Mourning Frost

She sucked in everything that deemed to destroy her in order to make her power stronger. Nothing had ever stood a change at tearing her down, breaking her foundation or her core. She was only ever seen, in Freya's eyes; as invincible.

“Oh yes my dear bratty Freya. Both mummy and daddy are dead NEHAHENAHAHA!!!” Grele’s piercing laugh shook vibrations through the rubble. From where the walls used to be, you could see part of the market and of the village, smouldering in there remains.

In just one day, the world she had loved had gone up in flames, and the people she had known were now nothing but puppets to a mad man of Saul. He took one rickety step forward and raised his right arm in a fist. The smell from him was so natural, it made the burning rubble smell like a fresh orchard of apples.

“Look around bratty Freya. From the four walls there is now only one, and that one is half on the side where the door is, and half on the connected wall behind you” she didn’t need to move to know he was right.

The entire castle was in ruin, but that corner was the only one intact. “Let’s play a game, dearest bratty Freya” he uncurled his fist and raised it above his head, palm spread open wide. “In this game, I live. And you die NEHAHENAHAHA!!! Doesn’t that sound like fun dear bratty Freya?”

The words bounced around her like rubber, like a pool of water, refracting and reflecting off of the surface like there was nothing within to absorb it. “Now die!” Grele screamed this as he slung down his hand; discharging tens of wire thin threads from each of the tips.

Ryan leapt in front of her “Freya! Get Rachel and get out of here!” the wires jabbed through the flesh in his arms and legs, running through and wrapping around his limbs. He let out on noise despite the excruciating pain he felt, but instead fell to the ground in agony.

The stains of his blood had sprayed all over Freya's clothes, her skin; her face. She was now seeing the world through a splatter of blood and horror. “Ryan? Ryan!” she let out a scream as the blood soaked wires clung tighter and tighter to his flesh, ripping away at his long grey sleeves.

Rachel slowly backed up, but stumbled from the rubble into the arms of two puppets, dressed as cleaners. “Freya! Help!” she called out to her. Freya still stood motion less in the centre of the room. A snigger came from Grele as he raised his wired hand.

As he did, Ryan went with it, flying upwards. “Let’s see if this affects you! NEHAHENAHAHA!” he tossed Ryan towards the wall, smashing him against it and shattering most or what remained in the castle. Ryan's body slipped down to the floor as Grele released his grip. He was badly injured, but not dead.

The wires pulled back in to his hand until only a few inches remained on the end, stiff and dripping with Ryan's blood. “Would you like to know what’s beautiful about being a puppeteer, bratty Freya?” he moved sluggishly towards her wax like state. “I can control the amount of wire I create in my body, and harden it so it’s nice and sharp”

He stopped in front of her, with face to face contact and stretched out his smile to a killer grin. Every time he moved, the wooden body creaked and rattled.  “Now before you die, from such a pointless fight, I'm going to tell you what you mother did before she became my puppet.

He got closer, right up to her ear as he pressed the wires in to her side. Her eyes widened in agony as she squealed from the torturous pain “She cried…”

Crack

A wall of ice grew between them, sliding against the floor and pushing Grele back. “No! NO WAY!” she was yelling now, not in pain anymore, but in disbelief and rage. Freya raised her arms this time, shining blue; she threw them down and sent forth large ice spikes towards Grele in fury.

“THAT’S MORE LIKE IT! NEHAHENAHAHA!” as the spikes rushed towards him, a quick swish of his extending wires shattered her attack, reducing their powers to nothing but a stale mate.

“Oh goody, our title dance has intrigued me. Let’s change partners now shall we?” Grele snapped his fingers on his non-weapon hand and summoned a puppet down from above. “Don’t worry, it’s not mummy!”

A hooded puppet crashed to the floor. Face covered, it stood, with sword in hand and dashed towards Freya, swinging with malice. She dodged, the blade narrowly missing her face. “Dammit!” Freya leapt back, grasped rubbly off the ground and threw it forward into the cloaked face of the puppet.

The ashy cloud of rubble partially blinded the puppet, rendering it to swing recklessly from side to side. Freya sniggered as she pulled the ice rock necklace off of her neck and squeezed it tight.

It shone bright and mutated into a small, thin dagger. Grele laughed his bewitching howl again “Is that all you’ve got? NEHAHENAHAHA this must be a joke. That thing wouldn’t serve as a toothpick; let alone a weapon!”

Freya lunged at the incapacitated puppet, slashing through its cloak.  The shreds fell to the floor in chunks, leaving a partially wooden body holding on to a white and silver blade.

“Freya… helps me…” Freya swallowed.

