Chapter Fourteen
As a dead, icy wind blew through the fallen city, it could be seen by all those who wished to see. Atop a cairn of rubble, flooded with sickly sweet crimson, lay the hero that was supposed to save the world. He lay prostrate and twisted, a mutilated, broken wreck that would have been unrecognizable as the once mighty King of the Monsters. The woman who loved him and the man who had once been his enemy were at his side as he breathed his last.
Imagine this, if you will, that you're high above this scene of tragedy and sorrow and you're heading downwards towards this scene ever so slowly as the scene rotates below you. You see the saurian's battered face with broken teeth and hear the last beat of his heart until you ask whatever could it be that Godzilla sees in his last moment? From his perspective, everything seemed to grow brighter and brighter until it all disappeared in the unending white glare. When the glare died down, everything seemed to grow darker until the King of the Monsters saw a place of shadows and found himself in pain. In this strange vision, Godzilla was impaled throughout his gigantic body even more cruelly than he had been when Ghidorah attacked him with the steel girders.
All through his body, impossibly slender thread thin titanic metal blades tens of thousands of feet long lanced through his body, as if he were a frog suffering the twisted attentions of a cruel boy. The needle blades went through his thighs, through his shoulders, through his chest and straight out of his back perverted manner. Not only that, but they surrounded him as if they were a forest of spines, one or two reaching as high as his shoulder and most not. They suspended him in midair in a hunched forward, crouching position that held him still and left his head and arms dangling. He was there, suspended in the unending, infinite blackness of a strange mist shrouded valley so huge that it's colossal mountains towered over and dwarfed even Godzilla's gargantuan 100 meter tall bulk. In the darkened place, it was cold and wet and droplets of moisture condensed on the needle blades. There, the drops mingled with the blood that flowed down along the blades that went downwards to the valley bottom where they disappeared in the mist.
Although it was a place that a visitor to Godzilla's mind would not have been able to understand, it was a place that he himself knew all to well because he'd been there for a long time. Twitching in pain and stifling screams, he grit the teeth and squeezed the eyes in his hanging head shut as he was impaled ten times over in that insane position. Tortured as he was, the agony he knew surpassed any imaginable but the pain he felt was not a physical one but was instead of a spiritual nature, the very worst kind. On a closer expression, each metal blade that held him up would quickly be seen to not be made of metal at all but of memory.
On a blade that went through his right arm was the image of Godzilla failing to save his mate and of the nest where their unborn son lay, trampled. On a blade that went through his thigh, an image of having almost killed Miki could be seen. On a blade that went through his belly was the picture of the Mesozoic world completely destroyed, the bloated corpses of dinosaurs rotting in the sun. On a blade that went through his heart, were seen images of the human world. While it would seem strange for a human to think that images of cities and buildings and people would be cause for fear, for a creature for whom such things represented the death of his world, such images were nightmares.
It would seem that Godzilla was alone in that time of suffering and anguish but he was not. There was one other there with him who watched him and called him and all others like him son. That was when the saurian heard it, it was a roar louder than a hundred thunderstorms; that was when he smelt it, it was a smell like the ferns, ginkos, and cycads of jungle forests. That was when he looked up and saw it in the distance through the fog and shadow. To Godzilla's eyes, it had scales like ten fold shields, claws like spears, teeth like great swords, and it was bigger than the mountains that were at his sides.
It was made in the image of a Tyrannosaur down to the massive legs, to the short but impossibly muscled arms, to the thick and powerful chest, to the spiked ridges that ran across its brow, to the small fleshy spines that ran all along its shoulders to the tip of its tail. It was like a Tyrannosaurus Rex in all but size which was magnified a trillion fold. Black and gray, he made the world, if it was even a world they were in, tremble with his weight as he walked from the mountain from where he was and looked to Godzilla who was by comparison was less than a microbe. This saurian god was a hundred miles, nay, a hundred light years tall and was as far beyond Godzilla as he was beyond a lizard. Impaled on the needle blades, Godzilla saw this and would have gasped if he were able for he whom he saw emerging from the misty darkness was the Great Tyrannosaur.
