Titanomachy PT. 1.
Godzilla tugged furiously as he was pulled by the viny tendrils toward the water, but to no avail. The ground, even with its extreme durability, was simply too soft for the strength of the creature which tugged at him and his impenetrable hide. He toppled over onto his back, his rigid spines carving massive canyons through the black ground. Massive glowing towers collapsed around him.
The tendrils took him into the shimmering sea. He snorted. Such a foolish move. He was the ruler of the seas. Anyone who tried to challenge him there was in for an uphill battle. He prepared himself to teleport away from the tendrils and come up behind his opponent. Yet, his attempts failed.
This sea wasn't his domain. Somehow, neutral territory.
It didn't take long for Godzilla to come up with an explanation. Hercules. It was that damned pirate, as always. Whatever he did, his lackey was able to make an entire dimension specified to keep him contained. It was as he had always thought would happen.
……….
Hercules liked to place himself outside the Olympians, but that was delusion. Since the dawn of the multiverse, there were always sinners leading to other sinners. Always thinking themselves above each other but they were all blood born.
The beginning of the multiverse itself was an end. The twilight of the last cycle gave birth to the Core, Seed, whatever it is. From the twilight came Nox, or Nyx. Not the human, but something that Godzilla himself couldn't quite comprehend. Much as he gathered, she was the dark, the night, the chaos. Where there is no light, that is Nyx. Floating within the dark, as the tree took root and branches came forth the concept of a sky came over a boiling ball of magma. There came forth Nyx's sibling, Uranus. The personification of the sky.
And amongst those came the the First Ancestral Race. By all means, they could be considered gods. Some still remained in the World Tree, but they were brought down by their hubris. Godzilla couldn't comprehend why, but they thought that they should make more of themselves. It wasn't enough to create art, to keep one another company. They wanted more. So, when the multiverse was forming around them they planted seeds. Two seeds for each habitable world. Both would hold spears, a sort of backup if the formula failed.
That formula? Merging the life on the planet into one. Becoming a supreme being as their individuality went away with a simple pop. The planets would bleed, distort. The converted forms of the life on the planet served as amniotic fluid, gestating the embryo of a future god.
Nox tried to warn them, to manifest more things like this could lead to conflict in the long run. But it was not enough.
The results… were unpredictable. The manifestation of the branch of the World Tree merged with the new god, giving birth to Gaia. A representation of a planet which can hold life. Some would call her the goddess of Earth, but that is thinking much too small. She was a manifestation of a branch of the world tree, higher in power than the First Ancestral Race, and was brought to life by force. Copies upon copies of her would be born through the sheer endless might of the tree's growth, but here he was referring to Hercules's direct ancestor.
Gaia could bring life alone and only did so passingly until she found herself with Uranus. As the cosmos shaped, realms upon realms with their own representative gods were born. Gaia didn't like their company. She wanted power and so through her different worlds on her branch, she and Uranus brought forth the Titans. Uranus himself was greedy and power hungry, however, and subjugated Gaia. He knew eventually she would strike back, so he consumed their children one by one with the exception of those hidden inside one of Gaia's branches.
These were the first race of giants. The Hundred-Handed, the Primal Cyclopes, and the Titans. They fought back and struck down Uranus's core, butchering him allowing his blood to fill countless seas and leaving only small segments of him behind. Amnesiac, only able to remember his bond with Gaia. It would become the duty of an unfortunate soul to keep him from reuniting with her.
The Titans managed to make a rule worse than that of their mother. She didn't want much to do with life and violently rejected the seeds of it on her favorite worlds. But the Titans wanted someone to control, so they lulled her to sleep and settled on a little planet called Earth. One teeming with life.
With life established on their planet, they exploited it for labor, food and profit. They even bound their siblings, the other races of giants and threw them into the domain of Tartarus---an entity of pain, barrenness and despair. This limited the time of the Titans, but not enough.
When Cronus too became worried about his spawn beating him, he consumed them too. But they had a one-up. Their mother helped them release the Cyclopes and the Hundred-Handed. Cronus's hours were numbered from there.
Which led then to the rule of Jupiter and the rest of the Olympians. To say their treatment of the mortals was scarcely better was an understatement. It wasn't as if the humans were much better than them, though. The gods were lazy and hateful and the humans were their kin. They clubbed each other, beheaded one another, led each other into gas chambers and harnessed nuclear power.
As if humanity wasn't bad enough on its own, the gods weren't totally gone. Their machinations, interfering with the mortal world brought forth literal monsters well before the humans created their own.
The Titanomachy wasn't over. The Olympians still couldn't control the raging storm that was Typhon, the brother of the Titans. The Olympians even played right into Gaia's hands.
Before Typhon was fully reined in, the Earth was mostly monster free. The gods made sure that it didn't stay that way for long.
Medusa was a pious woman, dedicated to her guardian goddess Minerva whom helped keep Typhon at bay alongside the others. She would tend to the temple and go to wind down beside the sea. There she would sometimes fall asleep. There, she met Godzilla's predecessor, Neptune. It was not a pleasant experience.
Minerva was a disgusting, spiteful goddess. She blamed Medusa for what happened to her. The best thing Hercules ever did was track her down and murder her. Medusa didn't live to see Minerva receive justice, however. She was thrown out of society for her "sin", forced to live as a Gorgon whom nobody could lay an eye on without turning to stone. Then, she was hunted down and murdered in an alleged hero's quest. It was only then the children that she carried, born of Neptune, managed to evacuate themselves out of her limp corpse. Pegasus, and Chrysaor---the Golden Sword.
The Golden Sword was buried by history, but his exploits never ended. He fathered the Mother of Monsters Echidna. Her union with Typhon brought about the birth of thousans of monsters. Even after the Giants were defeated, their older brother destroyed, their legacy still lived on. Their grandnieces and grandnephews continued to be at large. The monsters were destroyed too. But it wasn't until after they got their final say.
Chrysaor wasn't gone. And Jupiter had made a dire miscalculation on his treatment of his son, Hercules. The Grandfather of Monsters found himself a very, very dear friend.
……….
