Elsa and Kristoff stood near the princess, both with worried expressions on their faces. After his wife-to-be had woken up screaming in terror, Kristoff didn't know what to do, and so he took her to see Elsa, telling her what had occurred.

Anna sat in a chair near Elsa's bed, a blanket wrapped around her. A small table sat in front of her; on it lay a cup of tea and a small plate with some chocolates on it. Normally, Anna would have stuffed her face with the chocolate, but right now she was holding just one piece in her hand, taking small bites. Every now and then she would take a sip of the tea, but overall, her sweet tooth was severely lacking that night.

Anna's eyes were still red from all the crying she had only just finished minutes ago. Aside from uttering Kristoff's name when she woke from her ghastly dream, she had not spoken since that point, instead only continuing to sob until she sat down in the chair and had some time to compose herself.

Seeing an opportunity, Elsa moved forward and gently placed her hand on her sister's shoulder.

"Anna...what happened? It's not like you to have nightmares..."

The princess just sat there, continuing to absent-mindedly nibble on some chocolate, while she used one hand to keep the blanket wrapped around her.

Elsa was confused at her sister's silence. Anna was usually much more talkative.

"Please, Anna. Tell me what happened. If I don't know, I can't help you at all."

Anna swallowed the last piece of chocolate, and shut her eyes. She breathed deeply.

"...Elsa...could I stay here for the rest of the night? I just...I don't think I can go back to my room right now..."

Elsa looked over at Kristoff, who shrugged; he seemed fine with it.

"Well, all right, Anna. But you have to promise that you'll tell me everything when you wake up."

Anna moved over to a big, soft couch that sat up against the far wall, directly across from the foot of Elsa's bed. As she lay down, she pushed the blanket aside to make a space next to her. She patted the cushion, motioning for Kristoff to come and lay beside her.

"Elsa...I mean, your Majesty, do you mind if I stayed here too?"

"That's fine, I suppose."

Kristoff gave a short bow, then moved over to where Anna was on the couch and laid down. As he did so, Anna immediately pushed herself onto him and laid her head on his chest, her right hand grasping his left. After her horrid dream, it felt nice to be wrapped in the ice harvester's arms. Anna gave a yawn, as she nuzzled her head against Kristoff.

"Good night, my love," she whispered, her eyes shut, already half-asleep.

Kristoff kissed the top of her head.

"Good night Anna."

Elsa watched as Kristoff's eyes slowly shut, and soon, both he and Anna were back to their usual snoring. She couldn't help but smile a bit as she watched the couple sleep.

The queen needed to stay up until Anna awakened again, so she could catch her before she tried to leave without telling her about her dream. It wouldn't be too hard; the sunrise was only around three hours away.

Elsa moved to her bookshelf and removed a book; it was a collection of recently-published short stories. As she sat down on her bed, she turned to page 147; the story was entitled "The Man of the Crowd". Elsa began to read, as Anna and Kristoff snored the night away.

While she slept, Anna didn't encounter those creatures again. But she did have another vision.

She found herself floating over an entire land coated in ice. Somehow, instinctively, Anna knew what she was looking down on; the Earth's southernmost continent, Antarctica. She passed over entire plains of snow, drifting for what seemed like hundreds of miles, until she saw a mountain range on the horizon. Anna floated closer, and as she slowly went over the mountain peaks, she saw what lay on the other side of them.

Beyond the mountains was a vast city. Weird structures of unknown origin covered the landscape. Some structures were spherical, some cubed, some conical. None of them had any visible entrances, and every building was coated in those same odd patterns and lines that composed the unidentified language that Anna had studied.

She stayed over the city for a few more minutes, taking in its strangeness. Then, suddenly, Anna began to float upward. The city grew smaller in her vision as she continued to travel further away. Eventually, Anna was so high up that she was able to make out the entire continent, looking at its white shape bordered by the blue of the sea around it.

Anna went higher and farther away still, until she became the first person ever to see what the Earth looked like from space.

For a second, Anna marveled at its beauty, but as she watched, the planet began to freeze. It was slow at first, but the frost quickly spread. The oceans turned to ice and the land turned to snow.

And then, all at once, the entire world shattered to bits; trillions of little bits of ice, floating in the vacuum of space.

Anna then saw each star, light-years and light-years away, begin to go out. Eventually, none were left, and she floated alone in the blackness.

When the first faint rays of light from the sun began to peek over the horizon, Kristoff awoke from his slumber and looked at Anna. She was still fast asleep, and she hadn't let go of the mountain man's hand.

Carefully, Kristoff removed her hand from his own, then slipped out from under her. He looked over at Elsa; she had her nose buried in her book, still wide awake.

