The "Throat of the Wyrm" was not a natural cavern. It was a wound.
Julian ran his gloved hand along the wall of the tunnel. The stone was perfectly smooth, fused into a glassy obsidian cylinder fifty feet wide. Spiral grooves cut into the rock, evidence of the colossal, rotating drill-head that had bored this passage millennia ago.
"The Ancients didn't dig," Skid murmured, her voice echoing in the vast tube. She adjusted the glow-lamp hanging from her good shoulder. "They melted their way through. This whole tunnel is one long scar."
"Keep moving," Lyra said from the rear, her eyes scanning the darkness behind them. "Korg said the tunnel is safe, but I don't trust anything that hasn't seen the sun in a thousand years."
They had been walking for two days. The air was stale, recycled by unseen vents that wheezed like dying lungs. There was no day or night here, only the rhythmic crunch of their boots and the hum of the bioluminescent moss Julian had harvested to save battery power.
Julian walked in front, using the Black-Iron ring to dampen his senses. But even with the dampener, the tunnel pressed on him. It felt like walking down the barrel of a gun.
"So," Skid broke the silence, kicking a loose stone. "When we find this Frost-Titan... do you plan to wake it up like the last one? Because I'd prefer not to be standing on it when it decides to do jumping jacks."
"I don't know," Julian admitted. "The map I saw in the Bastion... the Titans are locks. If I open them all, something happens to the Aether grid."
"The 'Great Reset'," Julian continued, repeating Brother Cadence's words. "If the Aether stops, the Empire's machines stop. Their weapons. Their life-support."
"And my prosthetic eye," Skid tapped her goggles. "And Lyra's heaters. And the water pumps in the Dregs. We're talking about turning off civilization, Julian."
Julian stopped. He looked at Skid.
"Is that a reason to stop?"
Skid shrugged, wincing as her splinted arm shifted. "No. Civilization gave me a broken arm and a captain who left me to die. I say pull the plug. I just want to know if I should pack a sweater for the apocalypse."
"Pack two," Lyra said grimly. "We're here."
She pointed ahead.
The smooth tunnel ended abruptly, opening into a jagged mouth of ice and rock. A blinding white light spilled in, so bright it hurt their eyes after days of darkness.
The wind howled outside—a high, thin shriek that sounded nothing like the wind in the Scrapyard.
Julian stepped out first.
The Northern Ice Shelf
He gasped. The cold hit him like a physical blow, punching through his coat and stealing the breath from his lungs. It was instantly, painfully freezing.
They stood on a high cliff overlooking a world of white.
To the north, a frozen ocean stretched to infinity. Massive glaciers, blue and jagged, rose like frozen tidal waves. The sky was a crystalline blue, streaked with the pale green ribbons of the Aurora Borealis—the Aether Lights.
But it was what lay in the center of the frozen bay that silenced them.
Underneath the ice—visible through the translucent surface—was a shape.
It was humanoid, curled into a fetal position. It was made of white ceramic and silver metal, sleek and elegant compared to the brutal iron of the Wasteland Titan. It was colossal, easily five miles long from head to toe.
Titan 05: The Glacial Sovereign.
"It's... sleeping," Julian whispered, the steam from his breath freezing instantly on his lips.
"It's under a mile of solid ice," Skid calculated, shivering. "How do we get to it?"
"We don't have to dig," Lyra pointed to the center of the bay.
Sticking out of the ice, directly above the Titan's chest, was a massive black spire. It looked like a needle injected into the ice. Around the spire, a small city of metal huts and fortified walls had been built.
"An outpost?" Julian squinted.
"No," Lyra lowered her binoculars. "A prison. That's a Penitentiary Mine. The Empire uses political prisoners to drill for 'Ice-Aether'—a rare isotope found in the glacier."
"If the Titan is beneath the mine," Julian realized, "then the entrance to the body is inside the prison."
"Great," Skid groaned. "So the plan is to break into a maximum-security Imperial prison, in the middle of a frozen hellscape, guarded by... what was it Korg said?"
"The Lost Legion," Julian finished.
As if on cue, a tremor shook the cliff they were standing on.
Down on the ice, near the base of the prison spire, snow erupted.
Three figures marched out of a snowbank. They were huge, clad in rusted, antique power armor that leaked green steam. They carried massive rotary cannons. They didn't move like men; they moved like clockwork toys that had forgotten how to stop.
They turned toward the cliff. Even from two miles away, their sensors picked up the heat of the three travelers.
WHIRRRRR.
The rotary cannons spun up.
"Get down!" Julian tackled Skid into a snowdrift.
BRRRRRRRRT!
A line of explosive shells tore up the cliff edge where they had been standing seconds ago. The rock shattered, sending debris raining down.
"They have range!" Lyra yelled, crawling backward. "We're exposed!"
"We need cover!" Julian looked around. The tundra was flat and white. There was nowhere to hide.
Suddenly, a shadow fell over them.
A massive shadow.
Julian looked up, expecting an Imperial ship.
Instead, he saw a Sky-Ray. A biological beast native to the tundra—a flat, manta-ray-like creature the size of a bus, floating on gas bladders, gliding silently on the wind currents.
And riding on its back was a figure wrapped in white furs.
The rider pulled on the reins, banking the beast hard. It swooped down, hovering just feet above the snow.
"Get on!" a voice shouted from beneath the furs. It was a woman's voice, sharp and commanding.
"Who are you?" Lyra aimed her pistol.
"I'm the one who isn't shooting at you!" the rider yelled. "The Legion is triangulating your position! You have ten seconds before the mortars fire!"
THUMP-THUMP.
Distant thuds from the prison. Mortars were airborne.
"We trust the big floating pancake!" Skid yelled, scrambling onto the creature's back.
Julian and Lyra followed, grabbing onto the thick fur of the Sky-Ray.
"Hang on!" the rider snapped the reins.
The Sky-Ray groaned—a low, whale-like sound—and surged upward, catching an updraft.
Seconds later, the cliff where they had been hiding disappeared in a massive explosion of fire and ice shrapnel.
They soared away, flying low over the glaciers, heading towards the dark, jagged peaks that bordered the frozen sea.
Julian looked back at the prison spire and the sleeping Titan beneath the ice.
"Out of the oven," Julian muttered, gripping the fur of the beast.
"And into the freezer," Lyra finished.