Godzilla knew the Titanomachy wasn't over the minute he realized that the son of Medusa wasn't gone. That that the son of Jupiter had a chip on his shoulder. The will to burn it to the ground was there. And they had gotten ahold of Potara earrings.
_____________________
The Other watched the sky. He could feel it from here… his nephews and niece. It was their power, all rolled into one. He didn't know how, but he had his theories. It was quite odd the way their mother vanished so long ago. He doubted Tiamat would abandon them, especially to their father. He didn't know how much Tiamat knew it, but he didn't like Marice much and he doubted she did either. In fact, when he was greeted by Daeva his words just spilled out. He was in disbelief that she would be so calm about leaving her to that monster. He told her everything back then. Now, her brothers would know that too.
The Other had said to Daeva first, "I was trying to kill him, foolish as that already was... foolish as it proved to be. I was hopelessly outmatched. I spent countless nights trying to find some way to do it. I learned sorcery. I dabbled in the occult, shrouded by the evil of your father. The gods of Nexus pointed me to a world. They said that I would find something that could stop him there. I thought there, there would be salvation..."
Then proceeded his account of the faithful encounter with a radioactive monster. All of it…
___________________________
The Other: An Origin
Daichi pushed the manhole cover free. The breeze off a car passing overhead whipped through his mask. Gently came wilted petals of a cherry blossom drifting downward. This was the place.
He moved without disturbing the petals nor the next car. He was a phantom. It was as if he'd never been there. Despite this, he was ever so slightly close to being hit by the car. He could have done better. But, to use his full power would have been a mistake. Even in this distant world, there could have been eyes watching.
Once in the alleyway, he hopped and kicked the side of a building. He did so until he stood atop a tower. He ran across its edge masked by the neon. He leaped to the next, climbing with such grace as to not disturb the lanterns hanging below. He walked to the edge and stared over the locale.
It had a certain level of familiarity to him. His current guise and this place's legendary assassins...
It was clear that the time period he had arrived in was one where they were all dead and gone. The working class of this town spent their days in an office more than they did farming. A trio of girls underneath an awning shook a vending machine attempting to get back money they had lost.
If this quaint settlement's development had him impressed, seeing the metropolis of Tokyo would undoubtedly knock him to the floor. Now wasn't the time to admire civilization. This one's very development was at stake.
Clasping his hands together and sitting down, Daichi summoned several spectral duplicates of himself. Upon closing his eyes, he could see through theirs as they fanned out across the town analysing every detail in search for clues as to the weapon's location.
One weaved through a neighborhood, phasing through into homes and zipping through their contents. Unlikely as it would be, he had to cover all the ground. However, something gave him pause. He caught a glimpse of a family huddling together in terror. Had he been discovered?
At once, his duplicates stood around and searched for signs. None were discovered. Yet, he could see a wave of concern wash across the denizens of the town. He focused his mind, scanning countrywide for what could possibly be the cause.
"This is Tokyo. Once a city of thirteen million people. What has happened here was caused by a force which up until a few days ago was entirely beyond the scope of Man's imagination. Tokyo, a smoldering memorial to the unknown, an unknown which at this very moment still prevails and could at any time lash out with its terrible destruction anywhere else in the world. There were once many people here who could've told of what they saw... now there are only---"
A disaster? One which struck millions? The ninja found his concentration broken completely by a sudden feeling of concern. Waking up from his meditation, he noticed that he was already chewing away at his lip. He stood and paced. Something, something unknown had torn apart the city. And it couldn't have been him. sad*stic as the evil one was, he wouldn't destroy a city... not without making Daichi watch. This was something new... but a worldwide threat nonetheless.
He could risk entering government buildings to access their files despite a lack of familiarity with the technology, but it seemed evident to him that the simplest and quickest route would be to interact with the locals.
Daichi leaped to a perch below before nimbly kicking off, in the process shrouding himself in the image of a traveler from the region. He examined his image in a puddle below---No flaws. Once that was through, he quickly scanned the area and found a tea shop. Stepping in, he came across a sight most expected. A patron was complaining about the news, not wanting to see it anymore. They were causing quite the ruckus. Chameleon he was, Daichi spoke the native tongue fluently: "What's going on?"
The cashier replied, "It's nothing. He's just tense. With what happened to Tokyo."
"They know what hit it?"
"Where've you been? It's a giant monster."
"I thought that was… a digital effect."
"I wish."
"I have family in Tokyo," the patron said, barely keeping themselves composed. "And friends. Or, had them."
Daichi bowed his head in sympathy. He didn't wish to come across as too extravagant. Coming from a place of tragedy, this was easy. "At least the military will deal with it."
"They tried. Thing, like, molted several times. Even those missiles that drill into bunkers couldn't do a thing."
Daichi sat back in a chair. What form of infernal creature could have manifested here, in all places? If it wasn't Marise it had to have been some other conquerer, some extra dimensional thing or something extraterrestrial. "Where is it now?"
"Can we talk about something else already?"
"I apologise," said Daichi. He ordered a drink and talked to the patron before he left the establishment. Outside he gazed contemplatively at the Eastern sky.
More information had come in through the television as he spoke. The beast---Godzilla---was currently 108 meters tall, lizardlike in appearance despite initially sharing some common elements with sea animals. Somehow, it managed to intercept a nuclear bomb with its own stream of thermonuclear breath, which it had also used to aid in slicing apart and burning down Tokyo. It was currently heading eastward with a strong possibility it would target a nearby city.
He wrestled with himself over what to do. He came here with a mission. That mission was one he stewed over for ages, watching the children be treated in ways that he couldn't imagine. Those four, they had potential to do wonderful things. With their father's vice grip, only sorrow would take hold. Dante had the potential to unleash one of the most destructive things in all of existence but, he theorized, tame it. The boy was an inspiring presence, one whom he had taken notes from, but the shadow of his father loomed over them all.
Yet, to simply ignore Godzilla would mean to damn this planet. To forgo the needs of these people just for his quest was wrong. Though it was true that his specialty was in espionage he surely could destroy this creature without any effort. Then, he would return to his mission. He could save this planet and he could save his niece and nephews, no compromise.
