Disclaimer: I do not own any aspects of the Godzilla franchise.
Notes: And we're back! Sorry it took so long to get the next chapter of this one finished, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.
For anyone who doesn't already know, the first chapter of my Methuselah-centric sidestory to this fic, "The Heart of the Mountain", was posted recently! I'd encourage everyone to check that fic out if they're enjoying this one, especially since what happens in that story will eventually tie into the events of "In the Hearts".
Music for this chapter is as follows! For the opening flashback scene, "Mosasaur Battle" from the Prehistoric Planet soundtrack; for the island-exploration scenes, "Tethyshadros" from the Prehistoric Planet 2 soundtrack; for the "ancient city" scene, "Planet Earth II Suite" from the Planet Earth 2 soundtrack; and for the second-to-last scene, the song choice will be obvious once you get there. I'm not putting that song's title here because that would be a spoiler, but it's the version performed by Elsie Lovelock.
Now, let's get into this!
Chapter 2: The Island of the Gods
Infant Island, Indonesia
Thousands of years ago
Amimoto, Speaker of the Houtua tribe, stood atop one of the high ridges that ran across his people's island home, accompanied by a dozen of his tribe's most experienced hunters. His long silver hair was ruffled by a warm tropical wind, and his shoulders were slightly hunched under the weight of his many years. He leaned on his ceremonial staff and gazed down at the coastline of the island below them, his eyes wide in horror as he and his followers bore witness to the ferocious battle that was raging several miles away, in the deeper water outside of their protective ring of reefs.
Flashes of glowing bioluminescence lit up the dark water and the clouds above the ocean, in shades of blue, green, and purple. Roars and screeches echoed all the way back to the island, loud enough for the Houtua to hear them even at this distance. Some were familiar, the calls of the Goddess-Queen and God-King who defended this island against any hostile gods who sought to threaten it, while others were unfamiliar, belonging to the pair of deadly Serpents who had come from the depths of the sea to claim this land for themselves.
The elderly Speaker couldn't help but feel a rush of dread as he thought back to the attacks that had taken place over the past few moons. At first, it was merely the Serpents' offspring who had attacked the Houtua: the monstrous reptiles had come ashore and invaded the island's bountiful lands in search of food, devouring many of the native creatures before they moved on to picking off any member of the Houtua who strayed too far from the outskirts of their city. Finally, the deadly creatures had escalated their attacks, and had closed in on the city itself.
As fortune would have it, however, the Houtua had received deliverance from their divine protectors. Amimoto's prayers to the Goddess had finally been answered, and she had arrived just in time to save their city from destruction. Her righteous, blinding wrath had rained down upon the young Serpents and sent the vile creatures fleeing back out to sea, where the God-King had risen from the depths to exact bloody vengeance upon them for their crime of attacking those who were under his Queen's protection. Of the dozen young Serpents who had invaded the island, none had managed to escape the fury of the tribe's protectors.
At first, the Houtua had rejoiced at their god-rulers' victory. But on this night, it had been revealed that the creatures which had attacked them before were merely the children of something much worse, as a pair of far-larger Serpents had risen from the sea to challenge the Goddess and her partner, seeking revenge for the slaughter of their brood. Through the link that existed between her mind and his, the Goddess had warned Amimoto to take his people inland, where they would be beyond the Serpents' reach for the moment. Most of the tribe had followed his instructions, but Amimoto and a few of his strongest hunters had chosen to stay behind and bear witness to the battle that was about to erupt, while the Goddess and the God-King had gone out beyond the encircling reefs to face the vengeful Serpents.
The battle had been raging for hours, and although he kept up an outward appearance of calm to reassure his followers, Amimoto couldn't help shivering as he listened to the bestial cries of the angry gods. Despite his faith that the Goddess-Queen and God-King would emerge victorious over the Serpents, he still felt a knot of fear in his stomach, prompted by the knowledge of what would happen to his people if their protectors were somehow defeated.
The lives of the entire Houtua tribe now depended on the outcome of this brutal, primeval contest… and in that moment, all that he could do was pray that their patron gods would be the victors.
Several miles away, the Queen leapt from one jagged rocky outcropping to another in quick, darting hops, keeping a wary eye on the water. As the dark surface was lit up from below by a pulse of bluish-purple light, she flicked out her wings and jumped into the air again, just before the water burst asunder as a massive serpentine head broke the surface and lunged towards her. The purple sea-serpent's strike narrowly missed as the Queen spun to one side, her fang-filled jaws snapping shut on empty air.
The female serpent, Tiamat, let out a frustrated snarl as she propelled herself through the water after her frustratingly nimble opponent. The clawed feet on her four short legs grasped at the rocky surface of the reefs as her purple scales and glowing blue fins bristled in an intimidation display, and her eyes blazed with anger. "Damn it… stand still and fight me already, you little coward!" she roared, before rearing up out of the water again and spitting a jet of luminous yellow venom.
The Queen's eyes brightened in alarm, and she dove behind a large rocky outcropping that jutted out of the water, allowing the gout of corrosive liquid to splatter harmlessly against the stone. A few drops connected with one of her wings, drawing a hiss of pain from her as steam rose from the point of contact. The venom of a sea-serpent was a toxic acid that burned on contact, which was best avoided whenever possible; even with her healing powers, she couldn't afford to take a direct hit from that attack.
At that moment, another, more familiar roar echoed from nearby, accompanied by an explosion of water and steam. The Queen's head snapped around as two massive forms broke the surface, locked together and thrashing around: one was her King, lit up by his pulsing blue bioluminescence, and the other was Tiamat's mate, a male sea-serpent named Manda. Male and female sea-serpents were physically similar for the most part, with the notable exception that males sported a set of large, many-pointed antlers projecting outwards from the tops of their heads. In addition, Manda had dark sea-green scales and glowing emerald fins, a significant contrast to the purple-and-blue coloration of his mate.
The King was bleeding freely in numerous places, as the serpents' razor-edged scales and fins had left dozens of long cuts on his dark hide, but he looked angry rather than pained. He and Manda twisted and rolled through the water, grappling with each other like a crocodile fighting with a python. One of the King's clawed hands was clamped onto Manda's snout, holding his jaws together so he couldn't spit venom, but the serpent's long, flexible body was coiled tightly around the King's torso, sharpened scales and fins cutting into his hide with each shift of their bodies. In addition, one of Manda's coils was wrapped around the King's neck, constricting tighter with each passing moment and making it impossible for the larger Kaiju to unleash his fire-breath.
"Goji!" The Queen's eyes flashed with alarm, and she leapt off the rock where she'd been perching and sped towards the pair. Her focus on her partner, however, left her vulnerable, and she reacted too late as Tiamat exploded out of the water right below her, jaws wide. This time, the female serpent didn't miss, and her jaws latched onto one of the Queen's wings. The added weight was too much for the Queen to carry, and she was yanked straight down into the water as Tiamat fell back into the sea.
"Nice try," Tiamat growled as she twisted her body and slammed the Queen painfully against an underwater rock outcropping. "But you're not getting away from me this time!" She clamped down harder, her teeth puncturing the Queen's wing membrane and sending pain lancing through the smaller Kaiju's body, before letting go and planting her front feet onto the Queen's wings, pinning her awkwardly against the rocky seabed. The Queen thrashed and squirmed against the pressure, lashing out at Tiamat with her forelimbs and trying to break free, but the water weighed down her wings and hampered her movements; unlike her larval state, her adult body wasn't designed for swimming or for fighting underwater.
"Some Alpha you are," Tiamat snorted, rolling her eyes. "What a joke." Her cold yellow eyes blazed down into the Queen's, and a cruel smirk spread across her face. "And now you're gonna pay for killing our hatchlings. First, I'm going to tear you apart." She sneered and jerked her head over towards where Manda and the King were still wrestling with each other. "Then, I'm going to go help my dear Manda finish off your partner. And after that… I think we'll celebrate by eating every single one of that pathetic little swarm of mammals that you apparently love so much."
Even in her injured state, the Queen's eyes suddenly blazed with fury at that, and her bioluminescence shifted from blue to a deep, vibrant red, flashes of light flaring through her wings. Tiamat's smirk faded and her eyes widened as she sensed the power building up, but she wasn't fast enough to react. The Queen let out a muffled scream as her wings suddenly lit up with a blinding flash of pure-white light, before a massive pulse of light and heat blasted outwards from her.
Despite all her size and power, Tiamat was hurled backwards by the shockwave, launched clear into the air before she crashed back into the water. The shallow water around the Queen was also blown back by the explosion of energy, and she quickly scrambled up onto a larger rock, sucking in a few deep breaths as she tried to recover. Her left wing had been badly torn by Tiamat's teeth, but a quick jet of silk was enough to seal the wound for now. She could worry about healing it properly later.
As Tiamat surfaced again, shaking her head and trying to recover from the temporary blindness caused by the dazzling energy pulse, the Queen's eyes darkened and her angry red bioluminescence intensified. Just because she was normally more friendly and gentle than her King, that didn't mean that she wasn't just as much of an Alpha Kaiju as him, and she could be just as ruthless as her partner if the situation demanded it. And this serpent's most recent threats against those who were under her protection had crossed the line.
"That's enough," she muttered grimly to herself. I'm through playing.
Flaring out her wings, the Queen leapt into the air and soared across the distance between herself and Tiamat while the serpent was still distracted. Just as Tiamat started to get her bearings again, both of the Queen's longer forelimbs smashed into the side of her head with all of her momentum behind them, landing a solid hit. Despite her relatively small size for a Kaiju, the Queen was capable of punching well above her weight when it came to physical strength, and Tiamat was knocked off-balance by the devastating impact, falling sideways and crashing back onto the reef.
Luckily, Tiamat was in shallow enough water that she wasn't fully submerged, so the Queen immediately dropped down on top of her, abdomen snapping forward as she drove her stinger point-first into her opponent's flank. The sharp, hollow point struck home, finding a chink between two scales and provoking a shriek of pain. Delivering a sizable dose of her venom, she yanked the stinger free and leapt back into the air, barely avoiding a lashing swipe of Tiamat's tail.
"You little bitch!" Tiamat snarled, clutching at the small puncture wound on her side with one clawed foot as she rolled over and reared up like a cobra. "You're gonna suffer for that! You…" A glassy look came into her eyes and she swayed back and forth, coughing and panting heavily. "You… w-what did you… do to… me…?" Right on cue, the full effect of the Queen's paralytic venom kicked in, and her eyes rolled back into her head as she collapsed, splashing back into the water and spasming weakly as her muscles began to lock up.
The Queen turned in the air, looking quickly for her King, but she relaxed when she saw that he was already on top of things. He'd managed to wrench his other arm free of Manda's crushing coils, and had grabbed the sea-serpent by the throat with his now-free hand while keeping Manda's jaws locked together with his other hand. Once he had a good hold on his opponent's neck, he gritted his teeth and squeezed, his clawed fingers tightening like a vice.
Both combatants were now in the same situation, but due to the King's greater strength, Manda was the first one to crack. The coil that had been wrapped around the King's neck went slack, and he began struggling to wrench himself free. This gave the King the leverage that he'd needed, and he planted his feet on the ocean floor and reared up out of the water, rising to his full height as he wrestled his way free of Manda's coils. More cuts and gashes were gouged into his hide by the serpent's sharp-edged scales, blood spilling down his flanks, but he barely even seemed to notice. Roaring, he swung both of his arms down and slammed Manda's head brutally against a flat rock outcropping with enough force to splinter the serpent's antlers, before spinning on his heel and flinging his battered enemy away, following up with a blast of his fire-breath to make sure Manda stayed down.
"Goji!" the Queen panted, swooping down towards the King and landing on his back. "Are you all right?" She was bleeding in a few places as well, most notably from the wound that Tiamat's bite had left in her left wing, but that was nothing compared to the number of cuts that he had sustained over the course of that night's battle.
"I'll be fine," the King reassured her. She could hear the pain in his voice, but his eyes were still glowing as brightly as ever, and she could tell that he still had plenty of energy left. While he did have many wounds, none of them were serious enough to potentially be fatal. "Now let's finish this."
Manda had crashed down into the water not far from where Tiamat had fallen, a section of one flank charred by the impact of the King's fire-breath. Coughing and gagging as he tried to catch his breath, he dragged himself over to where Tiamat's paralyzed body lay sprawled in the shallows of the reef and nudged her with his snout. "Tia?" he rasped, his eyes widening in alarm when she didn't respond beyond some feeble twitching. "Tia! Are you okay?!"
"She's not dead," the Queen called out from her position on the King's shoulder as he stalked forward to loom over the pair of sea-serpents. Her wings flared out, orange eyespots glowing like twin coals, as both of their bioluminescent auras flared up simultaneously in a primal threat display of red and blue.
"But she will be, if you insist on continuing this fight," the King growled, scowling down at Manda. "So I suggest that you surrender. Leave our territory, and take your mate with you… or suffer the consequences." His eyes flashed from orange to blue on those last few words, and the plates on his back hummed and crackled with azure light as he primed another blast of atomic fire, ready to unleash it at the slightest provocation.
Manda glared up at the pair of Alphas, his eyes narrow and calculating as he shifted protectively in front of Tiamat, but the Queen could tell by the look on his face that he knew he couldn't win. Even in a two-on-two fight, the sea-serpent couple had ultimately been outmatched, but on his own, he would have no chance whatsoever.
Sure enough, after a few seconds of thought, Manda finally lowered his head in submission. "Very well," he bit out, clearly hating every word. "We'll leave, and we won't trouble you or your humans again." Tiamat, who was half-conscious and still paralyzed by the Queen's venom, let out a weak growl, but she wasn't in any shape to protest beyond that.
The King nodded, his expression still firm. "Good." He nodded out towards the open ocean. "Now get out of here. I don't want to see either of you creeping around here again."
