Titans of Chaos

The wand jumped up in the air, and a light came from it.

It poked the Quentin-body in the mouth, and seemed to act as a shoehorn. The spirit was slurpedinside, a reverse-genie returning to a tiny lamp.

Colin could not stand. He dragged himself on his belly over to Vanity, he bit back a cry of horrorand alarm, and he lifted up his hands to apply pressure to her spurting wounds. 'Tourniquet!" Hisvoice was desperation. "Tourniquet here, or it is death!"

Victor was having blood drip out of one hand. No, not blood, but his molecular blood-creatures,the ones programmed to heal.

With his other hand, Victor was tearing up long strips from the deck boards he knelt on, whichwere bubbling and turning into bandages when the beam from his one eye struck them.

Victor's metal cloth suit ripped itself into shreds or tentacles. One strand formed a noose aroundVanity's gushing arm, tightening. The spurting stopped. The others, like a hundred-armed hydra ofmedicine, took bandages, applied them, probed other wounds.

I am ashamed to admit I was too much in pain to move. That does not sound shameful, does it?

But the truth was, I was too much in pain to try to move, and I could not think straight. The onlything I was thinking at the time was, Why are they all looking at Vanity? Why isn't Victor helpingme?

Sometimes the best in people comes out during emergencies. Sometimes not.

Quentin staggered over to Vanity.

I heard Colin say, "Don't look. This is pretty bloody bad."

Quentin made a noise like a whipped dog, a painful whimpering. He whispered, "Darling, don'tdie. Don't die."

Vanity mumbled something, and made a noise something between a groan and a shriek. I heardgargling. It sounded like blood was obstructing her throat.

My eyes could not focus. I stared at the ceiling. I heard the conversation, but I did not look atVanity. My imagination was filled with pictures of her soft flesh cut and lacerated, blood andother fluid seeping and spurting from open wounds, white bone fragments sticking from flesh.

Maybe the reality was not so bad as what I imagined. Or maybe it was worse.

Quentin said, "What is going on? What are you doing to her?"

Victor said in a cold voice, "Leader, we must wake Vanity back up, so that she can get us out ofhere before Trismegistus returns. Her body is trying to put her into shock, to release her frompain. Do I have your permission to apply a stimulant?"

"Wh-what? Is it going to hurt her?"

"The pain-signals reaching her brain from her nervous system will increase."