The wind howled a bitter, mocking tune as Rizpah and Puck marched across the endless white flatland. For weeks, they had trekked over what they believed was a vast, snow-covered plain. But the spirit of winter was a liar. The great deceiver of the cold had frozen over a massive stretch of the ocean, painting the ice with a thick layer of white frost to trick the Tyrant into leaving solid ground. Below their feet lay miles of crushing, freezing abyss.

Perched on Rizpah’s crown, Puck squinted through the falling snow. Far in the distance, piercing the gray sky, a thick plume of red-tinted steam hissed upward from a jagged crack in the ice. Beneath the steam, a faint, unnatural cyan light pulsed like a dying star.

"What is that?" Puck asked, his breath misting in the cold air.

Rizpah didn't stop her march, but a low, vibrating growl rumbled in her chest. "That is the Boiling One," she said, her voice dripping with disgust. "He is a Titan. Larger than I am, and far heavier than the Maw of Gluttony. But you have nothing to fear from his pride, little Witness. He is a coward."

Puck looked at the distant, glowing steam. "If he's so big, why is he hiding?"

"Because he fears death more than he desires victory," Rizpah scoffed. "He abandoned the surface to hide in the crushing dark, feeding off the heat of deep-ocean vents. He turns the water around him into a boiling cauldron, keeping the winter at bay while the rest of the world dies. He will never face a true enemy head-on."

Suddenly, a primal dread seized Rizpah. Her ancient instincts flared, screaming that the earth beneath her was a lie. She cast her glowing eyes downward at the frost just a fraction of a second before the ice let out a deafening CRACK.

The plain of ice exploded. Freezing water and shattered ice blasted into the sky as a colossal set of jaws snapped shut right where Rizpah’s throat had been. Because of her instincts, Rizpah had already thrown her massive weight backward, barely dodging the ambush.

From the rupture in the frozen ocean, the Titan breached. 

Behold the beast of the scalding deeps, whose vast bulk is as a sunken mountain, dwelling in the crushing blackness. His flesh is scaled in the midnight of the ocean, and from his maw and his dark hide bursts forth a piercing, spectral light—an unnatural, glowing cyan that burns through the dark waters as cold fire. His visage is drawn long and merciless, bearing the cruel snout of the ancient sea-dragons, and his jaws are lined with jagged, ruined teeth that shine with a treacherous luminescence. Beneath his chin hang writhing, living tendrils of light, cast out to lure the unwary into his ruinous trap.

The Boiling One crashed his massive, flippered limbs onto the ice shelf, his cyan eyes locking onto Rizpah with pure, panicked hatred. The water rolling off his boiling hide instantly melted the ice around him, turning the battlefield into a slippery, collapsing trap.

Rizpah didn't hesitate. She knew she couldn't fight a deep-sea Titan on a breaking ice sheet. She spun around and sprinted toward the distant, dark silhouette of the shoreline.

"Hold on!" she roared to Puck.

The ice fractured wildly under Rizpah’s heavy footsteps as she ran. Behind them, the Boiling One slipped back into the water, swimming just beneath the ice like a glowing blue torpedo. He smashed upward through the frozen surface again and again, his jaws missing Rizpah’s legs by mere inches as he tried to drag her into the abyss.

"Thou art a blind fool to cling unto the corpse of Rahab!" Rizpah roared over her shoulder, her voice shifting into the heavy, ancient tongue of the Titans. "Forsake the shattered leviathan, and thou wouldst no longer need to cower in the scalding mud!"

"Hold thy tongue, thou traitorous pyre!" the Boiling One shrieked, thrashing violently through the ice. "Rahab is the deep and the dark, and we are its eternal teeth! May the waters crush thee! I shall drown thee for thy blasphemy!"

Puck clung desperately to Rizpah’s spikes, terrified but refusing to stay quiet. "You don't have to hide anymore!" Puck screamed down at the churning water. "There is a new world! The Voice of the sky is bringing the green place back! Let us help you!"

"Lies!" the Boiling One roared, smashing his head through the ice right behind Rizpah's tail. Fear completely blinded him. "There is only the cold and the dark! And I will rule the dark!"

Rizpah saw the shoreline just ahead—the dark rocks leading up to the towering, frozen peaks of their true destination. But the ice beneath them was completely shattering. The Boiling One shot forward for one final, desperate lunge, exploding from the water with his glowing jaws opened wide to snap Rizpah's spine.

Rizpah was ready. She slammed her massive right foot down, anchoring herself on the slipping ice, and violently pivoted her entire upper body. Her massive, heavy tail whipped around like a black iron club.

CRACK.

The obsidian blades of Rizpah’s tail slashed violently across the left side of the Boiling One's face, tearing his glowing cyan eye right out of its socket.

The sea-dragon unleashed an agonizing, bubbling shriek that shook the ocean. Blinded and bleeding scalding blood into the freezing water, his courage completely evaporated. He thrashed backwards, slipping off the ice and sinking quickly into the dark, churning depths.

"I will drag thee down!" his voice echoed faintly from the abyss, growing quieter as he fled. "I shall hunt thee in the dark!"

Rizpah didn't wait to see if he was lying. She launched herself forward, her heavy feet finally hitting solid, frozen earth. She stomped up the rocky shore, breathing heavily, completely leaving the shattered ice shelf behind.

Before them loomed a massive, terrifyingly silent mountain of ice. The Summit of Stillness.

Puck slowly let go of Rizpah’s spikes, his heart hammering against his ribs. He looked back at the ocean, where the cyan glow had vanished completely into the black water.

Puck swallowed hard, looking down at Rizpah. "How do you even fight that?"

Rizpah let out a long, exhausted plume of steam from her snout, her eyes fixed on the towering glacier ahead.

"I'm sure you and the voice of the sky will figure something out."