Daichi readied himself as he turned in the direction of the city. His body eased itself before priming all essential muscles. He then leaped into the air, leaving only a faint trail of light in the immediate area from which he jumped. This single leap was enough to take him entirely outside of the town. From there, he took through the hills. The gentle roll of the mountain and the trunks of the trees barely registered. A lake was as if it were completely solid. One would think he would lose his sense of direction and they’d be wrong. His destination was met in next to no time.
Daichi stood at the bottom of a towering mountain, staring up to the peak then back at the others. Yes, this would do. Here he would be able to spot a creature of such an immense size. With several gentle leaps, he stood on a rocky outcropping just below the clouds. Gentle fog clung to the Yakuza, soothing his skin as he crouched down in waiting. Across from him was a waterfall pouring into a river, shining a rainbow upon the misty landscape. A place of true beauty. It was as if it were the realm of a god.
As that thought crossed Daichi’s mind, he heard a low rumble. A vibration gently nudged his feet, immediately putting the ninja on guard. He scanned the valley for evidence. And immediately, he found it.
The water in the river swelled with the mass of some unseen thing, breeched then by first one charred spire and then two others. They were followed by the rest, arranged in three rows. Water rolled off two rows of fangs and down the nose leading up to two eyes… eyes which were marred with confusion. The creature was on all fours, looking at both of its brawny arms and then at the ground. Its eyes traced its reflection. With no other warning, a beam erupted from its unhinged jaws. The immediate valley shuddered with the force. All around the creature, the hills began to collapse in a cloud of dust and steam. It roared defiantly. So loud, in fact, that Daichi had no other choice but to cover his ears.
The crumbling mountain sides were taken as challengers to Godzilla. It thrashed its tail in a wide circle, digging massive trenches as the sheer force caused the other side to collapse. Its breath struck the mountain beside Daichi, tunneling straight through it before it dragged it toward the hill.
This thing was going to level the whole mountain range! Yet, there wasn't malice. Not yet at least. It was simply confused. Lashing out at a world it couldn't comprehend. Daichi felt a twinge of sympathy as he leaped in to stop the path of the beam. Holding out his hand, he fired a ray larger than his entire body which stopped Godzilla’s right in its tracks before pushing itself into the beast’s maw. With an explosion, teeth flew around the valley as gorpetos. But, even before Daichi could think that his job was done a gutteral hiss escaped from the carnage. As the smoke cleared, Daichi gazed upon Godzilla now looking again at the ground. This time, at a sheet of glass created from its fiery tantrum. It tilted its head and watched itself move its hands and neck. It flared its gills curiously.
Daichi floated down to its large scaly shoulder. He stepped away from what was quite apparent to be a fresh keloid scar. He watched the creature’s reflection alongside it.
It was just now becoming aware. He swallowed as he soaked this in. Millions of people were killed… because it just existed. Godzilla just so happened to be there. No malice. This hit Daichi harder than he had imagined it could. He was used to evil. He was used to Marise. This was different. It was an infant and a catastrophe wrapped into one. As it studied itself, it read its features and the immediate area. Perhaps if there was a mind forming it would cease the destruction?
He crouched and attempted to communicate with the creature psychically. Its mind was… there. The problem was, it didn't seem to like that he was inside it. Its head echoed with the sounds of screams. Overwhelming, incoherent. But one thing managed to come out:
"You… you hurt me."
It turned its head in the direction from which Daichi’s blast had come. sh*t. How did it know where the attack came from. How did it know it was from him? With a heave, it shot its blazingly blue beam toward the mountain. Daichi threw himself in front of the blast, cancelling it out with his own. The creature’s expression seemed to change slightly. It threw more of itself into the blast. It was as if holding back a concentrated five megaton warhead. Fine, if it was going to attempt to destroy everything with nuclear power he would return that many times fold.
He unleashed a blast just above that of the humans’ most powerful nuclear bomb.
It quickly overpowered Godzilla’s attack and washed over the beast with fiery intensity. Despite the attack’s power, it did little to damage the surroundings and, as it turned out, Godzilla. Daichi sat suspended in the air, studying the monster. No creature on this planet should have been able to withstand such an attack. Yet, now he looked upon the thing who had defied the odds. Whatever the attack had done, it was so miniscule as to be not mentioned at all and had already been undone within seconds.
He sighed. There was some part of Daichi that wished the monster would survive that attack. An irrational part of him. Now that his wish had come true, he realized that it meant this thing was an even greater threat than he had imagined. As Godzilla charged up again, Daichi unleashed a blast straight into the creature’s midsection. It had just about enough time to let out a screech before exploding into a golden blaze. All that remained were bones. Its skull trapped in an eternal howl as its arm grasped at its belly. Daichi turned away from the sight, but the sound of the bones cracking apart were reminiscent of a landslide. It was done.
Or so it seemed.
Daichi reclined against the one mountain which remained standing as he looked upon the corpse. Staring at it caused so many questions to form in his mind. How could something like this come to be in a world like this? It was true that not only from his recent travels that giant beasts were not uncommon. Even ones as powerful as this one, so long as the conditions were met. This world didn't seem to have such means. The environment was all wrong. Unless…
It was a child of Tiamat. The thought filled him with guilt. He hadn't seen her birth anything like this, it was true. Still, myths and legends had a certain portrayal of her. The name was associated with the bringing of dragons with poison blood, not unlike the creature before him. That made Godzilla, in some roundabout way, family.
He was supposed to guide the children of Tiamat. Be an anchor in the dark. He knew she was disappointed in him already. All this strange behavior. All this leaving randomly. He always struggled with it, every time: was this the right direction? Should he have at least told Tiamat? She once felt for him as her own brother. That had vanished more with every mission. He told himself every time that he was saving them in a roundabout way. Marise couldn’t know, so the information must be kept to himself and the grim things whose trails he followed. But now, there was something presented to him that if true, would truly make him a failure.
You’ve always been a failure, Daichi. Just the other. Neither the greatest protector, nor their true father. They looked to you less. And now, even lesser. You best just get off the face of this planet, or the multiverse at large.
No. They needed him. He needed them. They had to be the best they could be. So did he. The best Daichi was the one who would kill Marise and bring peace to the family. Nothing had changed. He had a mission.
