With a grunt, Anna ducks hard against her horse's neck as she glides beneath a branch; the breath catching in her throat as the woody limb swishes over her red hair. Her latest obstacle evaded, she sits upright in the saddle and trains her eyes on the fox scampering through the leaves yards away. The sound of her heavy breathing barely rises over the thudding of galloping hooves as the horse tears its way through the forest.
A glittering sheen rises from her arms as she flexes her fingers against the bowstring. The oaken bow creaks, Anna holds her breath, and she lets her arrow fly without taking more than a second to aim. The twang of the bowstring is followed immediately by the hiss of the arrow landing amongst the leaves, and the fox's startled cry as it dodges its pursuers. The missed arrow snaps like a twig beneath her horse's hooves ripping up the soil.
"Ugh," Anna groans, pulling her horse's reins right to keep it on course towards the fox dashing into a clearing.
"You're have to aim if you're even thinking of winning!" Elsa's voice calls out behind her. A gust of cold wind creeps upon Anna's face as her sister's horse pulls up alongside hers; snowy-white with lifeless eyes, the snowy beast sheds snowflakes from its skin and snorts breaths of frosty air under the Queen's relentless exertions. Anna shoots a glance at her sister, her lips curling into a smirk as she bobs with the steady gait of her horse.
"Oh, don't be so smug," Anna scowls, nocking another arrow into her bow, "how about we see you try?"
A sparkling shower of snowflakes bloom from Elsa's hand, revealing a six-foot long solid ice-spear. She raises the weapon over her head and narrows her eyes at the fox as it slips under a bush. A flash of red darts before her eyes and she hurls her spear, its icy point glinting beneath the sun as the shaft sails through the air. The tip flies between the fox's ears and shatters against a tree root, spraying ice shards across the forest floor.
"Dammit!" Elsa shrieks,slumping back into her saddle, "that was even closer yours!"
"Closer? You missed it by miles!" Anna taunts, looking at Elsa while keeping an eye on the fox's trajectory, "now watch this!"
Anna lets go of the reins and draws her bow horizontally; she balances the sight against her horse's neck and steadies her aim against the motion of its galloping. Her heart thumps in her chest as she inhales deeply and holds her breath. The fox skirts around a boulder, momentarily bringing its reddish tail into Anna's line of sight. Furrowing her brows, she cringes her cheeks as the arrow zips towards her target.
With a loud shriek, the fox tumbles through the grass, sending leaves and bits of soil flying into the dense forest air. Despite the gash lining its pelt, the critter recovers and darts off in the opposite direction.
"Fuck!" Anna curses, yanking hard on the reins and eliciting a furious neigh from her horse. The princess grunts as she digs her heels into its flanks, and Elsa directs her horse after her sister's in an unrelenting pursuit.
"My turn!" Elsa smirks, ice spear already in hand. A trail of icy wind whips through Anna's braids as Elsa sends the spear flying towards the fox in a glittering arc of frost. The tip slices through the air and nicks the creature's hind legs, sending it slamming to a halt in the grass and disappearing from the sisters' view.
"I win!" Elsa cries out, stopping her horse dead in its tracks and whirling around on its hind legs.
"No you don't!" Anna complains, watching the fox limp away amidst a trail of blood oozing from its paws, "the poor sod is still very much alive!"
The Queen drops her glance to the empty quiver lying against Anna's hip. "You're out of arrows, dear sister," Elsa sneers, "and it won't stay alive much longer bleeding out like that – so I win!"
Anna stares at the fox's movements deteriorating into mere trembling between blades of blood-stained grass. With a flick of her wrist, she draws a knife from her riding pants, and hurls it at the ground. The blade slams into the fox's neck with such ferocity that it startles a flock of woodland pigeons roosting by the swamp, sending them fluttering into the trees for cover. A stream of blood spurts from its lifeless body before it stops moving, limp and impaled into the soil.
"Very well then," Elsa sighs, glaring at the triumphant smirk on her sister's face, "you're still going to share that last piece of chocolate pie with me, aren't you?"
"Of course!" Anna quips, trotting her horse alongside her sister and slipping her fingers into Elsa's hands, "this wasn't about the prize at all – I just...needed to get my mind off things."
