Frozen Heart

by Nickaej

After the thaw Elsa and Anna tries to live a normal life, but Elsa is haunted by repeating nightmares and it brings down consequences on all of Arendelle, as the two sisters are put on seperate paths, as an ancient evil awakens. Read and review

6. part 6

Frozen Heart Part 6

Chapter 51: Nell: Arendelle`s Last Stand

Nell was quite sure that all three of them and the guards behind them had never been riding horses as fast as they did now, but their lives depended on it!

If they failed to escape, they would die, and it would not be a pleasant death, given Elsa's massacre in the throne room. Nell thought that Elsa had gone mad and she wanted someone to have the strength and the courage to fight back against that freak of nature!

Nell considered herself a woman who did not want the death of other people, but in Elsa's case, she could only wish that she got the slowest death possible.

She could not stop thinking about all those who had died: Kai, Judy, the woman who was hanged in the market, her sister Anita and niece Matilda, and so many more, and if they were not fast enough, it would soon be their turn too.

She was riding next to Anna that could be the Queen if anyone could kill Elsa.

She heard the horses behind them, turned her head and saw Kevin and the other guards riding behind them at full speed!

"Good to see most of you coming out of the yard!" Anna shouted.

"I am happy about it too, but we are not out of danger yet. I need to find my wife Isa!" Kevin yelled back.

They had to be quick if they wanted to save the people of Arendelle and save Kevin's wife Isa from certain death!

"We have to warn everyone in Arendelle before it is too late!" a guard shouted out.

"Yes, that is a good idea, but we need to be quick about it. The time is short!" Nell replied.

Riding towards the end of the bridge, Nell tried to figure out how much time and how many people they could manage to warn before they had to ride away, but other thoughts disturbed her thinking.

"That monster wants me dead because of the child and Anna for protecting it! Oh God, what have I ever done wrong? Nell thought to herself.

However, she already knew the answer to that question. She had not been strong enough to fight Hans, and that meant she carried what she first saw as a burden, but now she knew she really wanted this child.

She wanted to take care of it as if it were a child conceived through true love, and now she knew what to call it if the child was a girl!

By the time they reached the end of the bridge, they were now in the city, Kevin was pushing his horse to the limit, he stopped right outside his home, and everyone got off their horses.

Nell hurried into the house.

"Is she in here?"

"Yes she is!" Kevin responded.

"Kevin, what is going on here?" Isa asked.

"The Queen has lost it! We are no longer safe here, my darling. Do you have any valuables hidden away in here?"

"Yes, but..."

"No, buts, I want you to take all our valuables and some blankets."

"But..."

"Just do it!"

Nell rushed out when she heard Anna calling the citizens of Arendelle, "Citizens, you must go immediately! The Queen has gone mad; you must try to get away!"

"What has happened?" a man asked.

"The Queen has murdered all her staff in cold blood!"

The citizens, who had opened their windows and doors to hear her message, began to panic.

"I knew it would come to this!" said an old woman. "That monster will be the end of us all!"

"Look!" a little girl shouted.

Everyone looked towards the castle and saw the ice spread on the bridge, but it was not the ice, they were used to seeing.

This ice was black!

"What sorcery is this now?" a woman shouted in panic. "We should have listened to the Duke of Weselton and we should have let Hans finish the job!"

Nell saw the tears running down Anna's cheeks. Nell knew everything about what the two men had done, and she could not even begin to imagine all the feelings Anna was going through.

The people were screaming for Elsa´s head like a bunch of feral dogs barking for a bone.

Nell walked over to Anna and said, "We have to get out of here my princess. It is not safe here!"

"She is right," said one guard.

"What is your name?" he asked Nell.

"My name is Nell, what is yours?"

"My name is Ulrich. Nell, you and Anna are going to use the horses to escape as the Queen wants your heads on a silver plate."

Kevin and Isa came out again.

"Kevin, you and your wife will use the horses to escape from here!"

Kevin helped his wife up on one of the horses; he then got up one another.

"But what about you Ulrich, and what about all of you other guards?" Nell asked them.

"Someone should try to stop the snow queen! Hurry now that the black ice is getting close!" they all answered.

Nell knew none of them had a chance to defeat the queen, but Ulrich continued, "Anna, you may not sit on the throne, but you are our true queen! You must flee with your allies here. Travel to the kingdom of Corona and seek help, then come back and help free us from this evil."

Anna had been crying but she nodded in agreement for Ulrich was right! They had to get help if they wanted any chance in defeating Elsa!

"I will do so, Ulrich!" Anna assured him. "Citizens of Arendelle, keep your hopes up. I promise to return with the help of our friends and allies, but for you who cannot fight, you must evacuate immediately!"

"All hail Queen Anna of Arendelle!" the citizens chanted.

"GO NOW!" Ulrich yelled as the black ice approached them all.

As the cold death approached them, the four riders rode like the wind, and soon left Arendelle behind them.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!"

The scream made Nell's heart jump a few beats.

"It was Ulrich who had screamed, and by God it sounded like he was in pain. He is probably dead now!" she thought to herself.

Another name to ad to Elsa's lunacy.

"Where are we going Queen Anna?" Isa asked in a shaky voice.

"I have to warn the ice harvesters about this. They do not know what has happened!"

Nell said, "They are probably working on that ice order."

"Screw that order! I want these men to be safe!" Anna shouted back. "These men must be warned of the danger that is approaching!"

"What about the people? Do you think they will be safe?" Isa asked Anna.

Anna did not respond at first but then she said, "I can only hope that my sister managed to come to her full senses."

"But what if she does not?"

"Then I will pray for them, and hope I can get help from the kingdom of Corona."

Nell knew there would be a lot of praying as Elsa had barely moved a muscle when the massacre began in the throne room, and there was no way Elsa would forgive Anna for the written letter the Queen had received.

Full of thoughts of death and red-eyed shadows, she asked Anna, "Anna, why did the Queen respond in this way? What message did the letter carry?"

Anna did not answer at first, but then she said, "He knew it Nell. Tamas knew what I did to Olaf, but he was not even in the room when it happened!"

Excuse me your highness, but what are you two talking about? Isa asked them with fear written all over her face.

Anna said, "Nell is carrying the child conceived with Hans of Southern Isles, but she managed to escape, but Elsa wanted to get her hands on it. When Olaf learned about the pregnancy, he was going to tell Elsa, but I stopped him before he could say anything. No one saw what happened, and yet Elsa learned about it from a letter written by Tamas. I feel like dark magic might be in play."

Nell forced herself to look up at Kevin and await his verdict. She imagined him shouting traitor, drawing his sword and cutting off the heads of both Anna and herself, but just as Kevin looked at her and was about to say something, Isa gently put a hand on his arm.

Nell knew Kevin and Isa's story.

Judy had told her how they had lost their own child, and Nell knew that when Isa touched Kevin's arm, it was to make sure Kevin did not get angry with Nell, but to remind him of the child, they both had lost.

Kevin turned his head, looked at Nell, and gave a small nod to her and then Kevin said, "We are in this together now."

Nell felt her chest explode with such warmth of gratitude to Kevin and Isa that she could have cried if this conversation took place under different circumstances, but now they had to get away.

Away from Arendelle, away from Snow Queen and now they had to warn the ice harvesters before anything happened to them.

Nell knew the real reason why they were there.

It was so Anna could warn her beloved Kristoff about what had happened back in Arendelle, but a sudden thought struck Nell as they approached the ice-harvesting workplace, for how would they respond to the news of the events that had taken place in Arendelle?

Ever since that time when Elsa hung that one person, Nell had heard that Kristoff had trouble controlling the tempers of the other ice harvesters even though the woman had actually been a spy.

The execution was not the reason why the ice harvesters were angry. For their sake, any traitor to the Kingdom of Arendelle should hang, but it was the fact that the way the execution had gone, the public humiliation that Elsa had given the spy. Using a crazy person like Gerhardt, it had all been a little too much, and the mood among the harvesters had been low ever since.

It made the workplace atmosphere polluted with fear, anger maybe even hate, and now they were on their way to this place to tell them what had happened.

The Ice harvesters would hate Elsa even more now. Would they turn against Princess Anna too for being the Queen's sister? What about themselves? Where they going to blame Nell as well?

The more Nell thought about this, the more she got the feeling that they were riding towards danger, a different danger than the one they were trying to escape from, but still a danger.

Nell felt she had to say something but they could see ice harvesters in front of them, she realized it was too late to say anything and now they just had to wait and see how the ice harvesters was going to react. That was something they all had to do now.

There was no other way.

When they stopped in the middle of the ice-harvester camp, Nell saw Kristoff coming out from his office and run over to Anna as fast as he could.

"Are you okay, my love?" he asked Anna and looked at her companions, his eyes resting on Nell for a few seconds before asking, "Anna, what has happened, what is wrong?"

"It is Elsa, Kristoff! She is angry we have to get out of here all of us!"

Nell looked around and noticed that the harvesters, was all looking at them with angry expressions on their faces and she could not help the feeling that, it was a bad idea to come here.

These hard men had worked hard their entire lives and now they were informing them that Elsa had attacked her own people.

Nell wanted to get out of their and that was when she saw one of the harvesters grab his axe.

Chapter 52: Elsa: Judgement Day

She had not moved from her throne. She had not moved a single muscle and the throne room looked like a slaughterhouse. All her staff lay dead; their bodies had been torn to shreds by the giant icicles that had emerged from the walls and the ground and ceiling.

Elsa had only one thing on her mind now and it was revenge.

"I will make you suffer for this transgression Anna! You have my word on it. You can run but you cannot hide and I will teach you the true meaning of fear!"

She rose from her throne and began to walk but she fell to the ground in pain. Looking at her own reflection in the ice, she did not recognize the person looking back. A blue flame engulfed her entire body, the same as she had seen in her nightmares, in the world where Hans raped her.

"My God, what is up with me?" she asked herself.

Her hands also looked like they were burning, with the light blue flame.

"I am sure these flames are my own!" she told herself.

Stomping her foot hard into the floor, she created an ice wall so she could look at her own reflection even better. What she saw almost gave her a heart attack. The flame that engulfed her was burning even brighter now, but she could not feel it. She was sure that if someone touched the flames, that persons hand would freeze to ice and could be crushed like glass, for this flame was cold and not warm.

"Why is that happening to me?" she asked herself.

"You are mine Elsa!"

"That is the voice again!" she thought desperately.

"Your true potential, you are beginning to discover it. Release your furry on everyone responsible for Olaf's death! The icy blue flame around you will not hurt you, but can be used as a weapon!"

"My true potential?" she asked.

Looking at her hands, she struck her fist into the air, part of the blue flame came loose and hit the wall, which froze to ice, and she was sure the wall could now be destroyed as if it were glass.

"Like throwing a snowball," she said to herself.

"Let go of your true potential!" the voice said again.

"Anna you killed Olaf, I will get you for that!"

The ice was black mixed with the red color of blood from her victims.

"Nell you deceived me, and for that I want to see you hang!"

The blue flame around her burned even brighter as she thought of her revenge.

"This flame must be the true power that rested in me. I will unleash its full potential!"

Stomping her foot hard into the ground, she turned the surrounding ice black. She thought of Anna and the black ice spread in that way, almost as if the ice had become an aggressive dog in the middle of the hunt for a cat.

"The black ice will follow her and Nell, and only them and no one else, I know!" she said to herself.

"You are the key."

She walked to the window and saw Anna, Nell, Kevin and some guards riding as fast as possible across the bridge to get away from the black ice. Elsa knew the ice would chase them until Anna and Nell had left this world for good.

Her body suddenly hurt and she screamed loudly. She was sure that the use of these newfound powers was tearing at her own body.

"I better not use this hidden power to much or I die until my time has come!"

She was sure the black ice would spread, but only be chasing her two targets down. She saw them reaching the city where people came out of their homes.

"They sure warned them, but my loyal subjects have nothing to fear for me, only Anna and Nell do!"

She saw Kevin come out of his house with his wife by his side.