Manda stiffly returned the nod; he was clearly still angry, but he made no further attempt to lash out at either of them. He carefully clamped his jaws down on the back of Tiamat's neck, before gently lifting her up and pulling her out into deeper water. Tiamat was still unable to move under her own power, but a look of pure hatred was blazing in her eyes and a strangled hiss leaked from her mouth as she glared impotently back at the King and Queen. Finally, the water grew deep enough and Manda submerged, pulling Tiamat under the surface with a swirl of foam and carrying her out to sea. Their combined bioluminescence gradually faded away beneath the dark water, and then the battlefield finally fell silent.
For a few minutes, the King and the Queen remained quiet and still, gazing intently out over the ocean and keeping all their senses on alert, in case the serpents changed their minds and decided to come back to continue the fight. Eventually, however, it became clear that their opponents were not going to return, and they both allowed themselves to relax. The King's shoulders sagged and he let out a heavy sigh as the pain and weariness of the battle finally kicked in, while the Queen winced and tucked in her right wing, letting the damaged left one hang down.
"Are you all right?" the King questioned, watching with some concern in his eyes as the Queen began wrapping her torn wing with additional layers of silk.
"Oh, yes, I'm fine," the Queen assured him with a small smile. "She didn't get me too badly." Her blood, a metallic blue-green in color, had soaked through the first layer of silk that she'd used to bandage her wing, so she added several more layers to make sure the wound was fully sealed before giving it a few experimental flaps. Once they were back on the island and she had some time to rest, she could heal herself properly, but this would do for now. For her King's part, although he had plenty of cuts laced across his body, his own natural healing was remarkably fast, so a few days' rest and a few of her scales to speed up the process would be all that he needed to fully recover from relatively minor injuries like these.
"Good." The King smiled wearily, nuzzling his head lightly against hers, before he nodded back towards the island. "Go check on your humans and let them know the danger has passed. I'll make sure the serpents haven't doubled back, and then I'll come back and rejoin you."
"Of course." The Queen returned his smile and nuzzle, before she unfolded her wings and took to the air again, flying back towards the island. Although she felt sorrow for the humans who had been devoured by the serpents' young before she had been able to intervene, this battle had only strengthened her resolve to defend all those who lived within her domain.
As long as I still draw breath, she vowed as she soared back towards the city that her subjects had built, the humans on this island will always be protected. No matter what.
Infant Island, Indonesia
One month after the Battle of Boston
Madison leaned back in her seat and gazed out the window of the Monarch helicopter as they soared over the ocean, looking down at the clear blue-green waters below as the sunrise began to gleam on the eastern horizon. She yawned and stretched her arms up over her head, arching her back and trying to relieve some of the stiffness that had accumulated during their long flight.
It had taken several days for the Monarch team to prepare their equipment before they were finally ready to head out on their expedition. After that, their journey had taken the better part of three days: from Castle Bravo's location near Bermuda, it had taken a long, multi-legged series of flights for them to finally reach their present location on the other side of the world, skirting along the remote northeastern edge of the Indonesian archipelago.
The other passengers on the helicopter were similarly exhausted after their long journey. Mark and Ilene had both dozed off at some point during the flight, while Ling was reading something on a tablet, and the members of the G-Team squad who had been chosen to accompany them were also napping. Madison was only familiar with one of the soldiers – Warrant Officer Barnes, one of the G-Team members who'd helped her parents to rescue her from Boston, who had been chosen to lead the squad – but she definitely felt better about having all of them for protection, just in case Infant Island turned out to be more dangerous than its reputation would suggest.
The turbulence was strong enough that Madison knew she shouldn't unbuckle her seatbelt, but she was getting increasingly bored, so she raised a hand and waved to Ling to draw her attention. Ling looked up, and her lips quirked in a small, amused grin. "Everything all right, Maddie?" she questioned.
Madison returned her weary smile and nodded. "Yeah, I'm fine," she replied. "Just feeling kinda bored, and we're not supposed to be there for a while, so I figured I'd see what you were up to."
Ling chuckled as she looked down at the tablet in her lap, tapping the screen. "Just looking through our most recent data on the Titans," she replied. "Nothing particularly unusual, and luckily they all seem to be staying out of trouble for the moment. Behemoth and Methuselah seem to have settled down in the Amazon, and we're monitoring them to make sure they stay clear of any cities or towns. The new MUTO is somewhere in northern Canada right now, although her electric aura makes it harder for us to track her. Rodan made landfall in Fiji a few days after the battle in Boston, and he seems to have taken up residence in a volcano there." She tapped the screen again, scrolling down a bit. "Kong, Maguma, and Shisa are all still contained on Skull Island, and the Skull-Crawlers that surfaced during the Mass Awakening were either killed by those three or driven back down into the deep caves under the island. Baphomet's up in northern Siberia, Bunyip is somewhere along the remote north coast of Australia, and Mokele-Mbembe and Sekhmet are both still wandering around in northern Africa, although luckily they've both moved away from any population centers." She leaned back in her seat and sighed, exiting out of the screen that she'd been reading from and shutting off her tablet. "As for the other four active Titans that we know of – Sargon, Na Kika, Leviathan, and Typhon – all four of them have dropped off of our radar, which means they're probably all hiding somewhere in the deep ocean."
"Yeah, that makes sense." Madison nodded, unable to suppress a small smile as she imagined seeing the Titans living peacefully in their natural habitats. Despite all the horrible mistakes that her mother had made, Emma had been right about one thing: the idea of the Titans living freely (albeit safely away from humans) and helping to heal the planet's natural ecosystem was vastly preferable to the idea of their being trapped and imprisoned in manmade containment facilities. Zoo enclosures were fine for many types of normal animals, but she firmly believed that gigantic creatures like the Titans were much better off in their natural environments.
At that moment, a call from the front of the chopper drew their attention. "All right, everyone, look alive!" one of the Monarch pilots called back to them. "The island's in sight; we'll be there in a few minutes."
"Finally!" Ling's eyes immediately lit up, and Madison also felt a rush of excitement coursing through her as she turned to look out the window. "We're here."
Madison had never been to Infant Island before, but their long journey from Castle Bravo had given the Chen sisters plenty of time to bring her and her dad up to speed on what they could expect, and her first view of the island didn't disappoint. About the same size as Skull Island, it had been created by a trio of active volcanoes, which rose to three large cone-shaped peaks along its eastern side. The island's landscape was a patchwork of ridges and valleys: its eastern half was covered by a dense blanket of tropical rainforest, while the western half was dominated by open grassland. Its beaches were coal-black instead of white, a telltale sign of volcanic sand.
Just like Skull Island, Infant Island was cut off from the outside world by its own natural defenses. Unlike Kong's homeland, however, this island wasn't surrounded by a perpetual storm system; instead, its shores were guarded by a massive network of reefs that stretched out into the ocean for several miles in every direction, some jutting above the water and some concealed just below the surface. Any boat that came too close would be shredded by the jagged maze of rock and coral, making it extremely hazardous for any seagoing vessel to go near the island. In addition, the waters outside of the reefs were constantly churned by powerful currents and strong undertows, and were patrolled by a variety of dangerous predators, including tiger sharks, bull sharks, and barracuda. As a result, it had always been virtually impossible for any explorers to reach this place; even Monarch had only been able to get there after the advent of air travel, which had enabled their 1961 expedition to bypass the island's natural defenses.
As the helicopter passed over the defensive ring of reefs and moved over the shallow water that ran along the island's shores, the rest of the team had now been awakened from their naps and were prepping for their landing. Madison, for her part, double-checked her backpack to make sure that everything she'd brought with her was stored properly, before she joined her dad in gazing curiously out of the windows. There were no signs of any Titans yet, but that made sense: according to the satellite scans that Rick had taken of the island before the expedition had headed out, Godzilla, Mothra and Scylla were all on the far side of the island from the team's chosen landing site. Making landfall here and approaching on the ground would hopefully help them to avoid provoking any territorial responses from the Titans.
The other reason why the team had chosen this part of the island as their landing site, of course, was because the area that they were now approaching was home to the island's native human inhabitants, the Houtua tribe. They had been friendly enough towards the few Monarch expeditions who had visited the island over the years, and the Chens were hoping that the tribe would be able to help them navigate the island's jungle terrain much more easily than they could have on their own.
Sure enough, as the chopper came in low over the sparser trees along the coast, the outlines of numerous wooden buildings came into view below the canopy, occupying the area around the mouth of a river that led up into the island's interior. A large, open beach not far from the village provided them with a perfect landing spot, and the chopper descended slowly to the ground, touching down almost gently on the dark sand as the wind from its rotors kicked up a cloud of dust.
"All right, boys and girls," Ling spoke up with a chuckle, exchanging smiles with Ilene as she looked around at the other occupants of the helicopter. "Welcome to Infant Island."
As the team disembarked and the G-Team soldiers began unloading their gear, Madison wasn't surprised to see that the village's inhabitants were already emerging into the clearing. Several dozen members of the Houtua were watching from the edge of the trees, clearly intrigued by the arrival of strangers. Madison had never seen them before, of course, and her eyes widened in surprise as she got a good look at their observers.
Like several other isolated human populations in remote locations around the world, such as the Iwi of Skull Island, the Houtua were believed by Monarch scientists to be direct descendants of the original Cro-Magnon race, the first wave of Homo sapiens who had migrated out of Africa and spread across the world many thousands of years ago. Shielded from the rest of the world by Infant Island's formidable natural barriers, they had changed very little over the millennia since their ancestors had first found their way there. Their physical appearance was quite unique: while their rich brown skin tones were similar to those of other Indonesian native populations, the hair of every individual that Madison could see was a shimmering, gossamer silver, and their eyes were all varying shades of blue. Like the Iwi, the adults all had a strange, ageless quality to their facial features, making it very difficult for her to tell how old any of them were. Most of them wore simple, lightweight clothing, although some of the older members were dressed in more elaborate robes, and everyone present sported patterns of blue and orange body paint, which immediately reminded her of Mothra's coloration.
Mark and the G-Team soldiers were clearly somewhat unsettled by the onlookers, especially since some of the tribespeople were carrying bows or spears, but Ilene and Ling seemed totally at ease. "Relax, guys," Ling assured them with a smile. "The Houtua have received Monarch expeditions before, and they're not hostile to any visitors who come in peace. As long as we don't do anything to threaten them, they won't have any problems with us being here. So, everyone take it easy, and we'll be fine."
"Dr. Chen knows what she's talkin' about, people," Barnes added calmly, keeping his weapons holstered as he nodded to his squad. "Everybody stay cool. This is just a field trip; we're not here to start any trouble with these guys." Mark nodded in agreement, although he was still tense and he stayed close to Madison.
The onlooking Houtua were starting to approach the team, children peering curiously around the legs or bodies of their parents as some of the adults murmured quietly to each other in a language that Madison didn't recognize. As Ling had advised, none of them seemed to be hostile or angry about the visitors, although some were visibly cautious. The last Monarch expedition to this island had been more than a decade earlier, so it made sense that the tribe wouldn't have been expecting visitors. Curiously, most of their interest seemed to be focused on the Chen sisters, rather than on the armed soldiers who accompanied them.
Ilene gave Mark and Madison a reassuring smile, nudging one of her shoulders gently against Maddie's for a moment, before their attention – along with that of the others – was drawn to a commotion on the edge of the clearing. A dozen more members of the tribe emerged from the trees, led by a tall woman with almost unnaturally bright blue eyes and long silver hair that cascaded all the way down her back. She wore a long, ornate robe, colored blue with white and orange trim, and a headband which was adorned with a crest of brightly-colored feathers from tropical birds. She was visibly older than most of the other Houtua, but there was no way to tell how much; thanks to her seemingly ageless appearance, she could have been anywhere from fifty to eighty.
"She must be the high priestess," Ilene murmured to the others under her breath. "Our mom explained their social structure to us once, and the high priest or priestess is the highest-ranking member of the tribe. She's the one that we need to speak with." She stepped out in front of the others, moving forward to greet the new arrival and bowing her head respectfully as Ling did the same. "I greet you," she spoke up, speaking slowly and clearly. "I am Ilene Chen, of Monarch. We seek only knowledge, and we mean no harm to your people."
The older Houtua woman returned the bow, and a small smile spread across her face as her eyes drifted over the expedition, focusing on Ilene, Ling and Madison. "I greet you, Ilene Chen of Monarch," she replied, in accented but understandable English. "I am Daiyo, Speaker of the Houtua. You and your companions are welcome on our lands, as long as you truly do not mean any harm to us or to the Goddess." Her smile widened and she clasped her hands behind her back as her gaze shifted from Ilene to Ling and back again, before she inclined her head respectfully to them both. "You two in particular are most welcome. It has been a long time since any of the Goddess's blessed children have visited us, but we have been eagerly awaiting your arrival ever since she returned here." Excited murmurs echoed among the other Houtua, and they too bowed their heads to the twins.
Madison felt a rush of excitement welling up in her chest at the thought that Mothra really was expecting them, and she had to suppress a volley of questions. Her dad and the G-Team squad, however, were visibly confused. "Ah… sorry, guys, but what's she talking about?" Mark questioned in a low voice.
"Among the Houtua, twin births are extremely rare, so they're believed to be a sacred blessing from their goddess," Ling replied under her breath. Clearly, the sisters had known that the Houtua might know about their true nature and had been ready for this possibility, so they'd come up with a plausible explanation. "We figured that this might happen; our mother and aunt are twins too, so they received the same kind of welcome when they first came here in the 60s."
"Huh." Mark nodded slowly, thinking that over, while Madison's shoulders sagged in relief. She knew how important it was for the twins to keep their true nature concealed for the moment, but she didn't want to lie to her dad, so she stayed out of the conversation.
Ilene, meanwhile, was speaking quietly with Daiyo. After a brief conversation, she smiled and turned to face the team. "All right, here's the situation," she informed them. "Godzilla, Mothra and Scylla are on the other side of the island, but Speaker Daiyo and her hunters are willing to guide us to their location."
"Indeed." Daiyo nodded, smiling warmly. "We're ready to depart whenever you are." Her smile grew as she nodded towards the distant volcanic peaks of the island. "We should leave soon. The Goddess awaits us, and if we leave now, we can make it there by dark."
