Disclaimer: I do not own Godzilla.

Note: Music for this chapter is "Two Against One" from the Godzilla 2014 soundtrack.

Through the Eyes of Titans

Chapter 1: A Dream of Dawn

In his sleep, the King was there again.

The huge human hive – no, city, that was what they called it – was an inferno. Thick black smoke billowed into the air from a thousand fires, making it difficult for most eyes to see. His senses, however, could handle far darker and murkier conditions than this, although the overpowering smell of smoke did make his nose itch.

The itching was the least of his concerns, however, as his senses were focused entirely on his enemies. The two creatures that he had sensed from afar and tracked across the world had finally come together, and he had to stop them. He had heard their mating calls echoing through the ocean, the familiar and hated sounds rousing him from his slumber and spurring him into action.

In most cases, this wouldn't have been a problem for him: usually, if he'd heard two Kaiju calling to each other to signal their readiness for mating, he wouldn't really care and would probably have just rolled over and gone back to sleep. But this was different, because the moment he'd heard those mating calls, he had known exactly what had created them. They were the Jinshin-Mushi, the parasites, the enemies of his kind, and if he allowed them to meet and reproduce, they would more than likely create a plague of parasites that would cause chaos and destruction across the entire world. It had happened before, and if he didn't do something about it, it would happen again. So when he sensed that one of the parasites was fully-awake and moving, he had roused himself and gone after them.

Tracking the male parasite hadn't been difficult, although he was still annoyed that the little bastard had been able to get away from him so easily after their first fight on that tropical island. The fact that the humans had actually attacked him as he was tracking the male down had been even more annoying, as he was still irritated by the fact that they apparently didn't remember who he was anymore, but he'd brushed aside their feeble attempts to harm him without much trouble.

Now, however, he was really starting to get annoyed.

Thanks to the humans' interference, the two parasites had found each other and mated before he could bring either of them down. Now the female was hiding somewhere in the burning city, using the smoke to conceal herself as she built a nest to lay her eggs, while the male was continuously pestering him and keeping him from tracking her down.

"Damn you!" he snarled, lunging and snapping his jaws at the winged parasite with no effect, as the male nimbly darted sideways out of range. "Stand and fight, you little coward!"

"I don't think so!" the male shot back, his fanged beak curved in a grin of amusement as he dodged left and right, evading the King's increasingly-frustrated attacks with ease. "You won't get to her while I'm breathing!"

"Then allow me to fix that!" the King spat. He attempted to launch himself up at his irritating enemy, but missed again, crushing several of the smaller human nests – no, buildings, he reminded himself – in the process.

Their game of cat-and-mouse continued for over an hour, with the King growing increasingly frustrated. He knew he was being played, and he longed to turn away from the irritating male and work on locating the female, but whenever he tried, the male would immediately attack him from behind or from above, forcing him to stop and defend himself or risk incurring injury.

Eventually, something unusual happened: he caught sight of a group of tiny red sparks that dropped out of the darkening clouds overhead, descending swiftly into the human city a short distance away. Squinting and looking closer, he eventually recognized the tiny falling forms as humans, each of them trailing a cloud of glowing red smoke. He was a little confused by their presence, as he didn't have the faintest idea what they were doing, but he shrugged it off. No matter. The affairs of humans were of little concern to him, as long as they stayed out of his way. However, they did help him to spot what he'd been looking for: on a hilltop some distance away, still partially obscured by smoke, was the unmistakable form of the female parasite.

Luckily, the falling humans also distracted the male as well, even if it was only for a moment, and that gave the King an opening. He lunged forwards and was able to grab one of the male's wings with one clawed hand; his weight gave him the advantage in this instance, as he pulled with enough power to swing the male in a full circle before letting go of him and flinging him away. The male smashed through several large human nests, bringing them tumbling down, before crashing to the ground.

Normally the King would have pursued his foe, but under the current circumstances the female was a higher priority. She would be guarding their nest, so he had to get her out of the way and destroy the eggs before they could hatch. Under no circumstances could he allow another parasite plague to begin. With that in mind, he turned away and started walking quickly towards the female, his footfalls booming through the burning city as smaller structures were crushed and smashed aside by his passing.