"They are fleeing with Anna. They have to be traitors. They will die by my hand!"

Anna, Nell, Kevin and Isa, got back on their horses and continued out of the city!

"The guards have stayed back, probably in the hope that they could defeat me!" she said to herself as she watched the guards grab their swords and prepare for the final battle of their lives with her.

She stomped her food hard into the ground again and sent a huge ice wave down the black ice path. She was sure it would not miss the guards. A few seconds later, she saw the wave hit one of the guards that turned to an ice statue.

She could no longer see her four enemies and looked at herself in the ice barrier. She forced herself to relax and the blue cold flame began to disappear again.

"That is how it works!" she said to herself. "When I am angry, I get this blue flame around me to give me extra strength. That is a good thing to know!"

"Good, good. You are everything I have always hoped you would be. I am so proud of you!"

"JUST ANSWER ME! WHO ARE YOU?"

"I am the one who created you, I made you and I am the one you shall obey."

"I do not obey anyone!"

"Yes, you do, you just do not know it yet."

The voice was quiet again.

She heard the swords sing through the open window, and she saw her knight Gerhardt in open battle against the remaining treacherous guards that had helped Anna and Nell in their escape, and she would see the guards die because of it.

Gerhardt avoided the guards' singing swords, and as they battled, Elsa noticed how quickly and elegantly Gerhardt was on his feet, how his sword went through the guard's stomachs and saw him cut the throat open on the last guard.

Elsa saw it all but found no solace in knowing that Gerhardt was her ally or that the treacherous guards had died. She turned around and stared at the throne room she had partially destroyed.

Many long and sharp icicles protrude from both the ceiling, floor and the walls, and had hit many people and many had been speared and was hanging above ground from the giant icicles, many people upon them.

She saw Kai hanging on an icicle that had emerged from the floor, his blood dripping to the floor, painting the black ice red and pink. Another guard named Jacob lay on the floor with both of his arms missing, and blood was pouring out from the gaping holes where his arms used to be.

He coughed and Elsa put her hands over her mouth as she tried to look away, but then she heard him speak, "Elsa, where, why Elsa?"

Slowly, she turned to Jacob, went down on her knees, and with trembling hands she turned Jacob, so that he was no longer lying on the floor face down, but instead his head rested in Elsa's lap, her dress getting more and more red.

He spoke again, "Why, why did you do this?"

What should she answer? Should she just come clean and say she had a mental breakdown? That the trolls prophesy began to become a reality, what could she say to the man that was slowly dying, his life dripping away, what could she say about all the people she had killed, what could she say?

What had she done? What had she become?

Slowly, the dread filled up her soul as she realized in horror, what she had done in her fit of rage.

"Jacob, I am sorry. Please. I did not mean this to happen. None of you did anything wrong. I was focused on Anna and Nell."

Elsa looked down at Jacob and felt his pulse getting weaker and almost trying to grab the last remnants of her old self; she bent down and kissed Jacob on his lips, a slow passionate kiss, and her tongue playing with his.

She removed her lips from his, and Jacob said, "Do not be afraid."

With that, Jacob was no more.

Elsa felt weak and empty, but then she heard the nearby footsteps, and suddenly a woman was shouting, "There is the monster!"

Elsa did not say anything, but she looked at the nearby citizens, who had axes and pitchforks with Gerhardt's head on top of one of them.

Elsa never said a word and from under her, the black ice spread to the citizens, freezing them in place as they screamed out in terror. Then there was silence, except for a young boy who managed to avoid the ice, and as Elsa saw him, she could not guess his age.

He was one inch lower than Elsa was. He was not muscular and he had a little mustache on his lips, clear blue eyes, blond hair, dressed in a green coat and yellow pants. He had drawn his sword and was ready to charge at her, when she stood up and said, "Go ahead, do it. My sister has betrayed me, my servants, my family are dead and gone from this world, so come on, strike me down with all your anger. I think some of them were your family too. Go ahead and kill me if you can."

Then she turned around and went up to her private chambers and went straight to bed and threw herself in it. She cried hard and loud because of the loss of Olaf. She had created him and he had been like a friend to her, and in time Olaf become like a son to her and now he was gone, burnt alive by her treacherous sister!

"Where are you going now Anna?" she asked herself as she cried into a soft pillow.

Elsa suddenly knew the answer as she knew her sister well!

"Kristoff."

She heard footsteps behind her, but without turning around she asked the young man, "How old are you boy?"

"I am fourteen you witch and I will finish you for what you have done to this city and to this kingdom, Anna is the true Queen to us!"

"I see boy but do I really look like a witch?" she asked him, turned around, and confronted him.

"After all that you have done, how dare you ask me about that?" he said and approached her with hate in his eyes.

"Okay then, come and take me then, do with me as you please. People just hate me no matter what I do and I cannot seem to stop failing people, so just finish me then!"

Elsa opened her blood soaked dress, took it off, and saw how she was covered in blood from naval and down her legs. The young boy stopped and looked at her and Elsa guessed that since he was fourteen, he might have been too young to be with a girl his age, and certainly not with a woman like herself.

There they stood in what felt like hours, each of them not knowing what to say or do to each other. For Elsa, there was something else going on inside her, as if her animalistic feelings had become so much stronger.

She felt strong and confused, but she had a strong feeling, as if she was capable of doing what she wanted to do, a sense of innocence lost and the wild side of her had come to the surface of her mind.

Was this strong feeling of part of her because of the blue cold flame that was resting inside her?

Before she knew it, she took off her bra and panties and stood as naked as the day; she entered the world, staring at the young boy who stood spellbound by her beauty. She approached him, putting her arms around his neck and she kissed him, a kiss full of hunger for something she had lost.

A kiss for warmth, love, trust and comfort.

What she really wanted was to get the young stranger to tell her it would be okay, for someone to tell her that she was not alone in the world.

Elsa grabbed his pants, lowered them, and pushed him down on the bed and Elsa got on top of him, kissing him feverously and moved her hands up and down his chest as she kissed him and wanted to join with this boy, who had been caught and was spellbound by her beauty.

She kissed him, but she noticed that he did not kiss her back and as she looked down at the rest of his body, there was blood everywhere running from his chest.

In her eagerness to be with someone, her raw unfiltered emotions had conjured up icicles from her hands, which cut through this young man´s hearth, and he was now stone cold dead.

She was still straddling him but never came to be one with him, and when the shock started to set in, she got off him, crawled over to the corner, got into a fetal position, and hid her face in her legs.

If she did not think about any of this, it could only be a nightmare and she would wake up in a second.

She did not wake up and she knew she had tainted Arendelle, tainted the city, her ancestral city, her parent's city.

She had to get out of there, and slowly she got up and put on her ice Queen dress. She walked over to the dead boy and kissed him on his lips. Then she walked out of the room and closed the door behind her.

She took a torch that was hanging from a wall and went to the fireplace in the kitchen, got a lively fire out of it, so the torch burned brightly, went back to her private chambers and burned the window curtains.

This was to be the young boy´s funeral pyre and the end of the kingdom of Arendelle.

Elsa ran over to the painting of her mother and father and said, "I hope you can forgive me for the things I have done. You were right. I should have made sure that my powers were hidden away."

Elsa ran out of the castle and watched with horror what she had done. The city of Arendelle lay in ruins; the many bodies of her people lay scattered around everywhere. Houses were destroyed with icicles coming out of them, children lay around her like little dolls, and Elsa fell to her knees and vomited for a long time.

Then she got up and thought to herself, "What have I done? Where can I go from here? Should I go north?"

"Travel to the Black Box, you are a witch that murdered the innocent, travel to the Box where you deserve to be." the voice said to her.

Elsa was broken and felt like a mindless slave.

"I am a murderer, the slayer of innocents; yes the Box is where I deserve to be!"

She could not go to Corona after all the things she had done. She was only human and did not want to live alone in the mountains. She knew that for someone like herself, someone who was a danger to society, and who refused to be alone, that there was only one place in the known world, where someone like her could go.

To get there she had to go north to the northern kingdoms, which was under the rule of King Magnus. Therefore, she began to go north as the fire consumed her ancestral home and the kingdom of Arendelle was no more.

Chapter 53: Kristoff: Love Hurts

Kristoff was sitting in his office drinking his second cup of coffee that day as his thoughts returned to Anna and Nell, thinking about his own life and the love he had for both women.

He admitted to himself that when he saw Nell for the first time he had a desire to be with her, but he also realized that he did not even know her at all. When it all came down to it he was not a man that wanted to play around, breaking young women's hearts and stomping on them as if they were nothing to him.

All the people who had come into his life, they were all important to him. As he had thought more about it, he realized that if there was one person he was going to spend the rest of his life with, it would be with Anna, and he knew that now.

When he first met Nell, it had never occurred to him that it was possible to love a woman, and then to experience a similar feeling for another. It had been a confusing idea and feeling for Kristoff, from the very first time he had looked into Nell's green eyes, so he had slowly evaluated his whole life for the past few days.

He knew Nell's life story, but he knew Anna's kisses and love a lot more, not only her warm personality and her warm laughter, but he also knew her body and had touched her bare skin with his hands.

The more he thought about it, the more he realized that he did not love Nell, but he loved Anna, more now than he had ever loved her before.

Kristoff new what it was he was going to do next time he saw Anna.

He was going to pick her up and stare into her sweet eyes, and then he was going to ask her the question, "Do you want to marry me?"

That is what he really wanted to do now, that is what he realized he had to do, and regretted that he had not asked her this question earlier. He was sure he wanted to spend the rest of his life with Anna, the woman he loved.

His thoughts on Anna returned to the day he saw her freeze to an ice statue and she would have been dead had it not been for the love she had felt for her sister. However, this was not the first time that Kristoff had seen people freeze to death.

There was two people, that he could not remember and he could not remember their faces either.

Kristoff himself like all men and women began his life inside a mother's womb, and he had come into the world when a blizzard raged and howled outside the warm home he was born inside off on a dark and stormy night.

His childhood home was built out of stone, and he entered the world at the sight of his father's joyful eyes and felt his mother's warm embrace, but now as time passed, he had a harder time remembering them.

He could not remember their voices or the things they had said to him. After all, it was years ago that they had passed away, and they died while he was still a little boy.

His father had brought him to the workplace to show him to all the harvesters and his mother had traveled with them. The harvesters had thought he was a sweet little boy. When his father and mother started walking home, they were caught in a blizzard, a storm so wild that it was hard to see a few meters ahead.

The harvesters who later found him at home told Kristoff what had happened to his parents.

They had come home and were freezing, the cold going all the way into his mother's bones, and she had become very weak, so she sat down on the bed immediately, while his father rushed to the fireplace to get a fire going in it, and it was here that the harvesters told Kristoff another truth. His mother was sick with a fever, and when she was caught by the blizzard, it took all the rest of her energy and her life.

Kristoff could only remember a few details about it. When his mother sat on the bed and lay down on it, she was a weakened woman and had died soon after, and he could still remember how his father had reacted and held her body in his arms.

The harvesters had told Kristoff that it must have been the shock of everything, which had pushed his father to his death. As his father held her body close to him, he seemingly stopped moving.

The harvesters had become concerned for all three of them as they had seen them heading towards their home, but had seen the blizzard arrive so they had rushed to his parent's home to make sure they had returned home safely. What they found and heard was Kristoff crying and his father and mother dead, his father bend over his wife.

The harvesters told Kristoff that his father had died of a broken heart after he had lost his life companion. When Anna froze in her try to stop Hans´s attack on Elsa, he had thought about how he just almost lost another person to the cold, and then he hated himself.

He hated having had those feelings towards Nell, and he knew that Anna was the only woman that he not only wanted, but also was the woman he loved with all his heart.

His thoughts returned to the ice harvesters under his direction. They had been in a bad mood ever since Elsa had hung that spy in the middle of the marketplace, which is why Kristoff found himself isolated from them now, and it had never been something he had experienced before, but now he had found himself isolated almost every day.

