Dinosaur King: Project I

by Harold Godwinson

5 months had passed since the Arendelle war between the D-team and the Alpha gang. New friendships are forged, and a new alliance is born. But little do our heroes know that a new darkness is rising to take the entire Earth, with a savage pair of biological weapons. Now Elsa, Anna, and all their friends and family must come together to banish this darkness forever... or die trying.

12. The Enchanted Forest: Part 2

The Enchanted Forest: Part II:

Last time...

Elliot: "Everyone up to Hunter's Ridge immediately!"

Max: "We do what we can to help out, here."

Terry: "Let's let them know."

Anna: "You think I'm crazy...?"

Elsa: "Trust us, we only want to help."

Witch: "CRY HAVOC! AND RELEASE THE DOGS OF WAR!"

(Intro theme.)

A few hours had passed since Yelana and the Northuldra welcomed Elsa and her party to their village, a small settlement of nine teepees made of wood in a circle formation with a few small campfires in the middle to keep everyone warm in the autumn breeze, and almost everyone had been nicely settled into their new accommodations. Small children began to play and adults tended to their supplies of food and water before putting any tired children to bed.

Around one of the campfires was Olaf and a trio of the more awake toddlers, who found himself getting his feet, arms and even his nose getting taken off of him, but still continued to ask questions more suited closer to adult aged people. "Okay, so let me ask you, how do you guys cope with the ever-increasing complexity of thought that comes with maturity?" he asked, the three not giving a response, and instead he saw a little girl stick his nose in one of her nostrils, giggling in glee. "Brilliant!" he exclaimed, before a younger girl stuffed one of his arms through his head, smiling all the same. "It's so refreshing to talk to the youth of today, our future is in bright hands," he said blissfully, before noticing a boy about to eat his foot. "Oh no, no, no don't chew that! You don't know what I stepped in!" he told him hurriedly.

Walking by them was Kristoff, Sven and Ryder, discussing what had been transpiring since he started trying to propose to Anna, and all the times he'd messed up. "I can't seem to get her attention, or even say the right things..." he told the younger man sadly, with Sven giving a low moan in agreement.

Ryder too gave him a sympathetic look, before a confident smile spread his lips. "Well, you're in luck. I know absolutely nothing about women." Cue the disturbed looks from the ice harvesting pair. "But I do know we have the most amazing way of proposing!" Then onto the looks of wonder. "If we start now, we'll be ready by dawn," he told him.

"Really?" Kristoff asked in happiness.

"Best part..." Ryder started, before excitement coloured his whispered reply. "It involves a lot of reindeer!"

"Whoa!" Kristoff said, before they both followed him off to the herd outside the camp.

Meanwhile, on a small rise overlooking the settlement was Anna and Mattias, the pair of which were just talking about life in Arendelle and how much he had missed. "Hey, back at home," he started. "Halima still over at Hudson's Hearth?"

"She is," she replied with a smile.

"Really?" he asked again, to which she nodded, before he looked away. "She married?" he asked nervously, taking a drink of water from his mug.

"Mm-mm," she went, shaking her head.

"Oh wow...why didn't that make me feel better?" he asked with wide eyes.

Anna then took her turn to ask a question. "What else do you miss?"

That was when the battered lieutenant gave the princess a sort of faraway look, his smile a bit dejected. "My father...he passed before all of this..." he told her in honesty. "He was a great man...built us a good life in Arendelle, but told me to never take the good for granted. He'd say, 'Be prepared. Just when you think you've found your way, life will throw you on another path.'" he said, recalling the words of wisdom, to which Anna took to heart, seeing the rest of her friends and family below them. The D-Team with Yelana, and Elsa with Honeymaren around a fire.

"What do you do when it does?" Anna asked him.

He gave a patient smile. "Don't give up...take it one step at a time, and..." He trailed off.

"Just...do the next right thing?" she finished.

"Yeah...you got it!" he said, making Anna give a soft giggle as they continued to observe the people from above.

"Anything else you think of from home?" Anna asked.

The older man paused in his drinking again, with only one person apart from his father who occupied his thoughts. "Admiral May..." he said softly, a faraway look in his eyes again. "She's the one who taught me what it means to be a soldier, how to use the sword..." he lost his smile at that point, sadness etching across his face. "She was the closest thing I ever had to a mother...my real one died in my birth, and she helped my father from time to time..." Anna became more engrossed as he continued, as he turned to her. "We became very close as such, practically seeing each other as family...I wonder if she...even remembers me..." he said, closing his eyes.

Anna, feeling sorry for him, went to lay a comforting hand on his shoulder. "I never knew this about her...But I have seen her from time to time in the library looking at that portrait of you...she always seemed so sad, and I never knew why...until now," she told him with a supportive smile.

"And...how has she been doing all these years...is she, still alive?" he asked in reply after a stunned pause.

"Of course. She's now a Field Marshal and serves on the council as head of our military, and the fleet," she told him with a smile.

Not expecting such a grand answer, Mattias's smile came back in full force with wide, excited eyes. This was some of the best news he'd heard in years. "Are you serious?" He had to be sure.

"I am, and I'm sure she'd be so happy to see you alive!" she exclaimed.

While that had been going on, over with Yelana, Max, Rex, Zoe and their dinosaurs in their chibi forms, the team had just finished filling in the elder of how despite his age, the blond had become the Dinosaur King, and all of their adventures up to then in the modern world, and little to say, the Northuldran woman was completely awestruck by such a wondrous tale. "So it is through these stones that your friends are able to converse with people?" Yelana asked the lot of them.

"Yeah, that's right!" Zoe answered, with Paris's head on her lap as she gently stroked her. "And they're held in these...-" She raised the arm that held her dino bracer. "...-For safekeeping and to summon them at will."

"They were found by Rex's mom and dad before he was born," Tank reminded the elder from their story.

"And you're saying this find took place in...the future...?" she checked for the umpteenth time.

"You're still in shock about that, aren't you?" Terry scoffed in humour with a chuckle.

"Yes, admittedly so..." she replied, looking down with slight sheepishness for a moment. "But surely you all understand how this all sounds to me, like-"

"Fictional? Otherworldly?" Rex listed.

"Yes, you could say that..."

"It's the truth, though, we promise you that." Max told her in slight defensiveness. "If the Space Pirate's ship wasn't damaged, we could've proved it if you don't believe us."

"Oh, I do I assure you. Having lived with the spirits all my life I've learnt not to disregard the possibilities in the outside world," she replied calmly, before her gaze went over the dinosaurs once again with a calculating look. "And, now that I think about it...An old tale of the forest now springs to mind..." she mused.

"What kind of tale?" Ace asked.

Yelana looked away for a moment in thought. Could it be so? Could it actually be one of these 'dinosaurs' all this time? "When I was a girl, our previous leader and elder shared a great myth of the forest with me and my friends," she started. "Legends that spoke, of a great reptilian beast, that protected our home and the other spirits if they could not protect themselves."

This was not what they expected to hear. "A reptilian beast?" Paris asked.

The elder nodded. "Not many people believed it, though there were those who did...I was one of them." A small endearing smile spread her lips as she looked into the clouds above. "No one knows what it precisely looked like, though there have been those who caught a glimpse of it...they say they saw long arms with dagger-like claws-" She emphasised with a handmade claw. "Razor-sharp teeth, and they say it moved as fast as the wind itself." She then stood up and waved her staff in a wide circle, gesturing to the village and her people. "This great being is what allowed us to live in this forest, free of oppression and out of the sight of those who seek power and greed...and up to this day, our texts have given it a name..." She took a pause. "The Beast of Ahtohallan."

The D-Team, at the end of that story, all of which were awed by such a name, decided to voice their thoughts to each other. "A dinosaur...is in this forest?" Max gasped.

"But how can that be? Chomp and I were the first ones out the card, and that was the day we met you." Terry said.

"But...were you?" Ace pointed out.

Zoe then turned to the elder. "Ms Yelana, do you know what happened to this creature?" she asked her.

But she only shook her head. "It is said that it appeared again only briefly when the forest fell, some claiming to have heard its roar...but it had vanished hundreds of years before, when our land was invaded," she told them, her eyes now cast downwards with a slightly dark look.

"Invaded...by who?" Chomp asked.

"Dragons...!" She slightly growled, catching the team off-guard with her tone. "They and their peoples came to us under the prospect of needing a new home...but when we granted them refuge...they attacked us, killing everyone, and destroying everything in their path, be it with claw, teeth, wing, tail or fire..."

The team all looked to each other in surprise and shock. That did not sound like how their more recent interactions with Elliot's family went..."What?"

As Yelana continued to share her story, Honeymaren and Elsa were comfortably settled around another fire within the village, conversing about anything that came to mind. They found they had quite a few things in common when it came to family, and how they were the older siblings. Their conversations went on, until Honeymaren asked the queen something. "I want to show you something, may I?" She gestured to the scarf, to which Elsa nodded. The Northuldran woman took the piece of clothing in her hand, and showed an area that had the four element symbols in a square formation, spaced out evenly. "You know air, fire, water and earth..." she started, gesturing to each of the diamond-shaped marks with her free hand.

"Yes." Elsa nodded.

"If you look here, can you see?" she went on, gesturing her hand in a circular motion to something unnoticed by the queen before then. The four elements were positioned in a square, as said before, however - in between each symbol were four extra diamond marks, all of which were voided and lacking any markings like their filled counterparts. Upon seeing these, Elsa developed a look of grand surprise on her face with a gasp - after all, it didn't take a genius to see what they were meant to be. "There have been many a tale amongst our people about the past, of how there were four other spirits living in the forest alongside us," she shared with a smile.

"Eight spirits...?!" The blonde gasped in awe.

Honeymaren nodded at her quick assumption. "There have been many rumours about what elements they represented, and what they looked like over the years..." she told her, before a more solemn look crossed her face. "But our knowledge of them has been lost over the centuries they have been gone...lost on the day the dragon's people betrayed and attacked us...!" She finished with a hint of anger.

Something Elsa was not expecting. "So, the reason why you were so hostile with Elliot especially, was because of what he really is..." she realised, before she asked another question. "How did you know he was a dragon, though?"

The raven-haired girl gave her a curt look. "We didn't...but we saw his companion - 'Sugi', I believe it was?" Elsa nodded to her. "We remembered from our oldest of elders, what kind of creatures the Highfells possessed...one of those creatures, were giant felines with immense teeth, and strong enough a rip a man apart," she told her.

"The sabretooth cat..." she breathed out in reply, looking away in deep troubling thought. None of what Honeymaren had said up to then about dragons made the slightest sense. She knew for a damn fact that they were not the greedy, overbearing and monstrous beasts of the old tales many people believed in...but kind, gentle yet powerful creatures, whose only concern was protecting their people.

It was true, at a time in the more recent past, she and Panthos weren't each other's favourite company outside their families, for he saw her as untrustworthy, unworthy of Elliot's affections and even weak. And for her, he seemed selfish, and cared only for his own interests, same with Koba on a more uneven level, and even gentle Rohanna, though not as much as the former pair.

But throughout the time, heartache and adventure leading up to her husband becoming welcomed and even adored among her people in Arendelle, she saw them all for their true colours, and the same for them for her and her family. She soon saw them as benevolent, open-minded and accepting people, and they, in turn, saw her as a strong, brave and incredible woman for someone as young as her. This went on until she eventually accepted them as her new mother and father figure, and Koba like a true older brother, whether they be human or not.

Same with Orius, Tyeema, Tarroz, Iven, Darboon and Utheema.

With all this knowledge in mind, she faced her companion to voice her thoughts. "Honeymaren...I've been around dragons long enough to know they aren't conquerers," she implored her. "Ever since I've known my husband's family, all they seemed to really care about was what's best for their people. Granted, my first impression of them wasn't positive, but...I know them well enough to know their true colours."

Honeymaren matched her look with a scowl as she made her retort. "That's how they seemed to us too, at first..." She took a pause. "But mark my words, sooner or later, they will betray you...and if not, then I'm sure they already have, in a way you might not understand yet," the woman told her, a deep look of knowing crossed her scowl. At the sight of this, Elsa too developed a disapproving look at the raven-haired girl, unimpressed by her retort. But then, Honeymaren's look became sadder, and even...guilty. "Look...I'm only saying these things to you, because centuries ago, it was dragons and their...subjects...-" Cue the emphasis of disgust. "...That took away our peace...our people...our freedom..." She then gestured to the marks on Elsa's scarf again. "And they are also the reason why four of the eight spirits are no longer here with us, lost to the heavens..." she finished with a look of defeat, her eyes cast downwards with her head lowered.

With that bit of information, Elsa took on a look of sympathy for the Northuldra, knowing what it was like to lose everything you once had, but she was still heavily conflicted about her words...Elliot and his family had never done any sort of wrong on the innocents of anywhere...right...? Before she could dwell more on that, Honeymaren regained a hopeful smile. "But, what keeps us going is one hope that we have..." she said, showing her the symbols on the scarf for the third time. "You now know about the eight spirits that lived in this forest."

"I do." Elsa replied.

The Northuldran woman then pointed a finger into the middle of the square of symbols. "But look..." She paused. "There's a ninth spirit." She then looked up at the blonde. "Said to be a bridge between us, and the magic of nature..." she told the queen.

"A ninth spirit...?" Elsa couldn't help but gasp in such a revelation. Just how many spirits lived in this forest?!

Honeymaren gave a nod before making another comment. "Some claim, they heard it call out, alongside the roar of an enchanted beast from our folklore, the day the forest fell."

"My father heard them..." Elsa replied softly with an awed smile, looking away in thought before turning back with another question. "Do you think that's what's calling me?"

Honeymaren, too, gave a smile. "Maybe..." she said in a short reply. "Alas...only Ahtohallan knows."

"Ahtohallan..." Elsa sighed, looking away for a bit before closing her eyes, and took a breath "Dive down deep into her sound," she sang softly to begin. "But not too far, or you'll be drowned." And with a twist, the two did a duet to finish.

Afterwards, Honeymaren gave a slight laugh before asking her own question. "Why do lullabies always have some dark warning in them?"

"I wonder that all the time..." Elsa gave her own laughing reply. The queen's attention, however, then wandered off towards a sight outside the village, where she saw her husband sitting in front of a smaller fire, gazing into the flames with a faraway look, and all the while Sugi was sitting beside him, looking down at him with what seemed to be a look of concern and sadness. At this troubling sight, Elsa decided to be a particularly sympathetic and concerning wife and wanted to see what was up with her husband. "Could you excuse me for a moment, Honeymaren? I'll be right back," she told her. She rose up and marched over to her husband.

And ignoring the irritated...jealous glare that was sent his way.

DK

The Queen of Arendelle quickly slowed her march into a slow walk, calmly and slowly approaching the hunting pair. Sugi was the first to notice her and gave a gentle growl in greeting, to which Elsa smiled and gave a few gentle strokes to her head with both hands, causing the feline to purr in comfort. After that, her smile turned into a small frown, slowly laying a gentle hand on Elliot's shoulder, letting out an unconscious sigh of relief when she felt his larger hand cover her smaller one. "Hey..." she greeted softly.

"My dear..." he replied in the same tone. He planted a delicate kiss on her fingers and looked up at his wife.

"Are you okay?" she asked, taking a seat next to him, pressing up against him as she did.

He gave a sign with his head down and eyes closed, before opening them again and made his soft reply. "Well, yes, physically..."

"And emotionally? M-Mentally?"

"I'm..." He sighed with a sudden guilty expression. "I'm sorry...for how I've been acting." He turned to face her. "I'm just so desperate to protect you, with this whole journey and, the prophecy that Pabbie told us about and..." He gave a slow shake of his head whilst breaking eye contact. "Now you're in the dangerous place any Highfell could be..." And he stared back into the fire.

"Hey..." she cooed, as she wrapped her arms around him in a hug and laid her head on his shoulder. "It'll be okay...nothing has ever kept us apart before, and we're not about to split up now."

"I sure hope so..." he replied, wrapping his left arm around her as he tended to the fire with his right, using his khopesh to act as a fire pick.

"Besides..." Elsa began to speak again, looking up into the dark cloudy sky. "If I never woke up the spirits, we wouldn't need to come here."

"Hey," he said intently, causing her to look at him as he cupped her face in his hands and turned her head to face him. "I don't wanna hear you blame yourself, you hear me?" he asked her. "Whatever happened in here was because of something that happened in the past, so all we need to do is find it, free this place, and then we can go home." He finished with an encouraging smile. "Sound good?"

Elsa, too, couldn't stop a smile on her lips from spreading. "Sounds excellent!" she commented, placing a delicate kiss on his lips which he eagerly returned. The pair from there on were just content to stare into the flames before them, loving each other's company and closeness (her legs were practically swung over his lap). "Elliot?"

"Hmm?"

She continued to look into the flames. "I'm still a little bit emotional from...what happened in the past from after our wedding night..." She then looked into his eyes with passion. "But I'm not ready to give up being a mother."

He turned to face her with surprised eyes as she continued. "What I mean is, after this adventure is over...I want us to try again...to have a family," she elaborated.

In response to her words, Elliot gave an adoring smile at his wife with love in his eyes, a look that she happily returned. "I'd love nothing more, Mrs Takkar," he replied honestly with a slight hint of lust in his eyes before he began to look her up and down. "Besides, you have a rocking body," he teased.

In response to this, Elsa merely rolled her eyes with a scoff. "Men..." She sighed.

"Ey, everyone's gotta have their own tendencies!" He slightly laughed, planting a peck on his wife's cheek.

"You're incorrigible..." she muttered in amusement.

"But you love me," he said, showing his wedding ring.

"Yes, but that doesn't mean I like you!" she retorted stubbornly, sitting up and folding her arms in front of her (but not hiding the smile on her face).

He gave a louder more open laugh as he said, "How the hell does that work?" And then he pulled her into another hug.