As he walked up the hill where he had seen the female, the King was greeted by a wall of billowing smoke. His burning orange eyes narrowed and he turned on his heel in a quick circle, swinging his tail through the air and generating a strong gust of wind that dissipated some of the oppressive smoke. Sure enough, the female came into view, crouched protectively over a smoldering pit in the earth that must be her nest. Her red eyes gleamed angrily as she saw him coming, and she rose to her feet with a clattering hiss of warning.

The King snorted at that. She wanted to trade threats? Very well, then. His eyes flashed, and he reared back slightly as he sucked in a deep breath of air, before letting out a long, drawn-out, thunderous roar that filled the air around them.

He had to give the female a little credit, as she wasn't cowed in the slightest by his threat display. Instead, she screeched in defiance and charged towards him, her eyes flashing with rage. It was true of all species that a female defending her young was the most formidable force in existence, and that was as true for Kaiju as it was for smaller creatures.

The King didn't break stride. Instead, he sped up a bit, snarling in eagerness, and slammed into the female with his full weight behind him. Their collision rocked the city, but he stood firm; his larger size gave him an advantage, and the female was knocked back by the force of the impact. He leaned in, jaws clamping onto the side of her neck, and felt her natural armor crunching under his teeth, but she didn't try to retreat. Instead, she bit back, her own fangs sinking into his hide as her jaws latched onto his shoulder.

The King growled in pain, but didn't let up, shoving the female backwards and driving her along one of the larger pathways between the human nests, her longer forelimbs taking chunks out of the buildings on either side as she tried to slow down her backwards slide. Releasing his hold on her neck, he drew back his left arm and slammed a fist into the side of her face, catching her in her right eye. That forced her to release her own bite, and he promptly spun around and swatted her with his tail. The impact knocked her off her feet and sent her tumbling head-over-heels, bringing down several buildings with her flailing limbs before she rolled to a halt.

Sensing victory, the King rushed after his fallen enemy, slamming into her as she scrambled to her feet and pinning her against a larger building with both arms. His jaws were going for her neck again when the building collapsed under their weight, sending her toppling backwards to the ground. Satisfied with this, the King reared back, raising one foot and slamming it down on the female's chest to pin her in place. He started bearing down with all his strength, hoping to crush her, but he didn't have time to do any serious damage before the male swooped down from above and crashed into him again.

Staggering away from the female, the King thrashed about with a snarl of rage, trying to latch onto his smaller opponent. Just as he was on the verge of grabbing the infuriating male, however, the female charged back into the fray and rammed into his right flank, knocking him off-balance and sending him crashing to the ground, crushing one of the smaller buildings beneath him. He roared a challenge as he pushed himself back up and turned to face the female, only for the male to slam down on top of him; as he swung back around and snapped at the male, the female landed another blow from behind.

The battle raged on, and to his dismay, the King realized that he was starting to tire. He hadn't fought like this for thousands of years, and he'd gotten a little rusty, but that wasn't the real problem. The problem here was numbers. One on one, he could easily handle either of these two in a straight-up fight, but together they were fighting with a flawless display of teamwork that was more than even he could withstand. Every time he seemed to be gaining the upper hand on one of the parasites, the other one would hit him from behind and prevent him from inflicting any serious damage. He'd had plenty of experience with this sort of tactic, but normally he had a partner of his own to help him deal with it, and this time he was alone.

Snarling in rage as they forced him back, the King flung up his arms to hold off a diving strike from the male, but in the process he left himself open to the female, who lunged up and sank her fangs into his neck, holding his arms back with four arms of her own. He snapped at her, but failed to connect; the male slammed down hard on his back again, beak pecking at his head, while the female's fangs dug in deeper.

Damn it…! The King snarled, his mind filled with a mixture of rage and pain, as he struggled desperately to free himself. Not many things scared him, but the idea of dying at the claws of a Jinshin-Mushi was one of them. The loathsome creatures had killed countless members of his species over the eons, including his own father, and he had no intention of becoming the latest of their victims. But, for the life of him, he couldn't think of a way out of this one. The parasites had him on the ropes, and unless a miracle happened…

And right at that moment, as if his own thoughts had conjured it up, the sky overhead suddenly lit up with an unearthly light.

The King's eyes widened, the pain of the parasites' attacks forgotten for a moment, as he looked up. What…?