"Sounds good, ma'am." Barnes nodded, adjusting his backpack and beckoning to the rest of his squad. "All right, people: wheels up in ten. Let's get this show on the road!"
Once the team had finished packing up their supplies, Daiyo and half a dozen of the strongest Houtua led the way to the river that ran through the village, where the tribe had prepared a group of large dugout canoes. With their supplies packed onto the boats, the group set out, heading up the slow-moving river into the island's interior. Except for Madison, everyone pitched in to help row the boats, and fortunately the gentle current didn't do much to impede their progress. For a while, both sides of the river were dominated by dense mangrove forests, but as the canoes moved further inland, the trees gradually became sparser, and the water shifted from brackish to fresh.
Since Madison knew that Infant Island was supposed to have some highly unusual animal life, just like Skull Island, she had a pair of binoculars hanging around her neck and eagerly kept an eye on their surroundings, looking for anything that might emerge from the mangroves. For about half an hour, there were no signs of anything larger than a bird; that made sense, since few large creatures could navigate a dense mangrove forest.
As they approached the end of the trees, however, a deep, rumbling call echoed down the river, sending a chill up Madison's spine. Her dad and the G-Team tensed up at the sound, and a few of the soldiers reached for their holstered weapons, but the Houtua didn't appear to be concerned, so Ilene motioned for the soldiers to stay calm.
Ling, in particular, looked excited, and waved to Mark to get his attention; he was riding with Madison, in a canoe next to the one that the Chens were using. "I think you're going to like this, Mark," she murmured with a grin. "Just remember to stay calm. We don't want to scare them."
Mark frowned. "Scare what?" he whispered back.
At that moment, his question was answered for him. The canoes rounded a bend in the river, emerging from the mangroves, and finally got a clear view of the open grassland that lay before them… and Madison's breath caught in her throat.
Gathered on one bank of the river was a group of massive, four-legged mammals, each easily the size of a full-grown elephant. For a second, she mistook them for some sort of giant bovines, like the Sker Buffaloes of Skull Island, but these creatures had no horns, and instead of hooves they had large, clawed paws that appeared to be meant for digging. Their bodies were covered in dark brown fur, and they had large, bulbous noses above a pair of prominent, rodent-like incisor teeth. At first, they didn't look like anything she had ever seen before, but she gradually recognized them as looking similar to a much smaller animal that she and her mom had once seen in a zoo, when they'd gone to Australia on a business trip to visit Titanus Bunyip's containment facility. These creatures looked vaguely like gigantic wombats.
Mark was less confused, but he seemed even more stunned. "Incredible," he breathed, an incredulous smile creeping across his face. "Are those… Diprotodon?"
"That's right," Ling confirmed. She glanced over to Madison and grinned. "Diprotodon was the biggest marsupial ever to exist; they lived in Australia until about forty thousand years ago, but an isolated subspecies managed to survive here. These ones are significantly bigger than their extinct cousins, of course, but otherwise they're virtually identical."
"Wow," Madison whispered, her eyes wide as she took in the massive creatures. A few smaller Diprotodon, each about the size of a cow – presumably juveniles – were clustered in among the massive adults, which stared curiously at the canoes as they drifted past.
"They're not gonna be a problem, right?" Barnes questioned, also keeping his voice down.
Mark shook his head. "Diprotodon was Australia's equivalent of animals like elephants or bison. They're big, but they're vegetarians. Unless we do something stupid and provoke them, they shouldn't go out of their way to attack us." Ling nodded in agreement.
"Right." Barnes didn't seem to be entirely convinced, but he followed the scientists' recommendation and signaled for the rest of the soldiers to keep their weapons down. Fortunately, their advice was accurate; while some of the adult Diprotodon did move to shield their young protectively as the canoes passed by, they had no other reaction to the humans' presence.
As the team continued to paddle upriver, other creatures also began to cross their paths. Unlike on Skull Island, where many of its inhabitants were totally unlike anything that had been seen on Earth since the time of the dinosaurs, most of Infant Island's wildlife seemed to share a common ancestry with modern animals that inhabited places like Australia and New Guinea. In addition to the massive Diprotodon, Mark and Madison were amazed to spot a pair of giant, fifteen-foot-tall birds with dome-shaped bony crests on their heads, similar to cassowaries but much bigger, stalking down to the water's edge for a drink. A ten-foot-long, otter-like creature with short, dark-green fur and a large, flat bill like that of a duck's – clearly an oversized relative of a platypus – was basking on the riverbank, but slid into the water as the canoes passed by. And several spiky, hedgehog-like giant echidnas, similar in appearance to their smaller relatives but as large as bears, were burrowing in a sandy area next to the river, probably in search of food.
Their most impressive sight, however, came about an hour and a half into their journey upriver. As the canoes cruised around another bend, Mark suddenly sat bolt upright and inhaled sharply when he caught sight of a pack of creatures napping under a large, isolated tree a short distance from the bank. At first glance, they appeared to be wolves (albeit more than twice the size of any wolves that existed elsewhere in the world), but when Madison looked closer using her binoculars, she could see that they were actually quite different. They had reddish-brown bodies, dark stripes across their backs, and huge jaws that gaped open impossibly wide as one of them tilted its head back and opened its mouth for a sleepy yawn. And, although these creatures were much larger than their extinct modern relatives, she recognized them instantly.
"No way…" she whispered.
The others had spotted these creatures too, and Barnes's eyes widened as he lowered his own binoculars. "Damn," he muttered. "Even I know those ones. That's a freakin' Tasmanian tiger, isn't it?"
"Yep," Mark muttered, his voice going oddly soft in disbelief. "They're a lot bigger than the ones that used to live in Australia and Tasmania, but… yeah, those are thylacines." For a moment, all of the irritation and concern that was often visible on his face, plus the lingering guilt that Madison had seen in him ever since Andrew had died five years earlier, melted away, and all she could see in his eyes was awe. "I've always wanted to see one of them alive." A tear traced down his cheek as he looked down at Madison and smiled weakly. "Your… your mom did too."
Madison felt a pang in her heart at that, and had to rub her eyes to prevent her own tears from spilling as she looked back through her binoculars at the pack of giant thylacines. She wasn't going to let the pain of her mother's death overwhelm her, especially not now; they had much more important things to deal with at the moment.
The Chens' canoe was right next to the Russells', and Ilene reached across to rest a supporting hand on Mark's shoulder. He glanced over to her and smiled appreciatively, before shaking his head and focusing back on the business at hand as he took up his paddle again. Madison also felt a rush of warmth wash over her, like the mental equivalent of a comforting hug; as she lowered her binoculars and looked over to the other canoe, she saw a faint flicker of blue light in Ling's eyes, showing that she wasn't just imagining it.
Through all of this, the Houtua had remained calm and relaxed. That did make sense to Madison: clearly there were no crocodiles or other dangerous creatures in the water here, because they seemed totally at ease in their simple canoes, and the only land predators that she had seen so far were the giant thylacines, who had stayed well away from them. Unlike Skull Island, Infant Island didn't seem to have a large number of deadly predators, so it made sense that the Houtua weren't as constantly wary as the Iwi tribe.
As the day wore on into the late morning, however, a dense bank of clouds began to roll in from the ocean, blocking out the warm tropical sunlight and shrouding the island in an overcast gloom. There was no rain, but the Houtua seemed to be growing increasingly nervous as the daylight faded, and they began putting more effort into their paddling as the canoes drew closer to the edge of the rainforest that led up into the island's highlands.
Madison looked back at her dad, noting that he and the others were all clearly picking up on the sudden tension in the air. Frowning, she looked around at the riverbanks, trying to determine what could be causing the sense of unease. Nothing dangerous seemed to be visible: the only living things nearby were a herd of giant kangaroos with mottled brown-and-green fur, the adults standing over ten feet in height and the juveniles about as large as a grown man, and a pair of the bear-sized echidnas. And the Houtua weren't paying much attention to the nearby animals, anyway; instead, they were all looking up, gazing warily at the increasingly-cloudy sky.
The Chens exchanged a glance, before Ilene turned back towards the front canoe in the group where Daiyo was seated with a pair of guards. "Elder?" she spoke up quietly, keeping her voice down just as a precaution. "Is everything all right? What are they looking for?"
Daiyo was about to respond, when one of her guards hissed something to her in the Houtua's native language and gestured up at the sky. Immediately, her eyes narrowed and she raised a hand, issuing a swift order to the rest of the hunters aboard the canoes in the same language, before turning to face the team. "Everyone, lower yourselves," she commanded. "Predators are coming. They will likely ignore us, but we should still conceal ourselves."
Madison felt a chill run down her back, and Mark's eyes widened in alarm as he quickly pulled her down into a crouch in the bottom of the canoe. Craning her neck, she peered up at the sky, trying to figure out what the Houtua hunters had seen. After a moment, her eyes suddenly caught movement high overhead: a point of glowing green light, standing out against the dark clouds, that was circling high above them. As she watched, a second point of light emerged from the clouds, and then a third.
"Crap," Ilene breathed, quietly enough that Madison could barely hear her. "Are those…?"
"Yeah," Ling confirmed, concern clear in her voice. "Ropens."
On cue, a harsh, echoing cry echoed over the fields, like a mixture of a foghorn's blast and the caw of a raven. The animals in the meadow immediately responded: the giant echidnas curled in on themselves, becoming impenetrable balls of spines, while the oversized kangaroos began bounding towards the edge of the jungle, about a hundred yards away. The reason for their panic quickly became apparent, as the three glowing points of light began to descend, spiraling down towards the field.
As the lights came closer, Madison could distinguish the outlines of great leathery wings flapping on either side of the glow, their wingspans as wide as small planes. She initially assumed that they were giant bats or something similar, but as they came closer and their shapes became more distinct, her eyes widened in shock.
The creatures were massive by human standards, with wingspans of at least forty feet. While their leathery wings and the coal-black fur that covered their bodies gave them a resemblance to bats, their heads gave away their true natures. Instead of toothy mouths, they had huge, pointed beaks, similar to those of a stork, which clacked loudly as they swooped down over the fields. Each of them also had a large, pointed crest that projected up and back from the backs of their heads, which was lit up with a vibrant emerald bioluminescence. It was these glowing crests that had given off the glow which she had first seen when they were still circling high overhead.
In the back of her mind, Madison knew immediately what she was seeing. She hadn't known much about the unusual wildlife of Infant Island, but she had always been excited by prehistoric animals, and Vivienne Graham – the closest thing that she'd ever had to an aunt – had been a massive enthusiast when it came to paleontology. As a result, Madison had spent plenty of time in museums as a kid, looking at the skeletons of dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures. And she instantly recognized the animals that had appeared before her.
Pterosaurs, she thought in disbelief. They're pterosaurs! She hadn't been expecting this: the only surviving pterosaurs that she'd heard about in Monarch's database were the deadly leafwings of Skull Island, but those creatures were tiny compared to the giants in front of her. These resembled the skeletons she'd seen in museums of azhdarchid pterosaurs like Quetzalcoatlus or Hatzegopteryx, some of the largest predators of the late Cretaceous period.
Spooked by the descending predators, the giant kangaroos were fleeing towards the edge of the forest, covering ground rapidly in great leaping bounds. Some of the juveniles were lagging behind, however, and the massive pterosaurs were quick to take advantage. Instead of striking from the air like predatory birds, they swept in low over the grass, tucked in their wings and hit the ground running on all fours, shifting from flight to a galloping run with surprising ease. On the ground, their size was even more impressive: even with their forty-foot wingspans folded in, they were still close to twenty feet tall, and they could move with terrifying speed despite their seemingly-awkward gait.
The giant kangaroos never had a chance. Three of the slowest juveniles were quickly overtaken and picked off; Madison got a clear view of the gruesome sight as one of the pterosaurs snatched its target up in that massive beak, crushing the life out of the man-sized animal in a matter of seconds. The pterosaur shook its head back and forth several times until the kangaroo went limp, before tossing its head back and swallowing its prey whole in a few gulping motions, just like a pelican or a heron downing a fish.
"Shit," Barnes hissed under his breath, as Madison caught a glimpse of him out of the corner of her eye. He was trying to draw his gun while still remaining prone in his canoe, but the Houtua hunter who was in his boat reached out and tugged his hand away, shaking his head and signaling for Barnes to stay still.
"Nobody move!" Mark whispered, nodding in agreement with the Houtua's warning. "Once they've made their kills, they should move on." Madison could see that her dad's hands were white-knuckled as he gripped the sides of the boat, but his experience when it came to observing predatory animals was clearly overriding his emotions, allowing him to stay calm.
Fortunately, he'd been right. Once all three of the massive pterosaurs had finished their grisly meals, the creatures called out to each other with a series of echoing honks and deep-toned hisses, before their wings flared out and they leapt back into the air. Despite their size, they were easily able to gain altitude, and they quickly rose up and away, flying inland towards the distant peaks of the island's three volcanic mountains.
Madison couldn't stop trembling as she sat back up, staring wide-eyed after the departing creatures. "What were those things?" she whispered.
"They are the Night-Demons," Daiyo intoned grimly as she straightened up in her seat. "They do not fly in daylight, only at night or when dark clouds cover the sun. We were fortunate to be on the river: they cannot swim, and it is difficult for them to enter the forest, but anything upon the open ground is prey for them."
"Monarch calls them Ropens," Ling added as she caught her breath, "after a legend of a similar creature from New Guinea. We think there may be a few of them living on that island too, but we haven't been able to confirm that yet." She nodded to where the now-distant lights of the creatures' glowing green crests were disappearing into the clouds over the rainforest. "They're basically this place's equivalent of Skull-Crawlers: the biggest, nastiest predators on the island. They roost in caves on the upper slopes of the three volcanoes during the day, but they come down to these open plains to hunt, usually at night."
"Wow." On one level, Madison was amazed by what she'd just seen… but on the other hand, she couldn't banish the mental image of the Ropen snatching a giant kangaroo off the ground and swallowing it whole. Considering the size of the animal that the massive pterosaur had consumed, it wasn't hard for her to imagine how easily one of them could do the same thing to a human.
