The Guardian
by Concolor44
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Author's Note: I'm sorry for the delay in getting this posted. Real Life has been quite the witty little bitch lately.
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Chapter 17: Cornered
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The Far Eastern Reaches of Arendelle, 26 June 1841, 8:00pm
The fugitives discovered shortly after leaving the island that the beings chasing them could move with frightening speed. Though they were able to stay ahead of their pursuers, it took constant motion. They tried stopping for rest once. It was only seventeen minutes before they were dodging arrows again.
Several hours of that – and guiding Sleipnir around obstacles and over ever more broken terrain – took a toll on Elsa, and the lack of discernable trails didn't help, either. Kristoff had said he'd know the right trail when they got to it, but either he wasn't quite as good as he thought, or the right trail just hadn't made an appearance yet.
They had no way of knowing what the Ifritt had done to the former soldiers, but apparently it made them immune to fatigue as well. They ran. They sprinted. They climbed. They crawled. And they didn't stop. Ever.
By mid-afternoon, Elsa, in desperation, had instilled a rudimentary intelligence in the giant horse (something she'd told herself she would only do as a last resort) and turned over the reins to Kristoff. At present she was wedged between him and Anna, leaning her head against her sister and snoring softly. Sven's back provided Anna with something to brace against. He kept a constant vigil to their rear.
Anna reached forward and tapped Kristoff's shoulder. When he glanced back at her, she mouthed, "What are we going to do once the sun sets?"
He looked up at the scattered overcast and sighed. "You'd best wake Elsa. Get her to make as many more of those spears as we can carry." Gesturing at their ride, he added, "I'm sure she can create something to hold them, too."
"Okay. Fine. That's great and all, but …" She waved in the general direction of their pursuers. "Can you get all of them before they skewer us with those exploding arrows?"
"I guess we'll see, won't we?"
"That doesn't fill me with confidence."
"That wasn't my aim." Seeing a short, flat valley stretching out before them, he turned part-way around and held her gaze. "We're going to fight as hard as we can. You know that. But this is an Elemental creature of flame, who seems to have some major magical abilities that I never heard of and couldn't anticipate. I'm not gonna hand you some lame platitude to ease your mind, when I know damn well our chances aren't really that good."
She grew a bit paler.
"Sweetheart … I'd love to be able to tell you that everything will turn out okay. But that might be a lie, and I swore I would never lie to you about anything." He reached back and gave her hand a squeeze. "I can promise you that I will protect you with all the strength I can muster, with my last breath, my last drop of blood. But I won't lie to you."
Anna's hollow eyes tore at his heart. He turned back to watch where they were going.
Sven said, "I think he has the right of it, Highness. We'll have to fight."
After a minute, after she tamped her panic down, Anna said, "Elsa? You need to wake up."
Incoherent mumblings answered her.
"Elsa, seriously, we need you to make more spears."
"A'ready made a hunnered." She squirmed and positioned herself against Anna's other shoulder.
"Those things are going to catch us."
Elsa blinked twice, sat up straight, and turned to look at her sister. "What?"
"We're just barely keeping ahead of them, and we'll lose the light in a little over an hour. Even if Kristoff can find the trail, we won't make it to the trolls before it gets dark. And we can't see in the dark." Jerking a thumb over her shoulder, she added, "I'm betting the Ifritt can, though."
Three breaths passed in silence. "Then we'll have to find a place to make a stand."
"Yeah. Probably."
Elsa got busy making spears and placing them in long quivers down Sleipnir's sides.
They rode for another half-hour, then Kristoff got their attention and pointed. "See that mountain there?"
They all looked off to the east, at the conical shape he indicated.
"See how steep the sides are?"
"Yeah," answered Anna. "Really steep. So?"
"The top looks small. Defensible."
"Sure, if we could get up there."
He got Elsa's attention. "Think you could make a path up the side of that slope?"
She considered his question for a moment, then nodded. "That shouldn't be a problem. It's a good idea." Giving him a tiny smile, she said, "That plan might just save our skins."
