The air in the dungeon had grown frigid, initially noticeable only to the prisoner. The source of the drop in temperature - the queen, standing on the other side of the cell door - could not even feel the cold which she had created, immune to its biting touch. She rather sensed it a few moments later, tipped off by the sound of roused wind and Dee's shivering breaths in her ears.
The unceremonious arrival of her powers surprised and frightened Elsa to the point of gasping.
Ever since the coronation incident, the queen had prided herself in the control of her powers. The queen would be the first to admit that she didn't fully understand the clarity bestowed upon her by Anna's sacrifice. Even her own declaration that "love will thaw" was a mystery to her - a wisdom that she knew to be true but struggled to grasp completely ever since it had left her mouth.
All Elsa truly knew was that thawing Arendelle - a task that should have been impossible - had suddenly seemed easy, natural, even, after her vague realization. With that ease had come confidence and, although her thoughts dwelled occasionally on the questions left in the thaw's wake, the queen never imagined that she would ever lose command of her powers again. In her mind, such a prospect was just as impossible as harnessing them had been before. Regardless of her true comprehension, Elsa felt like she was in full control for the first time in years.
The truth, however, was that the month since the coronation had been less than a challenge to Elsa's emotions. Other than her stints in front of the mirror - where, admittedly, she had shown unprecedented restraint over her powers in the face of her own guilt - the queen was living a happier life than she had since she was a small child. Arendelle's recovery from the storm was moving swiftly, Elsa had plenty of time to herself, and, most notably, whenever she did tire of reading or letter-writing, Anna was always there right beside her to share in a multitude of sisterly bonding activities.
Elsa had the life that she had always dreamed of and, in her bliss, her powers were rarely under the pressure of her feelings. She was never confronted by her lack of understanding. She never really had to question what exactly it all had meant. Control had been easy when the ice at her fingertips wasn't imbued with crippling grief. Now, in the dungeon, Elsa found herself grappling with just that.
She knew that the kingdom had been hurt by her storm, but she had thought of it all as repairable damage - things that she could fix with adequate effort.
Nothing permanent.
No one dead.
"Queen Elsa?" Dee asked, finally persuaded to speech by the unexpected gust and the small terror that crept up inside of her alongside it.
"I..." Elsa tried to speak but faltered, taken aback by her own struggle to retain control. She looked down at her palms and was barely able to make out the shapes of sparkling teal snowflakes drifting upwards from them. The queen balled her hands into fists, clamping the magic within them with all of her might physically and mentally.
Even then, frost continued to wrap across her knuckles, moving at a glacial pace.
"I'm sorry," Elsa said. Another wind whipped through the hallway and into the cell, causing Dee to shake with chilliness and distress. "I'm so sorry, Mrs. Daleon."
"No, please," Dee pleaded, her voice frantic. "I didn't mean to upset you. I don't blame you for William's death, alright?"
A few frozen droplets appeared in the air above Elsa, each consciously eliminated within a few seconds by the queen. She was able to check her magic in a sense, she noticed, but while she was upset it was difficult to stop her emotions from manifesting entirely. Rather, she would have to take note of her unintentional displays and get rid of them after the fact, forcing them back into whatever plane they came from with a mental effort that Elsa only hoped that she could maintain.
"I won't say that I never did blame you," Dee admitted to another wall of cool air, "but you must trust me when I tell you that I do not anymore."
"You said that his sled flipped in my storm," Elsa hissed. She cared little for the widow's excuses, assuming them made out of respect - or even fear - of her queen. "It doesn't matter if you blame me or not. I killed him."
"It is true that William was riding in the storm-"
"My storm."
"Yes, your storm," Dee corrected herself, her breath alone visible in the darkened cell. "But you didn't really kill him. I did."
Elsa was confused. "What do you mean?" she asked, distracted from her self-deprecating thoughts for a moment. It grew slightly warmer in the dungeon, though the temperature was still nowhere near its normal level.
Dee sniffled before she began. "We were running out of supplies, you see," the widow said somberly. "My son was ill, so the burden fell to William."
"That doesn't-"
"Listen," Dee interrupted the queen. She was perhaps the only one to have ever been so audacious as to do so. "We weren't out yet. We still had food and firewood to last us a few more days, at least. But I was afraid. I was worried that we would run out, so I convinced William to make a trip into town. It was me."
