AN – Sorry my pets. I dare say I forgot all about you. But for an apology, I present the whole of Absolved that I neglected to put up, rebetaed by FlawlessVictory.
Prologue
Sub-Zero crept slowly over the ice-covered hallways, unsure of what he had stumbled into. Even as far as he was into Outworld, it felt like...home.
He glanced down at the body of his student, limp in his arms. A familiar ache rose up in his chest and he took a deep, shuddering breath. Why had she taken the Dragon Amulet? He would have gladly given it to her when the time came.
She looked too peaceful, not a bit like the spit-fire she had been in life. Most ice elementals tended to be calm and cold, but no matter what the outward manifestation of her element was, she was a fire spirit at heart.
Without a mark on her cold body, it looked more like she was sleeping, resting, rather than she had killed herself. The fine blood vessels in her face had burst from the frostbite, but other than that her beauty was as unmarred in death as it had been in life. A true Sleeping Beauty...with no one to wake her.
There was a bright light up ahead, refracting down the corridor through the ice. Unable to shade his eyes because of the burdens he carried, he settled for squinting. The hall opened up into a chamber, brilliantly lit by a crystal set in the ceiling, and filled with carved stone.
Beautiful armor lay on the top of the stone platforms, marking what he suspected were sarcophagi. Gently, he laid his student down on the nearest platform and carefully pulled the armor from the stone lid, accidentally nudging the cover off slightly, exposing... nothing. Emptiness. No body lay in this tomb.
There were bodies frozen in the niches lining the walls, perhaps the owner of this tomb was watching them from behind the ice. There wasn't a sense of disturbance or anger; whoever was meant to be laid to rest in the sarcophagus would not be angry his tomb was disturbed. Hopefully he wouldn't mind it being appropriated for someone else, because this would be a suitable place to lay his student to rest, a place where her body wouldn't be disturbed.
Burying her felt like burying a part of himself. He had such high hopes for his best student, but now all his plans had crumbled to dust. All students eventually tried to test themselves against their masters...but it was Frost's misfortune to have taken on something she could not possibly hope to defeat.
A sigh came from his lips, and the grandmaster kissed her smooth forehead before sliding the stone back over her cold form. He wanted to leave before he was too grieved to continue. Stopping for but a moment to take the armor that once marked the tomb he strode from the chamber, his footsteps echoing from the walls.