The dense storm-clouds, the smoke, and the oncoming night had mixed to render the city nearly pitch-black except for the orange glow of the fires. But now a new light shone down from above: a flickering blue glow, eerily similar to the one that came from the bony plates on his back when he charged up his fiery breath. The clouds glowed brighter… brighter…

And then they parted, blown aside by a brilliant pulse of light and a rippling shockwave, and a piercing, trilling screech echoed through the city. Both parasites flinched back, dazzled by the burst of light, but the King had realized what was about to happen a moment before it did and closed his eyes. As a result, he couldn't see the source of the light, but even with his eyes closed he instantly recognized the voice that rang out over the devastated city, a voice he knew as well as his own.

"LEAVE HIM ALONE!"

As he opened his eyes, the brilliant white light shifted back into blue, revealing another winged Kaiju hovering above the city through the gap that her pulse had blown through the clouds. This one looked vaguely similar to the male parasite in terms of size, shape, and body proportions, but she was more streamlined, her wings were larger, and her body was aglow with a brilliant blue light instead of being dark-toned like the parasites. Her wings were lit up with the same luminescence as her body, and a glowing eyespot on each wingtip shone with the same orange light as his own eyes. Her eyes were bright blue, not red like the parasites', and were blazing with an uncharacteristic level of anger at the sight of her King in pain.

"Mosura?" the King whispered, his eyes wide in astonishment.

The Queen didn't hesitate. Her eyes flashed and she dove towards the fight, her trilling battle cry ringing out like a bell.

To his credit, the male parasite reacted quickly. His own wings flicked out and he launched himself into the air to shield his mate, but he didn't have time to do more than raise his claws in a defensive posture before the Queen hit him like a thunderbolt. The impact knocked him backwards, and the two of them went tumbling away through the air, clawing and tearing at each other, their wings churning up the clouds of smoke.

"Damn it!" the female parasite hissed, shooting a glare after them before she turned to glower at the fallen King, who was on his hands and knees as he gasped for air. "Don't think this changes anything," she spat, taking a step towards him and kicking him in the side of his head with one clawed foreleg. "You can't stop us. Our children will be born, and there's nothing you can do about it!"

At that exact moment, another thunderclap reached their ears, and a colossal fireball erupted from the parasites' nest, roaring up into the air like a miniature volcano. The King was surprised for a second, before he realized what must have happened: that explosion was similar to the ones that the humans' new weapons had produced when they'd attacked him, so they were probably the ones who had done it.

"You were saying?" he coughed, a distinct note of mocking amusement in his voice.

The female's eyes widened in shock and horror, her claws flexing and her jaws hanging open silently. "No," she breathed, before her eyes flashed brighter and filled with a mix of fear and rage. "NO!" Instantly forgetting about the King, she turned away from him and took off, rushing back up through the city towards the nest as fast as she could.

The King groaned as he shook his head, trying to clear his vision. The fight had been severely draining for him, especially with his normal abilities weakened from the start by the parasites' electric auras. Right now, all he wanted to do was lie down and go back to sleep.

Don't you dare!

The telepathic voice sent a bolt of clarity lancing through his mind, and his head snapped up. "Mosura?" he murmured, reaching out with his mind and feeling the bond between them, pulsing just as strongly as it had back before they'd both gone into their long hibernation during the Cold Times.

Don't you dare give up, Goji! The Queen's voice echoed through his mind again, along with a mental image of her kicking the male parasite away with enough force to send him crashing into a human building, bringing it tumbling down in a shower of rubble. She hung in the air, wings flapping steadily, watching the resulting dust cloud for any signs of the male emerging. You're stronger than that; I know you are! You're not going to lose to a couple of parasites, are you?!

The King managed a weary grin. "You always know what to say to get me motivated," he chuckled.

That's because I know you so well, the Queen replied with a soft chuckle, before her emotions grew more serious as the male burst back up out of the rubble with an angry screech and soared up towards her. Now get back up and show that parasite what you can really do. With that, her wings swept back, the orange eyespots at their tips flashing brighter, and she dove back down at the male with a piercing cry of defiance.

The King felt a surge of strength rush back through his tired limbs. His own eyes glowed brighter, burning with the same orange light as the Queen's eyespots, and his claws dug into the rubble as he pushed himself back to his feet. He started after the female parasite, his strides growing stronger and more confident with each step as he lumbered up the hill.

He'd had enough. Weakened or not, there would be no more holding back.

As he finished ascending the hill and caught sight of the female, the King's eyes narrowed and a growl rumbled in his chest as he began summoning up the power that lurked within him. The bony spiked plates on his back began to glow as well, a vibrant blue light radiating from them as a deep humming noise vibrated through his bones. The glow started at the tip of his tail as it waved back and forth, before coursing upwards and rising up his back. His eyes also changed color, their normally-orange glow replaced by the same piercing blue, and he could feel the heat welling up in his throat, ready to be unleashed.

