Author's Note: Happy New Year, everyone! Sorry it took me so long to get Chapter 2 written; dealing with all the COVID craziness, working on job-hunting, and going through the holiday season didn't give me too much time for writing recently, but I was finally able to get this chapter finished. Hope you guys enjoy it!
Shoutouts to edboy4926, Miss Queen B, MarioMan90276554, RainBowRoad29071, CustardCloud89, Mew1157, Guest, and Van the Rogue Soul Drinker for reviewing Chapter 1. You guys are awesome, and I loved hearing your thoughts on this story so far! :D
Music for this chapter, specifically the first half of it, is "The Larva" from the Godzilla: KOTM soundtrack and "The Giant Cocoon" from the Godzilla GMK soundtrack.
Chapter 2: The Queen Reborn
She had been alive for unfathomable eons. She honestly couldn't remember exactly how long it had been, because she had countless lifetimes' worth of memories stored in her mind, and so it was very hard for her to remember when the tipping point had been: when a species had become an individual, when the line between reproduction and reincarnation had blurred and finally disappeared altogether.
This was what she knew:
Her life cycle always started with a single egg, when a special genetic timer that had been encoded into its DNA was triggered. Once that happened, the larva inside the egg would begin to grow and develop, and after a certain period of time – usually a few weeks or a couple of months, but sometimes just a few days – it would be ready to hatch. When that time came, her newest incarnation would tear open the soft membrane of the egg and emerge from it in her larval form, remembering everything from her previous lives.
The time she spent in her larval form varied, depending on the environment she was in. If she was in a dangerous area with the potential for predators to find her, she would normally speed through that stage of her life cycle as quickly as she could, as she was much more vulnerable in that form. But when she was in a safe environment, with her King or another friendly Kaiju around to protect her, then she would take her time with it, letting herself grow and develop at a more natural pace.
Either way, when the time came for her to change again, she would find a safe place and spin a silken cocoon around herself, sealing herself off from the outside world once more, before her mind and body would dissolve and reform as she rewrote herself from the inside out. Once her transformation was complete, she would cut her way out of the cocoon and emerge in her adult, winged form, fully matured and ready to continue her newest life.
As part of her adult life, her most important job was to continue her own cycle of reproduction and renewal. Therefore, she made a habit of regularly patrolling the world to check on all of her eggs that hadn't hatched yet. She always made sure to have numerous eggs in existence at any one time, usually at least half a dozen or more, so that even if she lost a few of them she would always have more in reserve. If she discovered during her patrols that any of her eggs had died due to natural causes or had been eaten by predators, she would find a new nesting site and lay a new egg to take its place. In addition, she would use her telepathy to reset the genetic timers in each egg when she visited its nest, thereby ensuring that none of the eggs would start to develop too soon.
Of course, no one lifetime could last forever, and her adult bodies did not have as long of a lifespan as many other Kaiju did. So eventually her living body would die, either killed by another Kaiju or simply dying of old age. But while death was the end for any other creature, for her it was only a temporary setback. Because when her current living body died, that meant that there would no longer be an adult version of her around to reset her eggs' genetic timers, and so they would continue ticking onwards. And eventually, one of the eggs' timers would reach its limit, and the unborn larva inside would begin to stir and develop. The egg would hatch, a new incarnation of her would be born, and the cycle would continue once more.
This was the way of things.
Most types of egg-laying Kaiju didn't produce nearly as many eggs as she did. There were only three types that she knew of which did: the energy-thieving dragonflies, which lived in large swarms ruled by a dominant breeding female; the squid-spiders, like her old friend Scylla, which gathered together in large groups to spawn and raised large batches of offspring communally; and the Jinshin-Mushi, the parasites, whose females could sometimes lay dozens of eggs in a single clutch.
She was actually fairly certain that she and the Jinshin-Mushi were related, that their species were distant cousins which had both evolved from some common ancestor many millions of years ago. That could explain why the males of their kind looked so similar to her winged adult form. Of course, there was no way to know for sure, as it wasn't like any of them would know the answer to that question even if she asked them; unlike her, they could not inherit memories from their parents, so none of the parasites that were alive today would have any way of knowing how their species had originally evolved.
She did know, however, that her reproductive method and theirs were completely different. A clutch of Jinshin-Mushi eggs all hatched at once, and if there were too many offspring in that clutch, they could become a destructive swarm that could scour the land of everything edible during the early stages of their growth. In her case, her eggs only hatched one at a time, and every time the hatchling inside was the exact same creature, containing the same mind, the same memories, and the same soul as its mother.
There was only one Mosura. There was only ever one Mosura.
The way her eggs worked was also fairly straightforward. Normally, their genetic timers were each set for a different amount of time, and were "programmed" to only begin developing once that amount of time had passed. As long as the eggs' genetic timers continued ticking away, the unborn larvae inside would remain in stasis, frozen in time, passively absorbing their mother's memories via the psychic link that she maintained with all of her unborn future selves. When an egg's "timer" finally went off, the larva inside would be sparked to life, and it would begin to grow and develop until it was ready to hatch.
Typically, she would set the eggs' timers for a relatively short amount of time compared to her normal adult lifespan, perhaps a few decades or a couple of centuries. Then, every year or two, she would fly around the world and check on each of her eggs in turn, making sure that nothing had happened to any of them and laying a replacement egg if any of them had been destroyed.
But in her last, most recent lifetime, things had changed. The world had begun to grow increasingly cold; ice caps were expanding outward from both poles, sea levels were falling, and the global temperature had begun dropping dramatically. A few of the more recently-evolved species of Kaiju, mainly the mammalian species like the tusk-sloths or the giant apes, could better tolerate this new, colder climate and had remained active, but most of the surviving reptilian and invertebrate Kaiju had taken refuge underground or beneath the sea and had gone into deep hibernation, planning to sleep through these Cold Times and to wait for the world to warm up again. She and her King had remained active the longest out of those types of Kaiju, but as the planet continued to cool, they had ultimately decided to do the same. She had allowed her most recent body to die peacefully from old age, after resetting and extending all of her eggs' timers so that it would take several millennia at least before any of them hatched, while her King had gone into hibernation in the deep ocean.
Time passed. The ice advanced and receded, the planet began to grow warmer again, and still her last batch of eggs remained, safely tucked away in their hidden nests. Thousands of years went by without incident. Her mind, a single consciousness distributed into a network among all of her slumbering unborn selves, slept and dreamed, blind to the world around them, waiting patiently for the time when she would awaken once more.
And then, one day, one of her slumbering eggs finally reached its time limit, and the hatchling inside began to stir.
As she woke slowly from her dream, the Queen began to properly take stock of her situation. She was still inside her egg, but as far as she could tell, her new body was fully developed, and she was ready to emerge at last.