Dee had begun crying, however it was not quite as dramatic as it had been before in Isaac's audience. The sobs were quiet but somehow even more powerful than the roars that had preceded them, transforming her naturally chipper voice into a struggling, disgusted thing when it even allowed her to speak over its heaving breaths. Elsa's anger at the other woman's apparent forgiveness was displaced slightly by a sympathetic pity.
"You can't blame yourself," the queen said. Two stray tears rolled down her cheeks, froze in midair, and hit the ground with twin clinks. "None of it would have happened if it were not for me."
Dee paused for a moment, softly huffing a few times. "Once again, that is true," she said, bracing herself for a wind that thankfully never came. "I thought about it like that, too, for a while."
Elsa furrowed her brow in annoyance. "Is there any other way to think about it?"
"There's a difference between the mistakes that we made," the widow said, barely able to keep herself together. "You could never have known the effects that your storm had on my family. You still didn't know - not until I told you."
"It doesn't matter," Elsa hung her shoulders. "Just because I didn't know doesn't mean that it wasn't my fault."
"Perhaps," Dee's words glided sorrowfully out into the darkness, "but I am more responsible than you. I knew what I was doing. I knew that if I asked William to go out into your storm he would do it."
Dee shuddered twice, silently.
"He loved me," she continued, the statement falling from her mouth and allowed to fully settle on the dungeon walls before she proceeded. "He would have done anything for me and he gave everything for me."
Elsa remained unconvinced of her supposed innocence, the widow's tale only adding layers to her misery. Emotions seemed to stack up inside of her, making themselves known to the external world with even more disobedient sparks of magic. The queen's foot, pressed hard against the ground in focus and despair, slipped to the side unexpectedly, the floor below it now plated with a thin layer of glassy ice. With a pointed thought from Elsa, the slick frost receded, but she was still aware of its presence dormant within her, lying in wait for its next trigger.
How much control did she really have?
"Maybe you are right. Maybe we are both to blame," Dee finally said. "But I knew."
Elsa desperately wanted to console to the widow. She started to open her mouth, but saw a snowflake materialize directly in front of her face before she could speak. The queen took aim for the fleck of ice with both her right hand and her thoughts, slapping it with a palm in frustration before sending it back from whence it came.
The queen couldn't find any words of reassurance for herself. How could she even begin to console anyone else? Elsa closed her mouth just as another small crystal appeared in the air above.
The two women stood in the near-silent shadows on opposite sides of the cell door, each disabled by their grief and, even more so, their guilt. Dee rubbed her nose roughly, Elsa swatted rebellious snowflakes from the air.
"He's aiming for the windows upstairs," Martin chirped, awestruck.
"Sounds like he's doing more than just aiming," Kristoff added.
The audience behind the men echoed their statements, chattering about what they really meant in hushed, worried voices. There was a sense of instability in the ballroom. Everyone was afraid and everyone knew it. There was only the question of what would definitively set the crowd off - or rather when the inevitable catalyst would come.
"Elsa's wing..." Anna thought aloud. "If one of those fireballs actually got inside, then..."
The princess didn't even want to imagine it. Save for Elsa's room, nearly the whole wing was some sort of combination of carpet, wood, and draperies. The fire would catch fast and spread faster, afforded routes to all of the castle's different floors via the multitude of staircases leading off of the main upstairs hall.
"Is there anyone up there?" Martin demanded, his squeaky voice sounding surprisingly guardsman-like.
"No, I dismissed everyone for the festival," Anna said. "It should be empty."
"Good," Martin nodded.
"Good?" Kristoff asked, still pressing himself against the ballroom's front door just in case. "What exactly is good about this situation?"
"Well, if the wing were to catch fire, anyone upstairs would be in danger."
"If the wing catches fire, we're in danger," Kristoff retorted. "You said yourself that that last door leads to Queen Elsa's wing. The fire's only going to spread, and we're trapped between it, that frozen doorknob, and some psycho outside!"
The ice master's audience shuffled uncomfortably in the back of the hall.
"We're doomed!"
"Is there no other way out?"
"Someone has to do something!"
Anna could sense the dangerous state of the room. Settled panic was rustling afresh with the increasing cries in the back. She knew that the whole room was presently teetering and soon would be completely lost to chaos without guidance. Again, the princess could practically feel the gazes of her frenzied guests settle onto her, waiting to see if she could put forth anything that would stop them before descending further into madness. Duty called and Anna recognized that without her sister present she would have to be the one to answer.