As Daichi rose, becoming ready to leave to the town and find the weapon once more, he could hear the loud chopping of air, and several large military choppers appeared in the area. They stopped in the air, seeming to observe the monster. Daichi observed them in turn, fading into the underbrush. He was quick to realize that they had come from not the direction of a military base, but from the same direction he had. If these were hidden there, he found it now very likely that the weapon he sought was under military custody. Daichi cursed. He didn’t want to get involved with the natives’ defensive forces but now it seemed likely that even with his stealth he would have to engage. Especially given he had flared his powers too much as is, so he would need to suppress himself even further than when he first arrived.
One of the choppers readied itself to land in a relatively flat clearing below. Daichi took this opportunity by edging down the hillside. The trees were his domain. He scurried along the branches, leaping to to from gently. By the time he got down, several soldiers had fanned out and were taking pictures and speculating about how things had gone down.
“Think he melted down, somehow?”
A soldier held up a geiger counter. “Nope, no radiation at all over here.”
“Yeah, because this place is the only one untouched.”
“You’d think if he exploded this whole area would be a crater. How come this hill is still here?”
“Think something ate him?”
A soldier shuddered. “Please don’t get that idea in my head. Still freaked out about that puppet thing at base.”
One of the soldiers seemed exasperated by the situation. Daichi was mildly put off by the casual manner in which they were speaking. It clashed very hard with what he knew other humans to be like. It was almost as if this were something they were curious about and the tragedy of Tokyo didn’t phase them. More bizarre was despite the choppers bearing the mark of the Japanese Defense Force, the soldiers did not.
“That’s Eve. Give some respect to the first lady.”
“Yeah, right. Give my respects to some mutant who gets her name from a death cult.”
“Godzilla died for your sins.”
Their odd behavior made Daichi less remorseful about snatching the quietest one into the bushes. Even though Daichi had a hold on the man and his mouth covered, the soldier managed to free themselves enough to attempt to stab him in the throat. Faster than the man could see, his attack was stopped. Daichi tapped him on the shoulder, knocking him unconscious. Daichi quickly placed a teleportation badge on the man, setting the timer to four hours before he’d be brought back to the chopper. He removed the man’s communications gear and assumed his form, walking out and pretending to take pictures until being called back.
“Shinji. Time to go back to base.”
Daichi responded appropriately and returned to the chopper. The others were still speculating about what could have been done to Godzilla. Daichi imitated their tone, “Perhaps, something from space?”
“Looks like Shinji has a sense of humor after all,” one said.
“We’ve had enough crazy things from space already.”
So, it would seem that they had contact with the world beyond. Looking at their technology, what they saw was either not hostile or unintelligent and weak. That being the case, Daichi silently bemoaned what was certainly a horrible fate for the off world creature. Humans were inherently hostile. Several Earths he had come across were defiled, left to ruin by war---often nuclear in nature.
Life did happen to be fairly resilient, however. In cases of climate change, he witnessed futures where things like lizards, rodents, co*ckroaches and even the occasional squid evolved to fill interesting ecological niches. Most creatures were more pleasant than the humans that they replaced. But during nuclear apocalypses, life never came back. The thought brought him back to Godzilla. He had some suspicions that humans were the root cause of the issue but at least he now gave them extra time to get better.
It took roughly 10 minutes to arrive at the town. He watched it float by through his window. Flying at this rate was a surreal experience for a being like him. To not use his power to move and simply do what felt like a gentle drift inside a container... he always preferred vehicular flight to his own. Hopefully once Marise was done for, he could then meet up with the dragon that the gods were keeping away.
Something resembling a large garage door slid out of the way, revealing a large cavern within a hillside. The choppers entered one by one before it closed once again and he was told to get a move on. He did so, but not without first taking in the environment. One never knew when it would be useful.
The cavern was tall enough for a 30 meter creature to enter and was supported by metal beams. held up by large pillars. Within a pillar to the side was the elevator which he used to get downstairs, following the soldiers.
In contrast to the floor above, the one Daichi found himself one was blank and sterile. Blinding flourescent lights ignited a smooth white tile floor. Along the hallway’s white walls were steel doors. In some cases, there were windows which offered glances into the rooms. He spotted a decent school-grade chemistry lab and across from it a lab featuring petri dishes and an assortment of live animals. Some didn’t seem to be of a species he recognized, but he was far from an expert on Earth biology. A soldier tapped him on the shoulder.
“Forget where the computer lab is or what? We don’t have time for you to clown around.”
Daichi quickly spotted the computer lab and wordlessly moved toward it. He could hear the soldier say as he entered:
“What a freak.”
In the room, several soldiers and people in lab coats sat in front of monitors logging data. He watched the judgmental human sit in place and remove a small memory card from his camera. Daichi fiddled with the camera before finding the exact location of the memory card. Upon removing it, he began to utter an enchantment. Something at the back of his mind told him not to be acquiring the information this way. He had hastily learned this process some years ago, realizing that he would likely need to mingle with primitive technology in order to increase his skills at espionage. Still, this tech was so backwater that even his knowledge could not work. His hesitancy quickly faded and he inserted the card into the computer.
It was as if he had entered a massive series of caves and canals, all coming toward him and bombarding him with information. The Yakuza was almost overwhelmed by the process. They tugged away at his inner being, the data stream pulling him each way and digging itself into him. He attempted to refrain from using ki---and in the process melt down the entire Earth information grid---but it became enough that he had to fight it back. He stepped firm, sending his power in a wave. However, in such a spiritual form he only succeeded in scattering himself further.
That wasn’t the only problem, either. The data on the card which he had ridden on had been corrupt. It had now invaded him even further than the overwhelming might of the world wide web. He had to use an enchantment to reaffirm himself. But, in doing so he would permanently corrupt himself. Damn it Daichi, just follow your instincts.
With a fading chant, he felt all of himself come back together. He looked at his astral form. Things, many strange things floated through as images across his spirit. Facts, arguments, philosophies, names, they all popped into his head as intrusive thoughts. Waves of pain struck him along with images of Godzilla’s skull, mixing themselves with the memories of the creature’s final moments and making them stronger. But, now that he had strengthened himself, he could isolate himself from most of the larger stream. He would come to realize later, he had brought into himself a duplicate of the planet’s information.
