Titans of Chaos

At that same instant, as if my scream had summoned it, the waters to each side of us suddenlyexploded. Jets of water, or lava, or acid, or whatever that damnable stuff was, rose up before us,forming spouts or columns. The storm of flame and hail suddenly dwindled, falling silent.

In hyperspace, explosion. Darkness. The blister had ignited again. The scattered troops and naviesof Mavors and Mulciber went whirling in knotted folds of space-time off into outer dimensionalwilderness, and were gone.

The boiling masses under the keel of the Argent Nautilus were beginning to solidify, becoming likemolasses, then like mud.

The ship ran aground. The deck tilted over forty-five degrees. The bow of the ship was crushedbetween rocks, rock grown suddenly solid and firm; the stern was jumping for a moment, bubblesof churning chaos-stuff surging and sloping up over the stern rail splattered the bench underwhich Vanity still hid. Then the stern waters iced over, slid to one side, dragging the keel withthem. A horrid popping and cracking came from below, as if the keel had broken. The sloughs ofliquid to the stern changed and started to grow muddy, thick.

Vanity sobbed as if she could feel the pain of the ship. The beautiful silver ship, so swift andgraceful, now lay canted far over, her prow out of line with her stern, her hull scarred andscratched with acid stains, her once-proud sail now brown tatters. Her keel had been broken, herproud spine snapped.

A wave of flaming muck surged over Quentin, who made an impatient gesture. A gasp of fear orawe came from the boiling black syrup, and it politely parted to either side, splashed past to hisleft and right, and did not get a drop on him. The rest of the deck was washed under with a rippleof brownish slop.

The bent segment of railing supporting Victor gave way. I reached out and down with tendrils ofenergy, upper-dimensional songs made solid.

The wave of goo from the stern picked me up and tossed me roughly against the railing at thesame time. Some of it got in my eyes. My skin was burned and frostbitten.

And I lost my grip on Victor. He is so thin in the fourth dimension, so paper-thin.

His dissolving body fell into the muck, which bubbled and became solid as the flopping anddripping body fell into it. It turned from mud then into rock. There was a green wash of color, andthe rocks were coated with grass.