Anna has never heard her sister scream like that before.
Even in the final seconds of her frozen heart consuming her body, her mind, she heard her sister's plea.
A plea of denial. A begging to not take her away.
And tears – of fear and sorrow and regret.
But this . . .
This is so full of fear and pain it ices Anna's blood.
Michael collapses onto the stone, his blood spraying the grass and stones. A draugr readies to leap atop him, Anna's own scream near erupting out of her throat, but Michael pulls a dagger from his belt and stabs the draugr in the left eye.
Then he is up again, running and bellowing at them to go. Beneath the dark arrow protruding through his shoulder, blood already soaking his tunic, his skin.
Gods, he's covered in so much blood it looks like he bathed in it.
Elsa sprints past her, her hair a blur of platinum.
She runs as if the denizens of hell are at her heels, right through Michael's blood. It splashes onto her shins, absorbs into her boots. Unflinching and uncaring, Anna watches in shock as her sister – the picture of sophisticated grace and poise – wraps an arm around Michael and they raced across the grassy expanse, his face paling as the wound gushes blood.
Without hesitation, Elsa presses her hand over Michael's wound, careful to avoid the arrow. She doesn't even look at the blood that pools onto other pale hand. That runs down her arm and to her side; a deep line of red cutting through her pale blue tunic and pants.
She never knew, never even thought, that her sister would be capable of such things. She'd heard the story of how she fought Hans at the Ice Palace, and she was so proud of her sister, so amazed to learn how she was able to fight with her magic, even if she claimed she had no control at the time.
And that look . . . the fear in her sister's eyes – fear and pain and sadness and . . . heartbreak.
The fear and pain at the thought of losing Michael.
The sadness that she can't see him.
The heartbreak of feelings she doesn't even think Elsa knew about.
At that moment, Anna knew her sister had changed.
This isn't a Queen of Arendelle, anymore.
This is a warrior.
A warrior, who has fallen in love.
Anna's skin crawls with goosebumps as Elsa looks at the oncoming draugr and lets out a low, vicious snarl.
Her heart—it had been meant for her heart.
And he had taken that arrow for her.
If he had been one inch farther behind, it would have hit his heart. She might have still been screaming, or sobbing—there is such a roaring silence in her. The ground is wet with Michael's blood, the air heavy with its scent.
An unnerving calm spreads through her like hoarfrost. And all she could think about is how she'll kill them all. Slowly.
Once they catch up to Anna and Kristoff, she shoves Michael into Kristoff, the Ice Master careful not to get Michael's blood on his clothes. "Run," she says.
"No—"
"Run."
It was a voice that she's rarely heard herself use — a queen's voice — that comes out, along with the blind yank she made on the blood oath that bound them together.
His eyes flash with fury, but his body move as though she compels him. Michael staggers across the bridge, just as—
Elsa whirls, yanking her hands up with fanned fingers just an arrow aims for her heart.
It stops between the ice, just like the arrow back at the Ice Palace when she had fought the Duke of Weaseltown's men. Its tip inches from her eyes.
The air to her left her shifts, and Elsa moves — but not fast enough.
Cloth and flesh tear in her upper arm, and she barks out a cry as the draugr's blade slices her.
She whirls, imagining the weapon as she brings her hands up for the second blow.
Steel meets ice and cracks.
In her hands she now grips a sword made of ice. Mimicked after Michael's, Elsa wills her magic into making it as hard as steel. She watches as the cracked ice of the sword's blade hardens back together.
Michael's blood is at her feet, smeared across the grassy foothills.
The dragur – a male-looking type with a hole in his helmet – presses against her blade, but Elsa holds her ground and hisses, "I'm going to rip you to shreds."
She shoves the draugr off, snapping her hand up to deliver a spike of ice into the creature's head. As it falls, Elsa readies her sword like a javelin and fires. It grazes the shoulder of another one, shattering upon impact of a female draugr's breastplate.
It's all the time she needs.
She closes her eyes and lifts her hands up, palms open and facing the charging mob. Plunging into her well of magic, she imagines thick braided threads emerging and shooting towards her hands. She takes a deep breath, ready for the tug at her gut that'll pull the wind out of her lungs.
Her palms begin to cool, snowflakes dancing in a pulsing turquoise light. Her thoughts race back towards Michael – everything he did to protect her, the blood he's lost, the injuries he's endured. How selfless and instantaneous he reacted.
All of it she pools into her thoughts, her power, her hands. Michael's blood has already crusted atop her skin.