"Like what?" Elsa asks, noticing the dark circles beneath her eyes, "are you still having trouble sleeping?"
Anna leans into the crook of Elsa's neck and inhales the heady scent of her sweat. With a sigh, her fingers bunch up around the frosty ice-lattice of Elsa's dress, taking care not to crush its delicate fabric.
"Not when you're around," she whispers.
"You didn't come to bed last night," Elsa comments, pulling Anna's head close to her chest, "I came back late...and...and you weren't there."
Anna breath catches in her throat as she searches her mind for an answer. She tries to keep the tremble out of her lips as the explanation falls from her lips in a steady trickle of words, "...I went out for some fresh air; when I got back to my room I drank some hot cocoa and fell asleep on my bed."
"And the night before?"
"I was studying," Anna replies without a hitch, "royal tests are coming up and I want to get something right for the first time in forever."
"And the night before that?" Elsa asks again.
Anna's skin flushes red and her blood begins to boil beneath her freckles. Scowling, she pushes herself away from Elsa and hisses, "What business is it of yours what I get up to at night?"
"Of course it's my business!" Elsa hisses back, clutching the reins until her hands glow snowy-white, "you're my sister! How the hell would I be able to live with myself if something were to happen to you?"
"I'm not a child!" Anna shrieks. Thoughts flood back into her consciousness; she grits her teeth and attempts to stop the tears from springing into her eyes - but the memories win over, and a trickle makes its way down her cheek.
"Have you been drinking?" Elsa accuses.
"Of course not!" Anna retorts. Unlike the other half-truths she's belted out, this one's real - and she makes no qualms conceaing her disgust at Elsa's accusation.
"You're hiding something from me, aren't you?" Elsa spits, her gloved fingers quivering around the reins. As much as the Bishop's mysterious words burn in her head with a fiery fury, she resists the urge to ask Anna directly. Instead, she stares at her sister with ice in her eyes, waiting for an answer. Each second of silence sends her heart pounding harder and faster, until the tension between them reaches its boiling point.
Everything in Elsa's head explodes in a burst of ice and pain as Anna slaps her hard across the face, unseating her from her horse and sending her slamming against the forest floor.
"What the fuck? Anna!" Elsa shrieks, whirling onto her back and brushing the leaves from her face.
The glare of the noon sun is blotted out immediately by Anna's face, right before she closes her fingers around Elsa's neck and slams her head first into the forest floor.
"Down!" Anna hisses, jamming her weight onto Elsa's delicate frame.
Elsa's voice comes in shaking spurts, spitting out frosty gasps of air against the forest floor turning into ice beneath her, "Look, Anna, I'm...I'm sorry. We can w-work t-this out, I'm s-sorry-"
"Shh!" Anna hisses, eyes darting left and right, "There's someone here!"
Elsa strains her neck against the imposing grip of her sister's, and tilts her gaze upwards. The blood in her veins turns to ice as she spots a shadowy figure perched on a cliff of a limestone quarry with a wooden contraption by his feet.
"Anna, Anna! The cliff! Look!" Elsa snarls against the grass.
The princess snaps her eyes to the cliff just in time for the blurry image of an arrow sailing towards her to make sense in her mind. Without thinking, she throws herself clear of its path as it slices through her ear.
"Fuck!" Anna hisses, pressing her hand against the blood streaming from her ear. The throbbing in her chest accelerates the bleeding to the point of spurting, and by the time she's dragged Elsa behind a tree for cover, her brown blouse has turned slick with blood.
"He's reloading!" Elsa whispers. In their panic the sisters clutch at each other's clothes, desperate to keep the other from straying beyond the tree's refuge.
"Shit, what do we do? What do we do?" Anna gasps, jamming her face into Elsa's hair. Terror overwhelms her svelte frame to the point of trembling, and her voice comes in sputtered gasps, "the guards! We must've left them at least a mile behind!"
"Fuck the guards, they can't save us now," Elsa hisses, taking off her gloves, "just let me think for a second."
