Elsa's eyes flutter open at a tinge of frost blossoming across her cheeks. She stares at the cloudy wisps hanging above her face, and the dark eyes looking down upon her. The persistent darkness in the sky from earlier refuses to lift, and it takes a few seconds for the name to slip into her mind.
"Olaf?" Elsa slurs, unsure of which state of reality she's in.
"It's been awhile, hasn't it?" the snowman says, his voice barely a whisper in the ferocious rumbling reverberating through the darkened noon sky.
"I'm sorry I never got a chance to-"
"You made me, and gave me this," Olaf chirps, pointing at the snow clouds above his head, still refusing to melt in the sweltering heat, "that's more than I could've wished for."
"I've never done enough for anyone," Elsa laments, pushing her burnt cheek into the rapidly melting snow and hoping it'll ease her passing, "not for my parents, not for the kingdom, not even for Anna."
"You never stopped fighting," Olaf says, pointing his twiggy arms at the fiery demon-beast behind him, "and she will never stop fighting for you either. That's what true love is about, and I thought you would've learned that love conquers all by now."
Elsa shields her eyes from a sudden blast of searing heat singing the very hairs on her skin; beneath the stench of ash and sulphur, Elsa imagines smelling the faintest hint of cooked carrots, but it's hard to imagine anything when life itself threatens to desert her. When she opens her eyes, the snowman has vanished from sight, but a gleaming pillar of metal shrouded in flame catches her eye.
Tongues of fire lick away at the polished steel, glowing a glittering silver in the daylight. Elsa cranes her head at the vortex of fire swirling around the metal and ponders the red cloth flapping about in the fiery maelstrom, rapidly being consumed by the flames. She stares until the image makes sense, and it draws out every trace of air from Elsa's lungs in one long gasp. It's a suit of armour.
"Anna!" Elsa gasps, eyes still fixed on the burnt lock of reddened hair peeking from beneath the helmet, "You g-goddamned fool - I t-told you not to f-follow me-"
The figure in the armour stumbles in the snow as it picks up an enormous shield; three feet in diameter and wrought from iron, the craggy metal plate trembles in her shaking hands. Lifting the shield to her shoulder's height, she cowers behind the metal as a blinding, white-hot wave of heat slams into her with such force it sends her falling over into the soil. The shield clatters next to her stricken body, and at once she leaps to her feet while picking it up like it weighed nothing at all.
"You...fuck, get away from there, it's too hot-" Elsa slurs, slumping back into the burnt-out soil. Try as she might, strength leaves her shoulders, and her attempts to reach for Anna are met with a burning pain stabbing into her spine.
A scraping sound resonates through the air as a faint glimmer reaches Elsa's eyes. She tilts her head and gasps at the sword held out in her sister's hand, pointing directly at her foe's head sprouting fire and brimstone while it rears up for another attack. The helmet seated upon Anna's head conceals her emotions, but the shaking in the sword's glinting metal tip gives her away.
With a roar that tears the heavens apart, the beast leaps towards Anna with its nostrils blaring smoggy clouds of sulphuric acid. Terror strikes the young princess's heart like a bolt of lightning; she crumbles to her knees for an instant, before rising to her feet with blue eyes casting their defiant stare at the approaching dragon. A deafening crunch rips through the air and Anna snatches her arm from the dragon's teeth as it snaps its jaws at her armour-clad body.
A grunt ripples through Anna's chest; every muscle in her body flexes in tandem with her sword swinging at the beast, eliciting a roar from the pits of its monstrous throat. Ignoring the cherry-red glow radiating from her sword's edge, she slams the blade into the dragon's neck again before an explosion sends her reeling. The helmet flies from her head and clatters on the ground; Anna bolts upright and shrieks at the spray of molten metal showering across the soil. Casting aside the melted hilt from her hands, her armour scrapes along the blackened earth as she edges herself from the dragon galloping towards her with its scales glowing a red hot fury. The stench of the beast's sulphuric breath slams into her a second before its jaw does, but the mistimed crunch allows her time to jam her foot between its teeth.