The Emperor of all Dinosaurs, the god of all dragons, the father of all reptiles, looked at what the "King of the Monsters" endured and narrowed his eyes. He looked on him and let him know his thoughts. MY SON, SINCE THE DAY ADAM TOOK THE FORBIDDEN FRUIT, THE MORTAL WORLD HAS KNOWN SUFFERING. YOUNG ONE, WHY THEN MUST YOU TORTURE YOURSELF SO? IS NOT THE WORLD ITSELF A SOURCE OF ENOUGH PAIN?
For all the sorrow he had felt for so long, this was what he had feared for so long: that he would face the one whom he failed. Unable to meet the Great One's gaze, Godzilla hung his head in shame. Godzilla knew he had been born to protect the subjects of the Saurian Empire and that when they needed him the most, he had failed them. Now the Empire was gone and in its place a false world built on the blood and bones of his ancestors. Straining his pained head, he looked up to show the master the grief and shame that lanced through him and pained him. He suffered as he deserved to suffer.
The Great Tyrannosaur's throat rumbled and all Creation seemed to shake. YOUNG ONE, I TOO HAVE SEEN THE NEW WORLD AND I WEPT WHEN THE WORLD MADE FOR MY CHILDREN WAS NO MORE. I WEPT FOR EACH AND EVERY ONE OF THEM WHEN THEY DIED AND YET THOUGH THEY DIED, TO PROTECT THOSE WHOM I ENTRUSTED TO YOU MY SON, YOU GAVE ALL YOU HAD. MORE THAN THAT, CANNOT BE ASKED.
As much as it could, Godzilla's face showed confusion and disbelief. The Great One did not hate him…? But he failed them, they hated him, his mate-!
He did the saurian equivalent of raising an eyebrow. YOUR MATE, HATE YOU? I THINK NOT. With that, the Great One turned his colossal head, one the size of a continent—a planet!—to the waist high mist shrouded mountain at his side and in that mist was the outline of someone… special. Walking from out that mist there she was, her lithe, slender body as green as emerald and her spines as purple as sapphires. Her body bent forwards and her arms held against her, Gigantis was there at the edge of the mountain top and she looked at her crucified beloved.
Straining his aching head as best he could, he saw her, his sweet, sweet mate… She…
She loved him. Gigantis walked as close as she could until her talons came over the edge of cliff and from eyes set in a green saurian face there came tears. They were tears for him as she saw him tortured like that; she loved him and nothing could ever change that. The Fire Monster swished her tail behind her and stretched her arms towards him from across the abyss; in all the eons she had looked down on him from the stars of Draco, her heart ached waiting for the day that they might be together once more.
In a shock so great that he ignored the wrenching bloody agony, if only for a moment, Godzilla's jaw dropped; she did not hate him…? She forgave him…?
Folding her hands against her chest like the Tyrannosaurs from which she and her mate descended, Gigantis shook her head. She did not forgive him. Looking at him, there was a tear covered face of devotion and unconditional love. She couldn't forgive him because there was nothing to forgive.
Godzilla couldn't believe it… but if not her then what of the others…
INDEED, WHAT OF THE OTHERS? LOOK HERE MY SON AND UNDERSTAND.
On another of the valley's mountain tops beyond the one where Gigantis was there appeared from the mist two elderly Tyrannosaurs at her feet. Their erect tails moving past their bodies and their small arms clutched against their massive chests, their taloned toes crunched gravel as they walked towards the very edge of the mountain top. They were… Blood Fang and Pretty Kill… Their son strained forwards to try to see them but when his sudden movement made the needle blades tear that much deeper into his body, he stopped and roared in agony. Blood spurting and pouring from his wounds, he trembled in his pain and shut his eyes; soon enough though, he weakly opened them and looked to his mother and father. They still loved him?
Pretty Kill rubbed her massive skull against her mate's throat before turning to her egg. Blood Fang looked to his son and opened his maw as far as he could to let out a roar that tore through the darkness. They held no failure and no grudge against him and loved him with all their hearts.
Soon, on the black, mist shrouded, towering mountains that surrounded Godzilla, many strange and odd creatures appeared. Scaled creatures with horns and wings and spines, some on two legs and some on four, came from the mist to stand at the edge of the mighty valley. Therapods, Pterosaurs, Ankylosaurids, Stegosaurids, Sauropods, Dromeosaurs, Hadrosaurs, Ceratopsians, all the saurian races came and saw him. He saw his comrades in arms, Gorosaurus and Baragon and Titanosaurus. The dinosaurs came to see him and saw their protector once more; what bitterness some few had towards him was as nothing compared to the desire they had for him to avenge them and destroy their enemy.
