Ben Bova - Orion in the Dying Time

Set himself had shown me how even the Creators could be destroyed once their source of energy was denied them. Anya had taken that lesson and turned it on the devil himself. She had taken over the core tap and was now in the process of dismantling it. His screen that blotted out starlight was already gone.

The ground shook again, harder than before. I could hear the rumbling deep beneath me, like the muttering of some titanic beast. The courtyard was undulating, solid earth surging up and down like the waves of the sea. The circular wall swayed drunkenly. A section of it broke apart and came crashing to the ground.

Still I sat there, trying not to bleed to death, unsure of whether or not I could get to my feet even if I tried. The ground beneath me shuddered even more. The wall at my back quivered and groaned.

And then the middle of the courtyard erupted in a fireball that blinded me, it was so bright. Squinting so hard that tears coursed down my cheeks, I blurrily made out a fountain of red-hot lava erupting from the bowels of the earth, pulsing out waves of heat that seared my face even though I was a good hundred yards away.

“The core tap is destroyed, my love,” said Anya’s voice. “I can join you now.”

“Not before I do,” came Set’s implacably hate-filled voice.

And out of that bubbling fountain of molten hot lava boiling up from the earth’s core stepped the huge red form of Set, looking like evil incarnate, a horned demon whose reptilian eyes glittered with fury and hatred for me.

I grasped the scimitar at my side and tried to push myself up to a standing position. No use. I was too weak to stand, I had lost too much blood.

Set’s taloned feet paced closer to me, closer, until he loomed above me, silhouetted against the darkness by the glowing red-hot lava of the molten fountain in the center of the courtyard.

“You have destroyed my world, Orion,” his words burned through my mind. “But you have not destroyed me . I will destroy you.”

He reached down and clenched his clawed fingers around my throat. Lifting me completely off my feet, he began to choke the life out of me. His claws cut into my flesh, my blood flowed over his hands and arms.

I slashed at him with the scimitar, but I was too weak to harm him. His mighty arms protected his chest against my feeble swipes, and his scaly armor was proof against my blade’s edge.

Turning with me dangling between his crushing hands, Set paced slowly back to the fountain of fire. My vision was blurring, I could not breathe. The world was going dark.

“You will roast in the flames of agony for all eternity, Orion. I still have enough control over the forces of spacetime to give you the most painful death of all. Burn in hell, Orion! Forever!”

He raised me high above the boiling fountain of lava. I could feel my flesh roasting, bubbling, the pain burning to the core of my mind.

I still held the curved sword in my right hand. Raising it with the last of my strength, I plunged its point into Set’s eye and rammed it deep into his brain as hard as I could. I felt the blade grating on the bone of his eye socket, heard him howl with agony and rage.

He tottered but did not ease his grip on my throat. The hot lava seethed against my skin, all I could see was red burning molten lava and Set’s even redder face, lips pulled back in a hate-filled snarl, the curved blade of the scimitar sticking out from his eye socket, blood streaming across the glittering red scales of his cheek.

And then a flash of silver blazed before my clouding eyes. Set screamed again and I felt myself whirling through the air. Suddenly the lava was no longer broiling my skin. A gleaming silver globe hovered in midair, a jagged blue-white lightning bolt crackling from its glowing spherical surface, writhing and hissing like an electrical snake clamped to the broad back of Set’s scaly body.

A golden globe appeared, and then a pure white one. And one of deepest ruby red, all of them firing twisting, sputtering shafts of electricity into Set’s body. He dropped me, screeching and hissing, his tail lashing wildly, his hands clutching at empty air. He staggered backward toward the fountain of lava, his body wrenching and thrashing as his screams pierced through me like hot knives.

More globes appeared, copper and emerald green, bronze and gleaming brass, each of them adding its lightning blast to Set’s tortured form, pushing him bodily into the seething fountain of fiery lava.

With a final shriek of agony and despair Set plunged into the bubbling molten metal, the red scales of his body disappearing in the blazing, searing fountain of hell that he himself had created.

I lay on my burning back, more dead than alive.

The globes of energy hovered around me and took on human forms: Anya, Zeus, red-haired Ares, beautiful Aphrodite, dark-eyed Hera. And the Golden One, of course, looking as smug as ever.

He stepped forward, smiling, his golden mane glowing against the night, a long cloak of gold and white wrapped around his muscular body.

“We’ve done well,” he said cheerfully. “That devil will never bother us again.”

“Orion has done well,” Anya countered, kneeling beside me on the blood-soaked ground of the courtyard. I felt dizzy, weak. I was consciously suppressing the pain from my burns, yet I knew that my wounds were deep, perhaps fatal. But once she touched my grimy brow with her cool fingers I felt new strength flowing into me.

“Oh, he played his part. It all went according to my plan.”

Zeus cocked an eyebrow. “Come now, Aten, if it hadn’t been for Orion, we would never have been able to penetrate Set’s defenses.”

With some vehemence in her voice, Anya added, “Orion distracted the monster long enough for me to take control of his energy source and destroy it.”

I looked around the shattered courtyard. Dead carcasses of sauropods and carnosaurs lay like small hills. Bodies of slain Shaydanians sprawled among them. The curving fortress wall was half smashed down. The searing fountain of lava had disappeared.

“It was a time stasis,” Anya said to me softly. “Set intended to plunge you into that fountain of hell and leave you in it forever.”

“Instead…” My voice was a strangled dry croak.

“Instead we pushed him into his own hell,” she said. “While you distracted him, we were able to shut off his energy source and return from our hiding places to attack him.”

“He’s dead.”

“He is in stasis,” said Zeus. “Roasting for eternity.”

Alarmed, I propped myself up on one elbow. “Then he could be released?”

Aten made a sneering smile. “None of us will release him! Would you, Orion?”

I shook my woozy head, muttering. “It would have been better to kill him.”

“Not so easily done, my love. Be satisfied that we have won.”

“Lots of the dinosaurs got loose,” I remembered.

“Good hunting for your Mongol friends,” said Aten. He pulled his cloak tighter about him. It began to shimmer.

“Wait!” I called.

The Creators looked down at me, their faces curious or annoyed.

“What about Subotai? He is here with only his personal guard, less than a thousand men.”

“Quite enough, I should think,” said Zeus.

“I promised him that I would bring his entire army here. That means all his people, their women, their flocks and herds, their yurts and all their belongings.”

“Why bother?” asked Aten scornfully. “The barbarian general accomplished nothing. He’s useless to us.”

Struggling up to a sitting position, I answered, “He is my friend. I promised him.”

“Ridiculous.” Aten sneered.

“That’s not for you to decide alone,” Anya snapped.