Titans of Chaos

"Yet even they, yet even they were held back by one more terrible still: the great lord whom I willnot name, the Unseen One, the Lord of the House of Woe, came forth that day in all his horror,opened the hell-gate, and drove his armies of shadow before him; the dead walked, and the GreatFear was at hand: the dreamlords shrieked and fled like mist; the Fallen spirits cowered, aetherialspear and shield a-tremble in their airy hands; and the cold brains of the war-machines of the Lostwould not open fire with their planet-destroying weapons without the support of their allies. Eventhe deathless Titans of your timeless people, the prelapsarians, were astonished, and they paused,even though they could not be made afraid."

I turned his words over in my mind, trying to imagine the unimaginable. This was the battle myparents lost, the battle when they lost me.

I said, "Why didn't they win? You guys are all so afraid of Chaos that you don't dare kill us. IfChaos is so dreadful, why didn't they win that fight?"

"Fate decreed otherwise."

"That is not a real answer."

"Ah, but Miss Windrose, it is a most penetrating and pertinent, and, if I may say, speaking onbehalf of one who fought to defend reality itself against your parents, who wish to impose anothercondition of being on us, it was indeed a real answer-the very essence of real, so to speak. Butperhaps you wish an historical cause rather than a final one? An examination of the mechanismFate employed to direct events toward the desired outcome? All four races of Chaos fear theThunderbolt of Jove, and (if I may propose an opinion) for good reason. It is an antique weapon;Chronos himself forged it when Time began."

"But Zeus-Lord Terminus-he was dead at that point, wasn't he?"

"Ah! A most acute and perceptive point, Miss Windrose. Had the inchoate confederation of Chaosbeen apprised of that most important fact, they might have come to a far different conclusionwhen they learned that their champion, Typhon of the Lost, had been slain by Lord Terminus."

Boreas smiled, and his eyes twinkled, but his words were cold as he continued: "Oh yes, thedreamlords are temperamental creatures at best; and the prelapsarians are too honest for theirown good; and the Fallen Spirits, quite frankly, had several Dukes and archangels of darkness inour pay. (Not that I blame them for that; we found that the Phaeacians were in their pay, which ishow they found the Lapses and dark-paths needed to mount their attack.)