The blood pouring from his face, Godzilla looked to them and wondered if they were there at the master's side, then where was Anguirus?
The Great Tyrannosaur looked to his creation. YOUR BROTHER IS NOT AMONG THOSE HERE. ANGUIRUS IS AMONG THE LIVING FOR HE IS NOT DEAD.
What! Ignoring the bloody, tearing pain he felt in leaning forward and strained to ask the master but before he could "ask" he was cut off.
YOUNG ONE, MY CHILDREN HOLD NO GRUDGE AGAINST YOU AND STILL LOOK TO YOU AS THEIR CHAMPION. YOU MUST NOT YIELD MY SON FOR YOU ARE THE LAST HOPE OF A FORGOTTEN RACE AND YOU MUST STAND FOR THEM, ALL OF THEM.
Each occupying a mountaintop of the misty shadowed valley and looking at their King were the monsters that had fought and died in the Monster Wars and before it, paying the ultimate price in standing against the Prince of Skyllans.
Standing atop another mountain at the Great One's side and arching her wings was the dragoness Tiamat, the daughter of the Great Dragon—one of the One's avatars. Though as tiny as a fly next to her mammoth father, and even the mountain where she stood not reaching his knees, she looked at him with true love. She had perished seeking to avenge her father's first brood and to defend the second. If she was to have died, then it couldn't be in vain.
She looked to another mount at her grand spawn, the serpentine Apophis, a lost soul that died seeking to avenge his grand sire and find redemption. Though he'd been wrong and had sinned none had ever doubted his sincerity. At his side were his four minions, crocodile, ape, hawk, and jackal. Apophis and the rest wanted King Ghidorah to pay.
At another mount were two figures familiar to Godzilla, Rodan and his mate Fire Radon. Their predecessors had stood alongside him against the demon 65,000,000 years ago and they now had died in battling against their common foe in an effort to guard their egg. Their child could not be allowed to grow up in the world of darkness King Ghidorah would bring forth.
There were Mechanstein, Uchihikrah, and Yetrigar standing together on one mount; they'd been heroes to the core and fought to the end protecting their human charges… and their human families. Even if they themselves could not stand against the three-headed monster, if Godzilla could then he had to do so and protect the innocent. If not him, then who?
One after another all those whom King Ghidorah had killed came to the black saurian; Inagos, the Swarm, Dagarla, Kamoebas, Shiigan, Nessie, and the trillions of sentient beings that had been butchered from across the cosmos. All of them said the same thing over and over, Avenge Me, Avenge Me AVENGE ME!
Towering over all of them, the Great Tyrannosaur's fanged reptilian face, a face with jaws that could devour mountains, filled the sky and looked down at Godzilla from above. YOU HAVE HEARD THE WORDS THEY HAVE HAD TO SAY. DO YOU STILL RUN FROM YOUR DUTY?
Soon enough, all those who had been there to see him disappeared into the mist and the shadows from whence they came. In the end, even his mate, Gigantis, and his parents, Blood Fang & Pretty Kill, vanished though they wept and kept their dear one in sight until the end as if telling him that they waited for the day they would be reunited forever. The needle blade through his heart burning him and his mouth dripping blood, Godzilla hung his head and clenched his fangs in anger as those he loved were taken from him again. Any feelings of warmth or compassion died with that and they were replaced with the stone cold hatred he had known for so long.
His body quivering the anger, he focused a bitter gaze towards the Great Tyrannosaur. Many monsters looked to him as their leader, their king, and now they beseeched him to fight one last battle and avenge them. Yet the kaiju that asked that of him were all kaiju that had licked the hands of humans and that had gone to be their mewling slaves. Ignoring the grinding pain, Godzilla held up his fist to his face before impaling the back of it on one of the needle blades, his arm and chest quivering in pain.
As blood spurted upwards and then ran down along the blade and on his hand, he thought of how humans ran from monsters. Yet he also wondered how many more monsters ran from humans, gathering in holes like refuse? As Godzilla raised his other arm to impale it against another needle blade, he asked why should kaiju hide themselves in the shadows of man as they, the monsters, were the unclean? Slamming his hand through the blade and feeling skin and bone and tendon shredded, Godzilla knew that monsters too deserved the right to live!
