Titans of Chaos

Colin played a few notes, soft and low. His ragged demon-things now towed thenow-fully-three-dimensional black glass mass off into the chaos storm, deeper and deeper. I lostsight of them.

Gone.

No wonder they were afraid of us.

The winged shape of fire seeped back down into Quentin, who turned from fine porcelain backinto flesh and blood, and opened his eyes.

The Swift God Thrice-Greatest

Quentin said to Victor, "You should not have killed Lamia. It makes us vulnerable to enemymagic."

An external speaker built into the armor of the dragon-worm crackled to life. "I will attempt tonegate any incoming magic, Leader."

"It also might call the Psychopomp. He might come to gather her spirit, to save her from hell..."

Framed in the square of trapdoor leading up to the deck, I could see, against the burned sails andhigh blue sky beyond, the long metal head of the Victor-dragon, which still had thePhobetor-shaped Colin, steaming guitar in hand, hooves planted wide, atop it. Quentin stood onthe deck below them both, and had his hand out. He snapped his fingers, and his wand flew uptoward his grasp. The wand was in midair, moving toward him.

Then it happened, too swift to see.

There was a flare of blue-white light. Maybe it was Cherenkov radiation. The head of theVictor-dragon now had a dented furrow bisecting it, and a splash of crumpled armor flying ineach direction.

Atop the dragon-skull, at the crumpled end of the furrow, was the figure of a lean man withoverly muscular legs. One leg was straight, the other half-bent beneath him. He was balanced forthat split-instant on one heel, leaning so far back that his spine was almost parallel to the deck,looking for all the world like a runner sliding into a baseball plate. He was the very picture ofspeed incarnate, trying desperately to halt his motion. In his hand was a long wand or pole whoseedge he had dug into the crumpled surface of the broken armor plate.

There were thin streamers of white smoke and white flame around his heels, and his pale whitecloak tails were flying up around his shoulders in a frozen moment like outspread wings.

No, they were outspread wings. Wings like white flame. And the white flares of lightning I sawgathered around his heels were wings also.