"We still have to go find Elsa," Anna said forcefully, silencing the growing concern of the crowd with her loud declaration.
"We can't," Kristoff protested. "The only way to get to the dungeon would be right through her wing, unless you have any ideas for busting open that other door without getting us frozen. If there's one thing more dangerous than staying here, it's going up there."
Anna looked to her boyfriend, her expression a successfully masked fearful and unyielding.
"I will go," she stated.
"Princess Anna, if I may-"
"Anna, it's too dangerous-"
"Elsa's the only one who can stop the Dark Mage," the princess said with a certainty that everyone else was already feeling. She turned, now, and addressed the whole room, finding that the attendees in the back, indeed, were all staring at her in the time of crisis. "I'll go get her and she'll know exactly what to do. She always does."
"I cannot allow that," Martin said.
"It's the only chance we have."
The feeling in the ballroom changed again with Anna's statement. Martin's proper facade wavered slightly. Kristoff gulped in acknowledgement. Isaac looked like he may just be persuaded to start speaking again. The crowd in the back mumbled even quieter and crouched even lower under the weight of the princess's words.
In the vacuum created, a few of the guests could begin to hear a faint crackling far above them. The queen's wing had caught aflame.
"If you insist upon going," Martin was the one to break the silence, "then I will accompany you."
"Me, too," Kristoff volunteered, although he was unable to sell his empty bravery quite as well as the guardsman.
Isaac mumbled something, as well, but he looked even worse.
"I'll be fine alone," Anna assured them. "You just-"
"Princess Anna, as a member of the Royal Guard," Martin interrupted, tilting his head upwards and displaying his damp, sweating neck, "I cannot allow you to go alone."
Isaac's eyes widened in terror as he watched his friend.
Anna made a small gesture. The group of four near the front of the ballroom took a few steps forward into a tighter circle, granting them a small degree of privacy much to the frustration of the eavesdropping guests.
"What happens if..." Anna's whisper trailed off with a glance over to the archway at her right that said it all. "Someone needs to stay here."
Martin had already decided to accompany the princess. There was little that anyone could say to persuade him otherwise. Like Anna herself, he felt the force of duty pushing him along. For most of his career with the Royal Guard, he had been relegated to mere security positions - posts that he considered the epitome of boredom in the historically peaceful kingdom. Even the day before, Isaac had been picked as a member of the search party over him. It seemed to the guardsman that he wasn't a guardsman at all. He was something not nearly as impressive or respectable in his own eyes - a watchman, perhaps - and he hated it
And so, despite the rapidity of his pulse, Martin wouldn't allow himself to pass up on an opportunity to accompany the princess in a real time of danger. No matter what, he couldn't refuse his one chance to live up to his true title.
He looked pleadingly to Kristoff and then Isaac.
The first nodded. The second would be okay.
"They will stay," Martin finally said to the princess, not bothering to quiet his naturally shrill voice. "You and I will go to the dungeon," he nodded, leaving the rest unspoken.
The group of four exchanged reassuring looks. A few of them were legitimate.
"Are you sure you'll be alright?" Kristoff asked Anna's resolved face, unable to fully return her optimism (or perhaps just determination) in his own expression. He was well aware that Anna was capable - having witnessed many of her most admirable moments first-hand - though he still couldn't help but be worried for her safety. After all, he had always been there for her during the storm the month before, ready to pick up the slack if ever she needed him to. He wasn't sure how comfortable he could allow himself to be when they were apart.
His unease was put to rest by a single brave, genuine, radiant smile from the princess. "We'll be back with Elsa before you know it," she whispered the pledge through upturned lips. "You just focus on keeping those doors closed until we get back."
Both Anna and Kristoff shifted towards each other in the same moment as if to embrace, however the princess quickly countered her own movement, pulling away with a blush and a quick glance over to the crowd of guests that made her intentions clear to the ice master.
"No need for anyone to be worried," she said through the corner of her mouth. "Including you. Before you know it, alright?"
On the other side of the circle, Martin and Isaac were having an even quieter conversation, conveying their thoughts through their eyes in rapid succession.
Are you okay?
Yeah, are you?
Maybe.