"What am I gonna do with you?" Elsa said with a slightly stubborn huff.

"You're stuck with me, wifey mine!" he teased with a smirk and a wink.

"And I married you why...?" She sighed, but finally wrapping her arms around him again.

"You really want me to tell you that?" he replied as he laid his cheek on her head.

Suddenly though, before anything else could be said, a low boom sound shook the ground, causing the pair to come out of their bonding banter. Then a second, closer-sounding boom hit, with Sugi giving an uneasy growl.

Then after a third made itself known, Elliot immediately deducted what exactly was coming. "The Earth Giants!" he said to her in alarm.

"What are they doing down here?" Yelana asked in confusion, also recognising the booming sounds, as she and the D-Team jumped to their feet. Everyone within the village scrambled, putting out their fires, closing their doors, or quieting fearful children, and after that, everyone made a dash for a hiding spot.

"Down!" Elliot hissed, tugging his wife behind a thick tree with Sugi hiding behind a nearby bush, crouching as low as she could.

Anna and the D-Team found themselves huddled behind a large boulder together, and not far away, a huffing and puffing Olaf was hiding behind a smaller rock when the fire spirit from before crawled up onto a smaller rock next to him. "Shh, shh, shh, shh, shh..." he said in an attempt to not give themselves away, only to be answered with the blue salamander lighting himself aflame. "Gah! They're coming!" Panicking, he tried blowing on the fire lizard to douse him but only resulted in picking up the flames even more. Olaf, giving a gasp, then idiotically picked the fire ball up, and caught his stick arms alight, and nearly dropping him back on the rock he flailed his arms about, which were then evaporated like water as the Spirit of Fire laid himself down on his snowy head. "This is why even Elliot and his family don't play with fire," he scolded, but the innocent reptile only gave his eyeball a lick in response. "Aww, I can't stay mad at you...!" Olaf gushed as the little guy snuggled in. "Why are you so cute?!"

Moving on, Elsa, Elliot and Sugi all gave a gasp as one of the Earth Giants came into view, towering above the tree line. It was possibly the biggest living thing they'd ever seen, with only Charles and Gertie being a close second by the looks of it, and even in the dark of the night, the three could easily tell that these humongous titans were made entirely from rock and stone. At first, though, it seemed as though it would just pass by, but then with a grunt, the giant turned in their direction, causing the three to silently yelp and duck back in cover.

Each of them held their breath as time seemed to have stopped, but then a moment later, the giant turned back around and continued on its merry way. Seeing this, the three came out from their hiding spot, and Elsa felt a pull, a feeling to follow them. But as she took a step after it, she felt a tug on her arm. Turning around she came face-to-face with a serious-looking Anna, gesturing for her to kneel down. "Please tell me you three were not about to follow them!" she scolded her elder sibling.

But Elsa had an epiphany as she turned to face the direction the giant went. "What if Elliot and I can settle them like we did with the wind and fire?" she asked with an excited smile on her face.

"Elsa, the only reason I was able to get the wind spirit off my arse was because of my sudden reunion with my dragon half." Elliot told her seriously as he and Sugi joined the sisters on the ground, with a concerned glare on his face. "And I almost ended up killing you because I couldn't control it, never mind the devastation I caused because of that incident," he reminded her, making his wife lose her smile.

"Yeah, Elsa, he's right - and besides, what if they crush you before you get a chance to even talk to them?" Anna further implored. "Remember: the goal is to find the voice...find the truth as get us home...all of us." She emphasised the last bit while pointing to something to her right, and when Elsa looked, she saw Max, Rex, Zoe and their dinos helping to calm the children of the village down.

She realised at that moment that she was right - everyone was counting on her to find the voice so everyone could go home and so that the D-Kids could go back to Sanjo City so they could make sure their own families were okay.

Before she or anyone else could comment, though, they heard and saw a panting Olaf running up to them with the fire spirit - which had been promptly named Bruni by the snowman - on his head. "Hey guys, that was close!" he said to them worriedly.

"We know, little guy." Elliot said as Elsa allowed the small salamander on to her open hand. "The Giants were most likely drawn here because they sensed Elsa's magic or my dragon power, and would deem us a threat if we show aggression," he told the four, as he laid a hand on his wife's shoulder. "Either way, it's likely they'll return to look again, we need to move before we end up putting everyone else at risk," he reasoned.

The queen nodded in agreement, before turning to her sister. "You're both right, Anna, we've got to find the voice...we're going now," she told a reassured Anna.

"Alright, great!" she said. "Let me just find the D-Team, and-" Her next sentence paused as she turned to the Northuldra crowd, seeing Rex and his friends, but no sign of a certain older blond and his reindeer. "Wait, where're Kristoff and Sven?"

"Oh yeah, I think they took off with that Ryder guy and a bunch of reindeer," Olaf told her.

"They just...left?" the princess replied, hurt written on her face.

"We'll never know the ways of men," Olaf said before wandering to join up with Elsa. Anna, though, hesitated to leave her beloved behind and didn't want to go without him, they were meant to do this all together...right?

Her train of thought was broken when she felt a hand on her shoulder and turned to see Elliot looking at her in reassurance with a kind smile. "He's a good man for you, Anna...and you know as well as I that he'd understand that you'd want to not let Elsa out of your sight...she's one of the only family you have, after all," he said to her.

Anna, grateful for hearing that, returned his smile and laid her head on her brother-in-law's chest as she wrapped him in a hug. "There are those times when I think how my life with Elsa would be like, without you in it," she said to him honestly.

"Dull as hell, perhaps!" he offered in a jokey manner, causing her to giggle as she pulled away and made eye contact with him.

"You don't mean that!" She giggled.

"I don't know, do I?" he snipped again, making them both laugh in this moment of brother and sister with the redhead woman shaking her head.

But this happiness was then turned wrought with worry, as a loud snarling growl made itself known in the air as the pair turned to the village with wide, worried eyes.

And they weren't the only ones to hear it. "Was that a wolf?" Max asked, still in the village with his teammates. "Are-are there wolves out here?"

Honeymaren walked up to them, looking out beyond the village into the darkness of the forest. "Wolves...?" she asked warily. "No, there - there hasn't been any sort of wolf since..." As she continued, she slowly turned around, and soon found herself frozen in her tracks. For there, coming out from between two of the village teepees, a large, dark brown monstrous-looking wolf stalked, snarling like a rabid beast, its growls catching the immediate attention of the D-Team, causing them to jump away as they set their sights on it.

The Northuldran woman raised her staff in preparation to protect herself and her people, but that was when the monster before her growled viciously, charged and pounced at her, set to tear out her throat and organs. As she screamed in fear and prepared for the worst, a feral Sugi came out from nowhere, and threw her opponent to the ground. From there, a battle of tooth to claw raged, the wolf biting at her fur and neck when it could (despite the dragon steel she was wearing) and the sabretooth responding with brutal paw swipes to its face, both animals snarling like beasts out of hell.

Seeing the commotion, Lieutenant Mattias came with his sword and shield in hand, ready to stand with his men and assist the friend of his new king. "MATTIAS!-" The older man turned to the younger man at his scream. "DUCK!" And immediately, he hit the deck when he saw a small hatchet flying at full speed. He then heard pained growling from above and looked above to see a second one of these creatures with the small weapon stuck in its shoulder. As his men dragged him to safety, he turned to see Sugi and saw as she leapt and pinned an equal-in-size wolf under her, and struck its throat with her signature sabres, quickly ending the mutt's life, and then he and everyone else around saw Elliot unsheath his longsword, and promptly stabbed it downward onto the second one's flank, causing a fatal blow to the wolf's organs and its life to leave its body.

Everyone watched in breathless amounts of horror from what nearly happened to them, Honeymaren still panting and shaking from her near-death experience as Elliot yanked out his hatchet after doing the same with his sword. "Warg scouts!" he snarled, as he turned to everyone. "Which means an orc pack has entered the forest!"

"Orc pack?!" Rex exclaimed, as a severely pissed off Yelana marched up to Elliot.

"Who did you bring into our forest, beyond your group?" she demanded with a scowl of hateful betrayal.

"No one!" He replied without hesitance.

"WHO DID YOU BRING?!" she raged at him as Elsa ran to his side.

"No one, we swear!" she told her with a look of fearful worry as a certain beeping went off on the D-Team's dino bracers.

"What in the - we have a dino alert from somewhere in the forest!" Max exclaimed in shock.

"And something tells me this is no coincidence..." Rex said with caution, warily looking around in the dark.

"What in the spirit's name are you talking about?" Honeymaren asked in fear as she turned to face the Highfell.

"We're being hunted...all of us, including you and the rest of your people now," he told her with no deceit in his tone. At this, every man, woman and child of the Northuldran villagers began to panic, as the children began to hold onto their equally fearful mothers for dear life.

"We've got to get everyone out of here." Mattias suggested grimly.

"We can't!" Ryder's voice called out as he along with a worried Kristoff and Sven came out of the trees. "We've lost all the reindeer, they bolted!" he cried to them.

"There's only one thing we can do then!" Elliot suddenly shouted out, turning everyone's attention to him as he looked to his family. "Elsa, Anna and Olaf, you're with me!" At the girl's nods of understanding, he continued. "D-Team and Kristoff, you keep everyone away from harm until we get back!" he ordered like a king as he turned to get Sugi ready to run.

"Wha-? Eli, wait, you're gonna split us up?! Won't it be better if we stick together?" Zoe asked hesitantly with her boyfriend and the Dinosaur King alongside her.

"Trust me when I say this, kids," he said as he began to adjust Sugi's harness. "If Sugi and I were to stay and protect all those people, we'd fail, because there's only two of us and maybe a twenty to thirty strong pack of killers out for blood." As he then attached his longsword to the harness and reequipped his khopesh and katana, he turned to face them. "But you guys: you by far have the best chance to make sure all these people get to safety. Not only do you have the skills I taught you all when learning to use your dino blades, but you've got all the dinosaur power you need to protect them and you as well," he then told them all earnestly. "We all need you guys...and I believe in you."

The team all looked to each other in concern of their predicament, as Elsa wrapped a grateful hand around his. They thought about how so many lives that depended on them from this whole ordeal, and there was only one way to see them through to the end. "We'll take care of them." Max said with a determined grin. "If everyone is counting on us, then we won't let them down!"

"No, Max, listen to me!" Elliot suddenly snapped at him, catching them off-guard. "I am not fucking with you guys here. If you slip up or slack for even a split second, the wargs will overwhelm all your dinosaurs with their sheer numbers!" The three kids took in a horror-filled gasp. "They could very well end up killing your partners themselves!"

That made the brunet's determination stop dead in its tracks, and in its place, sheer fear gripped on tightly as he turned to Terry and Chomp. If what Elliot said was true...does that mean their dinos could die protecting the villagers?

Such a thought made him tremble.

Before anyone else could say anything, though, a long, low-pitched roar filled the air as the area around them gave a shake, startling everyone present. "Everyone's gonna have to move now! Something big is heading this way!" Terry alerted them all.

"It must be the dinosaur!" Max commented.

"And a big one too, by the sound of it!" Rex theorized before turning to Elliot. "Elliot, you guys go find that voice, and free the forest! We'll welcome our new visitors!"

Eli took a deep breath before he gave a nod. "Make sure you keep everyone safe, Dinosaur King. And stay alive!" he told the team.

"We will!" Zoe replied determinedly.

Anna and Kristoff at that moment gave each other a thorough hug, each partner gripping tight to their beloved. "Kristoff..." Anna whimpered, looking into his brown eyes with worry. "I..."

"I know...come back to me..." he replied in the same tone, before they gave a love-filled kiss, and separated.

"Anna, here!" Elsa said, waving her hands, and making a small, ice-made sledge attached to Sugi's harness by a rope of the same element, to which Anna nodded in thanks and hopped in. After which Eli hopped onto the feline's back, and pulled his wife aboard behind him.

"Olaf, come on!" Elliot called out.

"I'm coming!" said the snowman cheerily, with Bruni back on his head as he hopped onto Anna's lap.

"Godspeed, everyone!" He called to the Northuldra and his teammates. "Let's go, girl!" he said, and with a roar of agreement, Sugi took off, with all her passengers aboard, and soon disappearing from sight.

"Yelana, since this is your home, you oughta lead the way," Max told the Northuldran elder, who nodded in agreement. "Where do you suggest we go?"

"To the lichen meadows, a couple of miles west of here. It would leave us out in the open, but it will eliminate our oppressor's chance at an ambush," she replied immediately.

"You won't have to worry about any of those cowardly tactics." A female voice suddenly resonated on the air around them, catching everyone off-guard again, with the children clinging to their mothers from how coldly it sounded by tone. "Because I know that the battle to come will reshape this forest a bit," the voice said again.

"Hey, listen here, bitch!" Terry snapped, constantly sniffing the air to try and pinpoint her location. "Instead of being Madame Mysterious from the trees, how about you come out and talk to us in full detail?" he growled out.

"Yeah, take us on like a man if you dare!" Chomp added in.

Silence then met them for a moment, before a snapping branch caught their attention. "Huh?" Max wondered, looking around wildly as loud footsteps met their ears.

These steps sounded off five more times, before the form of a large sauropod dinosaur came from a gap in the trees, causing all the Northuldra, Mattias and his men to widen their eyes at the size of the monster that greeted them. Its colour scheme was a darkish-grey all around, though, on its neck up to his head and along the tail were intricate circular patterns of orange-y red, with the grey in the middle as sort of an eye. The tail was long and whip-like, and from the middle of its back to a quarter along the way of the tail was a small row of spikes. This dinosaur was a dinheirosaurus.

"That's the dinosaur the bracers picked up!" Zoe exclaimed, pointing to it.

"It's a dinheirosaurus!" Terry managed to identify, remembering seeing one as a skeleton from an encyclopaedia book he once read.

"The name is Dynerra, use it!" the dinosaur hissed at the rex, causing all of the people - the D-Team included - to gasp in surprise.

"You can talk?" Paris asked in shock, which caused the Jurassic giant to turn to her with a cold glare.

"Is that a problem, runt?" Dynerra retorted, snorting fiercely with a stomp on her front left foot and waving her tail dangerously.

The frightened parasaurolophus backed off and cowered herself on the ground, taking shelter behind an angry Chomp. "Hey! why don't you pick on someone your own size?" he growled.

"Like...you?" she sassed, slowly approaching the team intimidatingly.

That was when a wide-eyed Chomp realised...he fucked up! "Uh, Max?" he promptly asked squeamishly, just as he got called back to his card.

"DINO SLASH! TRICERATOPS, ROAR!"

The now adult-sized Chomp landed on the ground with a thud, determination clear in his eyes. This also caught the immediate surprise of Yelana and her people, who all looked on in amazement of the trike's new - more familiar - look. "Such power...what have we missed all these years?" she asked to herself.

"That's what I was about to say!" Mattias said breathlessly, coming to her side to watch the upcoming battle.

"Don't just stand there, you guys!" Max called to the pair. "Get the people away from here or you risk getting crushed!" he warned them.

"I'd prefer not to have the death of innocents on my conscience, thank you very much!" Chomp added with a short roar, snapping the pair out of their stupor.

"Y-yes, yes of course!" the elder stuttered back, turning to encourage her people away from the village.

"I'll give them a hand guys, she's all yours." Kristoff said, before running to assist in the evacuation with Sven in tow.

"Alright then, now we got her!" Max said with a confident grin, before slow clapping filled their eyes, stopping the brunet before he could make the first move.

The clapper slowly and casually walked out from behind Dynerra's front legs, bearing a calm and collected smirk on his lips, widening the kid's eyes upon recognising him as he stopped clapping. "You know, I thought you three kids of all people know that's not how you speak to a lady. 'You can talk?' That's real mature, isn't it?"

"Hans?!" Rex snapped. "What the heck are you doing here?" he demanded with a scowl.

The former Prince of the Southern Isles didn't seem too bothered by the blond's tone as he turned to his dinosaur standing above him. "Just taking an evening stroll with a new friend, you could say..." He responded casually as if it was an everyday thing. "We just wander from place to place sniffing around until..." It was then that his smirk took a more sinister look as he redirected his gaze. "The next opportunity presents itself."

"We mean, why are you here? In this forest?!" Chomp talked back with an aggressive snort.

"Ahhh...that's what you're upset about, isn't it?" Hans replied coyly.

"You led those warg things here, didn't you?!" Max snapped back at the prince.

"Even if he led them here, those dogs would've picked up the scent long before word reached their ear," Dynerra told the brunet, before shifting her gaze to the triceratops. "But I cannot imagine the pack leader would go about coming too close with all of you here..." she hissed.

"So that just begs the question..." Hans added in. "Could you possibly tell me where Queen Elsa and her husband are, along with Princess Anna, so we can avoid any of this nonsense, pu-lease?" he asked, adding in an air of pleasant charm.

Unfortunately for him, though..."You want her? You're gonna have to go through us to get her!" Chomp roared, charging at Dynerra with his horns now lowered at full speed. But upon reaching the dinheirosaurus, he didn't expect her to meet his charge by stopping him with a foot on her head, like holding back a toddler on a tantrum. "Hey!"

"Oh, I'm sorry," she replied, shoving him back, before she turned sideways quicker than her body should have allowed, and whipped her tail across his flank. The force of the blow sent him flying and rolling across the ground before crashing into a thicket of trees. "Is that better?"

"You're a cocky bitch, aren't you?" Tank snapped in.

"Chomp, you okay?" Max called to his triceratops in worry.

"Yeah, yeah..." he replied, stumbling to his feet with a shaking head. "Just a bit dizzy, is all..." he commented.

"This should even things out then!" His partner replied to him, before summoning one of his move cards from his dino gadget. "Electric Charge!" he shouted confidently.

