The cold wasn' t a sensation; it was an assault.
Lloyd regained consciousness with the violence of someone plunged into a frozen lake. The first breath he forced into his lungs tasted like glass needles, tearing his throat and searing his chest with arctic dryness. He snapped his eyes open, but the light greeting him wasn't from the sun; it was a dim, diffuse bluish glow, filtered through layers of ice so dense they looked like quartz.
It took several seconds to stabilize his vision. He wasn' t in the Ocean of Mist. Above him stretched no white void, but a cyclopean vault of rock and frost. The ceiling was bristling with colossal stalactites, some the size of warships, dripping an invisible but palpable cold.
He tried to move, and a sharp, prolonged metallic screech echoed in his ears.
He was in a cage.