The female was crouched over the burning ruins of her nest, hissing and shrieking in anguish and fury. When she heard him coming, she turned, her eyes flashing with rage, but she was brought up short when she saw the glow radiating from his spines. Some of the rage was mingled with fear, and she took a step back.

The King smirked humorlessly as he sucked in a deep breath and rocked back on his heels, his chest expanding with the air he'd accumulated. And then he swung his head forward, jaws wide, and unleashed his power in a blazing stream of blue fire.

The most dangerous thing about the Jinshin-Mushi, other than their ability to produce large numbers of offspring, was that, as natural enemies of his kind, they were more resistant to his more powerful abilities than most other Kaiju. The electrical auras that they produced had originally been designed to interfere with the fire-breath that his species could summon forth, weakening the force of the attack and making it easier for the parasites to overpower them. The strongest Jinshin-Mushi, the Alpha female known as the Prime, was said to possess an aura so strong that it could snuff out his fire-breath entirely, which was part of the reason why she had been able to bring down many members of his kind so easily.

This female, however, wasn't anywhere near that strong. Her aura was able to weaken his fire-breath, but she couldn't extinguish it entirely, and the blast he unleashed upon her still had more than enough power to do some damage. It hit her squarely in the chest, scorching and burning her exoskeleton; she staggered back, screeching in pain and flailing wildly in an attempt to douse the flames, but without success. The stream of fire cut off for a moment as he sucked in another deep gulp of air, before he unleashed a second blast as she lunged back in towards him.

Blown backwards by the burning power, the female crashed into another human building and lost her footing, falling sideways to the ground. She hissed in pain as she tried to push herself back up, the armor of her chest and stomach charred and smoking.

Meanwhile, the Queen was fully occupied with her own fight. The male parasite was about the same size as she was and had similar physical anatomy, so he was able to hold his own. Her wings were larger and broader than his, giving her greater speed, but his longer limbs gave him more reach. His fang-lined beak was much more formidable than the Queen's mandibles, so she couldn't really bite him back and had to devote more of her time to avoiding his snapping jaws. However, the Queen was far from defenseless; while the parasites' limbs ended in simple curved claws, her arms and her front legs ended in large, razor-sharp, bladelike claws, designed specifically to slice through tough vegetation and to help her defend herself from predators.

In truth, however, it was experience and skill that made up the real gap between them. The parasite was strong and fast, but he was also very young by Kaiju standards; his two fights with the King, first on the island and then here in the city, were the sum total of his combat experience. The Queen, however, had been defending herself from predators and enemies for longer than the male could comprehend, longer than any other Kaiju alive, and she had gained a vast amount of fighting experience during that time.

When the King unleashed his fire-breath upon the female, the Queen and her opponent both looked in that direction, landing on adjacent buildings. The male's eyes widened in alarm as he saw his mate fall; he let out a cry and sprang back into the air, trying to break away from his own fight and rush to her aid.

"No you don't!" the Queen snapped. Her eyes and eyespots flashed brighter, her luminous glow shifting from blue to red, as she jumped into the air and sped after him. With a clap of her wings, she shot forward and landed hard on the male's back, one of her clawed forelimbs wrapping around his neck and the other one slamming repeatedly down on the top of his head. A powerful, twisting lunge of her body wrenched him off to one side, her bright wings and his dark ones flailing in unison as they crashed into another building.

The male used the impact of the collision to his advantage, spinning his body and smashing the Queen against the building with enough force to dislodge her grip on his neck. His wings slammed down and he propelled himself up into the air, before circling back and lunging down towards her, but the Queen was ready. This time, her mandibles snapped open wide and she spat out a jet of sticky white silk. The male's eyes widened and he twisted his head away in time to avoid being blinded, but the silk still covered one side of his face and enveloped his front legs, sticking them together. The Queen jumped nimbly to the side as he sideswiped the building she'd landed on, landing on another one nearby as her previous perch collapsed.

"Damn it!" the male screeched, shaking his head back and forth as he tried to get the silk off without much success. His wings flared out and he rose swiftly up into the air, clearly trying to get some distance so he could figure out how to free himself.

