Freya Valdis's Arc

Chapter 9 of 11

Aezrath cradled his frozen arm, but his hate had not cooled. He would not wait for Freya to challenge him. He struck first. His good hand rose, and the cold in the hall turned solid. "You should not exist," he said. "So you will not." Freya felt his power seize her. It was not frost this time. It was erasure. The floor under her feet went pale. Her hands began to fade, edges blurring into white. Aezrath meant to unmake her, to blot her from the world the way one wipes a name from ice. Elsa screamed her name. The girl clutched the carved pixie to her chest and stumbled forward, though she had no power to give. "Freya, the lantern!" she cried. "Use the light!" Freya could barely feel her arms. But her cracked lantern still burned cold and blue at her hip. She grabbed for it. As her fingers closed on the handle, the flame flared. It did not stay a flame. Light poured out and hardened. Shadow, gold, and shifting color wove together into a blade in her hand. The lantern had forged her a sword. Moira stood apart, feathers of blue and gold drifting from her crown. Aezrath's sister had seen every road, and she did not look surprised. "Hope answers unmaking," she said. "Raise it, or you are gone." Freya raised the sword. Aezrath's power hit the blade and broke against it. The rainbow light threw his erasure back. Her fading hands filled in again, solid, real. She felt the floor beneath her feet return. Aezrath poured more into the strike. Freya braced both hands on the hilt and pushed forward. The blade drank his cold and shone brighter for it. Step by step, she drove toward him. His unmaking could not touch what the light defended. "You cannot erase me," Freya said. "Not anymore." She swung. The sword did not cut his flesh. It cut his power. The wave of cold he had gathered split apart and scattered like ash. Aezrath fell back against his golden throne, drained, his frozen arm dragging. He stared at the blade in her hand. So did Freya. It hummed against her palm, warm where nothing of hers had ever been warm. "He tried to take you out of the world," Elsa said, breathless. "And he failed." "He failed," Freya agreed. She lowered the sword but did not let it fade. "And now I have a weapon that turns his own power back." Moira's eyes moved to the open sky above the hall. "He cannot unmake you. He cannot seal the sky. So he will run," she said. "To the one place his power still holds whole. His hall of fire, far south, where no frost can follow." Freya looked south, past the golden walls, and tightened her grip on the blade. Aezrath had one refuge left. She meant to take that from him too.