Finally! She smiled brightly and began carefully squirming around inside the warm liquid that filled her egg sac, doing her best to twitch or wiggle each part of her body so she could make certain that everything was in order. Each of the small, hooked claws that made up her limbs in this form, arranged in a double row along her body, flexed in readiness. Her mandibles opened and closed, testing their sharpness, and she let out a soft chirp that echoed oddly in the liquid around her. She wanted to tear herself out of the egg right away, eager to be awake again and anxious to go find her King, but the experience gained from countless previous hatchings told her to take her time.
Finally, after about an hour of slow, patient tests and exercises that she had developed over the years as a way to make sure that she didn't have any more growing left to do, she pronounced herself satisfied. Her body was fully formed, all of her limbs and organs were functioning properly, all of her prior memories were present in the back of her mind, and her thoughts were clear and focused, not fuzzy or muddled as they often were during her development process. All of that could mean only one thing: the process was complete, and her new body was fully grown.
It was time. She was ready.
Tensing her muscles, the Queen arched her back and started pushing upwards, feeling the soft membrane of the egg sac starting to bulge and stretch as she pressed herself up into it. Tilting her head back, she dug her mandibles into the soft material and began slicing through it, opening a long and thin cut across the top of the sac. Nodding in satisfaction as the liquid inside the sac began leaking out through the hole she had made, she closed her mandibles and drove her head up against the cut in the sac, shoving upwards and forcing it open wider, until finally the egg burst open entirely. Her claws hooked into the edges of the cut and pulled them down, peeling the collapsing egg membrane off of her body and letting it fall away.
Finally free of the egg, the Queen uncurled her body fully and reared up to her full height, arching her back and lifting the front half of her body upwards in a long, luxuriant stretch. Her eyes sparkled in the gloom, her body lit up with the pulsing blue light of her bioluminescence, and she let out a soft, joyous trill that echoed in the quiet space around her.
That was when she realized where she was and took notice of everything that lay around her… and her happiness at her rebirth quickly shifted into a mixture of surprise and confusion.
When she had contacted her King in his dreams a couple of days earlier, the Queen hadn't been sure where her developing egg was located. This wasn't due to negligence on her part: it was based on the simple logic that she had left a dozen hidden nests scattered around the world when she'd gone into her long sleep during the Cold Times, and this egg could have been located in any of them. There had been no way for her to know which nest this was while she was still inside the egg; that would only be possible once she had emerged from it and could take stock of her surroundings.
In general, however, there were two basic options for where this egg might have been located, because she had two types of nests. The first, which she'd been using for the entirety of her long existence, were the nests that she had built either by herself or with her King's help: large underground caverns beneath a hill or inside a mountain, which she had carved out for the express purpose of storing an egg. The second, which she had started using much more recently, were those nests that had been built for her by humans. And based on what she now saw around her, this appeared to be one of the latter.
In the days before the Cold Times, the Queen had spent many years interacting with humans. She'd always found them to be fascinating creatures: tiny in comparison to her and the other Kaiju species, certainly no match for any of them in terms of strength, but with highly-intelligent minds that were equal to a Kaiju's in complexity. In addition, despite their diminutive stature, by working together the humans could build enormous structures that rivaled any Kaiju nest in size.
The Queen had been quite impressed by this talent for construction, so after some of the humans had formed a relationship with Kaiju like her and her King – a fairly simple arrangement, where the humans provided them with various kinds of offerings, usually food and sources of energy, in exchange for their protection from any hostile Kaiju that sought to do the humans harm – she had reached out to them to request that they build some artificial nests for her: strong, durable stone pyramids, designed to last thousands of years, which could be used to safely store some of her eggs and keep them hidden from predators.
Judging by her surroundings, this egg had been one of those, as she appeared to be inside one of the humans' pyramids. The egg had rested on a large, flat stone platform – an altar, she remembered the humans calling it – in the center of a huge, high-roofed hall. Flowering vines cascaded down the walls of the great chamber from small gaps and cracks in the ceiling, filling the air with a lovely, fragrant scent that made her mandibles twitch. On either side of the altar loomed a pair of large stone statues, depicting a pair of human women dressed in robes. Those statues were an artistic representation of her highest priestesses: the special human twins that she had modified genetically, giving them the same powers of telepathy and parthenogenesis that she herself possessed, so that they could communicate with her much more easily and serve as her emissaries and voices to the rest of the humans.
Among the humans of old, her special twins had been called by many different names: they'd been known as the Houtua, the Shobijin, the Elias, or the Cosmos, just to name a few. But she had always just referred to them as her Singers, because, just like her, they loved to sing. They sang before the crowds of worshippers who gathered at the humans' temples to pay homage to her and her King, and they would often entertain her by telepathically sharing the songs and music of their own people with her. She had possessed the same type of mental connection with her Singers that she had with her King; she could contact them from across the world, she could connect her thoughts with theirs and speak to them telepathically, and they could translate the speech of other humans for her without her needing to establish a mental link with those humans (which was useful, as a telepathic connection with her could sometimes be overwhelming for a human who didn't have the twins' enhanced abilities).
Leaving her Singers behind when she went into hibernation had been almost as hard as being separated from her King, as of course they couldn't hibernate like a Kaiju could, but she had been sure that the gifts she'd given them would hopefully keep them safe and should enable their line to endure through the millennia. Just like her, they could reproduce whenever they wanted without needing a mate, each producing their own set of twin daughters in turn, and their telepathic abilities gave them some formidable natural defenses against enemies in their own size range. As long as ordinary humans were able to survive, her Singers should be able to do the same.
In any case, the Queen could tell now that the egg she'd just hatched from was in one of the artificial nests that the humans had built for her. That much was obvious. But what surprised her was everything else that she saw around her, as she turned to look around at the temple's interior.
She hadn't known what exactly she would find when she emerged from the egg, of course. But if this egg was in a human temple, then she would have imagined one of two possible scenarios for what she might see upon awakening. The first option was that the humans who had built the temple for her – or their descendants, at least – would still be living in this place, and that they would be there to greet her when she emerged. That had always been a time of great celebration back in the day, on the few occasions when she had hatched from an egg inside one of the human-built nests. There would be cheering, dancing crowds of worshippers everywhere, singing songs and chants in her honor, and they would normally provide a feast of tasty vegetation and flowers to help her grow stronger and settle into her new life. Her King would always be there too, of course, and sometimes one or more of their other Kaiju friends would be present as well. She had always loved those special occasions.
The other option, of course, was that the humans who had built this temple would no longer be here: that they had moved elsewhere or died out entirely during the Cold Times, and that there would be none of them left to greet her. In that scenario, she would have expected to wake up alone, in an empty and silent temple that would likely be overgrown by plants but devoid of humans. That wouldn't be quite as pleasant, as she had cared greatly for the humans and the idea of them all being gone made her just as sad as the idea of losing one of her Kaiju companions, but she could have understood that.
But interestingly enough, what she saw now was neither of those options. There were humans here, but not nearly as many of them as she would have expected… and they were utterly unlike any humans she had ever seen before.