Before her stood the part wood, part Snow Fairy version of Sylvia, clutching bliss bringer in her hand. She creaked open her wooden mouth a second time “I'm sorry… I can’t stop…” Sylvia raised bliss bringer again, this time from the side, and swept out at Freya.

Freya barely reacted as she caught the blow no her ice rock dagger. A blue flame sparked from behind, zooming across the battle field, past Sylvia and Freya, slicing off the arm of Grele that was pulling Sylvia's strings.

“You little bastard!” Grele raised his remaining arm and shot out wires towards Ryan, but before they could reach, Sylvia had run across into the firing range, to protect Ryan. Tens of wires had struck though her, like a knife through butter.

Freya morphed her dagger to a throwing star and sent it for the puppets holding on to Rachel. It ripped off their heads and returned to her for one final time, so she could send it off at Grele. It tore off his other arm, but like before, it didn’t bleed.

 Because wood couldn’t bleed

Both Freya and Sylvia rushed over to their injured companions, Rachel to Ryan and Freya to Sylvia. Sylvia lay on the floor with a hole through her body, but no blood.

After all, wood doesn’t bleed

“Sylvia, you’re ok now, right?” Freya's frantic crying ran down on to Sylvia's face. “Freya… I'm sorry I couldn’t do more… but I saved your bodyguard, cherish him and he will protect you…”

Freya wrapped her arms around her, for one last tight embrace. She looked up to Rachel, resting Ryan on her lap and patting his head, like a dog being praised by its owner, and she smirked at that.

“Freya… take this… it’s your birth right…” Sylvia's frail hand held up bliss bringer, the sword made of silver and ice rock. Sylvia and her mother had two different ways of summing up the reason for bliss bringer, and Sylvia's was it wasn’t made for power or commemoration of strength.

Queen violet had the blade bliss bringer, with its silver inline and twisted hollow handle, made to protect. To protect family, to protect the villagers, and to protect the land of ice and snow; known as Chillda.

“Sylvia… I'm scared…” Sylvia placed her hand on Freya's face with a smile on her own. “Stop crying… it will only show weaknesses...  stop this endless agony and terrors… kill that bastard!”

With her last sentence, Sylvia changed colour to a pure white, not a single speck of difference in her now. The white started to glow brighter and brighter, and gave the effect of glass breaking, before bursting into tiny white lights, like fireflies, that escaped into the sky.

Ryan sat up “I'm sorry Freya, but before you grieve; make firewood out of this asshole” the look on his face was sincerity, it stood for the truth in his voice and what he felt. Grele needed to die.

Now

Freya gabbed on tight to bliss bringer and raised it high. “This is it Blissy!” Ryan and Rachel looked at each other confused, with faces that said only ‘she gave it a nickname?’

Blissy turned to blue white and morphed to a silver and ice rock halberd. “That looks familiar!” Ryan cheered on from behind. Freya chuckled with a victorious tone. “Before I only took power from the small ice rock on my neck, this time I morphed Blissy to keep its fully resilient properties”

She rushed forth towards Grele. His eyes split open, splintering the wood on both sides of his face as Blissy cut down his forehead.

“FU-”

Black firefly like orbs swarmed up as Blissy finished severing Grele in two. Rachel stood with Ryan resting on her shoulder and limped over to Freya, who met them halfway in the room’s middle.

“Freya, what happened to Sylvia's and Grele's bodies? They disappeared in swarms of lights and I really don’t understand” Freya sat with them on the floor, Ryan resting on Rachel's lap one more time. Freya pointed up, towards the blackened sky that seemed to get gradually lighter.

In the sky were thousands of white lights, and some black, drifting up to who knew where “Rachel, in the earthen realm if a person dies, their soul leaves the body and the body remains. In the supernatural real, if a person dies then their body and soul turn to light and drift off together, white lights mean a good person, and black a bad person”

Rachel gazed at the dreamlike lights, nothing that had happened seemed real to her. Freya held her halberd in hands and shifted it back to its original shape of a sword.

“Protect”

Freya held Blissy up high, as if she was raising victory.

“Die” a blue bolt of lightning struck Blissy, striking it across from her, and casting her across from the others. Rachel reached out her hand to Freya, but missed her by a second.

“Die!” a second bolt, slightly weaker than the first collided with Ryan, sending him into the last remaining chunk of wall. “What is going on!?” Rachel screamed. “Not much my dear, what about you?” another cloaked person stood behind Rachel, but one too articulate and powerful to be a puppet. It twisted round, grabbed Rachel and lid back, taking Blissy off of the ground.

“I think I’ll give this to one of my underlings, the one who has shown me they have proven themself to me the most. That would have been Grele but, well, he’s a little dead now isn’t he?”