From a newer, safer distance, Yelana, Mattias and the rest watched in awe and pure amazement (aside from Kristoff and Sven) as thunderclouds appeared and struck the triceratops with a lightning bolt, and empowering him instead of harming. After giving a roar, Chomp charged at Dynerra at full speed once more.

But in a twist..."Go, Aqua Tail!" Hans called out, placing the card to his throat. In a glow of blue, Dynerra's tail began to ripple as water began to flow around it, giving it the appearance of a water whip. With a roar, she waited until Chomp was in range, and then with a great lash at blinding speed that would make a thunderbolt jealous, she slammed her tail across his head, sending him flying into a rock wall.

However, the resulting impact revealed something more dreadful than the now-injured trike, 'cos a second later, something landed on the ground...

It was a horn.

One of his horns...

"Oh my...clumsy me!" Dynerra said, in a mocking sort of way. The whole D-Team could only watch with shock as Chomp was now without his left horn. And as for the triceratops himself, he could now only hyperventilate at what had just become of him. It was a horrid sight for him, and worst still, the pain that followed after losing it prevented him from getting up.

"By the spirits..." Honeymaren gasped with a hand over her mouth.

"Chomp...Oh my God...!" Max could barely whisper out, knowing that the loss of the horn was because of him as tears came to his eyes.

"Max." Terry said, forcing his attention over to his T-rex from his tone of hidden, unrivalled fury. "I want to teach that bitch that no one hurts my brother and lives to tell about it!" he told him, and at that, Max's own fury emerged from his guilt, as he gave a nod and returned him to his card.

"I want some payback too, Zoe, get me in there!" Paris told Zoe in anger for her mate, who too, in her anger and horror nodded, and did the same.

But before they could summon them, growling and snarling could be heard on the air, the same as the ones from before. And a few feet behind the smirking Hans and his partner, more wargs emerged from the rise, numbering around twenty or so, all growling like rabid monsters (occasionally snapping jaws too) - a quarter of which had orc riders on their backs. Leading them was a tall, imposing pale orc, covered in scars and claw marks, with a horrid claw-shaped tool in place of his left hand, mounted on a larger warg with the fur of the same colour.

The sight shook the three kids, and even more so for the shaken and weakened Chomp. They had never seen beasts that looked so bloodthirsty before. Were these really the same ones that Elliot and Sugi had to face before? "Do you smell it?" The pale orc spoke softly in a language non-recognisable by the D-Team, slowing gliding the claw against his warg's fur. "The scent of fear?" he continued, staring intently at the three children and the small creatures at their feet. The six of them, still not recognising his language and terrified of how he spoke, all grouped together in fear, Zoe and Max hugging each other tightly with Rex and a frightened Spiny standing right at their side, and even Ace and the usually competitive Tank were fearful of this newcomer. "We remember the times of when all creatures reeked of it in our presence," he continued to speak, now loud enough for them to hear clearly, as his tone shifted to one of anger. "Before the arrival of the dragon...!" He bared his teeth as he glared straight at Rex. "With your death, Dinosaur King...shall terror spread to every corner of the land..."

The three kids could only look at him with fear through their veins, still not knowing what they said. Eventually, though, they steeled their nerves, and sent their own glare his way. They couldn't afford to let fear stop them dead, especially with people everywhere around the world counting on them. "No idea what you're saying, pal..." Max said determinedly. "But if you wanna mess with Terry, go right ahead!"

"DINO SLASH! TAKE 'EM ALL, TYRANNOSAURUS!"

"Come on, Rex!" Zoe shouted at the Dinosaur King

"I'm right behind you!" he replied as he recalled Ace.

"DINO SLASH! PARASAUROLOPHUS, BLOOM!"

"DINO SLASH! CARNOTAURUS, BLOW THEM AWAY!"

After going through all their transformations, Terry, Paris and Ace all landed in front of Chomp, the first of which roared at Grarzog and his horde of hunters challengingly, the wargs of which all snarled and growled back, eager for a fight. "Wait!" Another voice shouted, before Sykes and Gothel both came out of the trees alongside the orcs. "We want in as well, you know, Snow White!" He snarked at the orc leader, who only growled in annoyance.

"You two as well?!" Tank shouted in exasperation.

"What do you want?!" Max added in.

"Well, firstly to apologise for the speech of our friend Grarzog here," Gothel said with a smirk, gesturing to the pale orc standing not even five feet away from her. "He understands English but prefers not to use it himself."

"The second was so we can join, since I assume that this is a party anyone can join," Sykes commented, before placing a card to his face and his hat. "Centrosaurus, please, ladies and gentlemen!"

"Yes, indeed," Gothel said with the same grin as she placed a card of her own to the right side of her neck. "Indosuchus!"

After doing their black zigzagging around the heroes, appearing in front of them were the respective dinos of their choosing. The centrosaurus was crimson red all over with darker brown patches around its sides and sported a lighter-coloured frill with its long nose horn in the same colour. On the other hand, the indosuchus, sported a leopard-like colouration, with a greyish-coloured body covered in large patches of brown, all the while with its back being lined with small spikes.

Both dinos landed alongside Dynerra and roared at the D-Team's dinos in challenge who roared back. "You two may take the lesser two...the T-rex is mine..." she ordered the pair, who nodded and charged in, with Ace doing the same as Paris stood her ground in front of her mate as she met the Indosuchus in a headlock.

Terry soon stepped forth and roared at the Dinheirosaurus, who took it upon herself to examine the dino standing before her. "I was hoping to fight an actual T-rex who knows how to fight, let us now see if you'll be less of a weakling as your friend there," she said to him, turning and shifting her body so that her tail would be able to go on full offence.

"You go anywhere near him after what you and Hans just did," he growled. "And I'm gonna lose it."

"And what of your human partner?" She inquired to the T-rex, who paused. "Have you considered that it's the boy that lead him to being rendered useless?"

"Don't you try turning me against Max, you reptilian cunt!" He roared in fury, now running straight at the Jurassic sauropod with the intent to rip her apart.

Grarzog, tired of sitting on the sidelines, looked over the field of battle, seeing Yelana and her people on the nearby rise. "Those three children are mine!" He informed his pack, gesturing his remaining hand to the three D-Kids (which had a mace in it). "Kill the forest dwellers!" he roared out, with his white warg sending the signal snarl for her riderless subordinates to rush the defenceless Northuldra people.

At this, Zoe and Rex sprang into action again with their other partners.

"DINO SLASH!"

After doing their transformations and landing on the battlefield, Tank and Spiny gave a roar as they charged at the pack. The wargs, undeterred by their sudden appearance, decided to use their numbers to bring down their new quarry, as several daring mutts took a chance to jump at the pair. "Take this, and that, and this, and that, and that!" Spiny yelled like a goof as he claw-slashed and chomped down on the wargs closest to him.

"Get the hell off me, you poodle rejects!" Tank roared out at the three wargs that had jumped onto her back, shaking and jumping about as she did. That must be how Maximus felt when Sugi did something similar to her back in the day.

Back with the dinosaur battle, with a loud roar, Terry jumped into the air and having avoided Dynerra's whipping tail, landed on her back, and proceeded to bite into her neck. The dinhierosaurus gave a pained roar in return and swung her neck backwards to try and dislodge him.

A few feet away was the centrosaurus charging in to help, only for its charge to be answered with Ace flying in from nowhere and he kicked the ceretopsian in the face, sending him down to the ground. The carnotaurus then proceeded to jump up and down on it, causing the centrosaurus to roar in pain each time. However, that was when the indosuchus began running in his direction. "Look out behind you, Ace!" Rex called out.

"I see 'em!" Ace replied, facing the smaller carnosaur, jumping over the lashing tail the smaller tried to give and landing behind it, before giving a powerful kick that sent both dinos rolling along the ground.

"That's the way, Ace!" Tank called out, still struggling with her passengers, before finally flinging one off her back and crushed it with her tail club.

"Nature's Blessing!" Zoe called out, slashing the card against her bracer. "See what you can do for Chomp, Paris!"

A leaf tornado swirled and danced around the parasaurolophus, as she then let it fly from her beak towards her mate. "Please work..." Paris begged as the power spread itself over the triceratops. Chomp, feeling his strength returning, manage to stagger back to his feet as gave a confident roar as the power died off. However, his broken horn stayed broken as he turned to Paris.

"Thanks, honey...I owe you..." he said to her.

"Do you think you can still fight? Your horn didn't return..." she observed guiltily, disappointed that for whatever reason her power didn't bring her mate back perfectly.

In response to this, he walked up to her and gave a comforting nuzzle to her cheek. "Hey, you got rid of the pain of losing it, that's all that matters now," he said to her reassuringly, before giving a mighty roar to tell his allies that he was back for more.

This, though, proved itself as a distraction - a point proven that when Terry released his victim's neck to look over to his brother in relief, Dynerra seized the opportunity to bash him off of her with a tail whip. However, on a plus side, Tank and Spiny were able to dispatch their warg problem as they regrouped with the others. "So what now, tall, pale and scary, you gonna send more of your pack to join the body count?" Sykes asked Grarzog rhetorically, who only growled in return.

"Here we go, Tank!" Rex called to his saichania as he swiped one of her new moves. "Boulder Slide!"

With a purple glow and a roar, Tank reared up on her hind legs and slammed her front legs down again, and from behind her with a rumbling earthquake, a huge rocky cliff wall rose up from behind her and her teammates. From the top, a row of six huge boulders came rolling down at an alarming rate of speed, and upon reaching the ground, they hit the three enemy dinos, two hit Dynerra, who stumbled from the impact, the other four hit the other dinos respectively, knocking them away and causing them to disintegrate in defeat.

"Nice one, baby!" Spiny cheered his girlfriend.

"Thanks, hun, but I still wish we know why that happens..." Tank replied grimly, with some of the others nodding in agreement. Even after months, they still had no idea why these dinos kept disintegrating, even with Spectre's help.

On the other side of the field, Gothel and Sykes saw the defeat of their dinosaurs, and their faces shifted to looks of anger, while Grarzog looked on, amused at their failure. "You're gonna be very sorry for that, you lil' shits!" Sykes swore as he pulled out a triangle-shaped card!

Something that didn't go unnoticed by the heroes. "What the-?!" Max sputtered as Rex and Zoe looked on in surprise.

"A card in triangle shape?" Ace saw with a small gasp.

Even Sykes and his teammates looked at the card with surprise. "I forgot that these new friends of ours have their cards in this shape," Gothel commented, looking between her compatriots.

"Well, we can ask ol' blueberry about them after we see if they're cracked up to be," Sykes replied, before placing the card on his hat. "Here goes, you get first dibs, Scowlersaurus!" he said.

Unlike the usual times when the cards went black and zigzagged around the enemy, this new dinosaur had a proper transformation. In a purple and yellow dimension, a small version of this mystery dinosaur span around in the air as it began to grow. Lightning grew its four legs, and then its long, triceratops-like horns. But then in a shocking twist, purple crystals grew a row of stegosaurus plates on its back, and even thagomizers on the end of its tail! Finally, with a mixture of yellow lighting and purple crystals from its eyes, it swang its body around, slammed its tail on the ground, rear up and roared in a thunder and mountainous dimension as it finished. Its colours were dark grey all over, with a tan-ish underbelly, with its plates an orange with lines of black.

Once it appeared on the battlefield before the D-Team, they could not help but go absolutely gobsmacked at the dino that stood before them. "What exactly are we looking at?" Zoe croaked.

"It's some kind of..." Rex tried for an answer, utterly freaked out from the sight. "I-I don't know, it looks like a triceratops on the front, but then it goes into a stegosaurus for the rest of the body!"

Max tried turning to his partners for an explanation. "Do you and the others recognize it, Terry?" he asked.

"If we did, I'd tell you by now!" he snipped back.

"We've never seen a dinosaur like that!" Chomp exclaimed.

"That's nothing." Gothel mocked, before taking out another triangle card herself. "How about you try this one?!" she yelled, before placing it to the side of her neck.

Inside a blue and purple dimension, another dinosaur stayed on the ground for its transformation. As geysers blew steam from the floor, a mixture of water and rock formed it's long, sauropod-like legs and tail, with a ankylosaur-like club on the end, and spiky armoured back, whilst also growing said spikes on the side of it's neck. A mixture of rock and water sprouted from its eyes, as it slammed its tail on the ground and roared, a geyser sprouted more water and earth. Its colours contained a bright orange for its top half and a bright green for the bottom half.

"Okay...what?" Tank could only mutter as the second one of these...mutants...landed alongside the first one.

"There's two of those things?!" Max shouted at the sight before them.

"What have you done to them?!" Terry roared at Sykes and his teammates furiously.

"Oh, don't go acting so precious," the trike mutant said, in a Native American accent. "Long story short, they made us stronger and smarter than you in every way - how about that?" he mocked.

"You think you're so smart, how about this then?" Max retorted, before utilizing an old favourite. "Go, Magma Blaster!"

Fire gathered in Terry's mouth as he stamped a foot into the ground, before letting it fly from his mouth. The attack struck true, and his opponent went flying along the ground before stopping at a large tree. "That's the way, bro!" Chomp cheered as Terry gave a satisfied roar.

"Ohh, my..." the sauropod mutant said, with a deep, posh tone of voice. "An ego silencing sneak attack, oh, I like you, Mr T-Rex, yeesss..." His charming look and voice shifted to one that spelt danger. "But that shall save you not, noooo! For my assistant and I are far more powerful than anything you've come across up to now!" At his roar, Terry backed up in preparation for a second fight with Ace, Tank and Spiny alongside him. The mutant then turned to his seemingly defeated partner. "Round Two is beginning, no need to play dead anymore - get up, Scowler!"

The other mutant's eyes snapped open as he nearly jumped to his feet. "If that's their best, they're in a lot more trouble than we let on, eh, Bulldust?" he asked with a chuckling laugh.

"What?! Did that blast really do nothing?" Paris asked in shock.

"Not even close..." Sykes answered, before pulling a move card from his pockets. "Now, say hello to Lightning Axe!" he called out, placing the card to his hat.

Lightning infused Scowler and arched up from his head, forming the blade of an axe in between his horns. He leapt high into the air and starting spinning in the same fashion that Dino and her sisters do when they use Spinning Attack. The blade of the axe first bashed Tank and out of the way, before striking true against Ace, who roared in pain as the electricity shocked him and caused him to twitch, before falling to the ground and returning to his card. "Ace!" Rex called in worry, rushing to get his card.

"By the gods..." Yelana gasped in fear with a hand over her mouth.

DK

Further away from the battlefield on a mountain top looking over the entire forest, and with daylight making itself known on the horizon..."I think it's safe to say that we've lost them now, you three, Sugi's not picking up the scent of wargs up ahead!" Elliot said to his entourage reassuringly, patting the slightly panting Sugi on the shoulders in a job-well-done fashion.

"She can really move fast when she wants to!" Olaf commented fondly, dismounting from the sledge, and placing Bruni on a small nearby rock.

That was then the pair noticed that both Elsa and Anna were looking out at the view with a troubled frown on their face. "Hey, you two okay?" Elliot asked them.

"Hmm?/Pardon?" the sisters asked, snapping their heads over to him.

He developed a knowing look. "You two are worried about Max and the others, aren't you?" he said knowingly.

"Well...yes, of course." Elsa replied, looking down in concern and twisting her hands together.

"Just the three of them facing who-knows-what?" Anna added worriedly. "I'd be surprised if any one of us wasn't worried, especially if this pack you mentioned is as dangerous as you say it is."

"Yeah, I'm kinda scared for them too, really..." Olaf said to the now-frowning hunter with a sad worried look on his face of snow.

"Yeah-yeah, I know...I know..." he replied as Anna wrapped him in a comforting hug. "I'm afraid for them too..." he admitted with Sugi gave a croon of agreement.

They all looked out the view, knowing that somewhere down there, he D-Team were facing unknown odds, and they just left them to basically fend for themselves just for the sake of the mission - not to mention they had left Yelana and her people at risk too. "We could just...look for the source of the voice later, can't we?" Olaf asked nobody in particular as settled on Anna's lap again.

The three humans looked at each other before a determined grin spread across Elsa's face. "You know what Olaf? I think we can, Arendelle's not going anywhere just yet, I wouldn't think!" she said.

"Yeah, you're right, my dear." Elliot said in reply as he dismounted and detached the sledge from the harness. "Anna, you and Olaf see if you can find the reindeer, Elsa and I will take care of the rest."

"Be careful, you two!" the princess replied as Eli remounted.

"We will!" he said to her. "Come on!" he suddenly exclaimed, and with a firm growl, Sugi turned in on herself and sprinted back down the mountain into the woods.

DK

As the battle continued, Chomp was forced into a headlock with Scowler with Paris helping where she could, and all the while, Terry, Spiny and Tank found themselves hanging by a thread as they constantly got pushed onto the defensive under the combined assault of Bulldust and Dynerra. All of this was observed by the satisfied villains and the growingly worried and frustrated D-Team. "This is so far proving to be a successful test, Bulldust and Scowler seem to be able to take on the entire D-team singlehandedly." Gothel commented with a dark smirk and her hands crossed on her chest.

"Well, Dynerra did make a contribution, rendering their triceratops nearly useless." Hans pointed out.

Sykes then made a few words himself. "Well, whatever the outcome of this battle now, win or lose, the two boys have proven to be ruthless, not like some New Yorker, gentlemen," He made a snort. "Trying to protect his riding cloths."

"And..." Hans raised a finger. "We've yet to show the secret weapon our new friends have...and they're only a few of the many we have on the way..." he said, with a slightly evil laugh.

"And you, Grarzog..." Gothel inquired with the orc leader who was still mounted on his warg, turning his line of sight to the old woman. "I thought you said you were going to take a shot at the D-Team themselves," she asked.

"They are already dead..." he replied in his language, gesturing with his claw arm out towards the other side of the battlefield.