"Hang on," Mark interjected, a scowl beginning to form on his face. "You're saying you knew those things were on this island? And you didn't say anything?!"
"I didn't think we would see them on this trip!" Ling protested. "And they shouldn't bother us again. As far as we know, they don't come into the jungle, and I can't imagine that they'd go near the Titans, so this should be the only time that they'll be anywhere near us."
"She's right, Mark," Ilene seconded. She looked a little shaken up by the incident, as they all did, but she'd managed to keep her cool. "The previous survey teams who came here didn't have any trouble with the Ropens, so we shouldn't either. All we have to do is be careful." She smiled over at them, and Madison felt another warm sensation in her mind like a comforting hug, helping her to calm down after the adrenaline rush of that encounter. "We'll be fine, I promise."
Madison wasn't sure whether her dad had felt the same thing, but after a moment of silence, he relaxed slightly. "All right," he muttered. "But let's make damn sure that there aren't any other close calls like that one while we're here, all right?"
The twins exchanged amused glances, and Ilene nodded understandingly. "Of course."
Luckily for everyone's safety and for Mark's nerves, once the canoes had left the open plains behind and entered the dense rainforest that filled the interior of Infant Island, the rest of the journey was much less eventful. After about an hour of paddling further upstream, they came to a fork in the river where it split in two as it flowed down from the island's highlands: one branch became the one that they had been paddling up, while the other veered off towards the northern section of the island. Following Daiyo's instructions, the team and their guides set off down the other branch of the river, heading downstream and deeper into the jungle. The dark clouds had given way to a brief tropical rainstorm, but the overhanging tree canopy blocked most of the rain.
Still feeling very tired after the past couple days of nonstop travel, Madison actually dozed off in the boat and took a quick nap, resting her head on a rolled-up jacket and draping a raincoat over herself as a precaution in case there were any breaks in the trees. She slept for a couple of hours, until she was suddenly snapped back into wakefulness by the feeling of her dad's hand jostling her shoulder.
"Maddie?" Mark's voice was low and tense, but she could hear a note of suppressed excitement in his tones as well. "Wake up, sweetheart. You're gonna want to see this. But sit up slowly, and keep your voice down." When she opened her eyes and looked up at him, she saw the look on his face: he was staring intently at something, but he glanced down at her and raised an index finger to his lips to indicate a need for silence.
Rubbing her eyes, Madison slowly pushed herself up into a sitting position, looking around. It took a moment for her to register what was going on: the canoes were drifting in a large, still pool, near one bank of the river. Everyone else – the Chens, the G-Team soldiers, and the Houtua guides – were looking across the river towards the trees on the other bank. As she followed their gaze, her eyes widened and she sat up a little straighter, almost unable to believe what she was seeing.
On the other bank of the river, half a dozen ape-like creatures were looking back at the expedition. Four of them were on the ground, while the other two were perched in the lower branches of an overhanging tree. They were fairly small, no more than three feet tall, but they stood upright like humans, not on all fours or with the hunched posture of normal apes like gorillas, chimpanzees or orangutans. They had dark brown skin, darker than that of the Houtua, and long black hair that hung down past their shoulders, but no fur on their bodies; instead, they wore what looked like simple handmade loincloths around their waists, made from animal hides. Most bizarrely of all, several of them were carrying what, to Madison's eyes, looked like spears: long wooden shafts tipped with carved stone blades.
Madison had recognized most of the larger creatures out on the open plains, at least through their resemblance to modern animals, but she'd never seen anything like these creatures before. Mark and Ling, however, were both staring at the strange, miniature humanoids with stunned, awestruck expressions, suggesting that they already knew what they were looking at. Despite the Chens' prior knowledge of Infant Island, Ling looked just as surprised as Mark this time.
The Houtua guides were visibly tense as well, but Daiyo didn't seem overly concerned. With the help of one of her guards, she shifted to a kneeling position in her canoe, so she could lift herself up higher without standing up and running the risk of falling overboard. She extended one hand towards the creatures, palm out and fingers spread wide, and called out loudly in the Houtua language, speaking slowly and clearly. After calling a few words across the water, she kept her hand outstretched and bowed her head.
The creatures were silent for a moment, glancing at each other, until one of the ones on the ground stepped forward to the edge of the water. Planting the lower end of its spear in the mud with one hand, it held out its free hand in a matching gesture and let out a long, screeching call, unlike any other primate vocalization that Madison had ever heard. The other creatures joined in, their voices rising in a chorus that sent chills through her body.
Tugging its spear back out of the ground, the lead creature regarded Daiyo and the rest of the expedition for another moment, before it let out a soft grunt and turned away, walking back up the bank. Its stride was fluid and natural, perfectly balanced on two legs like a human, nothing like the times when Madison had seen chimps or gorillas walking briefly on two legs in nature documentaries. The other creatures on the ground fell in behind the leader as it strode off into the underbrush, while the two creatures in the tree turned and bounded away through the branches, as agile as any primate that she'd ever seen. A couple more of their distant calls echoed through the forest, before they finally faded into the background chorus of birds and insects that made up the natural sounds of the jungle.
The tension that had gripped the Monarch team finally faded, and everyone's shoulders sagged in relief. Ilene sighed, leaning back in her seat, but Ling and Mark were both staring fixedly after the creatures with stunned looks on their faces.
"Dad?" Madison frowned, looking over her shoulder at Mark and then across to the Chens' canoe. "Dr. Ling? What were they?"
Daiyo spoke up first, smiling over to Madison as she retook her seat. "Those are the Little Ones," she explained. "They have been here as long as we have, if not longer. They choose to live apart from us, and we are at peace with them, but we do not enter each other's territories without permission." She nodded towards the spot where the creatures had been, and repeated the hand gesture that she had made. "That is our ancestral greeting to them, requesting permission to pass through their lands. Their response meant that they are allowing us to proceed."
"'Little Ones'…" Ling shook her head, a smile spreading across her face. "Our mom and aunt heard stories about them when they came here in the '60s, but none of the Monarch expeditions here ever actually saw them. I never thought that's what they would be." She turned to face Mark and Madison. "You know what they were, right, Mark?"
"I do," Mark confirmed. He nodded slowly, letting out a soft, disbelieving chuckle. "I'll be damned. Hobbits."
Ilene and Ling both grinned, but Madison and the G-Team soldiers were thoroughly confused. "Um… what?" Barnes spoke up. "Hobbits? Like, the little guys from Lord of the Rings?"
"Not exactly," Mark replied, still chuckling. "Their scientific name is Homo floresiensis: a small species of hominid, native to Indonesia. A type of human, but a different species from us, kinda like Neanderthals. They were small, no more than three feet tall – which is why scientists nicknamed them 'Hobbits', after the characters from the Tolkien books – but they walked upright like we do, and they used stone tools to hunt." He shook his head, wiping some sweat off his forehead as his expression became more perplexed. "But… they're supposed to be extinct."
"To be fair, most of the creatures here are supposed to be extinct," Ling quipped, before her expression became more thoughtful. "For Homo floresiensis… the only place where fossils of them have been found so far is on Flores Island, on the southern side of the Indonesian archipelago. Those fossils were from thousands of years ago, but there are myths of similar creatures in various parts of Indonesia, like the Ebu Gogo in Flores or the Orang Pendek in Sumatra, which could potentially be surviving populations of that species." Her smile returned as she gazed off into the jungle. "I never thought I'd actually see them alive, though."
Madison grinned, feeling more and more excited. Apart from the scare with the Ropens earlier, everything about this island was even better than she could have hoped, and she could hardly wait for what lay ahead of them.
"All right, let's keep moving," Ilene decided, taking up her paddle again and nodding to Daiyo as a bit of amusement sparkled in her eyes. "We've got an appointment to keep."
Now that they were traveling with the current instead of against it, the team's boats were able to make faster progress, and after a couple more hours they finally reached the sea again, now on the far side of the island from the Houtua's village. Luckily, the island's protective reefs meant that there weren't many powerful waves hitting the beaches, and the canoes were able to handle the gentle ocean swells without much trouble.
By this point, the storm had passed as quickly as it had begun, and rays of sunlight were beginning to pierce through the thinning clouds. It was that sunlight that allowed Madison to spot something, as the canoes came around a bend in the shoreline into a large, open bay where another river flowed out of a valley between two high ridgelines. For a second, she thought she was just looking at a large rocky outcropping, protruding from the inner edge of the reefs in the deeper part of the bay. But then, as she got a better look at it and her eyes started to notice specific details, her eyes widened and she felt a sudden rush of excitement mixed with fear. "Uh… Dad?" she breathed, reaching back behind her and grabbing one of Mark's arms as she pointed out towards it. "Is that what I think it is?"
"Huh?" Mark had been occupied with rowing, but as he looked up and followed her gaze, he suddenly sat bolt upright. "Oh, shit," he muttered, his eyes wide as he frantically waved to the other boats and spoke up as loudly as he dared. "Ilene! Over there!"
The occupants of the other boats quickly noticed what the Russells had spotted. Barnes immediately paled and muttered a curse under his breath as he checked his sidearm, while the other G-Team soldiers did the same. That reaction was totally understandable, as the "rock outcropping" that Madison had indicated was actually the partially-submerged form of Titanus Scylla, crouching against the reef with only her coiled shell and the upper portions of her crablike legs visible above the surface. She wasn't moving, and she didn't appear to have noticed the boats making their way along the shoreline, but the entire Monarch team were immediately on high alert.
The Houtua, however, seemed to be strangely calm. Unlike when the Ropens had appeared, Daiyo and the rest of her people didn't have any kind of nervous reaction to Scylla's presence; in fact, they all inclined their heads for a moment, bowing in the direction of the sleeping Titan and murmuring what sounded like a prayer.
The Chen sisters didn't seem surprised by this, but Mark's alarm turned to confusion as he looked around at the team's guides. "Ah… I'm sorry," he spoke up, "but… what are you doing?"
"Paying our respects," Daiyo replied with a smile, gesturing to the distant form of Scylla. "She is a member of the Goddess-Queen's court, and must be treated as such. Don't worry, she will not harm us."
Mark didn't look very reassured or convinced by that – which Madison could understand, considering Scylla's rampage through the American Southwest only a month earlier – but he nodded and made a visible effort to stay calm. However, he didn't take his eyes off of Scylla until the canoes had made their way all the way along the shoreline of the bay to the mouth of the river. Luckily, she didn't show any signs of movement or aggression, and the team passed through the bay and up into the river without incident.
This river flowed down through a valley that led up between two of the island's three volcanoes, with ridges that rose up for at least a thousand feet on either side. The gentle slopes were covered by dense jungle, making it hard to see anything beneath the trees. The river here was much wider than the ones that they had taken before, and it also seemed to be much deeper, from what Madison could see when she peered over the side; although the water was crystal-clear, it was hard for her to see the bottom.
The Houtua seemed to be increasingly excited now that they were nearing the end of the journey, and were paddling with a renewed vigor. The G-Team did the same, and the canoes were soon skimming along at a good pace, even against the slowly-flowing current. As they continued upriver, Madison started to notice something else: odd shapes that were partially concealed by the vegetation on the riverbanks, too large and symmetrical to be natural. A closer look through her binoculars confirmed her suspicions: what she was seeing were the overgrown remains of ancient stone buildings, lining both banks of the river.
"Whoa," she breathed, looking over to where Daiyo's canoe was gliding along next to theirs. "Did your people build those?"
Daiyo smiled proudly and nodded, admiring the view. "Our ancestors did," she confirmed. "In the old times, when our gods often came to share this place with us, there were many more Houtua on this island, and we dwelled in this city. Once the gods went into their long sleep, our population gradually declined over the centuries, and we eventually left the city behind to make a new home on the west coast." She indicated the view ahead of them, as the team's boats approached a sharp bend in the river that led into a broader section of the valley. "But this was our original home, built to house our people and to honor our protectors. In our language, it's known as Moan'stalan: the City of the Gods."
And then, as the canoes cruised around the bend in the river and the valley opened up before them, Madison's eyes widened in amazement.
Spread out along the walls of the river valley was the same breathtaking view that she'd seen in her dream at Castle Bravo, two weeks earlier: a vast city of stone buildings, built along the ridges that rose up on either side of the placid waterway. Unlike the smaller buildings that they had just passed, however, there wasn't much vegetation around these buildings, leaving the ancient stonework exposed and clearly visible from the river. It was a testament to the people who had built these structures that they were still mostly intact, despite the millennia that had passed since the Houtua had abandoned this place.
Madison could tell that the architecture of Moan'stalan was similar to that of the Temple of the Moth in China, but this place was far more extensive, more reminiscent of the flooded city that her dad and Ilene had discovered in the Hollow Earth. Clearly, Ilene and Ling's theory had been correct: the Houtua's ancestors had been part of the ancient "Aztlan" civilization that had formed some sort of partnership with Godzilla and Mothra.
"My god," Mark breathed, regarding their surroundings with amazement in his eyes. "This is amazing." Ilene and Ling nodded in agreement, awestruck smiles fixed on both sisters' faces.
While Madison and the three scientists were distracted by the beauty of the ancient city, Barnes was concerned with more practical matters. "So… what happened to all the trees?" he questioned, waving towards the nearby riverbank. Sure enough, when Madison followed the path of his gesture and looked more closely, she could see numerous tree stumps and patches of churned-up earth among the ancient stone buildings. It took a second for her to realize what must have happened: this lost city had been mostly overgrown, but the trees and plant growth here had recently been stripped away by something very large.
"The Goddess did that after she and her God-King arrived here," Daiyo explained with an amused smile. "She needs food to complete her growth before she can transform, and this was ideal for her purposes; she was able to clear the overgrowth from the old city and feed herself at the same time." She nodded up the river, where another bend in the valley prevented them from seeing what lay beyond the ancient city. "She and her King await us further upstream, at the altar that our ancestors built for her. It was where the Speakers of old would go to commune with her, and it is where we must go now to do the same."
"Of course." Ling nodded, her smile becoming more excited as she exchanged a glance with Ilene. "Let's go, then."