Kristoff was very close to the royal family of Arendelle and it was especially Funk that was filled with anger towards Kristoff, and Funk had let him know that.

Kristoff had been pushed to the ground and Funk had come on top of him and cried, "It was my sister, you cunt! It was my sister she hung, and you, who are so close to the royal family, tell me why I should not choke the life out of you!?"

The other harvesters ran to Kristoff's help and got Funk off him while Funk continued to shout, "My sister is dead, because of that freak of a woman, and all of you are just working for the man who is close to that creature! I will not have it! I will not have it!"

Olav said, "Funk take it easy before you hurt someone!"

"The only one I am interested in hurting is that bastard Kristoff. I really want to hurt him. What happened to my sister was a true crime, and what happened to her should happen to the royal family!"

Kristoff tried to reason with Funk: "Hear me out Funk. What happened to your sister was not my fault, and besides she was a traitor, who planned to inform Hans of the Southern Isles about the strengths and weaknesses of the kingdom.

"She was not a traitor!" Funk answered and tried to escape the other harvesters grasps.

Kristoff could see the hate in Funk´s eyes. The hate that was shining bright with all the fires of hell hidden behind those eyes.

Kristoff knew that Funk would have killed him, if the other harvesters had not hold Funk back.

How had it all come to this? Kristoff asked himself.

"Did you know how the Queen executed her? Have you heard that Gerhardt ejaculated in his pants as he executed my sister! Tell me my sister deserved that kind of humiliation! Since Elsa never showed us any evidence of her accusation, I do not think my sister was a traitor!"

Kristoff had to give it to Funk.

Elsa had not provided any evidence to support her claim, according to a letter he had received from Anna, and in that letter she described how Elsa became increasingly paranoid as the weeks went by.

Funk's sister may have been an innocent victim of Elsa, but Kristoff would not believe it.

He could not.

Olav managed to calm down Funk again, and they stayed away from Kristoff and the other harvesters and from that point on Funk and Olav only worked together in cutting and preparing the ice.

When Kristoff drank his coffee, he thought of that incident. Every nerve in his body told him to kill Funk for that attack, but Kristoff did not think that the other harvesters would do anything to him. As Funk´s words began to sink in with many of them, that his sister might not have been a spy but an innocent victim, Kristoff found that his men no longer spoke to him, and he found it to be of serious concern.

Every fiber of his being told him to drive to the castle, take Anna over his shoulder and drive as fast as he could out of Arendelle, perhaps driving towards the Northern Kingdom, as all other places was dangerous to be in.

If he were seen as a criminal, he would end up in The Black Box in the Northern Kingdom. The Southern Isles was under Hans´s control. Elsa´s distant family controlled the Kingdom of Corona, and Tehomia was not a place he could hide either with the chaos in that kingdom.

It was too risky.

He still had a job to do, and he had not been assaulted by anymore of his other men, so he did not think it would be necessary to panic. He was not a coward and he did not want to be seen as such.

However, he could not ignore that feeling inside him that told him to run and before he knew it, he got up and went over to the window. He looked outside and saw his men work to complete the Sultan's ice order, and he could see that they were all working as hard and efficient as they had always done.

Why did he have such a bad feeling about being here?

Before he could think of the matter any further, he saw people on horses approaching them. From here, he recognized Anna's red hair and saw that she was wearing only a dress, and he knew immediately that something was very wrong.

Hurrying over to a chest at the other end of the small building, he found an extra coat, got out of the building, and ran over to Anna as quickly as possible with the coat in his hands.

"Are you okay, my love?" he asked Anna, gave her the coat, and quickly looked at her companions.

He recognized Kevin and Isa, the husband and wife, whom had lost their baby girl, his eyes stared at Nell for a few seconds, trying to read the horror written in her face, and then he asked, "Anna, what has happened, what is wrong?"

"It is Elsa, Kristoff! She is angry we have to get out of here all of us!"

"Anna, what has she done, tell me everything!"

"Kristoff, she killed them all! Kai is dead, Judy is dead and they are all dead. She killed them with giant icicles coming up from everywhere, none of us is safe, and we should get out of here and that in a hurry!"

"Okay, just let me get my stuff!"

Then he heard Nell scream, "Look Out!"

When he saw and heard her shout it, he knew the danger was coming from behind, and Kristoff knew in that split second that he would not be quick enough to avoid the danger.

His eyes fell on Anna, whose mouth formed a "NOOOOOO!"

Kristoff knew it was over and he said to her, "I love you!"

Kristoff never felt the axe penetrate his skull, as his world became one of a silent darkness.

Chapter 54: Anna: Loss

Anna was scared. She had never been as scared in her life as she was riding besides friends towards the harvester's camp. As she was riding beside her companions consisting of Nell, Kevin and Isa, she felt the fear slithering through her body like a snake.

The thing about fear was that once it got hold in you, it did not release its grasp, allowing the fear to spread throughout the body and mind and causing great distress.

The fear in her that had been awakened by her sister changing so much and had become so dangerous to everyone, felt for Anna as a chain of sorrow upon her heart.

She had loved her sister with all her heart, but she could no longer tolerate that Elsa killed people who was innocent of crimes they did not commit. Anna knew that Nell was innocent of any wrongdoing, and she had prepared to do whatever was necessary to protect Nell, and Olaf had died because of this.

Even thinking about it now, made Anna's blood run cold as ice. She liked to consider herself a person that made friends with everybody, even lying assholes like Hans, but never in her life had she considered herself capable of taking that extra step to protect a loved one...

That came naturally for her.

Anna had been prepared to give her own life for her sister, and she had never once thought twice about that. She had seen Hans being ready to kill Elsa, and Anna had yelled "NOOO" as Hans's sword came down towards her.

That same love she had for her sister at that point was now the same love she felt towards Nell.

"Nell" Anna thought as she rode beside that woman, that she now considered family. Anna had learned a long time ago from her parents, that you had to be good to people, because if you were not, that might come back to haunt you someday, but Anna did not want to protect Nell out of some old memories she had for her long dead parents.

Anna protected Nell because she wanted to.

No one was to hurt Nell ever again, Anna would not allow that, and it was this thought she held on to as she and her companions arrived at the ice harvester's camp.

Anna saw Kristoff come running out of his office, with a jacket in his hands.

"Thank God for that!" Anna though silently as she gazed upon her approaching lover, the love of her life.

"Are you okay, my love?" Kristoff asked her and gave her the jacket, and quickly gazed upon her companions and he asked, "Anna, what has happened, what is wrong?"

Where was she to start?

Elsa was mad and was a danger to them all. They had to get away and with shivering lips Anna said, "It is Elsa, Kristoff! She is angry we have to get out of here all of us!"

"Anna, what has she done, tell me everything!"

"Kristoff, she killed them all! Kai is dead, Judy is dead and they are all dead. She killed them with giant icicles coming up from everywhere, none of us is safe, and we should get out of here and that in a hurry!"

"Okay, just let me get my stuff!"

Then she heard Nell scream, "Look Out!"

Anna saw him as well, she had not thought much about it as the harvester had approached them, but now it was too late, and as she saw the harvester lift the axe up, ready to strike with it, Anna screamed "NOOOOOO!" and she just managed to hear Kristoff say: "I love you!"

Then he fell where he had stood, with the axe deeply buried in his skull, and just like her dead lover, Anna fell from her horse and hit the cold ice and snow. She had been overcome with such a shock of horror that she was about to faint, but it was like her mind refused to allow her to faint, as there were danger everywhere around her, and through her eyes she could see, but did not understand what she was seeing.

Men running back and forward, a sword got drawn, screams of terror and horror, she was certain she saw an arm getting cut off, but she was unable to see who it was. She could not see clearly, then the shock of it all seemed too much, and Anna fainted.

When she came to she found herself in the arms of Nell, who kissed her on the cheek, and a bonfire was burning brightly in front of her. Isa and Kevin was there with them.

"Oh, you are awake again I see" Kevin said, as he was cleaning his sword dripping with blood.

"Blood!" Anna though to herself. "His sword is red with blood."

"What happened?" she asked.

There was a thick silence between them all, but then Kevin said, "Anna, do you remember what happened, before you fell of your horse?"

Just like that, it all came back to her now, and her heartbeat went faster.

"Kristoff!" she almost screamed, and felt Nell's arms tighten around her in a hug, she barely noticed.

"I am sorry my princess but Kristoff is dead, are you ready to hear what happened after you passed out?"

The tears was running down her cheeks but Anna knew that she had to be strong, and with a whisper, she asked, "What happened?"

Kevin took the word: "After you fell from your horse, I immediately got off from mine and used my sword to cut that ice harvester down where he stood, the one who took the life of Kristoff, and after that everything became chaos. The harvesters turned against each other, those there were on your side attacked those who were against you and your sister. It became a blood bath and in the end there was one ice harvester left standing, a man named Olav, who was on our side, but I killed him too."

Anna asked, "Why did you kill him when he was on our side?"

"To keep us safe, so no one knows where we went off to. I picked you up from the ground and got you up on my horse, and with your own horse tied to mine, we continued forward. You were still passed out, and I have to say to you now, that we did not stay behind to bury the body of Kristoff, there was no time for that."

Anna felt as if she was going to break into a thousand pieces, and found herself resting in the arms of Nell, and with her left ear, she could hear the beating heartbeat of Nell's heart. They were all calm, almost soothing to Anna.

Anna asked, "What happened then?"

This time it was Nell, who spoke with a calm voice: "We continued on and eventually found this place, and decided to make a bonfire to keep us warm. We waited for you to wake up so we could continue our travels, but I think we can stay here for tonight."

"No." Anna replied. "We have to go and get help to Arendelle, we must be able to protect the people, we must continue on."

Anna noticed that Isa and Kevin were looking at each other, almost as if they were asking each other, what they were going to say, and that made Anna uneasy.

"Has something else happened?" Anna asked and felt her own heartbeat beat faster.

It was Nell, who talked: "Anna, from where we are now, we can see the castle and the city from here, but it is not great news what I am going to tell you."

Anna felt Nell's arms around her, her soft lips kissing her forehead: "Anna, we could see the icicles pop out from everywhere, destroying all the houses and killed most of the citizens in the city, and the castle itself has gone up in flames, there is no more castle and there is no more Arendelle."

Anna tried to process what she had just heard but she only came out with a little moan as she passed out again.

Anna awoke when she felt it in her fingers. She had been sleeping next to Nell and her hand had rested upon Nell's abdomen, when she felt something move though her fingers. It was Nell's child, the child of Hans, which was moving a bit.

It would still be some months before the child was to be born, and Nell had decided to keep it. Anna could not stop smiling on the thought of how brave Nell was, but she also knew that there were things she had to see for herself now.

Getting up, she wandered over to the edge of the cliff and saw what was left of Arendelle.

The city had been destroyed and her ancestral home was just a smoldering ruin.

She heard someone coming up from behind her, but instinctively she knew it was Kevin and he said, "I saw your sister coming out of the castle, she seemed alive and unharmed. She headed north afterward, and I did not see her again."

Anna asked, "Why would she head north? That is the way to the Northern Kingdoms, but I thought she would be traveling to Tehomia, where Tamas is waiting for her."

"I have no idea princess, why she would be traveling to the Northern Kingdoms, is there anything special in that Kingdom?"

Anna did not know what to think or feel. For all she knew Elsa would be walking around in her insanity, always searching and crying for the things lost to her, for the lives stolen by her, but Anna could not know this, only speculate.

Anna was sad but no tears came from her eyes. She did not want to feel apathy towards her sister because of her insanity, but what else could she do, but travel further and further away from her? Her sister could not control her powers and had become a danger to everyone she met, and now Arendelle was no more.

Where would her sister go? Who would want to get to know her? She was a danger to society, and she was insane, unwanted and extremely dangerous.

"She might be going there," Anna began but stopped in mid-sentence, as she was thinking about the possibilities.

"She might be what?" Kevin asked her eagerly.

"The Box, Kevin. "The Black Box." She is probably headed for The Black Box."

