Fifteen-hundred different kinds of pain and cold lashed at Ave’s face, unbothered by her everlasting hatred and bitterness towards the Arctic.

“Why are we here again?” she spat out, sharply gazing over her shoulder towards the tent in which a chuckle arose from.

“Because there’s someone here that you wanted to see,” a voice chirped out, accompanied by the head of Dain, Ave’s personal assistant.

“Right,” she grumbled, kicking up a layer of snow. “Just the place in which there’s not a single fire within a three-thousand mile vicinity.”

“It’s not like Adin has any advantage here,” Dain stated, emerging out of the tent.

“You are an idiot,” Ave frowned, seeing Dain covered in nothing but a silly Superman sweater and brown sweatpants. He looked to be the epitome of stupid.

“Ah, but I’m not,” he smiled, a small gleam in his eyes. Ave cocked her head as she stared at him, trying to decipher the hidden meaning behind his words and the look in his sly, brown irises. Dain danced towards Ave, stepping in the tracks in which she had already made.

“When do you think he’ll get here?” Ave asked, turning away from him and attempting to see through the shards of ice that whipped through the air, mocking the fact that she had no power to melt them as she usually would. Nothing but ice-covered rocks and frost met her eyes.

“Maybe he’s too scared of the mighty Ave, whose oh-so-scary temperature manipulation could burn down or freeze up any of his animals,” Dain cooed, slinking into her field of vision. She scowled.
“Shut up. It’s against the truce for me to bring any weapon of fire, and it’s so cold here that everything’s already frozen. All Adin does is persuade animals to do his bidding. There aren’t even any animals near here,” Ave scoffed.
“Oh, right, the truce. Forgot about that,” he rumbled, a smile popping onto his face. Ave narrowed her eyes at him.
“What do you mean?” she questioned severely. His smile widened, eyes sharpening.
“Oh, I just forgot to tell you that we’re atop a floating chunk of ice in the Arctic Ocean,” he smiled maliciously.
Ave furrowed her eyebrows. She already knew that. What did that have to do with the rules?
She realized after a faint, high-pitched keening noise pierced through her thoughts.
“Da- Dain?” she faltered. His wicked grin deepened, the malevolent intent showing in his smile.
“Dain, Adin, Dain, Adin,” he taunted, the keening growing louder. The ground upon which Ave stood on began to shake, as if breaking apart.
“Oh my goodness,” she gasped.
Dain was just an anagram for Adin.
“You have no fire,” he smirked, coolly shifting his weight from one leg to another. “I made sure of it.”
With that, the ice shattered, a killer whale emerging, baring its maw for Ave to disappear inside of. She screamed, narrowly dodging the flying shards of ice. She broke out into a sprint, hearing Adin’s sickening laughter behind her as the killer whale submerged back under the sea.
“You can’t get away,” Adin sneered. “You think that orcas travel alone? C’mon, Ave. I thought you were better than that.”

The ground beneath Ave shuddered, and she yelped, lunging to the side – just in time to avoid falling through the newly-formed cracks in the ice.

There was a whole pod of killer whales under Adin’s biding.
Come on, Ave, think, she chided herself, quickly picking herself up. She continued to run from Adin, who was now following her at a leisurely pace.
All she saw was ice and rocks.
Ice and rocks.
Rocks.
Another orca rammed through the ice, its gleaming teeth snapping at Ave’s leg, snaring one of her feet under an avalanche of snow as she cried out loud. Ave fell onto all fours.
She had to get to the rocks.
Rocks meant friction.
Flint meant heat.
Heat meant fire.
Cursing her integrity on never noticing the similarities between Dain and Adin, she shook her leg, trying to get the ice off of it. Adin had almost reached her when she was finally able to crawl out, lifting up onto her legs and quickly limping towards the direction of the rocks.
“Darling,” Adin whispered, his mocking voice drifting through the air. The coldness in his tone rivaled that of the temperature, and chills raced against themselves down her spine, grasping the last of her warmth as Ave shuddered for the first time since reaching the Arctic.
“What do you want?” she yelled towards him, her useless foot dragging behind her. The distance between her and Adin was quickly closing together.
“You know what I want,” he growled. “I want the League to realize that I was a much better choice for this mission than you. They want to save the animals living here, so why not send me?” he stressed. “I can talk to these animals – I can tell them to fight back against the humans. But you,” Adin addressed with a sneer, “all you’d do is freeze the ice back up, as if that would be a permanent solution to everything.” His look turned murderous as he closed the gap between them.
“I’m just trying to help them,” Ave gasped, her legs finally buckling as her foot gave out. She slammed to the ground. “It may not be a permanent solution, but it’s better than turning the sea creatures against the humans!” She quickly glanced towards the rocks, seeing that there was only a short distance to go.
Adin saw her look and smirked.
“Trying to create some heat, huh?” he inquired spitefully, stepping on her hands. Ave cried out in pain, watching as a river of crimson leaked out from her broken hands, staining the pure, white snow. A killer whale bashed through the ice beside them, breaking the ice sheet. An enormous hole was left from where the orca rammed through.
Adin smiled sadly, looking down on Ave as her kicked her towards the hole. Shards of bone and ice and pain stuck into the place her ribs once were.
“You’d have better luck freezing something up than burning something down in the Arctic.”
She’d have better luck freezing something up that burning something down.
Her eyes widened.

Ave’s body approached the hole one kick at a time. Adin’s pitiless eyes gazed upon her as he prepared for the final kick into the ocean.

“Goodbye, sweetheart,” he beamed. “Enjoy the last few seconds of your life before my darlings eat you right up.”

And he kicked.

Ave grabbed his leg with her broken hands, shifting her weight so that she rolled under his body and knocked his other leg from beneath him. Her whole body screamed in pain as her shattered bones dug their way deeper into her body, but she ignored the crippling sensation as she focused on her task.
With his balance lost, she let go of his leg as she pulled herself upwards, glancing to her side as she watched Adin lose control of his feet and stumble around.

Right into the whole in which he created.

He dropped coolly, fully knowing that his orcas would lift him back towards the surface and aid him in killing Ave. His body hit the frigid waters as he sunk ten feet below the surface.

He could already hear he minds of the killer whales as they raced to aid him back to the surface.

But Ave had already summoned the temperature of the water to drop even more than what it already was.

Back to its original cold, icy form.

It didn’t occur to Adin how fast the water could freeze as his face hit the cold figure of ice instead of the blissful nothingness of air.
-
Dain gasped, bolting upright. He sat up, the strange sensation of an endlessly foreign, salty expanse of water ringing in his ear and filling up his mouth. From his spot on the hard, dry ground, he shivered as a chill clawed his way down into his bones, despite the sun blazing upon his uncovered torso. He stared out into the land beyond. The barren, windswept terrain stared back at him. All he could see was crimson, flat dusty land. A dry breeze lifted his white, billowing pants off the dust, the silk fluttering in the air behind him. He frowned. He had no memory of how he'd gotten here. He had no memory of anything before he had gotten here. And where was here?
"Hey, what are you doing?" a voice called out from behind him. He turned around, surprised to see a young girl, around the age of eight, staring at him.