Unknown to any of the heroes or the forest people, Bolg and a group comprising of three wargs and their riders had snuck around the flank of the battling dinosaurs to the kid's side of the field, using the trees and any rocks in their path as cover. As a precaution, they had also covered themselves in mud, and while they may have now looked like shit, it proved to be a very thoughtful shield against Terry's famously sensitive scent of smell, so now he wouldn't be able to smell anything out of the ordinary - not that his mind was on his snout at the moment, having been knocked to the ground by a tail swing by Bulldust.

After a good period of sneaking, Bolg's hunters had managed to get into the necessary ambush point, out of sight and mind from everyone. "Prepare yourselves..." Bolg instructed to his orcs, all of which gave low grunts of bloodlust excitement as they brandished their weapons of choice as their wargs growled savagely, ready to tear the three limb from limb.

But, before they could, a wall of purple fire suddenly raised from out of nowhere, cutting the hunters from their prey - a sight that caught the attention of all present: human, orc, warg and dino alike. "What?!" one of the lesser orcs snarled.

As quickly as the flames appeared, it evaporated, only to reveal a much more alarming threat. A Viking-like war cry erupted from Elliot's lungs as Sugi pounced high into the air, teeth and claws bared with a loud deep guttural roar, crash-landing down on one warg as the human hunter made a quick job of its rider, cutting off its head with his khopesh. Bolg, quickly coming to terms with what was happening, ordered his party to attack the Highfell pair, charging in himself with a crude sword drawn.

"Whoa, Eli! W-where did you come from?!" Max exclaimed as he realised that he and his friends just got their lives saved.

"We can handle this!" Elliot replied, looking over in his direction as he thrusted his swords into the mouths of two wargs, with the blades now coming out from the back of their heads. "Focus on the battle!" he said just as he got pounced on by a third one.

"Elliot!" Zoe called out in worry, only to be answered as a long spear of ice impaled its shoulder, causing the monster dog to jump away. and from the trees where the spear came from, Elsa ran out, letting more ice spray from her fingertips.

"It appears we have...company." Gothel said in an unimpressed tone as she and the rest of her cohorts saw the unfolding second battle, and Grarzog could only roar in frustration at his son's failed attempt of a kill, before encouraging his own pack to charge at the new intruders.

But before they could get close to the Son of Dragons, they found their path blocked off, by none other than a crazy Max, Rex and Zoe, with the cards for their dino blades ready to be slashed. "Stop right there! Where do you think you're going?!" Zoe demanded with her arms spread and her green and blue blade already deployed.

One of the lesser orcs from Grarzog's group tried to make a lunge for the three kids after dismounting his warg, only to be answered by the leader swing his mace backwards against his head, killing him on the spot. That was when all three kid's determination got replaced by horror. This...monster...was happy to kill his own men right in front of their faces, and not regret his actions afterwards, now sitting proudly atop his snarling white warg with arms open wide, and a sickening, taunting smirk across his face.

But with this new fear, the two boys brought their dino blades to life and made battle-ready stances, now determined to give up as they grouped together, before yelling as they charged, determined to take him down, as a team. And in response, Grarzog gave a roar as his warg pounced, ready to tear the three kids a new one.

But a few feet away, a certain hunter had dispatched the remainder of Bolg's party and forced him to retreat, before giving a horrified cry at the scene. "NO!"

But just as the D-Team and Grarzog were about to clash, a thick ice wall sprouted out of the ground, separating the four as the kids turned to see a panicked Elsa as Anna and Olaf appeared with the Northuldra's reindeer. "HE'S FAR TOO DANGEROUS, YOU THREE! RUN!" She screamed at them as her wall started to get slammed by the orc mace, and the trio, upon realising just what they were about to do, made a run back towards their dinos to help them out in their struggle.

Speaking of said battle, things turned for the worst as Bulldust and Scowler hit Tank and Spiny with Water Sword and Lightning Axe, forcing the pair back to their cards, soon followed by Chomp and Paris as Dynerra used Aqua Tail on them, now leaving a tired Terry to stand on his own. "And then there was one, yeesss..." Bulldust said in a pleased tone.

"Oh no!" said a worried Max as his dino bracer blinked red, signifying the T-rex's low strength.

"Bring it, you messed up wanks...I can take it..." panted Terry with a growl, still standing on his feet - but only just.

"Come on, pal, don't give up now!" Max whispered to his partner desperately, knowing that if he lost, there was no telling what could happen to them next. But before that thought could worry him even more, he yelped when he saw a blue salamander on his face with a beaming smile across its lips. "Huh? What the heck are you?" he asked the little lizard, who only squeaked in response before jumping off, and scurried along the ground towards Terry.

"What's that little guy doing?" Zoe asked in worry.

"...I think I have an idea..." Rex said to himself in astonishment, noticing the symbol of fire on its back.

It was not long before the fire spirit reached Terry, who looked down at him after hearing it make a squeak. "Uhh...hi?" said the unsure and surprised T-rex, not expecting to see the tiny critter at his feet. Bruni only licked his eyeball in reply, before scurrying up his legs and onto his head, where he laid down as if he was about to take a nap. "You realise this is very bad timing for a nap, right?" Terry deadpanned.

However, the spirit of fire then closed his eyes tightly as if squinting after lighting himself aflame, and then soon after, a red glow emitted from the lizard. Soon after that, Terry found his strength coming back to him, and his eyes went from green to an enchanted blue, giving out a huge roar as his power grew ten times over. "Woah! You okay, Terry?" Max asked his partner in concern.

"You kidding me, buddy?" he replied in confidence. "I've never felt better!" he exclaimed, giving another, much louder roar to signify his readiness for Round Three. Soon after that, Gale came chittering and flying in, snitching Ace's card from Rex's fingers.

"Ace!" the blond called out as the wind spirit formed a tornado around the card, where soon a white glow appeared from within, and as the twister disappeared, the carnotaurus landed on the ground, shaking his head a little as if he was trying to make himself undizzied. "You okay, pal?" he asked.

"I'm fine, I'm-" Ace paused, looking down as he pawed the ground with his feet. "More than fine...!" he revealed as Gale continued to swirl around him as his eyes went to an ice-white from their standard yellow.

"It's getting to you too, isn't it Ace?" Terry said knowingly.

"Yeah...The spirits are infusing us with their power..." he replied, both carnivores now glaring defiantly at the trio of evil dinos, all of who grouped up in preparation for the next fight.

"If the spirits are really giving some of their power to our dinos, maybe we can use it to turn this battle around!" Rex theorised, before turning to his grinning best friend. "What do say we finish this Max, huh? Both you and I together!"

"Yeah! Let's go, Rex!" The brunet replied, sheer determination and confidence in his tone as he turned to their partners. "Get ready guys, this is the big one!"

"Ready!/Let's do this!" Ace and Terry called back.

And probably to their knowledge, a grinning Elliot and his smiling wife observed for a moment before turning to each other. "This is gonna be good!" Elsa's smile increased at her husband's words, taking his hand in hers as they saw the magic happen.

Max went first and called out, "Ultimate Fire!". With a loud squeak from Bruni and thundering roar from Terry, the T-rex burst into crackling flames of purple, before charging faster and harder than ever before, with the fire spirit still on his head.

Followed by Rex as he called out, "Ultimate Wind!". Gale swirled and chittered more fluently as Ace gave a roar himself, allowing a tornado of autumn leaves to surround him and infuse him with power. A split second later, he ran for a bit, and he and Gale flew faster than the wind, matching Terry's speed as the pair even broke the sound barrier!

"Attack!" Dynerra roared, before she, Bulldust and Scowler charged at the magic-enhanced carnivores as fast as their legs could carry them. The spirit's powers merged as the two predators attacked as one, mixing and fusing their power together, just as they were about to collide the pair split up, turned on each other and clashed their opponents from the flanks, passing each other on the way. The three evil dinos collapsed to the blow, unprepared for such a counterattack, with a final defying roar from the dinhierosaurus, all of them returned to the cards.

"OH YEAH!/HA-HA!/YAY!" The three kids cheered in victory as Terry and Ace roared to the sky.

"Hahahahaa! Yes!" Elliot too cheered as Sugi gave a roar at her friend's accomplishments as Elsa jumped into his arms with Anna soon joining in.

The three cards of the fallen dinosaurs floated lifelessly to the ground, and then were picked up by their respected summoners, all of which for some reason wore satisfied smiles on their mugs. "Not quite the outcome I would've preferred, but a successful test nonetheless..." Hans said to his companions as Grarzog and Bolg rode up to them on their wargs, with the men's horses riding alongside as the prince mounted up.

"I think we could've done better if we showed the secret weapons, but I am inclined to agree." Gothel added, climbing on behind Hans as Sykes mounted up himself, before turning to the D-Team. "This has been a very interesting contest, may we play again soon..." she said.

"Huh?" Max wondered, seeing their evil-looking smiles.

"See you around, cowpokes!" Sykes said, giving them a tip of the hat before they all turned and rode towards the exit of the forest.

'They don't even look defeated!' Rex thought to himself in surprise, before a grim look crossed his features. 'They're up to something...and those messed up looking dinosaurs proves that...'

DK

Daybreak had finally arrived an hour or two later, and Yelana and the Northuldra had expressed their gratefulness to the D-Team in defence of their livelihood, whilst also raving on how amazing it was to see their dinos battle, especially towards the end when they saw the spirits fight alongside them. They had also thanked the newcomers for returning the villagers' reindeer to them, and now they had started to pack up in preparation to move to the meadows.

But while everyone had been busy, Kristoff, Sven and Ryder had been looking high and low, searching for Anna, either to ask if they can go with her or to propose again - who knew? "Come on, where are they?" Kristoff muttered to himself.

"I'm sure she can't have gone far, we'll find them!" Ryder said with a smile, laying a supportive hand on the ice harvester's shoulders, before turning to his own reindeer. "Have you guys seen them anywhere?"

"Not me!" he said for one reindeer, switching his voice as he did.

"What did they look like?" he said for another.

"I'm sure they're here somewhere..." And for another.

"I love love!" And for another.

All the while Kristoff had watched with a look of pure amazement with a gasp. "Wait...you speak for them too?"

"I do!" he replied, just realising he wasn't being crazy...or maybe they both were without really knowing it.

"It's like, you can actually hear what they're thinking..." the blond remarked.

"Yeah." Ryder started. "And then, you-you just say it!"

"And then you just say it..." Kristoff replied breathlessly, wrapping an arm on a smiling Sven's neck in a sort of half-hug.

The two boys soon heard girlish giggling, startling the pair out of their conversation, and looked to see the D-Team walking towards them with Zoe having a hand over her mouth. "We thought we saw everything when we first saw Kristoff talking for Sven, but this tops the list!" The pinkette couldn't help but giggle.

"Well, what can we say?" Kristoff said defensively. "I reckon we're reindeer lovers as much as you guys are dinosaur lovers," he said.

"Eh, there's no arguing that, I guess..." Rex admitted, before shifting the topic. "What are you three up to, anyway?"

"You guys seen the princess?" Ryder asked.

"I thought she was with you..." Max replied.

"No, where is she?" Kristoff asked next.

A clearing of the throat caught all their attention as Yelana walked up to them. "If you're looking for the princess, she's already left with queen and the Highfell," she told them hesitantly.

This was not an answer the mountain man wanted to hear. "What?" He asked to make sure he heard; they wouldn't leave without saying goodbye...would they?

"I wouldn't try to follow...they're long gone," she confirmed.

"Long gone...?" he said to himself out loud, shocked that he and the D-Team were left behind.

The elder Northuldra woman gave a slight nod. "We're about to head west to the meadows I mentioned earlier, you and your young friends can come with us if you want," she said, leaving soon after.

Poor Kristoff was shattered, having been left behind and forgotten - never mind along with the D-team as well - and once again, he had missed out on an opportunity to propose to Anna. Ryder meekly walked to him with a sorry look on his face. "Hey, I'm- I'm really sorry..." he began to say.

"No-no, it-it's fine..." Kristoff replied, quickly cutting the other man off.

"Yep, yep..." Ryder added, feeling a small amount of awkwardness. "I better go pack, you four coming with?" he asked.

"Actually, maybe it's best if the three of us go make sure there are no more signs of trouble - after that battle, I don't wanna take any chances." Max said on behalf of the entire team, who nodded in agreement.

"I'll catch up with you later!" Kristoff said to Ryder.

"Okay you...-you know where you're going."

"Yeah, I know these woods." He smiled in reassurance as the younger man walked off. Soon after that, a down-mooded Kristoff sat on a nearby boulder and looked down with a doleful expression on his face, feelings of uselessness and sadness coursing through his veins as Zoe walked up and placed a comforting hand on his shoulders.

"You wanna come with us?" she offered softly, to which Kristoff looked up at her with a smile.

"Don't worry about me...I just...need to think things over, by myself..." he told her. With a look of sorrow on each of their faces, Zoe and the rest of the team walked off in a different direction of the Northuldra people, giving him some space but making sure she wouldn't wander too far away to provide comfort.

Sven walked up to his rider, and sat down before him, giving a low moan in apology.

Feeling there was nothing better to do, the blond man could only give a few words in song form.

"Reindeers are better than people..."

(He looked up into his best friend's eyes.)

"Sven...why is love so haaaaarrrrrrd...?"

(But that was when the reindeer before him gained a smile on his lips, and honest to God sang with his own voice!)

"You feel what you feel, and those feelings, are real."

(Cue in Kristoff's super surprised look as his best buddy continued.)

"Come on Kristoff, let down your guuuuaaaarrrrd...!"

(With gentle encouragement, the man stood up with an unsure look, and with a nod from Sven, he walked over to a nearby tree and began to sing more with a sad-sounding voice.)

"Again you're gone...off on a diff'rent path than mine, I'm left behind, wondering if I should folloooooowww..."

(He slowly walked past the three children, their dinos in their small forms and a line of reindeer as he continued.)

"You had to go...and of course it's always fine-"

(Sven gave a slow nod.)

"I prob'ly could catch up with you tomorroooow..."

(He then found himself sitting by a small pond, with who he thought to be Anna with a troubled look on her face. He started the next verse in a slightly different musical key.)

"But is this what it feels like to be growing apart...?"

(He reached out to stroke the princess with a hand, only for her to vanish like fog as the man stood up with a hand on his chest.)

"When did I become the one who's always chasing your heart?"

(As he reached the chorus, Sven walked up to him and began to sing with him. They now changed the musical key to a different one.)

"Now I turn around to find, I am lost in the woods!"

(As they continued, Sven looked left and Kristoff right, before turning to look at each other.)

"North is South,"

(And then looked up and down in tandem to each other.)

"Right is left, when you're gooooooooone!"

(He then saw himself walking alongside his beloved arm in arm.)

"I'm the one who sees you home-"

(Before he gave a worried sorrowful look as she vanished out of thin air.)

"But now I'm lost in the woods! And I don't know what path you are oooooon..."

(He changed the musical key back to the original key.) "Lost in the woods..."

(He walked by the sorrowful-looking team and animals, before hopping from stone to stone on a nearby lake.)

"Up to now, the next step was a question of how-"

(He found himself out of stones to hop to.)

"I never thought it was a question of whetheeeeer..."

(He began to have a flashback of his time with Anna, the events of the eternal winter, her nineteenth birthday, the adventure leading up to reuniting Elliot with his family.)

"Who am I...If I'm not your guuuuuuuuy?"

(He then had the memory of him and the princess sharing their first kiss.)

"Where am I, if we're not togetheeeeeerrr...-"

(He soon snapped out of it, when he realised he was kissing nothing but air.)

"FOREEEVEEEERR?!"

(At this point, even the team and their dinos (who too began to move their mouths as they sang) began to sing with him, along with the reindeer. They all sang in a slightly happier-sounding musical key as the chorus before.)

"Now I know you're my true north, 'cos I am lost in the woods!"

(A second Kristoff showed from behind a tree.)

"Up is down,"

(Then a third from another.)

"Day is night, when you're NOT THEEEEEEEERREE!"

(He ran up a hill towards what he thought was Anna, only to stop in disappointment when he saw it was just a stack of stones.)

"Oohh, you're my only landmark! So I'm lost in the woods!"

(The three kids and four reindeer walked up to him in support as they sang the next verse with him.)

"Wondering if you still care..."

(He looked ahead with a calm smile, as he looked atop a small hill where he not only saw Anna but also appeared to see her with Elsa, Elliot, Olaf and Sugi. As he continued singing, the musical key became a slightly happier one as Kristoff continued looking at them.)

"But I'll waaaaiiit!"

(Elliot looked up from sharpening his longsword and looked to him with a brotherly smile as Sugi gave him the same look.)

"For a siiiiiiggggnnn!"

(Silhouettes of three reindeer along with Max, Rex, Terry, Chomp Ace and Spiny as they echoed his words.)

"For a siii-iiggnn!"

(The next to welcome Kristoff were Elsa and Olaf, the latter of which was jumping up and down like an excited child, waving his stick as well.)

"That I'M YOUR PAAAAATH! 'Cos you are miiiiiiine!"

(The next silhouettes were of Zoe, Paris, Tank and five more reindeer as they sang.)

"YOU ARE MIII-IIINE!"

"Until then-!"

(He then found himself riding on Sven's back-)

"I'm LOST IN THE WOOOOOODS-!"

(And soon the herd of the animals, along with the D-Team on the backs of their dinos as they all ran and sang with him and Sven.)

"Lost in the woods!/In the woooods!/Lost in the woods!/I'M LOST IN THE WOOOODS!"

(And finally, Anna turned to face him with an adoring beaming smile.)

"Lost in the woods, I'M LOST!"

(But as the man brought his girl into a hug, she along with the rest vanished without a trace, leaving the lonely man to sing his last words alone.)

"I'm loooost in the woooooooooddss..."

