Titans of Chaos

Lamia-I see her. I see them both.

Laverna said-Begin!

Lamia upended the drinking horn. A splash of blood struck the stone before her. She threw backher head, mouth wide. I heard no scream, yet still I sensed the meaning of what was said: Wives ofthe Psychopomp, I release thee: All ye fair captives who sold white bodies and dark souls to thelust of Trismegistus for promises of escape from Hell, I put aside your chains: Let slip thy leash,and run thee down my prey!

The red-haired woman raised her hand, saying, Guardian of Dreams! I call upon our ancientcovenant. I open the gate, I break the boundaries, I let pass my Lord's many wives into thedaylight world: I let pass the laws of dreams as well.

A green stone, a twin to the one I had seen on Boggin's toe, glimmered in her palm like a starmade of poison.

(I noticed then, too late... far too late... that the glinting strands whose flash, had attracted myattention were running from Laverna to me to the guitar I still held. My debt to ap Cymru.)The blister from the dream-plane expanded, grew brighter, and intersected the plane of Earth.

The blister erupted. There was an explosion, then darkness.

The heavy medium of hyperspace shook with the concussion. A force violent beyond alldescription sent me tumbling end over end.

An automatic reflex had made me turn headfirst into the wave, and to "yank in" the various redand blue limbs and wings of my hyperbody. I folded myself into a three-dimensional shape (tonarrow my 4-D cross-section to nothing) and let the concussion flow over me. It helped-I was notbroken in half-but I still was thrown.

I did not lose consciousness, but my senses spun. I remember dazed images of useful tubes throughhyperspace, used by the Atlantean ships, being blown and twisted by the explosion, and darkeningto uselessness.

I remember seeing the hidden half-mile-tall giants of Mulciber's army being scattered hither andyon throughout four-space. The blister itself, the source of the light, erupted into Earth's plane,depositing armies of dream-women into the sleeping metropolis and blowing aside the normallaws of nature of Earth in the Los Angeles area-I saw the internal nature of all objects flutterviolently with the new impositions-become dreamlike, charged with magic.