Titans of Chaos

by John C. Wright

  The concussion would have instantly destroyed us (or anything made of that fragile substance we call "matter") had we still been in the normal laws of Earth. As it was, the blue light showered over all of us. There was no visible change.

  The Argent Nautilus dashed through the waters of the underground river like a flung spear...

  The stone walls to either side of us were blurs. The piston of holocaust-fire that the pressure of the explosion was driving down the tunnel in both directions was traveling faster than the speed of sound, so there was no noise coming from it. We were receding from it faster than its advance, so that the ball of flame behind dwindled immediately to a flare, a spark, a twinkle.

  Quentin was frowning at the white wand he held. It was nothing but a stick now. He tossed it overboard. Then he said, "I'm neutralized. Who has anything?" The cell phone speaker was very dim: "I have sustained major damage. High-priority nervous system functions are continuing at half-power. All auxiliary systems are nonfunctional."

  Colin: "I've been hexed. I'm out."

  I said, 'There were sirens. They may still be around us. My powers are gone."

  Quentin smiled and threw himself on the one bench at the stern of the Argent Nautilus. "You are the only one who can help us now, Vanity."

  Vanity's look of fear stiffened into a look of resolve. The confidence I had seen on the island, or when she saved me from Archer, was back. Nausicaa confidence. She said, "I won't let you down, Leader!"

  She laid her hand on the silver rail. Immediately in the water before us, a door made of water, with hinges and staples made of translucent fluid, opened up, revealing a long slope, an unwalled tunnel made of air, which dropped down through the water.

  Quentin said, "Er... Vanity? You are doing that, right? That's one of yours?"

  The Argent Nautilus tilted on the brink of the doorway made of water, her stern high, her prow dipping low...

  We all screamed as the ship fell headlong, except Victor (of course), and Vanity, who laughed like a madwoman.

  Vanity yodeled and hiccuped and said over the roar, "I think I am getting the hang of this."

  Down we plunged, a barrel tipping over a waterfall.

  Dream Storm

  We fell down a long steep slide, down a shaft of naked air, past walls of unsupported rippling water. Overhead was a roof of water equally unsupported and impossible: an upside-down river.

  The trapdoor made of rippling water fell shut behind us. The flames that still were shooting after us merely flew on by overhead, filling the stone tunnel we had just quit.

  The light here came from the glimmering silver of the phosphorescent hull, and from the leaping and rippling light receding so rapidly behind us, a white-hot flame seen through a wall of boiling water.

  The cell phone asked Colin for help. Colin rolled Victor's stiff body over on its back and, putting his shoulder to Victor's spine, levered him more or less upright.

  The third eye opened, glittering azure.

  The silver ship-glow and dwindling flame light was joined by the dim blue light from Victor's third eye, of course. Useful to have a built-in flashlamp, I suppose.

  Colin said, "Leader! Victor wants to try turning your powers back on. He says he's only got enough power for one try. You want to stand over here, please?"

  Quentin said, "In the middle of a battle is the best time to experiment with untested superpowers.

  Sure. Zap me. If I become incapacitated, Victor is second-in-command. Then Amelia, Vanity, Colin, in that order."

  Colin muttered, "Hmph-! Fifth-in-command. Thanks a lot."

  Quentin said back, "It's for all those nights you kept me awake with your chatter after lights-out.

  Ready when you are, Victor."

  A streaming azure beam played across Quentin's face for a moment. His features were lit from below, throwing the shadow of his cheeks and nose across his forehead. The effect gave his face a sinister cast.

  The beam turned cherry red, then saffron, which melted into a ray of purest gold. Now Quentin's features looked pure, ennobled with a solemn, living energy.

  The shadow Quentin cast across the deck grew black as ink, solid-seeming, and streamed away from his feet, growing larger and darker as the beam of gold light played down across Quentin's chest, stomach, and legs. The beam twinkled for a moment at his feet, and the shadow swelled up along the speed-blurred watery walls of the tube of liquid through which we flew, and nodded high above us.

  Then the shadow faded and vanished.

  Vanity said, "Did it work?"

  Quentin picked up a belaying pin and whispered a word to it. There was no visible effect, but suddenly I had goose bumps, and a sensation that some potent and inhuman will was regarding me.

