Titans of Chaos

This time, I saw how Boggin made himself and Mavors disappear. They had not been in the craterany more than the Mars lander had been. It was a Phaeacian technique. It looked to me like atube of force running from this spot, up out of the continuum, through the dreamlands, and backinto the continuum at another spot, their real location. The three-dimensional energies, such aslight waves, as well as fourth-dimensional media, by which I perceived such things as internalnatures, utilities, monads, and moral obligations, were all swept from one spot to another throughthe Phaeacian shortcut. Presumably, they could be manipulated, dreamed into new shapes, whilethey passed through the dreamlands, before being deposited here, in a spot where the laws ofnature had been changed to allow for this type of illusion. The photons were not emerging fromtrapdoors, but from subatomic areas of uncertainty in the base vacuum of space itself.

Magnetic waves had been present, too. Something from Victor's paradigm had allowed thesethree-dimensional light images to manipulate my flagpole and Mavors' spear in coordination withthe actions of their hands. I had not seen how the wind and air had been manipulated, but it wasnot hard to guess that Boreas might have fine control over such things, fine enough to make thesound waves of a spoken voice. Since I could detect no clue, perhaps Colin's paradigm wasinvolved? Hard to say.

And also, somehow, the Phaeacian ability to detect attention must have been tied into an abilityto deflect attention: The clues that would have warned me that the lander was not below as weflew down toward it had been hypnotically thrust aside in my brain.

The moment I woke up Victor, I knew why they had to knock him out. He called it cryptognosis.

He said he had detected the interference in my perception system the moment we crossed theboundary into the special laws of nature obtaining in the crater basin. He had been silencedbefore he could speak. He was immune to illusions woven by magic.

I attuned my senses to a distant spot, during that moment while I had the chance. The place whereBoggin and Mavors had truly been standing was atop Mons Olympos, the tallest mountain in thesolar system.