Mental attack 2

Lina leapt, swinging a stake down at him from over her head. His left
hand caught her by the wrist, and he threw her back into the midst of the net
of attackers closing on him. Though his pain had increased, mobility was
returning to his body. His opponent was growing weaker as well.
Suddenly, there was a change in the world.
D stood on a section of ice field crossed only by the howling wind.
He didn’t have a mark on him. The sword in his right hand had returned
to being his peerless weapon.

D shut the door more firmly than ever on the cage of his psyche.
His foe was gambling his victory on this image. They’d make every
lethal effort to leave a beautiful corpse lying there, exposed to the wind on
the fields of ice.

Shooting stars flew across the pitch-black sky.
D, someone called out to him. The voice twisted in the wind, became a
desolate scream, and raced off across the icy plains. Again it cried, D.
Ahead of him at a distance that was impossible to judge—it might as
easily have been a yard as a thousand miles—there stood a lone woman.

6 - 2