  Quentin, instead of answering, took a piece of chalk out of his pocket and uttered three words that clanged like iron. The chalk, of its own accord, flew across to where Colin stood, fell to the deck, and slid around him in a circle: once, twice, thrice.

  Quentin knelt, tapped the belaying pin on the deck, pointed at Colin, uttered a command word in some language that hissed like fire in his mouth.

  Quentin muttered to himself. Then he said, more loudly, "Therefore what humors and essences which once touched Phobetor, shall now and always shall be of him, be with him, be obedient to him. So mote it be. Quod erat faciendum."

  Colin's face and features ran like wax, and black smoke boiled around him. Vanity looked shocked, and I think I must have screamed.

  A demon-prince stood there. His skull was long and narrow, like the face of a stag or fox, and instead of a tongue, flame was in his mouth. His eyes were green lamps. Antlers tipped with silver glints, made perhaps of bone or ice, branched Up like a crown. His chest and torso were manlike, albeit much brawnier and wider-shouldered than any man. In one hand he held a mace of silver; in the other, an orb of crystal carved like a moon. Vast bat wings pebbled and patterned like the neck of a venomous snake rose up hugely from his back. He had shaggy goat-legs and narrow feet, ending in split hoofs sharp as razors. His male member was appropriately large and godlike.

  A scent like ambergris came from him.

  "Oh, cool!" said the stag-headed demon-prince with his tongue of flame. Little electric sparks played around the fangs of his sudden smile.

  The horned and narrow head turned toward me, the greenish dots it wore in place of eyes dancing with unholy mirth. "Hey, flying squid-girl. You think your true shape is freaky? Check this out."

  Quentin said, "Return to that form you wore on Earth, O Prince of Nightmares..."

  "Hold on a sec," said Phobetor in Colin's voice. "My senses are sharper in this form. I can feel trouble coming. I can feel the hate in the air. I can see... I can see dreams..."

  "Fix me," I said to him.

  He did not respond. His eyes were focused on something I could not see. "Hey, Leader! There is a big dream-storm coming."

  Quentin asked, "What is a dream-storm?"

  "Hell if I know. Looks like a tidal wave about to break over us."

  "Can you fix me?" I shouted at him. The idiot.

  "Hold on, sweet cheeks. There are also some singing fish women in longboats dreaming about stopping us___

  Your sirens? They'd just smite you if I turned you back on. Wait. I think I can do something..."

  Vanity said, "Leader! Tell him to do something about the tidal wave! This ship sails in dream-waters!"

  "Leader, what about me... ?" I asked. "Can't I get my powers back on... ?"

  Quentin said, "Who else is in the boat?"

  The demon Phobetor said in Colin's voice, "How the hell do I know? I cannot see the boat, I can only see the dreams of the women in it."

  Quentin said, "I was not talking to you."

  A chilling voice spoke out of midair. "Maenads who kill; dryads who will not; Amazons of iron will; sirens whose songs fill strange nonrealms of other-space, unimagined, un-shaped worlds the creation hath forgot. Master, I break faith with thee, and cry woe! Yo
ur vengeance shall not fall on me, for thy doom rides in that bark also."

  There was a rustling in the air, and Quentin's robes flew and flapped in a breeze that was not there. Then the hems of his garments fell, and the air was still.

  "Great," muttered Quentin.

  Phobetor said, "What the hell was that?"

  "A rat deserting a sinking ship."

  Vanity: "Are we in trouble?"

  Quentin: "Big trouble."

  Phobetor: "Dream-storm looming up, Leader. Suggest we go below, or batten hatches, or something-"

  "Leader!" I said loudly, "I saw the dream-plane earlier form a bubble or blister and explode into Earth's continuum. That may be the same effect that is happening now. A spell. Your paradigm."

  Quentin said, "But I don't know how to stop an unknown influence-"

  "Listen, Leader! Victor can stop it, I'll bet. If he can get fixed in time."

  The cell phone said in a dim, tinny voice: "And get an energy supply of sufficient magnitude."

  I said, "If you will tell Bambi-head here to turn my powers back on, maybe I can fix Victor, or at least see what's wrong..."

