The ice groaned and cracked with each heave of the beast's enormous body, its clawed forelegs sinking deep into the glacier as it advanced. Ryla shivvered as she felt the abundant water in her body freezing, her hands and feet quickly losing their feeling. They really didn't know she was here. It now seemed that all she had left was her choice of death: Freeze, or be crushed and eaten by the thing that had destroyed the compound. No, maybe not eaten. It wouldn't have followed her all this way down if all it had in mind was food. She had nothing to offer it in that regard. Her death was its goal, not a side effect of its hunger.

She turned to face the titan as it heaved its body from side to side, pulling itself across the ice. LaRava, the natives called her. The one who erases towns. The keeper of the barrens.
What was Ryla to do? Plunge over the edge and freeze in the sea, just to appease it? Why did it deserve to be appeased? When had she ever rolled over and died just because someone demanded it?

The frostbite had spread up her arms and into her shoulders by now. She struggled to keep her eyes open as the behemoth bore down on her, preparing to deal the finishing blow. She swallowed the frozen water in her mouth and glared up at the thing, spitting the only three words that made any kind of sense right now.