Kevin responded: "If she is going to "The Box," she will be confined to it for the rest of her life; we will never see her again unless we end up in "The Box" with her."

Anna said, "I cannot imagine any other place she would be heading. Sure, she could be traveling up the mountains, but I do not think she will be doing that this time. I do not think she wants to be alone.

Kevin said, "This might be for the better, everybody keeps to themselves in "The Box." I think Elsa will be able to get something out of her life in there."

Anna said, "Do not be ridiculous. The Black Box is the end station for those who cannot fit into a normal society. I have heard stories about that place, but if Elsa goes in there, then I saw my sister for the last time as she was sitting on her throne, and I will never see her again after that."

Here they stood Kevin and Anna looking down at what had once been a beautiful kingdom and they wondered what would happen to them now, and what would happen to Elsa, if she really were heading towards "The Black Box."

If Elsa went into it, she would never leave it again alive, but maybe this was for the better. This meant that Elsa would be living isolated from the rest of the world, and if Elsa proved to be too powerful, the syndicate within would kill her.

Chapter 55: Hans: Karma Was Always A Bitch

Hans was sitting on a bench in the courtyard, were the apple tree stood planted, the red apples on it being devoured by worms and bugs. Hans was in deep contemplation about the actions he had taken to get to this point in his life, and he asked himself, how he could have been so stupid.

Ever since waking up from the nightmare, in which he stabbed Anna to death, he could not get that dream out of his head. The images of the broken blood soiled body of that beautiful princess, stood as an oiled painting edged deep inside his mind, making him feel sick to the stomach.

He had asked himself, why he suddenly felt like this? Why did he feel guilty that way?

Anna was after all still alive, home and safe in the kingdom of Arendelle. He felt like he was being haunted by his misdeeds, tormenting him with images and sounds in his mind, of those he had killed, those he had ordered killed, and those he would have killed in the future.

He felt eyes upon him from people he could not see. He heard a woman screaming his name in ecstasy in his mind, and that voice seemed to change with every passing minute. Anna was moaning his name, Elsa was moaning his name, Nell was moaning his name, his mother was moaning his name, and suddenly they were all doing it at the same time.

Then the voices stopped, and pearls of salty sweet, ran down his face, as he struggled to make sense of it all. The throne was his, there was no doubt about that, but what a price he had to pay for it, a price many people had to pay for.

Ever since that nightmare, it was as if it all was catching up to him, and it was now he truly understood, that he was truly alone. He did not have friends, he did not have any family left, and he did not have anyone that truly liked him.

Even his people had started to take notice that his brutality was far worse than that of his father and he started to realize the consequences of his actions that everything came at a price at some point. The price was not all the lives he had taken, family or not, but it was the fact, that his body was almost aching in an unimaginative pain of all the things he had done, and when he looked back on every single thing he did at the same time, he found it difficult to justify any of them.

That had never been a problem in the past so why was it a problem for him now? Was it because of that dream? Was it because of Anna?

He could hear her in his mind, whispering and moaning that love is an open door.

Was it because he started to compare himself to Anna in some twisted way? Was it because Anna despite everything that had happened was the one, whom were surrounded by people who truly did love her?

Elsa and Anna had each other and Hans had no one.

He once had a woman, but Nell had been against him ever since he almost killed his brother that day. He wanted someone who was with him, one who would share his dreams for conquest and glory to the Southern Isles, but then he realized that he once had that, or he could have had that with Anna.

They could have run away together even though that Elsa said, that Anna could not marry a man she had just met, there could have been so many other choices, and for Hans, it suddenly dawned upon him that he might have chosen all the wrong choices.

He got up and went into the throne room, sat down upon the throne and contemplated these thoughts, when a servant girl names Lisa, came walking with a crystal goblet and some wine, and came up to him. She was scantily clad in a dress with her skirt barely covering her buttocks and the little shirt she was wearing covered her small breast down to her nipples. Lisa was eighteen years old. She was not thin, but had curves that made Hans more aware of her.

She poured wine into his goblet took a sip from it, waited, and then passed it on to Hans. That was a strict routine. Before Hans ate something or took a sip of something, someone had to have tasted it first, and he had started to use Lisa for that sick and sadistic purpose, or her little brother would be killed.

That was not all he was using the girl for, and as he sat on the throne, he undid the buttons on his trousers and removed them so they were down around his ankles, and his dick lay there as a soft slumbering animal, that was in need of a gentle touch.

Lisa understood perfectly what was expected of her, this was after all not the first time he had done this to her. The first time he had forced her down upon her knees and made her suck his manhood, but he had not used her for anything else than that.

Lisa grabbed hold of his dick, and opened her mouth for it. Hans wanted nothing more than to stay in that moment at that very time, and feel his dick being sucked by this young girl, but other thoughts kept interrupting him.

What was going to happen once he had taken over Arendelle? Would Hans still be in debt to the master? What was he to do when all things were said and done? What about Miko?

Miko was not a friend, but only an ally as things were now, sent to keep a close eye on Hans, and Hans hated that.

His manhood was now stiff enough, so Lisa got on top of him and slowly lowered herself onto his dick, and started riding it, as she knew what she had to do.

Once upon a time Hans would have seen all of this as wrong, but he was the king and he could do whatever pleased him to whomever it pleased him to do it to, and no one was to stop him from doing these things he wanted to do to others.

He looked up upon the girls face, and saw that it had been replaced with Anna´s face, and suddenly it was replaced by Elsa´s face. Hans began to understand what was happening to him. He had heard tales about other people going through traumatic events, that resulted in them seeing and hearing things that was not there.

It dawned upon Hans that he was experiencing some kind of hallucinations that could haunt the individual experiencing it, for the rest of their lives, and this was a reason in itself to be aware of the mind.

If he could not trust his own senses, he would have a difficult time in being king, and when he thought about all the people he had killed and had made sure got killed, he found it more and more difficult to be able to carry out more of those killings.

He thought about that nightmare again. He was sure that it had been the first true indicator of the stress disorder, but it had been all the violence in it, that had seen so real, so out of control, that it was difficult for him to think about something else and just ignore his dream.

He remembered how in the dream, Anna had held his head in a lock, forcing him to see all the blood that ran from her eyes and her mouth, and Hans came to that conclusion, that when Anna had held him in that lock, was when the disorder truly began to inhabit his mind and body.

He heard the girl moan, and he looked up upon her face, only to see the face of Nell, with those green eyes of hers, looking directly into his, but these eyes were filled with fear. Nell had been a slave to Hans, and Hans lowered his head, because he did not dare to look into those eyes again.

A whimper escaped the girl's mouth. Hans felt how tight she was and how dry she was down there. She was not wet, and why had he expected her to be that?

Feeling the urge to strangle Lisa, he pushed the girl of him with such a force that she landed upon the floor in front of him and Hans yelled out, "Go with you, I do not want to see your face around here again!"

The girl got up on her legs as fast as she could and without looking at him, she walked away as fast as she could out of Hans´s sight, just like he wanted it to be.

Hans pulled his pants up and sat on that throne, when he heard footsteps approach him, and he looked up and saw Miko coming his way. Miko stopped in front of him and gave a deep bow to him, Hans was after all the rightful king of the Southern Isles, and was about to say something when Hans spoke first, "What news do you bring me Miko?"

"I bring word from the master, there has been a change of plans, and we are now going to plan B."

"Plan B, you say? I did not know that such a plan even existed. What was the full scope of Plan A?"

Miko continued: "Plan A was to sow seeds of discontent among the royal family of Arendelle in which the master used an agent for that job. Furthermore, the master used his dark arts to lure the youngest son in the Tehomia family to fall to his death, and then influence the king to order a giant ice order to drain the kingdom of Arendelle for workers and people alike. Then he would influence the king of Tehomia, to set up an ambush for Queen Elsa, when she arrived to celebrate prince Kasim´s birthday, while you used the navy to destroy Arendelle, while the queen was away, so her powers could not interfere with the battle to come. That was plan A."

"Seems convoluted to me," Hans replied.

"It was actually straight forward that one, Elsa would be captured and brought to the master, but now when this plan is a failure, another agent have been ordered to poison the rest of the royal family of Tehomia, killing them all. The master also informs me, that some things has happened in Arendelle, he would like you to know about."

"What are these things?"

"The kingdom of Arendelle is no more and it citizens are dead."

Hans almost fell out of his throne, when the news hit him like a clenched fist to the face.

"What has happened?" he replied with the shock painted upon his troubled brow.

"Apparently, Elsa lost control of her powers and ruined her own kingdom, and then she sat fire to her own castle and burned it down. Her sister Anna, and a servant called Nell, and two others have escaped. The good news is that Elsa has reached her full potential; the bad news is that she is headed for "The Box" in the "Northern Kingdom."

"The Black Box?" She is heading for "The Black Box?" If she ever enters that place, then the law is clear, that she has to spend the rest of her life in the darkness of "The Box. It makes my navy useless. It makes all the things which have transpired here completely unnecessary."

"You are right about that Hans, but the master did anticipate that Elsa would be traveling to "The Box." It seems clear now that your navy and the Southern Isles is no longer needed, and the master would like to keep the knowledge about his existence to a minimum."

Before Hans could reply, he saw the knife but he could not avoid it, as Miko plunged it into his jugular, and Hans felt it penetrate his skin, veins and muscles, and he was gasping for breath.

Hans fell to his knees, and with his right hand, he tried to stop the bleeding that ran from his neck, but he could not speak, but he knew that he was slowly drowning in his own blood.

He could have sworn as he lay down and felt his body being drained of blood that he saw Anna leaning in over him to give him a kiss, and then everything went dark before Hans´s eyes, and he knew no more, as he slowly died.

Chapter 56: Zerah: The Love Behind A Locked Door

Zerah was approaching the sand hill and saw the old ruin that was standing next to it. It had taken her a while to find away outside the city as the guards were patrolling everywhere. Their captain and been found dead with his throat cut open, and the guards had become even more aggressive in their search for her.

They cared not about the dignity of the people, but broke it almost whenever they could. They would walk into people's homes and start yelling at them and barking orders that was to be obeyed the first time. Anyone that resisted was seen as a traitor and was to be executed, that was what Sultan Ali had ordered and his words were law, and was to be obeyed immediately.

Anyone that was asking questions was killed, and their executions became sick entertainment for those that was called law-abiding citizens.

No matter what anyone said or did, there was someone ready to contact the guards and become a snitch, so the wrong doers were executed.

Even the much beloved Scheherazade was starting to be hated by the people, even though she did her best to calm the people and her husband, but her words were ignored and Zerah smiled.

"What had Scheherazade expected?" Zerah asked herself laughing.

Scheherazade was of the royal family that was becoming more unpopular as the days went by so what had she truly expected? Was Scheherazade so arrogant in her belief that she as a woman was going to stop the coming war that was brewing in the horizon? Did she think that she had the influence and the power to stop her master Zuldrak?

If so, she would be sadly mistaken about that.

Zerah snuck out of the city in the middle of the night, even though this was a much more difficult thing to do then first expected. The guards where everywhere and blocking the gates and she was missing both a nose and ears, so she would be stopped no matter what she did.

She waited until darkness fell upon the land and the stars was shining bright from the black velvet above her. That was when she scaled a building using a ladder and got access to the rooftops.

One guard was patrolling directly in front of her and had his back turned to her, and she was silent, and the guard hardly felt it as the knife went through him. He was dead seconds later, without making a sound.

She jumped from rooftop to rooftop and avoided the guards when she could, and she eventually reached the wall surrounding the city and jumped and landed upon it.

She had no time to think, because of the patrolling guards upon the wall. All she could do was to climb down the wall from the other side and land upon the dessert sand. Then she could find the ancient ruin.

Her heart was beating fast as she climbed down. If she fell, she would be dead and it was not a guarantee that she would be stuck in limbo again, even though she was connected to her master.

Climbing down, her hands were sweaty, she was afraid of falling, and of being discovered, but one-step down at a time she realized that she was going to make it. When she felt solid ground underneath her feet, she cried tears of joy, and then she walked the lonely road towards the sand hills and cliffs, in search of the ancient ruin.

