The Six Stones of karabraxos
by MySoapBox
xxooOOooxx
Elsa
Elsa is running. She's in a forest. Quiet. Eerily so. No birds. No insects. Not even a breeze to move the leaves. Time is suspended. She only hears the fast tempoed crunch, crunch, crunch of the leaves beneath her feet. Then she sees. There, among the leaves and bushes. A mound. A bright contrast of colors against the browns of the earth. Fabric in a jumble.
xxooxx
She's in bed. There's a pounding at her door that causes her to sit up. Her head spins and she wants nothing more than to lay her head back down onto her pillow, escape into the darkness. But before she can, Anna comes bursting through the door.
Anna, her dear sister, who had waited outside her closed door for years, who had followed her up into the North Mountain, who had saved her life, and taught her to use her magic and save Arendelle. Anna, who had married Kristoff, and made her an aunt and named her first born daughter after her. This same Anna stands before her, and while she is almost 40 now, and a little softer and rounder in the way beautiful mothers are, she has not lost any of her spitfire, and from the look on Anna's face, Anna is about to release all that spitfire on Elsa.
"Have you been out in the courtyard? Have you? It's body to body out there!"
"Anna, I kn-"
"We have to do something! We have to save Arendelle!"
"Yes, last ni-"
"Almost a eighty dead. Eighty! And that's just an estimate. Have you seen the east wall? They've turned it into a posting board." Anna's arms are flailing now. "Have you seen my wife? Have you seen my father? Have you seen my child? Elsa! It's horrible."
"I know-"
Anna stops pacing, and Elsa feels the bed dip as Anna sits beside her. "We have to do something. Open the ground floor to the people, get them food and blankets… and… and… beds, they will need cots or something."
"I've already told-"
"Elsa, I saw them this morning."
Anna's words are coming so fast. "Who?"
"The mothers. They are posting descriptions and drawings of their children on a wall." Elsa feels Anna's hand take hers. Anna's hand is so warm and alive. " On OUR wall, Elsa. And some of them are still looking, frantically looking through the crowds, calling their children's names!"
"I know-"
"Oh Elsa, it could be me! Those missing children could be MY children. If I ever lost Elisabet, or Agnarr , or Kristofer, I couldn't go on, Elsa. I couldn't. I'd go mad."
Elsa pulls Anna close, and wraps her arm around her. "I know, I know. We're doing everything we can. The castle kitchen will be open for lunch again, and I've already told Borge to open the ballroom and front hall tonight for anyone who needs to sleep indoors."
Anna pulls back from the embrace. Her eyes are red but there is a look of determination on her face. "We have to stop them, Elsa. We have to go to the west forest. I know we're safe behind your walls but for how long? We have to find out where these horrible dogs are coming from and stop them at the source."
"The Captain sent some men out first thing this morning. He'll report to me before lunch. Until then, I have a meeting with the council." Elsa pushes off the covers and slides from her bed. Anna remains sitting there, looking despondent. Elsa knows what to do. "Anna, will you oversee the kitchens and the preparations for the people? I want them to be as comfortable as possible. "
As Elsa leaves to go to her washroom she wants to turn around and yell at Anna. She wants to tell her to stay in the castle. Stay in her room where she will be safe. But her body does not respond to her frantic commands, and Anna fades from view.
xxooxx
Elsa is running. She can feel the unevenness of the ground beneath her feet. Her footfalls unsure, but she cannot take more care. She must hurry. The sun through the tree leaves casts dappled light on the forest floor before her, creating shadows and shapes that she cannot discern clearly until they are directly in front of her. And then it's there. A bundle of green and brightly colored fabric. She has to reach it, but as fast as she runs, it remains out of reach.
