Contest entry - Elsa's Rage

    Prince Hans of the Southern isles stared in awe at the enormous ice palace that stood before him. He was quite amazed at how one person had been able to do all that, even after hiding her powers after all those years. At the same time, he was a bit scared; if Queen Elsa was able to create an entire palace, then who knows what she could do to hurt a person?

    After recovering from his small shock, Hans called out to his men, “We are here to find Princess Anna! Be on guard, but no harm is to come to the queen!” He hopped off his horse and looked back. “Do you understand?” He walked away while a few, Yes, your Grace‘s came from his men. Meanwhile, the Duke of Weselton’s guards exchanged a glance saying, You know what to do.

    As Hans led his horse toward the stairs leading to the palace, still awestruck, the giant mound of snow next to the stairs suddenly moved. Everyone jumped and brought out their weapons as a gigantic snow creature over three times as tall as everyone stomped toward them, growling and roaring as it swiped at Hans. He was able to back away at the same time as his men fired their crossbows and threw their spears into the beast. Unfortunately, this only seemed to infuriate it even more, for it roared even louder and icicles sprouted from its snowy skin. It lunged forward and whacked the Duke of Weselton’s guards into a snowbank. They looked up, and behind the snow monster they caught a glimpse of Queen Elsa peeking through the doors to the palace before closing them.

    “The queen!” shouted the Duke’s bearded guard in a gruff voice, getting up as quick as he could while grabbing his crossbow, followed by his comrade. They both sprinted towards the stairs.

    The snow beast batted Hans off to one side. After shaking his head to get rid of the shock, the prince looked up, and between the beast’s legs saw the Duke’s guards running up the ice stairs, crossbows in hand.

    Queen Elsa saw this as well and gasped in alarm, grabbing her dress so as to not trip herself while she ran up the stairs as fast as she possibly could. She glanced back just in time to see the Duke’s guards bursting through the ice doors. Still, she continued running up the steps, hoping to get as far away from them as possible; she didn’t want to hurt anybody.

    The Duke’s guards looked around the palace, trying to locate the queen. “Up there!” the bearded one shouted as he spotted her running up the stairs. “Come on!” He motioned to the non-bearded with his crossbow to follow him.

    Elsa rushed into the palace’s upper room, hoping to find a safe place.  

    Suddenly, she heard one of the guards say, “We got her!” She yelped and whipped around to find the guards aim at her with their crossbows.

    “No, please!” she pleaded, putting up her hands. She wanted to reason with them, let them know that she’d hurt them if they tried to hurt her. However, the Duke’s guards didn’t want to reason--they knew how dangerous she was, so the bearded one fired an arrow at her. She gasped and shielded her face for protection. When she didn’t feel an arrow piercing her, she looked up to find the point of it mere inches away from her face, having been stopped by a stalagmite of ice she’d apparently conjured up. She panted in fear, knowing very well that she could have died.

    “Go around!” commanded a guard. “Toss it!” The bearded guard tossed a weapon to the non-bearded, who took aim at Elsa.

    “Stay away!” commanded she, thrusting her hands forward and sending a mini-wave of ice towards the guards. They rolled out of the way. She continued panting, realizing that she’d inevitably have to fight them off. She’d have to hurt them…

    “Fire, fire!” The Duke’s guards continued circling her, searching for a weak spot to gang up on her as she continued sending deadly ice waves. “Get her!” Elsa’s waves of ice became bigger the more frantic she got.

    Meanwhile, outside the palace, Hans was fighting an entirely different battle. He lifted his head off the ground, shook the shock off, and looked up just in time to see the snow beast lifting up its foot to crush him. He rolled away, missing a terrible fate by mere centimeters. He sprung up, and with his sword, hacked off the beast’s snowy left leg with just one blow. It roared as it tried to stay balanced on one leg.

    “Come on!” shouted Hans above the growling, motioning his men to follow him up the stairs. The snow beast roared once more. Hans glanced back, trying to rush up the stairs as fast as possible. The beast toppled over the edge of the chasm under the steps, swiping at Hans to try and drag him down with it. However, he was able to dive forward at the last moment. The beast instead took most of the stair’s railing, and only succeeded in dragging Hans to the edge of the stairs. The beast let out one final bellow as it fell to its death. Hans hung onto the stairs for dear life. He was able to climb back up with the help of some men.