Between the furious, heaving breaths filling the tiny space between them, a canary tweets its merry song, oblivious to the terror which has befallen the sisters. A breeze meanders its way through the leaves and grass, carrying with it the ominous scent of danger. Behind another tree, Elsa's snow-horse crouches in wait, its lifeless white eyes ignoring Anna's dead palace horse beside it with an arrow impaled in its neck.
"I can take care of him," Elsa concludes, trying to shift Anna's weight off her, "you have to let me go!"
"He'll shoot you the moment you get past this tree," Anna spits, jamming an elbow into her sister's spine. The blood streaming down Anna's face trickles onto Elsa's dress, leaving hideous streaks of red interlaced with blue. Her skin buzzes with adrenaline, and her teeth clatters under the stress racing through her spinning head. As tunnel vision begins to overwhelm her eyes, she hisses without thinking, "I'm faster than you!"
"You- what? No!"
"I'll draw his arrow, so you can go after him when he's reloading, alright?" Anna whispers.
Elsa digs her nails into Anna's dress, but the Princess brushes off her grip as though it belonged to an infant. Amidst a chorus of feeble protests from Elsa, Anna throws herself off her sister's body and jumps into the open. An ice wall blooms from Elsa's hand, slicing across the forest and shattering the arrow flying straight at Anna's head.
"Go, Anna, go!" Elsa yells her sister. With a snap of her fingers, frost sparkles from her hands and the snow-horse charges into the open. Elsa flings herself lengthwise over the saddle as it brushes past her in a smattering of snow and ice. The horse neighs and leaps over Anna throwing herself behind another tree.
"Christ!" Elsa gasps, shutting her eyes and bracing herself for the impact. The roar of wind and the horse's furious neighing forces her eyes open, and she shrieks at the twenty-foot gap between her and the forest floor. With a shuddering whump, the horse's new wings sprout into an ever-widening wingspan, and Elsa pulls herself into the saddle of her Pegasus. She searches the cliffs for signs of her assassin, but the rush of blood to her head and the sun beating down on her eyes melts the trees and grass into a patch of green.
"Higher!" Elsa orders, clinging onto the reins as her horse soars into the sunlight. Despite the wind cutting into her watery eyes, she finally makes out the shadowy figure on the cliff completing his reloading. Goosebumps prickle along her skin as the cloaked assassin takes aim.
Elsa lets out a shriek and yanks the reins as far right as she can, digging her knees into her horse's flanks to avoid falling off her mount. The arrow misses her easily, and the man tosses his weapon into the quarry before fleeing his position. With her heart pounding in her throat, the Pegasus lurches downwards and slams into the cliff in pursuit of the assassin. The beast hits the ground running and takes off on a full-speed gallop after the man, sprinting along the cliff's edge with his black cloak billowing behind him. Before long, Elsa's fury-driven pursuit wins over the ferocity of his flight, and she corners him on the patch of rock overlooking a hundred-foot drop.
"Stop!" Elsa yells, drawing an ice-sword from thin air and pointing it at his neck, "yield or you're going down the cliff!"
The man stumbles backwards, sending bits of grass and stone falling into the foggy chasm below. Despite the hopelessness of his situation, a smile spreads across his face as he stands on the tips of his toes and looks over the Pegasus's wings. He unveils his hood and reveals his face: bald and laced with scars.
"Very well then, I surrender!" he snarls in a hoarse voice while unhooking his belt. The glint of a hook catches Elsa's eye, but she's unable to react in time to stop him from throwing himself over the cliff's edge. With a loud crack echoing through the chasm, the hook catches against the rock face and allows him traction to rappel away into the fog below.
"What the-" Elsa gasps, staring over the cliff's edge and trying to pick out her would-be killer through the mix of fog and crows flying across the chasm. A shrill scream laced with panic reaches her ears; bringing with it a sudden rush of dread overwhelming the Queen's senses. Inhaling sharply, Elsa whirls around on her horse and dashes back to the quarry's edge. Amidst the cawing of crows, she hears the same voice screaming her name.
As she reaches the cliff, her heart falls at the sight of a bruised and bloodied Anna entangled in a chain-link net, desperately fending off a dozen assailants stabbing at her with spears.