Most of the humans that she could see and sense were gathered at the other end of the large nesting chamber, tucked into a smaller room that was set into the far wall of the chamber and that appeared to be the entrance to the humans' path into the temple, which seemed to be sealed off from the main chamber by a strange, transparent wall. The rest of the humans, perhaps a dozen of them, were all gathered around the altar where her egg had rested, perched on a series of elevated walkways that seemed to have been added in quite recently and led back to the room where the other humans were gathered. Curiously, the walkways seemed to be made of metal, not of wood or stone as the humans had done in the old days. It seemed that they had continued to develop their craftsmanship while she had been asleep.
What was also interesting was that the humans gathered before her weren't wearing or carrying anything that resembled the attire or offerings of her old priests and priestesses, or even those of the ordinary worshippers who had once congregated in her temples. The ones on the walkways around her were clad in what appeared to be full-body suits of armor, light blue in color, with helmets covering their heads. Instead of fruits, leaves or flowers, they carried what appeared to be bulky black sticks, made from some kind of metal; she could also see that the tip of each stick appeared to be glowing blue and was emitting a faint crackle of electricity.
"Weird," the Queen murmured thoughtfully to herself. She frowned and glanced around curiously, before reaching out with her mind again, but it only took a moment to confirm that none of her Singers were within range of her senses either.
What was going on here? What were these humans doing? Perhaps the customs they'd been using to worship her had changed dramatically since the last time she'd been awake? Or was this something else?
At that moment, a soft voice, which seemed to be a human voice amplified to an unusually-loud volume, echoed through the space around her. While most Kaiju couldn't understand human speech at all, thanks to her Singers she could understand enough of their language that she could comprehend the words, although their true meaning was harder for her to understand without the accompanying telepathic impressions that she was used to.
"Activating containment grid," the voice intoned. With a strange humming sound, what looked like a column of glowing blue light suddenly flared to life around the Queen, rising up around her altar and extending all the way to the ceiling of the chamber.
The Queen frowned and tilted her head curiously as she examined this strange phenomenon; it wasn't like anything she'd ever seen before. Maybe this was some kind of new custom that the humans had invented? The blue glow did resemble the same blue light that she herself emitted. Perhaps that was its purpose: to mimic her bioluminescence as a way of paying respects to her?
She looked down at the circle of humans around her again, and found herself feeling more and more confused by how quiet they all were. The humans back in the old days would have been singing and chanting this entire time, so she couldn't help but find it strange that these ones weren't making any noise at all, except for the occasional crackle of electric sparks from the strange metal sticks in their hands. What kinds of offerings were those supposed to be, anyway? They clearly weren't edible and they weren't producing any radiation, so maybe they were some kind of ceremonial instruments?
And what was the purpose of this glowing blue column around her? Curiously, she reached out one hooked claw, poking it lightly into the inner surface of the column, but the dense blue light stubbornly resisted her efforts to push through it, and she felt a strange tingling sensation running up through her claw. She tried scraping her claw along the surface of the column, but it slid harmlessly over the mesh of blue light without any effect.
The Queen's confusion deepened for a moment, before her eyes narrowed and her feelings slowly morphed into suspicion as she realized what this glowing column reminded her of. The strange, mesh-like design of it bore a striking resemblance to the nets that humans back in the old days had used to catch fish in the ocean, except that this one was much bigger, and made from glowing blue light rather than ropes or vines.
Was this glowing light-column supposed to be… some kind of trap? For her?
Just as those suspicions began growing in her mind, the glowing "net" suddenly changed color, shifting from blue to red, the way her own bioluminescence did when she became agitated or upset. There were a few explosions of sparks on the ceiling above her, raining down around her… and then the flickering red "net" dissolved into the air, evaporating like mist, and was gone.
The Queen tilted her head back and forth, feeling more perplexed than ever. What just happened? She turned to examine her surroundings, her body bumping against the metal walkways that the humans appeared to have built around her egg and sending tremors through them. The blue-clad humans around her stumbled back as she moved, but she ignored them for the moment, scanning the surrounding area with both her senses and her telepathy for any signs of anything familiar, particularly searching for any traces of her Singers. But try as she might, she still found nothing useful; there were a few other humans outside the pyramid, but she couldn't sense anyone with telepathy.
Frowning, she turned back to face the semicircle of humans beneath her, leaning down towards them. "What's going on here?" she questioned, her voice accompanied by a series of staccato clicks and snorts. "Why are you all acting like this? Explain yourselves!" To add a bit of emphasis, she swayed a little closer to them and slapped one claw down lightly on the near edge of the walkway, digging it into the metal. She knew the humans probably couldn't understand her, but she was getting increasingly confused and frustrated by their bizarre behavior, and she definitely wasn't comforted by the idea that they might have been trying to imprison her somehow using that strange light-net.
What happened next only confirmed those misgivings. Instead of bowing, speaking to her, or doing anything that the humans back in the old days had normally done, one of the blue-clad humans beneath her let out a yell and raised his metal stick to point up at her. A moment later, a bolt of crackling blue lightning leapt from the tip of the stick and hit the Queen in the stomach, sending a stinging electric jolt racing up through her body.
"Ow!" the Queen cried out at the stinging sensation of the electric shock, much more startled than actually hurt but feeling a jab of pain regardless. Her body reflexively jerked backwards, rearing back away from the humans, as her mind whirled in shock and disbelief.
They'd attacked her. They'd actually attacked her! The humans who worshipped her back in the old days had never done that, not even once, both because they knew she would never harm them and also because, frankly, they weren't stupid enough to pick a fight with a Kaiju, no matter how gentle she was normally.
This was completely unheard of… well, almost. Prior to her hatching, she had seen some flashes of her King's recent memories while they'd been sharing dreams through their mental connection, and she'd glimpsed some images from when he'd been hunting down those two Jinshin-Mushi parasites a few years earlier… memories of humans attacking him, using strange, flashing weapons that launched stinging bursts of fire from a distance. But she hadn't really believed that humans could have changed that much, even in a few thousand years. Surely it must have just been some kind of misunderstanding on their part, especially since her King had been trying to protect them from the parasites at the time.
But clearly, she had been wrong about that. The humans in this new age were willing to attack Kaiju, even friendly ones, without provocation. And if these humans were willing to attack her like this, it meant that they weren't worshippers; they were hostile. At the bare minimum, the group of them around her now qualified as a threat.
The Queen was silent for a moment, her eyes still wide and astonished. Then her eyes narrowed, and her glowing bioluminescence melted from blue into red as a surge of annoyance and anger welled up inside her. Who the hell did these humans think they were, attacking her for no reason?!
"Okay," she muttered, her mandibles snapping pointedly at the air. "You know what? That does it."
And with no further hesitation, she let out a piercing screech and struck.
Luckily, it wasn't difficult. With three quick flicks of her head, three jets of sticky silk burst from her open mouth, and all three hit their targets, wrapping around most of the humans who had attacked her and knocking them off their feet. After those three quick bursts of silk, most of the humans had been stuck to the walls of the chamber, glued firmly in place and unable to move or threaten her any further.
