Maleficent AU sneak peak
This is a little snippet of the drabble I am writing for Disney!AU week of Frozen Month. Elsa is Maleficent, Anna will be Aurora, and Hans is Stephan (though he and Elsa are not romantic just very good friends).
---
It was at the edges of the Wood that Elsa stood to meet them.
They say that the fight lasted no more than an hour, but in reality it took only half that time for the men to realize their mistake. One man would tell you that the woman’s eyes had glowed a pure white as she froze men where they stood. Another would claim that her eyes did no such thing but instead she had ridden a mount of ice and with a sword made of the same substance slayed 500 men. Some would spin tales of a being that wasn’t a woman at all, but a demon who had attempted to seduce the king with her beauty, only to transform into a hideous creature with horns and claws when he refused her. Each solider had a different take on the battle between human and fae but the truth was much simpler than that, though no less fantastical.
The king and his men had howled with laughter when they first laid eyes on the Protector of the Wood, but what they had mistaken for a defenceless woman was instead a furious winter storm made flesh. With a wave of her hand Elsa woke the sky, blinding her enemy with snow and drowning out their leader’s commands with a fierce wind. With a word, massive golems of ice and snow rose from the earth to drive back anyone foolish enough to rush their mistress, their defining roars echoing for miles and caused even the bravest of men to turn and flee in terror.
The king rode back to his castle gravely injured and though the man lay dying he saw his loss not as a failure but as an opportunity.
“The first of my sons to kill that winter bitch and avenge me will be named king upon my death!”
Hans fled the castle at first light, desperate to get to Elsa before his brothers did.
When Elsa first discovered Hans yelling her name at the edge of the Wood she regarded him with bitterness and mistrust. But when he delivered his warning of those who sought to do her harm and they began to talk Elsa felt the years spent apart melt away. They spoke until the sun had long since slipped below the horizon, drinking the wine Hans had brought from his father’s cellar, and laughing like they were children again.
The next morning when Elsa awoke she knew only pain. It felt as though her hands had been clasped in gloves of iron, but when she held them up to the light she found no metal, no gloves, nothing at all. The winter fairy stared in horror at the bloody stumps that sprouted from her wrists bound tightly with old rags. How? And then she caught sight of the vial lying in the now frost-covered grass next to Hans’ wine skin. The air was sucked from her lungs and her mouth worked to produce the sounds she desperately wanted to expel, while sharp spines of ice rose up from the ground to surround her. When Elsa found her voice again the girl’s screams tore through the Wood like a knife through flesh, so that all those who resided in the Enchanted Wood knew her anguish. The fae had never known cold such as what they felt that day.