The Queen, however, had no intention of giving him the chance. Her eyes narrowed and she launched herself up off the building, chasing after the fleeing male as they spiraled upwards into the smoke-filled sky.

The King's attention had been briefly diverted by the male's cry; his head snapped over to the other fight for a moment, until he relaxed when he saw that the Queen had matters under control. Time to finish this. He turned back towards the female, who was dragging herself away from him as she attempted to recover from the damage his fire had inflicted.

"Why?!" the parasite hissed, her eyes burning with anger and pain as she glared at him. "All we wanted to do was mate and have our offspring! Why did you have to ruin it?!"

"Because I know your kind," the King shot back, his eyes narrowing as he stalked after her. "Your 'offspring' would be a plague that would turn the whole world into a lifeless wasteland. And there's no way I'm going to let that happen." His eyes flashed from orange to blue again, his spines starting to glow as he prepared another blast of fire.

"Damn you…" the female panted, fear joining the pain in her eyes, before it was suddenly overpowered by a surge of boiling hatred. "DAMN YOU!" With a scream of rage, she hurled herself at him, but this time the King was ready for it. He landed a solid uppercut to her jaw, snapping her head back, and deflected her charge with a swing of his arms, shoving her to the side. Before she had time to recover her balance, he wrapped his arms around her neck in a headlock, each of his hands clamping onto one of her jaws and ignoring the pain of her teeth digging into his clawed fingers. Twisting and wrenching her head back awkwardly, he snarled as his spines glowed brighter. Ignoring her forelimbs as she clawed frantically at his head and neck, he wrenched her mouth open as wide as he could…

And then he unleashed a third blast of his fire-breath, directly into her open mouth and down her throat.

The female's shriek of agony was cut off with a choking gurgle as the fire poured down her throat and into her body, burning through her lungs and roasting her from the inside out. The King didn't let up until her clawing limbs finally went limp and fell away, and as the fire burned through the thinner flesh of her neck, he made a swift twisting motion with both hands and ripped her head from her shoulders.

Satisfied, the King cut off his fire and stepped back as the female's headless body toppled to the ground at his feet, dropping her severed head beside it. "Good riddance," he growled, before turning and scanning the darkened sky for any signs of the Queen or the male parasite. He couldn't see either of them, so he reached out with his mind. Mosura? Are you –

Right here! The telepathic call came an instant before the Queen and the male burst down out of the clouds, a few hundred feet above him. The male had freed his front legs from the silk and was lashing out wildly at the Queen, who was giving as good as she got, each of them taking blows from the other's claws as they spiraled towards the ground. Suddenly, the Queen deflected a strike from the male's claws and swung her abdomen forward like a striking snake. The King saw her stinger extend a moment before it pierced the male's left wing, punching through the armored scales of the wing's surface and delivering a dose of paralyzing venom.

The parasite cried out in pain, his back arching, and the Queen yanked her sting back out before kicking him hard in the chest with her hind legs to propel herself away from him. She pulled away from the male, wings flapping to help her gain some altitude and slow her plunge towards the ground. The male tried to do the same, but his left wing was already going limp and he couldn't use it to slow himself down effectively. He tumbled to the ground and slammed into the earth not far from where the King stood watching, leveling several smaller human structures beneath him.

The King couldn't resist another grin as his eyes flicked up, tracking the Queen as she circled the spot where the parasite had crashed. She let out a loud, triumphant trill, before flapping a couple of times to slow herself down and landing atop one of the largest intact buildings in the area.

The King didn't waste any time. He stalked down the hill, a deep growl rumbling in his lungs as he approached the fallen male. The Queen's venom had done its work; the parasite was sprawled in the crater that his impact had gouged into the earth, twitching and jerking spasmodically but unable to get up or lash out. The poison that her stinger produced had been specifically designed to be nonlethal, due to her dislike of killing; instead, it induced a temporary paralysis, which usually lasted for at least a couple of minutes when used on another Kaiju. The length of time a victim would remain paralyzed depended on the amount of venom they received and also on how big they were.

None of that mattered here, though, as this parasite wasn't going to get enough time to recover.

This time, there was none of the drawn-out struggle that had accompanied the female's death. The King just walked over to the paralyzed male, raised one massive clawed foot, and slammed it down on the parasite's head with all of his weight behind it, crushing the male's skull and snapping his neck in one brutal motion with a sickening crunch of bone and chitin. The parasite's limbs twitched and jerked a couple of times, before he finally went limp and still forever.