Several of the humans were still on their feet, running away along the metal catwalk, but the Queen noticed that the one who had attacked her first was with them, and she was in no mood to let him off easy for that. She lunged forward, her mandibles clamping down – as carefully as possible – around the legs of the human in question; she dragged him backwards, hoisted him into the air, and gently tossed him into one of the silken webs that she'd just created along the nearby wall. As soon as he hit the curtain of silk, he was immobilized by its glue, held there motionless and out of the way just like the others. None of them were dead or seriously injured, but they were all safely stuck in place and wouldn't be going anywhere for a while. Therefore, none of them were a threat to her any longer, which meant that she should be safe while she figured out what to do next.
With most of the strangely-hostile humans trapped and out of the way, while those who hadn't been trapped were quickly vacating the chamber, the Queen was able to relax a little, although she still felt unnaturally tense. Turning around and scanning the room, she tried to make sense of this bizarre situation, but she still felt thoroughly confused. Why would they treat her like that, as if she were an enemy or a threat? Had they all somehow forgotten about her?
Putting her confusion aside for a moment, the Queen lowered her head and reached out with her telepathy, extending it farther this time and seeking out the connection between her mind and her King's. After a moment's focus, she could feel their connection, but it was faint and indistinct, which meant that he was a long way away. She'd been pretty sure this would happen, as the odds of his being near whichever nest this happened to be at the time of her hatching were fairly low, but unfortunately it meant that she wasn't going to be able to get his help right now. She would have to get out of here, find a safe place to cocoon and transform, and then she could go and find him. Hopefully, once she'd tracked him down and they were reunited, he would be able to explain why the humans were behaving so differently now.
The sudden flicker of another mind approaching snapped the Queen out of her thoughts, and she looked up to see another human approaching down the elevated walkway. She tensed up for a moment, expecting another attack… but on closer inspection, something about this human seemed different. This one was an adult female, by the looks of it, and she was moving much more slowly and cautiously than the others. In addition, unlike the humans that had attacked her, who had been clad in blue armor, this one seemed to be wearing some kind of loose-fitting white robe. Instead of a metal stick crackling with electricity, this female carried some sort of dark metal box, which looked more like an offering basket than a weapon. Her demeanor was also very different from that of the blue-clad humans: she moved slowly and carefully, and kept her head inclined respectfully as she approached.
The Queen cocked her head, feeling intrigued by this human's clothing and her attitude. Some of her priests and priestesses back in the old days had worn robes that vaguely resembled this one, and they often behaved in a similar way when presenting offerings to her. Could this female be one of their descendants, perhaps?
This female's attitude seemed much more like the type of behavior that the Queen had been expecting, but she was still wary. She leaned down, putting her head on the same level as the human, and deliberately banged her chin lightly against the metal platform, shaking the structure as a warning. "Don't try anything," she warned, despite knowing that this human probably couldn't understand her. "I won't kill you… but if you try to harm me, I will defend myself."
The white-robed human approached, slowly and cautiously, until she was just a few yards away from where the Queen was waiting. A short distance away, she crouched down on the walkway, sinking to her knees and bowing her head as she set the metal box down on the floor in front of her. The Queen regarded it with some interest, wondering what it might be. She couldn't sense any radiation emanating from it, but it didn't look edible either. Maybe it was meant to be some sort of decoration? Shiny rocks and crystals had often been used to adorn her altars back in the old days, and she supposed that this might fall into that category. Or perhaps the real offering was something inside the box, contained within a protective metal shell?
After setting the box down, the human continued fiddling with it for a moment, until the box suddenly opened, unfolding in a manner that made it look like a strange metal flower. The Queen was still puzzled, but interest was overtaking her confusion: maybe it was some sort of artistic decoration after all? She leaned in a little closer, watching intently as the human continued tapping the interior petals of the metal flower for a few more seconds.
But then, suddenly, the human's hands made an odd twisting motion, as if she were turning something inside the metal flower… and a strange, pulsing voice rose out of the flower and sliced through the warm air of the chamber like a blade. It almost sounded like the voice of another Kaiju, but it was warped and distorted beyond recognition, melted into just a series of loud, blaring tones.
"Ah!" The Queen jerked back with another cry of pain, shaking her head back and forth as if stung, as the shrill, piercing warble dug into her sensitive ears. The red light of her bioluminescence flashed brighter, and she instinctively spat a burst of silk in the direction of the noise. Due to the pain in her head, her normally-accurate aim went wide and the silk missed its target, splattering over the railing on one side of the walkway instead of trapping the white-robed human, who ducked to one side to avoid it and made a quick adjustment to the metal flower. The pulsing, grating voice shifted tones, becoming deeper and slower but no less confusing. It was like listening to somebody slurring all their words together, a confusing warble that was impossible to understand; she couldn't make any sense out of it, but it was still sending jolts of pain through her brain with each throbbing pulse of the noise.
"Stop that!" the Queen cried out. She spat another jet of silk in the direction of the noise, missing with this one too, and continued whipping her head around in an attempt to get the noise out of her ears. "That hurts!"
As the Queen thrashed back and forth, trying to relieve the nagging lances of pain that were stabbing into her head, she dimly sensed another mind approaching. She heard a high-pitched human voice shouting, and looked up to see another female human – this one noticeably smaller than the white-robed one, and dressed in darker colors – running along the walkway to where the white-robed female was still fiddling with the warbling metal flower. Normally she would have regarded this development with more interest, but with her head feeling more and more like it wanted to split open every time the flower's discordant song pulsed, she didn't really care right now.
"I said stop it!" the Queen snapped with a furious glare down at the white-robed female, her mandibles clattering together angrily and her red glow intensifying. "Either you stop that noise right now, or I will!"
Seemingly ignoring her, the white-robed human shouted something over her shoulder as the smaller female approached her, and finished making another adjustment to the metal flower. The warped "voice" that was coming from it promptly changed again, but this time was the worst one yet: the low-toned, guttural warbling of the last sound now rose into a piercing, high-pitched wail that set the Queen's mandibles on edge. If the other sounds had been like spikes lancing through her mind, this one felt like she'd driven one of her own claws straight into her brain and was deliberately twisting it around. She screeched in pain and recoiled, lashing back and forth as the pain in her head quickly fed her growing anger, and finally came to a decision.
That was it. She was done playing nice.
She wasn't going to kill these two humans, as she didn't kill other living things unless it was absolutely necessary… but she was going to grab them, pick them up, and throw them both into the silk webbing with the others who'd attacked her. Then she was going to smash that metal flower and hopefully shut off the agonizing racket that was echoing from it, and then she would get out of the pyramid and figure out what to do next.
Rearing back with a clattering hiss of anger, the Queen coiled like a snake and struck down at the pair of humans, her mandibles spreading wide to snatch them up and toss them into the silk. The white-robed human made one final frantic adjustment to the metal flower, and its voice shifted again –
"Be calm."
And the Queen froze, just feet away from the pair, as the pain in her head vanished and the discordant chorus of noise echoing from the flower suddenly snapped into crystalline clarity.
