Titans of Chaos

"I am not just going to go off and leave a nice present you bought for me. I want to see it. It looksnice. Very nice. So very nice."

I slapped him across the face. He just smiled at me, placid, his eyes going all blank, his smileempty and idiotic.

His feet touched down, and he folded his wings. We were on the ground, in the center of thegrass-grown circle of Stones, in the center of the ring of toadstools.

Colin said in a sleepy voice, 'Why did you slap me, Amelia? That wasn't very nice. All I wanted todo was I.."

I looked in the higher dimensions. Rising up from the guitar were webs upon webs. They were allaround us, strands and nets of magic. They were winding more and more tightly around Colin andme, glistening ruddily.

This was magic: Quentin's paradigm. It neither automatically trumped my paradigm, nor did mineautomatically trump it. Was there something I could do?

I reached into the nearest cluster of moral imperatives and... twisted... something, curving themorality-strand back inward on itself to form an infinitely recurring loop.

In effect, I hoped to do to the woven web of moral obligations what I had done to the nanotechvirus Dr. Fell had injected in me. I thought that if I gave the moral obligations free will, theymight not be able to be used as an enchantment or as a snare.

For a moment, it seemed as if the webs might wake up and loosen us.

But then a slim and beautiful woman, dark-haired and ivory-skinned, stepped out from a tree, herfootstep as soft and shy as a doe stepping. Her corona was a wreath of living leaves. Her gownwas green.

She did not come from behind the tree, but from inside it: For a moment, her form was a mist orinvisible essence sliding between the substance of the bark. With her next quiet step, she was solid.

I could see from her inner nature that she resided in a vessel, shaped like a woman, which was, atthat moment, made for her, solidified out of thin air.

In one hand she held a slender wand of willow. She tapped it on the ground, saying, "Phobetor,Prince of Night, my gentle sweet, look to me. Look, and be enchanted by, Oenone."

His face turned toward her. His eyes were utterly blank at this point.

I saw the strand of morality twisting, shaking, tossing. I reached more deeply into the energy knotinvolved, trying to liberate the core of the incoming power before...

"Phobetor, you have slain Leucosia, our husband's wife, ending and therefore owing us a life. Younow are owned by the nymphs of stream and tree..."