Godzilla's agonized roars echoed through the mist of the valley and reached the master's ears. As blood spurted and showered, the Great Tyrannosaur looked at his chosen one's self inflicted mutilations with mild interest. If the young one wanted answers, he would have them. "REPTILES ARE ABHORRENT BECAUSE OF THEIR COLD BODY, PALE COLOR, CARTILAGINOUS SKELETON, FILTHY SKIN, FIERCE ASPECT, CALCULATING EYE, OFFENSIVE SMELL, HARSH VOICE, SQUALID HABITATION, AND TERRIBLE VENOM; WHEREFORE, THEIR CREATOR HAS NOT EXERTED HIS POWER TO MAKE MANY OF THEM." THE HUMAN CARROLUS LINNEAS SAID THOSE WORDS IN CLASSIFYING THE BEASTS OF THE WORLD.
Abhorrent? Trembling with indignation as he was impaled, Godzilla felt the blood drip from his body and the hate well up. Reptiles are abhorrent? That was how those wretched mammals viewed his race!
I HAVE SEEN THOSE THAT STAND IN PLACE OF THE SAURIAN MY SON. THEY ARE A STRANGE RACE THAT FEARS WHAT IT DOES NOT UNDERSTAND. IN THAT FEAR, THEY HATE AND PERSECUTE THE KAIJU AS IF BY DOING SO WE MAY NO LONGER EXIST. TO THE HUMANS, THIS IS THE ONLY WAY THEY CAN PROTECT THEMSELVES, BY BANISHING US FROM THEIR THOUGHTS, THEIR HEARTS, AND THEIR MEMORIES. WITH THEIR AGE ENDED, PERHAPS IT IS EVEN THE LAST VESTIGE OF THEIR PRIDE.
The blade through his heart made of feelings towards the human world flared and burned at those words and the King of the Monsters roared. His people would not pretend! They would not continue to hide! His rage momentarily spent, Godzilla let his head fall on pierced and bloody heaving chest. All kaiju, himself included, wished for peace with the humans, but the price was high, too high for those monsters that could not accept the label "outcast." But why should they do so!
Seething and barely able to keep his rage in check, the impaled Godzilla knew he was not immune to desire but that desire became anger and that anger wishes to make war. It was war against the humans that hated the blood that flowed through him. If not for his innocent staying his hand, he would have long since murdered every man, woman, and child on the Earth but because she was there he could not. What other course then did have but to torture himself, that… OR TO KILL THE HUMANS!
The Great One heard those thoughts and saw his chosen one tortured by his own self. Quivering, with dried blood caked on him, what of Godzilla and his anger? What was he to do with it…? YOUR INNOCENT… "AND THE PROPHET SAID, 'AND LO, THE BEAST LOOKED UPON THE FACE OF BEAUTY AND STAYED ITS HAND FROM KILLING. AND FROM THAT DAY, IT WAS AS ONE DEAD.'" THE WORDS OF ANOTHER HUMAN.
BEFORE YOU MET MIKI, IT WAS SO MUCH EASIER, WASN'T IT? NO REMORSE, NO GUILT… BUT WITH HER AS YOUR CONSCIENCE IT'S NOT SO SIMPLE. SINCE KNOWING HER, YOUR IMPULSES TO KILL HUMANS HAVE GIVEN YOU GRAVE DOUBTS. THIS IS THE SOURCE OF YOUR SELF TORTURE AND YOUR GREAT SUFFERING. YOUNG ONE, LISTEN, THAT YOU ARE STILL ABLE TO FEEL REMORSE AND KNOW LOVE FOR YOUR INNOCENT SHOWS THAT YOURS IS STILL A RIGHTEOUS HEART.
With that, the master changed. His arms grew longer and from his back, wings sprouted; his head grew smaller even as his brow ridges became horns. Then, in the shape of a dragon, he reared back in his hind legs he lunged his head forwards to spit out a blast of flame that engulfed Godzilla. The fire swallowed him as if he were an insect and incinerated the needle blades of hate and shame that lanced through him. It was a flame that made his own Atomic Ray in all it's imagined nuclear glory look like an ember yet though the fire consumed him it did not burn; instead, enveloping him in its warming light, it healed. It made the lances of sorrow and pain disappear and wounds of shame and guilt that had festered for 65,000,000 years close. With them gone, the saurian fell crashing downwards to the mist shrouded ground below and crashed on it at the feet of the master. Smoking from the fire, he got up and craned his neck to look at the one who towered over him into infinity.