Daichi shambled his way through the tunnels. Even here, there was a large amount of data. The first few dozen things he found were either useless or things logging the dissection of an alien creature and containment protocol for a highly adaptable cambrian living fossil. Eventually, however, he found the information he was looking for. The weapon: a glowing lance of seemingly pure light, with energy unfathomable to the humans. And exactly what he needed to put an end to the reign of terror. It was a floor below, held in a lab. All he needed to do was take it.
Daichi’s soul reentered his body. When it did, the room was empty and many of the chairs were spilled over. Everything was left ajar. His body had been lying on the floor. Whatever had happened had made the humans get moving had justified them leaving him unconscious.
A shiver went down his spine when he heard a familiar roar and the walls of the facility rumbled.
“Is he here already?” said a soldier.
“Impossible,” a scientist said. “Godzilla has never moved that fast before.”
“Yeah, and since when has something come back from just a skull?”
They didn’t have any more time before vaporizing, followed by a wall of fire. Daichi flew back, crashing through a meter’s worth of solid steel. He blinked the blur out of his vision before vomiting profusely. If it hadn’t been for his slight spike in power, he would have been vaporized alongside the humans. He allowed himself to heave up blood before making his armor reappear. The ball of fire had turned the hillside into molten rock. Journeying to the edge, he could see that everything for many kilometers had been turned into a single smoldering crater. In the epicenter, rock floated into the sky as vapor before sending a rain of lava down onto the surrounding spaces. There was no plant life left to burn. And no town with people to see.
Then it came again: the roar. Louder, angrier. Daichi realized soon that an attack was coming for him. With the sound of thunder multiplied threefold, Daichi dove below to grab the weapon. He whirled around in time for the lance to block the atomic beam. To any mortal, the light would be blinding, but Daichi watched the attack look as if it were swirling into the lance. Once it was done, Daichi couldn’t help but grin. Yes, this will do, but he wouldn’t waste it on this monster. No, that would give it away. And so would using his power too extensively. He would have to end this quickly.
Daichi strapped the lance to his back, trading places with his own personal spear. Then, he channeled his power into a massive leap which took him kilometers in Godzilla’s direction. Weapon out, he spotted the creature. It was standing where he had left it. He stopped in midair. “Do you understand what you have done?”
A blank eye rolled upward in his direction. Half formed lips curled up in fury. A combination of a hiss and a groan escaped from the creature’s throat accompanied by the sound of loud thumping from the exposed side of its ribcage. Glistening scales crawled over muscle covered in a thin white film. Daichi could just make out the forms of humans melting into his massive heart, their spirits moaning in his head before vanishing. Then, it was only Godzilla’s voice. He could feel the creature’s pain through this brief moment. Godzilla’s jawbone---held onto a fully formed neck by a series of muscles and tendons---broke apart, reshaping itself and becoming larger. The flesh could barely keep up, leaving the jaw barely hanging. That was enough for Godzilla. Once again, it sent a torrent of energy toward Daichi.
Daichi swerved out of the way, processing the heat thrown from the attack. That energy output… it was the same as the attack which had incinerated Godzilla. Daichi growled and hurled himself toward Godzilla, spear jutting out in a massive surge of energy. At the last second, Daichi drew his sword. Together, they dug clear through the monster’s skull and vital organs and chopped his skeleton apart.
Once the pillar of light disappeared, Daichi stood alone. No signs were left of the monster. He sat on the glass ground of the obsidian wasteland.
Truth be told, he was shellshocked. That he had to use so much effort the first time was unthinkable but to use this much a second time? It was beyond the imagination. And now the web now invading his mind, that was saying something.
Yet he still felt reassured. This thing definitely wasn’t one of Tiamat’s. It was some folly of man. He thought to himself, this would make an interesting tale. Likely not popular in the other Earths’ eastern countries nor this one, but people did love a dragon story. A fable about not allowing industry and war to overcome your humanity. Then, it came back to him:
Millions of people were dead because of this thing. He could be happy to be rid of it, but now was not to be cheerful. Not to mention, Marise could be watching at this very moment.
A sense of dread overwhelmed him.
You’re being silly, Daichi. Just suppress your power and Marise will never know. Now that you have the weapon, you can simply disguise it as your own and obliterate him. This was just an aside. It’s not even the monster you’re worried about.
That thought would come to haunt him. Godzilla wasn't gone. Godzilla was coming back that very second. And he wouldn't stop coming back. He had made himself the target not of Marise, but of something else. Gods, they always did lead to the birth of monsters...
______________
The situation was dire. Before their very eyes, Raspaganje was claiming victory. The ritual was still missing its key components. Things were going far faster than La'tomer had anticipated. He wouldn't be able to assemble the gods, only what we have here.
Dana dropped to her knees. It was strange now that she would do so to anyone from the outside. She should have been catatonic as far back as Noon Harvest. He couldn't help but pry back into her mind back then, his world could only heal a fractured mind through knowing its intricacies. He was sure her magic was going to contain the Behemoth and Jake, but there was a more urgent issue now. It was ironic, the unnatural way in which she reincarnated was simultaneously the thing that could save them all and the thing which held her back.
Who was he kidding? It wasn't only her that would save them all…
He addressed the others, "I… have been a lackluster god. I suppose it's second nature for a god of sleep to be that way. My arrogance isn't."
A dust storm formed around him. He began, bit by bit, to merge into it as it grew exponentially more large in size, in a few seconds becoming the size of a gas giant. "So don't take this as me acting like the boss or some nonsense like that. I don't even know if this is going to work…"
A small dust devil swallowed Dana. Unfortunately for her, he would need to pull a full rest on her to heal her. There was someone she was fighting for, even if they had passed on to the other side. To bring back her drive, she would have to heal… and feel her memories of an eternity over again.
And he, the Sandman, would have to see if a being ancient as two multiverse needed to sleep.
"I'll buy you guys time. Hercules is coming to you. Say your prayers, little ones…"
"Something's coming, cackled the Legendary Beast. Jake could feel the thing's mirth at the idea that the Sandman was being upstaged.
"If anybody was going to surprise me," Jake grinned, "it was going to be them."