"Be calm."
The Queen's bioluminescent glow melted from red back into blue in the span of a heartbeat, as she stared wide-eyed at the pair of human women and the strange metal flower. A flower that was still somehow speaking to her, sound echoing out from its metallic petals… but this time, it wasn't a random chorus of nonsense. It was a voice, similar to the voice of a Kaiju, but with something very strange about it.
"Be calm," it murmured. "Be calm. Be calm."
To the Queen's sensitive ears, as she focused more intently on the voice of the metal flower, it almost sounded as if two different voices had been blended together, like two rivers converging and flowing into each other until they merged and became one. One of the voices was softer, higher-pitched, and distinctly feminine, but not like the voice of any Kaiju she'd ever heard. But the other…
It was a familiar voice. A deep, masculine, very familiar voice.
It was her King's voice.
"…Goji?" the Queen murmured in shock and disbelief.
What in the world?
The Queen was more confused in this moment than she could ever remember being. She'd assumed that this metal flower must be some kind of an attack on her, due to the pain that its raucous "song" had caused, but now she wasn't so sure. The voice she was hearing now was unlike any she'd ever heard… but the deeper half of its song, the deeper and rougher tones, was unmistakably the sound of her King's voice.
Could this be some kind of attempt by these humans to communicate with her, since her Singers weren't here to translate on her behalf? She remembered that back in the old days, some human groups would use simple noisemakers, like giant horns, to communicate with other Kaijus that lacked her telepathic abilities, calling them in to receive offerings of food or to defend their homes from hostile groups of humans or other Kaijus. Perhaps this metal flower was simply a more advanced version of such an instrument?
As she listened more closely, something else caught her attention. The second voice that was intermingled with her King's in the flower's song – the soft, high-pitched voice – didn't actually sound like the voice of another female Kaiju. In fact, on closer inspection… it actually sounded like a female human. And as the Queen focused more intently on the female portion of this strange double-voice, she actually recognized it: she'd heard it shouting just a few moments earlier.
One of the two voices that had been fused into this strange chorus was her King's voice… and the other was the voice of the smaller female human who was currently cowering on the walkway below her, the companion of the white-robed female who had been using the metal flower.
Fascinating…
The Queen leaned down slowly, tilting her head from side to side as she examined the pair more closely. "It's okay," she murmured, making her voice as quiet and soothing as possible. "I'm not going to hurt you. I'm sorry for attacking you like that; those noises just really hurt my ears, and I thought you were trying to hurt me."
The humans didn't respond, of course, as she was pretty sure they couldn't understand her. Her Singers were the only humans who could understand her normal speech, and she could only communicate telepathically with other humans by forming a mental link with them. She could try that with one of these two, but that could potentially be risky if they did turn out to be hostile.
But after a moment of deliberation, she decided that it didn't matter. She needed to know why things were so different now, and how this little human had managed to mingle her voice with the voice of the King. And the only way to communicate with this little one right now was if she formed a link between their minds.
With that in mind, the Queen carefully leaned down further, leaning inward towards the little human. Her mandibles clicked softly together as she approached, her eyes sparkling brightly as she held her head level with theirs. "It's okay, little one," she breathed to the human girl, slowly moving closer. "I won't hurt you, I promise."
The girl seemed to understand this, as her previously-fearful expression softened and she took a couple of steps forward towards the Queen. The larger, white-robed female held one of her hands, as if making sure she wouldn't get too close, but the dark-haired girl was clearly focused entirely on the Queen. She lifted one arm and held it out, her hand open and reaching out towards the Queen's head.
The Queen hesitated for a long moment, not sure whether she should really go through with this. But eventually she shook it off and leaned forward a little bit more, enough that the human's hand was able to make contact with the soft chitin of her forehead. Physical contact was the key to establishing a mental link; as soon as that connection was made, the Queen's mind reached out, gently and carefully brushing against the mind of the human girl. She heard the girl let out a soft gasp as she felt the contact, and smiled faintly at the note of wonder and awe in her voice.
Hello, the Queen projected, making her telepathic voice as soft and gentle as possible so it wouldn't overwhelm the girl. Seeing the girl's eyes widen in amazement and happy to see that there was no trace of fear, she continued. It's okay; I promise I won't hurt you. My name is Mosura. What's yours?
The girl's thoughts were a little jumbled – which was understandable, given the circumstances – but the Queen was able to distinguish a name. …Madison.
The Queen's smile widened. Excellent! She'd been able to make the initial contact without causing the human – Madison – any significant pain or discomfort. It would take more time and effort to expand this first tentative thread into a proper telepathic connection, but this was a start. A soft, pleased snort escaped her mouth, creating a rush of warm breath that ruffled Madison's hair, but the smile on the small human's face reassured the Queen that she hadn't frightened the child.
It's very nice to meet you, Madison, she replied, her voice still as soft and kind as possible. Could you tell me where –
And then the thunderclap of an explosion echoed through the great chamber, and the Queen's eyes widened in surprise. She and Madison both jerked back, their connection cutting off as they turned to face the far end of the room, where the other white-robed humans had been watching from their observation room. Now, however, an explosion appeared to have gone off in that room, with flames licking up the walls and smoke billowing out of the room. Some of the white-robed humans were crumpled on the ground, unconscious or dead; the others were promptly attacked as well, as more humans, these ones dressed in black, burst into the room. These ones were holding weapons, which she dimly recognized as some of the smaller fire-stingers that her King had mentioned, and they used them to deadly effect. The remaining white-robed humans in that chamber were cut down in a matter of seconds, crumpling to the floor in lifeless heaps.
The Queen's eyes widened in alarm. "No!" she gasped, rearing back and clattering her mandibles in alarm. But she was too far away, and there was nothing she could do; before she could even move in that direction, all but one of the white-robed humans in that observation chamber had fallen. Only one was left standing, his arms raised in surrender, as another black-clad figure – presumably the leader of these new arrivals – stepped into that chamber. He regarded the last white-robe for a moment, then lifted a small fire-stinger in one hand. There was a crack, and the last white-robe fell as the transparent barrier between the observation room and the larger chamber shattered and fell away.
The dark-haired girl, Madison, screamed and shrank back; the older white-robed woman wrapped her arms protectively around the girl, in a manner which suggested that she was Madison's mother. The Queen's eyes narrowed and she swayed a little closer to them, before letting out a low, warning hiss as the leader of the black-clad humans stepped out into the main chamber. While she wasn't very good at distinguishing individual humans from each other by their facial features, something about this one sent a chill through her. The impression she got from his mind was unlike any human she'd ever felt before: a cold, calculating, predatory intelligence, with flickering images of death and destruction boiling under the surface.
Come with me, little one, the Queen projected to Madison, a telepathic whisper that should hopefully be understandable through the flickering connection between them. I can get you and your mother out of here, but we need to go now.