Without looking up from her story, Elsa said "Take care on your morning deliveries, Kristoff."

"Uh...thanks," he replied.

He moved the blanket back over Anna, kissed her forehead, then nodded to Elsa as he quietly opened the door and left.

Only seconds after Kristoff had left the room, Anna woke up with a start.

Anna finished the last of her drawing for Elsa, then tossed the pen aside, putting her head in her hands as she began to weep. She thought she was done crying from her ordeal, but seeing her nightmares on paper made the tears well up within her again.

Elsa looked at the drawing, mystified. It depicted the six mysterious beings from Anna's dream, looking down at her while a spidery mechanism poised above her, ready to perform some macabre experiment on her body.

On another part of the paper, Anna had illustrated herself floating above the weird city of cubes and cones, then floating off the whole planet and watching it break apart, being left to drift in the cold darkness of outer space.

Elsa put her arm around her sister, letting her cry into her shoulder. Anna's tears fell onto her dress, giving it some watery stains. At the moment, Elsa didn't care; she only cared about helping her sibling.

"Anna...it'll all be okay. You're safe now.." said Elsa, rubbing Anna's shoulder.

"No...no, it won't be okay. What if they come back? What if they take me again?"

"It was just a dream-"

"It wasn't, Elsa. I know it, they let me see those things on purpose."

Elsa looked from her sister back to the sheet of paper. She picked it up in her hands and focused on the six creatures with the almond-shaped eyes.

"Is this 'they'?" said Elsa.

Anna nodded, without looking at her drawing. She shut her eyes.

"This is all because of that pictogram I looked at, isn't it? I found something out that they didn't like," she said.

"Anna, I...whatever's happening to you, it's my fault, not yours. I was the one who asked you to research that thing."

Her sister wiped her eyes and sniffled.

"They're going to come back for me, I know it. What do we do, Elsa? What can we do?"

Elsa thought for a moment, then moved from Anna's side to look out the window.

"I'm going to find out what's going on here, Anna. And I know just who to talk to."

It was nighttime in Arendelle once again.

Elsa moved through the Valley of the Living Rock, until she found the large amount of stones that all lay close to each other. As they all unraveled into their troll forms, Elsa froze each and every one of them instantly, encasing them all in blocks of ice with a flick of her wrist; she would thaw them out when she was done there.

One troll remained unfrozen; their patriarch, Grand Pabbie. He was taken aback at the sudden flash-freezing of his friends.

"Elsa, what is the meaning of-"

"Shut up."

Pabbie was sent flying as Elsa blasted him with her magic. As he lay on the ground, disoriented, the queen picked him up by one of his legs. With a quick flash of blue, more magic flew from her hand as a large ice pillar sprang up underneath her feet, lifting the both of them high into the air.

As Pabbie hung upside down, he could see they were well above the treetops of his forest, easily a few hundred feet up.

"Elsa, what are you..." he began.

"You knew something about those things, all along! And because you didn't say anything, Arendelle has lost valuable crops and cattle, six people are now dead, and my own sister was abducted by those things last night!"

"B-but-"

"You know, Pabbie, I don't think even stone would stay intact if it were dropped from this height. So unless you want to be turned into gravel, I suggest you start talking."

"N-no, please! You don't know those things, they're horrible-"

Elsa let go of Pabbie, and he shrieked as he began to fall.

Before he had fallen even ten feet, two long arms, constructed out of snow, shot out and caught the troll, pulling him back up to where Elsa was.

"Okay, okay! I-I'll tell you everything! Please, just put me down!"

After they had both descended back and were safely on the ground again, Elsa set Pabbie on the ground, ready to blast him again if he tried anything.

"Talk."

Pabbie gulped.

"All right, Elsa. Listen, these creatures, they're...they're exceedingly old."

"How old?"

"Older than you, older than me. Older than the Earth, even."

"And why are they here? What do they want?" Elsa demanded.

Pabbie brought his voice down to a whisper.

"They're here to get something valuable to them, something that will help them further their own plans. They came here from-"

Pabbie screamed as he shot up into the sky.

"Nnnnoooooooo! Help meeeeeeee!" he screamed, as he was pulled along by some great, unknown force.

The queen, shocked, quickly constructed an ice ceiling far above Pabbie, hoping he would stop when he ran into it. It didn't work; the troll simply phased right through it, as though it wasn't there at all.

One last bloodcurdling screech could be heard from Pabbie, before everything went silent.

Dissolving her construct of ice, Elsa could see that there was nothing past it, no indication of what had grabbed the troll or where he had went.

Elsa continued to stare up in the night sky, as she realized that her last real lead was gone, and once again, she had failed.

