Chapter Twenty-Two: Flame and Fury
As dusk feel over the deepest reaches of the mountains crags, a monster returned to its lair. The creature, shrouded in shadow, had only left to hunt, its belly now full of a plump doe and its fawn. The creature growled maliciously, its twisted mind recalling with glee the sight of the fawn before it was eaten and licked its chops.
The creature entered its main cavern and took a deep breath before spewing a thick gout of flames across the cavern, igniting oil that it had rubbed across the walls. The fires lit and illuminated the creature, revealing a reptilian dragon larger than a house, its scales a deep orange and covered with black flecks, its eyes red as blood. It had no wings, but it needed none. Not when all it cared about was right-
The dragon shrieked in surprise and horror at the sight of its cavern, utterly empty. Empty of the gold and jewels that it had protected for decades. Not the glimmer of a single coin remained. The dragon roared in fury, swearing vengeance upon whatever fool would dare to cross it. The roar was silenced, cut off as if with a knife, by faint chuckling.
Into the light from the shadow of a ledge walked a tall, svelte, redheaded man. "Surprised? I had hoped so," Hans said. The dragon howled and spat flames at the thief, but he just evaporated from the heat. The flames died down, and the thief once again appeared, wagging his finger as if the dragon were a naughty child.
"Now, now, Tore, what would that accomplish? After all, only I know where your hoard is." He said it all with a devious grin, not a trace of fear or even reverence in his tone. The dragon, perhaps once known as Tore, gave a fierce growl at the audacity of this thief. No one had uttered his abandoned name in decades.
Hans, on the other hand, steepled his fingers as he reflected on the way that some things never change. Many times, in the old days, these "cursed dragons" had been born from men; men twisted by greed and envy into something fearsome, something that reflected the monster within. Fafnir was the best remembered example, corrupted by the ring of Andvari, but there had been many before and after, most put out of their misery by Odin during his travels (and each slaying making the All-Father all the richer even as he gave the gold to those affected by the dragon's reign).
Some things never change, and this man Tore had befallen the same fate, his body twisted to reflect the darkness in his heart; greed for the gold his brother had been left by their father and envy for the approval of their family.
A part of Hans could relate to that, recalling his own childhood of striving to impress his father. His trip to Arendelle, to claim that throne, had been fueled in part by that very desire, as well as to rub his success in the faces of his brothers. Hans shook away his musings as he grinned at the dragon.
"Normally I would ask something belittling like 'would you like your gold back?', but I already know the answer. You do, more than anything. I can see it in those bloodshot eyes of yours." Said eyes grew only more furious. "But fear not, Tore. I will return your gold in due time. Every - last - coin." Tore narrowed his eyes in suspicion, but even his blackened heart could sense no treachery.
Hans grinned. "All I want in return is something quite easy to obtain." He paused, ever the showman. "The key to your treasure … is the corpse of the Snow Queen." With that, Hans disappeared into a whirl of mist. Tore snarled at the departed trickster, cursing him with every oath he knew. But the dragon had no choice. Only the thief knew where his hoard lay and Tore would do anything, absolutely anything to get it back.
Tore bolted from his cave and out into the mountains, loping along paths long forgotten with incredible speed, smoke billowing from its snarling maw. As it left its cavern, Tore never noticed the shimmer. The walls seemed to sway like reeds in the wind, a cloak of illusion peeling away to reveal his hoard, not a single piece missing. Tore was fighting to reclaim that which had never been stolen.
Far from the cavern, a maniacal laugh echoed across the mountains. The royals of Arendelle would soon have an unexpected gift.
Kristoff stared, pale with fear, into the eyes of a huge dragon as it emerged from the water. A guttural snarl echoed from the creature as it shook off the excess water, kneading the ground beneath its claws like a cat ready to pounce.
"This'll be fun," Eugene groused.
Alphonse walked through the dark reaches of the cavern, its walls carved with perfect symmetry and pocked with hexagonal holes. As he drew further in, the sharp metallic clacking grew sharper, and the tune of the builders grew in volume. Finally, he entered the final cavern, glittering with naturally-cut gemstones; filled with the miners who extracted them for purposes unknown.
Within the cavern were seven creatures that resembled short men with prominent noses. Long white beards donned six of their chins, the final one baby-faced and cleanshaven. They all performed different tasks, four swinging pickaxes to remove the gems, one driving a cart for transport, one checking the gems (apparently for sound) and the babyface disposing of the rejects.
These were the dwarves of the seven jeweled hills of Zuerst, the guardians of the long-dead queen Snow White.