She walked as night started to become day and the sun started rising above her head, greeting her with warmth and life, and would soon start torture her with heat. Yet, she pressed on with the ruin in mind and after walking for what felt like hours, she finally reached the ruin.

The ruin was ancient and had been destroyed many years ago, but for how long no one alive could say. It was speculated that the ruin once was a temple for worship, but who build it, and what was worshipped; no one could say that for sure.

The ruined temple barely stood upright with its roof having collapsed and the pillars of the temple was almost gone, turned to dust by the sands of time, but that were something at work here.

Zerah could feel it deep inside her soul that there was something about this place, something forbidden, and she felt like she was not supposed to be here. This was forbidden land, unholy in energy but powerful echoes of magic remained.

Zerah could feel it all around her, yet she could not see or understand what she was supposed to do. Her master had gone silent, so no answer awaited her from him.

Zerah opened her heart and mind to the echoes, and closed her eyes and listened, and somewhere deep insight her mind whispers came forward from deep within the earth.

The whispers were many insight her mind, "Free us, help us!"

She heard drums within her mind that sounded like war drums, rhythms used for tribal dances.

She started moving her body to the rhythm, and she danced as the blazing sun arose above her, but it was as if the sun´s warmth did not reach her. She saw the sand that came towards her, carried by a soft breeze suddenly froze in place midair as if time itself stood still, while she was dancing to the tribal rhythm.

The drums within her mind became louder and she felt the need to cut someone open to spill blood even if it was her own blood.

She took out the knife and cut her palm and few drops of blood landed on the floor of the temple, and she felt ecstasy, as all problems and emotions was removed from her mind, and she collapsed on the floor where her blood had been spilled.

"Help us, now!" the voices within her mind said, and she saw her blood seep through the stones and sand and then the voices became louder within her mind.

The temple shook beneath her and she felt it deep within her soul as if the temple itself reacted to her tribal dance and ecstasy. The floor split apart and revealed a spiral staircase that had been buried for who knows how many millennia's.

The voices said, "Come to us, come forth our champion!"

She felt as if she was in a dream and Zerah descended the spiral staircase and saw the images upon the walls. Images of burning demons of smoke and ash dancing a tribal dance and as she descended the images was dancing ever faster, ripping open each other's bodies, where after it healed once again in a continues cycle of violence.

The images was watching her as she descended. They were laughing, many of them encouraging her forward.

She heard whispers within her mind, "Come forth chosen one, servant of Zuldrak, you whom shall have whatever you desire. Set us free all of us."

The staircase seemed to continue downward ever downward, and the voices inside her said, "When we are out we will give you everything you desire. You can be one of us, a part of a family that loves you. We will tear you open and your wounds will heal, you will enjoy the pain, and when we do not, we will love you in ways one should not think possible. You will know pleasure when you are happy and when you are in pain. You Zuldraks champion are so close to the end now."

After what felt like an eternity, she finally had firm ground beneath her feet and she looked around at her surroundings.

The circular stairs ended at the bottom of a circular room with two different doors. On the walls, the images of the demons of fire and ash danced away, but when they saw her, the images moved their head in her direction.

They were looking at her and smiling at her, but they were images were they not?

"We cannot leave this place but our powers are growing, that is how we can be seen, because we are powerful, but to fully leave this place, to make you part of our family, we must fully be set free."

Zerah approached the door on the right and pushed it open. The voices within her mind became louder and walking through a tunnel, she saw the dancing demons of fire watching her every step from the walls,

She came to a door made of solid gold. There were five holes in the door, as if something was used to be a part of it, but she did not know where these objects were.

She remembered that her master wanted her to search the palace for some kind of Zeal.

Would this Zeal match the openings on the door and what about the rest of the Zeals?

She doubted that she could open the door without all five Zeals being placed in the door, and one of them had to be in the palace.

She said, "I do not want to be ripped open like what the images are doing to one another. That is not me that is not what Zuldrak promised."

The voices spoke; "You will be one of us. We are gods, we are demons, we are everything, pain and pleasure are the same thing to us, but if you do not find pleasure in pain, pleasure in the healing, then we shall make love to you as you desire. You shall never be alone again. You are precious to us, you are family to us and we will make you one of us if you open this door. Zerah, you are loved by us, and you may think that we are just saying this to tempt you with all you desire, but we are immortal, and we can bestow upon you immortality as well. We know you have lived a hard life. If you release us you will never have to fear again."

"How does it feel being like all of you?"

"We are individuals and we are one at the same time. What we do we do together, pain love, suffering, joy they are all the same thing to us. We live forever and so all emotions are the same to us. Once we are out, we shall lick you everywhere you want us to lick you. We shall hold you in our arms and only let go if you want us to do. We shall give you children of fire if you want us to do so. If you want us to give you food and water or blood to drink, we shall give it to you. Everything you want us to do to you, we shall do, as time does not matter to us. Food and water does not matter to us, only family and all feelings of pleasure matters and what gives you pleasure we shall give to you."

"How do you make me one of you?"

"You are already a part of us, as you are part of Zuldrak. Once we are free, we can fully transform you. You must find the Zeal in the palace to do so. Return to the circular room, go through the left door, and follow the tunnel that stretches as far as the eye can see. By the end of it, you will find the entrance to the palace. Kill that royal family, create chaos as a diversion and find the Zeal, where they most likely are to have it stored away, where gold and diamonds shines brightly."

Zerah looked upon the door and she said, "I just want to know what love is."

"You are already loved Zerah, you are already one of us, but we can only transform you once we are out and then no matter what we need to do to show our love, we will do so, we will do everything you tell us to do, and we will always be there for you."

"It sounds too good to be true."

"We are not humans we do not have to deceive, for we are immortal, there is no reason for us to lie, as that just created more problems, now return to the palace and get your revenge and kill that family, find the Zeal and it will not take long before you are one of us!"

Chapter 57: Elsa: The Black Box

Elsa found an old fishing boat, belonging to an old fisherman named Malaki, who was heading for the Northern Kingdom. As this was Elsa´s ultimate stop as well, she asked Malaki if she could sail with him, on his little one-man boat, and Malaki told her that she could, but she had to be okay to share the captains living compartments with him, which she agreed to do so.

What other choice did she have? Elsa prepared herself to pay the price of passage to Malaki, knowing full well, that if he tried something with her; it would be a small price to pay. Elsa had silently sworn to never again, loose her temper no matter what situation she was in, and she hoped she could keep that promise to herself.

She would not survive in "The Black Box" if she did.

"The Black Box" not even being near it was enough to make any person, which knew about the story behind The Black Box tremble, at the mere thought of it. Elsa had read the stories about it, while she had been researching her ancestral line.

"The Black Box" had its origins in events that took place many centuries ago in the Northern Kingdom's harbor city called "Icilia", which was also the capital city of the kingdom. Back then, a girl called Sasha, had been raped and murdered by an unknown assailant.

Now, it happened that there was a boy named Dumio, who had been a friend of her, and he had been seen around the scene of the crime, at the time of the murder. Because of this he was questioned about the murder, but as he was nervous, the guards took this as a sign, that he was the guilty one, and he was hanged for the murder of his friend, while the screaming crowd chanted for his death.

The guards captured the real killer a few days afterwards, and the people and its Queen at the time, Queen Mia, felt so ashamed of themselves that they abolished the death penalty in the city and in all of the Northern Kingdom and proclaimed that the criminals was to be locked up behind bars instead.

Now, it happened that the city only had a small prison and could not contain all those criminals that seemed to infest the city, so the people turned to Queen Mia for guidance.

Now, the Queen was one, who thought long and hard on decisions, and weighed in all solutions to a problem and as her thoughts fell upon the murderers, pedophiles, and thieves, she decided to allow a prison camp with high walls to be constructed outside of the city.

She said that she wanted the criminals to be the ones to build this prison camp and wall, and make those same criminals pay for it, with their bodies and minds and health.

The criminals was forced outside of the city, with guards being ready to kill them at any given time.

The first thing they had to do was to set up a primitive tall fence, comprised of wood, so a wooden wall stood surrounding the prisoners as a temporary solution.

The architect of its construction named Masilia, a man who was convicted of rape, but later accounts casted doubts about that, requested the building materials from the Queen herself.

Mia gave him all the materials and tools he needed to have the fence build to seal of the area, which would house the criminals.

The only thing was that the criminals thought that this was going to be a new super prison, and the guards would be controlling them within it, but Queen Mia had other plans.

Her son Ulrich, later known as the weak, had suggested something so simple and horrible for the prisoners at the same time, that Mia had planned to make him king at a young age, but he got sick with fever and the healers told Mia that her son would not survive it.

Out of grief, she ordered Masilia to build the fence faster, or all of the criminals would lose their life.

Masilia made the other criminals work faster because of this threat, and soon the fence was completed, surrounding all the criminals within.

Mia visited the newly constructed fence and told Masilia and the other criminals that the construction of the fence was but the first step, now they had to make a wall made out of concrete instead that was to be lined up along the fence, and it was to be build bigger.

It took two years and a lot of hard work before the fence made of tree was removed for a proper wall that surrounded the prisoners.

As the wall had been constructed many criminals has died of the hard labor and malnourishment or they had died in accidents, but there always seemed to be new criminals coming in so there were plenty of people, to pick up the hammer when it fell out of the hand of a dead man.

As the wall was completed, Mia send guards to patrol near its footing, ready to kill anyone, who tried to escape. Mia herself gave birth to a son, Henry who would later be overseeing the early stages of The Black Box being built.

Rumors swarmed around the Queen and the son of hers.

Her oldest had died of the fever and about nine months later she gave birth to another son, but Queen Mia was not married, so rumors began, that as her son Ulrich lay dying of that fever, at the age of sixteen, she had out of grief, sought him out in his sickbed. She had crawled underneath his blanket, and had her way with him, and the child Henry was an unholy offspring of that night.

Queen Mia then told the prisoners within the wall, that they were nothing but monsters, for comparing the criminals to dogs would be an insult to dogs, and then told them that the true punishment began now.

Queen Mia told them, that they had all chosen to break the rules and the common law of the land, and as such told them that their punishment would be a life within the wall, without any rules at all.

They were free to do whatever they wanted to do against each other, and she would make sure that her catapults would be loaded with food that would be shot down to the hungry prisoners.

No guards were to help them, no guards were to interfere but be ready to kill those who tried to escape from the walls that held the prisoners captured.

Then the true punishment began.

As the prisoners was trapped within the walls, they were also trapped with each other, with new prisoners arriving from time to time, a hierarchal structure started to emerge within it.

If a prisoner was a pedophile the other prisoner would beat him to death with punches and kicks, and the guards there were posted outside did not interfere, an when the food came crashing down from the sky, and splattered as it hit the ground, the prisoners tore each other to pieces to get that food.

The only thing the prisoners could do, and the Queen gave them permission to do, was to empty the buckets they used to shit in and dump it off at a farmer, who later would be using it as fertilizer for his fields.

The Queen saw this as a problem as there would be too much excrements left over that would be stinking and demanded Masilia to construct a sewer system so the prisoners could get their business done in a better way, but Masilia was already dead at this point. When Queen Mia crushed a rebellion, many surviving rebels was sent to the camp as well, which meant that there would be a lacking of prisoner space,

When this complaint reached the Queens ears, she just said that she was not going to have the living space expanded, she did not want perfectly good earth, to be walked on and soiled upon by these criminals, but she decided to be a bit fair.

She would give the prisoners materials to build a sewer that would be connected to "Icilia´s" sewers, in this way, the bodily waist from people could be easier dealt with, and furthermore she would be giving them the materials to make sure they could built up, as that would be their only choice.

Now, it happened that the space between the four walls became filled with people from every occupations.

Some were carpenters and some were building masters, and some even knew the art of crafting materials, in other words, blacksmiths found themselves in the prison to, and they would be able to make weapons if they just had the materials for it.

