The Snow Queen swept into her palace calling for Kai. It was a most exciting time. He was almost ready to join her collection. But he wasn't where she had left him. Only a small pool of water that was inexplicably not freezing. She kicked at the traitorous liquid that was refusing to recognize her command, sending a wide spray across over the floor. "Kai!" she screamed in frustration, ignoring the ominous cracking sounds from the surrounding ice. She would fix them later, after she found her current prize piece. He was more important than ice she could mend with the snap of her fingers. From room to room she went calling for him, but only emptiness answered her.

Gathering her cloak she stormed up to the tallest tower of her palace. There, far away on the plain below, were two specks racing away hand in hand. She didn't know how Kai had gotten away, or who he was running with. She gripped the window frame so hard it cracked and screamed as the nauseous feeling of being beaten swept over her.

Her scream echoed throughout her castle vaporizing ice crystals that hung in the air and shattering every thin ice window. Down in the valley, it started an avalanche that, if left unchecked would bury the offending pair. She snapped her fingers to stop it in place. She wanted to be there face-to-face when she took Kai back, and whoever his little rescuer was. No one escaped from her. Ever.

She spun to chase after them, but pulled up short when she found herself faced with a horde of half-frozen, sopping wet statues from her latest acquisition, a soldier from ten years ago, to her very first piece from a millenia ago when she came into her powers, her own mother. They were pressed shoulder-to-shoulder in the chamber, as if each one wanted to get to her first, and the mass continued out the door and down the stairs. Now that she was listening, it was surprising she had missed the shuffling feet of the amassed hundreds of statues she'd filled her collection with over the last milennia.

Her shock at the sight stilled her for just a moment. It was all the soldier statue needed to drive an icicle stake through her heart, reminding her with its ripping pain that, for as magical as she was, she was just a fragile mortal who could die. Her hatred of the hot, red blood that spilled from her was so great that her dying moment was spent trying to freeze the steaming plasma.

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When the Snow Queen's limp body fell to the ground, the horde shuffled forward, trampling over the lifeless body of the Snow Queen, to follow the soldier when he crossed to look out the window. As the most recently frozen person, his brain was defrosting the most quickly and coming out of the fog the Snow Queen's kiss had him under.

It was only the Snow Queen's scream that had prompted the soldier up the basement stairs in the first place. At first, his body was stiff and his brain could barely comprehend anything he was seeing or hearing. He couldn't even remember his own name, but he could remember the Snow Queen had stolen him away from something that he loved. Kill, kill, kill repeated in his still mostly frozen mind like a drum.

With slow, fractured movements he splashed through the rising ice melt caused by Gerda's tears that had melted a hole clean through the ceiling from the ground floor above. Her tears mixed with the ice to become a greater volume of water that ran along the intricate carvings of the ceiling in the curious way of water, to drip throughout the cavernous underground chamber, onto the heads of the hundreds of frozen people. As the drips landed on the ground, the floor began to melt, helping the defrosting process by creating a small flood that swirled around their legs.

At first, the soldier wasn't able to notice that others shadowing him as he went up the stairs, following some deeper instinct of survival that the rising waters in the basement were dangerous for them.

The morning sun broke through the clouds, laying gentle rays on the solder. He smiled at the warmth.

A great boom sounded deep within the castle and moments later cracks appeared in the walls. Any people that had melted enough to know they must flee the castle before it came down around them, trapping them forever, turned towards the door and began pushing forward against the still-groggy people whose brains hadn't defrosted enough to know where to go. By sheer momentum, the masses were carried along in the rush of shuffling feet and bumping shoulders, down the stairs and out of the castle. The horde spilled out onto the plain, where they stood in the weak sunlight that felt like it was blazing at them with the most intense of heats.

Behind them, the Snow Queen's magnificent ice palace collapsed in on itself. Undermined by the love of a little girl.