He stood there for a good ten minutes, listening to the borderline-nonsensical singing before he was noticed. One of the dwarves, the one with the largest nose and a permanent scowl, dropped his pickaxe with a start, then growled at the sight of the cloaked mage.
"Grumpy," Alphonse greeted neutrally.
"What're you doin' here?" Grumpy shouted, drawing the other dwarves' attention. All of them drew closer, instinctively forming a half-circle before the mage. He swung his gaze over all of them before answering.
"I'm calling in that solid you owe me," he replied lightly.
Three years before, he had come across the dwarves' cottage to find them depressed and unworked. A band of hobgoblins had swarmed through and taken over their mines, leaving the dwarves unable to work. Alphonse had volunteered to "remove" the goblin band and had done so with … chilling efficiency. The dwarves had been quite grateful, aside from Grumpy.
One of the dwarves, one with glasses, stepped forward. "What can do we for you- uh, we do, young Alphonse?" Doc asked. In response, Alphonse removed the dormant mjolnir from his pocket, flicking his wrist and, with a thin tendril of magic, snapping it into its full size, the prominent crack clearly visible.
"I had hoped you could work your own kind of magic." After the death of the "Wicked Queen" Grimhilde, the dwarves had never wavered in their devotion to the new queen Snow White. They had found a new sense of purpose: to serve her to the best of their skill. That included learning new skills.
Most dwarves "specialized" in one vocation or another, ranging from metalwork to masonry to mining. Anything and everything that involved the earth. The seven had taken it upon themselves to break this trend and learn anything that could aide their princess. They had learned metalworking and its own magic from a distant "cousin" named Smithy, and had apparently done quite well. After Snow White had finally passed, they had returned to mining. Dwarves were long-lived, just like the earth they worked, but they never lost their skills.
Doc took the hammer from Alphonse and adjusted his glasses, examining the piece with a practiced and naturally-analytical eye. He ran his thick finger over the crack with a tut-tut noise before moving on to examine the handle and its joint with the head. He sighed at the crack one more time before passing it back.
"Seems whoever has used it since the Great Quaking didn't know how to properly care for it," Doc surmised. All creatures had their own name for Ragnarok; the dwarves called it the Great Quaking, the shaking of the worlds as they were flooded and seared and clashed together.
"I doubt Thor had time to teach his sons while he was fighting the Midgard Serpent," Alphonse said dryly. Doc hummed and conceded the point. "Can you fix it?" Alphonse asked.
The dwarves all looked to each other, not needing words with those they had lived and worked with for who-knew how many centuries. There was a lot of eye movement and slight nods and shakes of the head involved, but Alphonse could only vaguely guess at what they meant. Finally, Doc turned back to Alphonse.
"We can make it even better," he answered. But a glint in his eyes spoke of something else.
"What do you want?" Alphonse asked. Technically, his debt was paid by them deciding to help. The quality of their work, like with many creatures, depended on the value of an offering.
"What have you got?" Happy asked jovially. Alphonse pursed his lips in seeming thought, before grinning and removing a parcel from his shoulder, untying it to reveal a number of baked dishes, a quick flick of magic heating them up to steaming goodness. He had to remember to thank Rapunzel for cooking these.
"Apple dumplings," Alphonse held up the dish, the smell of spiced apples floating through the cavern and drawing sniffs from the dwarves, "plum pudding", that got their mouths watering, and even grumpy was not-so-subtly testing the aroma, "and gooseberry pie." That last one was the clincher, and the dwarves nodded to each other.
"According to the rules," Sleepy drawled with a faint yawn, "you just bought up three commissions." Grumpy scowled even deeper at the drowsy dwarf, chafing at having to help even more. Even three-hundred years after meeting Snow White, he was still not comfortable helping outsiders. "Any ideas for the others?" Sleepy continued, either unknowing or uncaring about Grumpy's stink-eye.
Alphonse, from out of his cloak, removed the long, thin branch he had used during his Great Trial hanging from the Scion. Oh, yes. He had an idea or two.
While the dragon was still screeching its warcry and civilians were running away, Kristoff did the first thing that came to mind: he grabbed a merchant's cart and hurled it at the monster. The wooden cart, with Kristoff's enhanced, Thor-like strength behind it, smashed against the side of the dragon's head and cut off its cry.
The dragon snarled and shook its head, focusing on Kristoff with its hate-filled gaze before snapping its mouth closed and swinging its head back, throat swelling as if would throw up, and lashed its head forward to spew flames from its maw. Kristoff struck the ground and a spire of rock burst from the cobblestones to protect him. Even with that, he could feel the heat of the dragon's fire licking at his skin.
