"Kristoff!" Anna whispered. "Kristoff, wake up!"
Kristoff stirred from his slumber and opened his eyes to see Anna's smiling face.
"What is it?" he asked, disoriented. "What's going on?"
"I did it!" Anna whispered excitedly.
"Did what?" Kristoff asked, still not completely awake.
"I picked the lock!" Anna said with a wide grin. In her fingers she held a hairpin that had been bent almost beyond recognition. Behind her he could see the iron gate to the cell standing open.
"Really?" Kristoff asked in surprise, suddenly very awake.
"Yeah!" Anna nodded. "Come on! Let's get out of here!"
Anna took Kristoff's hand and led him out of the cell and toward the ladder leading up to the deck above.
"Wait," Kristoff said, abruptly resisting Anna's lead. "What are you doing?"
"Um, getting out of here?" Anna replied sarcastically.
"We can't just climb up that ladder onto the main deck," Kristoff said. "We'll be caught and thrown right back in the cell."
"You don't know that'll happen," Anna said. "And so what if it does? I know how to pick the lock."
"If they catch us trying to escape, they're not going to leave us unguarded again," Kristoff pointed out.
"Well then what do you think we should do?" Anna asked.
Kristoff looked around and noticed the door in the bulkhead. He knew the cargo hold would be on the other side.
"Let's go this way," Kristoff said, heading for the door. "We'll find another way out through the cargo hold."
Kristoff took down the wooden crossbars that secured the heavy door and swung it open. Kristoff and Anna peered inside. The cargo hold was pitch black; they couldn't see anything beyond the door. Anna fetched two of the oil lanterns that were hanging on the bulkhead and handed one to Kristoff. Cautiously, they stepped through the doorway into the darkness of the cargo hold.
Even with the light from the lanterns, Anna and Kristoff still couldn't see much. The cavernous cargo hold seemed to be empty, except for loose straw which covered the floor. Kristoff held his lantern up as high as he could, trying to extend the reach of its light. Even holding his lantern above him, he could barely see the bottom of the deck above, and ahead of them the hold seemed to stretch on into the blackness like an endless abyss.
"I've got a bad feeling about this," Kristoff muttered.
"What do you mean?" Anna asked.
"This is a strange ship," Kristoff replied. "I've never seen a cargo hold like this. It's huge! I can't even imagine what it was meant to carry."
"How many ships have you been on?" Anna asked skeptically.
"Too many to count," Kristoff replied. "I used to work in Lillehaven loading and unloading ships."
"I thought you were an ice harvester," Anna said.
"Ice harvesting is seasonal work," Kristoff said. "In the off season, I had to take whatever work I could find."
"I didn't know that," Anna said.
"Yeah," Kristoff continued, "and now that I think about it, a lot of those ships were from Weselton."
"What does that have to do with anything?" Anna asked.
"Oh, nothing, I guess," Kristoff admitted. "I just realized that there's probably a lot less work in Lillehaven now that your sister cut Weselton off. I used to sell those ships ice sometimes, too. You know, if I wasn't Arendelle's Official Ice Master and Deliverer, it might be hard for me to make a living now. I can only imagine how difficult it must be for the people who live here."
Anna didn't know how to respond. She didn't like the thought that any of Arendelle's people might be struggling, but she knew that Elsa couldn't simply forget about what the Duke of Weselton had done.
As they continued deeper into the hold, Anna noticed that a tiny spot of light had suddenly appeared in the darkness ahead of them. Curious, she began to wander toward it. Kristoff was distracted by his fascination with the strange ship's construction and didn't notice as Anna drifted away from him. As Anna moved toward the mysterious light, she noticed that it seemed to be moving in her direction as well. As she got closer, the light seemed to get larger and brighter, and Anna quickened her pace.
Finally, Anna approached the light and realized that it was merely a reflection of the light from her own lantern. She found herself standing in front of a large circular mirrorlike surface, almost as big across as she was tall, with her own dim reflection staring back at her. It wasn't a mirror, though. Anna could see that her reflection was slightly distorted. The surface, in addition to being round, was also curved like the lens of a giant magnifying glass, and the reflected light of the lantern was noticeably dimmer than that of the real flame.
As Anna studied the reflection, she also noticed with surprise that the surface seemed to be... wet. She reached out with her free hand to touch it. Just as her fingers were about to touch the surface, something suddenly came down in front of her, covering the reflection like a curtain. Startled, Anna jumped back with a shocked gasp. In front of her now was a thick wall covered in silvery-gray scales. Anna knew there was something familiar about the surface, but couldn't quite place it. Then, just as suddenly as it had fallen, the strange obstruction rose again to reveal the reflection again, but now, only a smaller circle in the center of the reflection remained dark. The rest of the reflection was now backed by a circular border of fiery orange.