Madison blinked and turned to look up at the Queen, her eyes wide. After a moment, though, she tentatively shook her head. N-no… no, it's okay, her mental voice whispered back, much softer than the Queen's but still audible through their faint connection. They… they won't hurt us. My mom won't let that happen. But… Her eyes widened a little more, and she glanced back over her shoulder at the dark-clad man before turning back to the Queen, her mental voice becoming more urgent. But you do need to go. They might hurt you if you stay here. Get out of here and get someplace safe. Go, please!
The Queen frowned, feeling conflicted. Surely the girl and her mother would be safer with her? She couldn't just leave them here to deal with these hostile humans on their own, could she? But Madison did seem certain that these newcomers wouldn't harm her, and she had to believe that there was a reason for that.
Besides, the girl was definitely right about one thing: it wasn't safe for the Queen to stay here. If she were in her adult form, she would have no hesitation about staying behind and challenging this new batch of hostile humans. But in her larval form, she was much smaller and more vulnerable… and if the humans' fire-stingers were capable of inflicting injuries on a Kaiju as large and powerful as her King, they could certainly harm her in her current state.
After thinking things over for a long moment, the Queen nodded slowly. She didn't like the idea of leaving Madison here, but under the current circumstances she didn't have much of a choice. All right, little one, she murmured. But I promise, if you need me, call out to me and I will come for you.
With that, the Queen swung around, away from the humans, and lunged towards the back wall of the immense chamber.
Luckily, when her human worshippers had built this pyramid for her, they had thought ahead. Since she hadn't wanted to destroy the pyramid to get outside after she hatched, they had built her an exit: a tunnel that led out of the hatching chamber, then curved down under the ground and led out of the pyramid, and then curved back up to ground-level again a couple of miles from the pyramid. The entrance to this tunnel, a large opening in the back wall of the chamber, had been concealed by a thick curtain of hanging vines and greenery that had accumulated over thousands of years, but the tunnel itself had been built to last just as long as the pyramid, and it was still there.
Without hesitation, the Queen pushed through the curtain of vines and plunged into the tunnel, fleeing into the darkness. I will find you again, little one, she thought, sending a last reassuring telepathic call back towards Madison. I promise.
And she would; she vowed it to herself as she scrambled along the tunnel, her hooked claws moving in a series of rhythmic waves along her body to pull her along as quickly as possible. But she needed to be stronger, faster, and better-informed first, and that meant her original plan had to be changed. She could no longer afford to stay in her larval stage for a while; she needed the speed and the heightened telepathic power that her winged adult form gave her. Therefore, right now she needed to find a safe place to cocoon, and then she needed to go find her King as soon as she finished transforming.
Once she was with her King, they could figure everything else out together. He could help her figure out why the humans were so different now, and maybe she would be able to track down her Singers, if their descendants still lived. Everything would be fine.
But before she could track her King down, she had work to do.
As it turned out, the other end of the Queen's escape tunnel had been buried by a landslide at some point in the past few thousand years. No human could have cleared away the wall of displaced earth and rocks that had filled the tunnel's mouth, but the Queen barely even slowed down. Her larval form might be fairly small by Kaiju standards, but she was still a Kaiju, and a little digging wasn't going to stop her. She plowed through the mound of rubble with barely any effort, smashing it aside and bursting out of the tunnel exit in a massive cloud of dust.
The exit from her tunnel was set into the side of a hill, and as the dust cloud settled, the Queen found herself on the bank of a large river. Finally being outside again was a little overwhelming, but the reassuring warmth of the fresh air and the calls of countless living creatures helped to soothe the fear and confusion that she'd felt inside the pyramid. She took a few deep breaths and tried to calm down as much as she could, taking a cue from her King and just listening to all the sounds of the forest around her to help her relax.
She glanced back and forth, evaluating her options. If she went downstream, she would be closer to the ocean, and therefore closer to finding her King… but right now, what she really needed was a safe place to make her cocoon. So she closed her eyes for a moment and focused on her sense of hearing instead, listening intently for any sounds that might give her some useful information. What she really needed was someplace where she would have shelter while she was transforming, a place where, on the off-chance that any other Kaiju were still awake, they wouldn't find her while she was immobile and defenseless. But she was sure there had to be someplace suitable in the area; she just had to find it.
And sure enough, as she listened closely to her surroundings, she heard a promising sound: the soft, crashing rumble of a waterfall, echoing down the river from somewhere upstream.
The Queen smiled. If the waterfall was big enough, it could be ideal for her purposes. Making her decision, she turned upstream and set off, crawling along the river as quickly as she could, while keeping both her ears and her telepathy on full alert for any signs of potential danger.
It didn't take long for her to find what she was looking for. The waterfall was only a few miles upriver, and it took less than an hour for her to reach it. She didn't think she'd been there before, but it was ideally suited for her needs: a very high and very broad set of falls, wide enough that her King could have stretched his whole body out under them and taken a nice bath if he'd been there. Best of all, the rock of the cliff-face was undercut, creating an open space behind the curtain of falling water that appeared to be more than large enough to accommodate her, even in her cocoon.
"Perfect," the Queen murmured to herself, nodding decisively. After scanning the surrounding area to make sure there were no hostile humans nearby, she crawled up the river to the base of the falls. Moving slowly and carefully so her claws could find purchase on the slippery rocks, she clambered up to the falls and ducked through the sheet of falling water, washing away the dirt that had accumulated on her body during her crawl through the escape tunnel. She pulled herself into the cavity behind the water, and was pleased to see that her guess had been correct; there was more than enough room for her to fit comfortably in here.
As she settled in and prepared to get started, a strange humming sound reached her ears, echoing over the rushing din of the falls. Turning, she cautiously poked her head out through the sheet of water, just in time to see several strange creatures flying into view over the nearby hills.
Hmmm… The Queen regarded these new arrivals carefully as they began circling over the falls. At first glance, she thought they might be some kind of large bird, or small insect Kaiju, but on closer inspection they were unlike anything she'd ever seen. They didn't have flapping wings extending from their sides, like the wings of her adult form or of any other flying creature that she'd seen before; instead, a set of narrow, bladelike "wings" appeared to jut out into the air above them, and spun around in a circle to give them lift. In addition, they seemed to be covered in metal, not in feathers or scales. And when she reached out with her telepathy, she didn't feel any life from them; instead, she felt the presences of several humans inside each of the strange "birds." She couldn't sense the girl Madison or the strange, predatory man aboard any of them, though, so she assumed that these must be a new group.
After contemplating for a moment, the Queen shook her head. Whatever they were, these strange metal birds and their human riders didn't seem inclined to attack her, which meant she could afford to ignore them for now. And frankly, that was a good thing, because she had a more important job to do at the moment. She let out a warning chirp, directed up at the metal birds, before pulling her head back behind the falls and into cover.
From here, it was academic. She'd spun a cocoon for herself countless times before, so she barely even needed to think about it at this point. Grasping the rocks with some of her claws to hold her body in place, she tilted her head back and began spraying jets of silk over herself, using her upper claws to manipulate the strands and spreading them out into a silken "shroud" around her body.