Kristoff yelped as his shield of rock was jerked up, the dragon looming over him with the stone clasped in his talons. The dragon gave a hacking roar, almost a laugh, and swung the stone down.
Kristoff had barely braced himself for death before he was pushed out of the way. He had barely landed when he felt the ground shake under the force of the slab smashing against it. Kristoff looked up to see only a few fingers sticking out of the rubble. Eugene's fingers. The dragon roared in triumph at killing the prince, but the roar cut off at the sound of gravel shifting.
The rubble rose up and fell away to reveal Eugene, covered in dust but otherwise unharmed. The Coronan prince coughed and shook the dust away before standing up and facing the baffled monster.
"That all you go-" The dragon struck the prince with its sinuous tail, sending him flying. Eugene slammed into the side of a building, leaving a crater in the wood and stone before he fell to the ground. The prince stood up and brushed himself off as if nothing had happened.
"As I was saying," he said, popping his neck, "is that all you got?" The dragon, Tore, roared in fury and lunged at Eugene, murder in its foul gaze. Just before it made contact, Eugene leapt forward and rolled under the dragon's belly, letting the creature smash into the building it had knocked him into. Tore smashed through and the building came down on him, burying the creature.
Eugene stood up from his roll, breathing heavily, as Kristoff approached with awe in his gaze. What had just happened?! He had no time to wonder as Tore burst from the rubble, seemingly unharmed.
"Oh, come on!" Eugene cried out, more exasperated than afraid. He glanced to the side to see Kristoff clutching his forearm, hand clenched in a fist and eyes closed in concentration. Faint thunder echoed as the final light of the day faded away and left them with the light of the town's streetlights.
As the dragon roared somewhere in front of them, blue-white light lanced downward with a deafening crash, the remains of the building exploding apart. On instinct, Eugene covered his face to make a smaller target as shrapnel raced past them. Only after it had passed did he remember that it couldn't hurt him anymore.
Eugene opened his eyes to see the dragon sprawled across the ground, its body smoking. Eugene grinned at the carcass, a look that faded as the monster began to shake itself and it stood up to growl at them.
"You've got to be kidding," Eugene grumbled.
"These things are tough," Kristoff commented. He knew exactly what this was from Thor's lessons. A human consumed by greed, twisted into a monster as dark as his heart. They were tough to squash, their armored scales being virtually unbreakable. Odin and Thor had actually had a hobby of fighting them to test their skills. Kristoff grinned in anticipation. "This is gonna be fun."
In Zuerst, the dwarves were finishing their preparations for forging. Gems studded the walls around them in a cavern deep in the mines, sparkling in the light of the fires. It had been decided that Grumpy and Doc would work the hammers. Sneezy had been chosen to work the bellows (Alphonse secretly figured it was due to his experience in powerful bursts of air).
As they finished preparations, Alphonse approached Sneezy and placed a hand on his forehead. He muttered in that hissing, gravelly language and his eyes flashed, and soft green light lit his palm. Sneezy stared at him before his eyes lit up in fear and he huffed and puffed, ready for a galeforce sneeze. He cried out with a strangled breath … and nothing happened.
Sneezy sniffled and scratched his nose, a little stunned. He looked up to see Alphonse grinning down at him. The mage shrugged, "Couldn't have your hay fever mess up the forging. It's not permanent, but it should last a few days." Sneezy smiled in thanks and nodded. He felt ready to shout for joy, but they had a job to do. And for dwarves, the job was all-but-everything.
"Alright, boys," Doc announced, "time to whit to gerk- uh, woe to grit- ummm, let's go!"
Alphonse reached for the rune of fire within his mind and snapped his fingers, bringing the forge to blazing life. Doc nodded and lifted Mjolnir to place it in the flames, Sneezy taking his place at the bellows. Alphonse stood back and watched; for this, they didn't need his help. Despite their goofy appearances and bizarre quirks, these three and their cohorts were real professionals.
They wouldn't fail.
Eugene definitely did not scream like a little girl as he flew through the air and slammed into the dragon, sending it flying even as he went unhurt. As the monster shook off its confusion, Eugene leapt to his feet and glared at Kristoff, who had the gall to grin at him - teeth and all.
It was only an instinctive duck to avoid the dragon's claws that prevented a scathing retort. Kristoff could have at least asked before throwing him!