Rage burrows at the center of her magic, Elsa gritting her teeth as she feels it build and build and build.
Around her the air cools, the rain hardening into hail as it falls around her.
She hears a hiss a foot from her face, and then –
Elsa opens her eyes and takes just one step forward, stomping her foot against the ground and thrusting her hands forward.
A scream rips out of her throat – a battlecry of vengeance and anger as a cloud of flakes and ice erupts.
Lightning flashes with it mixes an eruption of arctic light. Like a wave pushed towards land, the tidal of ice floods towards the draugr.
This isn't a gentle winter's wind.
This is ice so cold it burns.
Wind howls and wood cracks as her ice blankets everything in her path.
In less than a minute, the wave of ice lowers. Wisps of frost twine and float through the air, the chill quickly dissipating until it mixes with the growing kiss of autumn.
Then silence. Utter silence.
The frost-kissed haze ripples and billows. Until there is only Elsa standing before a crowd of slim pillars of ice.
A gentle wind from the north sweeps down. The veil of mist pulled back, and there they are.
Each and every one of the draugr that were after them, now frozen solid in their coffins of ice. Each frozen in their last stance: one ready to chuck his axe, another having her bow aimed at her heart. The one that was a foot from Elsa was ready to bring his blade down upon her head, his mouth agape in a hateful hiss.
The wind pushes away more of the drifting mist, clearing the land beyond Elsa.
And where that where death had charged towards them, only a frozen forest of ice statues remains.
And there is a lot. Stretching as far as they eye can see.
"Elsa! Come on, we have to go." Anna calls from behind.
Glancing over her shoulder, she can see Kristoff helping Michael onto Sven. Bless the reindeer, Michael is losing so much blood. But Sven doesn't even notice it, steadying himself and angling his head back to peer at the injured rogue.
The color looks like it was leeched from his skin –
But just freezing them isn't enough.
Looking back at the frozen draugr, Elsa holds her hands out again, only this time she curls them into fists.
Hard enough that her knuckles turn white, and she can see feel her nail digging into her palms.
A deep rumbling quivers the earth beneath her feet. A sharper glow emits from her hands.
And when Elsa rips her hands to apart, each and every one of the frozen draugr shatters like glass.
There's nothing but the quiet pitter-patter of the ice falling to the earth. A thin tendril of black smoke still churns towards the sky; all that remains of Kristoff's wagon.
"Elsa!" Anna barks.
Elsa turns and runs towards them, the group making their way back to Arendelle.
The trek back to Arendelle is the longest journey of Elsa's life. So many hills and paths they have to cross, the arrow a gross protrusion on his back. None of them dared to remove it, each of them useless. They didn't have any combat medical training, none of them even knew what herbs of the forest could help. Before, Elsa was praying that his healing magic would help with some of his injuries, only now it seems like it's exhausting his strength.
Michael sags heavily against Sven's back as they hurry through the forest.
Elsa glimpses at the blood soaking Sven's back — Michael's blood—and nearly vomits.
She keeps a hand on his shoulder, ignoring how the stain on her hands is already chipping, revealing her porcelain skin beneath. He smells of cinders and sweat and gore. "Michael, please stay awake."
A horrid question wrenches Elsa's gut. Anna must be thinking the same, because she asks, "Are we going to make it?"
Elsa looks past Michael sprawled across Sven's back. Some of Michael's wounds have clotted, but his eyes are half-closed, his face drained of all color. He can't even lift his head.
She keeps a hand on his shoulder, ignoring how the crimson of her hands is already chipping away, revealing her porcelain skin beneath. He smells of cinders and sweat and blood. "Michael, please stay awake."
"We'll make it." Kristoff declares. He moves to step in front of Sven, stopping him. "Elsa, hop on. You and Sven head back to the castle as fast as he can carry you. He made the trek once with me and Anna, he can make it again."
To her surprise, Anna doesn't argue. Yet, "But Kristoff –"
"We'll be fine. We're just slowing you down. He needs to see a healer. Now."
Elsa's eyes line with tears. She presses her lips into a tight line, whispering, "Thank you."
Kristoff nods, offering heartbreakingly gentle words to get Michael to lift himself up. Elsa does her best to angle herself, using Sven's harness as purchase.
She's extremely aware of her movements as she hoists herself up, throwing her leg over the side of the reindeer and grips the strap across his back. Michael – having roused from half consciousness – loops his arm around her waist, his brutalized body a solid mass at her back.