Soon the world went back to normal, and saw Kristoff still sitting on that same rock from earlier with Sven having now laid his sad little head on his lap, and the three kids, who decided he might wish to be alone for a while, left to patrol the forest and meet up with the rest later.

DK

Meanwhile outside the forest still, the horned witch was keeping herself occupied with staring into her orb of magic with her raven occasionally cawing at her as she held a dark look of content, with the rest of her cohorts either napping or keeping watch from their makeshift campsite. She was just slowly swirling her hand around the object with her thoughts occupied on current events, wondering on the current doings of Sykes and his team, and how the test of the newest members of Project I was coming along.

Thoughts that were broken when she heard small footsteps approaching her and looked to see a pair of small chibi dinos approaching her, one in black and one in a pale white. "Mistress, my brother and I were wondering if we may ask you something, concerning us..." The black chibi dino said with a female voice with a slight bow from both of them, which was answered as the woman turned her head.

"What bothers you, my children?" she asked with a smirk on her face as the white dino stepped forward.

"Not that we doubt the newer members to our growing pack, but why exactly were we not picked to venture into that forest?" he asked, looking at the fog wall only a few feet away. "After our performance in all but killing those weakling Wind types all those months back, we would've expected for us to be selected instantly..." he explained as he turned back.

The witch only slightly chuckled in response. "My dear ones, don't let yourselves become jealous, simply because you were not picked to fight the Dinosaur King and his followers," she said. "With each new member of your pack that is born and trained to fight, a live battle is a perfect way to test the ferocity of each and every one of you," she explained. "As of now, there is four of you with the remaining many still being made in our lair..."

"We understand, mistress, but...what of the magic glacier you told us about?" the black one asked her.

The witch turned to face her in reply to her question. "Ahtohallan. What of it?" she asked with no amount of concern.

"If what you told about what happened centuries ago, during the war between the Northuldra and the dragon's people, and what that frozen river is capable of and what resides inside." She paused. "Should we not be concerned if the vanished spirits return?"

"Be still, child..." The witch said in reply to the dino's cautiousness, kneeling down and lifted the chibi dinos chin to make eye contact. "That was only a precaution because at the time, I had not regained my full strength, and the spirits would easily overpower me should I be noticed." Her smirk was reborn anew. "But now that my return to this world is complete, not even Seikatsu frightens me. The rest of the Enchanted Spirits may return and it would be pointless. Nothing can stop us now," she told them. "Besides...it was fun seeing them tear each other apart...A miracle of what my magic is capable of."

Before she could say more, she soon noticed Sykes, Hans, Gothel and the orc pack emerge from the wall on their mounts, with the human trio riding up to her. The witch rose up to her feet and met them halfway as they dismounted. "So, judging from the looks on your faces, I am right to say that Scowler and Bulldust got on just fine?" she asked satisfyingly when she took note of the dark smirks on all their faces.

"Dynerra did lay a helping hand when it counted," Hans admitted. "But our newest members just managed to take the entirety of the D-Team's signature dinosaurs," he said, to the growth of her pleasure.

She gave a slight chuckled as she replied. "Excellent, this just goes to show that with genetic powers, many grand achievements can be made as shown with Seth all those months ago. A grand start to our further operations once Project I is completed as a whole," she said with an evil smile.

"Madam, if I may...permission to drop formalities and tell you something alone?" Sykes asked, giving her a look that she recognised.

"Leave us..." She ordered Hans and Gothel and the chibi dinos at her feet, who all took the cue to leave and rest.

"Maleficent..." Sykes started, revealing her name with a troubled look on his face. "What Royal Two-Shoes said about Scowler and Bulldust's battle against the D-Team's dinos was true. But there's something that he left out..." he told her with a serious look.

She stepped up closer to him and matched his look. "And what might that be?"

"The pair, along with that dinheirosaurus we found, managed to defeat all but that T-rex the kids have, and by that point, he was practically on his last legs...but then, something happened that turned the battle way around," he told her honestly. "Something...to do with the Spirits of Wind and Fire."

This got her attention piqued. "Go on..."

"At first, we didn't think much of it, just bad timing on their part..." he started. "But then...the fire spirit, somehow, transferred some of its energy to the rex, and from what we saw, returned his power two - maybe three - times over!" he continued after taking a pause. "And then the wind spirit came in, and somehow got the gall to return the kid's carnotaurus to the battle, after being returned to his card from having been defeated beforehand," he said, emphasising "after" for good measure to get his explanation across.

A point that was not misheard on her ears. The witch, now revealed as Maleficent, looked down and away with a look of surprise on her face. But then again, if the spirits had the same elements as the stone plates, it shouldn't be that big of a shocker that they could tap into that same energy to help an ally in need.

But that doesn't mean such a feat didn't catch her off guard. With this information in mind, she might need longer than she realised to fully rectify her goal. "I take it this enabled the pair to defeat all three of them..." she rhetorically asked with a troubled frown.

"We were completely caught off-guard." Sykes revealed with a sigh. "And we didn't even use the secret weapon 'cos the battle looked finished before."

This caught her off guard now. "What did you say?" She hissed in anger with her orb swirling dangerously.

"We didn't use Bulldust and Scowler's secret weapons..." he repeated with a look of mild fright.

"You imbecile!" Maleficent shouted as she stormed up to him and strangled him around the throat, choking him. "You call the battle a successful test when you did not use their true power against the Ice Maiden's entourage?! How pathetic!" she said in disgust, turning away sharply while shoving the western outlaw away. "It is lucky enough that you recovered their cards before the D-Team could mess with them!" she said, before walking off towards the forest with a plan in mind.

A plan, that could interest the Northuldra.

DK

Far, far away, Elsa and her team found themselves walking along a barren, hilly area of the forest with Bruni accompanying them. "AHH, AHH, OH OH!..." the queen called out, presumably the songful voice she had been hearing, according to Anna and Elliot, who looked to each other with the same thought.

Suddenly they jumped out of their skin when Olaf jumped in front of them and Sugi yelling mambo-jambo words at the top of his lungs (even though he didn't have any) - though it was more of a tense of annoyance with the hunters of Arendelle. "AHHHOOHHHWAHOOOAHOOOOWA!"

"AHH, AHH, OH OH OH!..."

"WAAAAHHOOOHOOOWAAAAHOH!"

Deciding enough was enough, and before Anna could react, Elliot gestured his head for the equally annoyed sabertooth to pick up the noisy snowman's head from the rest of his body with her mouth, which got him to stop yelling with a look of surprise on his face as Elliot marched into his line of sight and plucked out his carrot nose. "Olaf, two words, okay?" he stated, getting straight to the point. "Shut-" He began, tossing the carrot in his hand. "Up!" And then stuffed it back in his head again, popping the "p" as he did whilst the cat reattached the head to Olaf's body. Soon after that, Elliot then walked on ahead, muttering, "It's already headache-worthy with Elsa constantly making that noise..."

A mutter that didn't go unheard as the queen stopped in her tacks, and sharply turned to her husband with a coy, sassy look as if to say 'You wanna say that again?' "What, was that, Elliot?"

"Nothing...!" he replied, quickly walking up to her side. "Just, marvelling...-" He started with a dramatic flare, before giving an equally dramatic bow. "At your lungs..." He finished with a teasing smirk, before carrying on ahead. Soon, though, her sister walked up to her with a smile at her elder sibling.

"He said something, didn't he..." the blonde deadpanned to Anna, who then whispered something in her ear.

A little further up ahead, Elliot continued to softly smile as he walked along, looking at the surroundings of the area around him, yet for some reason, he had been getting a terrible nagging feeling at his head, as if something was about to happen that he wouldn't like.

POOF!

But just then, something cold and moist slammed into the back of his head, causing him to slightly stumble forward with a look of surprise on his face. As he reached back behind his head with a hand, his hypothesis was confirmed by A: the feeling of snow on his hand, and B: the tell-tale sound of a giggling Anna.

His wife just threw a snowball at his head.

Slowly, and in a delicate sort of way, he dusted off his hands, before facing his wife with a playful warning look. "Elsa..." he said.

Anna giggled with her hands over her mouth to muffle her sounds, Olaf looked on with an innocent expression and Sugi gave an amused look as the queen gave a reply. "Yes...?" she said with a cute, sheepish smile at the face her husband was giving her.

"Are you sure you wanna play those games with me...?" He playfully teased as he walked towards her, with the woman before her looking around her frantically for somewhere for her to hide, before finally settling to use her still-giggling sister as a meat shield. "Because I can assure you, things can get very ugly, very fast!" He gripped the princess's shoulders and looked around to give his squeamish wife a playful glare, continuing to slowly follow her steps. "And do you really think it wise to tempt a Highfell warrior into battle, by throwing a snowball into his head?" Elsa, still trying to hold in her sheepish laughing, found herself crawling backwards along the ground and pinning herself against a rock as her husband knelt down and trapped her between his arms. "Take it from me, wifey mine...you don't..." he finished, booping her nose with a finger, before finally getting up, and walked on ahead of her.

Anna watched her brother-in-law walked off as she went over to her sister, who gave a big sigh of relief. "Hehehe...are you okay, sis?" she asked her as she helped her sister to her feet.

"Yeah, I'll be alright..." she replied, before giving a playfully dangerous look at her husband's shrinking form as he walked further and further away as she formed another ball of snow in her hands.

She hurled it high and far before it began its descent.

POOF!

And landed directly onto his head, causing the man to tense up. "Oooooooohhh...!" Olaf went with wide eyes as Anna's giggling came back in full force, while Sugi had wide eyes of her own.

Slowly, the man turned to face his wife with a deadpanned look at a smug Elsa, who gave him a sassy look with a hand on her jutted-out hip. "Mmm-hmm, hm hm!" She hmmed with a slight laugh at the end.

Elliot's look gave a challenging smirk. She did want to play this game after all, it seemed. Seeing something worse than a snowball at his feet...

Elsa's smug look shifted to a look of shock and disgust as Elliot used his arms to gather up a big sloppy ball of mud. "Oh no...noo!" She warned seriously and dangerously as her husband took his turn to give a smug look at his wife. "Noooo-!"

SPLAT!

The ball of mud collided heavily with Elsa's face, the force of which caused her to fall to the ground on her back with her face completely covered. At first, a wide-eyed Anna could only just stare at her sister's fallen form, before she shifted her agape face to her brother-in-law in astonishment.

And Olaf and Sugi were just the same. "I think Eli might be in trouble now..." the snowman commented to the giant feline worriedly, who nodded in agreement as a very ticked-off Elsa rose to her feet, her face and her hairline now caked in mud. Panting unhappily, she used a hand to wipe off the majority of it, now revealing her ruined make-up with that same deadly glare. "You..." she started with a low hiss, taking in a deep gasp of air. "Egotistical...!"

She wiped off the remaining mud as Elliot snarked back. "You spoilt!"

"Disrespectful, pretentious!"

"Deluded!"

"POMPOUS!" she shrieked, throwing another snowball, to which he dodged. "Self-centered!"

"High and mighty-!" He got cut off with another ball to the head.

"Ungrateful! Intolerable! Impossible! Insufferable!" the queen ranted, throwing a ball each time.

"At least I'm not repressed!" he replied smugly, getting up close and personal to the still pissed-off wife.

Very pissed, might I add..."Reee...pressed!?" She hissed with vengeance in her voice. "I'll show you repressed!" she vowed, swirling both her hands together and formed a huge snowball above her head.

But before she could bring it down on top of him..."Look, Gale's back!" Olaf exclaimed, seeing the wind spirit flutter about between the now-distracted husband and wife.

First, with a chitter, she slightly pushed Elsa forward, before suddenly flying behind Elliot's head, and forced him to unwillingly headbutt the blonde. "Ow!/Augh!" the pair shouted, putting their head to their foreheads, but due to the woman no longer focusing her power, her snow creation came down on both of them, essentially trapping both of them in a big heap of snow.

Anna, Olaf and Sugi could only watch with wide eyes at what just happened in front of them as a pair of unamused heads covered in snow rose from the pile and stared blankly at them. "Don't even think about it..." Elliot deadpanned.

The trio stared at each other before the inevitable happened. "HAHA! HAHAHAHAHAHA!" Olaf and Anna let loose the loudest laughs they'd ever made, keeling over and holding onto their stomachs as tears graced their eyes, and even Sugi fell to the ground on her side with roaring laughs, kicking out her paws to add as well. "Have you seen your faces...!" Olaf wheezed before he and Anna doubled over to the ground with the big cat, flailing their legs.

The pair slowly climbed out of the pile of snow and faced each other. "You and I can both agree this was your fault, yes?" Elliot asked his wife as if it was the most obvious thing.

However..."Yes, it was your fault!" she sassed with her arms crossed and a raised eyebrow.

"Don't go being coy with me, lass, this all started because you couldn't resist throwing cold white powder at me!" He argued with a pointed look.

"Better than having a face caked with mud!" she retorted, gesturing to her still slightly dirty face.

The laughing three finally managed to stop laughing as Elliot made another comeback. "How about, instead of going back and forth on who started it, we share the blame, eh?" he suggested. "I take 33% while you get the remaining 67%?" He offered.

"Uh, uh, uh! Not so fast!" Elsa replied with a wagging finger. "75% for you, 25 for me!" she retorted.

"Not taking that, miss!" He made a comeback. "30-!" He gestured to himself. "70!" He pointed to her.

"80, 20!" she replied, making the same gestures.

"16, 84!" he exclaimed.

"90, 10!"

"5, 95!"

"85, 15!"

"Stop!" he went with a raised finger, and from there the pair gave each other a firm stare down, before making a final conclusion. "50, 50!" They exclaimed together. "You like it?" he asked quickly with a point.

"No, you like it?" She asked with an open hand.

"No!" He grasped it. "Deal!" They told each other with a quick shake before Elsa yelped as her husband picked her up, bridal style. "You coming, Anna?" he asked the princess.

"Yeah, we're right behind you!" She giggled in reply as he walked on ahead.

"Those two have a strange relationship sometimes..." Olaf whispered to her. "I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks that..." He continued with a shrug. Before Anna could say more, though, Gale reappeared and darted around the pair. "Hi again, Gale!" Olaf said cheerily as she went on towards the married couple.

"You and I've got some business, you little shit!" The Hunter of Arendelle muttered to the wind spirit as she fluttered around him and his wife, making her giggle in response as the wind spirit flew off. But that was when they saw her fly around what looked like a mast, as she then made the tattered flag on it flap about before finally leaving.

It was Arendelle's original crest.

And all humour left the group at the sight, though Olaf maintained his smile. "What?" Anna wondered aloud, and soon after that, Elliot put his wife back on her feet as she ran to the top of a small hill with the other four following close behind.

And down a steep slope on the other side was an object that made the sisters gasp in horror as Anna took her sister's arm in her hands, as Elliot and Sugi joined at their side as the feline gave an uneasy growl, with the man laying a shocked, shaky hand on her harness. 'Impossible...how...?' he thought.

Laying there in a large dip in the ground, was an Arendelle galleon, now nothing more than a shipwreck. Its center mast had broken in two, its sails were torn, and the bowsprit had been cleaved in half at the tip, with a large, punctured hole in the port side. "How can it be...?" Anna asked with tears in both girl's eyes.

"What is it?" Olaf asked, knowing that something was very wrong.

And only Elsa had the strength to answer him. "Mother and Father's sh-ship..."

"But this isn't the North Sea..." the snowman replied, confusion obvious in his voice.

Elliot slowly shook his head. "No...no, it's not..." he murmured out loud.

Elsa and Anna then ran down the hill towards the wreck with Elliot and Sugi close behind, slowing down at the hole before coming to a dead stop once they entered the hull of the ship. The entire place had been riddled with damage done from the storm that took the late king and queen away - the floor was still dirt instead of wood, the floor above them had almost been entirely destroyed, it was unfathomable.

The girls took a moment to get over their shakiness before they followed the hunter pair inside, as Sugi went about tasting and sniffing the air, hoping to find something useful. "Why is their ship here...how is it here...?" Elsa asked with shock in her voice, going through the various amount of messes in hopes of finding any form of clue.

And Anna was doing the same as she made an assumption. "It must've been washed in from the Dark Sea..."

"What were they doing in the Dark Sea...?" was Elsa's hesitant response.

Anna took a pause in her hopeless search, looked down and could only make one sentence. "I don't know..."

"How did the ship get through the mist?" Olaf asked out loud as he slowly walked in after everyone else. "I thought nobody could but us...unless..." he paused. "Nobody was on it..." He finished softly.

"Nobody alive, that is, Olaf..." Elliot's voice rang in a grim tone, and the snowman, along with the sisters of Arendelle, looked to see him above on the upper floor, looking at them with a grim look. "You three need to come and see this..." he said, before making a gentle swirl of his hand. From the ground, a steady powerful wind gently picked up the trio and placed them down in front of him, before leading them to a door on the left side of the hull.

As the door opened, Olaf gave a terrified gasp, Elsa and Anna immediately found themselves struggling to hold in a load of vomit, horrified at what lay before them. At their feet lay the bodies of an Arendellian crew, their uniforms torn and dull in colour, with their skin a sickly pale and so thin one could see the outlines of their faces. Cobwebs even stretched from the faces and limbs to the floor, all of which were twisted in awkward angles.

"Members of the crew...most likely the ones that didn't get tossed over in the storm..." Elliot told them honestly with sadness, before he gathered a few stray pieces of cloth, and got to work on covering their faces.

"And...Mama and...Papa?" Anna whimpered, to which Elliot shook his head sadly as the sisters held onto each other.

"Stuck with the rest of their men at the bottom of the sea...They weren't among the bodies here..." he told her softly, as the sisters clung to each other tighter.

But then, as Olaf looked at the bodies, he took notice that some of the bodies each had a hole in their uniforms. Holes, stained with blood..."Hey, Eli?" he hesitantly asked.

