Aloy rose slowly to her feet and racked her bow on her back. Taking down Scorchers was much safer in her fire-protective Carja blazon armour, but she always felt ridiculously exposed afterwards, when the cold slammed back in with all the force of a Stormslinger bolt.

She clenched her teeth to stop them from chattering as she bent down to loot the Scorcher’s mangled corpse. Then she frowned as she became aware of a strange sound: an ominous gurgling roar about twenty paces away.

A new machine, she thought urgently. One that spits boiling oil, maybe? Swiftly Aloy spun on her heel, her blast sling in hand, ready to take on her new opponent…

And for the umpteenth time since entering the Cut, her mouth dropped open in awe as a powerful fountain of water suddenly surged out of the ground and high into the sky. A delicate white cloud of steam roiled away from the geyser’s gushing spray and immediately froze into ice crystals, reflecting the sunlight like sparkling fireflies made of water.

Aloy could hardly breathe. She’d never seen anything like this before. Eagerly she stood and approached the geyser with the same slow, amazed caution that she would use to approach a newly tamed machine. Curiously she peered into the hole in the ground where the water had spewed out, and her jaw dropped again, this time with delight: the water was simmering in the ground – simmering as though it was in a pot suspended over a fire!

Eagerly Aloy held her hands over the warmth of the geyser hole until the simmering water started to boil with a dull roar. Then Aloy backed away swiftly, and not a moment too soon: the geyser erupted again, its jet of hot water surging into the air with all the powerful ferocity of a Snapmaw attack.

Aloy laughed out loud as the warm cloud of steam rolled over her and beaded in her hair and eyelashes. Gently she wiped her eyes and gazed up at the sparkling cloud of condensation. The crystallized ice glowed gold in the fading light of day, and that’s when Aloy realized it was sunset: the fading light of day was sending its last determined rays over the distant mountain peaks, dyeing the sky with a kaleidoscope of pinks and purples.

Aloy sighed with satisfaction. She no longer felt the cold on her bare skin.

After all, what harm was there in a little bit of cold, when heat could surge straight from the center of the earth?