It took them twenty minutes or so to get to the base of the mountain. By then, Sven reported that he could see the Ifritt in the middle distance.
Kristoff groused, "Son of a bitch sure can move."
Elsa's icy road sprang into being ahead of them. Sleipnir mounted the path. They made good time up the side, Elsa being careful to dispel the path behind them. They were nearly to the top when their enemy got to the base, and they caught something on the wind that might have been laughter.
Sven said, "I only count five of the archers."
The other three looked with him. After a few moments, they all concurred. "I wonder," said Elsa, "what happened to the other twenty."
"You think they're coming at us from the other side?" worried Anna.
"No." Kristoff shook his head emphatically. "If they had that much of a lead, they would have simply attacked us."
Sven offered, "Maybe they wore out."
The other three looked at him. Elsa pulled lightly at her chin. "Maybe they did. Kristoff, didn't you say a human body couldn't long contain the Elemental's heat?"
"Yeah. Pretty sure. But he's not in them." He pointed. "He's right there."
"But his magic was in them. It had to be."
"Huh. I guess so. Well," he said, reaching for a spear, "either way, five are a lot easier to fight than twenty-five."
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Standing at the bottom of the conical mountain, gazing up at the peak, the Ifritt nearly crowed at this turn of good fortune. He could not have planned it better himself. And as he stood, watching the remnant of his sprites assay the climb, his mind wandered over his upcoming triumph, and the rewards he was sure would be his.
In the domain of the Ifritts, names were not just names. They also served as titles, descriptors … even punishments. Surtur, the Fire Lord. Alliarra, Mistress of Magma. His own previous name, Khaalaash, the Hammer of Heat, leader of a Triumvirate. It was a name he'd been proud of; a name he could trade on.
His no longer. No, his infatuation with Alliarra, and subsequent actions to acquire her for himself, had led to that name being stripped from him … led to his exile to a small, nearly extinct volcano near the coast of what would eventually become the Duchy of Weselton. No more was he Khaalaash, the respected and feared. Now he was merely Dodge, the Cringer, the least and lowest of all Ifritts.
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The fugitives gained the top of the narrow mountain, and stopped for a moment, staring across at the weird rock-scape.
"It's flat," observed Anna.
Kristoff nodded. "Close to it. Slopes up a little from here, but, yeah. Mostly flat." He jumped down off Sleipnir and laid his palms against the stone for a moment. "Huh. I don't feel any magic."
Elsa started. "What? You can feel magic, too?"
"Earth magic. I was trying to see if the top had been leveled, you know, by unnatural causes. But it wasn't."
"Odd. I find the lack of vegetation odd as well."
"Yeah. We're still a long way from the tree-line."
"Your Majesty," said Sven, "we need to get into a defensive position.
Snapping back to their current dire straits, the Queen shook her head and agreed. "Kristoff? If you would, see if you can reduce the number of the whatever-they-are that are following us?"
He grabbed a few spears and trotted back to the edge.
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Dodge. They had named him Dodge. The one who shirks responsibility. The one who runs from battle. Had he possessed teeth, he would have been grinding them.
He had dwelt on the thought of his shame, day after month after year after decade after century, until it had driven him half-mad. But what could he do? All Ifritts owed allegiance to one and claimed fealty from another. The Fifteen Oligarchs swore to Surtur, the Fire Giant, the oldest of them, and by far the most powerful. Each Oligarch commanded the devotion of a Triumvirate of powerful Elementals, and each one of the Triumvirate headed a line of twenty to a hundred Ifritts of one specific type. Dodge was a Calidan, a Guardian of the Mantle, and before his demotion had personally overseen Mount Vesuvius, one of the most storied volcanoes in the world. He had led seventy-eight powerful Elementals. The indignity of being stripped of his rank and parked in an ancient, dormant shield volcano, a spot barely hot enough to deserve the name, had festered in his spirit until it abscessed.
Grimly, he directed the remaining sprites up the rocky incline.
He would have his name back. He would.
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Kristoff whistled. "Those things don't climb like men. More like squirrels. Or spiders."