Now, it happened that the Queen had a complete disinterest in the fact that the prisoners could with time arm themselves with deathly weapons, and insisted that whatever happened in the camp, whomever died in it and found themselves in it, was not something anyone outside the camp should be concerned about.

It was here the build master known as Nahilis, decided to ask the Queen for materials like steel and iron, and other proper materials to build upwards, so there would be space for the newly arrived, and he got what he asked for.

It was around this time that an inner market had started to appear in the structure, with small things like tobacco and buttons for a shirt, became some of the items known as "Items of pleasure."

A prisoner did not need tobacco to survive; this was why certain items was named as such.

That would only be made clearer as time went by.

"Items of pleasure" was very valuable, enough to kill each other over, but Nahilis had another idea.

Realizing that everybody was going to kill each other as time went by, Nahilis decided to set up a team of volunteers to try to make some kind of guard force within the walls, and furthermore demanded to know what newcomers had done to be within the walls, and what skill or trade they had.

In short, Nahilis became a kind of leader that everyone knew of inside the camp.

Realizing that there soon enough would not be any more space for other prisoners Nahilis had all the build masters collect a group of volunteers to build skywards, telling them that if no more space were created, people would be crushed to death within the camp.

Upon realizing this, the volunteers consisting of build masters, carpenters, blacksmiths and others started to work and form materials like iron and steel, so it could be used in the building projects, and it did not take long before the prisoners had enough materials to add the steel beams in each corner of the encampment. Furthermore, they soon had the materials to have an entirely new floor added to the camp that started to look more like a prison.

There was some problems with this solution however as the new floor constructed made the prisoners live in darkness, and those who lived on the new floor had all of the Sun and light to themselves.

It could not be avoided that conflict arose of the discontent that the people in the darkness felt, for the entire first floor covered the ground floor in darkness and Nahilis was murdered as a result, stabbed several times in the back.

Now, it happened that those, who had become guards, suddenly saw a business opportunity that was too good to ignore.

Over the following days they went to each and every prisoner and told them to pay the guards protection, and if they did that, the guards would make sure that any enemy that person might have, would be killed in a systematic fashion, and this was how "The Syndicate" within the prison structure came to be.

If a person did not have money, they could pay with items of pleasure, items you did not need to survive, but was important for some anyway, and then a representative from the syndicate" asked for an audience with the new king called Henry.

Rumors had it that the former Queen had believed that her son Henry was her husband reborn, and they slept together in the same bed every night and God only knows what had been going on in there. It happened that when Henry was thirteen he pushed his mother, so she fell down some stairs and she died because of that.

Henry became king and received the representative from the syndicate. King Henry was full of questions when it came to the new construction of what looked like was going to be a very tall building structure.

The representative explained that they were planning to build upwards to make sure that there would be enough room for the prisoners, and now it was the syndicate, that was in charge of the construction and the daily life within the prison.

King Henry gave the representative his blessing to do whatever the syndicate saw fit to do to maintain order within it, if that was what they wanted to do, there was after all no rules, and people could do, as they liked within the prison.

There was only one thing the syndicate had to do.

For every floor that was built in the building, black windows had to be installed on its façade. These windows were to be completely black, so whomever participated in the construction of the building within the walls, where not to be able to gaze out upon the Kings fields nor were they allowed to look at the city that had sentenced them there.

No one from the outside was to be able to see within the building itself, and any failure to comply with such and order would result in everybody being massacred.

The syndicate had no other choice to comply with such an order and as glassmakers found themselves within the growing box, and looked at the construction there was underway, the syndicate immediately put them to work.

Furthermore, they decided that it would be for the better to register everyone, which came to the box and already was in it.

The syndicate did not ask why a prisoner found himself or herself within the box, but they asked for their names, date of birth, current age, what the person had done outside of the prison and if they had some kind of trade or skill.

In this way, the syndicate could immediately categories a person as important or expendable.

The years passed and King Henry died, and was replaced by his son Kantas, who simply decided that his city was to longer feed those prisoners within the prison structure, that was now known as "The Black Box."

Therefore, he stopped his catapults from launching any food to the prisoners within The Black Box.

Some prisoners was terrified by that fact that they no longer would be getting food, but other prisoners saw opportunity.

A market for food could be opened.

The syndicate" went to King Kantas and asked permission to transport food to The Black Box, if they could pay for it just like everyone else did, food payed with real coins.

The king agreed with that.

As the years had passed it had started to become known that a giant building was being constructed in the "Northern Kingdom," with the form of a box, and those who went in there could hide from any authority as long as they knew, that they had to spend the rest of their lives within The Black Box.

As people came to The Black Box with different kinds of skills and trades, it was noticed that some peoples skills was so good that it was not enough to show up with some food as payment for the items that was getting bought, but real coins was necessary as well.

People brought coins too the building from the outside, and some people made their free family members transport items of pleasure, like a wheel of cheese, to the building, so not only did many "Item of Pleasure" appear within The Black Box, but with all the coins as well, a capitalistic economy appeared within The Black Box.

The syndicate no longer took items of pleasure as payment, but true coins instead.

Centuries passed and many Kings and Queens witnessed the continued construction of "The Black Box," a rectangular like structure that stretched up into the sky with black windows that kept the inside of the structure bathed in darkness.

It happened that one King of Icilia, named Namka, one day said enough was enough, and the prisoners was to complete the structure by adding a roof that kept out the sun, in this way finally sealing it off.

Then he told the syndicate that if there ever was too many people within The Black Box, all those who had been marked as expendable were to die, and that was why a prisoner had to have learned to do something when they came to The Black Box.

This was almost nothing compared to the fact that, children were born in this darkness, as prisoners to serve out there dead ancestors sentences and lived their entire life within it, without ever catch a glimpse of the blue sky or the white clouds, or the life giving sun.

They were cursed to live in darkness, there skin getting a ghostly white color, rotting away within the giant structure.

In the present day as Elsa was heading for "The Black Box," things had not changed within it except for three things.

The first thing came to be as people were living in darkness, it was negotiated that torches was to be sent to The Black Box and be installed on its walls, so they could be lit on fire so people could see, as working in darkness made it difficult to find missing objects. Holes were made in the concrete walls so the smoke could find its way out again.

The second thing that changed happened when a rich cheese seller, who liked to be with little children, and decided to strangle them afterwards and feed their bones to his dogs, were one of the people, who was paying the syndicate for protection, and the parents, who had lost their children would have none of that.

They killed the cheese merchant, but that only resulted in the syndicate killing them in return, and this created the first true conflict within the structure for many centuries.

It ended when it was agreed, that even though that there were no official laws within The Black Box, there had to be some kind of street code, and it was agreed, that from that point on the syndicate was always to investigate crimes when asked to by the people. At the same time, if it needed be, act as judges that did not take sides by the way of bribes or golden promises.

The third thing that had changed in The Black Box of today was the fact that competitiveness was allowed within, including people who went together and started companies, to better compete with other people.

When it came to the blacksmiths, the syndicate made sure they had steel and forges and all the other things they needed, in exchange for that, the blacksmith always had to be of service to the syndicate when asked for it.

As the syndicate kept a close eye on everybody, the prisoners knew that if they became expendable, they would be written on the syndicate's list, and they would die.

Women that did not have any skill was either to marry a man with a job, or become a prostitute to escape going on the list, and The Black Box was filled with those.

This was the state of things in the present day Black Box. Elsa was heading straight for that life and she found herself deserving that punishment after all she had done.

She was indeed deserving of it as the voice had said.

She had no skills like the common people for she used to be a royal and the only skills she had was her powers.

Days passed on the sea, doing all this time Elsa never found herself forced to have sex with old Malaki, and when she asked why he had helped her in the first place, he said that was what he was taught to do. Taught to help people in need, and that Elsa reminded him of his wife that died many years ago, and so he wanted to help her, and then he told her to come out of the cabin to look at something.

She could hardly believe her eyes, as she saw the beautiful white harbor city "Icilia," and started to notice that the city lay in shadow, of the giant architectural wonder, "The Black Box."

As the ship reached the harbor, Malaki said to Elsa, "I have noticed how quiet you are and noticed that you started shacking when you looked upon The Black Box. I have no doubt in my mind that The Black Box is your ultimate destination, but be warned. Once you enter The Black Box, you will never be allowed to leave again just like that. The first thing you must do is to seek out the syndicate, for they can help you more. Good luck child and may fortune follow your footsteps."

"Thank you for everything Malaki. Where are you headed next?"

"I am going to Tehomia. I am sensing not everything is well there."

With those cryptic words, Malaki put his little boat to sea again and Elsa watched as his boat disappeared beyond the horizon.

Elsa began her journey towards The Black Box that rose up before her as she continued towards it.

Then she came to the gate at the wall, guarded by two guards, and one of them spoke, "Once you enter you will never leave here alive, are you certain that this is your final choice?"

Elsa nodded and the guards opened the gate, and as she crossed the threshold, she was now cursed to never be allowed to leave. This was not her domain, she had no power here and this was her fate. This was her destiny. This was her new home.

In The Black Box.

Chapter 58: Kasim: A Mothers smile

Kasim was walking next to his mother Scheherazade and thought about Abdallah that had been found dead within his own home. No one semmed to be safe these days and therefore, he had decided to act like a bodyguard for his mother. Scheherazade did what she could to whisper sweet things to her husband, but Kasim was afraid that his father had lost his mind, when he had found out that his youngest son had been killed.

Scheherazade could not control her husband, no more than a fishing vessel could control the angry seas, but she was not one to give up and therefore she began to research as much information she could about the subject of dark magic.

The palace contained the hall of learning, a giant library that contained thousands of scrolls, each dealing with different subjects, from philosophy and ethics to cooking and baking and it was in this hall of learning where Scheherazade spent her days.

As Kasim was walking beside her, he asked Scheherazade, "Did you find what you were looking for?"

She answered "Not yet, but I am getting close. Wizards and witches, necromancers and warlocks, have practiced dark magic but many of those that are mentioned by name died, many years ago. That something killed Razul that way, that something killed a little child. What kind of a monster would do this?"

"I simply do not know mother. I simply do not know."

Scheherazade was looking at him and then she said, "I remember when you came to the world, my son. You came out kicking and screaming, and I knew that a fighter had come into this world, strong and proud, but I am glad that you are not too proud, that you never turned out that way."

"I do not think I have ever seen myself as proud mother dearest, but I do what I can, so I can become a great sultan one day, but first our enemies Zerah and her master must be found and brought to justice. You have not found anything in the scrolls that gives us a clearer picture?"

"Not yet, but I did discover some interesting information."

"What is this information?"

Scheherazade said, "A long time ago there was a temple that once stood here where the palace stands now. It is in the scrolls described as a temple and a castle that stood here a long time ago. Then a sand storm made the temple disappear and your ancestors asked all the gods for mercy, and they complied, as long as he made a sacrifice. He sacrificed his own children to appease the Gods, and the sandstorm stopped. Then this palace was built where the temple once stood."

"It is an interesting story mother, but it is just a story."

Scheherazade looked at him and said, "Some stories have a little bit of truth in them, and some does help build a larger narrative about us and our people. Your ancestors had other children and many generations later, here you are."

"It is more because you and dad decided to get it on."

Scheherazade laughed aloud and said, "That is a truth my boy, that is the truth."

Kasim was glad to see his mother laughing and smiling. There had not been much reason to do so. The wrath of the people was growing and everyone with a healthy mind could see it.

Scheherazade had asked him to be careful when he went outside the palace to walk the city streets with an army of loyal men, and here people came up to him and aired their grievances against him and his family.

Kasim could do nothing but assure people that everything was going to get back to normal once Zerah had been caught, but his people was not interested in hearing about it.

"Many of us saw her hang by the end of the rope, there is no way that anyone could have survived that!"

Kasim could only wish that he shared their optimism, but Zerah had told him that the execution was not going to work and now, multiple people had lost their lives. As much as he wanted to be happy and see his people happy, he could not be happy until Zerah and her master had been brought to justice.

