I was Tyrannosaurus rex, king of the tyrant lizards, the most ferocious carnivorous animal ever to stride the earth. I gloried in the strength and power I felt surging through me.
Hooting a piercing whistling screech, I plunged into the maelstrom of violence whirling all around me. I did not seek out the weakling unarmed duckbills nor even the dangerous triceratops. I strode through the carnage toward the other tyrannosaurs, the ones still under the murderous control of Set’s humanoids.
They were killing but not eating. Rip open the throat of a duckbill and let it fall to the dust, all that rich hot blood steaming and wasting, all that meat dying without sinking your teeth into it. Kill and then go on to another to kill again.
I pushed myself through a mound of dead and dying herbivores to reach one of my fellow tyrants. It paid me no attention, snapping after a bleating, screeching duckbill desperately trying to find a path through the blood to safety.
Just as the tyrannosaur was about to bite at the duckbill’s soft neck I crunched its own spine between my mighty teeth and felt blood and bone and warm flesh in my mouth. The tyrant screeched once, then its heavy head collapsed onto the vestigial forearms against its chest, its powerful jaws closed forever.
I dropped the dead beast and charged toward another. It took no notice of me, and I ripped its throat out with a single quick bite. Now I saw two other tyrants; they had stopped their pursuit of the herbivores and turned their glittering eyes on me.
Without hesitation I ran straight at them, slashing and clawing. The three of us tumbled to the ground hard enough to make the earth shake.
Very far away I heard a tiny voice warning, “Orion, look out!”
But I was fighting the battle of my life against the two tyrannosaurs. And winning! Already one of them was staggering, half its flank ripped open and gushing rich red blood. I was bleeding, too, but I felt no pain, only the exultant joy of battle. I backed away slightly, saw my other opponent stalking toward me, jaws agape, tiny useless forearms twitching.
Behind it other tyrannosaurs were gathering, all focused on me. I backed up until my tail brushed against the rock of the valley wall.
“Orion!” I heard it again. This time a scream, more urgent, more demanding.
And then everything went black.
Somehow I realized that I had been knocked unconscious. I was in darkness, cut off from all sensory input, but this was not the disembodied utter cold of the void between spacetimes. I had not left the continuum. Someone had come up behind me while I was directing the tyrannosaur and knocked me senseless. Despite Anya’s warnings.
I had been a fool. Now I would pay the price.
Once I realized what had happened I quickly made my body recover. Shut off the pain signals from my aching head and send an enriched flow of blood to the bruise on my scalp. Open all the sensory channels. But I kept my eyes shut and did not stir. I wanted to learn what the situation was without letting anyone know I was conscious once more.
My wrists were tightly bound behind me and more vines or ropes or whatever were wound around my arms and chest. I was lying facedown on the warm rocky ground, several pebbles and sharper small stones poking uncomfortably into me.
The only sound I heard was the snuffling half whistle of Juno. No voices, not even Anya’s. With my mind I probed the area around me. Anya was near, I could sense her presence. And half a dozen others whose minds were as cold and closed to me as a corpse frozen in ice.
“Let me see to him,” I heard Anya at last. “He might be dead—or dying.”
No response. Not a sound. In the distance I could hear the wind gusting, but no more screeching and hooting of the dinosaurs. The battle had ended.
There was no more than I could learn with my eyes shut, so I opened them and half rolled onto one side.