Freya came to her feet and smacked one on the floor, then the same legs knee to her elbow, then forcing out her arm full power, sending out a long pillar from the smouldered ice below the rubble.

With a bolt of lightning the pillar was gone in to shards; it was child’s play to this creature. “Slime guards! Grab them, and take them to Metar” Freya brought a long pole of ice from the ground as hordes of slime guards oozed their way in her direction.

“What is Metar? I know of every nation, there are Chillda, Saul, Spharos, Liquida, Abyss, Natura and Fier! There has never been Metar!” she thrust her pole through the heads and bodies of slime guards, reducing them to puddles on the floor and Ryan made ash out of his own.

The creature jested at her “My dear girl, Metar is a nation too, just not one visible on a map. You see Chillda homes ice, Spharos is sand, Saul is the spirits, Liquida is the water, abyss holds those who are rejected from every other society and nation, Natura is for those of air and wood and grass and all the other natural shit; and Fier of course is for the fire”

He pulled Rachel closer to him, clinging around her neck. “Metar is the nation in the sky which homes the creatures of metal, I know it’s odd it being in the air, but it is home to those who use metal and are made of it by birth. It is also the location for prisoners of war and nobility. Be thankful thought! Your young bodyguard gets to go too!”

Freya twisted the pole in the air, mutating it into a chain, heavy on the ends by two ice balls, used for smashing. It collided with several slime guards at once breaking them to nothing. “At least give me something good to fight, none of these scavengers of the damned bullshit!”

“Very well!” from the distance she was at, she could at least tell the voice to be a man’s, but who was he bring out. The slimes all turned to puddles and receded to a jar sat on the floor. When the jar was full, a hand reached down and secured the top with a lid, tightly.

“Hey! These things came from Metar you know! Show some respect!” a woman stood before them. She looked thirty at least, but seemed to age well. Long fiery red hair draped down to her waist, and sunglasses covered her eyes. She wore a long skirt in a red just darker than blood, with a blouse in black to counteract the clashing of colours.

“They’re also my pets, well, these ones anyway” her voice was matured and refined, like you would expect from someone in high society and with great wealth. “I'm Mary by the way, the lady in charge at Metar prison, and a descendant of a mother from Fier and a father from Metar, which made me perfect for the job”

She looked at the ice chain in Freya's hands and smiled with excitement “Hey! You’ve got one too!” from her blouse sleeve she pulled out a ring attached to a chain, long and steel with a blunt end.

“That thing has nothing on the end like mine though” Freya pointlessly said with a smirk on her face. A snigger came from Mary as she whipped it in to the air, then to Ryan, wrapping around his neck.

She pulled him in close to her, to her feet. She stepped on the side of his head, not to hurt him, but to keep down the powerless and injured Ryan. “Your turn and I’ll make it more fun for you by giving you something extra!” she grasped at the ring in one hand, and part way up the chain with the other hand.

Raised in the air she spun it around at an uncontrollable speed till only some parts were visible. “Ready?” the end of the chain started to resemble a sharp point the fasted the chain went.

“Those from Metar can control metal” the figure yelled as he gripped even tighter on Rachel's neck. Now he was at the point of cutting off her breathing.

The end on the chain turned red as if heating up, and then Freya realised; she’s part Fierian too. The sharp point burst in to flame, creating a blazing ring above her.

A blazing halo

She released the hand gripping part way up the chain, sending it flying for Freya. The fire slide through the ice chain and collide into the ground between her legs. A quick jerk at the now cooling chain spun it around Freya's leg and pulled her to the floor.

Mary pulled her in till she was next to Ryan, then put them back to back and wrapped them around with the chain. “Rachel!” Freya and Ryan called out continuously as the man picked her up.

He began to float on static from the floor, before taking off into the sky “B-bye Freya Cassidy! Ryan Chestnut! If you want your human back, you’ll need to come get her, that is if you every make it out of the floating fortress that is Metar! Oh don’t worry, I won’t kill her, she’s nothing but a trophy to me!”

With those last words the sky darkened again, and rain started to pour down from the sky with bolts of lightning and crackles of thunder. The rain hit Freya and Ryan fast, wiping them clean of all blood that was not their own. Taking away all tears they cried. Giving new life to what was left of Chillda.

The chain tightened as Mary pulled on the chain. “We’re leaving now. I don’t want to get too wet, I don’t work to well wet I'm soaked through”

Freya lent back on to Ryan and wept loudly “Ryan… I've lost everything…” Ryan gulped, held her hands and squeezed tight. “Don’t worry Freya” lightning crackled behind them.

“We’ll get her back. I promise”