Unlike Anna and Kristoff next to them, the guardsmen seemed to feel the gravity of their predicament. Much like the princess, they were profoundly affected by the eyes focused on them from across the hall, those of the foreigners and especially their fellow members of the Royal Guard. Both of the guardsmen were reluctant deep down - although one was significantly better at hiding it than the other - but forced into a position that they were unable to back away from. For better or worse, they were stuck.
Realistically thinking, they weren't able to manage very brave faces, but at least Martin dabbed some more sweat from his forehead with a sleeve and tried his best.
"You guys better get going, then," Kristoff said, now himself starting to hear the far-off sound of old wood beginning to burn. He was the first to step out of the circle, reclaiming his post against one of the archway's doors. Isaac followed him, sulking to the other before leaning on it with all of his discouraged might.
Anna and Martin started towards the non-frozen door in the back of the ballroom, the audience swelling around them in their approach. Even with nothing said, the princess could sense her guests' questions.
Martin quickened his steps, reaching the door and opening it ahead of his charge. Before stepping into the room beyond the door, Anna turned.
"Stay calm. My sister will fix all of this," with her best royal voice, she spoke to the crowd as a whole once more, scanning the sea of somewhat familiar faces. "Just stay here. And, um," the princess descended into a semi-mumble, trying to find the words that Elsa would have used, "stay calm. Again. Please."
Anna, now blushing, whirled around into the stairwell behind her. There was a slight murmur of confusion among the guests in the ballroom, one which the princess was blocked from hearing it once Martin had joined her and closed the door.
The two regarded the spiral staircase together, ears perked for the now clear crackling coming from the floor above. Their eyes widened as they scanned to the top of the steps and saw the abnormal, claw-like glow of flame reach out towards the landing.
The fire was definitely spreading.
"I'm grateful that you came down here," Dee finally cut through the tension in the dungeon. While it wouldn't be accurate to say that it had been silent since she had last spoken - the sounds of Elsa's semi-controlled ice were constants in the chilly space - it definitely felt as much. "Like I said, I wasn't sure that you would. I couldn't see why you would," the widow's voice was still sad, a quiet, damaged tone. "Why did you?"
"For some reason, my sister was hiding what happened to your husband from me," Elsa said, equally hushed, practically forcing the words out. "I wanted to know the truth, so I came."
Dee paused for a moment. "I see," she said, giving the impression that she meant it on some deeper, implacable level. "Did you get what you came for?"
Elsa let out a dry, harsh breath. "Unfortunately, I did."
Again, the only sound for a time was the repetitive popping of snowflakes in and out of existence.
"You're probably wondering why I wanted you to come here," Dee said.
Elsa was caught off-guard under her cover of darkness. The queen had forgotten all about the pretenses in light of all of the still-processing revelations of the evening. She had been summoned - that was what the guardsman had said.
"Yes," Elsa tilted her head downwards, slight reluctance and for some reason embarrassment audible in her answer. "Yes, I'm sorry-"
"Stop apologizing," the other woman's quiet voice briefly flashed with irritability, though the emotion was gone just as quickly as it had emerged. "Please," she continued, recomposing herself with an incredible deftness, "that's what I wanted you to come for. I wanted to ask for your forgiveness."
For a moment, the queen thought it unfair that only she was barred from apology. She dismissed the notion in a hurry, disappointed by her own insensitivity.
"I assure you, there is nothing that I need to be forgiving you for," Elsa steadied her voice as much as possible, the effort trading off with her attempts to control her rebelling powers. A flurry leapt from her palm, eliciting a gasp from the queen before she made it disintegrate into the air with her mind.
Dee let out a humorless, gasping chuckle.
"Have you already forgotten why I'm locked in here in the first place?" she asked, not bothering to wait for an answer before continuing. "I was going to kill you."
Elsa considered it. She was fairly certain that the old, thick woman silhouetted before her would have a hard time as an assassin, but the sheer emotion hidden in her dead voice overpowered questions of realism. In Dee's mind, at least, the widow had been resolved to kill her target, and the queen wasn't quite sure what to make of that reality.
"But I noticed something after they caught me," Dee continued without an audible reaction, her voice more level than Elsa could manage on even a good day and even more melancholy and terrifying because of it. "I wanted to kill you because I wanted revenge. I wanted to make you feel what William felt. I wanted you to be dead like him."
