Location: The Northern Ash Wastes (The Frost-Line).
Time: 14:00 (Day 2 of Travel).
The world turned white.
The black, oily smog of New Babel had faded hours ago, replaced by a sky the color of a bruised fingernail—pale purples and sick yellows. The ground was no longer scorched earth; it was a vast, blinding sheet of permafrost and radioactive snow that stretched into infinity.
The Psychopomp chewed through a snowdrift, its massive treads throwing up rooster tails of grey slush. Inside, the alchemical heater was humming at maximum capacity, fighting a losing battle against the -40°C air outside. Frost ferned across the inside of the windows.
Dante sat in the passenger seat, watching the Geiger counter on the dashboard tick.
Click... Click... Click.
"Background radiation is rising," Dante noted, his breath fogging in the air. "We're crossing the Fallout Belt. Keep the vents sealed."
In the back, Havoc and his three men—Torch, Rook, and Skid—were huddled together on crates of C4, wrapped in the stolen thermal parkas. They looked miserable.
"Captain," Havoc chattered, his robotic jaw stiff from the cold grease in the joints. "Permission to speak freely?"
"Granted."
"Where the hell are we going? My GPS died fifty miles back. The compass is spinning in circles like a drunk top. And Rook thinks he saw a cloud eating a mountain."
"The compass is spinning because of the magnetic interference from the buried Titans," Dante explained calmly, adjusting the heat on his mechanical arm to keep the servos from freezing. "And Rook isn't crazy. That was likely a Mana-Storm. We drove around it. If we hadn't, your blood would have boiled."
Dante turned in his seat to face his new recruits.
"We are heading to The Spine of the World. It's a mountain range that acts as the planet's neural stem. The Second Axiom is buried at the base."
"And what's guarding it?" Torch asked, hugging his rifle for warmth. "More steam-tanks? Automated turrets?"
"No," Valerius spoke up from the corner. The former Sword-Saint was sharpening a new weapon—a long, jagged piece of scrap metal he had filed into a spearhead. "Tanks freeze here. The things that live in the White Waste do not use engines. They use heat-sense. They hunt warmth."
"Great," Skid muttered, his goggles fogged up. "So we're driving a giant toaster oven through a predator preserve."
Dante rubbed his temples. The headache was back. A sharp, rhythmic thumping behind his eyes. Prime was processing the data from the stolen Telescope, and the computational load was bleeding into Dante's skull.
"Correction," Prime's voice cut through Dante's migraine like a laser. "The data stream is optimized. Your biological wet-ware is insufficient. You are dehydrated. Drink water."
"Shut up, Prime," Dante muttered aloud.
Havoc froze. The card game in the back stopped. "Who are you talking to? The Elf didn't say anything."
Dante sighed. He couldn't keep it a secret if they were going to fight together in this hellscape.
"Havoc, meet the navigator," Dante pointed to his own head. "He lives in my brain. I call him Prime. He's an asshole."
Havoc looked at Silas. "Is he... shell-shocked? Waste-madness?"
"No," Silas said, gripping the steering wheel with white knuckles. "He's haunted. Literally. By himself. It's a long story involving a failed experiment, a cannibalistic ritual, and a very expensive library."
Suddenly, Dante's mechanical arm began to vibrate. The white runes etched into the Dead Iron flared up with blinding light.
"GREETINGS, MEAT-SHIELDS," Prime's voice projected from the arm, loud and distorted, sounding like god speaking through a busted radio.
Havoc's crew jumped. Rook nearly dropped a grenade. Torch scrambled back against the door.
"I AM THE LIBRARIAN. YOU ARE THE LABOR. DO NOT DAMAGE THE EXPLOSIVES. I HAVE CALCULATED THEIR UTILITY FOR THE BREACH. YOUR SURVIVAL IS SECONDARY TO THE MISSION."
Havoc stared at Dante's arm. Then at Dante.
"You have a ghost in your arm," Havoc stated flatly.
"I have the First Axiom in my soul," Dante corrected. "The arm is just the speaker system."
Havoc looked at his men. They looked back, terrified. "Then" Havoc shrugged.
"Does he pay?"
"He pays in miracles," Dante said. "And occasionally insults."
"Good enough," Havoc grunted. "I've worked for worse officers. The Baron didn't even say hello."
Ping.
The radar on the dashboard lit up. A single red dot appeared at the edge of the screen.
"Contact!" Silas yelled. "Rear quarter! Closing fast!"
"Is it the Baron?" Valerius asked, moving to the rear window, his spear ready.
"No," Silas tapped the glass. "It's moving too fast for a tank. And it's... under the snow."
Dante activated the Chronal Glimpse circuit on his arm—just for a split second.
Flash: 5 seconds in the future. The ice beneath the car explodes. A maw of spinning teeth shreds the rear axle. They spin out. The roof collapses. Death.
"Hard left!" Dante screamed, snapping back to the present. "Silas, turn now!"
Silas didn't question. He yanked the wheel.
The Psychopomp swerved violently, drifting sideways across the ice.
CRASH.
A second later, the ground where they had been driving erupted. A fountain of ice and rock shot fifty feet into the air.