  "Do it," said Quentin to Phobetor.

  The demon-prince rolled his fiery eyes. "Um, Leader, there are still sirens in the area-"

  "Risk it."

  Phobetor looked at me. The green sparks that served him for eyes shrank into smaller dots, contracting. "I-I am not sure what to do. How do I make her stupid paradigm turn on?"

  Quentin spoke, his voice quiet and forceful: "Do you love her? Have faith in her. Put energy in her. Believe in her vision, even if you do not understand it. Become like glass, and let the feelings she inspires in you flow through you and enter her."

  Vanity gave out a yelp of fear. "The waters! The waters!"

  The spray coming off the bow of the ship suddenly turned black, and had streamers of flame and smoke rippling through it. The Argent Nautilus started bucking and pitching.

  The tube of water down which we flew dissolved like smoke, growing rapidly larger and swooping away from us. Suddenly and impossibly, we were in the middle of a large lake, then in midocean.

  But it was a boiling ocean of blood-splattered India ink, not water. Icebergs topped with flame buckled and broke against ice-coated piles of lava, red stones with black crusts. Open pits of air and smoke gaped here and there in the surface of the waters like holes in Swiss cheese.

  There were storm clouds above us, but the lightning was red, and the hailstones showering down on us were mingled with falling mud, snow, freezing rain, and drops of something acidic that stung and burned.

  The dream-smooth flight of the Argent Nautilus ended when the ship, boards groaning, pitched up as if struck from beneath.

  Our silver sails were streaked with long stains from the acid hail, browned with mud streaks, and Vanity was cowering under the bench, stung by burns in several places, tears in her eyes, determined not to cry. She had the glowing green stone in her hand and was trying to find some set of laws of nature that would allow us to survive the attack.

  Quentin was clinging to the rail as the ship jumped and rolled.

  Victor's body, not lashed down, was sliding across the deck. I ran and threw myself atop it, so that we were now both sliding toward the fragile silver railing...

  Crash. The railing held, though it bent out alarmingly. Victor's stone-hard body was between me and the rail, but I had burned my hand on some patch of his skin... his hull... which was still smoldering.

  I shouted in pain. Okay, well maybe it was a scream. But that damn stuff hurt Being pelted by acid-stinking hailstones did not help either.

  What the hell was this stuff? An attack?

  Over the noise of the storm-wrack, Quentin spoke to Vanity. His voice was very quiet, but some magic made each word clear, distinct, and legible. I do not think I was hearing it through my ears.

  "Keep moving. Can you find a door out of this acid storm?"

  Vanity shouted back, her voice dim and interrupted beneath the mindless roar of sky-rage:

  "Leader! We're becalmed! The ship cannot find any boundaries. There are no doors because there is no here and no there anywhere..."

  Although the deck kicked and bucked, Phobetor was not moved. He stood, hooves spread, mace glowing in one hand, his mouth lit with flame. His eyes were on me, his ears no doubt still filled with Quentin's question. Do you love her? The storm clouds roared above him, and red lightning flashed between the clouds of hail and streaming mud.

  "By God, I do love her, and woe betide mortal or immortal who raises a hand against her. Dark Mistress, when I rule in Hell, you shall be my Queen!"

  I waited for something to happen.

  "Not working," I shouted back over the storm-wrack.

  The wind just screamed at me. I wanted to scream back at it.

  Phobetor said, "And, um, thanks for helping me with my homework. I mean, well, this is sort of embarrassing, but, we all know you're, um, brighter about math and stuff than I am, and well, I just wanted to say..."

  And my vision came back. I was four-dimensional again, full, complete.

  I am not sure what the moral of that little incident was. Honest thanks for small favors is stronger than true love?

  Light!

  There was a blister, similar to the one I had seen previously, swelling out from the dream-plane parallel to Earth, shedding energy in each direction. I could see what was around us.

