"Shit, cold, cold, cold, cold, cold!" Anna stammers, teeth clattering amidst the crackle of exploding gunpowder. Her flailing hands splash around in the water until she catches a floating plank. She hauls herself onto the driftwood and spits a mixture of blood and seawater. The churning in her belly threatens to make her retch again, but the princess sucks in a gasp at the infernal sight around her.
An amputated arm drifts by Anna, followed by half a body blown apart at the torso, its hapless owner following soon after. Anna paddles as hard as she can away from the broken body parts floating in the water, before her makeshift boat runs into a tangle of netting and half-broken crates. Over a dozen bodies with blue faces stare back at her, their fingers still clutching at the netting where they'd tried to escape from drowning. This time, the girl's knees give way and she vomits into the water. She grips the plank's edges in an effort to stop the world from spinning around her, but the sloshing waves prove too much, and she falls into the sea again.
Anna plows her way through the random tangle of cold, lifeless hands and burnt wood. The pile of dead beneath her feet inadvertently gives her a foothold to step on, and before long her freezing body slumps on the dock. Covered in blood, vomit and soaked to the skin in seawater, the Princess of Arendelle pulls a strand of seaweed from her eyes and comes face to face with a sword blade barely an inch from her eye.
"Reveal your name, ye wretched-"
The soldier makes a splash into the water as Anna pulls his legs from beneath him. With the waves still rocking her feet, she struggles to regain her balance before staggering up the ramp. The sudden blast of another explosion sends her whirling around, and she recoils from the maelstrom of death and destruction before her eyes. Upon the rapidly sinking ships, the dock workers have stopped trying to put out the fires, instead opting to hurl themselves and each other overboard. Not one ship had survived the bombing; the largest of them having already broken into two to be swallowed by the waves.
The flaming sails and rigging light up the night sky like the Northern Lights. A chill runs down Anna's spine, not from the cold, but from the realisation that she had just committed an act of war against the most powerful kingdom in the north. The repercussions begin flashing through her mind like lightning: war, revenge, death. Anna's eyes glitter a chilly shade of blue beneath the embers spraying through the night air. She stares at the mayhem until her knees shake and she gags at the stench of blood on her clothes.
As the crackle of burning wood dies off, the noise crunching of boots fills Anna's ears. She spins around to a wall of steel a few yards away, interspersed with spears pointed at her.
"Intruder! Yield or be prepared to be taken by force!" A voice calls out from behind the Phalanx. The glare of flickering flames illuminates the shield-wall, revealing a row of helmets, with trembling eyes behind them.
"No!" Anna cries, staggering backwards as the wall advances towards her, "T-this, this is a mistake- I'm not- not supposed to be here. I'm s-sorry."
Oblivious to her pleas, the wall of pikes begins to pick up speed as the men develop a trot. The cold forgotten, Anna's fingers still tremble at the wall unfurling as more and more men join them. There'd be no going back if she got captured. The prince would execute her the moment he discovers her identity. Without a monarch in Arendelle, corruption or invasion would follow thereafter; she knows this beyond a shadow of doubt.
I don't want to hurt anyone, Anna whispers; more for herself than for them. She tiptoes and spots the shipyard's gates a short distance away from the vanguard; its iron bars chained shut to prevent her from escaping.
The row of glinting pikes comes to a halt several yards away from Anna; eyes glowing like the blaze behind her. The blanket of fear which had cloaked Anna's consciousness begins to ebb as an idea sprouts into her mind: resist and evade capture.
I will make it back to Elsa.
Her trembling fists go still as she stares at the row of spears; too high to charge into, yet too low to slide beneath. The girl drops to a knee, and then another, raising her hands in surrender.
"I surrender," she calls out into the night air with her lips trembling at every word, "p-please d-don't hurt me."
Beneath their helmets, the soldiers don't see Anna's teeth gritting in determination, or her legs flexing like a coiled spring. They interpret her slumping to the ground as a sign of weakness, and lower their pikes.
"Get her!" a voice echoes behind the steel wall.
A dull grunt reverberates from Anna's throat. The men flinch at the feral roar emanating from the crouched figure before them. It takes a full second for them to comprehend the sight of Anna leaping towards them on all fours, but by then it's too late. The girl slams into the steel wall like a cannonball, sending men and shields in all directions.
The steel wall fails to blunt Anna's momentum, she picks up a hapless soldier trying to escape and flings him into the rest of his platoon before charging into the tangle of fallen men. Voices bellow in every direction; some of the soldiers clamber over each other in an effort to stop the girl's relentless advance, some drop their shields and make a half-hearted attempt to flee in the ensuing chaos.
The dim light makes it hard to pick out one girl darting beneath the clashing of steel and locking of swords; pikes slide off shields and swords clash against armor, but Anna makes it to the company's rear with nary a scratch, save for the bruises on her knuckles. She comes face to face with the gate before snapping the chain with a flick of her arm.
Anna grunts as she slams the gate into a soldier's face. The sheen of sweat on her forearms gives off a shimmer as she flexes them, bending the iron bars into knots. The gate rattles beneath the soldiers piling up behind it with their pikes and swords still trying to stab at the girl.
"I'm...I'm sorry-" Anna stutters as she steps away from the mob, dodging random weapons being flung at her. The glint of a spear flashes before her eyes; she snatches it from the air at the last second, but in her shaking hands the shaft clatters to the ground. Whirling around on her heels, the Princess of Arendelle dashes off into the darkness of the Southern Isles, uncertain of where she's headed, and unsure of whether she'll live to see daylight.