Emerging from the hole was a nightmare.
It looked like a worm, but armored in translucent blue ice-scales. It was massive—easily a hundred feet long. Its mouth was a circular grinder of serrated crystal teeth, spinning like a tunnel-boring machine.
"Boreal Thresher!" Valerius identified it. "It hunts vibration! It eats metal!"
"It's huge!" Skid screamed.
"Drive!" Dante ordered. "Get us to the rock shelf!"
The Thresher slammed back into the snow, diving like a dolphin. It vanished, leaving only a ridge of displaced ice speeding toward them.
"It's faster than us!" Silas yelled, flooring the accelerator. The engine screamed, the Nitrous/Mana injector glowing hot.
"Havoc!" Dante turned to the back. "You said you were a heavy weapons specialist?"
"Damn straight!" Havoc unbuckled, grabbing a heavy, tripod-mounted harpoon gun they had stolen from the depot.
"Get the roof hatch open!" Dante ordered. "Valerius, keep them off us!"
Valerius kicked the roof hatch open. Freezing wind blasted into the cabin, instantly dropping the temperature by twenty degrees.
Havoc climbed up, mounting the gun on the roll bar. Torch passed him a belt of explosive-tipped harpoons.
"Where is it?" Havoc screamed over the wind, his goggles frosting over.
"Under us!" Dante yelled. "Silas, keep swerving! Don't let it lock on!"
The ice ridge was closing in. The Thresher was swimming through the permafrost like water, homing in on the thumping rhythm of the V-12 engine.
"Target Analysis," Prime whispered in Dante's ear. "The carapace is impervious to standard ballistics. Weak point: Thermal Vents located along the lateral ridge. You must heat it up before you can crack it."
"Havoc!" Dante relayed. "Don't shoot the head! Shoot the gills on the side! Use the incendiary rounds!"
"Copy!"
The Thresher breached again, leaping out of the snow right next to the car. It towered over them, a monolith of hungry ice. It roared—a sound like glaciers cracking.
Havoc opened fire.
THUMP-THUMP-THUMP.
The harpoons flew. Two bounced off the armored hide like toothpicks. The third struck a venting gill on the creature's flank.
BOOM.
The explosive tip detonated inside the gill. The Thresher shrieked, thrashing wildly. Orange fire sprayed from its side, melting the ice armor.
"It's hurt!" Valerius shouted, stabbing at the creature with his spear as it lunged.
"It's angry!" Silas added, spinning the wheel.
The Thresher didn't dive this time. It slammed its body sideways, trying to crush the car.
"Brace!" Dante yelled.
The tail hit the side of The Psychopomp.
CRUNCH.
The heavy hearse was knocked into a spin. It skidded across the ice, spinning 360 degrees, glass shattering.
It came to a stop near a jagged outcropping of black rock.
The engine sputtered and died.
Silence.
Then, the rumble of the Thresher moving under the ice, circling for the kill.
"Engine's dead!" Silas panicked, trying the ignition. "The impact knocked the fuel line loose! I need two minutes!"
"We don't have two minutes!" Skid whimpered. "It's coming back!"
Dante kicked his door open. He stepped out onto the ice.
"No," Dante said, his breath steaming. "We're bait."
He turned to the car.
"Havoc, give me a Bunker Buster charge. Prime the detonator for impact. Silas, fix the line. Valerius, watch my back."
Havoc tossed him a heavy magnetic charge. Dante caught it with his organic hand.
Dante walked ten paces away from the car. He stood on the open ice. He activated his mechanical arm. He didn't load a weapon. He loaded the Uranium residue left in the chamber from the Embryo trade.
He became the hottest thing on the ice. A beacon of thermal energy in a world of cold.
"Come and get it, you overgrown worm," Dante whispered.
The ice rumbled. The Thresher was coming. Straight for him.
"Prime," Dante thought. "On my mark. Divert all shield power to the arm. I need maximum output."
"Acknowledged. Warning: This will hurt."
The ice exploded directly in front of him. The mouth of the Thresher engulfed Dante's vision—rows of spinning crystal teeth descending to grind him into paste.
"NOW!"
Dante didn't run. He punched.
He punched straight into the spinning maw of the beast, holding the Bunker Buster in his other hand.
"Transmutation: Thermal Shock."
He dumped the raw heat of the Uranium directly into the super-cooled crystal teeth of the monster.
It wasn't an explosion. It was physics taking revenge.
CRACK-SHATTER.
The teeth shattered instantly from the rapid temperature change. The sound was deafening—like a chandelier being dropped from orbit.
As the beast recoiled, its mouth full of broken glass, Dante jammed the Bunker Buster into its exposed throat.
"Eat this."
He kicked off the creature's face, backflipping onto the ice.
BOOM.
The charge detonated deep inside the gullet. The Boreal Thresher stiffened, then collapsed, blowing black smoke from its gills.
Dante landed on his feet, sliding on the ice. His mechanical arm was glowing cherry-red, hissing as snow melted on contact.
He looked back at the car. Silas gave him a thumbs up. The engine roared back to life.
"Get in!" Silas yelled. "Before its mom shows up!"