  There were things moving in the light. The tumult from the previous explosion had left wreckage strewn across the dimensions: I saw Mulciber's giants, fallen, with technicians in long brown coats walking across helmet-tops, directing spider-machines at their repairs. I saw fleets and battle-barges of Mavors, thrown onto shoals and rocks, with lizard-faced Laestrygonians bailing and shouting orders to running sailors. I saw one group of Atlanteans in outer space, abandoning a tumbling space vessel, which glowed cherry red as its orbit decayed into the poisonous upper atmosphere of Venus. Atlanteans in black and silver armor dropped out of the airlock like pearls on a slightly curving string, one after another, and fell out and away from the dying ship.

  The blister grew and changed from a cherry red to a blue white. Another explosion was no doubt only moments away. And there were smoky forces stirring and boiling in the depths of the dream-plane, tangled strands and webs of some titanic magic being readied.

  And closer, much closer, I saw a flotilla of longboats, manned (if that is the term) by black-suited Amazons, cutting through the channel of a dream-canal. Each boat carried a complement of maenads and nymphs, while above and below, to the blue and to the red, cycles within cycles of sirens spun, deadly energy filling hyperspace for many yards in each direction.

  And, only inches away...

  "Oh my God! We are only about six inches away from Los Angeles! There is about to be an irruption from dream-space, and if we get caught in it... Vanity! Go that way! Tell the ship to go that way!"

  Vanity, from beneath the bench, called out in misery, "I cannot see where your hand is. Your arm turns red and vanishes. I cannot push through this lava anyway! The ship is dying! She can't move!"

  My upper senses told me that this place, this lake of tumult, was on the borderland, stuck halfway in the uncertainty between two dimensions. The storm here was caused by the breakdown of the local laws of nature, as confused bits and atoms of matter turned this way and that, not knowing which set of laws to obey. We were on the cusp, on the storm front, of some powerful effect issuing from the dream-realm, trying to render nature dreamlike and fluid, and an equally powerful effect coming from Earth, trying to restore the Earthly laws of nature: nice things like inertia, persistence of object, measurable time, linear cause-and-effect, atomic and elemental structures.

  It was shining, shining. Useful to us? Or useful to someone trapping us? I started trying to trace the lines of cause-effect and time-purpose backwards___

  Mud had stained Quentin's robes, and hail and acid droplets had raise
d small welts on his head and hands. He spoke, and his voice vanished in the storm-roar, but his quiet voice appeared behind my ears, quiet but cross: "The mission! Remember the mission! Examine Victor and see if you can make repairs!"

  Enough sightseeing. I turned to Victor.

  I looked inside Victor. He had been doing massive alterations to his internal organs. He had run tubes of nervous tissue down his spine and into his abdominal cavity, creating backup brains programmed to come online should his main brain be destroyed. Instead of a central heart, there were millions of photochemical bodies lining his now inert bloodstreams, making oxygen by photosynthesis out of carbon dioxide in the blood. The muscle tissues had a different texture and arrangement, and were supersaturated with additional blood capillaries coming from some sort of reduction-still in his lung cavities, which was making pure oxygen by breaking down excess bodily fluids. Nerves had been replaced by superconductors. There were electric eel cells lining certain limbs, linked in parallel, special analytical amplifiers built behind his eyes and ear cavities, extra joints and subcutaneous armored plates, chemical packages, groups of metallic crystals held in frictionless matrices of bone, energy cores, lubricant slurries, two additional parasympathetic nerve webs to carry and prioritize the extra sensory information. Radar bafflers. Repair microbes.

  Flares. He had done away with his digestive tract and replaced it with a series of molecular assembly-disassembly sieves.

  "Oh my heavens," I breathed. He had turned himself into a killing machine. I am not going to mention what he did to defend against groin kicks.

  Each atom and cluster of atoms in his body had a set of monads, linked in a preestablished harmony with his cen-tral, controlling monad. The explosion from the rifle had disorganized his monad hierarchy, as well as doing physical damage to his skin, muscles, and nerves. It had overloaded and burned out nerve ganglia that acted as circuit breakers, destroyed part of his magnetic control array, fused his power supply, lost mass as his skin was burned and flaked off.

  Okay. Start with first things first. I reached out, found one monad that governed one part of a fused metallic crystal, straightened it. There. Now it was back in harmony with the upper-level monad that governed the whole microscopic crystal. With five or ten more twists like that, I could repair one nucleus of one damaged nerve cell.