Freya Valdis's Arc

Chapter 5 of 11

Aezrath stepped back through the golden door. The frost in his robes flared. Above the hall, the sky itself began to knit shut. A crack of light was closing, the same crack Freya had climbed through to reach him. He was sealing the heavens again, locking her below forever. "No," Freya said. She lunged for the door. It swung closed and froze solid, gold turning to blue ice under her hand. Her freezing touch, the very power that made her a curse, could not break his older cold. The ice only thickened. "He's shutting the sky," Elsa cried. The girl gripped her carved pixie. The little wooden servant thrashed and pointed one arm downward, at the frozen sea beneath their feet. Its starlit patterns burned bright. "It wants you to look down. There's something under the ice." Freya knelt and pressed her palm flat. Through the frost she saw roots. Not roots of any plant, but of a vast tree, its trunk lit with turning stars, its branches spread wide beneath the sea. The cosmic tree that held the heavens together. Aezrath's seal ran up through it like sap. "He doesn't hold the sky with his hand," Freya said. "He holds it through the tree." The metal giant crashed down beside her. Water churned bright in his chest. He had freed himself from ice once with her help, and now he offered the same trade back. "Then break the root," he said. His voice rang like struck iron. He raised one heavy hand, the guns at his wrist folded away, and drove his fist into the sea. Cracks spidered out. Freya poured her cold into those cracks. She did not soften the ice this time. She split it. The frost that killed a world now served her. The frozen sea broke open, and a single star-bright root lifted into the air, dripping light. The root pulsed with Aezrath's seal. Freya took it in both hands. It burned like the memory he had locked in her. She thought of ten thousand still faces. She thought of Elsa's warm hand in hers. Then she squeezed, and her freezing touch crawled up the root until the seal cracked. Overhead, the closing sky tore open again. The crack held. The golden door burst inward. Aezrath stood in the doorway, and for the first time the small god looked afraid. His hall's fire dimmed. "You broke my hold," he said. "I climbed up once," Freya said. "Now the road stays open." She stepped over the shattered ice toward him. The metal giant came at her shoulder. Elsa followed, her pixie glowing. "You'll answer for how you threw me down. Here. Now." Aezrath retreated into the golden hall. The door hung broken behind them. The way to the god was open, but so was the sky he had tried to seal, and Freya no longer knew which one held the greater danger.