Titans of Chaos

The line of tall hills, once hidden by towering green trees, was now clear to see. The forest stillexisted on the upper slopes, but not the lower. Instead, gathered at the foot of the hills, standingtall and ruined, the color and texture of burned matchsticks, glades of smoking and leafless treesleaned, tilting drunkenly away from us. The sheer violence of what had been done here, and by thedischarge of a single sidearm, was staggering. I thought I saw clouds of steam nodding high overthe river whose bed I had crossed earlier. I saw the melted wreckage of the high-tension powercables dripping in the distance, as all the trees between here and there had been turned to tallposts of leafless ash.

Everything that had been inside Quentin's ward was saved. Even the dry leaves resting on thegrassy stones were untouched.

Almost everything. There was one dark spot in the green circle of grass and trees around us.

Victor.

I stared in horror at the prone body of Victor. I looked inside Victor to see if he was alive or not.

Life? I am not sure. I saw motions on an atomic level, sensed a burst of radio-energy...

All our cell phones rang.

Vanity yanked hers to her ear. "Yes?"

I was staring at where Victor's motionless body lay headlong in a crater, steaming and smoking.

The chain mail he wore was drooling little molten metal droplets across his skin. He must havedone some modification to his skin, because it was not charring, not melting, not burned. Therewere no holes in him. His hair was intact.

His hair was like gold wire. It was not burned.

I said, my voice all hollow with surprise, "It's Victor. The phone is useful to him..."

The voice over Vanity's cell phone said, "This is Victor. I've lost power to my hull..."

Colin blenched. "His... 'hull'? Did he say-?"

"... certain of my nerves and muscles will take time to repair. Prop me up so that my eye is facingEast The signal controlling the gun came from-"

Vanity interrupted, "Leader! We're being watched!"

I said, "Leader! A hole is opening in space-time. It's the enemy Phaeacian."

I was looking at Quentin, and saw, about two miles behind him, a tower set with stained-glasswindows, rising suddenly out of the ground like a piston. It was near the edge of the burned area.

Trees and soil were carried upward on the roof of the tower as it rose, and nodded over the towersides like the crown of a colossus.