Freya Valdis's Arc

Chapter 11 of 11

Freya moved deeper into the castle that had once been hers. Elsa followed close behind, the herdsman's daughter who had traded Aezrath's name for a debt. The girl kept one hand on the wall. "He's still in here," Elsa whispered. "I can feel the cold under the fire." Freya nodded and gripped the rainbow blade. Aezrath had fled through a side arch, wounded and hiding. She meant to find him before he healed. The hall narrowed into a corridor. Then the walls woke. Firestone twisted around them. The floor buckled and rose into jagged teeth. Doors slid shut where doors had never been. Aezrath's voice slid through the stone. "You forget. This place answers to me now." A wall of molten rock swung toward Elsa. Freya shoved the girl clear and rolled aside. "Freya!" Elsa scrambled up. "He's turning the whole castle against us!" The corridor closed tight. Spikes of glowing stone thrust from every side. Heat pressed the air from Freya's lungs. Her frost thinned in the furnace. She could not freeze fast enough to stop it all. But the sword did not care about heat. Its light held steady, cold and clean. Freya remembered what it had done in the golden hall. It turned a god's own power against him. This magic pouring through the walls was Aezrath's magic. So she stopped defending. She planted her feet and raised the blade high. "Then let it answer to this," she said. A spike drove at her chest. Freya swung. The rainbow light caught the surging magic and threw it back into the stone. The blade drank the castle's fury and returned it doubled. The walls shuddered. The spikes reversed and stabbed inward, toward their source. Freya turned in place, cutting each attack, sending each one home. The corridor tore itself apart around her. A scream came from the far arch. The molten glow drained from the walls. Firestone cracked and went dark and cold. Freya walked forward through the ruin. She found Aezrath crouched against a dead hearth, both arms now useless, the frozen one and the burned one alike. His castle had turned on him. His magic had broken his own bones. "You have nothing left," Freya said. She set the blade against his throat. "The seat. The sky. This home. You will give them back." Aezrath laughed, thin and wet. "I cannot. The path to your seat runs through the cosmic tree beneath the frozen sea. Only I know the way to open it." His burning eyes fixed on her. "Kill me and you lose the key forever." Freya held the sword still. She had beaten him. She had taken back her home. But he had spoken the truth, and she knew it. She could not simply end him. Elsa stepped beside her, pale. "Then we take him with us," the girl said. "North. Back to the tree." Freya lowered the blade an inch. Her enemy was now her prisoner, and her only guide.