As time ticked by and the minutes stretched into hours, the cocoon slowly grew larger and denser around the Queen as more and more silk poured from her mouthparts, her claws still instinctively weaving each new strand of silk into place as she turned around and around inside the cocoon. She barely noticed, as she was already slipping into a trance: a reflex that was designed to make the transformation process easier for her.
After a few hours, the cocoon was finally completed, shutting out the outside world. Only the soft rumbling of the falls echoed through the silken membrane, like a lullaby that was ushering the Queen deeper into her trance. As her mind started to soften again, she reached out with her telepathy one more time, flinging a message out like a dart along one of her mental connections: not the new, faint one that she had developed with Madison, but a connection that she'd held for millions of years.
I'm coming, my love, the Queen thought, just before she slipped fully into her trance as the transformation began and her DNA started rewriting itself from the inside out. Don't worry; I'll see you soon.
A day later and half a world away, the King floated motionless at the bottom of the ocean. His eyes were closed, only a faint orange glow filtering under their lids. He'd found it nearly impossible to sleep ever since his dream-conversation with the Queen a few days earlier, so he was trying to calm himself with his meditation instead. Listening to the song of the ocean always helped him to relax, and with luck, maybe he would be able to sense her awakening.
Over the last few hours, though, his meditation definitely hadn't been helping him relax.
When the Queen had first emerged from her egg the day before, he had felt the flicker through their telepathic connection, faint but unmistakable: wherever she was now, she was alive and fully conscious. A surge of joy had rushed through his heart in that moment, but it had soon been mixed with a dose of mild annoyance when he realized that, just as she had predicted, her current hatching site was too far away for him to pinpoint its location.
Then, however, things started getting worse. While Mosura was too far away for the King to sense most of what she was experiencing, the flashes of fear, anger and pain that he could feel filtering through their connection were quickly putting him on edge. He scowled, his rows of pointed teeth grinding together as his tail lashed back and forth behind him, churning up the water.
When he'd heard a second voice echoing through the deeps, the King had tensed up. This one was the same strange Kaiju-esque voice that he'd heard before, but this time it kept going, changing tones several times. Even at this distance, the first few garbled voices had put his teeth on edge, and a low growl had rumbled in the back of his throat. However, his anger had died down a bit when the warbling chorus settled into an actual voice, again one that was vaguely similar to his own. He'd been too far away to tell what exactly it was saying, but it seemed to be coming from the same area as his Queen, and his hands had clenched into fists at the thought of another Kaiju threatening Mosura right after she'd hatched, when she was smaller and more vulnerable.
Luckily, whatever strange Kaiju was generating this voice didn't seem to be hostile, as the impressions that he'd gotten from his Queen were feelings of confusion and curiosity, rather than anger or fear. And after a few minutes, the new voice had faded away, leaving only the faint trickle of sensations coming through the Queen's telepathic connection. He could barely even feel her presence, although he could tell that she was still alive and awake. Despite that, he had remained focused on their connection for a few hours after that until her telepathic message had echoed through it, and then the faint sound of her thoughts had dissolved into a familiar soft murmur, like the telepathic equivalent of someone snoring gently, which meant that she was in the process of cocooning. After that, he hadn't been able to hear anything more from her, but he could tell that she was still alive and unhurt.
Clearly, something had happened to alter their original plan, and the Queen had been forced to cocoon and transform immediately instead of coming to find him first. The question was, what could have triggered that change of plans?
Although he knew that Mosura was safe for the moment (she had to be, or else she would never have made herself vulnerable by cocooning), the King still found it impossible for him to relax; his hands wouldn't stop clenching and unclenching, and his breathing was significantly faster than normal. The idea that his Queen might be in danger, and that he was totally unable to help because he had no idea where she was, kept gnawing at the back of his mind, urging him to take action despite the fact that he currently couldn't do anything.
And the humans – or, to be more precise, their annoying little pets – weren't helping matters.
For most of the time since the King had awoken from his hibernation, he had only been acquainted with two types of the metal fish that the humans had apparently created in his absence: the floating surface-fish that drifted across the sea without submerging, and the whale-like diving-fish that could spend long periods of time underwater but still needed to surface again eventually. He'd assumed that those were the only two types of these strange fish… but ever since he had emerged from the depths to track down the pair of Jinshin-Mushi parasites, he'd found himself plagued by a new type of metal fish.
These ones had first appeared after his fight with the male parasite on that tropical island, when he'd been swimming across the ocean in pursuit of his prey. They were much smaller than the metal diving-fish that he'd encountered before, and their physiology seemed very different from that of their larger cousins: there was no radiation emanating from them, and he couldn't sense any humans concealed inside them. But the fact that they were made of metal, and the fact that they were usually found near the larger metal fish, suggested that they came from the same origin.
At first, the King had assumed that the smaller metal fish might be scavengers following after the humans' larger surface-fish, like the normal small fish that followed after predators like sharks to feed on the scraps from their kills. But after a while, he'd figured out that whenever these smaller metal fish showed up, they always seemed to be focused totally on him rather than on their larger brethren, always staying close to him as if their only goal was to track his movements. Eventually, he had realized what must be going on: these little metal fish were keeping tabs on his whereabouts for the humans, following him wherever he went and somehow reporting that information back to their masters. Ever since then, he'd dubbed them "spy-fish," and he had developed a strong dislike for their presence.
Right now, he could sense at least a dozen of the spy-fish in the area, significantly more than normal. Three of them were very close to him, close enough for him to see the odd, blinking lights that they produced as they circled leisurely around him, but he could hear many more of them beyond visual range, concealed by the rocks and crevices of the underwater terrain that lay between his current location and the underwater nest that the humans had built into a nearby seamount.
The King's eyes narrowed, their faint orange glow brightening briefly, and he let out a low, irritated growl. Normally he tolerated the humans' observations of him without any complaint, as they didn't really do anything to him, but right now he really wasn't in the mood for it.
Come on, Goji, just listen and try to relax, he thought irritably to himself, trying to think of what Mosura would tell him if she were there. He closed his eyes to block out the lights of the circling spy-fish and reached out with his other senses instead, letting the timeless song of the ocean fill his mind and wash everything else away.
After a couple of minutes, though, the King frowned as a strange sensation began creeping up his spine. His fists clenched again, his teeth ground together, and he felt a surge of adrenaline starting to flow through his body. He felt as if something was threatening him, as if an enemy was approaching, but he couldn't sense anything of the kind nearby. His normal senses all told him he was alone down here – except for the spy-fish, of course – but his danger-sense was murmuring in his mind with increasing urgency, as if it was trying to warn him of an impending threat.
The tipping point came when one of the spy-fish buzzed right past the King's face, one of its blinking lights shining directly into his closed eyes. That was too much: the King's lip curled and he lashed out, one hand swinging up through the water and grabbing the spy-fish in a vice grip. He knew there were no humans inside this creature, so he was in no mood to show mercy to it; a single squeeze of his hand crushed it in an instant.