"She what?" Gerda hollers over the roar of crashing waves. Seated upon the boat, still pockmarked with arrows, the bandaged captain tries not to let the pain on his pale face show as he repeats his words.
"I told you, her Highness insisted on going into the docks alone when the shooting started and we thought we had to abandon the mission-"
"Jesus, why didn't anyone stop her?" Gerda shrieks, waving her hands about. Dressed in her prim royal dress, the plump palace-mistress cuts a distinct figure among the scores of bloodied and bruised sailors receiving medical attention on the fjord's shores.
"Of course I did!" he argues, pointing at his broken cheekbone, "that bitch, I mean - the Princess, near caved in my face when I tried to shove her overboard."
"Well, did you see what happened?"
"It was chaos. But some of the men saw her fall from her boat shortly before the rest of the ships exploded."
"Holy shit! And none of you thought it necessary to go after her?" Gerda chides, "This is the Princess we're talking about here!"
"Goddammit woman they were shooting at us! We only had three boats left, and if I went in after her we would've all gotten shredded and none of you would even know what happened-"
"Well, how am I supposed to answer to the courts then? Is her Highness even alive? This isn't like with Adgar and Idun where we could just look for them! We're on the brink of open war with the Southern Isles!"
"I don't know!"
"I have a problem now," Gerda scowls, rubbing her forehead, "Queen Elsa hasn't awoken and...and I don't know what to do about succession. There's no heir for the throne."
"How about that ice boy? Kristian or whats-his-name-"
"Kristoff? Jesus, they're not even married yet! And the nobles? They'll tear that uneducated ice harvester apart before he even utters a word!"
"This is all my fault," the captain sighs, shaking his head, "I shouldn't have let her go with me-"
The palace physician stops tending to the captain's wounds and interrupts the pair.
"No, it is mine," he says.
"What-"
"The princess knows exactly what she's doing," the doctor says, adjusting his glasses, "she's trying to save Elsa."
"What does the Queen have to do with this?" the captain asks.
"I showed her the flower which held the key to saving Elsa. You know, the one which gave her cousin those magical powers. The only known surviving specimens are located in Weselton."
"She's going to try and cross into Weselton!" Gerda exclaims.
"I sincerely doubt she's able to last even a night in the Southern Isles," the captain says, "even if she made it out of the docks, the last prince will certainly raise all hell to get his hands on the girl who killed his entire family."
Rays of sunlight filter through the cobwebs hanging from the walls. With its interiors stripped of all furniture, the Southern Isles' palace exudes a foreboding hollowness, a far cry from the opulence which used to deck its halls. The once glittering rooms of treasure plundered from the west now reduced to an empty shell, a consequence of the royal family's many debts in pursuit of its vengeance.
Not only its interiors have been reduced to nothing, but its inhabitants too. The sole surviving heir of the throne, Prince Karl retains all the trappings of his father as he stands tall amongst his men - but there's no life to be found in his eyes.
"...I swear to you sire, we had no idea Arendelle would've plotted something this vengeful. Adgar was always cautious to avoid provoking us, and for them to do something so vile and outrageous was simply unfathomable-"
A gurgling noise cuts off the Colonel's testimony; he clutches at the source of the sound before realising it's coming from his throat. Blood drains from his neck like a fountain, he slumps face first and spills his crimson on the marble floor. The other officers back away from his dead body as servants come to remove it, all without batting an eyelid.
They've seen worse.
A reddish glint flashes across the room as Karl wipes the Colonel's blood from his sword.
"Who's next?" the prince asks.
Without looking down at the pool of blood beneath his feet, a Major steps forward in his former superior's place. Dropping his glance to the Prince's sword, and the smear of blood glistening beneath the skylight.
"Me," the Major says, exposing neither fear nor hesitation in his voice, "my company was on duty at the barracks when they attacked."
Hope deserts him when he sees the prince tightening his grip around the gilded sword handle. In the back of his mind, he wonders whether he sent his family far away enough that they wouldn't have to contend with Karl's wrath once he's dead.
"How many have we lost?"
The Major looks into Karl's piercing green eyes and tilts his head; he rubs at his throat, shocked that he isn't dead yet.
"Four hundred dock workers," he answers, "most perished with the ships."
"Those we can replace, what of the men?"
"Only a handful from my company."
"Did you find any from Arendelle?"
"Only two sailors' bodies recovered, sire. The rest retreated back across the sea, although one made it ashore and fled inland."
"What? And you failed to capture him?" Karl asks.
This time, the Major flinches, expecting his life to end in a flash of steel, but he sees the Prince waiting for an answer, and continues.
"It's a lady, sire. She paddled ashore on a boat and fought through the vanguard I summoned."
The blood drains from Karl's face and his whitened knuckles crackle with rage, "With bare hands?"
"Aye, sire. She tore through our ranks like a rabid animal. I myself sustained wounds during the encounter, despite deploying everything I had towards her. She also bent the iron gates like-"
"It's that bitch," Karl spits, "that whore of a cunt who killed Adolphus."
"What do we do now Sire?"
"Find her and destroy her," he snarls, before shaking his head, "no - bring that whore to me. I want you to devote every resource available in the Kingdom towards finding her. It appears the Monarchs of Arendelle have no qualms about fighting their own battles. Well, I will give them something to fight about."
Without another word, the prince strides off, leaving the officers huddled in a circle. The men heave sighs of relief that their latest meeting ended with their lives intact, save for the Major standing in the centre with trembling shoulders.
"So what now?" his comrades ask, "how do you plan to capture the Princess?"
"My friends," the Major answers in a shaking voice, "I'd rather the Prince executed me instead."