Titans of Chaos

With my head up, I could see Victor bent over Vanity like a one-eyed ghoul over a corpse. Anantiseptic smell and a sense of heat issued from his body, as if he had projected some kind ofweird force field to sterilize everything in an envelope around him. He had pried open her chestcavity with several metal tentacles and clamps formed from his suit, and a dozen more tentacleswere reaching into the heap of organs, performing a dozen operations with a score of instruments,tiny waldo-hands, molecular engines made of red blood or clear fluid.

Victor had no face. His one forehead-socket was empty. I saw he had perched his one eye on herbreastbone, to get a better look at the situation, and it had grown dozens of strands of fiber-opticcable, and these glassy strands had sent little camera-eyes snaking into all her major veins andorgans.

I heard the hissing noise of a bone saw.

It was a disgusting sight, much worse than my earlier imaginings.

Quentin was muttering: "Oh, dear sweet Jesus, save her life. Gods of Heaven, of wood, of Hell,save my Vanity, I pray you, if you have ever loved or known love, or if you ever knew horror andpain and fear you wished to flee."

The shadowy cat thing must not have been entirely dead or dissolved, because the black stain onthe planks under Quentin's feet now spoke up: "Son of the Gray Sisters, I will restore your dyingwhore. Merely say the words, my soul is thine."

Quentin gritted his teeth. A look of madness grew in his eyes, brighter and brighter. He said,

"Spirit, my's-"

Victor said in a voice of infinite calm: "Leader, please do not be precipitous. Vanity's body is justa broken machine. Fix the machine; she's fixed. There is nothing to it. Give me another threeminutes at the outside."

Quentin struck the stain with his wand, "Damned spirit, I suck dry thy last bit of life and grant itto my friend and comrade; let the blood of my lady, shed by you, torture you in darkness forever ifyou say other than 'I will.' Do you agree?"

Something too dark to see, but reddish around the edges, snakelike, trembled down the wandshaftand embedded itself into the stain.

Screams, screams, screams of pain filled the air. Mingled with the screams must have been thewords I will because a shower of energy points flowed along the moral lines connecting Colin withQuentin.

Quentin said, "Here is life! Colin, take some as well. Use it on yourself and Amelia."