Titans of Chaos

The pole in his hand was not just dug into the armor. Two long thin snake-heads had shot outfrom two long thin snake-necks, and had driven long thin fangs into the dragon's surface, likeliving guide wires or tail-hooks. It would have looked comical if it had not looked so utterlysatanic and grotesque. I flinched, seeing those poor snakes, stretched by that tremendous pressureof such abrupt deceleration___

The man had a hat shaped like a flying saucer. It spun off his head when he stopped, striking ourmast and rebounding in a spray of splinters. The man's hair was black and loose and flowing,whipped by the wind of his own passage.

All this, I should mention, took place in a split instant of total silence. Then, there was a sonicboom that threw me from my feet.

The skidding figure atop the dragon-head now straight-ened up, swirling and furling his vastwhite wings around him. He was a narrow-faced man, with one eye that glittered glee. A patchcovered his other eye. His mouth quirked in a crooked half smile.

He hefted the snaky wand in his hand and made a casual gesture.

I saw a blur of burning motion in the fourth dimension.

Without the least struggle or fuss, the Victor-snake fell prone, a puppet with its strings cut.

Clashing and clattering across the tilted deck, yards upon yards of snaky folds collapsed to eitherside of the ship, and spilled in wide arcs across the grass and rock. Victor's fall made an oddringing noise, as if a giant had shuffled a deck of playing cards made of metal.

At that same time, the eyepatch the man wore caught fire and burned away. The eye socketbeneath was filled with a glittering blue metallic orb, the eye of a cyclopes, and surrounded byscar tissue. The man had shot through the eyepatch, like a man with a gun firing through a coatpocket, not taking the time to draw it.

The azure beam flickered out and touched Quentin. Quentin cried out and fell down, choking. Thewand that had been flying toward his hand now bounded away at an odd angle and fell clatteringto the deck beyond my range of vision. Wraithlike smoke, some sort of choking gas, had replacedthe oxygen in Quentin's lungs.

As Victor's huge body fell, the wings blurred into motion on the man's feet, and he stood in midair,motionless while his support fell away beneath him.