    Elsa looked left and right, analyzing the situation at hand: both guards were on either side of her, holding up their crossbows. Just as the non-bearded one was about to fire, she thrust her hand forward. A bunch of ice spikes shot out from the ground, pinning the guard to the wall by his clothes. However, one spike was dangerously close to his throat, and was slowly getting closer with each passing second.

    The bearded one was taking aim, but the Queen of Arendelle blasted the crossbow out of his hands. He yelped, the blast knocking him back and almost freezing his fingers off.

    Elsa flicked her arm upwards, making a barrier of ice sprout up next to the guard. When he tried to run the other way, she created another barrier. Then she formed a wall of ice that moved toward the guard. He backed away and found that he was trapped between the door leading outside and the ice wall. Knowing that he couldn’t run, the guard pushed against the ice. The queen, however, pushed even harder, her facial muscles contracting with force. She had to get him away, she had to!

    The ice door behind the guard started to crack, and it burst open. He stumbled backwards before realizing that he was on a very small balcony and pushing against the ice wall once more. However, the ice beneath him was slippery, so he couldn’t get a good grip on the ground, and the wall slid him closer and closer to the edge. It was a very long drop to the bottom.

    The non-bearded guard was trying not to move, the ice spike threatening to stab him.

    Elsa only pushed harder on both of them.

    Suddenly, Prince Hans and his guards came sprinting into the room. They all halted to a stop and watched in horror at the scene before them: one of Weselton’s guards pinned against the wall by a bunch of ice spikes, and the other slowly being pushed to his death, Queen Elsa at the center of it all.

    “Queen Elsa!” shouted Hans. Elsa’s bright blue eyes were glaring with concentration. “Don’t be the monster they fear you are!”

    She was momentarily annoyed at Hans disrupting her concentration, until she looked over her shoulder, saw all those people who’d come, and realized what she was doing. She ceased her ice powers and panted as she stared at him.

    Still pinned to the wall, Weselton’s non-bearded guard was able to lift his crossbow and aim it at the queen. He was only a few feet away from her, it’d be an easy shot.

    Hans noticed this out of the corner of his eye, and was about to start running toward the guard when suddenly Elsa of Arendelle thrust her arm towards the guard. A sickening crunch resounded throughout the palace. Everyone gasped and stood motionless, staring at the guard, then at Elsa. Her head was down, strands of platinum blonde hair covering her face.

    “You caused all this…” she whispered. For a moment Hans was unsure of what she was saying, until she looked up, making direct eye contact with him. “You caused all this!” she repeated, louder this time. Her panting increased in speed, her beautiful features twisting into a mask of pure hatred and anger. “You caused all this!” She did a tiny motion with her hand, and outside the room, the screams of the bearded guard could be heard getting smaller and smaller until it was evident he’d fallen to the bottom.

    “My queen, what are you doing?!” a shocked Hans demanded, backing away along with the rest of the men.

    “This is your fault!” Elsa shouted. The ice in the room became a brighter amber the angrier she got. Something inside her snapped. She flung up both her arms, and the doorway to the room was sealed up with a thick layer of ice. Some men tried to hack at it with their weapons, but the ice was giving off a magical aura that shattered the weapons. “If you hadn’t proposed to my sister, none of this would’ve happened!” Everything was getting colder with each passing second.

    “But I--I didn’t--!”

    “SHUT. UP!!!” The Queen of Arendelle threw her hands outward, sending a huge avalanche that buried almost everyone in snow. Those who weren’t hit started running, trying to find an escape. However, Elsa merely froze their legs to the ground. They tried to break through the ice using their weapons, but, like with the doorway, their weapons broke instantly.

    Hans broke through the snowbank and reached a hand out toward Elsa. “Don’t do this, Elsa!”

    For a moment, Elsa considered what she was doing. “No…” She turned away and rubbed her temples, pacing across the room.

    “You have to listen to reason!” Hans explained, stepping out of the snow. “You can’t hurt anyone, or else you’ll be considered a danger to Arendelle!” Even Hans himself knew that was he was saying sounded stupid, but he had to have her see the truth.

