The Guardian
by Concolor44
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Author's Note: I apologize for the lengthy hiatus. Very little of it was anything I had any control over, and the rest was either Real Life raising its ugly head, or my having to work on things I'd already promised someone. In any case … here is the penultimate chapter. Hang onto your hats, if you got 'em.
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Chapter 18: Trespass
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The Eastern Border of Arendelle, 26 June 1841, 9:10pm
Kristoff shook his head, wiped dust off his face, rubbed the blood out of his left eye, and glared at the Ifritt. Not on my watch! Placing both palms flat against the trembling stone of the mountain, he concentrated. The stone under the Ifritt's feet split open; the Elemental windmilled its arms and tumbled back into the hole. Ha! Two can play at that game.
Both women descended on Kristoff, Anna screeching, "Honey! Are you okay? You're bleeding!"
"I'll live." Again he wiped at his face, wincing in pain. That's gonna leave a mark. He relaxed into it when Elsa placed a cooling palm against the cut.
The Queen said, "I get the idea it doesn't want to talk to you."
"Oh, you think?"
His fiancée was not mollified. "You're bleeding! Kind of a lot."
"Head wounds bleed. We can stitch me up after-"
But the ground began to shake. The hole Kristoff had made yawned wider. On a column of dull-red magma, Dodge rose up out of it. His raspy voice sawing at their ears, he said, "You will not escape. You cannot win. You will die. I will have my-"
Kristoff's first two rocks blew through its midsection. It staggered and released another of those deafening screams. Flame shot from the holes left by the rocks.
Elsa stood and wove her hands around each other, coalescing her power into a dense sphere that she then launched at their foe. The Ifritt ducked, but the ball of ice magic swerved toward its head, exploding in a cascade of icicles that stuck in its 'skin' briefly before disappearing in vapor. Its agonized yells got, if anything, louder.
Sven, who considered himself to be well out of his depth in this melee, nevertheless took that opportunity to chunk one of Elsa's spears. It hit the Ifritt in its right leg, which promptly froze solid and snapped off with an audible CRACK.
The ground in a double-dozen places groaned open, spilling lava in thick streams. All four humans could feel the intense heat; Elsa froze the nearest eruption, then the next nearest, before a quake knocked her off her feet.
Kristoff had yet to regain his feet, so he couldn't exactly fall. He threw a rock. Another. Two more.
The Ifritt, pounded back and nearly dismembered, disappeared into the magma. Over the next eight or ten seconds the quaking tapered off and ceased.
They were all panting. Anna turned back to Kristoff. "Dare I ask if it's dead?"
He took a deep breath, then one more as Elsa resumed cooling his gash. "No. I don't think physical damage could kill it." Glancing over at Elsa, he said, "Pretty sure your ice magic is the only real option we've got. We just have to keep it busy or distracted enough to-"
They had no warning. The ground under them all but exploded. They flew in four directions. When Anna didn't move after hitting the ground and rolling a few times, the others did not immediately notice.
Dodge, renewed by his bath in the lava and drawing power from its heat, regained his fire form. Raising his arms, he created a ball of flame and threw it at Kristoff, who barely rolled out of the way, his shirt smoking. Against his chest, his fire crystals began glowing brightly.
Sven got back to his feet and hefted a spear, but had to dodge another fireball before he could throw. Two more drove him to the edge of the scarp where he ducked behind a boulder.
Elsa tried to freeze the ground around their enemy, reasoning that if he couldn't get power from the lava, he might be weak enough to overcome. But her short flight across the stone had skinned her arms and rattled her, and her aim wasn't very good. Just good enough to draw Dodge's attention.
She deflected his next fireball with a wall of ice, but the heat as it passed was painful. The one after, she met with a huge snowball of her own. Suddenly the area between the combatants filled with dense clouds of water vapor.
Kristoff had managed to get more blood in his eye, and it affected his aim. Only one of his rocks hit the Ifritt's back, and that just a glancing blow. More fireballs came his way as the Elemental turned on him, snarling. This time Kristoff raised a wall of rock, and the fireballs just bounced off.
His fire crystals glowed brighter still, bright enough for the light to leak out around the seams of his shirt.
Elsa had edged around to where she could see past the (dissipating) clouds, rolling up another ball of ice magic. As soon as she had a decent shot, she took it.
Dodge fell over forwards and caught himself on his one unfrozen arm before sinking back down into the molten rock. He would NOT be denied! He would end this NOW!
Anna was fuzzily blinking her eyes open when the earthquake struck. Geysers of lava shot out of the ground all over, and she just managed to move out of the way of one. A couple of small splashes set her dress on fire, but she stamped it out.
Kristoff … was not so lucky. He screamed as his left arm took the brunt of one attack.