A new challenger came to Raspaganje. Something which seemed to be able to hurt him.
"But for how long?"
"Long enough, we just found ourselves a key ingredient. We just need to get Dana ready to go."
I do hope that they see our time together in the afterlife again, the Legendary Beast bragged. It would seem… I saved you."
Jake really hoped that the person whom Raspaganje was sealed in didn't have to listen to him speak. Still, it was an interesting insight to Dana's psyche.
And goddamnit she had to be reincarnated the worst way possible.
_________
The Afterlife
The canopy of the evergrowing trees set beams of light through to the waterfall adjacent to Dana. She let her face be washed with the cool mist, waving her hand toward the rainbow that appeared. Her eyes moved down the creek to a spot completely shrouded in shadow. The ridged fins of an amphibious creature disrupted the black water, sending a chill up her spine.
She was twice the creature's size and its scent sent a subtle message to her brain: prey. Yet, its site unsettled her. She inhaled deeply and eased herself into the water. If she was feeling afraid, she had to face it head on. The pool underneath the waterfall was surprisingly deep. She had to keep herself afloat in the waters. Waving her powerful tail, she moved toward the shadowy part of the creek. First, she progressed slowly. Then she gained confidence. But it was soon completely lost.
This just didn't feel quite right. Even with her experiencing fear looking at the surface, it didn't feel like she was facing any phobias by swimming in the dark water. She swam over to the bank and rose out of the water until it was ankle deep. That was when a shiver overtook her.
She looked down. For a second, it didn't feel right that she had feet. Once the feeling had went away, she still felt a sense of unease.
It had been like this since her larval stage. One of her first memories was of her being plucked out of the water and put into a tank away from most of the others. The communal figures who took care of the children said that suddenly, she started panicking and attempted to leave the water despite not yet losing her gills. The only thing that kept her calm was a brightly lit tank. There were others there, one whose colors she became quite familiar with as the years gone by.
It was only once she reached adolescence that she could put her finger on why this fear existed. "Fear" being the best word for it, because the sight and sensation of dark water recalled to her a cavernous landscape filled with fog and icy water. This world visited her in her dreams. It wasn't just a dream, though. It was a memory. She remembered thinking to herself, I can't remember that… it didn't happen. It couldn't happen.
Dana was taken out of her reminiscing by a sound in the distance. It was fairly common to encounter wildlife out here. The sight of it always happened to put her at ease so she turned her head to look. But in the distance was not any animal. It was another dragon. One she recognized. It didn't take long for them to also notice her. She met eyes with her friend Kenzie, who had been staring up the trunk of a tree.
The two gazed into each other's eyes for some time. Even from this distance, there was something telling Dana that. A certain… magnetism could be felt. It was as if those amber eyes were right across from her, using the windows to have a little glimpse into her soul. There was a warmth to it that fought evenly with an icy dread.
"Having a dip?" Kenzie said.
"Yup," replied Dana. Suddenly, she realized, it was as if they had spent a much longer time together than they already had. Dana could recall a set of plains next to a creek, its water running low under the beating of Nexus's stars. A few trees sat in the plain, right across from a granite cliff. In the memory, she could see herself crouching down to plant a sapling. Above her the distant sound of thunder.
This, this didn't scare her. She was looking into somebody else's memories but it wasn't running contrary to her sense of security. No, it was like a friend telling her a story.
Kenzie smiled and turned away. "See you back in civilization."
"Wanna have a swim with me?"
"How about we go by the Shipwrecks tomorrow instead? Just the two of us?"
It took Dana some time to register what Kenzie meant by that request. Once she did, she became slightly flustered. Everyone had always insisted that the way she and Kenzie would simply get along was because of love. Dana had always seen it as more complicated than that. Nothing was holding them back from simply getting together, especially given the gods' tendency to just not pay attention. With genetic engineering, they could even have their own batch of eggs together... So, what kept them from simply being together? It was like the biggest mystery amongst the village, when one of them was going to ask the other out.
Dana was hoping that she would have gotten to ask Kenzie. But now, whatever was blocking them had gone away and she was the one being asked out.
Her being flustered didn't last long, however. She pumped her fists into the air joyfully and said, "It's a date!"
It was only after Kenzie left that Dana wondered: why tomorrow, and not today? Daylight hadn't started to fade yet. If Kenzie thought that Dana liked her water dark, then it would have been tonight.
She supposed that she was overthinking it. Kenzie was a socially conscious girl. She had other commitments, no doubt. And could definitely tell what Dana was doing here. No question in Dana's mind, Kenzie even knew that Dana would regularly do this.
Dana whirled her finger through the water. Fear took her once again, but she again powered through.
Dana did this until her body was so exhausted from the stress, she had to go back home and fall asleep. That night, her dreams were memories. Of the afterlife.