Sure enough, after a few more minutes of paddling, the canoes rounded the next bend in the river and continued upstream, deeper into the island's interior. The trees grew dense on the riverbanks again once they were beyond the boundaries of the ancient city, and the river began to narrow. Before long, a new sound reached the team's ears, cutting through the background noises of the forest: the deep, low rumble of a waterfall.
As the river grew narrower, the current started getting stronger, hampering the forward progress of the canoes. Luckily, the Houtua had clearly planned for this, as Daiyo called out a command to her hunters and gestured to a large inlet along one side of the river, just large enough to beach their boats. As they rowed in and made landfall on the soft earth of the riverbank, Madison saw a clear footpath cut through the dense vegetation that led off along the bank, heading further inland.
"The river is too powerful for us to row any further," Daiyo explained, nodding towards the path as she climbed out of her canoe and waded ashore. "We must walk the rest of the way."
Madison yawned and stretched her arms. Although she was tired and sore after the long boat ride, she couldn't help feeling a rush of excitement as she clambered out of her boat and grabbed her backpack, slinging it over her shoulders. We're almost there!
Once the boats had been beached and secured on the bank, the team set out again, following Daiyo and her hunters along the narrow jungle track. The trail wound along the riverbank for at least a mile, and the jungle humidity was intense, but fortunately the sun was on its way down and there was plenty of shade, which helped to mitigate the tropical heat. As they made their way further into the rainforest, the distant thunder of the waterfall grew steadily louder, and Madison's excitement grew with every step. The Chens clearly felt the same way, although her dad and the G-Team soldiers looked more tired than anything else.
Finally, the team reached the top of a hill, and the roaring of water grew louder still. As Madison crested the hill, her breath caught in her throat, and she stopped so abruptly that her dad bumped into her back. He frowned, looking down at her for a second, before he looked up and saw what had stopped her in her tracks. His face instantly paled, and one of his hands grasped her shoulder to hold her still.
"Damn," Barnes panted as he stopped alongside Mark, his eyes wide in amazement. "Hell of a welcoming committee."
Before them was another place that Madison had seen in her dream: the spot where the river valley ended in a semicircle of sheer cliffs, rising up for at least five hundred feet. Most of that semicircle was occupied by a huge, broad waterfall, where one or more streams from the volcano's higher slopes came together and spilled over the edge of the cliffs, creating a cauldron of churning water and billowing steam. At the base of the cliffs, the water cascaded down into a large, deep pool, before flowing downstream into the river that they had just come up.
Just below the falls, however, was the sight that had really caught their attention: a large, square-shaped island, about as broad as a football stadium, that appeared to be highly artificial in nature, with its sides carved into a series of large stone steps that led up onto the smooth, flat surface of the island. It bore a resemblance to a pyramid, like the Temple of the Moth in China, but just the lowest level of one, with the rest of the structure missing. She remembered this from her dream, too, but it was even more impressive in real life.
Of course, the most impressive part was the fact that the island was presently occupied by the enormous forms of two resting Titans. A double aura of flickering blue bioluminescence illuminated the pair of enormous creatures as they lay upon the huge stone slab; three rows of bony plates speared up out of the steam, and two pairs of glowing eyes – one blue, the other orange – pierced through the shadows, gazing directly at the approaching humans.
Daiyo and the Chens hadn't been wrong. Godzilla and Mothra were waiting for them.
"Come on," Ilene murmured, smiling as she looked over her shoulder at them and beckoned for Mark and Madison to follow her. Her expression softened when she saw the tension on Mark's face, becoming more reassuring. "It's going to be okay, Mark. Trust me."
Mark was still understandably hesitant, but he finally nodded and relaxed his hold on Madison's shoulder, before following her and Ilene down the last section of the trail. Ling and Daiyo were already at the water's edge, having found a spot where an ideal fording spot had been created: a large rock crossed the river, forming a natural bridge with most of the water flowing under it, making the water on top of the rock just a couple of inches deep. As a result, it was easy for the team to wade across without getting more than their feet wet. The rock was slippery underfoot, but Madison hung onto her dad's arm with one hand to help her balance, and they both made it across without falling.
A thick layer of moss and lichen had grown over the dark volcanic rock that made up the small central island, changing its color from glossy black to a mixture of black and green. It was helpful for the human visitors, though, because the coat of soft, spongy moss made it much easier for them to clamber up the large stone steps that led up to the top of the altar. As they climbed up onto the great stone slab, a deep snort was followed by a rush of warm air, and Madison caught a whiff of two distinctive scents. The first, she remembered from her first up-close encounter with Mothra: a smell which resembled a mixture of flowers, freshly-cut grass, and sulfur. The second was unfamiliar – a cross between salty sea air and burning electrical wires – but based on the way Mark and Ilene reacted, she immediately knew that it had to be Godzilla.
Sure enough, with another gust of air, the steam before them was blown away, and the two Titans were fully revealed. Barnes cursed under his breath, and Mark's posture stiffened again, but all Madison felt was a mixture of awe and excitement. Daiyo and the other Houtua all sank to their knees on the moss-covered stone, bowing their heads in reverence.
Mothra was what captured Madison's attention first, as she was closer to the humans. The giant caterpillar looked just like she had back in the Yunnan temple, her dark exoskeleton pulsing and rippling with inlaid patterns of blue light. In different ways, though, she seemed both bigger and smaller than Madison remembered. The "bigger" part was because she'd forgotten that, although Mothra's first form might be small by Titan standards, the massive larva was still over a hundred feet long, as large as a fully-grown blue whale. In addition, the sheer presence that Mothra exuded, the aura of power and primal energy that radiated from the Titan Queen, was far greater than what her physical size in this form would suggest.
The "smaller" part, meanwhile, was due to the fact that this time, Godzilla was right next to Mothra. Even lying down, with his tail trailing off into the water on the far side of the small island, the Titan King took up most of the view in front of them, covering nearly half of the huge stone slab. He lifted his head off the rock as his glowing orange eyes narrowed, gazing down at the team with what Madison really hoped wasn't anger or aggression. His lip curled, showing rows of razor-sharp teeth that were as long as a grown man's entire body, and a low growl rumbled in the back of his throat, vibrating through the rock beneath their feet.
Barnes and the soldiers took a hasty step back, while Mark, Madison and the Chens instinctively remained frozen in place. Mothra, however, let out a soft series of chirping sounds as she turned to face the larger Titan, gently nuzzling against the side of his head. The intensity of Godzilla's gaze faded somewhat, and he visibly relaxed, letting out a low snort and shaking his head. Although he continued glowering cautiously at the humans, his posture became less tense, and he lowered his head back onto the damp stone and slid his clawed hands beneath his chin, almost like a cat.
Madison was relieved, but she also couldn't suppress a small, breathy chuckle at the sight of the King of the Monsters seeming so… relaxed. She'd seen Godzilla several times in the past, most recently when he'd inadvertently saved her from Ghidorah in Boston, but she'd never seen him behaving like this before. It was almost cute, if one could really describe a four-hundred-foot-tall predatory reptile as being "cute".
A moment later, however, she was snapped out of her reverie when a low, trilling chirp from Mothra cut through the silence. The larval Titan had also lowered herself back down into a more relaxed posture, no longer rearing up like a cobra but merely keeping her head slightly elevated while the rest of her body sank to the floor. Her glittering, multifaceted blue eyes were fixed intently on the humans, and Maddie couldn't help the distinct feeling that Mothra was looking right at her, before the Titan Queen's head swung around to focus on the kneeling Houtua. Daiyo, at the front of the group, looked up and met Mothra's glowing gaze without flinching, and Madison had the distinct impression that some kind of unseen communication was flowing back and forth between them, similar to her prior experience in the Yunnan temple.
After a few seconds, the strange stare-down was broken, and Daiyo turned to face the Monarch team. "Blessed ones," she spoke up, beckoning to Ilene and Ling as she rose smoothly to her feet, before her eyes gleamed with a bit of amusement as her gaze shifted down to Madison. "And you, young one. Please step forward; the Goddess wishes to commune with you." Mothra let out a low, humming sound, as if she was seconding this, and drew back slightly to give the humans a bit more space.
Mark's eyes widened as he looked down at Madison, placing a protective hand on her shoulder again. "Hang on," he questioned, frowning deeply as he looked up at Mothra. "What do you mean by that?"
"It's okay, Mark," Ilene assured him. "They're not going to hurt us."
Mark snorted under his breath at that. "And you know that how, exactly?" he muttered, keeping his voice low as he gestured to Godzilla and Mothra. "Because the last thing we want to do with animals this big is to infringe on their personal space."
"If they were going to hurt us, they could have done that already," Ling pointed out, shaking her head and smiling. "The Houtua have been interacting peacefully with the Titans for thousands of years. It's just like Kong and the Iwi: he's never harmed any outsiders who were under their protection, and it seems like the same is true here."
"She's right," Ilene confirmed, nodding towards the Houtua. "We have to trust them and show respect for their rituals if this is going to work."
Mark clearly wasn't convinced, so Madison tugged on his sleeve to draw his attention down to her. "Dad?" she spoke up quietly. "I think they're right. Mothra could've hurt me and Mom in the temple in China, but she didn't. And she just stopped Godzilla from getting mad at us here, too." She clasped one of her hands over his and met his eyes, putting all the conviction she could muster into her gaze. "It's gonna be okay, and you guys will be right here just in case. So don't freak out, all right? Please?"
At first, her argument didn't seem to have much of an effect… but, after a long moment, Mark finally gave a hesitant nod, and his hold on her shoulder went slack. "All right," he muttered grudgingly. "But be careful. And if anything goes wrong, we're getting the hell out of here." His gaze hardened as he looked up to the twins. "That goes for all three of you."
Ilene and Ling exchanged amused grins and nodded. "Fair enough," Ling agreed.
Finally, Mark reluctantly released Madison's shoulder, and she stepped forward next to the Chens and Daiyo. The four of them walked out in front of the larger group, cautiously drawing closer to Mothra. The Titan lifted her head up a little further and let out a series of low, chittering sounds as she watched them coming, her blue bioluminescence pulsing more vibrantly. She leaned towards them, her head dwarfing the four of them as she came to within arm's length, and her eyes flashed brighter. And then Madison heard it: the same soft, soothing voice that she'd heard on several previous occasions, in the Yunnan temple and then in her dreams.
Welcome, dear ones, Mothra murmured, her eyes glowing brighter as her telepathic "voice" echoed through their minds. It's so good to see you all.
Madison felt a rush of warmth flow through an unexpected surge of emotion as the full significance of this moment sank in. Ever since she'd first spoken to Mothra in the temple, a part of her had always been worried that it might not have been real: that she might have imagined that conversation, that her dreams since then were only dreams, and that the Chen sisters' claims of their connection to Mothra and their psychic powers could be explained in some other way. But now, in this moment, it had been confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt that everything she'd been told over the past month was true.
It's good to see you too, my Queen, Ilene's voice echoed inside her head, and Madison's eyes widened as she saw the older woman's eyes flicker with blue light. She smiled up at Mothra, tears visibly welling up in her eyes as her mental "voice" trembled. I… I feared the worst, after you fell in that battle.
We thought that we might not see you again, Ling added as she stepped up on Madison's other side, her telepathic voice also choked with emotion.
Oh, my dear Singers… Mothra trilled softly, her voice softer and filled with a deep, pained sympathy. It's all right, little ones. I understand, but I'm here now. And I promise you, I will not leave you again. She leaned forward, resting her chin against the stone within arm's reach; on cue, Ilene and Ling reached out, each resting one hand against the Titan's head as they closed their eyes and bowed their heads, tears of joy tracing down their cheeks.
After a few seconds of this silent communion, the sisters lowered their hands and opened their eyes again, blue light still flickering through the normal brown color of their irises. Mothra let out another low, soothing croon, before her gaze shifted down and locked unmistakably onto Madison. Welcome to you as well, dear child, she added, her mandibles spreading in what Madison recognized from her dream as the Titan's equivalent of a smile. I'm glad to see you again.
Since Madison was far enough away from the rest of the Monarch team that the background roar of the waterfall would hopefully keep them from hearing her, she felt like it was safe to speak out loud, but the idea that she was actually having a conversation with a Titan was such an overwhelming thought that it was hard for her brain to form words. "T-thank you," she managed to get out, her cheeks flushing with embarrassment. "I… I honestly don't know why you invited me here, but… thank you so much." Deep in the back of her mind, she couldn't help but feel like she might not deserve to be there, after everything that her mother had done.
Mothra chittered softly, a sound that was echoed by gentle laughter in Madison's mind. I could feel the kindness in your mind when we first connected, young one, she replied warmly, and I assure you, you are worthy of this. In addition, I decided after my most recent rebirth that it would be beneficial to have someone within your "Monarchs" who could communicate with me, apart from my Singers. She tilted her head slightly to one side, regarding Madison with her huge compound eyes. If you wish, you could be that person. Now that you are here, I can properly develop the mental link that I have forged between our minds, and then you will acquire all the gifts of a true Speaker.
Madison blinked at that, feeling a little confused. "A Speaker?" She'd never heard the Chens use that term, but… hadn't that been what Daiyo had called herself when they'd met her that morning? "I… I'm sorry, but what is a Speaker, exactly?"
Another soft chuckle echoed through her mind, and Mothra's strange smile grew wider. A Speaker is one like my priestess here, she explained, shifting her head slightly towards Daiyo, who smiled and nodded in agreement. An otherwise normal human, but one whose mind has been expanded through a link with me. I awakened the latent Speaker abilities that Daiyo inherited from her ancestors when I first came to this island, and I can give you those abilities as well if you wish to receive them. Once the full potential of a Speaker is bestowed upon you, you will be able to communicate not just with me, but with my King and our allies as well.