"Ew!" This from Anna.
Sven took a spear himself and leaned over the decline. "Damn. Right about that. They're … jerky. I don't think I could hit one, unless I just got lucky."
"Wait a minute, then. Let 'em get closer." Kristoff hefted a spear and took aim.
"You ain't waitin'."
"I don't have to lead my target." He grunted as he let fly.
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The year before, Dodge had learned of the existence of the Witch of Winter, and a plan to recapture his lost honor soon formed in his diseased mind. He had been storing up power for more than seven hundred years, hoarding it, concentrating it, and he marshaled it to aid him in his quest. Possessing the French tourist, and then the Duke, hadn't cost him much. He was still near his assigned volcano, and had been able to maintain the shell for months. But crossing the ocean? Two whole days out of sight of land, getting farther from his station every minute? That had cost him dearly. Once in Scandinavia, he could no longer keep his internal energies so tightly contained, and burned through his possessed bodies quickly.
Using the remainder of the mercenaries as templates for his sprites was much less of an energy outlay. He didn't have to worry about them burning out, and the drain on his system was minimal. Nevertheless, five had perished getting him across that river, and he had needed to reabsorb most of the rest of them during the chase.
A sting in his mind brought his attention abruptly back to the present.
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"Hah! Take that, you son of a bitch!"
Kristoff's target had become a chunk of ice frozen to the side of the hill. The other things didn't slow at all, or even seem to notice.
"Bloody undead."
Elsa came up to stand beside them. She saw that one of the four left was well in the lead, close enough that they could pick out the flames where its eyes should be. Leaning over, she shot a blast of ice at the mountain in front of it, spraying it with a sleet storm. It lost its grip, tumbling back down, down, down what had to be fifty or sixty man-heights, before landing on a sharp ridge of rock and breaking cleanly in two. The pieces whiffed into ash.
Sven whispered, "Shit."
Kristoff zeroed another, then another … then, accompanied by a roar from the Elemental, the final one simply vanished. A second later, a sheet of flame came screaming up the slope, forcing them all back.
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They dare? They would dare?! Madness! They all have to die. They must know they couldn't beat him! Why did they still resist? Stupid, illogical humans. Almost more trouble than …
No. The death of the Winter Witch would win him his honor. That was worth any amount of trouble.
He studied the conical mountain. It wasn't his volcano, but it hadn't been claimed by anyone else, either, being mostly dormant. He could use it. But it would take power.
Drawing the flames into his body, he stood instead in his magma form: roughly humanoid, but about twice as wide as a man, and with skin of cracked and glowing obsidian. It wasn't quite the frightful apparition, didn't bring quite the same reaction of fear, but it was certainly durable enough. Concentrating, he placed a fist against the rock.
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Sven squinted. "Where'd it go?"
"It's still there," said Kristoff. "Just not glowing."
"Is that a good thing?"
"How would I know?"
"… 'cause you know all that other stuff?"
"Well, this ain't in the list."
Elsa asked, "What's it doing?"
"It's hard to tell at this distance."
A tremor ran through the hill, jostling small rocks loose.
Suddenly concerned, Elsa asked, "Kristoff, did you do that?"
Giving his head a quick shake, he grunted, "No," and then laid his palms against the ground.
The next tremor was much more pronounced, and lasted for a count of five.
Anna gripped his arm. "Sweetheart? What's going on?"
"I think the Ifritt is-"
The whole mountain shifted. All four of them swayed and fell, catching themselves awkwardly. Several rough columns of basalt jutted up out of the earth, one of them knocking Kristoff away, blood flinging from a deep gash across the left side of his face.
Screaming, "Kristoff!" Anna jumped back up and took the two steps to his side. "Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God! Kristoff, can you hear me? Say something!"
He blinked slowly, focused on something over her shoulder, and yelled, "Look out!"
Hot, jagged rocks sprayed everywhere as the Ifritt rose up out of a cleft in the ground not thirty paces away.
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End Note: So now they don't have anywhere left to run. It seems choosing a volcano as their redoubt of last resort probably wasn't the best idea.