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Elsa is on horseback and Anna is riding beside her, sandwiched between lines of soldiers. Elsa is there, hands at the ready in case of an attack. Anna is there because she insisted. As soon as Anna learned that Elsa was taking men to investigate the forest beyond the northwest fields, Anna had demanded to go. She owed it to the families, she had said; she explained it all to Elsa in an impassioned speech. This farming area, on the very outskirts of Arendelle had been the first to be attacked by the death dogs, and these were the people who had suffered the most losses. If Anna could get answers for one person, locate one lost child, or identify one deceased husband, then it was her responsibility, as princess, to do so. She owed it to her people, she had said. Elsa didn't like the idea, but Anna had been resolute, and Elsa knew how hopeless it was to oppose Anna when her mind was set to something.
"No running off," Elsa had insisted. "Stay by my side at all times." And Anna had agreed.
"Swords at the ready men," Lieutenant Niclas orders as they approach the tree line where the dogs had been first seen. As they plunge into the mottled light of the forest Elsa hears the dogs. At first the sounds are distant, but then they are upon them, teeth and screaming, and breaking branches. Startled, Elsa just reacts. Her hands fly and an ice wall appears between them and the dogs. She is relieved when she sees the barking and snarling shadows on the other side of thick ice, but then she hears a horse's cry and she turns to see dogs coming from either side, snarling and pouncing. Men and horses are dropping all around. She turns to check and Anna is there, safely behind her, as she sends piercing shafts of ice out in all directions. Dogs fall hard to the earth, on the right and left. There is a moment where she and the men around her breathe calm, but then, to Elsa's horror, the dogs stand again, shaking off spears of ice, coming at them again, with ice shards sticking from their sides, from their heads. How is this possible? The men are huddled, backs together all around her, swords raised, slashing and stabbing at the oncoming horde. Elsa tries again, not spears this time, but ice chunks, large boulders of ice that fly at the dogs. They smash, in violent collisions all around. Bones and limbs of dogs break away. For another moment the dogs lay still. The amount of carnage is shocking; this must be the end of the dogs. But No! They twitch, and to Elsa's horror, they rise, like some sort of supernatural daemons from the other world, and maybe that is what they are, because Elsa sees them, shattered and broken, but still coming, eyes still swiveling in empty sockets, teeth still biting.
xxooxx
Elsa is running. She feels the brush slap against her skin as she runs by. She is looking, looking, and then she sees it, a colorful pile of fabric among the branches on the ground. Elsa rushes towards it but she can't seem to reach it. And then she is there. A soldier's hat is at her feet. She kneels and makes out that the green is a soldier's coat. Next to the green is pink. She reaches and it is gone.
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A soldier standing just a few arm lengths away falls. A skeleton dog bites hard at his shoulder. Paws firmly on his chest, suffocating him. Elsa shoots an icy blast and the beast is thrown, yelping, backward across the wood.
More dogs are coming and Elsa sees several of her guard are down. The horses have fled. They are overwhelmed. She has to get them out of this. She quickly looks for a way to escape. It comes to her. She raises her hand and begins to form an ice tunnel. She extends the tunnel, through bushes and trees, as far as she can see in the direction of the open field that perhaps might bring safety. "Anna! Lieutenant!" she yells, "This way!"
Anna scrambles into the opening right behind her, and she sees Lieutenant Niclas pull his sword from the jerking carcass of a death dog and yell, "Follow the Queen, Men. Into the tunnel. I'll guard the entrance 'til you're all through."
The men, swords still high. Swords still swinging to fend off the beasts press towards the opening. Elsa stands at the opening now, as the men run by her.
"Don't leave anyone behind," the Lieutenant yells, and Elsa tries to keep the dogs away from the opening as a few men run past her to grab their comrades who have fallen. But Elsa cannot hold them off for long, and more dogs press and snarl. The men rush back inside the tunnel opening. Elsa scans the area. As the last standing man passes, Elsa fills the opening with ice, and starts to run. She runs forward, creating the ice tunnel in front, as if they are in the belly of a great moving snake. She has never done anything like this before, and it's tricky to keep the ice moving in front of her as she forms it to the sides, around boulders and tree trunks. Behind her are the men, battered, bleeding, helping one another down the tunnel, towards safety. They could see the dogs barking and scratching at the tunnel walls as they go. The dogs paws and hot breath melting at the ice. Elsa reinforces them, rebuilds them at her will, fortifies them.