"KRISTOFF!" Anna sprinted to his side, jumping the small streams of lava that were steadily getting bigger. Seeing that his jacket was on fire, she quickly wrenched it off him, not noticing that much of the skin came with it.
The glow from his fire crystals was now obvious through what was left of his shirt. Anna blinked in confusion …
Sven, having caught his breath, popped up and surveyed the area. He noted Anna and Kristoff to one side, and the Queen to the other. Anna seemed to be tending to her fiancé, so he pounded feet over to Elsa, two spears at the ready.
He never saw the giant hand of fire that reached up out of the ground to crush him.
Elsa, though, did, and screamed, "Sven!" He jumped aside as she threw her magic at the hand, freezing it solid. Another came up just behind her. The heat from the thing alerted her to its presence, and she whirled and froze it, too.
The stone on which she stood suddenly rose, tilted, and she found herself scrambling for purchase.
Anna, finally realizing what she was seeing, nearly recoiled from the leaking flesh of Kristoff's grisly arm. "OhGodOhGodOhGodOhGodOhGod! Kristoff! Your … your …"
The pain was beginning to make itself felt. With an effort, he staked his claim on his consciousness, tried to focus on the fight. Anna and Elsa were his to protect, his responsibility …
Sven tried to get an angle on the Ifritt. It was about as far away as he thought he could throw a spear. Then he was dodging lava flows. Gradually, the blazing heat pushed him toward the edge. He thought, Didn't I JUST do this? ...
Elsa materialized a shelf of ice below her on the slope, and stopped sliding. The rock now stood at some fifty degrees from horizontal, with her a good two man-heights above the surrounding plateau. She looked around warily, wisps of blue magic hiding her hands …
Dodge sprang up with a gout of lava behind Elsa's perch and gave it a mighty blow with both fists. It cracked off at the ground and both it and Elsa flew (again) through the air. She was able to create a pile of snow to land in this time, so the impact was soft. The impact of a flying piece of stone with her head, however, was not. She sprawled out, unconscious.
Dodge cackled in insane glee, stepped up out of the lava, and strode purposefully in Elsa's direction. But then …
Kristoff, concentrating solely on his role as protector and doing his best to ignore the incredible pain of his burn, gained his feet and yelled, "NO!"
… Kristoff's shout distracted Dodge.
… The fire crystals blazed.
… His form was covered in garish yellow light.
… Anna stumbled backward.
… Grit and gravel from all over the small plateau streaked through the air toward Kristoff.
A few seconds later, Kristoff was sprinting toward the Ifritt, pelting rocks for all he was worth. His left arm was the color of dark stone. So was the left side of his face.
Dodge howled in rage and sank his fists into the ground. Lava streams appeared everywhere. In the Ifritt's near vicinity, the molten rock rose to form walls.
Kristoff found that his stones could not penetrate them. Grinding his teeth in frustration, he slapped both palms to earth. Lava's made of rock, right? I can control rock. Stands to reason I can control lava, too.
This, it must be said, was not a situation Dodge had anticipated. Suddenly he was fighting this sub-creature for dominion over his lava! It was not to be borne!
The battle raged in near-silence for half a minute. Dodge pulled more and more power from the magma; Kristoff's fire crystals were glowing so brightly no human could look at them. Kristoff pushed the walls into the earth; Dodge re-created them. Dodge sent the walls toward Kristoff; Kristoff pushed them aside.
But experience will tell. Dodge was able to keep Kristoff's attention on two lava walls while building up pressure just beneath him. With a loud boom, the stone under Kristoff's feet split, hurling him away. He smashed into a boulder and crumbled to the ground, stunned.
Anna, meanwhile, had seen Elsa go down, circled around to where she lay insensate, and dragged her away from the Elemental. She found a sort of shelf, out of direct sight, and hid the two of them there.
That tactic didn't really work. There weren't many places to hide, and Dodge could feel where they were anyway. He strode over, ripped the top off the shelf, knocked Anna away, scooped up Elsa's body, and held her high, shouting "Lord Surtur! I have a gift for you!" Elsa's ice dress began rapidly to melt.
That was when a great, jagged stone smacked into his back, tearing open a long gash and bowling him over, which caused him to drop Elsa. Anna scrambled back to her, gasping out, "Please don't be dead! Please don't be dead!" She cradled her sister close, crying freely.
Dodge pulled up another wall of lava to protect himself from Kristoff's rocks, and then began growing, and growing, to three normal man-heights. He called the lava from the entire plateau, bringing it rolling toward Kristoff …
But the trembling stopped, and the lava flows faded away to nothing.
… What?
Dodge just stared dumbly, his gaze switching between his hands and the ground. Why wouldn't the lava obey him?
The plateau near him began to melt, to bubble up.