After twisting his foot back and forth once to finish the job, the King nodded in satisfaction and stepped back, turning away from the dead parasites and looking up at the sky. His head tilted back, his mouth opened wide, and he let out an ear-shattering bellow of victory.

As the echoes of the roar slowly faded away, the King sighed and let himself slump against a nearby building, bracing himself against it with one arm. Pain and exhaustion poured into him now that the adrenaline of battle was fading away, and his shoulders sagged as he panted heavily in an attempt to catch his breath.

A soft blue glow filtered through his hazy vision, and he looked up as the Queen landed lightly on a building right in front of him, at a height where she could stand at eye level with him. She chirped softly, her eyes sparkling like twin sapphires. Any wounds she'd sustained during her fight with the male were gone, as if they'd simply melted away.

"Hi," she whispered, her mandibles parting in a soft smile.

The King smiled faintly, feeling a trickle of comforting warmth running through his mind via the link between them. "Hello," he murmured, leaning forward and lightly bumping his nose against hers. His spines and her wings pulsed blue in unison, a soft humming noise echoing from both of them. His glow was brighter now, as with both of the parasites dead, the effects of their electric auras were gone.

"I've missed you so much," the Queen breathed, her glittering eyes welling up with tears as she rubbed her cheek against his. "It's been so long, I thought something might have gone wrong, and I wasn't sure if I would ever wake up. It took me quite a while to summon up enough energy even to contact you like this."

"I've missed you too," the King admitted, a deep, soft purr rumbling in his chest as he savored the softness of her downy fur against his scales. "I…" He blinked and frowned, feeling a little confused by that last bit, and drew back a little so he could look at her properly. "I'm sorry… what did you say?"

The light in the Queen's eyes brightened a bit, and her smile grew warmer. "I said," she replied, "it took me a while to gather up enough energy to reach out to you like this. I don't think I could have gotten through to you when you were awake – I won't be strong enough for that until I hatch – but since your mind's more open when you're asleep, I was able to contact you like this." She chuckled softly, nodding to their surroundings. "I mean, come on: I've seen your dreams before, and they aren't normally this vivid, are they?"

The King frowned, glancing around at the ruined city. He had assumed that this was a normal dream, as he remembered how this fight had really gone and he'd simply been reliving it until Mosura had joined in, but…

His eyes widened as he looked back at her, the stirrings of hope rising in his heart. "Are you saying… that you're actually talking to me right now? The real you? I'm not just dreaming about you and imagining this conversation?"

The Queen nodded, her smile widening as her bioluminescence pulsed a little brighter. "That's right, my love. We're in your dream right now, but you're not imagining me here. I just projected my mind into your dream so I could talk to you." She spread her wings, the glowing orange eyespots – identical to his own eyes – gleaming from their tips. "It's really me, Goji. I'm alive, I'm awake, and I'm really here."

The King's eyes widened as the realization really sank in. "Mosura…" Unable to contain himself, he surged forward, carefully sliding his arms around the Queen in a gentle embrace. She hugged him back as hard as she could, her forearms wrapping carefully around his neck and her front legs resting on his shoulders as her wings wrapped around his torso.

"How?" the King questioned, his voice actually a little unsteady and much softer than it normally was, his eyes closed as he rested his snout against her neck. "How are you awake?"

"Well, technically I'm almost awake," the Queen explained, smiling as she nuzzled into the side of his neck. "One of the eggs I laid in my last life, back during the Cold Times, is finally ready to hatch. It's only a couple of days away from hatching now, and the larva inside is fully developed, so I'm finally able to think consciously again. I wasn't quite ready to hatch when I became aware of myself again, but I was able to feel our connection, so I tried to see if I could contact you. But since I'm not very strong yet, I had to wait until you fell asleep and contact you through your dreams." She shrugged, smiling as her glow pulsed warmly. "And, well… here we are."

The King mirrored her smile with his own as he drew back, gently running his claws through the soft fur over her thorax and along the leading edge of her wings. "So you're ready to hatch, then?" he inquired. "Do you know which of your eggs it's going to be? I can come and find it if you do."

The Queen shook her head. "Unfortunately, no, I don't know which one it is. It's been such a long time since I laid that last batch of eggs that I have no idea what each one of those nesting sites is like now. I'll have to figure out where I am when I wake up, and then I'll come find you."