Anna heard a guttural groan that seemed to come from all around her. After a split second of confusion, Anna's heart sank as she realized what she was seeing her reflection in. It was a huge eye!
"Kristoff..." Anna called out uncertainly as she slowly backed away from her reflection.
The eye slowly began to rise into the air, then it turned away and a massive scaly snout emerged from the darkness to take its place. Panicking, Anna staggered backwards and stumbled over the uneven deck planking. She fell backwards onto the straw-covered deck, barely keeping from dropping the lantern. She could see the creature looming over her, the light from the lantern reflected in its two huge orange eyes that stared down at her over the long snout, and she could feel its hot breath.
"Kristoff!" Anna called out again, now in terror.
"Don't be afraid, Princess," the voice of Anton said from behind her. Anna glanced over her shoulder to see Anton standing just inside the doorway to the brig, flanked by Hans, holding a lantern, and Verner, keeping Kristoff subdued by the threat of his sword.
"It won't hurt you," Anton continued with an evil grin, "unless I tell it to."
"What... what is it?" Anna sputtered.
"Why, it's a surprise for the queen, of course," Anton replied. "I found it on an island guarding a cave filled with treasure. A Scottish prince told me about it. I didn't believe him at first. He sounded like a fool. But he told me how to find it with such detail that I had to find out for myself. It wasn't easy to get past it. Weapons can't harm it. I lost a lot of good men before I finally managed to get inside the cave, and I never would have gotten back out if I hadn't found something special among the treasure." Anton tapped the helmet of silvery-gray scales that sat atop his head, and Anna realized why the creature's skin had seemed familiar: the helmet looked just like it.
"The monster is cursed to obey whoever wears the helmet," Anton continued, "so now it obeys me, and with it, I won't just take back what I lost; I will take everything I deserve, and no one, not my father, not my brothers, and certainly not your sister, is going to stop me."
Anna was left speechless. She couldn't believe what was happening. She looked back up at the creature towering over her. It seemed unstoppable.
"Take them back to their cell," Anton ordered.
As Verner roughly shoved Kristoff back through the doorway to the brig, Hans rushed over to Anna and helped her up. She didn't resist, and she forlornly let him lead her back to the cell.
"You're more resourceful than I gave you credit for," Anton said to Anna and Kristoff as Verner locked them back in the cell. "I want them watched continuously from now on," Anton said to Verner.
"I will assign guards to watch them," Verner replied.
"Very good." Anton said. He turned to Hans. "Keep an eye on them until the guards get here."
Verner and Anton climbed up the ladder to the main deck, leaving Hans behind outside the cell.
"Why?" Anna asked Hans. "Why is he doing this?"
"Anton has always thought he was better than everyone else, and that he deserved to be king even though Fredrick is the eldest. He'll do anything to become a king, and he won't stop with Arendelle."
"Why are you helping him?" Anna asked.
"I don't have a choice," Hans replied.
"Yes, you do," Anna said in desperation. "You can stand up to him. You can try to stop him."
"No, I can't," Hans said sadly.
Two guards climbed down the ladder to the brig to ensure that the prisoners wouldn't escape. With one last look over his shoulder, Hans silently climbed up the ladder and disappeared.
"I'm sorry, Anna," Kristoff said, sitting down on the bench in the cell.
"What?" Anna exclaimed as she spun around. "You don't have anything to be sorry for."
"Yes, I do," Kristoff replied. "We've been married for one day, and look at what's happened. We're locked in a cell, being used as leverage against your sister."
"None of this is your fault," Anna said.
"You wanted to postpone our honeymoon because you thought Elsa needed you..." Kristoff began.
"She told us we could go," Anna interrupted.
"But we didn't have to," Kristoff continued. "You were right. I could have backed you up, and then we wouldn't be here."
"I didn't know anything like this was going to happen," Anna said. "We decided to go on our honeymoon together."
"It's not just that," Kristoff said. "I couldn't keep us from being captured, I couldn't get us out of this cell, and I couldn't get us off this ship. You fought back. You picked the lock. I haven't done anything. I just feel so useless."
"Don't say that!" Anna said. "We're in this together. If it wasn't for you, I would have climbed up that ladder onto the deck and been caught right away, and then we wouldn't know what Anton was going to do."
"What good does that do?" Kristoff asked. "We don't have any way to warn Elsa." Kristoff sighed. "Do you think Elsa can stop that... thing?"
"I really don't know," Anna admitted, sitting down next to Kristoff and leaning up against him.
"I guess this is just about the worst honeymoon ever, huh?" Kristoff said.
"Yeah," Anna said, resting her head on Kristoff's shoulder, "but at least we're together."