The queen had to refocus herself. She could practically feel the magic's attempts to push out from within her. Snowflakes appeared with heightened frequency above her head and the hands she used to slap at them were covered almost completely in mitts of frost. As hard as she tried, Elsa could barely retain even after-the-fact control over her manifestations in the face of the widow's continuing emotional onslaught.
Dee knew it, too.
"Don't be upset," she tried to soothe the other woman. "Like I said, something changed after those guardsman stopped be upstairs. Before that, I was angry. I was so angry with you."
A frigid gust blew through the hallway again, dusting the brick walls with powdery ice.
"In my anger, I never thought - I assumed. I assumed that if I killed you then all of my problems would... I don't know," Dee paused, thinking of how to phrase what she wanted to say. "I assumed they would just go away," she decided.
Elsa recognized something in the other woman's voice - the familiar words, the broken, searching tone. Her powers slowed their unrest as her inner turmoil made way for curiosity.
"But I now realize that it would have done nothing of the sort," Dee continued, now with the queen's undivided attention. "Things are never that simple. Even if I did succeed - if I did kill you - there would be too much left. My sadness wouldn't be gone. My responsibility wouldn't be gone. My pain wouldn't be gone. It's hard to explain, but it would all still be there, just like it was before."
"I understand," Elsa said, and she did.
Dee began to sniffle again, a roaring quality returning to her pained voice as it rose. "I don't know how to get rid of the pain, Queen Elsa, but I have realized that it is not through killing you. I'm ashamed of how I assumed," she continued, sobbing loudly, "and I apologize to you now after having thought. I acted rashly and I am prepared to face the consequences - I only pray that you will be able to forgive me before I do."
"I already have," Elsa said quietly, her statement dwarfed by the widow's wails. "I pray that you, too, will-"
"I already have!"
Through the screen of darkness and grating, the queen felt a sudden and strikingly powerful kinship with the other woman. Elsa knew in an instant that the two of them understood each other on a level deeper than she had experienced ever before. She and the widow were the same - bound together in their struggle for the answers that it seemed the rest of the world had already long ago figured out.
They were the same and, viewing the widow's silhouette and hearing her crying words, Elsa was looking in her trusty mirror again, practicing the only speech that was impossible to give.
The stray ice around Elsa had melted. She had regained full control, empowered by her new, overwhelming feelings towards the widow. The queen felt secure in their connection. She felt reinvigorated, supported in just the way that she had so desperately been seeking.
Elsa knelt down and finally picked the forgotten lantern up from the ground. She squinted and eventually determined that the lamp was thankfully undamaged by its rough handling. The queen carried it back to the front of the dungeon, confident and no longer stumbling, and placed it on the guard table for a moment while she went about striking another match. Aided by the returned light, she scanned the desk with new purpose but was unable to find what she was looking for.
"The guard must have taken the keys to your cell upstairs," the queen commented. She carried the relit lamp back down the hallway towards the cell.
"You're going to release me?" Dee choked out between sobs.
"Of course, Mrs. Daleon."
"Why? Queen Elsa, I deserve-"
"I want to find out how to make my problems go away, too," the queen interrupted, divulging the truth shyly, carefully, hopefully.
"Your problems?" Dee finally quieted down, again falling back onto her more stable tone of grief.
"We're going to help each other," Elsa said. She nodded her head, placing the lantern down just outside of the cell door. It wasn't much, but she hoped that it would provide her new companion with some comfort. "We're both going to figure out our problems. We'll do it together."
"We will?"
"I promise."
Dee sniffled weakly a final time.
"I'm going to go and find the keys. I'll be back as fast as I can," Elsa said.
The widow seemed to hesitate for a moment, quietly considering all that had been said.
"Yes, Queen Elsa," she finally agreed.
That was all of the consent that Elsa needed to rush out of the dungeon and back into the considerably brighter basement hallways, setting a hurried course for a return to the ballroom.
Anna was the first to start hopping up the stairs, taking each step deliberately. Even now, no longer in view of her guests, she walked with a purpose, the rising temperature and sounds of fire only spurring her on as she made the ascent.
Martin moved cautiously behind the princess, clutching the slowly melting, ice-laced railings to steady himself and posturing to protect her at the first sign of danger. He was propelled forward by his duty and, thus, its object's brisk pace.