Scheherazade were of the same opinion and so she continued to read day in and day out, and she were looking for any writings of sorcery that involved pushing people to their death.

So far, she had no luck in finding any new information.

Kasim said, "Mother, if I had been there I could have stopped," but he was not allowed to finish that sentence.

Scheherazade said, "Do not even think about blaming yourself. What happened to your brother was not your fault. Do you understand me Kasim?"

Kasim nodded and looked away.

Scheherazade said, "None of this was your fault. No one could have suspected that this was going to happen. We are going to find out what is going on and then we will bring Zerah and her master to justice. Do not feel sorry for what happens beyond your control for it is not your fault."

"What am I to do then?"

Scheherazade said, "Be the person you have always been and do what you must to protect this land and its people.

Kasim knew that the problems the kingdom faced had more to do with his father's orders than anything else did. He never understood why Sultan Ali would buy 600 tons of ice. Why was he so interested in so much ice?

Kasim did not know the truth and he was getting more concerned that if he did not do anything, many innocent people could end up dead, just because the Sultan wanted them dead.

Kasim knew not where he found the courage, but he said to his mother, "I fear the Sultan has gone mad and that will come back to haunt us all."

Scheherazade said, "Never again speak such words to me or to anyone else again. Your father could have you executed for treason. Banish all the dark thought from your mind. We are about to eat dinner together with your father, so let us enjoy the peace we have doing dinner."

Hamza had been the cook of the family for years and he had gone beyond with the meat this day. Roasted lamb with a watered down wine should have tasted delicious, but neither Kasim, Scheherazade nor Sultan Ali seemed to enjoy the meal.

Eating together used to be a lively affair, but now a shadow of doubt was hanging above Kasim and his mother and father as they ate in silence in the private quarters of the palace.

Kasim was not in the mood for alcoholic beverages as it always gave him a headache, so instead he was just drinking water that he got himself from a courtyard fountain that ran with fresh clean water.

"Is there anything else I can do for any of you?" Hamza asked the family, but the Sultan said, "Your food is excellent as always Hamza, you may go now."

Hamza turned around and was walking out the room and Kasim could not help but notice how Hamza was walking.

Kasim could have sworn that Hamza was walking as if he was a woman as his behind was moving from side to side like a woman´s behind would do.

"Is Hamza Gay?" Kasim asked himself and looked down upon his plate of warm food.

The lamb tasted good with strong spices and cold clean water to wash it down with and he felt the spices within his body giving him heat and Kasim thought to himself that he would track down Zerah and her master know matter what the cost was going to be. He would avenge his little brother and nothing was going to stop him.

He was determined to be at his full strength and therefore he ate with a good appetite, and even Scheherazade and the sultan could feel the change in mood as they ate the hearty meal.

Maybe it was just Kasim, but he could have sworn that this lamb dish was stronger in spices then it used to be for Hamza had been preparing lamb meat many times, but somehow this dish just felt stronger in spices.

"Is it just me or has he put too much spices in the food this time?" Kasim asked and looked at the other two.

Scheherazade said, "Now when you mention it, it does feel much spicier then it usualy does.

The Sultan agreed and picked up his cup of diluted red wine and was drinking from the cup and he filled Scheherazade´s cup with the wine as well. Kasim was only drinking his clean water.

Scheherazade said, "We have to remind Hamza that he should not put so many spices in the food, or we would end up getting drunk on diluted wine to get it down."

Sultan Ali nodded in agreement and asked, "What do you think son? Should we tell Hamza to hold again with the spices?"

Kasim did not listen. He was too focused thinking about Hamza and his behind moving from side to side like a woman. The Hamza that Kasim knew were always standing tall and proud and he was walking with a stiff walk and did not walk like a woman.

There was something wrong here.

Scheherazade put her hand to her stomach and said, "Wow, all that spicy food does make it hard on a person's stomach. My stomach seems to rebel against the spices."

Kasim did not feel anything at all when it came to the food as he took another sip of clean water.

The sultan did not complain, but Kasim could see that he was sweating.

Sultan Ali said, "It does taste good, but too many spices. Is Hamza trying to destroy our stomachs or what?"

Kasim took another sip of water, but he could not feel anything in his stomach. His family was used to spicy food, and he did not feel anything hurting.

Scheherazade took another drink of the diluted wine and when she removed the cup from her lips, some of the wine was running down from her mouth, and down her green dress.

Sultan Ali gave Scheherazade a tissue paper to wipe her mouth and Kasim heard her say, "Oh by all Gods in the sky."

Kasim looked at her and he realized that it was not wine that was running down his mother´s lips, but it was red blood.

Scheherazade coughed and blood stained the table and the food as she looked upon the wine and Kasim saw that blood was running down from his father's nose, and saw him touching the blood with his own fingers.

Kasim did not have any blood purring out of him, he looked down his cup of clean water, and he thought, "The wine is poisoned!"

Scheherazade got up from her seat and said, "A lady should not defile a table with her own blood."

She took a couple of steps and fell to the floor and Kasim got up like lightning and was with her holding her in his arms.

"It is poisoned! That wine is poisoned!" Sultan Ali exclaimed and got up from his seat and was walking towards them when he too fell as long as he was and hit the floor with his head first.

"Someone help. Help!" Kasim shouted as his mother lay dying in his arms.

He heard a laughter and walking into the room stood Hamza and was smiling at Kasim and laughing.

Before Kasim´s startled eyes Hamza´s face started morphing into someone else and before him stood Zerah and was laughing.

Zerah said, "That went surprisingly easy. The real Hamza lays dead in a cupboard one floor above this one, so it was easy to take his place and put the poison in the wine after adding extra spices to the food."

Zerah was laughing as Scheherazade coughed up more blood. She would soon be dead and Zerah would stand tall in triumph.

Kasim said, "An antidote. Give her that I what you want you shall have."

Scheherazade said, "No. do not give that woman a dime, she is not worth it. As it is my time to go, I will be with Razul again so he is not alone anymore."

Zerah pointed at Kasim and said, "Be gone with you little rat."

Suddenly Kasim felt himself being pushed back and flying through the air and flew out a window, he could see the city underneath him with its people and then he fell.

Chapter 59: Kevin: The Final Choice

They had been traveling towards The Kingdom of Corona, for a few days now. They only stopped to take a break, but with Nell being pregnant and all, Anna had suggested that these breaks became more and more frequent.

Kevin was not happy about that at all, but he did not say anything about it. He did not want to come up as some sort of an asshole, who had no shed of honor to him, but he had Isa to think about, and even though Elsa had headed in another direction, he had a feeling that they were not out of danger yet.

They were having a break in a forest and Kevin did not like it here.

There could be ruffians or other sort of criminals waiting to ambush them, or Wolves who were keeping an eye on them from a hiding place, watching and waiting.

Kevin was the only one who could swing a sword to start with, and while Isa was equipped with a knife, it was not going to do her much good if it ever came to the point, where she was on her back, with a stranger's manhood inside of her.

Kevin having to protect three women was not an easy job, and he had started to think ahead of what was going to happen when they came to the Kingdom of Corona.

Anna told him that her cousin Rapunzel, was going to be the Queen of Corona at some point, and so she counted on Rapunzel for her help, but in this Kevin had started to get his doubts about that.

He thought about everything, every day while they were traveling. He knew that Elsa would not be coming after them as she had been heading for "The Northern Kingdom," and with little luck, if she had managed to find a ship, she would be halfway on her way there, heading for "The Black Box," and once she went in there, there would be no way out for her. Even if she were to use her powers, many Syndicate members would put her down like a mad dog if she tried to do anything out of line.

Elsa had destroyed Arendelle with all of its inhabitants and he had started to think about what reaction the King and Queen of "Corona" would have when, they were told that Elsa was the one responsible for it.

They would ask questions of what had made Elsa do such a thing in the first place, and Anna had revealed to him and Isa, that she had to protect Nell and she had done this by pushing the snowman Olaf into a fire.

He could imagine the shocked look on The King and Queen´s faces, when they were told that fact, and he could imagine them throwing all four of them into the darkest dungeon, and leave them to die for their crimes. Anna for having committed murder and treason, Isa and himself for protecting her and Nell for keeping her mouth shut about the whole thing.

They would not be ideal guest in the Kingdom of Corona, he understood that more now, and as such, he felt he was leading his wife into a dangerous situation, which he did not know how to get out of again.

He could hope that Anna and Nell kept their mouths shut about the whole ordeal and their involvement in the whole event, but what about himself and Isa? Why would they even be traveling with Anna and Nell? They owed them nothing and they had lost their own home to Elsa´s fury and Anna´s killing of Olaf.

In Kevin's eyes it made them both traitors, and he felt obliged to avenge the murdered citizens of Arendelle, and strangle the life out of both Anna and Nell, but he could not find it in him to do those things.

For the first: Nell was pregnant and carried a child, and as he and Isa both knew how that kind of loss felt, in no way shape or form would he ever harm her, and he understood but did not agree with Anna´s point of view.

She loved Nell. Maybe because she was like a sister to her, or maybe it was something deeper than that, love a person would feel for a lover, or maybe it went even deeper than that, like they were some kind of soulmates, but whatever the case, no matter how he thought about the future, it started to look bleak.

He felt like his head was about to explode because of all these troubled thoughts that infested his mind, and so he went over to Isa and asked for some medicine. The medicine was a colorless and odorless mixture, and one sip of it, and he felt he could think again.

Isa told him to keep the medicine on him, because he could need it later, if his head started hurting again.

Resisting the urge to take her right now in the forest, he kissed her on her lips and all of them got up on their horses again and continued to ride forward.

Kevin thought about Nell and Anna again.

It was their fault, that Kevin and Isa was in this situation to begin with, and Kevin could not see any way out of the situation. If they indeed made it to the Kingdom of Corona, they could end up being questioned. He knew that even if they were all silent about this whole mess, he was certain that as soon as Nell gave birth to the child, it would be used against her.

No matter how he thought about it, he was certain that the Royals of "Corona" would have the truth soon enough, and once they had that, all four of them would pay for it, probably with their own lives, and that was not something that would go smoothly, Kevin was certain of that.

They continued the journey until the darkness caught up to them and a bonfire was needed.

Kevin gave the women orders to find something they could use to make a bonfire with, in the meantime he would be preparing a meal for them all.

Earlier that day he had been lucky enough to shoot a deer, with a bow and arrow he had made for himself, and as he started cutting the deer and skinning it, he realized that only Isa came back with some branches for the fire, but Nell and Anna was nowhere to be seen.

"I will look for them," he said to Isa, as he got up and searched in the direction they had gone.

He did not find them until he heard very quiet moans coming from behind a rock.

Slowly he came closer to the rock and heard the moans clearer now, and he saw Anna pressing Nell up against the rock, having opened up Nell's warm jacket, that she had harvested from a dead ice harvester, revealing her breasts that had become more round do to her being pregnant. Anna had her hand down in the pants of Nell, no doubt satisfying her down there with her fingers as she kissed Nell on her lips with what looked like a feverish desire.

Kevin had a slight smile on his lips as he quietly moved away and went back to Isa, and told her what he had witnessed.

As she got the bonfire started, Isa said, "Let them be young and have a good time."

"Can you remember back in that clearing in Arendelle were we used to come all the time?" Kevin asked with a smile on his lips.

"How could I forget about that?" Isa said as she gave him a kiss on his lips.

"We were both so young and innocent back then were we not?"

"Yes, Kevin we were, but I would not say with all those things we did back then, I would not go as far as call it all innocent."

Kevin laughed and speculated in his mind, what to do with the medicine he was carrying in his pocket.

Kevin sat beside Isa, as she was preparing the meat for later and Isa asked, "What are you thinking about?" as she rested her head on his shoulder, as they stared into the bonfire, while she prepared the meal.

Kevin responded: "I was thinking a bit about all those things that has happened, not just to us, but to Arendelle to its dead citizens, all those things we have lost."

Isa said, "Well, we have not lost everything now; we still have each other."

