's the one who can just be there for Monroe when words would only make the pain and anguish worse, to hold her and comfort her and silently tell her that she's there if Monroe needs her, she can give her space if that would be better, but she's NEVER going to abandon her. She's going to be there when the tears are falling without an end in sight, and she's going to be there to shares laughs and hugs when times are better. And sometimes, that's the best care we can receive.

Still a handful of chapters to go, so bear with me. You'd made it through the most dramatic parts of the journey. Now it's time to pull the ends of the ribbon together and start tying the knot. Thank you for reading, and thank you for your patience. I promise I'll keep working on the next chapters steadily, so they should hopefully be up at a decent pace for me. Still a bit more story to tell here, after all.