Mountains rose from flatlands, continental blocks of land shifted and tilted, weather patterns were completely altered. High plateaus rose up to replace floodplains and swamps and more species of plants and animals were wiped out forever, totally destroyed by the incessant pounding the planet was suffering through.
The climate grew cooler still as new mountain chains blocked old airflows and dry land replaced swamps and inland seas. Ocean currents shifted as new tectonic plates were created out of the fissures that cracked half the planet and old plates were pulled back into the hot embrace of the planetary mantle with shuddering fitful earthquakes that shattered still more habitats of life.
If I had possessed eyes, I would have wept. Thousands upon thousands of species were dying, ruthlessly wiped out of existence because of me, because of what I had done. By destroying Sheol, by shattering Shaydan, I was killing creatures large and small, plant and animal, predator and prey, all across the face of the earth.
Whole families of microscopic plankton were annihilated from pole to pole, entire species of green plants driven into extinction. The graceful shelled ammonites, which had withstood Set’s deliberate devastation of Earth more than a hundred million years earlier, succumbed and disappeared from the rolls of life.
And the dinosaurs. Every last one of them. Gigantic fierce Tyrannosaurus and gentle duckbill, massive Triceratops and birdlike Stenonychosaurus—all gone, totally, forever gone.
I did not mean to kill them. Yet I felt a cosmic guilt. My rage against Set and his kind had resulted in all this suffering, all this death. My personal revenge had been won at the price of scrubbing the earth nearly clean of life.
I looked again at the new earth. Ice caps glittered at its poles. The rough outlines of the continents looked familiar now, although they were still not spaced across the globe in the way I remembered. The Atlantic was still widening, red-tipped volcanoes glowing down the length of the fissure that extended from Iceland to the Antarctic. North and South America were not yet connected, and the basin that would one day be the Mediterranean was a dry and grassy plain.
I saw a forest of leafy trees standing straight and tall against the morning sun. The sky was clear. The bombardment of Shaydan’s fragments had ended at last.
A gentle stream flowed through the woods. Grass grew on the ground right down to its banks. Flowers nodded brightly red and yellow and orange in the breeze while bees busily attended them. A turtle slid off a log and splashed into the stream, startling a nearby frog who hopped into a waterside thicket.
Birds soared by in fine feathery plumage. And up on a high branch sat a tiny furred ratlike animal, its beady black eyes glittering, its nose twitching worriedly.
This is all that’s left of life on Earth, I thought to myself. After the catastrophe that I caused, the planet has to make a new beginning.
I realized that just as Set had scoured the Earth to make room for his own kind of reptilian life, I had inadvertently put the planet through another holocaust that would eventually lead to my kind of life. That ratlike creature was a mammal, my ancestor, the ancestor of all humankind, the progenitor of the Creators themselves.
Once again I realized that I had been used by the Creators. I had given my body, my life, not merely to destroy Shaydan but to scrub the Earth clean and prepare it for the rise of the mammals and the human race.
“Just as I was going to do.”
It was Set’s voice speaking in my mind.
“I am not dead, Orion. I live here on Earth with my servants and slaves—thanks to you.”
BOOK IV: EARTH
Chapter 32
Set lived.
That single thought burned through my consciousness like a hot branding iron searing my flesh. He had survived the destruction of his race, of his planet, of his star. He still lived. On Earth.
I had destroyed Sheol and Shaydan, wiped out most of the life-forms on Earth. In vain. I had failed to kill Set.
“I will find you,” I said silently. Bodiless, with nothing but my essential awareness, I threw out the challenge to my deadly enemy. “I will find you and destroy you for all time.”
“Come and try,” came Set’s immediate answer. “I look forward to meeting you for the final time.”
His consciousness shone like a beacon against the black void of spacetime. I knew where and when he was. Concentrating every bit of willpower I possessed, I focused on Set. I willed myself through the tangled skein of the continuum to the place and time where he existed.
A flash of absolute cold, a moment of utter darkness and cryogenic chill, then I opened my eyes and took in a deep breath of life.
I was lying on my back, my naked body resting on warm soft earth. Tall trees rose all around me and the soft breeze brought scents of flowers and pine. I heard the melodious trill of a bird. My hands clutched at the ground and I pulled sweet-smelling grass to my face.
Yes. Paradise once again.
I sat up and looked around. The ground sloped gently before me. A brown bear shambled in the distance, trailed by two balls of fur that were her cubs. She stopped and raised her head, sniffing the air. If my scent alarmed her, she gave no notice. She just resumed her slow pace away from me, the cubs trotting along behind.
I am Orion the Hunter, reborn. Naked and alone, my mission is to find the monster Set and kill him. Kill him as he intends to kill me. Destroy him and his kind forever as he intends to destroy my kind, the human race, forever.
Smiling grimly to myself, I got to my feet and started walking slowly down the gentle slope, through the tall straight trees that dappled the afternoon sunshine with their swaying leafy branches. If this truly was part of the forest of Paradise, then Set would be at his fortress by the Nile.
The sun was too high in the sky to judge directions, so I merely followed the first stream I came to, figuring that it would eventually lead to the Nile. I knew I had a long walk ahead of me, but I had learned from Set that time means little to one who can catapult himself through the continuum at will. Patience, I counseled myself. Patience.
For days on end I walked alone, seeing neither another human being nor any of Set’s reptilians. This was a sparsely populated time, I recalled. There were probably fewer than a million humans living in the early Neolithic; their first great population explosion would not take place until they developed agriculture. How many of his own kind had Set been able to bring from Shaydan, I asked myself? Hundreds? Thousands?
I knew he had transported dinosaurs from the Mesozoic Age to this time and place: the giant lizards and fighting dragons I had met earlier were sauropods and carnosaurs from the Cretaceous.
The forest of Paradise was far from empty, however. The woods teemed with life, from tiny burrowing mice to growling, roaring lions. Using nothing but stones and wood, I quickly fashioned myself a serviceable spear and hand ax. By the second day I had a raw pelt of deerskin to wear as a loincloth. By the second week I had added a vest and leg wrappings tied with beef gut.