Kevin said, "I count itself a blessing each day to wake up next to you Isa, but there are things that I worry about."

"What are those things?"

Kevin looked over his shoulder too see if Anna and Nell had made it back from their love making, and as he could not see them, he said, "If Elsa really went to The Black Box, then we are out of danger for now. I think it would be a better idea if we split up from Anna and Nell and continued on our own."

"What makes you say these things Kevin?" Isa responded.

"I keep on thinking of that man I killed and on Anna and Elsa. There has been nothing but problems with those two ever since Elsa first revealed her power, and now we are following Anna on her way to "Corona" to meet up with her cousin Rapunzel, and I think you and I should travel to a different place."

"We should be going with them to "Corona" Kevin; we need to tell them all what have transpired back in Arendelle."

"Isa, you know what Anna did to Olaf, and how that started it all to begin with. I do not think The King or Queen of "Corona" is going to give us a warm and lovely welcome."

"Even so Kevin, we are still to talk to them about it, we cannot just run away from it all now. Anna and Nell are counting on us, and Anna seems to trust her cousin Rapunzel with her life."

"Isa, do you really think that Rapunzel trust Anna in return? I do not think she will be trusting of her, when she learns that Anna took a life to protect Nell, and was conspiring to help shelter the enemy's child under Elsa´s roof. I think they will look upon Anna as a traitorous person and upon us as conspirators as well."

Isa did not say anything for some time, but then she said, "You got to have some faith in people Kevin. We all know and all witnessed how Elsa seemed to lose it, that she was hearing voices in her mind, and how she became more unstable. Please Kevin we have to help those two, they are counting on us and they are so young, put in a situation they cannot get out off."

Kevin made up his mind what he was going to do with the rest of the medicine in his pocket.

Kevin got up, went over to his horse, and took his water satchel and to cups and filled them both with clean water and he quickly poured all the odorless medicine into the cup that he gave to Isa when he sat down beside her again.

This was what it had come to, he was not going to see his wife suffer, when they came to "Corona," it would be better that death came much more swiftly, and so he toasted with his wife, and they drank the water, in three mouthfuls for they were thirsty after all.

Kevin said, "Isa, come here." and then he swiftly but gently held his arms around Isa as her head rested on his lap, and he ran his fingers through her hair.

"That feels nice," Isa said and yawned, as she was tired.

With the tears running down his face, Kevin said, "You should go to sleep my love, and then I am going to take care of the cooking preparations."

He sat with her for a few more seconds, as her body began to convulse as it tried to make Isa regurgitate, and get the medicine, that acted as a poison, out of the system. He held her tight and turned her upward so she could not vomit on the ground.

Yellow, slimy vomit ran in a few lines down from her moth and across her face as her body became still.

Very gently, Kevin used a handkerchief, which Isa had been carrying, and wiped the vomit of her face, turned her body around, so Isa's head again rested on his lap.

Then he took her knife and slit his own throat, and the last thing Kevin saw was red blood pouring through his wife's beautiful hair.

Chapter 60: Elsa: The Syndicate Revealed

The darkness swallowed her whole as she entered the structure known as "The Black Box," the prison that housed the most dangerous criminals and the most innocent victims, those who were born in this darkness.

Her eyes had to get used to the darkness before she continued inside, but her ears heard the yelling, the whispers and the loud sounds of people working just fine. As her eyes started to see better in the darkness she realized, just how much of a city this complex truly was.

Streets slithering forwards like moving snakes, opened doors that led to small shops infested with cockroaches, dying men and women begging for coins and food and people walking back and forward not caring for anyone but themselves.

This was the darkness, which had awaited her and she knew it. She had destroyed her entire Kingdom, and had sworn revenge on her sister, for the killing of Olaf, but that all changed, when she saw the bodies of those children that had been thrown around like ragdolls, and from that point on she knew beyond any doubt, that she was damned.

This was going to be her prison and she had to get used to it, and as she stared down a long road, she remembered that she had to make contact with "The Syndicate," before starting on anything else. She noticed a door leading to a bathroom, and as she opened the door, her stomach turned as the smell came out from it, and she found herself ready to throw up.

Going over to the sink, where there was a mirror, she splashed some water on her face to get the worst dirt off her face, as well as the remaining make up. Then she left the bathroom and went down the street, as she looked through the opened doors. She had conjured up snow, on her journey towards the ship she had used, to get the blood of her legs, the blood of the people she had massacred, and that was a very good idea, as she did not want to be recognized or be seen as a mass murderer.

As she peeked inside the opened doors to either side of her, she saw people making bread or was getting ready to go after some fresh water, and she could see people line up to use a water pump to get some fresh water.

Many of the people here lived in little shacks with a door, and others lived in something that looked like an apartment and others lived in a single room, that could have been a motel room, and others lay spread out on the street inside the enormous complex, to tired or to weak, in other words expendable.

There was a shack without a door and inside it, there was a man and a woman, who were making love to each other and as the woman was a screamer, everybody outside of it, who was standing in line for the water, heard it all too well.

"Now, it is fucking enough!" a man in a green uniform yelled as he, with a sword in hand, went inside the shack and stabbed them both to dead, silencing them both.

A man in the line said, "That was about time."

Another man replied, "They had been told before to keep their voices down. They should have listened."

As Elsa walked passed the line, she could feel the people in it gazing upon her, like she was some fresh meat, and Elsa understood exactly what the true punishment was about, which Queen Mia had cursed them all with.

A society without rules, except the traditions that "The Syndicate" upheld to its finest.

A she continued down the swinging street, she heard footsteps behind her along with a whistle. She turned around a saw that a man had left the line and had continued walking after her and she prepared herself for the worst.

"That is a nice dress you have on there, lady. It must be worth a lot of money."

She had not bought it, she had conjured it up with her ice powers, but something told her that this man was threatening her and how was she even going to respond to him.

Elsa said, "Well, thank you for the compliment."

"It was not a compliment! I want you to get out of that dress, and give it to me."

Elsa saw a knife appear in his hand, one that lay in his pocket, and now he was getting closer to Elsa with it.

"Did you not hear me? Take your damn clothes off!"

Elsa turned around as fast as she could and started running, but she fell as the man jumped onto her and grabbed hold of her so she could not move.

For Elsa it happened so fast and when he tried to take it off her it ripped apart, and he put his knife to Elsa´s throat and said, "See now, you stupid cow! You have ruined the dress. I am going to cut you a new hole."

Before she knew what was happening her attacker lay on top of her with blood running from his head, and the man who had killed the love making couple stood before her and removed the dead man from Elsa.

As Elsa stood up, she felt the man's penetrating gaze, trying to make out whom she was, and before she could say thank you he spoke: "You are new here are you not?"

"Yes, but I,"

"No, buts here, you are definitely knew."

Elsa looked at the place where her dress had been ripped open, and saw that her right breast had been left exposed, and the man said: "I am from "The Syndicate," we are all wearing green uniforms, but all have a special badge, so no one can copy the uniform down in exact details. As you are new here, I want you to follow me."

"But, my dress has been ripped open."

"Do I look like I care? Now, follow me please!"

Following the man with her right breast exposed for everyone to see, the representative led her through narrow corridors and up a set of stairs to the second floor were Elsa saw that it was just as the first floor with shops and sounds and many people going around, and she was led in to a small office.

There was a chair and a table and a stack of papers neatly placed on top of the table, and finding the newest paper with the newest registration numbers, he spoke to Elsa: "Now, what is your name?"

Elsa could only stand up as the representative sat in the only chair in the room, she thought for a second what she was going to answer, and then she said, "My name is Sophie sir."

"Where are you from?"

"Arendelle."

"What was your occupation there?"

"I was a project manager."

That was not all a lie, because she have had a Kingdom to manage, and she failed it.

"I was a fallen Queen!"

The representative continued, "Well, we do not need a project manager here Sophie, have you done anything else?"

"No."

"Well, in that case I am just going to list you on another paper.

Elsa knew immediately what paper her knew name would be signed on to.

Expendable.

"Well, Sophie I am glad we have had this talk, and now get out of here."

"But can you help me with my dress?"

"I said get out!"

Elsa had no choice to get out and continue out into the noise on this busy floor, and find someone or something that could help her, and she had to remember her knew name.

If she had said Elsa of Arendelle, she was certain that she could be in trouble. She had been a queen who had always only known the best of the best, and now she was inside a construction with the worst of the worst.

It was not because she needed help with her dress. She could use her magic to fix it, but she stood out in the crowd, and that just did not do her any good at all. What was she to do, and where was she to go?

As she went around a corner, were no one could see her, she used her magic to repair her dress, and then she continued on, but she was more or less aware now, and she came up with an idea, how to survive among all the inhabitants of the structure.

If someone came against her, maybe she could lure them into a false sense of security, and when no one was looking, then use her ice powers to kill those who wanted to harm her.

All she had to do was to remember her knew name "Sophie."

As she went down another street she understood, why some people referred to this structure being a city in itself, with homes and shops and people selling "Items of Pleasure" all around her.

From sturgeon eggs to cheese. To fruit and wine, and as she continued, she felt a hand upon her shoulder, and she turned around and saw and old woman standing in front of her looking up on her.

This woman was of small stature and she spoke like a grandmother: "Dearest child, I saw you exit "The Syndicate" office over there, and I could not help but notice, that you seemed new to the place.

"I am new, that is true," Elsa said, with a feeling of being in still more new territory.

"I noticed you seemed very tired, I want to help you a bit and explain some things to you. If you would follow me, then I am going to tell you a bit about this place over a glass of wine. Come with me child, what is your name."

"Sophie."

"Come Sophie."

"What is your name?" Elsa wanted to know.

"Call me Zanna."

Elsa doubted that "Zanna" had said her real name, but then again, Elsa had not told hers.

Elsa had no other choice for she had no one in this structure, no friends, no family no nothing. She did notice that some of the women they passed send her worried looks and angry looks at Zanna, though she did not seem to notice them.

Following another corridor, they ended up at a door and Zanna opened it up, and she and Elsa stood in a big room with doors leading in to others and in this room, there were men and women laying on the floor on mattresses. Some from each other and some lay together, and some was in the middle of kissing each other.

Elsa saw a black man having his fingers up inside of a woman, and Elsa wondered if she had interred a whorehouse, and she panicked.

Zanna said, "Do not worry child this is not a whore house, I just want to make sure you are safe. Do you see that empty mattress? Go over there and sit down."

Elsa did not want to do it, but found herself doing it. Every nerve and every muscle in her body was ready to get out of there.

She looked across the room and saw a man sitting and smoking what looked like a long pipe, and he looked at her, and then he looked down on the floor, but Elsa though for a moment that he looked furious.

As she sat there, with her long platinum hair over her shoulder, her ice dress clinging to her body, she felt, that many eyes were looking at her, and no matter what she did, she just could not relax.

Zanna came over to her with a sandwich, a glass of wine and a pipe, like that man she had seen smoking.

"Here you go my child," Zanna said and gave her the sandwich and wine, but she kept the pipe to herself.

Elsa took the sandwich and bit into it, tasting the ham and egg and butter within and she tried her best not devouring the thing in three bites.

She was so hungry and it was first now in what felt like hours, that she had something to eat. When she was done, she started drinking the wine and noticed how Zanna sat and smoked that pipe of hers.

Then she looked over to the man that she had seen, who seemed to be angry, and she discovered that he was watching her, as if he was watching her every movements.

When the glass was empty, Zanna sat down beside her and gave her the pipe.

"Everyone is smoking in here dear child. Here take it and smoke it."

Elsa felt like her head had become too heavy for her body to lift, and it was as if she could smell it in the air.

A sickly sweet smell and she felt like she did not have any control any longer, as she inhaled some smoke from the pipe…

She felt her body become heavy and found herself laying down on the mattress. She looked to her left and saw that Zanna was busy talking to the man, who had been keeping an eye on her.

She saw him giving Zanna some coins, saw him approach her, and as he knelled down beside her Elsa passed out.