"Sounds good," the King replied with a smile. "So that means I get to see you as a worm this time?" His tone became a little teasing as he asked that question, and he chuckled softly when the Queen's glow immediately flushed pink.

"Hey!" she protested, playfully swatting at him with her shorter forelimbs. "You know it annoys me when you call me that!"

The King laughed, rolling his eyes. "Oh, all right, as a larva." He'd almost completely lost the soreness and exhaustion from the fight by now – which actually made sense, since he was just dreaming and he hadn't actually been in a fight.

"That's better." The Queen grinned cheerfully, nuzzling him again, before she blinked and looked around as the sky overhead began to lighten. "Oh, it looks like you're waking up."

"Damn it," the King growled, trying his best to hold onto the dream even as it started to dissolve bit by bit. Although the Queen was still solid and clearly visible, everything around them – the clouds of smoke, the shattered buildings, and the bodies of the parasites - was starting to become translucent and indistinct, like fog burning off as the sun rose.

"It's okay," the Queen soothed him, smiling as she gently stroked his cheek with one forelimb. "I'm going to hatch within the next day or two, and I'll come find you as soon as I do. I can't sense any other Kaiju awake except for you, so I should be safe in my larval stage until we can find a safe place for me to cocoon and transform."

"All right," the King replied reluctantly. He pressed his forehead lightly against hers, finally feeling the faint mental connection flowing back and forth between them for the first time in thousands of years. "I can hardly wait."

"Neither can I," the Queen replied, her eyes bright and full of emotion as she felt the connection too. She took a step back and spread her wings, floating in front of him as the rest of the dreamscape dissolved into a soft, glowing mist around them. "I love you, Goji."

"I love you too, Mosura," the King murmured, his smile mirroring hers. "I'll see you soon."

Then the mist swirled up and enveloped them, and everything was light.

The pale, warm glow of dawn was abruptly replaced with an icy blackness as the King opened his eyes. The transition was so jarring that he momentarily had no idea where he was, until he felt the water flowing through his gills as he shook his head back and forth, and his waking memories started to filter back into his mind.

He was back on the ocean floor where he'd fallen asleep some time earlier, dozing under thousands of feet of water. Once he'd regained his bearings, the darkness was of no concern to him, and his ability to breathe water as easily as air meant that he had nothing to fear from the crushing water pressure of the deep ocean.

Taking a few deep breaths and letting the cold seawater flow soothingly over his gills, the King tried to relax. Instinctively, he thought back to the advice his Queen had always given him back in the old days whenever this sort of thing became a problem.

"Just listen, my love. Listen to everything you can hear, let your thoughts slip away, and let the song of the world calm your mind."

And he did. His senses were more acute than those of virtually any other creature in the world, and he used them to their full extent now as he did his best to shift into a meditative state. He reached out with his mind and his ears, listening to the sounds of the world around him.

The lowest noises he could hear were the sounds produced by time itself: the deep, slow grinding and rumbling of stone on stone, or the distant crackling of an undersea volcano, as the earth itself moved and churned at a slow, oceanic pace. Those sounds weren't audible through his ears, but through his bones, as the deep vibrations pulsed through the rock beneath him and reverberated gently through every inch of his body.

Above those sounds, there was the softer, ceaseless rhythm of the tides, as ocean waves washed onto every beach in the world, outlining all of the continents in a map of sound that the King could use to navigate. Even he couldn't truly comprehend the vastness of the world, regardless of how long he had lived and how much of it he had explored. He distinctly remembered that the shape of the world's continents had once been very different than the way it was now, but the transition from then to now had been so slow and gradual that he had hardly ever noticed it.

And above those slower sounds, above the rumbling of the earth and the murmur of the tides, he could hear the sounds of life. The echoing calls of whales, the high-pitched chirps and whistles of dolphins, the bubbling and churning motions of countless schooling fish… the sea was filled with a complex and wonderful song, one that had echoed in his ears for his entire life from the moment he'd entered the ocean for the first time as a hatchling. And according to the childhood stories that he'd heard from his parents and the memories that his Queen had shared with him, that song had been there for as long as there had been living things to hear it, and even beyond that. As long as the ocean had existed, so had its song: always evolving, always changing, but timeless and eternal at its core.

But he was also aware that in the decades since he had woken up from his long hibernation during the Cold Times, the song had become very different than it had been before he'd gone to sleep. Now, the deepest, richest songs of living things, the songs produced by other creatures like himself – his own species and those of the many other types of Kaiju that lived all over the world – were almost entirely gone.