    “No…” She squeezed her eyes shut--she didn’t want to hear his voice anymore, the voice that’d made her sister fall in love and completely mess up her coronation ceremony, the voice that’d caused her to get mad at Anna and freeze everything. She didn’t want to hear anything from this terrible man!

    “You are being a monster, exactly what everyone thinks you are! Please, just listen--”

    “NO!” Elsa screeched. Something inside her stirred. She couldn’t take any of this anymore! “A-A-A-A-A-A-A-AH!” She covered her ears so she couldn’t hear anything else. All she could feel was wind, the temperature getting cold even for her, and she heard a howling--but maybe that was just her screaming. She didn’t want to know what anyone else thought. It’d all been perfect--she would’ve lived a happy life as queen, but everything went spinning out of control. It all would’ve been good…

    When she opened her eyes, she looked up to find that everything was completely still and silent, and that every single person who’d been in the room was replaced with a statue of solid ice. Every fiber of hair, every stitch of cloth, everything had been replaced with glossy blue ice. And they all wore the exact same expression: fear.

    Elsa stood there for a long time before whispering, “Oh...what did I do?” She cautiously tiptoed over to Hans’ statue and gingerly touched his icy skin. She ran her fingers over the ice, marveling at how smooth and cold it was. He had once been an actual person--granted, an evil person--and she had the power to simply turn him all into ice. She had that power. She could simply eradicate all the bad people in life, erase them and start anew, make everything peaceful...

    She stepped back, and snapped her fingers. The statue of Hans shattered into many little ice shards.

    The Queen of Snow stood there with wide eyes, unable to breathe. Eventually, she slowly took a step forward, and another. She opened up the doorway and walked out of the room. Her pace gradually got faster and faster until she was sprinting across the snowy land. When she realized how slow she actually was, she created a road of ice, replaced her ice slippers with skates, and she skated along the road. She had to get to Arendelle, she had to see how everything was going. She didn’t want to go back to that terrible place, she didn’t want to see the people she’d turned to ice there.

    When she got back to the kingdom, she was struck with even more horror. Everyone had been turned to solid ice as well--children, mothers, innocent people all sparkling and cold and would forever stay this way.

    “A-Anna?” whimpered the Queen, weaving her way through the statues, looking for any signs of her sister. Unfortunately, she found none, not even of the man that’d been with her, or Olaf. It was like walking amongst a bunch of corpses.

    She went into the castle, and sure enough, all the servants and guests were frozen as well. Even the walls were glazed with a thin layer of ice. When she couldn’t bear it anymore, she walked outside, and continued searching for Anna. Eventually, after searching outside the town was when she found her--frozen as well, along with the man, Olaf, and...a reindeer?

    Olaf had been sliding belly-down alongside the reindeer, who seemed to have been running as fast as it could. (Good reindeer, thought Elsa.) The man looked to be cradling Anna in his arms, hugging her as tightly as he could to his own body in order to protect her from the cold. Obviously he’d been trying to keep Anna as warm as he possibly could in his last moments, for some of his coats and hats were on Anna. His icy eyes were squeezed shut, obviously trying to tolerate the bitterness.

    As for Anna, she, too, seemed to have been terribly cold in her last few moments, for her eyes were glued shut as well. However, she also had a tiny smile on her face, as if she were happy to have been protected by a man ‘till the end. It was evident that she loved him.

    Love...something that Elsa had never been able to demonstrate to Anna.

    “Oh, Anna...I’m so sorry…” she whispered. A tear fell down her cheek, which froze right as it was about to fall off her jaw. She sniffed, and the wind around her picked up. A few snowflakes fell down from the sky. The more Elsa cried, the stronger the snowflakes and wind got. Soon, she was outright wailing, and effectively, a blizzard accompanied her sobs. “NO-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O! WHY-Y-Y-Y-Y-Y-Y-Y-Y-Y?!” she screamed, burying her head in her hands; it was all so cold. “I won’t hurt anybody else!” She raised her hands up toward the sky, and created a dome of the most solid, unbreakable ice that encased the entire kingdom of Arendelle. She didn’t want anyone to go in and risk getting hurt by her, and she didn’t want to go out and risk hurting someone else.

    And so Queen Elsa of Arendelle stayed inside the unbreakable dome of ice for the rest of her days.