Alphonse swiped beads of sweat from his brow, his cloak long-since shed, as he focused on channeling magic into the dwarven forge. He wished Elsa were here for this; her magic would have been better for the weapon they were creating (and definitely not because she would have looked utterly stunning as she glittered with sweat in the heat of the forge, not at all!)
He could see the strands of magic woven together by his will, gently easing into the flames and seeping into the metal of the weapon. With a stray thought, he lashed out a strand and burned away his shirt. It was far too hot in here for that! And yet the dwarves were fully clothed, not even sweating all that much as they worked the bellows and hammered at the metal within the fires.
Guess being bred to it had advantages.
With gloves cut of fine dragonskin, Doc reached into the fire and removed their second piece, quickly examining it and nodding in satisfaction as he placed it next to the shining, whole Mjolnir. Doc turned to Alphonse and held out his hand. The mage, never letting the strands of magic, fade away, passed him the branch from his Trial. The bespectacled dwarf took the branch and a lump of iron and plunged them into the flames.
As he did so, Alphonse reached into his mind and embraced the runes of weapons and of strength, of protection and of force, of luck and of chance. He carefully wove the metaphysical symbols, the building blocks of reality, into the strands of magic to infuse into the final weapon.
Alphonse breathed to keep himself steady. Now was not the time for mistakes. He only hoped things hadn't gone totally off the rails in his absence. Nah, Elsa was there - what could possibly happen?
Kristoff groaned with exertion as he gripped the dragon's horns, his brute strength the only thing between him living and him being impaled by the monster. Sweat trailed down his forehead, the veins in his neck and arms bulging as the lethal points drew slowly closer. He pushed as much as he could, pouring every ounce of strength he could into the push - and cried out as the monster drew back with a howl of agony.
The dragon lashed about in fury, swinging Kristoff like a shrieking ragdoll. The ice harvester was flung away and sailed through the air, only to be caught by a snow-white, ice-cold hawk. The bird dropped him, gently, onto the cobblestone before lunging to aide its mistress.
Kristoff stood, rather shakily, and watched with awe as his wife, sister-in-law, and cousin-by-marriage fighting the dragon.
Anna stood some distance away, her new sword strapped to her back, her body gently swaying like grass in the wind, and a faint, fiery aura surrounding her. Vines were springing from cracks in the cobbled streets to wrap around the monster; even as it tore them away, more sprung up to take their place. And yet the princess took it a step further and lit the vines with spectral green fire, drawing a piercing wail from the creature as it attacked the trio.
Elsa stood close to her sister, forming spikes of steel-hard ice to hurl at the creature and conjuring wolves and birds of ice to attack it from all angles. The spikes shattered against the dragon's scaly hide, but its lashing and snarling proved that it was taking at least some form of damage.
And in the middle of it all was Rapunzel, dancing around the creature and lashing out with a whip made of what looked like woven willow branches. Whenever the dragon swiped at her with its claws or tail, Rapunzel was long-since gone, flitting around like a glowing, golden butterfly. On the off-chance she was hit, the wounds healed up without even a scar.
But Kristoff was a realist, and he saw through the surface to the truth of the matter. No matter what they did, it was like a bee stinging a bear. The creature was too big, its scales to tough, its fury too hot to register any real wounds. Thor had warned him that dragons born of wrath and greed, when pushed too far, could slip into a berserker frenzy that made them all-but-unkillable, and the frothing at the dragon's mouth, the rippling of its muscles, the white-hot ire in its gaze had him worried.
As if sensing his realization (and who's to say she didn't), Anna glanced back at him. Clearly she could read his expression like a book, because the triumph in her gaze turned to fear.
Just as he thought, Anna knew what was going through Kristoff's mind. The weird movements and twitching and maybe some kind of sixth sense told her something bad was about to happen. They had to finish this now!
Even as she focused on wrapping the dragon in vines, which was not an easy feat, another part of her had been running through the stories her father had told her as a child. She had remembered what this entire situation reminded her of. The fierce dragon Fafnir, twisted by cursed gold into a dragon much like this who had been killed by the hero Sigurd. Sigurd had killed Fafnir by digging a trench and stabbing it from below.
But one look at the monstrosity and she knew that anything that got too close, even Rapunzel, wouldn't stand much of a chance. It fire was too strong, even for her. And yet there was something else, something about fire and a … bright sorceress?
And like a lock unclicking, it all came together and she drew her new sword. She knew what she had to do.