The light reflected off a planetary ring drifted into the opening in the wall, shaped vaguely like an arrowhead. It cast across a bed and into the floor below, where the mangled corpse of a dragon lay. Its eyes remained open even as its neck had been twisted completely around, spine holding the head on like a thread. No fear was in her head, no, it was instead a passing curiosity. "Wonder who this poor soul was?" Her thoughts and words were just one thing. Odd, how she found that novel. It didn't seem too strange to her that her words were more like disorganized wind-like howls and chitters. The dragon did look familiar to her, she just couldn't quite put a finger on it. Whoever it was, she hoped that the people who knew her would know and find peace. That wasn't her concern now. The rain was calling to her from outside. "Oh, how I love the rain." From another room, she could hear a frightened voice. "Is anyone there?" She couldn't find herself to care much for their plight either. She moved across the limestone brick floor to the doorway. Down the tower which she was located, a set of stairs lacking any railing spiraled down into inky darkness. Droplets of rain fell down through the roof, despite its being too solid to do so. She held out her hand---or rather what used to be a hand---to feel the raindrops caress her fingers. Alas, there were no fingers. Poking from beneath her tattered grey cloak was something like a black mist. It was strange, but nothing of her concern. She followed the stairs down toward the black below. On occasion, she would be able to gaze outside through an opening in the wall. The first time, she saw a heavy bog. Mist rolled over stagnant water into which large roots clawed ferociously. At its border was a plain, yellow plants wilting against the mud. This came across to her as normal, a bit familiar. That changed when she looked out another hole in the wall and saw a landscape of high peaks and heavy snow. In another, all she saw was fire. Despite their tumultuous weather, neither seemed to breach past the outer layer of the castle's tower. As she went down, these portals became less common and ultimately vanished. She joined the darkness in full. Only listening closely to the sound of the rain hitting the ground below beckoned her downward. It simply didn't seem quite right for her to stay there. The rain was calling to her. She needed to look at it. As she neared the bottom of the steps, she was greeted by another being. Its clothes looked to have been shredded by some predatory thing, leaving only a floating upper body. A plain white mask covered a literal ear to ear grin. She felt an aversion to it, but it wasn't focused on her. It said in a voice that was both a whisper and a shout: "Serena, I'm on the fifteenth step." It was nothing of her concern. The sound of rain had become louder. Its icy clattering hitting soft ground, filling her sense of sound with what was reminiscent of static. She made her way down to the sound but when she got there, there was nothing but stone flooring. Instead, the rain had become distant once again. Around her, she could see things like the one on the fifteenth step. They were floating toward her. "You cannot escape this place." "Madness is your destiny." "Welcome to your tomb." "You'll be one of us." The feeling of aversion returned. She attempted to listen for the sound of the rain, but their voices were beginning to drown it out. She headed down a grand hallway toward a pointed archway, the direction she thought she could hear the rain coming from. She lost sight of the things as she breached further into the castle's onyx light but the the dread didn't go away. Over her wispy shoulder, she checked. She did so again and again. It was only once she caught a glance of one in the distance, waiting to climb the stairs. She reached the grand archway and entered the room. Stretched before her was a long table lined with golden chairs. Huge tattered curtains covered windows into the cold outside, framed by defaced statues of centaur-like beings. Despite it having been broken down the middle, there were things sitting there. Those masked things. And the thing that had broken the table was another dragon. The things were making sounds reminiscent of rain. Up close, it was clearly just static. They all turned their heads to look at her, laughing and taunting. She hurried away from them, but the space distorted around her. The table never ended. More and more masked entities rose up to greet her. The ones who didn't taunt her sobbed, voices poisoned entirely with despair. Their tears hit the ground, creating the sound of rain. This was how it was going to be. Forever, stuck in this dining hall. Feeling that she was being feasted upon but never seeing who was doing it. The sound of soft jazz is what disrupted her despair. She turned to look and beside her was a tunnel, at the end of which appeared to be lights. The tunnel was made of a different type of brick than the castle. They were small, a reddish grey and rippled like waves. This sight was odd. But the oddity was nothing of her concern. She swerved into the tunnel and as she did so she could see the concrete floor was filled with rain puddles, small wavelets forming in them from drops appearing out of the ceiling. The tunnel branched out into many different ones. She once again saw the icy realm, but now could smell the decay. She could smell sulfur from another. One tunnel was pure concrete and smelled of diesel and gasoline. One of the entities she hadn't been aware had followed her moved ahead of her and went down into the concrete tunnel. "Why don't I want to go there?" She expected somebody to answer, but nothing did. Things on this path caught her attention. One tunnel wasn't so much a tunnel, but an opening to a cracked asphalt road lined by dirt and shrubs beneath a cloudy full moon sky. Another was a tunnel that opened to a road along a cliff, moons in the sky casting blue light onto treetops. Though the branching tunnels were numerous and some seemed to be attempts to tempt her into entering the same realms as seen before, none truly told her that she should go down them. The soul was called by music and rain. Her head bobbed slightly to the sound of soft rock and roll. It came as a surprise when the tunnel ended not where music could be produced, but rather a large train station. Hundreds of torchlit brick queues held entities who all looked just like her: semi-transparent floating robes, hoods shadowing faces with vacant white eyes. The room was alight with the sounds of howls and chitters. A long black train skidded into place beside her. She felt no temptation to join any of the lines to the train. Something said to her that it was for another time. Instead, she found a set of stairs at the end of the room. Its large black maw beckoned to her with the sounds of music and rain. She moved there, nonchalantly. Drops of rain fell strongly from the top. She could hear at the bottom not rain hitting soft ground, but rain hitting water. Her cloak's tail met black water. With a shiver, she followed it. Finally into an open sky. It was like she was standing inside a vast valley. Barely peeking over the distant edge were white peaks. 400 meters overhead was a bridge made of brick and asphalt coming from the hillside that the tunnel had come. Fog rolled from every corner of the vast lake. There were no waves besides those caused by phantom rain and vehicles plunging from the bridge overhead, sinking out of sight despite the water appearing shallow. She spent what might well have been decades standing, staring at the fog's milky horizon and the unfortunate souls who were consumed by the waters. It gave her enough time for what had happened to sink in. The escape she had made was so narrow but she didn't even know why she ran or what she had been running from. Her mind was as much of a haze as the sticky cold clouds which hugged her. She was lost in her own thoughts, never realizing the ungodly noise that she was producing. There was nobody else to hear her. Just her and eternity inside the fog, seeing nothing and hearing nothing new outside of the occasional ethereal roar. So lost in her thoughts, ignorant of the sound she was making, the spirit didn't even realize why what happened next transpired. From the inky abyss rose a pale green shape. Most guises of worldly knowledge had been sapped away by the cavern, but if they hadn't she would have recognized it as a boat. One that was so large as to be impossible. Its bow breached the water not with a splash, but with a gentle ripple. For a moment, she wondered if she was not looking at the thing which produced the echoing roars. Once enough of it was shown, something told her that was not what it was. The boat was decayed beyond any reasonable ability to float. Yet in the 1,000 meters from bow to stern it did. All along its sides were coats of algae and the hollowed husks of underwater animals. Sails stretched like wings of a drowned bat, pushed along by howls of despair as if the spirits the ship held produced the wind their speech sounded so akin to. Through the craggy gash in the opening of the ship's bow, she could see the shapes of many types of things. Their limbs attempted to pull them out, but to no avail. Memories of her time before the afterlife trickled in. She felt compelled to look at her hand. Its shape and color had changed. Osteoderms lined her fingers, dessicated barnacles burrowed into her skin and talons. But as soon as this was observed, it faded away. The bells of the immense ship still rang, but she could now see that below her feet there was concrete. A barren sidewalk in the abyssal waters. If it hadn't been for the reminder by the phantom vessel, she would have never been snapped into this reality. So, she walked along this pathway. The lantern lights of the vessel appeared as stars in the fog, always at a distance. Following her. She found herself an outcropping of cement jutting from the water. On it, a simple bench and a railing. She drifted over and sat on the bench, not a single thought in her mind. From the murk also appeared other spirits, which sat down beside her. She felt as if she should recognize them, but no memories could come. They had been eaten. It seemed now, somehow, she could feel that emptiness and not be at peace with it anymore. The rain circled around her and her companions, its pitter patter against the vast water droning against the sound of her wails. She could feel agony now, despair. The rain tried to soften her temper, to put her at peace. Every time she looked to her sides, though, she saw faces. Those faces, the ones from times past, who she could associate emotions with slowly bled her out. She didn't realize she was talking. Neither did the other shades beside her. No, she simply said what was on her mind. That was, until there was no mind left. "It's just drifting… place to place… storm to storm. I'm a piece of driftwood. I drift. I drift away. Drift away… Drift away…. Drift away… Drift away… Drift away. Drift away. Drift away. Drift away. Drift away. Drift away. Driftaway. Driftaway…"
Dana awoke in her bunk. She ran her hands down her body and slapped herself in the face. She had a body. She stretched out her arm and for a horrifying moment she saw a transparent limb dressed in a cloak. She hyperventilated, clawing away at her aching chest. Before she knew it she was on her floor before she by chance looked at her arms. It was normal.