The Great One looked down at his hind talons at Godzilla who was relatively tinier than a microbe and at the red circle of fire that was ringed around him and made the infinite darkness around them both disappear. TO SOME, I AM CALLED THE GREAT DRAGON; KNOW THEN, THAT THAT WHICH CIRCLES YOU IS MY DRAGON FIRE AND IT IS MADE OF THE LOVE AND FAITH OF ALL THEY WHO WOULD BELIEVE IN YOU, ALL FROM MYSELF TO YOUR INNOCENT. TAKE IT BUT ONLY IF YOU ASK YOURSELF, THIS HEART OF YOURS, THESE FEELINGS, CAN YOU COME TO LOVE THEM? CAN YOU NOT COME TO PEACE WITH YOUR OWN HEART?
With Matsu it was a global affair and people watching this around the world were crying as they saw this. In darkened rooms they were covered in their television's glare and they saw it, they saw and cried for the hero who had given everything for them. Many of them recalled how they'd been taught to hate the monsters that had come to cover the world and had hated Godzilla most of all for being the mightiest of them and for being their king. But over the course of the Monster Wars, the people of the world had come to see that it wasn't so simple and for all he did to fight King Ghidorah, that Godzilla was their last, best hope. They'd come to call him hero and savior and now children clutched their parent's hands and wept even as those parents fought back their own tears and refused to believe what was going on.
In the mortal world, Kyle Martin and Miki Segeusa were still there amidst the red rubble and still trying to wake him up. It was a scene of sorrow and despair, that neither though possible but both were forced to face as if it were the death of a brother. Sobbing, the psychic stood next the monster's giant hand and tried with all her might to move it. "Godzilla please, don't give up…!"
Holding back his tears, the kaijuologist slowly walked towards her through the ankle deep blood and placed a hand on her shoulder. Looking at the cold corpse, he said, "Miki, its all over… its that… his blood and his guts are all…"
Oblivious to his very existence, except for how she refused to believe his words, she was numb to reality itself and kneeled at Godzilla's side. Mutely scooping the blood that still flowed from the saurian's wounds, his innocent felt it slip through her hands and run down her arms. With trembling lips, she squeezed her eyes shut and whispered, "Don't go… don't leave him…"
Her hands clenching into fists, she screamed, "Don't go!"
Then all of a sudden a continuous explosion of blinding light flared up, knocking Kyle backwards and grabbing the attention of all those who were still on TV watching. In the eye of the luminous hurricane, as blood turned to light and then swirled around in a vortex, there was Miki at the saurian's side, both of whom were illuminated by the glow. As the blood turned to light and was swept away so was one tear that came from her face as she said, "Even if it is a kaiju's, its Godzilla's blood… its not even a little dirty."
Then, in a psychic shout that was heard around the world, a shout that people would tell their children and grandchildren they head, Miki yelled on her knees, "Godzilla's blood is not dirty and neither is his soul!"
Then in a place that was not a place and in a moment that was not a moment, balls of light swirled around and into Godzilla, covering him, wrapping themselves around him. It continued, faster and faster, until they were spent and slowed and finally stopped leaving one tear to slowly, ever so slowly, fall down and touch his heart. For a time there was silence and there was stillness but once again the light flared and once again in the mortal world those who saw were blinded for a time and could not believe what they saw. Whether they were there with the King of the Monsters or were in the UN base watching this via camera drones, or at home watching it on TV thanks to Matsu, they saw Godzilla, moments before reduced to a mutilated wreck, rise up unharmed and at the utmost strength.
The blood that had stained the ground in all directions and that had stained her hands evaporated, Miki slowly got to her feet and craned her neck to see Godzilla who even at that moment looked down at her. With eyes narrowed and looking keenly at her, the Great Dragon's champion looked at the maiden who had once sought to be his draconic sacrifice but who would stay with him until the end. With eyes wide and breathless, the maiden looked to the dragon that had fought to the finish for her and who would stay with her until the end. Towering over everything, towering over the broken constructs of man, the titan was truly the King of the Monsters. However there was another king in his kingdom, and that was… intolerable.