Titans of Chaos

In the air, his arms around me, I spoke over the rush and whistle of the winds against his blackwings. "Pillar of fire. How did you manage that?"

He shouted back, cheerfully. "I am a shape-changer. Why assume we are limited to organicshapes? Quentin told me the secret name of fire."

I said, "Where are the others?"

At that moment, I saw or imagined the rifle slung over my shoulder flicker and grow bright. It washard to use my higher senses when I was enclosed in Colin's arms, but something in the rifle hadjust become very useful to someone else.

Without pause, I shrugged my shoulder half an inch into the blue direction and let the shoulderstrap fall past and through my arm, grabbed the barrel with the other hand, and flung the massaway, amplifying the outward momentum- it was the quickest way I could think of to get theweapon as far away from us as quickly as possible.

The weapon had a computer inside it. Why not a radio link, a tracking device, a coordinatingcircuit for the commanding officer to find missing squad members? Why not a self-destructmechanism?

The weapon opened up like a flower of pale fire. In the middle of the explosion hovered a blueeye, shedding concentric shells of crystal. Shrapnel ricocheted off my suddenly stiff armor. Bluelight clung to Colin, flaming like cold napalm; he was falling, his face covered with blood.

I was weightless, with wind in my face. Colin's arms were no longer around me.

I rotated energy-wings into this continuum and negated gravity beneath me. Weightless again, butthis time the wind was blowing the other direction, since I was soaring up instead of falling down.

Where was Colin? I saw blue sky and white clouds rotating around me as I spun.

Energy from the higher dimension struck me, a ringing lance made of music. It cut my wings frommy body and crushed my higher sense into numbness. I screamed and screamed.

The sirens had found me.

Weightless again. Wind from below. The green clouds of forest below jumped up eagerly towardme.

Colin, black wings folded around him, dropped like a thunderbolt out from the glare of the sun.

One strong arm went around my waist. He cupped his dark wings, and the world spun slowlyaround me, and the forest receded.

Colin, his face black with wrath, reached up and the sky folded and rippled around his hand. I didnot see, my eyes could not focus on, what it was he did next.