Astrild Asleep

She is awake.

Elsa blinks, opening her eyes with slowness born not from sleepiness but reluctance. There's a strong tug at the back of her mind—gentle enough to not be painful, but firm enough that she cannot ignore it. She contemplates trying to do just that, because rest is hard to come by, and this night had been one of her rare few successes in centering her mind enough to sleep. But Elsa knows that, with the call resounding so powerfully, she can no longer sleep. Already, her mind is generating a thousand scenarios, a million branching paths, a million more ends to each one. Elsa breathes a soundless sigh and shifts upright, sitting with her legs dangling over the side of the bed and rustling the silk sheets that had been draped over her nude body. She looks out a window that stretches across the entire opposite wall. Tonight, like every other one, is a starry night. It never crosses her mind to cover herself even though the windows are unshielded. This high above the rest of the world, there is no one to see her but the moon and stars. And even if there were, her body is just a vessel. A beautiful one, to be sure, and that has its uses, but—the uses of a vessel does not make it any more proud than flesh and blood.

She does need to see someone, though. Etiquette and propriety reminds her to cover herself with a night gown, and then a heavy fur coat to ward against the night chill. As Elsa slips her arms through the sleeves, her gaze falls on her rapier lying propped against the wall, and after a moment's hesitation, she decides to leave it. It is a comfortable presence at her side, but little more than a prop. Metal is a very weak thing, after all, more brittle than ice and more inflexible than earth. If she is to be broken, metal would break long before. She does, however, take up her crown, and she sets it upon her head as mark of her office. She is queen, and she will always be queen; that is an unchangeable facet of her being.

At this hour of night, there are very few servants awake in the castle. They bow and make way when Elsa walks by, repressing their shudders until she passes, but she knows they do it anyway. Perhaps her presence will remind them that it is best to retreat to their quarters until the danger of night passes. Anyone with sense will lock themselves in the safest place they can find, staying away from the windows and praying they will wake from their sleep. No one ever goes outside. Those who do never return.

Elsa's quarters are already high enough, but she ascends to the highest point of the castle and, at the doorway, pauses for a moment to gather her bearings before passing through to the outside balcony. As soon as she opens the door, she is stricken by cold. Up here, thousands of feet above the kingdom, the falling snow is swept by gale winds into a frenzy. She already knows what she would see if she were to look down—something small, something insignificant, millions of humans huddled like ants in their burrows on her beautiful earth. Up here it is cold, horribly cold. Elsa draws her coat close, unable to even imagine the dark humidity and bloated beasts of the world below.

Sitting on the balustrade is a cloaked man, perfectly balanced on the thin railing even with one hand outstretched to catch the falling snow. Elsa approaches, and the man closes his fist over a snowflake. When he turns, his hood falls back to reveal a youthful face. It is the face of a boy, one the man wears well, so well that it is almost natural, but Elsa knows better than to think her old friend harmless.

"Edmund," Elsa greets.

"You've felt it too," Edmund says, and as he draws his hand back to his chest, Elsa watches carefully for any sudden movements. "Haven't you, Elsa? You must have."

"I'm not sure what you mean."

Edmund gives her a tired glance. "Anna is awake. She'll be here soon."

"And what do you plan to do?" Elsa asks, out of genuine curiosity. "Will you accost her as she enters the city? Indoctrinate her as you have so many others? Recruit her aid in an attempt to kill me?"

"Maybe."

"What's stopping you from trying it alone, now?"

"Maybe I will."

Elsa tenses, and her fingers itch for the cool steel of her sword, but Edmund makes no move to attack. There had been, for an instant, a spark of his old fire. Now he once again looks tired and even the youthfulness of his face looks stretched thin.

"How did this happen, Elsa?" Edmund asks, genuine sorrow in his voice.

Elsa chooses not to comment. She walks closer to him, the boy she has known for far, far too long, but she remains standing. Her back is straight, and her head is held high. She will not look at him.

"Will you try to kill Anna?" Edmund asks again.

Standing up here, watching the snow fall as the moon glows in the distance, all of this reminds her of a time long ago. She remembers vaguely, like a past life, with none of the emotions or sensations attached, but she does remember it.

"This snow is beautiful in the moonlight," Elsa says.

"I'll be seeing it later tonight. As rain."

Edmund leaps from his perch and drops from their shared loft, leaving Elsa to watch the moon begin to fade and the snow collect, fallen, on the ground.

