Titans of Chaos

Or, they would have hurt him, had he not been able to outrun the bullets shot at him. Trismegistusturned into a blur of motion, but it was a blur localized at about a hundred yards off the port sideof our damaged ship, and, with no space-bending techniques at hand, he could not outrun some ofVictor's energy weapons, many of which were firing at faster-than-light speeds Newton wouldallow, but not Einstein.

Colin waved his hand at the chaos muck boiling and seething off the port side. His teeth were redand clenched with pain; his fist was shaking with weakness. His voice was breathy and lackedtimbre: "Dream-stuff! Your Prince calls! Dance and play! Rip and rend and slay!"

Evidently, despite his weakness, he was inspired with pain and anger, because the wholeenvironment caught fire, and the liquid earth, which had merely been bubbling and splashing, nowerupted as if a million land mines, buried beneath the fluid gunk, had all gone off at once. Thewhole section of ground in that quarter jumped into the sky; the sky there fell.

The blue metal eye shot out of the mouth of the dragon and floated over to the blind and eyelessVictor. A valve or aperture opened in Victor's brow, and he placed the metal eye half within.

It glowed and rotated. Now Victor could see again.

The metal foil covering his body puffed up with magnetic charge. He moved. He was here, gentlypicking up both Colin and me.

Then he was down belowdeck. Vanity had been clawed and cut by the beast, and I saw redarterial blood spurting. Quentin's spirit was dissolving and flickering, but it was bent over Vanity,trying to apply pressure to her horrible wounds. His hands were insubstantial, though, and theprecious blood simply flooded through them. Tears of fire were burning on Quentin's cheeks. Hewas too dazed to realize that his hands were only made of phantom-stuff, and could not help her.

Victor's voice came from his chest plate, amplified tremendously to outshout the thunder of theguns and thunderbolts going off overhead: "You'll die without your body, Quentin."

Quentin moaned something, but his wand, up on deck, tapped impatiently.

Quentin's spirit flashed upward through the deck boards and returned with his clay body. Thespirit seemed to have great difficulty getting back into it, however. The dark and fiery silhouettewas trying to wriggle into it through the mouth like a man putting on a wetsuit, but the spirit waslosing fire and color, as if it were fainting, bleeding, dying.