The giant moving tunnel breaks through the trees, and out into the sunshine, but Elsa continues, out into the field, waving her hands and concentrating on maintaining her tunnel of ice until the barking and howling has stopped.
xxooxx
Elsa is running. Her feet are stumbling, first across ice, and then through crunchy leaves. She has to find her. She has to find her. She's looking everywhere, tripping through the light and shadow, moving around trunks and branches. And then she sees it. The soldier. His hat. She kneels next to him. His short dirty blond hair she does not know. But next to him is the pink cloak. Her cloak. Her bright cloak, and the red, so much red, contrasting against the green and brown of the earth.
xxooxx
What was left of the guard comes stumbling down the icy tunnel behind her. Uniforms torn. Swords covered with blood. Some being carried, with the Lieutenant being the last. "That's all of us," he exclaims.
Elsa looks around at the survivors and her heart jumps in her chest. "Anna! She was right behind me! Anna! Have you seen Anna?" She franticly looks through the men. Was Anna sitting somewhere? Had she fallen in the tunnel?
Elsa takes off for the opening of the ice tunnel but the Lieutenant grabs her. "Your Majesty, stop! There's no one left alive back there."
She jerks her arms free. "My sister's back there."
The Lieutenant steps aside and Elsa runs. She can faintly hear some of her men following her but she does not turn to check.
She's at full alert as she runs back down the snaking ice tunnel, fully expecting to be running back into the pack of death dogs, but she hears and sees no signs. When she reaches the ice where her tunnel began she sees that the ice hear has been made opaque by the scratches of large paws, but she sees no moving shadows of the dogs on the other side. She raises her hands and melts a doorway. She immediately sees several carcasses of dogs, all without heads. None of them were twitching or fighting or biting or even moving and Elsa briefly wonders if they have finally discovered a way to stop a death dog. Decapitation. She raises her hands, just to be ready, and dives out of the tunnel into the dim forest.
It's quiet. Eerily so. No birds. No insects. Not even a breeze to move the leaves. Time is suspended. . And then she sees. There, among the leaves and bushes. A mound. A bright contrast of colors against the browns of the earth. Fabric in a jumble. She runs. Her feet stumbling as she rushes to the place. And then she sees it. The soldier. His hat. She kneels next to him. His short dirty blond hair she does not know. Overlapping him is the pink cloak. Her cloak. Her bright cloak, and the red, so much red, contrasting against the green and brown of the earth. Anna had been trying to help him. Of course she had. Elsa could see it all in her mind's eye. Anna had left her position behind Elsa to give aid to a dying man. If Elsa had just formed the tunnel farther in their direction, they could have been enclosed in the safety of her ice, instead of being locked outside of it. When Elsa sealed the tunnel she had sealed Anna's fate.
Elsa reaches out her trembling hand, afraid of what she will see, but needing to know for sure. She feels the wet sticky wool in her hand, and pulls…
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Elsa gasped.
"My Queen. Are you okay?"
She sat up with a start, heart still pounding in her chest. She worked on calming her breath, but couldn't get control of it. She felt sick. Still gasping, she stood, and stumbled to the edge of the igloo and heaved. Her stomach was empty. She heaved again and bile burned her throat, rancid in her mouth, sour in her nose. Her breathing started to slow. In and out. In and out. She got control of it. Trembling, she leaned her head against the cool ice of the walls. She focused her mind on the blurry whiteness of the ice, pushing down the images of what she had seen, the memories that had been flashing across her mind in bright color and exaggerated detail.
"My Queen. You're ill. Let me help you back to your bedroll," the captain offered.
Elsa put up her hand to warn him away. "I'm fine. Just give me a minute."
Just a dream. Just a bad dream. It's over. It's all over now. But it wasn't over. Not for Elsa. Maybe it never would be.
Ismund understood. "Bad dream?" he asked, and Elsa only nodded.
Kristoff, who was standing nearby and had seen and heard the entire exchange only said, "I'll go put some water on for tea," and he turned his back and walked away.