Elsa locks one hand around the harness, the other holding Michael's arm around her waist. "To the castle, Sven," she says, digging her heels into the reindeer's side. "Faster than the wind."
Sven obeys. Elsa rocks back into Michael as the reindeer launches into a gallop, earning another groan of pain. But he remains steady, despite the pounding steps that draw agonized breaths from him.
"Faster, Sven!" Elsa calls to the reindeer as she steers him towards the kingdom, the mountain it had been built into.
Nothing has ever seemed so distant.
"Hold on, Michael." Elsa says, unable to keep the plea from her voice.
His arm tightens around her middle in answer.
Hold on.
Hold on.
Only now does she curse herself for wasting such precious time.
If she gave Michael his death . . .
Every thunderous beat of Sven's hooves, echoes Elsa's rapid heart as they race across the endless plain.
Hold on. Please, hold on.
Michael's head pounds, his mouth going dry.
Time slips from him. A coppery tang fills his mouth.
Agony is a song in his blood, his bones, his breath.
Every step of the reindeer, every leap he makes over rock and hill and fence, sends it ringing afresh. There is no end, no mercy from it. It is all he could do to keep atop the reindeer's back, to cling to consciousness.
To keep his arm around Elsa.
It had been a stroke of instinct when he threw a shield of fire around the group when colliding that draugr was inevitable. Even more so when he threw a second shield of healing light.
He didn't even know what to make of it.
But he managed to see – a second shield of pure, golden light around his first shield of flames. He's been trying to pool all his magical strength into his healing, stitching and mending whatever wounds needed it, especially when he felt sickening crunch of pelvis breaking.
He nearly fainted with relief when he saw the group mostly unharmed.
When he saw Elsa's face unscathed, mostly.
But the fear he heard in her voice, it stirred something within him. Something so primal that he nearly forgot about the pain in his hips.
His magic was doing a good job of healing him, his strength coming secondary.
But when that arrow shot through him, the world fractured into blinding light and blackness creeping into the edges of his vision. He was already feeling exhausted, having drained his magic too soon, too quick. The best he could do was pool the healing into stanching the bleeding.
He didn't miss how she handled those draugr. He was so proud, and so amazed by her. Even when she roared like a lioness, he felt nothing but pride.
Pride and wonder – and love.
He's never seen anyone fight for him like that. Even Danika and Caiden, his most trusted soldiers, had some kind of wall built between them. Either of his own creation, or theirs, but he never felt emotion as raw as that.
The queen doesn't flinch, doesn't falter, doesn't retreat an inch even when his blood is soaking into her back. No, she only presses further into his front, digging her nails into his skin, fierce as any bird. She's tucked her braid into her tunic, so it doesn't whip in his face. It almost makes him laugh.
Suddenly Elsa lets out a sob, and he follows the line of her sight.
To the kingdom gates, to the lights that twinkle in the guard towers.
"We can make it."
There are no tears in her voice. Nothing but solid, unwavering steel.
"Faster, Sven!" She doesn't hide the raw hope in her voice, even if it's laced with desperation
And gods help her, that reindeer does.
As if the gods that filled the bull's lungs with his own breath, Sven gives a surge of speed.
Faster than the wind. Faster than death.
Sven clears the first gate leading into the kingdom; erupting screams and yelps of surprise from the citizens as he barrels through. Glides over the cobblestone streets towards the castle bridge, towards the city gates he's never been so happy to see open. Judging from Elsa's sob of relief, she feels the same.
Sven's mighty heart does not falter, even when Michael knew it is raging dangerously close to the point of bursting.
They cross the bridge in a flash of grey and blue.
"Get me, Ida. NOW!" Elsa bellows as Sven comes to a sliding stop in front of the castle doors.
Workers and servants alike gasp and yelp, some covering their mouths in shock. no doubt they both looked like hell.
Yet Elsa's words are soft as she says to him, "Just hold on a little longer Michael."
She carefully dismounts, one hand always seeming to brace him up. with the strength he somehow managed to gather, Michael reaches up and gives a loud scream that rings across the courtyard as he breaks the head of the arrow, then reaching back and yanking out the other half.
Blood drips from the jagged end of the arrows, splitting open his clotted wounds. Michael carelessly tosses them to the courtyard floor.
Across the way, one of the servants vomits.
There's the sound of doors bursting open, hurrying feet padding his way.
But Michael's eyes have since blurred, and he doesn't have a single bit of energy left to stop himself from tumbling off of Sven's back.