Kristoff was searching for more rocks, as he'd exhausted the local supply, and didn't yet see the phenomenon that was so puzzling his enemy.
In Anna's arms, Elsa's eyes fluttered open. She hissed at the many patches of tender skin, reddened where the Ifritt had held her. Then she and Anna jerked and cried out as the ground beyond Dodge erupted with skin-cracking heat. She created a dome of ice over herself and Anna.
Kristoff watched in open-mouth disbelief as a truly gigantic Fire Elemental shot out of the ground and glowered down at Dodge. Then it spoke. "You worthless fleck of ash."
"My Lord! I have brought you the Winter Witch!"
"You have brought me annihilation, you idiot."
"… What?"
"Who told you to attack the Avatar of Boreas?"
"I … but … I wanted to … regain my honor … and …"
"How? By bringing down destruction on all our race?"
"… I don't understand."
Surtur pointed to where Elsa crouched under her ice. "You would assault the Avatar?"
Dodge looked over and did a double-take. "She's still alive?"
"For which we may thank Providence. Think you that her Masters would simply let that pass? Mindless dolt."
He stared, dumbstruck, at Surtur, then squeaked out, "Masters?"
"Listen well, you smoke-sucking moron: Fire cannot overcome the Cold. It never could. It never will."
"But … but …"
"What do you think came first? What do you think will be left after the end of all things?"
"… . . . … End?"
"Yes. The End." He held up a fist. "Cold. Numbing, blasting, biting, everlasting, all-consuming Cold. The Cold is eternal … preeminent. The Masters of Cold have deigned, for their own reasons, to gift this human with a tiny portion of their might. Do you think they did that on a whim? How often has the Cold created an Avatar? Do you have any idea?"
"… I …"
"Once every two or three thousand years. Always they have a purpose. I have watched. Oh, yes, I have seen their gifted ones. The plans are subtle. Boreas plays a long game, even by my standards. You think yourself immortal, but you are not. All of us, the Elementals, will age and pass. But Boreas? He is eternal. He nor his folk will ever die. They can't. They watch, and they see, and they know." He reached down and grabbed the smaller Elemental by the neck. "They know what you have done. I can feel their anger. It grows even now. Can you not sense it?"
Indeed, a frigid wind had kicked up while he spoke. There seemed to be a distant shimmering in the darkening sky, subtle whisperings of things no mortal had a prayer of understanding.
Lifting the hapless being until they were nose to nose, Surtur said, "You think they couldn't kill us all? How long do you suppose our race would survive if every volcano was frozen, every desert buried in ice? You think they couldn't do it?" Surtur shook him like a rat. "Fool. Fool's fool! The Cold cannot be overcome. It cannot even be withstood. You think to regain your honor through this folly? No." The massive head wagged back and forth. "No. You lost your honor through a lack of proper respect for your place. And now you leave us all in peril." He snorted, clouds of ash and smoke filling the air. "Such stupidity as yours needs to be culled from our people."
"No! My Lord, I meant no …"
"What you meant matters not; the only thing of significance is what you have done. Results matter. You have breached a peace we have kept with Boreas since the last time his people covered this land with ice more than a league thick. They allow us to tend our fires, to build up the mountains, move the seas, slide the lands past each other. They do not have to." Surtur brought his other hand up and gripped the top of Dodge's head. "They could turn this world into a solid chunk of ice, and there would be nothing we could do about it. The Cold rules all. You should have heeded my warning to stay in your dome and mind your affairs. Now … now you will pay."
Dodge gave off an eerie, keening wail as fire erupted from his body, funneling into Surtur's hand. He shriveled and shrank, his skin taking on an ashy gray cast. When the last spark had extinguished, the giant held up Dodge's body and called to the sky, "Boreas! Take what is yours by right of vengeance!"
Nothing happened for the space of three breaths. Then Dodge's body floated up off Surtur's hand, floated up and up until it looked like a child …
From every point of the horizon, icy blasts struck, the Cold a physical thing as it consumed the Elemental that had had the temerity to attack one of their own. In seconds, it was over.
Surtur, breathing hard, rubbed his arms and re-ignited the flame on his head. Then he stared down at Elsa and Anna. "Lady Avatar."
"… Lord Surtur."
"I would beg your forgiveness, but I can see that you hold no animosity toward me."
"Ah … well … certainly none of that … was your fault. Why would I blame you?"
"Indeed. Fascinating. You are a surprising person, Elsa of Arendelle. Boreas chose well this time." He sank back into the earth, the glow fading with him.
Anna jumped up and ran, calling, "Kristoff!"
Slowly, painfully, Elsa got to her feet and limped after her sister.
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End Note: Just a few loose ends to tie up, then we'll be done. What did you think of Surtur's explanation?
