Titans of Chaos

Then I pulled my companions carefully-ever so carefully-down into the plane with me. I made sureall wrinkles were smoothed out, and that they were flipped the right way, not lefthand-righthandreversed.

The echoes of the explosion were ringing overhead. Vanity stopped screaming once her body wastwisted from Escher-shape back to normal, but she looked greenish.

Quentin was...

I caught my breath. Quentin was made of clay. His face and hair were now composed of pale anddark layers of fired ceramic___

His real body was like the doll he made of Vanity. He had no real body. He was an exiled spirittrapped in matter.

Then he stirred, breathed, and a flush of color came back into his skin. The clay vessel looked likehuman flesh again.

He said, "Where is Colin?"

I said, "I can't move him. He's back up with the explosion."

He said to me, "Why didn't you bring Victor?"

Vanity said, "Victor melted. He's dead."

Quentin said harshly to her, "Victor is the dragon. He shed his human shape." To me, "Go gethim! We are vulnerable only when we are apart!"

I said, "I think it hurts him when I pull him through four-space. He's not built for it."

Vanity said, "Oh! Look! My turn! Mine! Watch this! I can reach him, Leader! There is a path toVictor. Things are calm around him, or something." And she pulled open a switch hidden behindone of the crates.

The deck overhead opened.

Colin, still playing his angry guitar, sparks shooting from his hand, was standing on the head ofthe dragon-thing.

A hundred guns and emission antennae peeped out from firing turrets that opened along thedragon's armored sides. Tracer fire and directed energy lanced from the huge dragon-shape inevery direction. Like some steel instrument of medical torture, the mandibles opened again, themouth gaped wide, showing a concentric funnel of crystal shark-teeth, the blue orb surrounded byits banks of amplifiers and augmentation-circuits glowed brightly, and the main beam of azureplasma licked out, so bright as to make all the laser fire seem dim by contrast, so loud as to makethe other incendiaries seem silent.

The spell that controlled the wild maenads had not dissolved when Lamia died; I saw the strandsand wires jerk when that intolerably bright blue flame reached out, and all the maenads screamedand jumped. Zap. All magic gone.

Colin was shouting the harsh words of his song, music loud enough to hear above the din ofgunfire, beams, bolts, and bombs:

What genius picked this battlefield?

Here, in the Dreaming, where I am Lord?