"Wait, what? Seriously?!" Madison's eyes widened at the idea of that, her lips twitching into a disbelieving smile. Talking to Mothra was crazy enough as it was, but the idea that Mothra could give her the ability to talk to all of the Titans? That sounded completely insane, and she was pretty sure that her dad wouldn't like that idea because he'd worry that she was putting herself in danger. But, at the same time… if Mothra could really do that for her, there was no freaking way she'd ever be able to pass that up. "That… that would be amazing!" She looked up to the Chens, receiving a pair of reassuring smiles from them, before she turned her gaze back to Mothra and nodded. "So… yes. I accept."
Excellent! Mothra's eyes flashed, and she let out a delighted trill as she lowered her head and rested her chin upon the stone slab. In that case, please step forward. This process works best through physical contact.
Despite the nervousness running through her body, Madison slowly stepped forward, extending one hand towards the Titan's face. She glanced over her shoulder and saw her dad watching her intently; he almost started forward when she stepped closer to Mothra, but Ilene was watching him too and held out a calming hand to stop him short.
Taking a deep breath to calm her nerves, Madison reached out and carefully placed her hand against the chitinous surface of Mothra's face, just below one of the huge, glowing eyes. She instinctively closed her eyes and bowed her head as a strange, electric sensation began flowing through her entire body, and she felt a bizarre feeling like static in her brain, not painful but very unsettling. Wincing, she squeezed her eyes tightly shut and gritted her teeth, frozen in place. The static in her mind built to a crescendo, drowning out all other sounds, before it finally melted away. The unnatural buzzing sensation in her brain ended as quickly as it had come, and the background noises of the jungle and the waterfall came surging back.
Whoa… Madison lowered her hand from Mothra's head and opened her eyes again, swaying a little on her feet. "Ouch," she muttered under her breath, rubbing her eyes and her temples as she tried to get rid of the headache that had suddenly developed. Shaking her head, she looked back up at Mothra, who was watching her attentively, and then turned to the Chens and Daiyo, who were all sporting warm smiles. "So… that was it?" she questioned. "I mean, did it work?"
Ilene and Ling both chuckled softly, and Mothra did the same, her voice echoing through Madison's mind. Yes, it did, dear, the Titan confirmed, before a bit of amusement filtered through their connection and she glanced to her right. Isn't that right, Goji?
Indeed, a new voice spoke up. This one wasn't like Mothra's soft, smooth mental voice; instead, it was an impossibly deep, masculine baritone, so much so that Madison flinched when she heard it. It was accompanied by an audible rumble that vibrated through her entire body, even reverberating in the stone under her feet.
Madison's eyes popped wide open, her cheeks paled, and she almost choked on her next breath. Her hands were trembling uncontrollably as she slowly turned and looked up, right into the fiery orange eyes that were now staring down at her.
Oh, she thought numbly to herself. So that's what he sounds like.
Godzilla's eyes narrowed fractionally as he studied her for a long moment, before he let out a soft snort and his lips pulled back in what almost looked like a smirk. At the same time, that deep voice spoke into her mind again, surprisingly calm given his fearsome appearance. Greetings, young one, he intoned. Calm yourself; I mean you no harm. You are one of my Queen's Speakers now, and as such you are under our protection.
Madison nodded, a little shakily. "Um… thanks," she replied, and was surprised when she had to suppress the urge to laugh. She still couldn't really believe that this was happening, but at this point she figured she might as well just go along for the ride. "It's, uh… nice to meet you, I guess? Officially, I mean."
Godzilla blinked at that, still gazing inscrutably down at her. Officially? he questioned. What do you mean by that? Have we crossed paths before?
"Well… I mean, I guess?" Madison's cheeks flushed, feeling a little embarrassed by the way she was getting tongue-tied. "We didn't meet or anything, but… you did save me from Ghidorah, when they were about to kill me in Boston. So… thank you for that."
The Golden One? Godzilla's eyes actually widened a bit, and his voice was noticeably surprised when he continue. Yes… I remember, they were attacking something when I found them. That was you?
Before Madison could say anything, Mothra chimed in. Of course, she murmured. Remember, Goji? I told you: this child is the one whose voice was mingled with yours to create that strange voice-mimicking noisemaker.
Noisemaker? Madison was confused for a second, until her eyes widened when she realized that Mothra must be talking about the ORCA. Oh! Her mom had explained once that she'd used Madison's own bioacoustics for her plan of combining a human's acoustic signature with Godzilla's to create a new Alpha frequency. At the time, she'd thought that idea was really cool, and it had made sense since she'd been the most convenient candidate (as it had been much easier for Emma to record her bioacoustics rather than anybody else's). But she could never have imagined that as a result, the Titans would also be able to recognize her voice without the ORCA.
Intriguing, Godzilla rumbled, his eyes narrowing contemplatively as he stared at her. Tell me, then, child: what was that voice-mimic? It was unsettling, but it also aided us in vanquishing the Golden One.
Madison couldn't help but feel nervous about the idea of trying to explain the ORCA to a Titan, but Ilene placed a calming hand on her shoulder and she felt a comforting warmth wash over her. Looking back at the older woman and smiling up at her, she turned back to face the Titans, who were both gazing down at her with a great degree of interest. "W-well," she began, trying to keep herself from stammering, "you're right: I guess you could call it a noisemaker. My mother invented it; she recorded some of your calls, and combined them with my voice, so that the noisemaker would sound like a mixture of your voice and a human's. She…" She winced, remembering the much darker use to which the ORCA had been put in the hands of her mother and Alan Jonah, before shaking her head and continuing. "She thought that we could use it to communicate with you, so that we could all coexist peacefully. And she thought that she'd be helping the world if we woke you all up, but…" She looked down, closing her eyes as she felt a pang of guilt in her stomach.
"Her mother had good intentions," Ilene spoke up, stepping up next to Madison and giving her a reassuring pat on the back. "But she made some costly mistakes, as well. She became obsessed with repairing the damage that humans have done to the natural world, by any means necessary, and it led her down a dark path." She frowned, probably remembering the speech that Emma had broadcast to the crew of the Argo before Rodan's awakening, before shaking her head. "But she sincerely believed that awakening you would be good for the world as a whole… and I do think that she was right about that much."
I see, Mothra chirped as she nodded her massive head. Her voice softened and became more comforting as she focused back on Madison. I sense much sadness and pain within you when you speak of your mother, young one. Tell me… where is she now?
"She…" Madison's voice cracked when she thought about Emma, and she couldn't help but feel afraid of what Godzilla and Mothra might do if they found out that her mother had released Ghidorah from the ice, but she pressed on. "She's gone." A tear traced its way down her cheek as she continued. "After Monster Zero – Ghidorah – took control of the other Titans, I used the ORCA to try and stop them. They found me right before you showed up, but you started fighting them before they could kill me. While you were all fighting, my mom and dad rescued me, but…" She nodded shakily to Godzilla. "When they were about to kill you, my mom took the… the 'voice-mimic', and used it to draw them away from you and from us. And it worked, but…" She closed her eyes as more hot tears streamed down her face. "They killed her."
Godzilla let out a low growl and ground his teeth as his eyes flashed in anger for a moment, clearly remembering that battle, but Mothra's eyes were filled with what Madison instinctively recognized as sympathy. I'm sorry, dear child, she murmured, lowering her head just in front of the four humans as another wave of comforting warmth washed over Madison. Whatever she may have done, losing a parent is never easy.
It seems that we owe much to you as well, young one, Godzilla's mental voice remarked as he let out a deep, rasping chuckle. You must possess great courage if you challenged the Golden One, alone, and not only came face-to-face with them but survived to tell the tale. In my experience, no other human can say that.
Indeed, Mothra agreed, mandibles clicking in one of her strange smiles. And without your noisemaker holding the Golden One's thralls at bay, we might not have been able to defeat them. We both owe you a debt of gratitude for that. She dipped her head in what Madison recognized as a respectful bow, and Godzilla rumbled in agreement.
"I…" Maddie could barely believe what she was hearing – that the King and Queen of the Titans were actually thanking her – but she nodded shakily and smiled, rubbing her eyes and wiping away her tears. "T-thank you," she managed, bowing her head as she felt another mental hug from Mothra and leaning into it this time. "My Queen."
Of course, dear one, Mothra replied warmly. Lifting her head back slightly, she regarded the Chen sisters as well as Madison. So, as we discussed in our dream-talk before, I wish to learn more about how the world has changed since my King and I went into our long sleep. Her mental voice chuckled softly. For now, however, I am due to pupate, so that conversation will have to wait until I have finished my transformation. In the meantime, Daiyo and her hunters will escort you and your companions to a place where you can set up camp. She tilted her head towards the Houtua priestess, who smiled and nodded in confirmation.
"As you wish, my Queen," Ilene spoke up, inclining her head respectfully. Ling did the same, both sisters' eyes flashing blue one more time before they reverted back to their normal brown.
Excellent! We shall speak again soon, then. Letting out a pleased-sounding chirp, Mothra nuzzled against Godzilla's head again, gently nibbling at his scales with her mandibles as if she was grooming him. He closed his eyes for a long moment, returning her playful nuzzle and emitting another rumbling crocodilian purr, before turning and repositioning himself on the altar so he could watch as Mothra scuttled off across the great stone slab, wading through the water on the far side of the little island and clambering up the rocks on the far bank. After she located a particular spot in the middle of one of the waterfalls, she ducked through the sheet of falling water and out of sight, suggesting that there was a large alcove in the cliff face behind the water. Madison quickly recalled the surveillance footage that she'd seen recently from the site of Mothra's last metamorphosis, a large waterfall near the Yunnan temple in China. Clearly, the Titan Queen preferred to carry out her transformations in more concealed spots where she wouldn't be noticed as easily during the lengthy process.
As Mothra's blue bioluminescence began to flicker behind the waterfall, Madison turned and followed the Chens and Daiyo back to where Mark, the G-Team soldiers, and the rest of the Houtua were waiting. Her hands were trembling uncontrollably, and her cheeks were still wet with a mixture of the waterfalls' mist and her own tears, but a part of her felt better than she had in months… maybe even since that dreadful day, five years earlier, when her brother Andrew had been killed during the MUTOs' attack on San Francisco.
"Madison?" Mark whispered urgently as soon as she and the other "blessed ones" rejoined the larger group. "Are you all right?" He was understandably worried, especially since he could obviously see the stricken look on her face, so Madison took a quick step forward and wrapped her arms around his waist, hugging him tightly.
"Yeah," she managed to get out, still crying but feeling a sense of peace and warmth enveloping her like a comfortable blanket, as well as the deep-rooted certainty that this was where she was meant to be. "I'm okay."
Over the next few days, the Monarch team settled into their new surroundings. With some assistance from a few Houtua volunteers, they had been able to set up their campsite in a large open area in the ancient city, where Mothra had stripped away the encroaching jungle vegetation. Madison had gone on camping trips with her parents plenty of times over the years, so she'd been able to handle setting up her own small tent, next to her dad's and to the pair of tents that the Chens had brought along.
Most of the other Houtua had returned to their village on the other side of the island, but Daiyo and several others made regular visits to the team's research site and to the ancient altar, where Mothra's cocoon was now developing behind the waterfall. Madison, Mark and the Chens would usually accompany the Houtua on those visits, although they were unable to perform any in-depth examinations of the cocoon due to the presence of Godzilla. The reptilian Titan might be willing to tolerate the presence of humans to an extent, but he was clearly very protective of Mothra in her current, vulnerable state; he spent the entire duration of that time curled up on the great stone altar, and a low growl would well up in his throat whenever the humans got too close to the spot where the cocoon was anchored to the rocky cliff behind the falls.
Scylla made a few visits to Mothra's cocoon as well, stalking up the river valley from her resting place in the coastal lagoon. Madison, Mark and the soldiers had ducked for cover the first couple of times that she'd showed up, but she had never demonstrated any hostility towards them; it seemed that she wasn't naturally aggressive, a sharp contrast to her behavior when she'd been under Ghidorah's control. Interestingly, Godzilla seemed to be more tolerant of her than he was of the humans, as he would allow her to approach the cocoon without more than a warning snort from him and a bow from her. She would usually duck her head through the waterfall and rest it lightly against the cocoon for a few minutes, rubbing her tentacles or one of her claw-tipped legs gently across its hard surface, before bowing to Godzilla again and heading off back down the valley to her lagoon on the coast.
Since they couldn't conduct a proper examination of Mothra's cocoon for the moment, the Monarch team focused on studying other areas of interest: the animal life in the surrounding jungle, and the architecture of the ancient city. Due to their respective zoological expertise, Mark and Ling took charge of the former task, with a couple of the G-Team soldiers and several Houtua guides accompanying them on their field trips, while Ilene devoted her time to examining the old city with Madison acting as her assistant. They were fascinated by the beauty of the formerly-overgrown city, and Ilene confirmed that the ancient buildings' architectural designs had common elements with the ancient, flooded city that she and Mark had found in Godzilla's underwater lair, and with the Temple of the Moth in China. Clearly, just like those two places, Moan'stalan had once been an outpost of the ancient "Aztlan" civilization. And, since most of that civilization seemed to have disappeared over the millennia, the Houtua might be the last surviving descendants of that society… or, at the very least, the only surviving descendants who retained any knowledge of that ancient time.
Daiyo and her bodyguards sometimes chose to accompany the pair, showing hospitality to their guests and taking the opportunity to discuss recent events in the outside world with Ilene. On this day, she was escorting Ilene and Madison through one of the city's larger temples, accompanied by Barnes and a pair of Houtua hunters. It was dark inside the ancient building, but the Monarch team's flashlights and the Houtua's torches provided more than enough illumination for them to make out their surroundings.
"This is one of the halls where our ancestors would record their history," Daiyo explained as she led the way through an archway into a huge, cathedral-like room, its walls lined with carvings and bas-reliefs. Many of them showed images of the Houtua and the other animals that inhabited Infant Island, while other, larger carvings and paintings displayed the ancient artists' impressions of various Titans. Images of Mothra and Godzilla were by far the most common, but several others were also present, including Scylla, Rodan, and a third one that Madison didn't recognize: a heavily armored quadruped with a spiked shell on its back, which reminded her of some armored plant-eating dinosaurs that she'd seen in museums.
