A War of White Shadows (Kingdom Hearts)

Threshold IV

When she sees Anna's fate, Elsa lets out a strangled cry. She drops to her knees. The snowstorm around her goes absolutely still; snowflakes hang in the air as if Stopga'd. Larxene's face goes blank. Then, she tilts her face eerily towards Sora. Her eyes ask one piercing question: What have you done?

Sora reaches towards Anna's hand as if to pull her free of her icy shell. He tugs; Anna is silent and unyielding. Sora's stomach drops through the floor.

Then, he senses the darkness come. Overwhelming darkness. An all-encompassing surge of despair swallowing Elsa's heart—it echoes the night Riku plunged the Destiny Islands into the abyss. A pool of darkness opens wide under Elsa's crumpled form. Larxene sees it, too. She summons a throwing blade in her hand and bolts towards her.

"No!" Sora shouts.

A blizzard explodes out of Elsa's form, throwing Larxene back like a rag doll. Tiny ice shards like little glass daggers bear down on her. Larxene just catches herself and skids backward on the ice, deflecting most of the shards. Those that make it through her guard cut hairline rips in her cloak, hair, and skin.

Elsa's despair—now a very real and tangible force—wraps her in a frosty black cocoon. For a moment, it seems the weight of her own darkness will crush her in this shell; then, it shatters. In a whirlwind of wings and snow, a huge, vicious beast of a Heartless breaks free. Its six black-feathered wings spread out against the gray morning sky, and it lets loose a grief-filled scream.

Larxene lay flat against the ice underneath the huge avian Heartless, pinned down by the wind of its beating wings alone. Without thinking, Sora dashes towards her just as Elsa's Heartless dives for him.

Sora drops to his knees and slides under the bird. Its talons pass inches from his ear. They strike the frozen lake with such force that, with an ear-splitting explosion, it craters into a blue valley of solid sea ice. Sora reaches Larxene just as the ice drops out from underneath her. He grabs her wrist in one hand and grips the upper rim of the ice with the other to keep her from sliding closer to Elsa's Heartless.

"What happened to her?" Sora calls against the howling wind. "I didn't think pure hearts could turn into Heartless!"

"She's clearly not as pure as we thought!" Larxene bites back. She stabs her throwing knife into the ice to keep herself in place.

"Did she give up her light? Is that why this is happening?" Sora's head spins. This is his fault. He has to make it right. He can't let Larxene kill her, Heartless or not.

The ship where Anna stands precariously on the rim of the ice bowl. Elsa's Heartless lands there, massive tail feathers fanning out as the ship teeters. A low, pitiful coo reverberates deep in the bird's chest. Then, she draws herself up to full height and wails her ear-shattering grief. She beats all six wings and rises, searching for them. When she sees them dangling there, she turns her huge wings on them, materializing great cutting blades of ice and wind out of the air. Sora braces himself to take the brunt of it.

A dark blur appears in front of him and deflects the ice shards with a sweeping parry. It's the smaller cloaked figure from earlier. The black-helmeted man appears a moment later out of thin air, as he tears through a portal over the bird's head and drops down on her hard.

The hooded figure jumps to the edge where Sora is holding on with one hand and pulls him up. As soon as he finds his footing, he bends to pull Larxene up with him. But she frees her hand from Sora's grip and slides down the side of the ice bowl.

"Wait! This is wrong!" He moves to go after her, but the hooded figure pulls him back by the sleeve.

"I know you can't fight," the figure says quietly. Her voice jolts Sora to the bone, as if it were something he'd hear in a dream before waking up.

He swallows a sudden lump in his throat. "What do you mean?"

"You can't fight," she says. She raises her hand and summons a broken keyblade. His keyblade. The Kingdom Key.