In the absence of his fellow Kaiju, the sea now echoed with a different chorus of sounds: those produced by the humans, and their strange creations. In his absence, they had populated the oceans with floating metal fish in a wide variety of sizes that drifted back and forth across the surface of the water, as well as other metal fish that could dive beneath the surface like whales. It was one of the latter that had woken him from his hibernation, when it had come close to his sleeping place: the pinging noises it produced and the radiation contained within it had sparked his senses to life, awakening him once more. He had risen to the surface and begun to explore the ocean, destroying a few of the noisy metal surface-fish when they attacked him with stinging projectiles and bursts of fire, until he realized that they were all seemingly infested with humans. After that, since he tried not to kill humans unless absolutely necessary, he had adopted a policy of avoiding them.

The noise that the metal fish made, however, was still present and annoying no matter where he went. Their strange banging, screeching, pinging sounds seemed to permeate every corner of the sea, a discordant new addition to its song, and one that he didn't enjoy. He'd only heard of a change like this in the ocean's song having happened a couple of times in the history of his people: once, long ago, when the Devastation had come from space and shaken the world, bringing about an end to most of the reptiles that had once dominated the seas and allowing the whales to evolve in their place, and once much further back when the Great Dying had come and nearly all life on the planet had been snuffed out. If the world was really in the process of a third devastating transformation like those ones, he wasn't sure what he should do about it.

As he listened to the song of the world and felt himself returning to a calm and relaxed state, the King suddenly twitched. His eyes narrowed and he turned to face in a different direction, as a new sound reached his ears. At first he had no idea what it might be: it was faint and distant, echoing dimly through the depths. But on closer examination, it almost sounded like the voice of another Kaiju.

The King's eyes widened slightly and he blinked in surprise. Somebody else is awake?

He could sometimes sense the presences of other Kaiju during his wanderings, but they were almost always from ones that were still hibernating, deep in slumber. Only the two parasites that he'd killed had awakened during the time since he'd emerged from hibernation, but he could tell that many others were still alive and asleep, hidden all over the world. He was fairly certain that he could wake at least some of them up if he wanted to, by sending out an Alpha call that would compel them to awaken, but he didn't really care enough to do that. They would wake up when they were ready. Until then, he was content with the peace and quiet. There were only two particular Kaiju that he genuinely missed: one was his Queen, and the other had been forever silenced even before he had gone into hibernation and would never return. He tried not to think about that one.

But this voice didn't belong to any type of Kaiju that he'd ever heard before. It was vaguely similar to his own voice, but he could also hear many subtle differences; it almost sounded as if a second, higher-pitched voice had been merged with the voice of a member of his own kind, creating a strange mixture of high and low tones.

The King had never heard anything like this call before, but its presence was unsettling. His eyes narrowed and his muscles tensed as he stared fixedly off into the distance, trying to puzzle out what it could be. Finally, after a few minutes, it faded away, and the song of the sea returned to its new normal.

The King frowned as he returned to his patrol, cruising leisurely through the depths of the ocean and letting the cold water flow soothingly through his gills. While the knowledge that his Queen was coming back lifted his spirits tremendously, the presence of that strange new sound offset it somewhat. He had no idea what it might signify, or what the result of those two events would be, but he was sure of one thing.

Things were about to change.

AN: Hi, everyone! This story's been growing in my brain for a while, and I was finally able to get the first chapter finished. I was inspired in part by the works of Miss Queen B, another excellent writer on here who's created an awesome series of Godzilla stories; they're really great (although, fair warning, some of them cover some controversial topics) and I would definitely recommend checking them out to anyone who hasn't already.

Also, just in case anybody was confused regarding the Kaiju's names in this chapter, I'm gonna be using the Japanese names for Godzilla and Mothra as the characters' personal names, as it makes more sense to me to have Gojira and Mosura be their real names and the names that ancient humans called them, while Godzilla and Mothra are the nicknames they've been given by modern humans. For the MUTOs, I didn't call them that because "MUTO" is a modern human term and wouldn't have been used for them back in ancient times, so I went with "Jinshin-Mushi", the mythological name used for MUTO Prime in canon, as the real name of their species.

Next chapter, the Queen awakens and emerges from her egg only to be greeted by a strange and hostile reception, and the King's rest is disturbed again when he senses an impending threat.

See you all next time!