Anna wakes up remembering nothing.

She knows that she is uncomfortable, and a cursory glance down at her body is enough explanation. She is filthy. It's no fault of hers, considering the environment in which she found herself waking up. Fallen buildings, rotting wood, cracked stone. Dust and dirt mingle into a heavy layer of soot that covers everything here, including Anna, and the trees that have constricted the ruins are lifeless. At least, they bear no leaves, no fruit. They seem to be functionally alive, if the thick roots bursting from the ground are any indication, most as wide as a forearm, some as wide as an entire man.

Anna wonders for a moment how she came to be here, and what she had been doing before she had fallen asleep, but pragmatism moves her out of the ruins soon enough. It's a wide span of area, but for whatever reason, she knows the way out. She knows where to find various exits, though most have been blocked off by the trees or by rubble. She feels almost herded onto one path. It never crosses her mind to find food and shelter. Instead, she just feels compelled to move, to find something, someone.

Eventually, though, exhaustion forces her to stop. She's out of the ruins and on a mountain path—how had she known that this way leads to a mountain—when her knees buckle and she realizes that her limbs ought to be atrophied, judging by the amount of dust on her person. It's lucky that she can move. Anna doesn't question it any more. She collects some sticks and strikes a fire with two rocks, because the night is cold and, though she has yet to see any, she would like to avoid wild animals. It's cold enough that she doesn't attempt to strip off her dirtied clothing, and instead she wraps the cape of her tunic close. It makes her want to sneeze, but that, Anna thinks, is preferable to hypothermia.

Time passes, though Anna doesn't fall asleep.

She resumes her journey once the flames burn out, guided by stars and intuition.

It's not long before she rounds a bend and can see it. Her destination. Beginning at the base of the mountain, wrapping around and then up to spiral over the entire mountain, lies a gargantuan city. This transformation is enough that Anna couldn't have realized that it was anything but a mountain from farther away. Walls blockade the entire structure, moving sinuously up the mountain in accordance with the curve of the city, and from a distance, it looks as though the whole thing is simply a massive mountain instead of a massive city juxtaposed over a massive mountain.

She's not as surprised as she should be.

Anna reaches the front gates in several hours' time, and to her great surprise, there are no guards. Instead, the gate opens at her arrival and closes again as soon as she has crossed, and something tells Anna there will be no going back. Why did she enter the city in the first place? She had just…done it.

It's very, very quiet in the city, though the homes begin immediately. It's also very, very cramped. Anna loses count of the number of buildings by the time she crosses one block, though her task had been made harder by the homogenization of these homes. All of them are boarded up, for one.

Why are they boarded up?

Anna gets her answer in the form of a high-pitched wail, a rush of wind, and a sudden, wrenching pain in her back.

She stumbles forward, sprawls on the ground—with the absentminded notion that part of her side has been gouged out—and glances backward at the monstrosity that has struck. It's a writhing mass of black, like the monster is made up of brushstrokes of ink caught in a swirl of water, shadows coming apart and coming together again and again. Anna pushes herself forward, away from the monster's sudden strike with its head. It slams into the ground but doesn't seem to register pain; Anna has barely gotten to her feet before it pursues on all fours, bleeding black everywhere it goes.

Anna squeezes into a narrow alley, but she realizes her mistake soon enough. She barely fits, but the monster, who had been nearly three times her size, flows into the crevice like liquid. Anna pushes her way through the refuse in her path, the garbage and filth, praying that she can slow the monster down, but the shadows pursue; there is nothing left of the gargantuan monster, only twisting lengths of shadow, within which a pair of blue eyes travel along like crystal.

"Duck!"

Anna does, not knowing why at all but desperate enough to obey. Heat rushes over her head, and when she hears the monster scream she looks back to see it set ablaze, the pair of blue eyes spinning madly within its tentacles. It doesn't retreat, but stalls, when more fireballs are sent its way. Anna doesn't stay to watch; she crawls along, down the alleyway, following a ray of light from the rising sun. Night is almost over, Anna thinks, day is coming, but her vision is darkening.

She makes it to a man with the face of a boy, who reaches down and says something, but Anna has already fallen asleep.

a/n: Hello everyone, thank you for making it all the way down here! I don't want to say too much because this story is meant to be one of intrigue. All I can say without spoiling too much is that you can expect to have your expectations subverted. If you've been following my writing for a while, yes, this story includes characters from Tempest and Polaris, albeit in different roles.