Elsa huffed as she snapped her fingers, whirlwinds of snow coalescing into great white wolves that lunged forward at the dragon. And like all the others, they were batted away before they could do much on anything. Rapunzel was clearly tiring as well as her movements became less graceful, her missteps more frequent.
Something was going to give, and the snow Queen had a sinking feeling it was going to be them.
As if in answer, the faint sound of sharp metal echoed through the air. Elsa whipped her head around to see Anna holding her bronze sword, a fierce look in her eyes. She couldn't possibly- Anna bolted forward with a high warcry, her sword shining in the firelight. She drew in close, darted past Rapunzel, and thrust the blade into the creature's chest.
The dragon shrieked a cry so high it shattered nearby windows, forcing Elsa to clasp her hands over her ears. It fixed anna with a glare so full of hate it should have blackened the ground - and Elsa knew what it was going to do. With its dying breath, the dragon spat out its hellish fires to engulf Anna. The dragon fell, its blood spurting to douse the stones beneath it … and Anna was nowhere to be seen.
Elsa stood, stunned, for the briefest moment before she ran forward with a cry of grief. She stumbled to the ground, up to her wrists in grey dragon's blood, searching for her sister. Her hands closed around fine grit and she knew what had happened. The dragon had burned her to ash.
"No …" Elsa whispered, begging for it not to be true. "No, no, no, no, no, no, no … … …" an unending mantra as tears rolled down her cheeks, her face blank. Grief tried to consume her, but she was numb to it, her heart beyond the breaking point to leave … nothing. Anna was gone. She didn't sense Kristoff fall to his knees beside her, didn't hear his hollow cry of sorrow. She didn't feel Rapunzel embrace her, tears in her eyes.
She felt nothing - nothing as her heart began to harden, to freeze.
And then she felt something else. Something moving between her fingers. Elsa glanced down to find the ground moving, something rising up from the grey blood around them. Something long and solid reforming. The thing, shaped like a person, sat up and wiped the blood from her face.
"Eeeeewwwww!" Anna retched, "this is disgusting!" Anna? Anna?! Was it really her wiping the grey fluid from her eyes or hacking and spitting it from her lips. ANNA?!
Elsa darted forward and hugged her sister, part of her having to confirm that she was real, solid. The other part, a part deep down in her soul, knew it was her. Would always recognize her dear little sister.
"El-elsa … Sis- can't- breathe …" Anna choked out before Elsa quickly let her go. Only to be wrapped in the bone-crushing embrace of her husband. And after that her cousin. Forget burning to death, she was gonna die of suffocation. Yes, she loved hugging but this was taking just a little too far! (Of course, given that she had literally been dead, she could understand the need.)
After everyone had made sure she was real, Rapunzel dragged Anna to her feet - to be wrapped in a group hug by her family. "You really should stop this, Anna," Elsa whispered with a sniffle, "you're going to have it stick one of these days."
"Nah, I'm like a cat," Anna answered gently. "Nine lives." Everyone chuckled at that, grateful to anything and everything that Anna was alive and well. As the group hug broke apart, Anna turned to examine the monster she had killed. Was it just her, or did it look just a little smaller in death. It was probably her.
Anna turned on her heel and walked away, the group tracking her progress. "I'm not cleaning that up!" she piped up and ran before Elsa could say otherwise.
Alphonse was grinning, sort of, as he flew as an eagle across the skies leading to Arendelle. He had what he had needed, the dwarves were happy (even Grumpy, somehow) and he was confident that nothing had gone insanely wrong in his absence.
As he neared Arendelle, the light of the waning gibbous moon lighting his way, that confidence began to waver at the smell of blood wafting from the seaside town. Monster blood. But what could produce so much that he could smell it from so high up? Alphonse dove and landed on a house before Shifting back, his eyes wide in surprise, horror, and fear for his friends.
That was a dragon corpse! The guardsmen were partitioning off and guarding a dragon's carcass! Alphonse turned and Shifted again, flying as fast as he could to the castle, to Elsa and her family.
What in the World had he missed?!
What do ya'll think about Snow White's dwarves? Brought them in for two reasons:
1) You can't have Norse myth with out dwarves and these are the only Disney dwarves
2) There's some scholarly evidence that the tale of Snow White was partly-inspired by a Norse myth. The story of Brisingamen, Freya's necklace.
In this continuity, dwarves have centuries-long lifespans. Snow white lived about three centuries before the current story (Margaret von Waldeck, the inspirational figure for Snow White, lived in the 1530's-50's and Frozen takes place roughly in the 1840's).
Hope ya'll liked it! Leave a review, they keep me motivated!