A roar splits through Anna's eardrums as she feels a violent lurch robbing her consciousness; by the time she recovers her thoughts, she's sailing through the air like a pebble. The beast had flung her from its jaws like a rag doll, sending her armoured body clattering across the plains. The dragon's latest assault finally takes its toll on her stomach; she kneels over and heaves a mixture of bile and sulphuric acid from her stomach. The ground quaking beneath her feet draws her gaze to the ferocious sight of the demon beast charging towards her, its shadowy wings billowing with flames. A glint amidst the blackened soil draws her gaze; Anna buckles over on her hips and edges herself towards the shield, hoping it could give her some respite from the fury of its fiery breath.
But no fire blazes forth from the dragon's jaws, instead it continues on its stampeding path towards the princess, its scaly claws ripping up bits of grass and soil along the way. The horns on its head begin to radiate a ferocious shade of yellow as it picks up momentum. Blood intermingled with sweat drips off Anna's chin in the boiling heat intensifying with each yard the beast closes between itself and the princess. The shield trembles in Anna's fist, her blue eyes peeking an inch over its metal rim at the dragon's glowing eyes exuding a ferocious hatred directed at her.
The beast bares its hideous jaw at the girl; the sight of its spiky teeth crushes her heart to the size of a pea. Her knees trembles under the panic building inside her, but a fleeting thought enters Anna's mind.
You're strong, her father once said to her, I always knew you were.
"I'm stronger than you," Anna scowls under her breath. All of a sudden, her trembling hands go still. The muscles in her calves tense as she braces her ankles into the earth. Anna grits her teeth and drops the shield to her hip. With a grunt, she leaps forward and sprints towards the beast throwing its weight through the air.
The thudding in the earth beneath her feet ascends into a rumbling as both girl and beast develop an earth-shattering momentum in their mad sprint towards each other. Each step Anna takes feels lighter and lighter to her, until the armor weighing her down feel like cloth on her skin, and the shield swishing by her hip feels like a salad plate. At the beast's roar, Anna's hair billows behind her in a spray of blood-red stained with volcanic ash.
The seconds tick by like hours, and the beast comes so close in its headlong dash she can feel its gaze burning away her soul. With a grunt, Anna raises the shield over her head and flings it at the beast. The metal plate's sudden flight through the smoke stuns both adversaries; the dragon spots it a second too late, and its momentum renders it unable to avoid the shiny piece of metal slicing through the air.
Anna trips at the last moment, sending her metallic body tumbling under the beast's craggy body. With the constant boom and crackle of thunder amidst the crimson-red clouds, she fails to hear the crunch of liquid metal ripping a lava channel through the monster's skull. By the time the girl has pulled herself from under the beast's belly - its red-hot brains have spilled all over the soil, turning the already-burnt out wasteland into a steaming mess of dragon blood and lava.
None of this stirs the slightest of Anna's interest; none save for a lock of blonde hair peeking from beneath the soil. The princess ignores the burning in her ribs and darts across the plains; she drops to her knees and unravels the pile of ash which had fallen upon her sister. The sight of Elsa's blistered and blackened face sends a ripple of pain through her heart.
"No!" Anna shrieks, uncovering more and more of her sister's broken body. Bits of soil fly past Anna's head as she shovels away the earth with her hands, each flick of her wrist revealing another patch of blood-stained clothes. The smell of blood slams into Anna's nostrils like a sledgehammer, and at once she flings her head to Elsa's chest, hoping there's still a heart in there beating. Every muscle in her aching body tenses in the silence that follows, and a gasp escapes her lips when she hears the shallowest of thumps floating through her ear. The girl bunches her fingers in her sister's dress, unwilling to believe herself, and it takes several shallow, spaced-out beats to convince her there's still something within Elsa fighting to stay alive.