The two of them eventually reached the top of the stairs, emptying out into the landing that marked the entrance to Queen Elsa's wing.
"Oh," Anna gasped, taking in the view of the hallway before her.
The crackling of flames was deafening by then, however not even the volume of the sound couldn't do justice to the sight of the destruction. Fire danced across the floor's entire main hallway, leaping from rippling walls to tattered drapes across the ceiling. The flames seemed to be most heavily concentrated around the queen's quarters in the center of the western wall, where the door had been entirely consumed - a sizzling, nearly opaque portal of steam and smoke that obscured whatever was left of the formerly ice-covered room behind it. There was room to walk, but only barely. Anna spied what looked like a crisscrossing, amorphous path of more resistant wood flooring under decimated carpeting - places where Elsa's decorative ice that had once adorned fixtures on the walls had melted and settled the blaze slightly - but it was ever-changing and unreliable.
"We need to move quickly, it's still spreading," Martin yelped above the inferno's endless noise. "Come on!"
The guardsman took the lead, taking a step forward to meet the racing flames a few feet away from the top of the staircase. He swung one leg and then the other over the initial wall, singing his pant leg slightly before he settled on a slightly damp wooden panel. Martin shuffled forward and then turned in a hurry to watch the princess follow his movements and jump over the wave of fire that fed on the carpets as it swept towards the staircase.
Having cleared the first obstacle, the guardsman shouted for his charge to, "stay close," and then was facing the expansive, already burning stretch of hallway again. He tried quickly to chart the easiest - and safest - path through the blaze, however such an attempt was futile. Any time that he saw a clear lane of wood it was engulfed again in fire, shifting the potential walkway to the side or causing it to disappear completely.
"Martin!" Anna warned, holding her dress in but unable to ignore the flames closing in around their drying platform of temporary safety.
Realizing by the princess's cries that he had not the luxury of planning time, Martin crouched and hopped to a small island presently free of flames to their left. Knowing that the new respite was far too small for two people, his eyes darted around in search of another nearby spot that the fire had not yet overtaken, finding only one: a clear plank just in front of the hub that was Elsa's room's door, a considerable distance ahead.
"Hang on!" the guardsman squeaked.
"Hurry!" Anna said. It would be inaccurate to say that she was losing confidence, however, deep down, the princess for a moment questioned her own recklessness as she stomped on a flame that had sprouted under her. She attempted to pull her dress up even more with limited effectiveness, trying to keep its gold from becoming the orange shade of the inferno that surrounded her.
The guardsman took a single step backward into the fire, bending into a crouch, but he was off almost before he could even feel the flames, converting his improvised start into a high vault that successfully landed him onto his target on the far side of the queen's quarters' entrance. Martin came down with a thud, stumbling slightly and causing a flurry of sparks to leap up around him, but was able to quickly regain his balance and begin plotting his next move. He was perspiring faster than even the extreme heat could evaporate and wiped his forehead with an ashy sleeve as he turned in a half-circle and awaited the shifting of the flames off of a suitably close area.
Anna saw her opportunity and was quick to take it, hopping away just as her former perch was smothered by the spreading fire. Her new position was only slightly safer, and she doubted her ability to even make the next jump considering the restrictiveness of her dress. She scanned the room frantically like her alleged escort. The fire pulled away from a plank a few steps to her right and she reacted instantly, dodging through the flames to reach it. The princess and Martin now stood at equal distances from the entrance to Elsa's room on opposite sides of the doorframe.
"There's nothing!" Anna shouted, searching the ground desperately for any next potential move. She heard a great shattering beyond the smoky, misty, open door to the queen's quarters - a piece of ice that had fallen from the ceiling and quickly sputtered off into steam.
"I-"
"That's it!" Anna realized. She looked over to the doorway a few feet away, assessing it. The room past it was mostly obscured by the moisture and blackness flowing out into the hallway, however she could see not even the vague glow of flames beyond the doorway itself. "Come on!" she looked over to Martin, finding the guardsman now watching her with a worried curiosity.
"Princess Anna, you can't be serious," he murmured in his typical high pitch, but it was too late.
Fire crept upward and finally snapped onto the delicate skirt of Anna's dress and she was out of time for her companion to talk her out of it. She glanced again to the veiled portal and, without delay, made a jump for it, piercing through the cloud of smoke and steam and into her sister's room.
