Chu Men's mouth flattened. There was no anger in his eyes, only hollow calm.
"Let's see how long your will holds out."
Chu Men straightened, and a dark red light flared in his eyes.
Twin beams of dark red light surged from his eyes and drove straight into Diana's forehead.
Diana's body went taut as a drawn bow.
"Ugh...!"
A low roar burst from deep in Diana's throat.
The floor of the Divine Temple's upper level shuddered beneath her.
The first second.
Dark red patterns spread across Diana's skin like roots growing wild.
They ran from her brow to her cheeks, then crawled down her neck into the cracks in her breastplate.
Two thousand years of memories were torn up by the roots from the sea of her mind.
The golden beaches of Themyscira, waves breaking against chalk-white rock, Antiope's wooden sword striking her shield again and again.
"Diana, take up your weapon. You protect everything beautiful in this world."
Crack.
The wooden sword snapped, and the golden beach became a sea of fire.
The fourth second.
Diana braced both arms against the floor. Her nails gouged five deep furrows into the hard marble.
Her nails peeled back, and blood smeared the stone.
"Hippolyta... Mother..."
Diana clenched her jaw until her molars shattered. Blood poured from the corners of her mouth.
The warmth of her mother placing the Starfire Tiara on her head, her sisters singing beside the spring, the salt on the sea breeze when she first stepped aboard a warship.
The images twisted, blackened, and burned to ash in her mind.
The seventh second.
Dark red energy ripped brutally through Diana's nerves.
Bruce setting a Batarang on the table before her for the first time: "We need you, Diana."
Clark reaching out to her in the sunlight: "With