As the switch closed, a tiny black vortice spun suddenly into being in the center of the room, and within the black swirl was a tiny golden center. Swiftly the black vortice grew until Eos and Druga were pressed against the wall to avoid the clutch of the power of the whirlpool. The purple mist that was Diana was swept along as a whirlpool draws a straw, faster and faster, and a great scream came out of the blackness. Within, the center of the golden core seemed to give a triumphant laugh as the purple mingled there.
For a time Eos and Druga watched the swirling gold and purple sentience mingling and struggling at the center, and as the golden core shone stronger and stronger and at last overcame the purple swirling entity that was Diana, Eos pulled the switch again open, and the black vortice of space-force lessened and finally disappeared.
That intense whirlpool of black energy had taken Diana back with it into the terrible current of space. Diana would live—but only as a mote of defeated consciousness whirled along forever into the depths of space by forces too great to fight.
The man on the floor raised his head, sat up, rubbed the great lump left there by the flat of Druga's axe—and his eyes met the flaming attraction of Eos' eyes. With a bound he was at her side, gathering her up into his arms, crooning brokenly.
"How long I sat and watched your grief and envied the other men who came for their brief spell of life in Paradise before the black witchcraft of your enemy made them into stone. How long I pitied you, poor Eos! How many centuries have passed, and now a miracle! I am alive, and have you once again! No other ever shall take you from me...."
Druga picked up the axe that lay disregarded on the floor.
"That may be what you wish, stranger, and though you are no enemy, if it is Eos you desire, you shall have her only over my dead body! Arm yourself, and prepare to die!"
The stranger eyed Druga scornfully. With a sudden gliding motion, he had passed from Eos' arms and seized the sword from the floor, was driving with it for Druga's throat. Druga got the axe in the way of the sword, but an axe, whatever antiquarians may say, was never the best tool against a smart swordsman; and this man knew his way with the weapon.
He drove Druga to the wall with swift darting movements of the blade, and Druga had no time to swing the unwieldy axe, but had to keep parrying the thrusts with the axe-haft, holding it between his hands like a quarterstaff. In moments his life blood would have been spilled on the floor had not Eos cried out:
"Hold, you brawling idiots, I am for neither of you! What do you think I have gone through all this for, to have you two whom I love kill each other? Now put up the weapons before I loose my own natural lightning and send you both into that doom you can only guess at!"