The risen moisture shielding the door simultaneously scaled her exposed skin and put out the young flames across her dress's hem as she glided through it. She shrieked in surprise and slight pain twice, once upon first feeling the heat of the steam and then again when she landed on the slick, slushy surface of ice beneath it. A sudden coolness washed over her recently irritated face, soothing its burns.
Looking around, Anna quickly realized what had happened. On the far wall, she could see the shattered window where the Dark Mage's fireball had entered. She assumed that it must have crossed the entire length of the room in the air before hitting the ground just outside of the door and starting the fire, leaving most of the icy quarters in between untouched. Only the things nearest to the entrance had begun to melt under the heat of the raging external flames. Looking to her sides, Anna noticed wooden foundation revealed by disappeared icy walls and ceilings and a drooping bookcase, its contents soaked and ruined.
"Princess Anna!" she could hear Martin's muffled voice from outside. The princess rose quickly from the ground and stepped away from the entrance into the still pristine portion of the room.
"Come on!" she shouted back, cupping both hands around her mouth.
A few seconds later, the guardsman hurdled through the steamy entrance, his knees soon slamming into the nearby floor's melting slush with a minute splash. He grunted before standing up and stumbling over to the princess while surveying the room, his sweat now accompanied with the gray tones of cinder.
"What now?" he asked.
Both of them looked around the room. The chamber had no other doors, and, although the coolness of its back half gave nearly no indication of the continuing disaster in the hallway, the aggressive popping of flames still penetrated into the icy sanctuary. They both recognized that the only way out would be back through the ever-magnifying inferno and tried to think fast to formulate a plan before fire consumed the entire wing around them or, worse yet, spread to other parts of the castle.
Anna searched with her eyes. Elsa's room for the most part was the same as it had always been - save for the pile of broken glass that had appeared on the floor near the window and the melting towards the front - and that was to say that there was little potential for usefulness in its array of diplomatic papers, pen, and little else.
Martin walked over to the melting bookcase on the wall closest to the door, sliding a bit on warming water and ice as he approached. He examined the piece of furniture, which still stood but was slowly transforming into something less than solid. Its structure was sound for the moment, however the guardsman could see that its soggy tenants had begun to slip on watery ledges. In fact, some of the volumes had already made their way to the ground below, where they settled in a large puddle of what had once been their shelves.
"We can use this," he declared, regarding the fresh pool of water atop a thin layer of ice. Martin looked to the princess, who now also took in the bookcase with newfound interest. "We can push it out into the hallway. It will melt pretty quickly, I'm sure, but maybe it could put out enough of the fire for us to get to the other side. If we can just get past the flames, we can probably outrun the spread all the way down to the dungeon."
Anna nodded, grinning, impressed and quite pleased by her companion's ingenuity. "Let's do it," the princess said.
Martin went right to work. He tossed the remainder of the bookcase's contents into a mildly neat stack on the ground next to it before rounding its side and beginning his struggle to push the still-hefty frame towards the door.
"Here, I'll help," Anna offered. The guardsman was disinclined to let her, but it was quickly apparent that he wouldn't be able to accomplish the task alone. He grunted in vague affirmation.
Together, they managed to nudge the bookcase out of its resting position against the wall, setting it on a slippery course for the doorway. Moving it got much easier as it gained momentum and more water started to melt from the sheet of ice that was the floor. Finally, the emptied, melting bookcase arrived just outside of the steam-covered frame at the head of the room.
"Okay," Martin said, squeaky, somewhat proud, and politely authoritative. "We don't have much time to pull this off. Stay right behind me."
"What if it melts before we get out of the fire?" Anna asked, unable to hold in the dangerous thought.
Martin didn't have the answer nor the time to come up with it. He still held the side of the bookcase in one hand and felt it melting even faster under the increased heat. "We'll have to make sure it doesn't," he said meekly, uselessly clearing his throat. "Stay close."
The guardsman could now slide the bookcase forward by himself - on account of its self-lubrication - and quickly did so, within moments causing an intense sizzling as the mass of ice plowed through the queen's quarters' smoky exit and met with the hallway's flames. The two forces dueled with a primal severity, shaking Martin to the rhythm of their hard-fought battle.
"It's working," Anna commented, just a step behind. The water expelled from the bookcase by the fire instantly betrayed its maker, clearing a rather wide path in the guardsman's wake and leaving the planks below so wet that the flames wouldn't return to them for quite some time.
