The first serpent struck with the speed of a whip-crack, a lash of condensed shadow aiming to bisect me where I stood.
In the real world, my body was broken. My ribs were powder, my lungs were collapsing, and I was bleeding out on the dirty asphalt of an alleyway. But here? In the Mindscape?
I was an idea. And right now, the idea of Samantha Kisaragi was absolute, unyielding violence.
"Block!" I shouted, not to myself, but to the girl beside me.
Liza didn't flinch. She stepped forward, planting her feet on the obsidian floor. She swung the ten-foot spectral alpaca like a war hammer.
THOOM.
The impact didn't sound like fabric hitting shadow. It sounded like a church bell ringing inside a sealed vault. Alpacacino's fluffy white surface flared with blinding radiance upon contact, disintegrating the shadow serpent into a shower of harmless gray sparks.
"Holy crap," Liza breathed, staring at her weapon. "He's... he's really soft but also really heavy?"