"Wow," Madison murmured under her breath, her eyes wide in amazement as she looked around the dimly-lit hall. She'd initially found it odd that, even though it had been thousands of years since this city was occupied by humans, its stone buildings were still mostly intact, despite the overgrowth of vegetation that had recolonized the area. However, Ilene's analysis of the ancient structures had confirmed that they were made primarily from granite, one of the most durable types of stone, which helped to explain their resilience against the degrading power of nature. In addition, Daiyo had explained that, while the Houtua no longer lived in this city, they did regularly visit to clear away some of the encroaching vegetation, keeping the city intact in preparation for the eventual return of their Titan protectors. All the remaining vegetation in the old city, of course, had been stripped away and eaten by Mothra when she'd arrived on the island a few weeks earlier.
As the group wandered around the immense chamber, one particular set of paintings on the wall drew Madison's attention. It reminded her of images that she'd once seen of an ancient cave painting that had been found by a Monarch expedition back in the 1960s; that one had displayed a Titan battle, with Godzilla, Mothra, and their human worshippers on one side, and Ghidorah on the other. This one was similar, in that the left side of the painting showed a stylized depiction of Godzilla and Mothra, with dozens of small human figures gathered behind them, presumably the artist's representation of the Houtua.
On the right side of the painting, however, was something very different: an image of two large, serpentine Titans that bore a distinct resemblance to classic depictions of Eastern dragons, snakelike creatures with four short, clawed legs and large, prominent fins. One of the pair looked oddly familiar to Madison: it was dark green in color, with a set of antlers protruding up and back from its head. The other one, however, was unfamiliar to her: its coloration was in shades of blue and purple, and there were no antlers on its head. Behind them were several smaller, snake-like shapes, presumably the offspring of the two larger creatures.
"Ilene?" she spoke up, raising an eyebrow questioningly as she looked over to where Ilene and Daiyo were examining some other paintings on the other side of the hall. "You might want to take a look at this."
"What's up, kid?" Barnes inquired, walking over to her. When she pointed up at the large painting that loomed over them, his eyes widened and he let out a low whistle as he rocked back on his heels. "Damn… those two look pretty nasty."
"Yeah." Madison nodded, frowning. "Weird part is, the green one looks familiar, but I can't remember whether I've actually seen it before."
"I think you have," Ilene put in as she approached them, her brow furrowed in thought as she looked up at the painting. "I've never seen that blue-and-purple one before, but the green one looks a lot like Titanus Leviathan."
"Leviathan?" Barnes raised an eyebrow as he looked up at the painting of the green serpent. "I've never seen him in person, just scans and pictures, but… yeah, I can see it. He's the one who was hibernating in Loch Ness, right?"
"Yes, that's right," Ilene confirmed, nodding as she regarded the painting. "Last I heard, he was somewhere in the north Atlantic, but he dropped off our radar not long after Ghidorah was killed. I didn't know there were any records of him here, though." She turned to Daiyo, who had followed her over and was also looking at the painting. "Excuse me, but… what is this?"
"That," Daiyo replied with a smile as she indicated the tableau with a wave of one hand, "is our ancestors' record of the greatest battle that ever befell this island." She pointed to the smaller snakelike creatures behind Leviathan and the other serpentine Titan. "Thousands of years ago, Moan'stalan was besieged by those creatures: a pack of great serpents that came from the sea to this island in search of prey. They began devouring our livestock and our people, and we might all have been lost, but our Speaker at the time reached out to the Goddess for aid, and she answered his prayers." Her smile grew as she nodded to the images of Mothra and Godzilla. "She and her God-King drove the young serpents away from our shores, and exacted a heavy price upon them for daring to harm those who were under her protection."
"Makes sense, I guess," Barnes mused, rubbing his chin as he looked up at the ancient paintings. "Where do the two big ones come in, though?"
"Well, the story does not end there," Daiyo explained as her smile faded. "Those young serpents had a father and a mother, who also attacked the island seeking vengeance for their offspring." She pointed to the representation of Leviathan, the green serpent, and then to the purple-and-blue serpent. "Our legend names the male serpent as Manda, and the female as Tiamat. The battle between them and our protectors was terrifying: our people were forced to flee from this city to seek shelter deep in the jungle, and it's said that the whole island shook from the echoes of their clash. It lasted for hours, but in the end, the Goddess-Queen and God-King were victorious, and the Serpents were banished from this place forever."
"Damn." Barnes whistled, regarding the tableau of the four Titans staring each other down. "That must've been one hell of a fight."
"And it might also explain why we found Leviathan hibernating on the other side of the planet, about as far away from here as he could've been," Ilene quipped.
"I mean, I guess we could call him Manda," Madison suggested, shrugging when the adults looked over at her. "If he and that female were both the same species, that means they're both Titanus Leviathan, right? So we'd need individual names for each of them."
Ilene nodded in agreement. "Good point, Maddie," she replied with an approving smile.
"Well, whatever feud they had goin' on in the old days, I just hope it's over now," Barnes remarked, grimacing as he looked up at the stylized snarls on the faces of the two serpentine Titans. "Because if Leviathan…" He shook his head. "If Manda really is on bad terms with the Big Guy, and they cross paths again… we might end up dealing with another Titan fight sooner rather than later."
Over the next few days, the team continued their work without incident. Some of the Houtua still made regular visits to the ancient city to check on them, but they seemed to be satisfied that the Monarch crew posed no threat to their tribe and were merely curious about the visitors to their land. Daiyo also spent quite a bit of time talking with Ilene and Ling, although Madison wasn't privy to all of those conversations. However, Ilene had explained that the Chens and the Houtua Speaker were basically comparing notes on what must be done when Mothra eventually emerged from her cocoon, as the Houtua had not performed the ritual ceremony to honor their goddess's rebirth since the last time she had visited their island, thousands of years earlier.
And then, finally, the few biosensors that the Chens had been able to place near Mothra's cocoon to monitor her transformation picked up a surge of activity within the hardened outer shell of the cocoon, as Mothra's bioacoustics began to build up again. The Titan's metamorphosis was finally complete, and she was nearly ready to emerge once more.
Somehow, the Houtua must have anticipated this, because by the time the Monarch team made it back upstream to the ancient altar, it looked like the entire tribe had already assembled there. There were several hundred of them in total, and they were all wearing some sort of ceremonial garb, while some of them were also carrying simple drums or other musical instruments. Most of them were gathered on the steps or the surrounding riverbanks, while Daiyo herself stood alone on the huge stone slab, dressed in deep blue robes and a more ornate version of her previous feathered headdress. Godzilla wasn't on the slab anymore; instead, he had shifted over to one side and was crouching beneath one of the high waterfalls. Streams of water were flowing down his sides as the falls poured down onto his back, but he didn't react, as his gaze was fixed intently on Mothra's cocoon. The reason for that was obvious: the Titan Queen's cocoon was glowing much more brightly now, its blue-green light pulsing rhythmically in a pattern that reminded Madison of the way Mothra's egg had behaved prior to her hatching in the Yunnan temple.
As the Monarch team waded across the shallow bridge and clambered up onto the steps, Daiyo turned towards them and smiled warmly. Madison saw that the older Speaker was also wearing face paint this time, her cheeks and forehead adorned with vivid stripes of white and orange that stood out against her dark brown skin and accentuated the blue of her eyes. "Step forward, blessed ones," she called out, beckoning to them as her eyes focused on the Chens in particular. "The Goddess awaits you." On cue, two of Daiyo's Houtua guards stepped forward, holding out a pair of blue cloaks that looked very similar to Daiyo's robes.
Ilene and Ling exchanged a glance, both looking nervous but excited at the same time. Ilene had clandestinely told Madison what to expect from this ritual, so she wasn't surprised, but Mark and the G-Team looked somewhat confused. "Uh… Ilene, what's she talking about?" Mark murmured quietly to the sisters.
"Well, since twins are sacred to the Houtua, Daiyo asked if we would help her with their traditional ceremony," Ilene whispered back. "Their ancestors used to do this whenever Mothra emerged from her cocoon, and if there were any twins among them at the time, they would be the ones to lead the ritual." She shrugged and gave him a reassuring grin, but Madison noticed a mischievous gleam in her eyes which meant that she clearly wasn't telling Mark the whole story. "Don't worry, she already talked us through the whole thing. We'll be fine." With that, she accepted the cloak that the Houtua guard had passed to her, as Ling did the same.
Mark was clearly still unsure despite Ilene's assurances, but he reluctantly nodded and watched alongside Madison and Barnes as the Chens donned their cloaks and climbed up the remaining stone steps to join Daiyo atop the altar. As the twins took up their positions beside Daiyo and began talking quietly with her, Madison heard a deep rumble and looked up to see Godzilla gazing down at them. Mark and Barnes both tensed up, but the Titan's normally-fierce eyes were oddly calm, and he let out a snort and shook his head before turning his gaze back to Mothra's cocoon. After a moment of silence, he tilted his head back and let out a low, echoing call, much softer than his usual roar, which echoed off down the river valley.
A couple of minutes later, the reason for that call became clear, as a return call reached their ears: a low, eerie trill, mixed with a series of staccato clicks, which sent a chill down Madison's spine. The Houtua reacted with excitement and anticipation, but Mark and the G-Team flinched back, and Mark stepped protectively in front of Madison as the dark, looming form of Scylla appeared around the bend in the river.
While seeing Scylla up close like this was still terrifying, Madison's instinctive fear of the six-legged Titan began to ebb as she noticed the way Scylla was behaving. She could certainly see the gathered humans, but she didn't display any aggression towards them; instead, she strode up along the riverbanks and moved into the open, stepping up onto the great stone slab while avoiding Daiyo and the Chens. Moving into the center of the altar, Scylla bowed to Godzilla… and this time, when she let out another low, chittering call, Madison heard a voice echoing in her head as well. Just like with Godzilla, her newly-awakened Speaker ability allowed her to understand the Titans' equivalent of human speech.
Is it time, my King? Scylla questioned. Her voice wasn't what Madison would have expected; unlike Godzilla's deep, imposing baritone, which certainly matched up with his physical appearance, the many-legged cephalopod's "voice" was soft and soothing, almost musical. Her voice was lower-pitched than Mothra's, but just as smooth and calming.
Indeed, Godzilla confirmed, turning back to the cocoon just as it pulsed more forcefully. This time, it felt like a wave of energy rippled out through the air around them, and Madison felt her hair standing on end, but she felt a surge of what she could only describe as joy washing over her as he continued. Her time has come.
Scylla chittered softly and stepped off of the altar into the river on the other side of the slab, taking up a position across from Godzilla and letting one of the waterfalls wash over her armored carapace. Her tentacles stretched out towards Mothra's cocoon, their tips brushing lightly against the hardened surface. I'm here, Mosura, she murmured, and Madison was surprised by the warmth and tenderness in the Titan's voice. We're ready. With that, she pulled back, her eyes glittering like twin silver beacons in the gathering darkness as she stared intently at the glowing cocoon.
A momentary silence fell over the clearing, and Madison's eyes widened as the flashes from the cocoon became more and more intense. Swarms of bioluminescent insects were rising from the surrounding jungle and swirling about overhead, as if they were being drawn in by Mothra's growing light.
At that moment, Daiyo stepped forward, raising her arms and extending them to either side. "Blessed Singers," she called out, bowing to Ilene and Ling. "Let us begin." With that, she waved to the onlooking Houtua, and all those who were carrying musical instruments – mostly drums, but some simple wind and string instruments as well – began to play. Slowly, a low, echoing rhythm began to build, growing louder with each passing moment.
Another snort from Godzilla drew Madison's attention to him, and her eyes widened as she saw him looking directly at her. His eyes focused on her, and while his face certainly wasn't human, she got the distinct impression of an amused grin. Watch closely, young Speaker, his voice intoned in her head. You and your allies should feel honored to witness this; such a ceremony has not been performed since before our long sleep. With that, his gaze shifted back to the trio on the altar, and a deep, echoing hum began to resonate within his massive chest, like the thrumming sound of his fiery breath charging up but not as harsh. His plates began to flicker with blue light, and wisps of steam rose from his back as the waterfall continued to pour down upon him. Across from him, Scylla also joined in the growing chorus, letting out a low, droning trill with occasional clicks mixed in.
Madison could barely believe what she was seeing. The combination of human music and Titan voices was truly captivating, a musical performance the likes of which had not been seen for thousands of years. Everyone else also seemed to be deeply affected by it; when she looked up at her dad, he actually had tears in his eyes as he gazed fixedly at Mothra's glowing cocoon. Barnes and the other G-Team members were stunned into silence as well. Among the assembled Houtua, all those who weren't playing instruments were swaying back and forth in a rhythmic dance, and a chorus of low chanting was mingling with the music.
As the music swelled, Madison's gaze shifted back to Ilene and Ling, who had walked forward until they were standing in the center of the altar, while Daiyo remained back near the edge of the great stone slab. The Chens exchanged glances, and even from this distance, she could see a flicker of blue light from their eyes. They joined hands, Ilene's left linking into Ling's right, and they each held their free arm out to the side, their ceremonial cloaks forming an outline that was reminiscent of a pair of wings.
And then, as the music reached a crescendo, the twins began to sing, in the same language that Daiyo and the other Houtua spoke. Somehow, even over all the background noise – the Houtua's music and chanting, the deep humming of Godzilla and Scylla, and even the background roar of the waterfalls – Madison could hear their voices as clearly as if they were standing right beside her, and it was clear from the others' reactions that they could hear it too.
"Mosura ya Mosura,
Dongan kasakuyan indo muu,
Rusuto uiraandoa, hanba hanbamuyan,
Randa banunradan,
Tounjukanraa,
Kasaku yaanmu!"
The Houtua's music swelled, pounding in Madison's ears, and her eyes widened as Mothra's cocoon shuddered in response. The blue-green glow inside the cocoon intensified, and its hardened membrane began to crack and split, buckling outwards. Long, multi-jointed limbs pushed out of the widening rift in the cocoon and through the sheet of falling water, and a familiar pair of glowing blue eyes pierced through the haze of water and steam. Mark's hand tightened instinctively on Madison's shoulder, but he was clearly just as captivated as she was.
