The javelin never reached me.
Brunhilde crossed my vision like a smear of pale light, and her katana left her sheath with a soft, wet crack, like a lake giving way underfoot. The ice spear met her blade and simply shattered. One heartbeat it was tearing toward my chest, and the next it was a hanging cloud of glittering dust, already drifting down with the snow.
She didn't even slow.
'Right. Of course.'
I let out the breath I'd been holding and shoved myself up onto my knees, Frostfang already in my grip. It was broken but I didn't have any other ideas right now.
'I can always supplement it with Sanctified Immolation.'
My Destrier was gone, a ruin of red snow somewhere behind me. The plain stretched white and flat in every direction, and rising on either side of it were the two mountains, dark and patient.
That was when I finally saw them.