She inhaled deeply and then exhaled. She craned her head and covered her eyes, pinching her nose. She felt like she had lived eons that night yet she didn't feel like going back to sleep. Instead she just sat still for an hour, her mind catching up to what she'd witnessed.
This was her past. In some crazy way, it was. All those years wondering what was going on, it was her subconscious wanting to say something about the afterlife. Not just want, Dana on some unconscious level wanted to scream it. Then her mind moved back to Kenzie. Kenzie had shared with her part of her past. One that couldn't have possibly been hers… unless it was the same as what Dana had been through.
Dana rose from her bunk and looked at her wall. The fronds of a plant crawling along slightly covered the time and date, but it was unmistakable. She had slept until the next night. Part of this relieved her. She hadn't woken up a thousand years into the future. Sure, she'd slept for a long time but she hadn't outlived Kenzie or anything.
Kenzie. f*ck. When Kenzie shared, this must have been her last ditch effort to let it out. She felt that need crawling through her skin to just let it out. Her subconscious was like two arms underneath her skin, pulling her which way from things that stimulated her memories but toward someone just so she could let it out. Dana felt sick. That someone could go through something like that, someone who she cared about so deeply. They sat together so many times. Shared foods, shared jokes, shared anecdotes. Yet this was still peeling at her. She took a chance by doing whatever she did with Dana.
That date now had so much more meaning. Dana got herself ready. She put on her best jewelry and took a brush to draw designs onto her scales. Then she found her best hooded sweatshirt. As she examined herself in the mirror, she felt that something was off. Hmm… probably no hooded garments. Instead she wore a long, high collared suit.
She stepped out into the night. There was a light rainstorm clinging to the top of the trees, soaking the bridges and structures of her forested city. They left a nice shine. The amber light shining across the needly canvas and the fresh smell of flowers soaked with rain made her feel at ease. Even with the echoes of the rain from the afterlife drumming in her mind, this felt right. There must have been more to the afterlife that she'd yet to experience. To feel this at home.
Dana whistled a jazzy tune as she stamped through the rain, heading over to Kenzie's quarters. Before she got there, she picked up a top hat from a nearby stand. She wasn't sure but something about it felt right.
When she approached the door, Kenzie had already opened the door. She had highlighted her large eyes with black eyeliner and put on a sleeveless full body garment, bracelets lining up all along the indents between her gauntlet-like arms.
Kenzie examined Dana and grinned. "Feeling better?"
Dana nodded.
"Heard you whistling jazz. Remember him yet?"
"Not really."
"He's a real pick up," Kenzie said. "But right now, how about that be us?"
They strided through the rain together, fingers locked together. Dana whistled the sound of a saxophone, while Kenzie hummed the drums. Then passing by their friend Jules practically made her spit out her drink. "You guys are out on a date?"
"Sure are! See you later!"
They spent so much energy simply doing the sing-along that they practically slammed down into their seats inside their pod and had to catch their breath. Dana turned her head toward Kenzie. "Wonder what that song was?"
"No idea," Kenzie said.
"Who's the mystery guy anyway?"
"His name's Baron Samedi," Kenzie said. "A little kooky. One of those gods you'd expect to be regional but f*ck if I know how that stuff works."
"Yeah," Dana said. Memories came to her. "Who knows? Afterlife can't seem to afford good rooms for the dead."
"There's apparently a minimum bleakness requirement in the afterlife."
"Yeah…"
Dana's head began to hang low. Memories of a dark steamboat filled her mind.
Kenzie hugged Dana. "I'm sorry. I forgot that you're not used to this yet."
"It's fine." Dana craned her neck, nuzzling Kenzie on the chin with her horn. "How do these memoriee work, anyway?"
"Far's I can tell," Kenzie said, "they'll just come. Doesn't mean you'll just randomly think of rain---okay, you do, but not the point. You get highlights most of the time."
"Like, going through a scary castle into the underworld?"
"Hm. I didn't have that, but you're on the money."
"What was yours like?"
"A long brick tunnel… branching out. Sounds that relaxed me called to me. A song."
"What song?"
Kenzie giggled nervously. "It's going to sound dumb… it was some kind of rock song."
"Like this one?" Dana asked as she pointed toward the speakers. She was confused as Kenzie took her hand and leaned her head against hers.
"It's the exact same one. Just... less jazzy."
The song was "Girl's Not Grey"
"What follows me as the whitest lace of light
Will swallow whole, just begs to be imbrued
What follows has led me to this place
Where I belong with all erased
What follows will swallow whole
What follows will swallow whole..."