Snarling, the King's eyes snapped open and he burst into motion, propelling himself forward. A flick of his massive tail pulverized one of the other two spy-fish, and he smashed the third against the rocks with a backhanded sweep of his arm.
The King accelerated through the depths, weaving back and forth through the maze of rock formations. Whenever another one of the spy-fish came into view, he smashed it and continued on, barely even slowing down. He'd had enough of humoring the humans for the moment, and maybe a good scare would convince them to keep their distance for a while.
As he approached the humans' underwater nest, the King scowled as he heard an echoing series of high-pitched whines and metallic clanks coming from the seamount that they'd colonized. They had closed armored metal shields over their observation windows, and he could sense the energy of their fire-stingers charging up. Clearly, they were interpreting his approach as a threat, and were preparing to defend themselves.
A deep, low growl welled up in the King's throat. His body trailed a river of current as he circled around the nest, keeping a careful eye on the stingers as they swiveled to track him. His usual rule was that he wouldn't deliberately attack humans without provocation… but if they attacked him, then he would defend himself. So if these humans opened fire on him right now, he wouldn't hesitate to smash their nest to pieces.
Unfortunately, the King couldn't actually talk to the humans the way his Queen could, as her telepathic abilities were much more advanced than his. However, he did have his own ways of communicating with others, and he used one of them now: the spiked plates on his back began rhythmically pulsing and crackling with light, similarly to when he was charging up his fiery breath. A deep humming rumble echoed in his chest, timed to synchronize with each pulse of his plates. This behavior could be used in two ways, depending on its target: to most creatures, it was a threat display meant to intimidate rivals or drive off enemies, while to an interested female it would serve as a display of his strength and vitality. In this case, it was definitely the former.
Luckily, as the King cruised slowly in towards the humans' nest, they apparently came to their senses, as their fire-stingers pulled back into the burrows that they'd emerged from. The King relaxed slightly, but his eyes were still narrowed warily, and their normally-orange light was still the same pulsing blue as his spines.
After another moment, he relaxed a little more as the metal armor plates that had covered the humans' observation windows slowly retracted. Clearly, they didn't actually want to fight him – or, at least, they'd thought better of it – and they were trying to let him know that.
Good. The King nodded in satisfaction, but he still felt unusually tense. His danger-sense was still going haywire and sending jolts up his spine; he'd assumed that it was because of the humans spying on him, but apparently it was about something else. But what could it be? Maybe whatever had forced his Queen to cocoon early?
His spines still pulsing every couple of seconds as a warning to any enemies that might be lurking nearby, the King reached out with his mind and his ears again, trying to identify the source of the threat that he was sensing. Finally, he caught a faint trace of something, something very distant but vaguely recognizable: the same strange voice that he'd heard near his Queen when she'd hatched the day before. This time, however, it was much softer, barely a whisper, and it was coming from a completely different direction, far away from its previous location.
Since the humans no longer seemed inclined to bother him, the King stopped focusing on them: he ceased his display and closed his eyes, focusing as intently as he could on the source of the whispering voice. While the first call had been coming from someplace far to the east of him, this one felt like it was coming from the south. Far to the south.
As a matter of fact… it felt like it was coming from somewhere near the spot where…
And then the King's eyes snapped open wide, and a furious roar erupted from his mouth with an explosion of bubbles. The glow in his spines blazed back to life and he thundered forward with a sweep of his tail, swerving to the left at the last second just in time to avoid smashing into the side of the humans' nest. Banking into a high-speed 180-degree turn, he accelerated back the way he'd come, swimming due south as quickly as he could.
He still had no idea why that strange voice sounded so much like his own, or what sort of bizarre Kaiju was creating it, but it no longer mattered. What mattered was that right now, the voice – and whatever was creating it – was in the one place in the world where no other Kaiju should be located. The place where, back during the Cold Times, he and his Queen had fought their final battle with the creature that had been their greatest enemy.
The enemy of all life. The creature that had fallen from the stars to wreak destruction on their world, that had tried to steal his throne, and that had come close to causing a third great extinction event before he and his friends had miraculously defeated them. The Devil with Three Heads. The Deathbringer.
The Golden One.
AN: And here we are!
In case anybody's confused regarding some of the things I referenced here, a few notes:
– My headcanon for Mosura's life cycle in this take on the Monsterverse is that, rather than just having one egg at a time, she usually has a bunch of dormant eggs hidden around the world, so that even if she loses one or more of them, she'll always have a few replacements available. That feels like it makes more sense to me, since that way she could maintain her "safety net" without having to immediately lay another egg every time she becomes an adult.
– The "Singers" that Mosura talks about in this chapter are her priestesses, the special twins who serve as the intermediaries between her and humans in most of the Japanese Godzilla/Mothra films. The various nicknames I cited for them are their names in the Showa films (the Shobijin), the Heisei films (the Cosmos), the Rebirth of Mothra trilogy (the Elias), and the animated Netflix trilogy (the Houtua). Those twins do actually canonically exist in the MonsterVerse, as Dr. Ilene Chen and her twin sister Dr. Ling Chen, who we see in KOTM; according to the movie, they apparently come from a family that's comprised entirely of sets of twin girls, so I decided to try and explain where they came from and what their connection to Mosura actually is. We'll be seeing more of them later.
– Regarding the ORCA's "voice": It's explained in the movie that Emma's solution for getting the ORCA working was by combining two different sets of "bioacoustics" from two different animals: one was Godzilla, and the other was a human. In the movie we're never told whether it was a particular human's bioacoustics or if it was just some generic "collective human signal" or something like that, but for the purposes of this story, I decided that instead of just using a random human's bioacoustics, Emma actually used the bioacoustic signature of her daughter Madison, as an extra means of keeping her safe during the impending mass Kaiju awakening. So, to Mosura and Gojira, the ORCA sounds like a mixture of Goji's voice and Madison's voice.
– Regarding Mosura's forming a telepathic connection with Madison: In the movie novelization of KOTM, it's hinted that Madison has some sort of unusual connection with Mothra that goes deeper than you might expect. As a way of making that happen, since I found that idea pretty interesting, I decided to have Mosura form a faint mental connection with Madison during that scene where Maddie comes close to touching Mosura on the nose. Now, this isn't even close to being as strong as the mental link that Mosura shares with Goji, or even the link that she shares with her Singers, but it's the very start of a mental connection between her and Madison, which could make it easier for Monarch to communicate with Mosura in the future… assuming that opportunity ever comes up, of course.
– And regarding Goji's talking about the humans' "metal fish": just in case it wasn't clear, "surface-fish" are boats, "diving-fish" are submarines, and "spy-fish" are the ROVs/drones that Monarch and/or the military have been using to track his movements.
Next chapter, the Golden One emerges from their hibernation, and as the King confronts his nemesis in the present, we get a flashback to the Royal Couple's last showdown with them, to explain how they were originally trapped in their icy prison. Stay tuned!