"What is it, Olaf?" he said in reply.

"If these men went down with the ship...how come they have red holes in their suits...?" That question made the Hunter of Arendelle look to where Olaf was looking in alarm, and sure enough, Olaf was right.

Some of the crew didn't die with the ship. "Girls..." he said in a slightly firm tone to get their attention, who came out of their comforting embrace at his voice as he examined the wound mark. "These sailors didn't lose their lives when the ship went down..." he said, before turning to face them. "Their bodies display the marks...of a stab wound."

Elsa looked at them and looked to see that her husband was right. "These men were murdered!" She realised with horror.

"Exactly...and as far we know about what happened that day, the ship went down with all lives aside from Captain Amia, lost..." he replied, looking down in thought. It was true, somehow, someway, Captain Amia managed to survive that storm when everyone else didn't, and he also remembered her telling everyone of how hard she tried to save the late king and queen along with as much of the crew as she could. But when everyone asked about what happened, all she did was break down in tears for failing in her duty. "There's something she's not telling us..." he said out loud, her loyalty now in question, before finally ushering everyone out of the room, leaving the bodies for the last time.

After leaving the said room, and hopping back down to the ground floor..."This doesn't tell us why Mother and Father would be out here in the first place..." Anna said dejectedly before an idea hit her. "Wait...wait, look around!" she suddenly told the team, going back to rummaging around the various messes and debris. "Every Arendellian ship has a-a compartment, waterproof!" She explained as everyone else began their search.

"That's very clever, although it does make me wonder why they didn't just make the whole ship waterproof..." Olaf commented as the looking began in full. Anna went about searching a large wardrobe with its door broken, whilst Elsa looked through the various draws and cupboards.

Sugi went about using her large paws to clear away a large amount of broken wood and various damaged items near the hole where they entered, giving a small growl every time as she found nothing and moved on to the next.

Elliot, though, knelt down by a long seat at the wall of the ship and felt his hands along the wood until he felt a gap on his fingertips, and then flicked out his hidden blades to pry open a small door, and found that clipped to it was a large glass tube compartment with rolled-up sheets of paper inside. He gave a sharp whistle to his team to let them know he found it.

After that, Sugi, using her mouth and signature sabre teeth, unclipped the capsule from its perch, and held it up for her rider to take off the lid. He took out the paper and unrolled the first sheet, revealing a section of symbols and lithographs. "What language is this?" Anna asked.

"I don't know..." Elsa replied with a troubled frown, turning to her husband. "Elliot?"

"If I knew what language it was, I'd be reading it out loud right now..." he admitted softly, before noticing something to the top left of the sheet. "But look here...This is your mother's handwriting..." he identified as Anna began to read.

"'The end of the ice age, the river found but lost, magic source...The children's source?'" She ended on a confused note as Elsa took the paper from her husband to read herself. Meanwhile, Elliot unrolled the second paper and held in a shocked gasp as it revealed...- "It's a map!" Anna said.

Taking the map, she laid it down flat in front of them and revealed what it showed - a birds-eye view of the entirety of Norway, with Arendelle at the bottom closest to the sea, the Highfells more to the North East past the North Mountain, and just past there were uncharted lands, as shown from Elliot's handmade map, and finally a land marked 'Northuldra' near the top. Elliot saw the long river that reached inland from Arendelle's fjord, and took a finger and followed it as the other four watched..."They went north... and, planned to cross the Dark Sea, to..." She trailed off at what was depicted as her finger reached the picture of a river on the Dark Sea, at the very top of the map.

Elliot looked on as a breathless Elsa identified with shock beyond measure. "Ahtohallan..."

"It's real...?" Anna asked herself as Olaf looked over to her with a confused expression.

"Ahto-who-what?" he asked.

"Ahtohallan, it's-a magical river said to hold all the answers about the past..."

"Reinforcing my water has memory theory, hmm!" the snowman commented with a slightly fond tone of voice.

It was then, though..."Water has memory..." Elsa took a few steps away from her family, sat on her knees and allowed her powers to flow into the wooden floor. As this happened, the water from that fateful stormy night appeared to be freed from the wood that soaked it all up and began to form in front of her.

"Elsa...you know that you're not going to like what you see..." Elliot frowned at his wife with her eyes closed.

"I wanna know what happened to them..." She slightly whimpered.

Soon, the water began to form a shape in front of the queen as she opened her eyes and cut off her magic. Slowly the water solidified into ice and a statue began to appear, one that took the form of Queen Iduna and King Agnarr holding onto each other tightly as if waiting for death, though it was not clear as to why yet.

But then, their voices could be heard as the statue continued to form completely, with Anna and Elliot coming to sit by her side, Anna holding onto her right arm as the sister's tears began to peek through at seeing their Mum and Dad in such a situation, and Elliot wrapping an arm around her shoulders with a knowing, mournful look.

"Ahtohallan has to be the source of their power!"

"Then we keep going. For Elsa and Elliot!"

"The waves are too high!"

"IDUNA!"

"AGNARR!"

The late monarchs' voices as they cried each other's names were like dreaded horrified screams, and now the statue truly had captured them having their final hug as a large wave flooded them and ready to drag them to their deaths.

Not being able to take what they had heard, Elsa broke out of the embrace and ran out of the ship, crying. "Elsa!" An equally teary-eyed Anna exclaimed, giving chase, with Olaf not far behind.

Elliot watched them disappear out of the hole, before shifting his eyesight back to the king and queen he called Mother and Father. Slowly rising to his feet, he gently went up to their statues, and laid each of his hands on their shoulders and looked at them with a hopeless expression. "Why didn't you tell me you were trying to find out more about me too...?" He croaked, before settling his head in between them and wrapped his arms around them in a hug.

Before his tears could fall, Sugi gently nudged him with a soft croon, sitting on her haunches as her rider came out of his unreturned embrace and wrapped his arms around her neck, who responded by wrapping a paw around his back in return to comfort him as best she could.

"Why...?" He let his tears fall as the feline tightened her grip.

DK

After running back up the hill, a still-crying Elsa set her upper torso down on a rock as Anna ran up behind her. "Hey, hey, what are you doing?" she asked.

"This is our fault!" The queen softly sobbed. "They were looking for answers about Elliot and me!"

"You are not responsible for their choices, Elsa..." Anna implored.

"No, just their deaths!" Elsa replied firmly, walking away from her sister with her arms wrapped around her.

But Anna wouldn't have any of it. "Stop! No!" She stated, marching in front of her and firmly gripped her sister's arms. "Remember how Elliot explained - why Arendelle would be gifted with a magical queen?" She paused, trying to get a stubborn Elsa to look at her. "Because - our mother saved our father, she saved her enemy!-" That finally got the queen to open up her eyes. "Her good deed was rewarded with you! You are a gift!"

"For what...?!" The still-teary Elsa asked as Anna shifted her grip to her hands and digits.

"If anyone can find out about the past, if anyone could free this forest and restore the world, it's you!" She delicately held on to her fingers, looking down at them. "I believe in you, Elsa, and I know Elliot does too-" Then back into her eyes. "More than anyone, or anything." She ended with a supportive smile.

Elsa, finally giving a small smile back, looked out to the horizon behind the shipwreck, knowing that the Dark Sea was not far away, based on how inland the ship got. Stepping away from her sister's embrace she looked out, feeling a cool breeze on her face, feeling the voice pulling her towards it even without singing to her.

If Ahtohallan was indeed real...this could only mean one thing that she needed to do.

With new determination in her heart, she slowly turned to face her sister again. "Honeymaren told me that there were nine spirits instead of four, like Papa told us when we were young. The ninth one being a bridge between the magic of nature, and us..." she told the now wide-eyed surprised Anna.

"Nine...spirits?!" She gasped.

"That's what's been calling me. From Ahtohallan...the secrets of the past are all there...!" she elaborated.

And at that, Anna gave a determined smile. "So, we go to Ahtohallan!" she said, as if it was the most obvious thing to do.

But Elsa gave a frown. "Not we...me."

That caught the princess off-guard. "What?" she asked.

"The Dark Sea is too dangerous for us all..." Elsa told her, upsetting Anna in place of her determined look from before as Olaf came up to them.

"N-no! No! We do this all together!" Anna snapped. "Remember the song?! 'Go too far and you'll be drowned'!...Well - who's gonna stop you from going too far?!"

"You said you believe in me, that this is what I was born to do!" Elsa replied in her own defiance.

"And - I don't wanna stop you from that!" The princess started. "I don't want to stop you from being whatever you have to be, I just- don't want you dying!" Olaf gave a shocked gasp at that. "Trying to be something for everyone else! Don't do this alone...Let Elliot go with you at least, if I can't help you, please, I can't lose you Elsa...!" She finished with a shallow sob.

Elsa gave a sad smile and pulled the redhead into a tight hug. "I can't lose you either, Anna," she said, before waving Olaf over to them. "None of you," she said as the snowman gave a hum of content.

Unknownst to the three, Elliot had been observing them from the deck of the shipwreck, not quite overhearing everything, but was able to hear Ahtohallan and the Dark Sea tossed about a couple of times. But one of the other things he heard was that his wife thought that she of all people was the reason why her parents were dead. 'Darling...could you be any more wrong...?' he thought brokenly, turning away from his spot, and vacated to sit on a broken barrel. He then reached into a pocket in his shirt, and took out the map they found earlier, all folded up into eights. He opened it up and gazed at it, taking in every little detail, about this accursed parchment. He raised a finger, and tapped it against Ahtohallen's image with a frown on his face.

As he continued to gaze in a morbid mind, he began to think. About everything from his first meeting with Elsa and Anna all those years ago, to his wedding day with the Queen of Arendelle, and, while granted, it was not perfect, it would have had to be one of the happiest days of his life, a day that wasn't full of scorn and hate at his mere sight, but one where everyone cheered and celebrated him. A day where he had true friends and two loving families that cherished him, one where he was a simple man married to a beautiful queen, and shared with a quirky but fun-loving princess that looked up to him like a brother, an ice-harvesting mountain man that was his friend, a reindeer, and a summer-loving snowman, and the other where he was a master of the hunt, and a friend of bird and beast alike, guided by great fire-breathing dragons that had reunited with their son after being stolen as an egg, dragons that were prepared to finally welcome him home with open wings, a mother, father and brother alike, and an elderly grandfather, who, despite not being there for the wedding, had given his blessing to be with Elsa long before anyone else did.

Everything, for once in his life, was perfect.

But as the saying is...all good things come to an end...

Do they...?

A small gentle growl broke him out of his thoughts, and came into eye contact with the one that had been there for him since he found her as a cub. Sugi took a small glance down at the map in his hands, then out towards the rest of their team, who were now coming back from the ridge, and then turned her sights back to him, with a look that said one thing alone.

They had to know what happened that day.

Elliot took in a deep breath and exhaled, with a downcast look in his eye, knowing that the years-long charade was about to cost him everything. He set the map down beside him, stood up and walked over to his ever-faithful companion, one who would not leave him even for the chances of finding a mate, laying gentle hands on her face as she nuzzled him with a comforting warble, knowing what was going to come. "You're right, girl...it's time..." he said to her looking her in the eye. "I was so busy looking for a life I wanted to have, with the people I love...I never stopped to think...on what they, needed to hear..." He paused, and slowly directed his line of sight over to the right.

There stood his wife, sister-in-law and snowman friend, all of which had confused looks on their faces. He turned back to his friend. "I've been hiding the truth for long enough...it's time to set it free..."

"Elliot?" Elsa's voice sounded softly, walking over to him and laid a gentle hand on his shoulder, only, to her shock, for him to shove her hand away. Not roughly or forcefully, but enough to get the message across. "Are-...are you okay?" she asked with hurt in her voice. He never turned down her comfort.

In response to this, he used his control over wind to gently blow over a pair of small stalls and gestured for the sisters to sit down, both of which bore eyes of worry at the look on his face. "Elsa, Anna..." He started softly. "There's something I've been keeping in my past...something I should've shared with you a long time ago..."

"What...?" Anna asked.

Elliot then went back over to the barrel and sat on it facing the sisters, showing them the map in his hand. "This map that your parents used to get this far..." He made eye contact. "They didn't come up with it themselves..."

"What do you mean?" Elsa asked her husband with a slight gasp from Anna as Olaf sat between them.

Elliot gazed back down at it. "This map has a story to it...one that starts a few months before your parents took this voyage." At that sentence, both sisters' eyes widened. He placed the map on the floor in front of him, and then took out his hatchet, looking down at it with a thoughtful expression. "It was just another day in the hellish life of seventeen-year-old Elliot Takkar, and one-year-old Sugi the Sabertooth...time to catch our breakfast," he started with a pained looking smile. "We went down from my tormentor's house to one of the many watering holes that dotted my homeland and looked around for an easy catch for us to eat...there were rabbits, possums, turkeys, swans, ducks, all kinds of small easy prey for the inexperienced hunter." He took a pause. "Only, up in the trees, did we see a bird out of place...a large white dove."

He raised an arm. "I called it down after noticing something odd with it, and let it rest on my finger..." His smile ebbed away. "And that was when I saw a letter strapped to its back...a letter, with your father's writing. And it was addressed to me..." he said lowering it, making eye contact with the sisters again. "They were asking for me to come back, to help with your powers, Elsa."

Cue the gasp of surprise from both girls. "Seriously?" Anna asked. "If that's true, and Papa asked for you to come back, why didn't you?"

"My tormentors... you remember how they were like in life." That response from the wind warrior caused the sisters to look at each other cautiously. "If they could treat me as they did to a child that wasn't even theirs, what was to stop them from trying to bring harm to you as well?" he asked rhetorically.

The sisters again traded glances, knowing what the man was on about. As children, the pair remembered seeing how his tormentors berated him, and though they never saw them physically harm him, they remembered hearing his pained screams and crying, with the merciless adults hurting him without reason or thought. It was only the titles of their mother and father and the power they had that saved them from the same fate. "I wanted to come back so badly, after the amount of pain, and torture my fake parents put me through...but I had to protect you from the same fate that befell me..." he told them with closed eyes as a tear fell down his cheek.

Elsa's heart screamed for her to march over and comfort him again, and she got up to do so, only to be halted as he held up a hand to her. This wasn't making any sense. Never before had the man she loved more than anything in the world turned away from her affection, and having this happen twice now in under five minutes filled her with confusion, hurt and worry all at once. What was going on?!

"But I was still determined to help in any way I could...so I waited patiently, for an opportunity to rise..." he said next, continuing his story. "A month or two later, I went down to the trading ports, along the river in the Fells that led out to the sea, on a small shopping trip I guess you could call it..." He paused. "I had taken another beating from the night before, and I didn't have the energy to take Sugi on a hunt, and she wasn't prepared to find food for herself. My tormentors were drinking that day, all full of themselves, mind you..." he added bitterly. "I found what I needed, and made my way home, when I heard something of interest. There was this trader, over by the docks, that specialised in long tales...one thing he mentioned, was seeing a glacier, out on a sea of dark water..." He trailed off with a look into each of their eyes.

A glacier, or frozen river...dark water...

That could only mean one place, was the only thought that went through both girls' minds, as Elsa gave a breathless smile. "Of course...glaciers are rivers of ice..."

"Ahtohallan is frozen..." Anna added in pure amazement.

Someone had actually seen Ahtohallan...

It was real...!

"For one moment, I only thought the merchant was spreading a tall tale, as most sailors do to get fame in their names..." Elliot continued, taking a pause before he continued. "But then...I remembered the story your parents shared with you which had mentioned Ahtohallan... " A brief smile caught on. "I knew right there, that if there was a slim chance that this place existed, I couldn't pass it. So I gave a little bit of gold in exchange for a parchment of paper." He presented the map to them. "And I drew this."

Anna gave a slight gasp as an equally surprised Elsa took the map from him. "So, you were the one who drew the map!" Olaf exclaimed in equal surprise with a bright smile on his face.

"I am!" The hunter replied somewhat proudly. "I had finally found a way of helping your parents, without putting you two at risk from my tormentors," he told the girls, who gave a smile in acknowledgement. "After doing so, I sent a messenger bird to your mother and father, asking them to meet me at a safe spot just by the North Mountain in a few days' time, when the moon was full. That is the night when my tormentors would be out drinking, and a time they wouldn't realise me slipping away for a few hours." He took the map back from his wife, rolled up the parchment, and held it in both hands, looking down at it. "We exchanged greetings, and I gave them the map..." That was when his words and face became more forlorn again. "Explained what they needed to do...and where they would have to go," he told them. "But had I known what would happen next..." He trailed off.

It all made sense right there for Elsa, especially at seeing the look of shame on his face. He sent them on that voyage. The one that would take her parents' lives. But she was not about to blame her beloved for sending them to their deaths. If she wasn't responsible, she knew he wasn't either. "Elliot, listen to me. What happened to Mama and Papa wasn't your fault, you understand?" She spoke firmly. "All you wanted to do was help them and help me in any way you could without putting anyone in danger!" she continued. "How can you even say that it was your fault?! You don't control all of nature, you'd never want to hurt them, or any of us! I know you, Elliot!" As she spoke more, her voice only gained volume, seeing as how her husband wouldn't even raise his head to make contact, and only continued to look down submissively. "Their ship went down in a natural storm, not one that you created! You loved them as much as they loved you! You're the most honest, wonderful and compassionate person I know-!"

"THEY'RE DEAD BECAUSE OF ME!" Elliot roared at her, stunning her at the sound of his voice and backed off in shock at his words.

It was a sentence that had caught both women and the snowman completely off guard.

"...What...?" was the only thing she could utter.

Surely, he wasn't...?

