When the Cold Cries[ON HOLD]

prologue

They were coming.

She could hear them, even through the thick walls of the castle. The pounding of the feet of a hundred rebels shook the ground beneath her throne, but for once she didn't stop them. She didn't want to.

10

The door swung open, and he rushed in, panic etching his usually stoic features. The sound of the rebels' footsteps drowned out his as he ran down the hall, stopping at the base of the dais.

"Your Highness, they're almost at the gates!" he panted. His eyes were wild, and snow dusted his rumpled uniform. "Some of them have managed to remove the frost from their hands. We tried to cryochronize them, but there are just too many!" He clasped his hands behind his back in an effort to look composed, but she knew that they were shaking.

9

She nodded, taking in the information, but made no effort to take any action.

"What do we do now, Your Highness?" he asked, his voice on the edge of panic.

"We wait," she replied. "We wait, and we let them take us."

    8

He looked at her, startled.

"What?" he exclaimed, forgetting to add the proper address. "You--you can't be serious!"

She looked down at him sadly.

"This," she gestured around her. "This was never the plan. I never wanted to...to take over these people."

7

"I...don't understand, Your Highness," he said hesitantly. He tightened his hold on his wrist behind his back, the thudding sounds coming closer and closer.

"I never planned to become a queen. I never planned to rule over anyone." She took in a deep breath as the thuds filled the room. "I started this because I wanted them to stop thinking our gift was...a weapon. That we were weapons."

6

"I wanted them to accept us. And this," she chuckled sadly as she looked around the empty hall, once filled with the terrified screams of prisoners. "This is not how I imagined I would do that. And fighting them now will only make things worse."

"Your Highness, we can still try to cryochronize them. We can still fix this," he insisted, desperate to do something, anything, to stop the invaders.

"What difference will it make?" she asked gently. "Cryochronizing them will not undo our mistakes. It will not turn back time. It simply delays the inevitable."

5

"We could have all the time in the world," she exhaled, "and we wouldn't be able to change a thing."

"Are we just going to give up, then? Let them shatter everything we have?" He couldn't understand why his queen wasn't moving, wasn't fighting. The one who was always the first to the battlefield, relentless against her foes.

"We are not giving up. We will never give up," she replied intensely, her voice firm. "We are simply accepting our fate for now. But I will never give up the hope that one day, they'll see us for what we truly are. One of them."

4

A loud crack echoed from just outside the hall. The shouts of the rebels mixing with the cries of her soldiers cascaded through the heavy door, and he jumped in fear. She tried to remain calm for his sake, but she too was afraid. Her pale hands shook from atop her frozen throne and she took a deep breath to calm herself.

"We were--" Her voice wavered, and she took another breath. "We were so focused on convincing them that they were wrong, that we lost sight of what was right." This time her voice was steady, although her heart skipped a beat with every crack of the walls and pillars of ice and stone, every thud of another chunk of the once grandiose palace smashing against the ground.

3

"And now," she continued. "Now we'll never be able to convince them. Now, the only thing left to do is hope that one day, a new generation will be able to achieve what we never could." Her voice turned sad, and he realized that she was...ashamed. Ashamed that they had faltered so far from their path, however powerful they had become.

Because maybe, just maybe, she never wanted the power.

Because power didn't necessarily mean the same as acceptance.

Another crash shook the palace, or what was left of it. A ray of sun sliced through the translucent doors like a sword ready to strike, and shadows of the rebels danced along the smooth walls of the hall.

2

"Your Highness, we still have time, please. We can stop them, just give us the order," he pleaded, looking back at the door where the rebels were sure to burst through any second.

"It's alright," she replied. Her voice was calm, yet the fear was evident in her eyes. "It's alright. Now we can start over. Now, we can do what we meant to do from the very beginning."

1

"But Your Highness, they'll destroy us!" he protested. She closed her eyes, a sad smile flickering across her face.

"I know," she said simply, her voice almost a whisper. A tear slipped silently down her cheek; and for the first time, he could see how exhausted she truly was.

"I know."

0

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first "chapter" (technically the prologue) of the rewrite. if you are a re-reader, you can see that this "chapter" has changed drastically. i'm taking on a totally new approach to this story, so the other chapters will also be completely changed. yeah, there are a lot of changes.

for my new readers(by the way, thank you for reading), how was it? it was pretty intense, right? and kind of vague, but that was the point of this prologue; you're not supposed to completely understand what's going on. Postscript: Idk if annie will see this but this is her bud from real life and I'm totally invading her author's note. mwahaha.

annie:)

sweetparadise07

PPS: i totally saw that postscript;)

PPPS: also, yes, there is a new word in here, which i did make up. i won't tell you what it means yet, but you can probably figure it out by the roots:)

PPPPS: and yes, i'm purposely not capitalizing. just to make it a little more casual. also just because i don't want to.

PPPPPS: no, the a/n's will not always be this long;)