"Oh god," Anna groans, the tension within her emptying out in one long shriek of sorrow, "please!"
The girl's broken voice echoes across the plains, and before long the sky too weeps for the ice queen's plight - emptying its tears upon the parched soil.
A westward wind flits through Anna's hair, the blood and ash-stained strands unrecognizable from her usual gleaming red locks. The ash clouds in the sky fade with the wind's persistent breeze, but with the passing of time - twilight falls upon the plains of Tarsanth, plunging the world into a darkness lit only by the stars scattered across an expanse of inky blackness. The ethereal night sky fails to pique any of Anna's interest; with her head hung low and her iron-clad feet dragging the grass beneath her - she resembles more the wandering vagrant who has given on all of life's hope.
All of it, save for the bloodied and broken figure curled up in Anna's outstretched arms, each gentle rise and fall of Elsa's chest urging the princess on towards finding shelter for the night. The slightest beam of light glowing on the plains from the crescent moon draws Anna's gaze to a cluster of houses lining the side of the mountain range. A spurt of joy bubbles up within her aching chest; she stumbles momentarily from the pain, before picking up the pace and marching headlong towards the settlement.
The inhabitants of Tarsanth have long exploited the ever-abundant fertile volcanic ash to produce grain yields unmatched even by the Ukrainian steppes. Being the only village brave enough to face the volcano's tempestuous eruptions, the villagers treated the sight of a dragon emerging from their benefactor's peak as something not to be trifled with - and promptly evacuated their homes to wait out the eruption by the river. Plumes of ash gather in piles on the roofs of Tarsanth, and the rivers of lava snaking amongst the houses have only begun to shed their cherry-red glow.
A deathly silence punctuated by the crackle of burning rocks greets the princess as she enters the village with Elsa still pressed against her bloodstained breastplate. The smell of sulphur sends a surge of panic into the girl's chest; Anna strides to the nearest house she can make out in the darkness and jams her back into it, shattering the wood easily. Once inside, the smell of tea and scones calms her racing heart. The dying embers flickering in the fireplace illuminates a single bed in the corner of the tiny house, and the girl lays her sister down into the sheets, taking care to rest her head on a pillow. With her burden lifted from her hands, Anna chucks a log of wood into the hearth and restarts the fire. She sheds the cumbersome pieces of armor from her body, keeping an eye on Elsa's motionless body barely stirring beneath the glint of moonlight peeking through the window.
As the bulky metal slides over Anna's arms, the rush of chill air against her skin raises a stinging pain that touches every nerve in her body. Her eyes water at the rush of needles prickling her skin, and she sticks her arms under the moonlight - gasping at the sight of angry red blisters which had been festering beneath her armor. The sight of the welts rising against her reddened skin sends a wave of shock into her body; Anna trips over backwards and stumbles across the empty house, sending pieces of armor clattering to and fro from her feet. After stepping into a stray bucket and bashing her head into the wall - Anna recovers from the fall, desperately searching the cabinets for anything that could alleviate the acid seeping from her blistered pores.
Accustomed to the helpful attention from palace servants since her youth, Anna does a shoddy job at ransacking the house's contents. Before long, the scent of honey reaches her nostrils, and she retrieves a pot containing the magical golden elixir. Without thinking, she strides over to her sister and smears the honey on her face, taking care to cover every inch of the burn extending onto her neck.
A sputtered sigh of relief leaves Anna's lips as she soaks her hands in the honey, scraping every trace of the blessed slime from inside the pot and letting it trickle down to her elbows. With the honey numbing the stinging pain from earlier, a dread settles upon her heart as she returns her gaze to Elsa's motionless body in the bed. The darkness crushes into her soul with such ferocity that it brings her to her knees by the bedside.
"Please," Anna mutters, her hands making squelching sounds as she clasps her fingers around Elsa's, barely radiating the last warmth left in her body, "please wake up."
A deadly silence hangs in the air between the sisters, interspersed with an occasional sob bubbling from Anna's lips.