"That storm that took them away from you...I was the cause of it." He whispered silently, looking down at his hands. "I was in a bad mood, seeing as how everyone around me had at least some happiness in their lives, with some even boasting about it...I was disgusted with it." None of them realised Sugi giving him a confused look as he continued to speak. This was not turning out as it really happened. "And because I was so angry, my control over the air fluctuated without me realising, until I looked up, and saw storm clouds heading northwest..." He paused as tears gathered in his eyes. "A few days later, word had spread about the passing of the King and Queen of Arendelle, and that when she comes of age, their eldest daughter will take the throne..." By now, he could only look up, seeing the utterly stunned expressions of his wife and sister-in-law as a tear escaped him. "Your parents are dead...because of me..." He growled gravely.

All four of them had different reactions.

Olaf was gobsmacked, as if all the bad stuff in the world had just flooded his gut (if he had one). Finding out that Elliot had kept such a dark secret was one of the biggest revelations he would probably ever have, and the innocent snowman didn't know what to think.

Anna was shocked beyond all measure, for as far as she knew, the man that married her sister was one of the best of man alive, even if he was not meant to be born human, a being that did not wish the same amount of pain he had to endure...and now...he went ahead and told them all that he killed them in anger, all because everyone around him had a loving family, and was jealous beyond all measure...that shock, turned into silent rage as she glared at him, standing from her seat as she did.

Sugi was stupefied. Everything concerning the death of the ones who nurtured her rider's mate was a lie. He was not jealous at all, and she was well aware of what truly happened that day, things that he did not share and instead told a lie...but why...?

But Elsa...she had the most stunned reactions of them all. She stood up, walked a few paces away from them as they watched with mixed expressions, and reprocessed what he'd just said.

They're dead because of him...

They're dead because of him...

They're dead because of him...!

For every time this one sentence played in her mind, so did a plethora of feelings she thought she would never have for the one she loved most. Betrayal. Disgust. Hate. And a fury that would make gods quiver in her wake. Tensed and with a blank expression on her face, she turned and faced the wary and shameful look of her betrothed. "All this time..." she whispered first, catching their attention at the empty tone of her voice. With a slight march, she walked back down into the hull of the shipwreck with everyone following her until she stopped back on the hilltop they arrived from. "All this time, I was in love..." She slowly began to turn around again. "...Married..." She met Elliot's eyes blankly. "Shared all my secrets and made love...to Mother and Father's...murderer...?!" That last word was said with clenched teeth, trembling with rage as she did.

Just then, a light showed on Elliot's ring finger, and she saw his wedding ring gleam in the sunlight and looked down to gaze at her own. But instead of filling her with the elation of happiness like it usually did, it now only added to her anger. With hateful scorn, she tore off her ring, nearly dislocating her finger as a result, and then gripped onto Elliot's hand tightly as she did the same with his own, making him give a slight grunt of pain. But he let her do it, knowing that this is what he got for taking advantage of her heart. She then reached into the pocket of her jacket and pulled out something that made her pause.

It was a necklace, with the head of a golden cave lion in the centre. This was the very first necklace he ever gave her, back when they were very young. It was a promise from him to her that they would always be together no matter what, and in turn, she had cast a snowflake necklace for him, to signify that same promise. A necklace, that she could see him wearing around his front right now. Before anyone could react, she tore the necklace from him, did the same with her own and placed them in an open hand with the rings.

She closed it around them and squeezed, using her powers to freeze them as she did...and then, she turned it upside down, opened up her palm and let the now frozen items fall and shatter on the ground.

And Elliot could only look on as the cost of his usage of her played out before him, with Anna stepping in next to her sister in support of her decision - all her love, adoration and respect for him as a brother completely gone. "You have no idea how furious I am for what you have done, Eli...!" She snarled savagely as her powers swelled in her fingers and angry tears spilt down her cheeks. "You had no excuse at all, to take the lives of my mother and father, after all they have done for you!...Honeymaren was right...Maybe dragons are deceitful creatures after all..." At his shocked look, she did not stop there as she turned away from him. "I have every right to take your life here...to make sure that their deaths are justified and avenged!" She continued with hate in her being, as she turned again. "But I won't...Maybe it's not what they would want...even if they see you...as a monster!" She growled with vile in her voice. "As soon as this ordeal is over, you and I are parting ways forever...all ties with the Northern Highfells and Arendelle will be cut, and your people...-" Cue the emphasis with vengeance in her voice, "-...Will all be considered as enemies of my kingdom - and should a war between this place and your homeland ever happen again, we will fight side by side until none of your subjects remains!" She raved on, ignoring the hurtful look on the hunter's face. "You are a traitor to Arendelle, and me letting you leave alive with Sugi is about the only mercy I will give you! And now I want you out of my sight, and out of my life...I realise now, that marrying you was a mistake...!"

All he could do to not provoke her further was a silent, "Yes...Your Grace..." with a shallow whimper, even if he had no right to cry, he slowly and cautiously moved around her with Sugi following close behind as Anna glared with the same hate as her sister.

"And Elliot!" He stopped short of the slope. "Don't even think of brainwashing the D-Team to help you...I have eyes and ears everywhere in my kingdom, a place where you will be considered an eternal enemy, for what you have done...! And should you ever set foot in Arendelle once more...I, will, kill you...!" She vowed.

With a slight tremble of fear in her words and shame in himself, he mounted himself on Sugi's back and urged her into a run, to get away from her as quickly as possible, something that she went ahead with, but not before giving her a savage growl in the final defence of her brother.

The three of Arendelle watched as the pair disappeared from view, and Anna finally relaxed her features as she turned to her sister. "Are you okay, Elsa...?" she whispered softly.

Elsa gave a small calming exhale before she made a reply. "Forgive me...Anna." She muttered to her with a frown.

"For what...?" She wondered and was about to say more before she suddenly looked down to see a small iceboat form around her and Olaf. "What are you doing?!" she exclaimed before the Ice Queen used her power to send the boat away from her, carrying its passengers back the way they came. "ELSAA!" Anna screamed as the pair slipped away from view.

Elsa needed to be alone.

On and on the ice boat went with its passengers, with no sign of stopping whatsoever. "Olaf, help me stop this thing! Give me a hand!" Anna yelled over the wind. The snowman promptly tapped his stick arm on her shoulder to get her attention and allowed her to take it from its socket. She looked around and ahead frantically for something to stop them, before noticing a tree up ahead with a low hanging branch. "Hang on!" She shouted, standing up and raised the stick arm, catching it on the branch. But what she didn't plan was for the boat to not only carry on going - but for the thing to leap off the path, down a steep hill. "Wait, wait, no no no!" And into a large river. "Oh, COME ON!" she exclaimed angrily.

"Anna!" Olaf exclaimed as the princess used his detached arm to control their boat. "This might sound crazy, but I'm sensing some rising anger," he said in fear and confusion as another long hanging tree branch bonked her on the head, answering to it with an angry grunt as she turned to him.

"Well, I'm fucking pissed, Olaf!" she snarled at the innocent snowman, the first time she had ever sworn in her life. "After learning that the man I loved as a brother killed my mother and father in jealousy at the worst possible time and Elsa pushed me away!"

"Ya-ha!" Olaf countered before continuing. "But what I mean is that I'm sensing a rising anger in me!" he clarified with a snap.

This caught Anna completely off-guard.

Olaf was angry...? This seemed so alien for her to hear. "Wait...you're angry?" She had to ask, to make sure she heard the usually carefree snowman correctly.

"Um...I, I think so?" he said, raising his still-attached arm to hold his head. "I mean, Elsa pushed me away too and, she didn't even say goodbye, and as for..." He made a hesitant pause. "You-Know-Who, I've known him for so long and, has been my friend long before I met you..." he said with a whimper, hurt easily written in his face.

This made Anna not only feel angry at herself and guilty for making her first-ever cuss at her favourite snowman in the whole world, but also doubled her anger at Elliot for betraying his trust. "And you have every right to be very, very mad at Elsa...and more so to hate Elliot for betraying us the way he did..." She told him firmly as a frown grew on his face.

"And...you both told me that some things never change, but, since then... " He made a sad inhale. "Everything has done nothing but changed." He ended with a disheartened tone of voice.

And the same could be said for the princess as she made her reply. "I know..." she said softly before an encouraging smile appeared on her face as she picked up his loose hand. "But-but look, I'm still here holding your hand!" she told him, holding the stick arm in both of her hands tightly, trying to cheer him up.

Olaf himself made an exhale of relief as he replied, "Yeah, tha-that's a good point, Anna...", whilst he made the arm in her hands point at her (don't ask how that's possible). "I'm feeling so much better..."

As Olaf continued to talk, Anna caught sight of something that made her catch her breath as his voice trailed away from her mind.

Up above on a ledge looking over the river was a large wolf-like creature, similar in appearance to the wargs that Grarzog and his orcs rode, only with a few noticeable differences. The first was that it looked taller than a man, standing at around eight feet at the shoulder by the looks of it, looked to be six meters long with a more elongated head, and unlike the smaller, more savage-looking wolf, this thing didn't have a constant look of bloodlust - rather it seemed to be a face of mythical wisdom, with yellow piercing eyes that were noticeable from its snow-white fur.

And it was looking right at her without Olaf noticing.

The large canine made a small low-pitched howl, one that seemed to flow through the air with mystical energy, before turning its head to look at something further down the river.

But once Anna did the same, a frightened gasp left her lungs as she hurriedly covered Olaf's mouth, shushing him frantically. "Don't shush me, it was bad that you-!" he scolded her, even though he'd heard Elliot say "Shut up" to him.

"Sh sh sh sh! No, look!" Anna squeaked.

DK

On and on and on did a certain giant feline run, with her passenger clinging to her fur as if his life depended on it. Elliot and Sugi had been on the move blindly through the woods for a good hour, unsure of where they were going, but knowing they were in the same trap as everyone else was.

In the hunter's mind, Elliot had no right to cry for what he did all those years ago, but he couldn't help the sobs that escaped his lips. His actions had finally caught up with him, and guilt, anguish, shame and pain flooded him, unlike anything even his tormentors put him through - after all, it is the external wounds that can heal fast.

Elsa...

Anna...

They turned against him, just as he knew they would. Yes, he was aware that his explanation was not accurate to the demise of the late king and queen, but frankly, he saw no point in telling the full truth.

It wouldn't matter either way. As far as they were and would be aware when the time came, he murdered Iduna and Agnarr in cold blood, as his fake parents watched on in cruel glee at the sight. A king and queen that raised two loving daughters, that didn't deserve what he had wrought on them to seal their fate, not by a long shot. But he didn't dare to revoke the fury of his...now ex-wife.

Before long, the pair reached a small stream in a meadow, where Elliot finally told the cat to stop as he dismounted and fell to his knees at the water's edge as his tears continued to carry on falling. He had only felt so lost at one point after the death of his tormentors, a situation in which he had to choose whose side he was on - Arendelle, or the Highfells. Only this time, he felt as if there was no one there to guide him...to comfort him when he needed help most.

A growl from Sugi took him away from his thoughts, and he turned to see a mixed look of confusion and sternness, a look that demanded to know why he said those things that were too far away from the truth. "It wouldn't have made a difference, Sugi..." He moaned dejectedly with a wobble in his voice as he then looked down to his reflection in the river. "Not with real fact that I took them from her...Agnarr and Iduna were there for the three of us when we needed their love, their guidance..." He continued. "And I repay everything they did, and would've done...by killing them..." He turned back to her. "How do you even go about telling the one you love that you killed their parents and expecting to be loved back...?!" He whimpered as his tears came out faster once again. "How...?" He sobbed, covering his face with one of his hands.

Sugi's heart had broken for her rider and brother many times in the past, but this one made tears of her own threaten to spill. Not knowing what to do without his mate's care, she rearranged herself so that Elliot could lay back against her side, and wrapped her free forepaw around his torso as he twisted and threw his arms around her neck, muffling his wrecking sobs into the dragon steel sheet that covered her, and even curled in his legs to find extra warmth.

As he cried on, one thought sprang to her mind...his egg-nappers did all this, caused him all this pain and grief, forced him to commit a crime he wouldn't do, and inflicted years upon years of sorrow, loneliness, and even at that particular point, even put him in a fight for his life when he needed her most.

A pure, primal rage at this memory she shared with him caused her hackles to stand up.

She swore in her heart that if she had the power to do so, she would go back through time, find those wretched humans, and tear out their throats before they could inflict the harm they caused against so many people. Yes, she was aware that without these events happening, he never would've met his mate and become as hardcore as he was today.

Even maybe he'd never have found her by her mother's corpse as a cub...and she would have been left to starve to death.

But it would be worth it, knowing that he would never know such helpless horrors.

For now, though, she'd lay down, beside him...hoping...praying, that soon, he would be okay again.

But after a few hours, when night had descended on them again and Elliot had fallen asleep, Sugi's sense of smell had picked up an alarming, unfamiliar scent, and the caw of a raven sounded above her head. A scent that set her muzzle into a small uneasy snarl, and made her look around cautiously in case of an attack. Thenm in a gap in the trees ahead of her, she saw a woman in dark-coloured robes walking through.

She delicately freed herself from the man and beast embrace and rose up on her paws to full height. After sparing one last glance at her rider to make sure he was still asleep, she stalked off quietly after this stranger through the trees.

Despite all the centuries that had passed since she was last here, Maleficent remembered this forest like the magic of her orb and wondered if the forest-dwellers and the remaining spirits were as weak-minded as she remembered them with an evil smirk on her lips. After hours of walking, she finally found what she was looking for.

She had found the Lichen Meadows.

And on the open plain overlooking the valley where the dam resided, she saw the newly made Northuldra settlement, with the occupants already ushering little ones into their tents - and strangely, no sign of the D-Team. Smirking evilly in satisfaction, she walked out onto the meadow, well in view of any Northuldran lookouts that might have been on guard.

And all the while, a certain feline kept to the trees, eyes open, hearing tightened and sabres sharp.

As the dark sorceress made her way over to the villagers' encampment whilst still holding her staff..."Stop where you are!" A voice called out, and out of the long grass in front of her sprang Honeymaren and four Northuldran warriors, pointing either spears or staffs at the intruder, and one of them, a big, buff man, had a stone axe in his hands. "Who are you? And what business do you have being in our forest?!" she demanded threateningly.

Maleficent, for her part, mentally rolled her eyes at the mere mortal's pathetic display of aggression, before raising her hands to show she meant no harm. "Now, now, is there any need for this hostility?" she asked charmingly, giving off a placating smile on her face. "I am here because I wish to speak with the one you call, 'Yelana'. I have information and a deal that could benefit your people, concerning the Highfell 'Elliot Takkar'."

Honeymaren's glare did not falter. "We don't make deals with users of Dark magic!" She threatened, lightly jabbing her spear forward.

Don't ma-" Maleficent sputtered in mock surprise, before giving a dark chuckle. "Oh dear, what an awkward situation then..." she commented amusingly, gently running her finger down her raven's spine. "I would've thought the life of your people being at risk from outer forces would concern you..." she continued, catching Honeymaren off-guard. "Well, in that event, I'd best be on my way...!" she said, turning around to leave.

And then came face to face with the Northuldra leader herself, with a levelled look of mistrust on her face.. "What concerns do you have of my people?...And what brings the Highfell to your mind?" she lightly demanded, still bearing the wary look on her face.

At this question, the dark sorceress gave an evil smirk.

And from her hiding place, Sugi grew to like this encounter less and less, and a wary growl left her jaws.

DK

Drenched, a bit cold and slightly miserable in a dark underground cave after falling down a waterfall (after an incursion with the Earth Giants), Anna dropped her purple cloak, kneeled down, and flicked a stone and flint together to set a sticks head alight, a minor trick she'd learnt from her ex-brother-in-law.

"Found it!" she said, finding Olaf's carrot nose on the stone floor, picking it up along with her makeshift torch and stuffed it back in its place.

"Dank you!" came Olaf's muffled gratitude with a smile, his mouth spilling out a gallon of water and even a fish! "Where are we...?" he said, looking around as he did.

"In a pit, with no way out..." Anna uneasily replied, looking around warily as Olaf made another comment.

"But with a spooky, pitch-black way in," he said, pointing at a small tunnel as he did before he walked in, with the princess following shortly after. That was when he noticed the worried look on her face as he took her hand and led on. "Come on, it'll be fun!", he said encouragingly. "Assuming we don't get stuck here forever, and no one finds us and you starve and I give up...!" he said afterwards, in a not-so-helpful style. "But, on the bright side, Elsa's gotta be doing a whole lot better than we are!" He slightly chuckled, carrying on down the path as the pair turned a slight corner.

All the while completely unaware of the pair of golden-yellow eyes watching them as they walked, the owner of which silently stalking after them.

DK

Dark...

Hazardous...

Treacherous and unforgiving with waves easily the size of houses to cathedrals, with a great storm overhead...

Elsa had arrived.

After a few hours of walking, the Dark Sea was now only a few feet away from her, its waves constantly crashing against the land and on each other.

Nodding in acceptance at what she had to do now, she turned away, discarding her over jacket, belt and boots, leaving her feet bare on the smooth stones.

Reaching a cliff face on the beach, she redid her hair into a ponytail similar to her ex-husband and turned to face the waves again. Huffing to herself with her muscles tense, and her feet planted into a ready position, she tensed up.

And she began to run headfirst towards the depths. Reaching the waterline, her powers allowed her to run along the water with ice-made stepping stones, just like she'd practised at Thunder's Cove in Arendelle, making steady progress until she got tossed over by the first wave with a grunt, forcing her back to land.

Now drenched and with a determined angry scowl, she readied herself for another run. "Okay..." she muttered to herself before taking off, charging harder than on her first attempt and finding herself running on the water again, and this time diving through the second wave onto a large rock.

Eerily similar to her first vision with Pyro all those months back.