"Mosura ya Mosura,
Dongan kasakuyan indo muu…"
A thunderclap echoed around them as the cocoon split wide open, and a massive form pulled itself out. The waterfall parted as Mothra passed through it, washing away the silk fragments and leftover fluids that had clung to her body, before she emerged into the open and rose up to her full height.
Madison's breath caught in her throat; she had seen Mothra in this form before, during the battle in Boston and in their shared dreams, but she'd never had time to fully appreciate the Titan Queen's imago form until now. She looked vaguely similar to the male MUTO who had attacked San Francisco in 2014, but the finer points of her appearance were very different: she had clicking mandibles instead of a fanged beak, blue eyes instead of red, and soft white fur that adorned her body and wings in place of the MUTOs' smooth gray-black armor. Most of all, the feeling that she gave off was completely different. Instead of a sense of intimidation or fear, like the other Titans, the only feelings that Mothra's presence invoked in Madison were awe, wonder, and a strange sense of comfort.
"Rusuto uiraandoa, hanba hanbamuyan,
Randa banunradan,
Tounjukanraa…"
Fully emerging from the waterfall, Mothra stepped up onto the great stone slab, looking around curiously. Her gaze swept over Godzilla, Scylla, and the assembled humans, sending a rush of warmth through Madison's mind, before she lowered her head to gaze down fondly at the Chens. Ilene and Ling gazed unblinkingly up at her, their eyes burning blue and tears of joy flowing freely down their cheeks, and their voices rang out stronger than ever as their song reached its climax.
"Rusuto uiraandoa, hanba hanbamuyan,
Randa banunradan,
Tounjukanraa,
Kasaku yaanmu!"
As the last few lines rang through everyone's ears, Mothra's wings flared out and a wave of blue light rippled through them, as the glowing orange eyespots on each wingtip also flickered to life. The Queen of the Monsters reared back, tilting her head up towards the moon overhead, and let out a piercing cry that echoed across the entire island. Godzilla and Scylla both joined in, letting out a deep roar and a chittering trill respectively, their calls mingling with hers to form a triumphant and joyful chorus.
Madison gazed up in awe, Mothra's brilliant blue aura reflecting in her eyes. A goddess had been reborn, a queen had reclaimed her throne… and, for the first time since her first communication with Mothra had been interrupted in the temple in China, she truly believed that everything was going to be all right.
North Atlantic Ocean
Deep beneath the surface, he cruised leisurely along the sandy ocean floor, navigating the complex underwater terrain with the ease of one who had been doing it all his life. The deep green glow of his bioluminescence illuminated the dark seafloor beneath him, sending countless smaller creatures fleeing in all directions as they sensed the threat that he posed. He wasn't interested in these tiny morsels, however, as his keen nose had picked up the scent of something much more promising. Gill slits rippled on either side of his neck, taking in oxygen from the water and helping him to track the scent, and he swam a little faster as he began to close in on the source of the appetizing aroma.
After a few more minutes of swimming, he finally located his target: a dead whale resting on the bottom, still mostly intact since it had fallen to the ocean floor quite recently. Several large deep-sea sharks and many other scavengers had already gathered around it, but they all scattered as his eerie green glow illuminated the scene, leaving the carcass abandoned. It still had plenty of meat on it, and he wasn't picky after his long sleep, so this would do nicely to take the edge off his hunger.
Lowering his head and letting out a pleased rumble, Manda plucked the whale carcass almost delicately from the ocean floor, flipping it up into the open water and then clamping his jaws down around its head, before gulping the whole carcass down headfirst. Like some of their smaller relatives – the ancient seagoing reptiles known as mosasaurs, and the modern-day snakes that they vaguely resembled – his kind, the sea-serpents, typically ate their prey whole, as long as it wasn't too big. This was the first decent-sized meal that he'd had since his emergence from hibernation, and he took the time to savor it.
It had been many thousands of years since he and his mate had been forced from their former territory. Manda deeply regretted allowing their offspring to wander into the territory of two Alpha Kaiju, but he'd never been as furious as Tiamat; in his mind, that batch of hatchlings had simply made a very foolish mistake by targeting prey that was off-limits, and they had paid for that mistake with their lives. He'd fought alongside Tiamat in her attempt to avenge their offspring, of course, because that was what a mate did for their partner. But he hadn't been nearly as enthusiastic about the idea as she had been, because he'd known that if they challenged the two Alphas who had claimed that island, they would probably lose that fight. And, sure enough, they had.
Driven from their hunting grounds, Manda and Tiamat had been forced to find new ones in this ocean, on the other side of the world. They had found a comfortable new home and had lived there for many years in relative peace, until the oceans had begun to grow cooler with the onslaught of the Cold Times. When the rest of the world's Kaiju had begun either going into hibernation or descending to the Underworld, they had decided to split up and hibernate separately, as finding an undersea cavern large enough for them both to hibernate comfortably was much more difficult, and Tiamat preferred warmer climates than Manda did. While she had sought out a resting place somewhere to the south, he had traveled further north, into the northwestern region of the vast Eurasian continent. Finding a coastal inlet of the ocean that was deep enough to comfortably accommodate him, he'd burrowed down into the sediment and excavated an underwater cave where he could sleep comfortably, before curling up and drifting into the peaceful silence of hibernation.
Then, thousands of years later, Manda had been rudely awakened by the distant Alpha cry of the Golden One, jolting him out of his trance and forcing him back into consciousness. He'd been surprised to find that the humans, the bug Queen's little mammalian pets, had constructed one of their strange nests around him while he'd been asleep, but it hadn't been too difficult for him to break out of it. When he'd surfaced, he had found that the coastal inlet where he'd gone to sleep was now a long, deep lake, cut off from the sea. After leaving the lake and making his way back out to the sea, he had spent the next couple of days destroying any human constructs that he could find, unable to shake off the Golden One's psychic control, until their control had finally been broken by their death at the hands of the lizard King.
Although peace had been restored, Manda had chosen to keep his head down for the time being. The Golden One might be dead, but he was still suffering from headaches and nightmares of his time under their control, and he needed time and rest to recover. In addition, he could hear that only a few other Kaiju were awake right now, and he didn't want to draw attention to himself. He had no interest in running into the lizard King or the bug Queen again, especially not when he was in this weakened state and unable to properly defend himself.
With that in mind, now that he'd fed and his hunger wasn't bothering him anymore, he sought out a good place to take a nap. It took a few hours of searching, but he eventually found an ideal spot: a large cave at the bottom of a deep-ocean trench, where he would be well-concealed from any other Kaiju who happened to pass through the area while he was asleep. Slithering inside and clearing away any debris with his four clawed feet, he curled up and rested his head on the soft, sandy floor.
I'll find Tia once I'm feeling better, he decided drowsily. Shouldn't take too long: a few months of sleep, and I should be back to normal. Then I can track her down, and we can see about carving out some new hunting grounds for ourselves. He grinned at that thought, his gleaming lantern-yellow eyes glowing a little brighter. With most of the surface world's Kaiju either still asleep or down in the Underworld, this was a perfect opportunity for them to establish a new territory. And no one would get in the way of that.
Reclining on the sand, Manda closed his eyes and allowed his body to relax, not sleeping too deeply so that he'd be able to wake up quickly and react if any other Kaiju came close to the cave while he was asleep. When the time came, he would awaken and rise to the surface once more… but for now, he drifted off to sleep, as the waves of the North Atlantic rolled past high above him.
Notes: And there we go!
So, a few notes:
– First off, yup, we're getting the inclusion of some other Kaiju/Titans in this story, starting with the introductions of Tiamat & Manda/Leviathan. To clarify for the latter: yes, for this story, Manda is Leviathan, the canon MonsterVerse Titan who was hibernating in Loch Ness, as that Titan hasn't gotten a canon description yet so I figured it would work well for this. To clarify, in this AU, Manda is his actual name, and "Leviathan" is the name that Monarch gave him after they found him (like Gojira/Godzilla or Mosura/Mothra). Since Tiamat and the classic Japanese films' depictions of Manda do look kinda similar, I figured that having them both be members of the same species would make sense, so I went with the angle of having them be a mated pair (similarly to how I had Methuselah & Kamoebas be members of the same species in this AU). Plus, this additional backstory gives the conflict between Godzilla & Tiamat from Godzilla Dominion a bit more weight, since they were just fighting over territory in canon.
– I really enjoyed exploring the MonsterVerse version of Infant Island! I took some cues from the MV's version of Skull Island, but for the most part I decided to use some real prehistoric species & cryptids from that part of the world as the basis for the island's creatures. Some are just scaled-up versions of real animals: Diprotodon and Homo floresiensis were both real species, and the giant cassowaries, the giant platypus, the giant echidnas, the giant thylacines, and the giant kangaroos are all loosely based on their real animals. The Night-Demons/Ropens are based on a cryptid of the same name in New Guinea, which is rumored to be a bioluminescent pterosaur.
– The Houtua are based on the tribe of the same name from the Godzilla Netflix anime trilogy, combined with some elements of the Infant Island tribespeople from the classic Japanese Mothra & Godzilla films. They also, of course, have some intentional parallels to the Iwi from Skull Island, as a tribe of ancient humans who have a close relationship to a Titan. Amimoto, their high priest/"Speaker" in the opening flashback, is based on the tribal elder from Mothra vs. Godzilla, as "Amimoto" was apparently that guy's name in canon. Daiyo, their current Speaker, is loosely based on the character of the same name from Ebirah, Horror of the Deep (also known as Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster), who was also from the classic Showa films' version of Infant Island.
– Also, for anybody who might still be confused regarding the difference between "Speakers" and "Singers" in this AU, here's the basic explanation. "Speakers" (like Amimoto in the flashback and Daiyo & Madison in the present-day) are ordinary humans who are gifted with a mental connection to Mosura. This connection allows them to understand & communicate with the Titans, but they're still basically human and they don't have any special powers apart from that ability. "Singers" (like the Chen sisters and the rest of their family) are actually a separate species of human who have evolved along a different line from the standard Homo sapiens, due to Mosura altering their ancestors' DNA. They're always twin women; they have actual psychic/telepathic powers, in addition to the ability to communicate with Titans; and they can reproduce parthenogenically without needing a sexual partner, the same way Mothra does.
– And for Mosura's transformation ceremony in this chapter, of course I had to use a version of "Mothra's Song" for that moment! There's actually a bonus track from the KOTM soundtrack of that song with the lyrics added in, but Elsie Lovelock's cover is the best-sounding modern version of that song that I've found, so I went with that one as the version that I would choose to accompany that scene here.
Also, just as a bonus thing: since I'm sure some people are curious about this, and I did mention it in the beginning with the conversation between Ling & Madison, I figured I'd include a quick breakdown of all the active Titans and where they are at this point in the story, one month after the Battle of Boston. These include all of the seventeen Titans who were awakened during the events of KOTM (except Ghidorah, for obvious reasons), plus Gojira & Barb. For this AU, I've switched around a few containment locations for some of these Titans, and left out a couple of canon Titans who were on that list of seventeen in canon (like Tiamat & Amhuluk), just because I think it works best for the story I'm telling.
Titanus Gojira (Godzilla)
Current location: Infant Island, Indonesia
Titanus Mosura (Mothra)
Original location: Monarch Outpost 61, Temple of the Moth, Yunnan Rainforest, China
Current location: Infant Island, Indonesia
Titanus Scylla
Original location: Monarch Outpost 55, Sedona, Arizona
Current location: Infant Island, Indonesia
Titanus Rodan
Original location: Monarch Outpost 54, Isla de Mara, Mexico
Current location: A volcano in Fiji
Titanus Behemoth
Original location: Monarch Outpost 58, near Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Current location: Amazon Rainforest, Brazil
Titanus Methuselah
Original location: Monarch Outpost 67, near Munich, Germany
Current location: Amazon Rainforest, Brazil
Titanus Jinshin-Mushi (Barb, aka the Queen MUTO)
Original location: Hoboken, New Jersey (not in a Monarch outpost)
Current location: Somewhere in northern Canada
Titanus Kong
Location: Monarch Outpost 33, Skull Island
Titanus Maguma (loosely based on Maguma from the Japanese Kaiju film Gorath)
Location: Monarch Outpost 33, Skull Island
Titanus Shisa (based on King Shisa / King Caesar from the Japanese Godzilla films)
Location: Monarch Outpost 33, Skull Island
Titanus Baphomet
Original location: Monarch Outpost 66, Manpupuner Rock Formations, Russia
Current location: Somewhere in northern Siberia
Titanus Sargon
Original location: Monarch Outpost 53, Stone Mountain, Georgia
Current location: Unknown, somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico
Titanus Na Kika
Original location: Undesignated Monarch Outpost, Indian Ocean
Current location: Unknown, somewhere in the Indian Ocean
Titanus Mokele-Mbembe
Original location: Monarch Outpost 75, Jebel Barkal, Sudan
Current location: Somewhere in northern Africa
Titanus Sekhmet
Original location: Monarch Outpost 68, Volubilis, Morocco
Current location: Somewhere in northern Africa
Titanus Leviathan (Manda)
Original location: Monarch Outpost 49, Loch Ness, Scotland
Current location: Unknown, somewhere in the North Atlantic Ocean
Titanus Typhon
Original location: Monarch Outpost 92, Angkor Wat, Cambodia
Current location: Unknown, somewhere in the Pacific Ocean
Titanus Bunyip
Original location: Monarch Outpost 99, Uluru/Ayers Rock, Australia
Current location: Somewhere in northern Australia
Just to clarify, yes, we will be meeting all of those other Titans eventually, some in this story and some in the other future fics that I've got planned for this AU.
Next time, we jump forward to a year after the Battle of Boston, as the Queen works to re-establish herself in the modern world, the Monarch team continue their study of Infant Island's unusual ecosystem, and the Royal Couple cross paths with several of the other Kaiju who were awakened by Ghidorah. Stay tuned!