She slowly turned and walked away. She waved her hand, the blocks of ice that had trapped the rest of the trolls dissolving. They looked about, confused at what had just happened to them, and where Grand Pabbie was.

But Elsa had already left.

The next day, Elsa was once again sitting in her study, filling out documents. As she wrote, her mind was elsewhere. Particularly, she thought of her sister Anna. According to both her and Kristoff, she had not any problems sleeping the previous night; seemingly, "they" had left the princess alone, at least for the time being.

She heard a tapping at the window, and looked up; it was her ice eagle she had sent out the day before, lightly hitting its leg against the glass, another letter clutched in its foot.

Elsa moved to the window and opened it. The bird held out its leg for the queen to take the letter. When she did so, she examined the seal on the back of the envelope, and saw the sunny emblem embedded into the wax; it was from the King of Corona.

Elsa patted her bird on the head.

"Good work. Feel free to fly about the kingdom, just don't hurt anything. If I ever need you again, I'll whistle, like this."

Elsa whistled, and her creation listened, committing the sound to memory.

The frosty eagle nodded, then took off once again, flying towards the forest.

Opening the letter, Elsa began to read:

To Her Majesty, Queen Elsa of Arendelle,

I have approved your request of an import. As of this day, on July 8th, 1841, a shipment of goods is en-route to your kingdom of Arendelle. The shipments are as follows:

-twenty-eight (28) cows

-forty (40) chickens

-thirty-one (31) goats

-two-thousand(2000) ears of corn

-eight-thousand and five-hundred (8500) corn kernels

-one-thousand and three-hundred (1300) carrots

-four-thousand and four-hundred (4400) carrot seeds

-nine-hundred (900) potatoes

When you have received your shipment, a payment of twelve-thousand, eight-hundred and fifty-two (12,852) shillings is expected.

Warm regards,

His Majesty, King Raimund of Corona

Elsa put the letter aside; it was a hefty price to replace the lost goods from Lukas Evensen's farming operation, but it was worth it if it meant Arendelle would no longer risk a famine.

That was one problem solved.

At this point, she didn't know what to do next about the issues plaguing Arendelle. What could she do? Grand Pabbie was gone, and so, there was no one left to turn to, no one else to ask for information.

Elsa took one more glance out the open window, trying to enjoy the gorgeous summer day.

But what happened next was terrifying.

A massive, black, saucer-like object suddenly materialized in the sky. It floated only a few hundred feet above the rooftops of Arendelle, blotting out the sun and casting a large shadow over the entire town, as well as the fjord. As everyone down in the village saw it, the shouts and horrified screams could be heard coming from both men and woman alike.

Had the saucer been there this entire time, floating over Arendelle, cloaked and hidden?

Elsa watched from her window, astounded, as the entire top of the North Mountain exploded. As it blew apart in a shower of snow, ice, and rock, something large began to emerge from the hole in the mountain. And that was when it hit Elsa; the North Mountain had been hollow, all along.

The large object coming out of the mountain was a dodecahedron, and like the flying craft it was getting drawn towards, it was also black. Etched onto the numerous sides of the object were those same symbols Elsa had seen in the pictogram, as well as the angled lines and circles from Lukas' field.

The dodecahedron floated over to the much larger saucer, and it passed through the underside of it, disappearing inside. And then, the entire sky quickly flashed blood-red before the saucer turned into a ball of energy, rapidly shooting up into the sky, leaving the planet altogether.

Elsa was shocked; she stared out the window at what had just happened, trying to make sense of it all. But she couldn't, because none of it made any sense.

Eventually, Arendelle went back to normal (as "normal" as a kingdom could be with a monarch that had magical ice abilities). New crops were grown, more livestock were raised, and the country prospered. There were no more disappearing farms, no more mutilations of animals or people, and no more bizarre symbols in that pre-Sumerian text.

Anna never had any more nightmares of "them", and she went back to her usual cheerful, optimistic self in no time.

As for Grand Pabbie, his fate remained unknown. At one point, Elsa heard a rumor of a collection of greyish sand being found by the trolls in their valley, with a bit of grass and yellow crystal mixed in with it. But it was just that: a rumor.

There was only one last strange thing to happen in Arendelle: the old finance minister of Elsa's cabinet was found dead inside the basement of his home. He had slashed open his left wrist with a knife, and drawn something with his own blood. However, what he had drawn wasn't in that old pre-Sumerian language. Instead, the symbol was something entirely different; it was a pyramid. And on the inside of it, the finance minister had drawn an eye.

In the end, everyone was safe. And those unwelcome visitors were never encountered again.

As far as Arendelle knew, everything was fine.

As far as they knew.