Quickly climbing to the top and sliding back down with her powers after nearly slipping, she carried on to nearly a quarter of the way across. Then, however, appeared what could have been mistaken as a small tidal wave. But, determined not to give up, she used her powers to create a large ice sheet that split the head of the wave, allowing her to run up with her magic allowing her to grip the ice.

Unfortunately, the force of the wave cracked up the ice, tossing the young queen off into the abyss with a loud yelp as the wave crested and toppled down.

Now underwater and slightly dizzy from spinning under the waves, Elsa frantically used her arms and legs to push herself back to the surface.

That, however, was when the Nokk appeared! It startled her with a slight whimper. The Horse of the Sea gazed at her with a cold murderous glare, recognising her instantly from months before, making a slight snort before dissipating into its domain and vanishing.

Seemingly in the clear, Elsa took a gasp of precious oxygen into her lungs with a slight cough, before hearing the sounds of a ghostly whinny from below and seeing the Water Spirit rushing for an attack. Thinking quickly, she built a raft of ice and climbed onto it to regain some of her strength, only for her to be flung with a shout of "NO!" as the Nokk rammed and smashed it to bits, with her falling into the sea again.

Coming for air a second time, she looked around wildly for any sign of the creature, before setting her eyes on the shape of it in another large wave. But before she could react, she found herself shoved under the surf, and being pushed deeper and deeper by none other than the water horse itself.

The Nokk was going to drown her.

And this time, there were no dinosaurs to save her.

But through instinct to live and determined to win this battle, she fused her powers into one of the Nokk's legs, freezing the entire animal, before it disappeared into the waters again, allowing her to swim back up.

From there, their battle raged - water and ice meeting aggressively, and needing to become the victor. At one point, though, after getting under the surf again, one of her hands ended up in the Nokk's mouth, and she was now constantly being dragged through the waves themselves, coughing and letting seawater fill her lungs dangerously.

In a final effort to come out on top, she quickly used an ice lasso to wrap around its face, at which point it quickly became a set of reins that forged around his head, and using the momentum when it swung its neck to try and get it off, she leapt onto its back.

That was when their fight turned into a rodeo, as the Spirit of the Sea relentlessly bucked to try and dislodge the Ice Queen. After a while though, through tugging and grunting to herself, she felt she could now let her guard down, as the spirit settled into a calming canter, causing her to smile softly.

That was when it really struck.

Rearing onto its hind legs, and catching her by complete surprise, it gripped the remainder of the reins that weren't in her hands and yanked hard! This not only succeeded in flinging her from its back into the sea again, but as she landed on her back and in front of it, it took up the opportunity to dive down, using its buck teeth to grip her exposed throat and drag her underwater again.

The front teeth of a horse are mainly for slicing through grass and plants.

But they can also puncture flesh.

Biting down hard, it continued to drag her deeper and deeper, determined to end her life as she defiantly gripped its muzzle to try and dislodge its jaws. But due to her now extreme lack of air, her strength failed, and her eyes began to shut for the last time.

However...before the Nokk could snap her neck, the creature tensed in what seemed to be wariness, dissipating once more and abandoned the woman as it sensed that something was amiss.

But the queen was still in trouble, as she now couldn't muster the strength she needed to push back to the surface.

But as her eyes opened once again, she felt something graze her finger on her left hand.

And her eyes widened when she saw it was a dinosaur card!

But before she could do anything else, she began to cough violently under the waves, allowing gallons of seawater to fill her lungs again as she began to lose consciousness and sink to her death, just like her mother and father.

But she didn't notice her powers freezing the card solidly, allowing it to grow and change form in multicoloured light.

Out of the light came a small Jurassic carnivore, with long arms with three claws at the end, diamond white teeth, a row of spikes going down to its tail, and most distinguishably, a small crest on its head. Under the water, it appeared to be black all over, but in reality, it was a beautiful blue all over, with striking patterns of white all over its body and face, with its underside a lighter blue. This small but powerful dino was Cryolophosaurus.

If this was any other dinosaur, it would immediately start swimming upwards for air, but instead, this therapod looked down to see Elsa sinking to her death. Reacting quickly, after sensing her magic, it swam downwards, clutched her in its arms, and swam back to the surface.

After breaching the surf, it opened his mouth, and a large flow of ice quickly made a large solid platform, and gently settled her body down on it, before climbing on it itself. It gazed down at her, and after a few seconds of staring at her and feeling her magic within, it exhaled a warm gust of air on her face, and then backed away a couple of feet.

A great lurch caused Elsa to abruptly throw up a bunch of water from her mouth, allowing her to hack profusely as life-giving air filled her lungs once again, rolling onto her front - after which she looked around wildly, before slowly looking up at her apparent saviour, a small gasp in surprise at seeing the dinosaur before her.

But as she looked into its yellow eyes, she saw not spite or bloodlust, but a kind, mystical creature, one that spoke of power, that while similar to hers, was unlike anything she had faced before.

But before she could gaze anymore, she heard a familiar whinny in the distance. Looking due west, she saw an angry Nokk coming at her at full speed.

She tried to stand up, but her legs were wobbly from the battle and caused her to sit on her knees. But hope remained as the Cryolophosaurus stepped forward and roared loudly at the water spirit, who stopped dead in its tracks, rearing up on its legs with a startled whinny. The carnivore studied the aggression of the spirit and realised it had to be pacified by force, quickly, before it was too late. Giving another loud roar, the dinosaur charged at the spirit, allowing its control over ice to let it run on water, while the Nokk did the same.

The spirit span its body around upon reaching its new opponent and kicked out its hind legs, only for the dino to leap over the creature and charged in, and whipped its tail in a counter-attack, striking true, making it fly back and land on its side, disappearing into the water - and if Elsa wasn't mistaken, she actually heard a pained wail from the animal.

This new dinosaur actually harmed it!

The Nokk reformed once again, this time, using its domain to its advantage. It reared up on its hind legs again with a whinny, and a strange shockwave left its body, and following that, the sea rose up behind it, and grew into a tsunami, tipping over onto the dinosaur in an attempt to crush it. But in another twist, the Cryolophosaurus glowed multicoloured, and from its mouth (much to Elsa's shock) a blast of ice and snow shot forth, crashing into the wave, and turned it into a huge iceberg from tip to bottom, before it quickly rushed back towards the ice raft and pushed it away before the wave tipped over and crashed into the Dark Sea again.

Angry that its ace card failed, the Nokk gave an angry snort and charged once more, and with a roar of challenge, the dinosaur prepared to do the same.

"STOP!" Elsa shouted, rushing into the path of the carnivorous reptile, stopping it in its tracks with her arms spread and a pleading look. This act also caught the Nokk off-guard, slowing down to a stop just behind the queen with a look of confusion. In fact, they both did. "Please...no more..." she pleaded with them both, making sure to look at the pair intently.

The Nokk and Cryolophosaurus then looked to each other, and from there a staring contest forged. But they weren't the stares of aggression this time, as the longer they gazed, the more their battle instinct left them.

And familiarisation finally filled their eyes, which had previously been lost to them in their battle.

To Elsa's partial confusion, and to her relief, the two former opponents bowed to each other with a croon from the dino, and a short purr from the spirit, and the Dark Sea finally became as calm as a pond. The queen then took a gamble, slowly walking up to the water spirit as if pacifying a wild horse (which in a sense it was) with one of her hands slightly raised and looked into its blue glowing eyes. The Nokk, now wary instead of death-driven, took a slight step back with a nicker. "Easy...easy..." she whispered soothingly, holding an open hand out, waiting for it to accept her.

After a few tense moments, the Nokk closed the distance, its nose now touching her palm, and a breath left her lungs in relief with a bright smile gracing her face. Then taking another chance, she slowly walked to the flank of the water horse, as it watched her every move. She laid her hands on the back of the animal before her and waited to see how it'd react. But upon not receiving any uneasy reaction, she climbed up onto its back again, and gently ran her hand down its watery neck, soothing it further.

She then looked to the Cryolophosaurus, who had watched the whole ordeal, and saw it give her a slight nod.

She had proven to be the one.

With a new smile of giddiness and determination, she gave a thorough kick to the Nokk's side, causing it to rear up again with a loud whinny, and then galloped off with its new rider, with the dinosaur quickly following and matching its magic-induced speed.

The three magic beings ran across the Dark Sea together, with the Queen of Arendelle taking a huge inhale of air, the feeling of freedom filling her lungs with a huge smile on her face.

Then she finally saw it.

Out in plain sight was a small mountainous island, with a huge river of ice running through the two tallest peaks, the whole of which was glowing a mystical blue hue.

Her smile widened. "Just as that trader told Elliot..." she said breathlessly, but with a hidden bitterness at the last part, stroking a hand down the Nokk's neck again. "'A magic glacier on a sea of dark water'...I can't believe I actually found it..." she said to herself with an emotional smile.

Ah-ah, ah-ahh...

If it wasn't the voice that sang louder and clearer than all the times before, it was the roar of the Cryolophosaurus that seemed to answer back to it as they drew closer, catching her completely off-guard as she looked to it with giddy surprise as it turned to her as it ran. "You hear it too...?!" she couldn't help asking the cold-crested lizard, and in response, the dino looked forward again and roared a second time at Ahtohallan.

Ah-ah, ah-ah-ahh...

A tear stroke down her eye with happiness filling her heart at this moment. This dinosaur wasn't like any who came before, and there was no denying just what it was.

The Beast of Ahtohallan was a dinosaur of the cold!

"I hear you...and I'm coming..." Elsa whispered, before urging the Nokk to gallop faster with their friend right beside them, as a gentle song sang from her heart.

"Every inch of me is trembling, but not from the coooo-o-ooooolld..."

"Something is familiar, like a dream I can reach but not quite hold..."

(The Nokk and the Cryolophosaurus galloped/stepped in time with the music as Elsa sang on.)

"I can sense you there...like a friend I've always knoooo-oo-oo-ooown..."

(Finally, they reached land, and Elsa lept off the mount and both she and the dinosaur bowed at the water spirit, who bowed in return, and dissipated back into the sea - for good this time.)

"I'm arriiiiviinng... and it feels like I aaam, hooooo-oo-ooome..."

(As she turned to face the glacier, she undid her hair and let it fall loosely down her shoulders as Rapunzel used to, and then walked slowly towards an opening in the wall with the dino right at her side.)

"I have always been a fortress, cold secrets deep insiiide..."

"You have secrets toooo...but you don't have tooooo hiiiide..."

(The pair slowly walked down a narrow tunnel into the island, sensing the magic within with wonder in Elsa's case, looking around herself.)

"Show yourself...I'm dying to meet yooouuu...show yourself...it's yoouurr tuuurrrn..."

(They walked on until they entered a large opening room.)

"Are you the one I've been looking for, all of my liiii-ii-iii-iife?"

(Then she turned to the Cryolophosaurus, seeing him gaze at her intently as he kneeled down.)

"Show yoursee-e-ellf! I am ready to leeeaarrnn...!"

(Getting the message with a smile on her face, she immediately jumped onto the dinosaur's back.)

"Ah-ah, ah-ahh...!"

(After making that familiar sound herself, the dinosaur roared loudly, and then ahead of the pair, a bright pinkish-white light glowed down a tunnel.)

"Ah-ahhh, ah-ah-ahhhh!"

(Then he started running, with a still-singing Elsa on its back.)

"I've never felt so certaaiin, all my life I've been toooooo-oo-oooorrn!"

(She allowed one of her hands to glide along one of the ice walls as she saw the light moving with her, looking at it with a smile still.)

"But I'm here for a reasoonn, could it be the reason I was booorrn?"

(Then the dinosaur jumped as they reached a wide gap, and with a multicoloured glow from it, shot its ice downwards, creating a series of jumping stones as it bounded across to the other side.)

"I have always been so different, normal rules did nooot applyyyy!"

(Then she dismounted it.)

"Is this the day?"

(And then looked to see the light in the wall next to her.)

"Are you the way,"

(And watched it disappear behind what looked like a blocked doorway.)

"I finally find out whyyyy?!"

"Show yourself!"

(The pair shot a blast at the doorway, open the door into a large hallway with the pillars collapsed in their path.)

"I am no longer trembliiing!"

(Then the pair worked together using a mixture of her powers and its body and tail to flip them back upright.)

"Heeeere IIII aaammm, I've come sooo faaar!"

"You are the answer I've waited for, all of my liiiii-ii-iiiife!"

(Upon reaching the end of the hallway, the pair burst open a crystal barrier into a darkened room, filled with the Four Spirit elements...but also four she didn't recognise.)

"Oooohh, show yourseeeelllf! Let me see who you arrrrreee...!"

(Then, two at a time, silhouettes of the Spirits of the Forest appeared, and formed into the crystal marks of their elements.)

"Come to meee nooow..."

(The first to appear were Bruni and Gale, who danced around the pair, before forming into their element marks.)

"Oooopeeen your dooooorr..."

(Next to come were silhouettes of the Nokk and one of the Earth Giants, forming into shards of their own.)

"Doooon't maake mee waaaaiit..."

(But then, to her surprise, the small form of a spiritual fairy fluttered around her head as the form of a giant eagle flew past her head, turning around and forming into another crystal emblem, followed by the fairy, forming her own symbol.)

"Oooonnneee moooment moooore...!"

(Then finally, a great lion pounced forward and formed another diamond, followed closely by a huge three-headed serpent shape that flew over her head!)

"Ooh! Come to meee nooow!"

(With all eight symbols in front of her, Elsa strode forward with the Cryolophosaurus following her again, using her arms to levitate the shards in front of her.)

"Oooopeeen your dooooorr!"

(Then finally she laid them back on the floor on their sides.)

"Doooon't maake mee waaaaiit, oooonnneee moooment mooo-o-OOOOORE!"

(Stepping herself into a bright circle surrounded by the spirits, Elsa closed her eyes as a beam of light shot up around her into the ceiling, making the entire room light up in what looked like a crystal cave, and on the walls...were memories of her mother...!)

"Wheeeree theee North wiiiinnnd...meets the seeeeaaa...!"

Ahh-ah, ah-ahh!

(At the familiar call, she looked to see a memory of her, mother as her younger self, and holding the young Prince Agnarr, shocking her beyond belief at realising that the voice was her the whole time. And roaring to the sky beside her was the Crylophosaurus himself.)

"There's a riiveeerrr..." (Ah-ahh, ah-ahhhh!) "...full of memorieees...!"

("Mother..." Elsa choked tearfully, turning to the dinosaur beside her with the biggest smile on her face...the Beast of Ahtohallan was her friend, so many years ago.)

"Come, my darling, homeward boouunnd...!"

(Then, shocking her most of all and nearly making her cry, a vision of her mother, singing to her as she could only sing one thing back as the spiritual dino stepped in front of her.)

"I am FOOOOUUUUNNNND!"

(Mother and daughter sang together, as the Cryolophosaurus blew a magic hue at her dress, giving it a dramatic transformation as the key of the song changed.)

"Show yourself! Step into your poweerr...!"

(As the transformation of her dress continued, the dino then stepped in behind her, tugged on her new white dress and formed a pair of slim transparent capes like a fairy's wings. She now wore the same dress as in her most recent vision with Pyro, giving a graceful twirl as she recognised it.)

(She knew right there and then that she had become the Ninth Spirit.)

"Grow yourseeelf...into something neeeeew!"

"You are the one you've been waiting for!"

"All of my liiii/-all of your life-/iiiiife! OHH, SHOW YOURSELF!"

(Now in the final throes of the song, Cryolophosaurus glowed multicoloured once again, and from its mouth spewed a great cloud of mystical fog, just like the one that surrounded the Forest, flew forth, swirling around the room as Elsa guided it with her hands.)

"Ah-ahh, ah-ahhh...!"

("Ah-ahh-ah-ahh!" the voice sang as the dino gave a short roar in time with it.)

"Ah-ahh, ah-ahhh!"

("Ah-ahh-ah-ahhh...!" the voice sang once more, with the dino following with a louder roar.)

(Then as Elsa sang for the final verse, the Beast of Ahtohallan roared its longest and loudest.)

"AHHH-AHHH, AHHH-AAAAAAAHHHHHHH!"

And with the song finished and the dino's roar ended, the pair brought down the magic-made cloud onto the floor, turning everything a blinding white.

Next time...:

Olaf: "You're gonna have to do this next part on your own..."

Stranger: "Redeem...past...restore...future..."

Elliot: "D-Team, stay out of this!"

Max: "Well, we got their attention!"

Terry: "What the hell was step two?"

Elliot: "(Emotional voice) Impossible...they're...alive...?!"

Please hold down your torches and pitchforks, don't be so hard with me!

Making this chapter took a lot of time and effort on my part - making all the settings, new characters and plots. (Never mind college life getting in the way and a depressing virus over our heads.)

But I'm super excited to start writing out the next chapter, which shall be the second-to-last of the Enchanted Forest arc.

So yes, our number one married couple have split up, due to a misunderstood hate that shall be revealed in truth in the next update.

But the big surprises...(avoiding that there are now nine spirits instead of five like in the movie). Hybrids...in a Dinosaur King and Frozen crossover. This just seemed like something a certain person would make, other than evolved dinosaurs.

I have an inkling suspicion that Stegoceratops and Ankylodocus were not what you expected to see. I will just say now that Bulldust's personality comes from Megatron from Transformers Beast Wars, while Scowlers I came up with myself.

Not to mention the Dinheirosaurus from Dinosaur Revolution. I know Dynerra's appearance was a bit random...but I've envisioned a back story for her and Brontikens which might catch your interest.

And the fact that Cryolophosaurus was a friend of Iduna's from back in the day, and an enchanted beast.

But perhaps the most significant one of all...Maleficent...the Mistress of all Evil herself...

Damn, our heroes are in for some s***!

I'll quickly end it here by saying sorry again for making it seem like I was dead, and I'm hoping to see you all again in the New Year!

Merry Christmas, everyone! :)