"Have to keep moving," Martin said, grunting a high-pitched grunt of effort as he shuffled the quivering bookcase along. Upset, albeit cool water jumped at him from the disappearing ice, spattering his face and clothes with even more moisture. He dared not look ahead as they proceeded, but was unable to resist picturing the queen's wing in his mind, rapidly charting a theoretical path forward.
Elsa's room was only about a fourth of the way down the main hallway. After clearing that, they would have to maneuver a corner and make it into a secondary corridor - to which the fires had doubtlessly spread by then - and then take one of the small servant staircases three levels. That would finally get them to the floor that the dungeon was on and, more importantly, the inferno was hopefully not.
Eying the rapidly melting bookcase in front of him, the guardsman prayed silently that the door to the tiny, oft-forgotten stairway would be closed. That would at least give them a fighting chance.
If it was open, and the fire had already begun feasting on the steps' weathered wood...
Martin didn't even want to think what such a possibility could mean for his present mission. He couldn't bear to think of what it would mean for the castle at large. If the bottom floor caught fire, too, then the whole structure could very well be compromised. So he prayed and he pushed forward even harder.
By the time that they had almost reached the end of the main hallway, two of the sizzling bookcase's shelves had been filed away by the heat below. The piece of furniture was stubby now, half of its original size and only seeming to expire more swiftly the more it shrank. Martin was panting, too.
"Do you want me to take over?"
"No, Princess Anna," Martin gasped for breath, his exertion magnified by the surrounding heat and his own dreadful thoughts. He made a final shove, putting the icy block just in from of the exit onto the intended side hallway, letting it melt a bit to extinguish nearby flames before stepping carefully around it to get at an appropriate angle to continue. Still, he refused to look ahead, fearful of what he may see. His eyes locked on where the ice fought fire below and he tried to focus.
Anna peeked around the guardsman and into the side passage once more. It was already completely covered by the Dark Mage's magic. The small doorway in the corner that they were heading towards was gaping, its door left wide open by a careless servant hours earlier in a rush to enjoy the festival's proceedings. A weak glow came from within the cubby of a stairwell, but the princess couldn't quite make out its source. She placed her hands on Martin's shoulders, at the same time steadying the man and offering again to take his place in the pushing of the diminished piece of furniture.
"Are you sure?" Anna's distraught, urging proposal gave Martin a pretty good idea of the situation regardless of his willful oblivion.
The guardsman put all of his energy towards the bookshelf just as a large crack burst through the hallway behind him - a fallen, charred ceiling board that was rapidly gobbled by the flames below. He labored on, now guiding the last remaining shelf blindly ahead towards where he remembered the stairs to be.
The last of the ice boiled away just as they reached their destination.
"No, no, no," Martin chirped, watching the remains of the bookcase boil into a steaming puddle before looking up to see his fears realized. He spied down the several stories worth of steps and watched fire pour downwards - not complete in its spreading to the bottom floor but well on its way. He glanced backwards, then, for a terrible moment, and caught sight of the recently cleared path from the queen's room as it rapidly transformed back into its former, fiery state.
They were trapped.
"What now?" Anna asked, panicked and looking to the guardsman.
"I..." Martin only began, his throat catching with emotion. His first real assignment - however unofficial - and he had failed. He had not only let the princess endanger herself but also had been unable to protect her when the danger did become real. A sense of shame overcame him and his eyes watered for the first time that perilous night.
Even then, it wasn't as if he would ever have an audience to be ashamed in front of. In that moment, Martin was sure that he had killed the princess and himself.
"Martin!" Anna hissed frantically, her eyes darting around the side hallway looking for something - anything.
Her search returned with only one thing: fire, fire everywhere.
But her call did manage to snap Martin out of his pitiful trance. Through smoke and tear-veiled eyes, he found himself staring again down the servants' staircase. The guardsman saw what looked like an unaffected patch of steps at the end of the diagonal tunnel. He was reminded that the fire had not yet finished their race downwards.
"If we can just get past the flames, we can probably outrun the spread," he mouthed.
Martin whirled around, in a single motion clutching Anna tight and pushing his shoulders out backwards, and the guardsman did his best to shield the princess with his body as he sent them tumbling down the burning stairs.