John Wright - Titans of Chaos

The weapon had a computer inside it. Why not a radio link, a tracking device, a coordinating circuit for the commanding officer to find missing squad members? Why not a self-destruct mechanism?

The weapon opened up like a flower of pale fire. In the middle of the explosion hovered a blue eye, shedding concentric shells of crystal. Shrapnel ricocheted off my suddenly stiff armor. Blue light clung to Colin, flaming like cold napalm; he was falling, his face covered with blood.

I was weightless, with wind in my face. Colin's arms were no longer around me.

I rotated energy-wings into this continuum and negated gravity beneath me. Weightless again, but this time the wind was blowing the other direction, since I was soaring up instead of falling down.

Where was Colin? I saw blue sky and white clouds rotating around me as I spun.

Energy from the higher dimension struck me, a ringing lance made of music. It cut my wings from my body and crushed my higher sense into numbness. I screamed and screamed.

The sirens had found me.

Weightless again. Wind from below. The green clouds of forest below jumped up eagerly toward me.

Colin, black wings folded around him, dropped like a thunderbolt out from the glare of the sun.

One strong arm went around my waist. He cupped his dark wings, and the world spun slowly around me, and the forest receded.

Colin, his face black with wrath, reached up and the sky folded and rippled around his hand. I did not see, my eyes could not focus on, what it was he did next.

But then he had a woman in a Greek toga by one ankle. A lyre was falling from her wildly clawing hands. Colin contemptuously let go of the ankle and let her drop.

He did not say anything, did not pause to wonder about it. He just flung her away as if she were garbage.

With a long, hideous wail, she fell away from us, growing smaller and smaller. I closed my eyes and clutched Colin with both arms, burying my head in his chest.

"Are you hurt?" he said, masculine anger still throbbing in his voice.

"My wings are reduced... crushed... I don't know if I can fly..."

"I'll carry you, Amelia."

"Are you hurt?"

"No. Red ink. But the magic ring just went kaput. I think we're visible___Hey. What is that... ?"

Colin had changed course and was now spiraling down toward a wide round clearing in the middle of the forest.

Slabs of fitted stone formed the circular foundations of a ruined building. Grass grew in the cracks between the stones. Rusted stumps of pipe protracted up from an underground space in one or two places. There was a circle of toadstools, bright and gay with spots of yellow and purple, making an outer circle exactly concentric with the circular rim of the grassy stones.

In the very center of the circle of grassy stones, a sleek, black, rocket-ship-shaped guitar was visible, unharmed, unscratched.

This looked like the selfsame guitar that had been slung over the saddle of the Amazonian horse shot to pieces and blown to smithereens before my eyes. How could it have survived... ?

Who had brought it here?

Colin said, "What is that?"

I said, "I bought it for you. A guitar. It was meant to be a surprise."

He laughed an odd laugh, and folded his wings, swooping down.

"Colin, what the hell are you doing? Up! Go up! Get us out of here!"

"Oh, come on, Amelia. Don't be silly. What could be the matter? I want to see this guitar you bought for me."

I was looking right at his eyes when it happened. His pupils shrank, contracting in a moment to tiny pinpoints, as if he were staring into a blinding light.

"Colin! This is magic! I am ordering you, as the leader, I am ordering you to get us out of here!"

"Oh... now you're just being pushy. Please, Amelia. Don't be so paranoid. That guitar is mine, isn't it? It looks cool."

"Colin! Wake up! Listen to me, for the love of God!"

"I am awake, Amelia," he said in a voice of maddening calm. "I can hear you just fine."

"Away! Fly us away!"

"I am not just going to go off and leave a nice present you bought for me. I want to see it. It looks nice. Very nice. So very nice."

I slapped him across the face. He just smiled at me, placid, his eyes going all blank, his smile empty and idiotic.

His feet touched down, and he folded his wings. We were on the ground, in the center of the grass-grown circle of Stones, in the center of the ring of toadstools.

Colin said in a sleepy voice, 'Why did you slap me, Amelia? That wasn't very nice. All I wanted to do was I.."

I looked in the higher dimensions. Rising up from the guitar were webs upon webs. They were all around us, strands and nets of magic. They were winding more and more tightly around Colin and me, glistening ruddily.

This was magic: Quentin's paradigm. It neither automatically trumped my paradigm, nor did mine automatically trump it. Was there something I could do?

I reached into the nearest cluster of moral imperatives and... twisted... something, curving the morality-strand back inward on itself to form an infinitely recurring loop.

In effect, I hoped to do to the woven web of moral obligations what I had done to the nanotech virus Dr. Fell had injected in me. I thought that if I gave the moral obligations free will, they might not be able to be used as an enchantment or as a snare.

For a moment, it seemed as if the webs might wake up and loosen us.

But then a slim and beautiful woman, dark-haired and ivory-skinned, stepped out from a tree, her footstep as soft and shy as a doe stepping. Her corona was a wreath of living leaves. Her gown was green.

She did not come from behind the tree, but from inside it: For a moment, her form was a mist or invisible essence sliding between the substance of the bark. With her next quiet step, she was solid.

I could see from her inner nature that she resided in a vessel, shaped like a woman, which was, at that moment, made for her, solidified out of thin air.

In one hand she held a slender wand of willow. She tapped it on the ground, saying, "Phobetor, Prince of Night, my gentle sweet, look to me. Look, and be enchanted by, Oenone."

His face turned toward her. His eyes were utterly blank at this point.

I saw the strand of morality twisting, shaking, tossing. I reached more deeply into the energy knot involved, trying to liberate the core of the incoming power before...

"Phobetor, you have slain Leucosia, our husband's wife, ending and therefore owing us a life. You now are owned by the nymphs of stream and tree..."

Part of the strand began to uncurl. I shouted in triumph and alarm, calling out to Colin, begging him to wake up.

Colin stirred and blinked. A tone of confusion and anger rang in his voice: "Amelia! What is happening to me-? Can you-?"

The nymph said softly, "Arms of Phaethusa, you have slain our lord's wild lady, grim Chalcomede-why should your bloodstained hands undo our work, when hers are nerveless and forever still? Hands and arms! An equal balance must require that you do our lord's and not your lady's will."