CHARMING'S AUTHORS NOTE #1: Back in 2022, I put out a one-shot called "The Inferno." That story was my first foray into the world of monster stories, it was a resounding success. Fast forward two years and I am back again, revisiting the world I created two years ago. While I was writing the original version of "The Inferno," I had a much larger, grander story in mind. Today, i'm unveiling the original story I wanted to tell, the version I wasn't confident enough to show to the world. What can you expect in this story you ask? More monsters, more action, more LORE! This is a much bigger story, so it goes without saying that this is the first of many updates.
CHARMING'S AUTHORS NOTE #2: I only have this prologue written at the moment, so don't anticipate my usual weekly posts when i'm releasing a story. I anticipate this story will take some time to complete, but we'll get through this together! XD On a more serious note, this prologue wasn't beta read by anyone. I wanted to get this out there so that i'm committed lol, lest I find yet another reason not to release the first chapter of a story (not that I've done that for the last six stories i've begun over the last several months!) Anywho, future updates will likely be beta'd, but this one isn't, so any mistakes are my fault.
The Inferno
A Novelization by
CharmingCharles2896
Prologue
Surigao Strait
The Philippines
January 18th, 1959
"Mommy, is the monster going to get us?" little Carmen asked her mother, Maria, as she nervously watched the ocean. The last four years had seen the rise of a new and terrifying animal, a beast of immense size and strength. Every day, the radio reported stories of the monster terrorizing Japan. For a child like Carmen, traveling by boat had never been so nerve-wracking. Carmen looked from the calm waves towards her mother. Carmen watched her mother, searching her eyes for the truth. Carmen's mother gave her a placating smile and shook her head.
"There's nothing to worry about, Sweetie," Maria replied. "Tyrannus only bothers Japan, which is thousands of kilometers from here."
"Why do they call it Tyrannus?" Carmen asked as a follow-up.
"I don't know, they say it looks like a giant dinosaur," Maria said as she looked back out towards the ocean. For Maria Fernandez and her daughter, Carmen, this trip via ocean liner was necessary. Maria's husband was working in Butuan City and he'd sent her a telegram to join him. With no land routes and no affordable air routes between the islands of Leyte and Mindanao, Maria's only option was to brave the waves of the pacific on the increasingly unpopular ocean routes. Traveling by ship used to be a very popular means of transportation in the pacific, but since Tyrannus' first appearance only four years earlier in Osaka, Japan, the world had greatly soured on ocean transit of any kind.
The blare of a fog horn grabbed Maria's attention. A loud siren followed the horn, rousing everyone on the ship to a state of high alert. "Unidentified sonar contact off the starboard quarter, one-thousand meters and closing!" came the voice of the ship's captain over the public address system. Maria's eyes searched the waves, frantically trying to find what she hoped beyond all hope wasn't about to make an appearance.
"Mommy, look!" Carmen yelled as she pointed through the railing, towards the ship's five o'clock. Maria followed her daughter's point and saw a row a large, jagged dorsal plates breach the surface. Even in the daytime, the bone-white dorsal plates were impossible to miss. The dorsal plates seemed to move back and forth in a rhythmic pattern… swimming! The splashing of the displaced water as it cascaded off of the back of the enormous beast gave just the faintest indication of the size of the beast. As the leviathan grew closer and closer Maria began to understand why they called this beast Tyrannus.
By now, every person on the ship was looking at the enormous beast as it swam closer and closer, much faster than the ship could steam away. The dark mass drew closer, eventually overtaking the large vessel. Everyone on board lurched as the ship came to a sudden stop only a few hundred feet from Tyrannus. "Mommy, I'm scared," Carmen whimpered as she hugged her mother's leg.
"It's going to be okay, Sweetie," Maria said to her daughter in as calm a voice as she could muster as the dorsal plates slowly moved towards the ship. "Tyrannus has just come to say hello, that's all." Even as she spoke, she knew her words were merely wishful thinking.
"What is it doing?" Carmen asked as she beast floated closer and closer, its dorsal plates the only thing visible above the surface. Before Maria could answer, the dorsal plates disappeared beneath the surface. A massive black tail rose from the seas behind the beast as it dove into the ocean's depths. Maria breathed a sigh of relief as Tyrannus seemingly left for parts unknown.
"See, that wasn't so bad, was it?" Maria said to her daughter as a nervous laugh escaped her. Carmen smiled up at her mother and nodded. The little girl opened her mouth to speak, but before she could, the water beside the ship seemed to rise up in a flash, only to break and reveal the massive form of Tyrannus. Carmen and Maria took several steps backwards as they were showered by the water falling off the enormous creature. Carmen screamed in terror as the beast loomed over the ship. Before Maria could react, Tyrannus let loose a deafening roared that seemed to shatter the calm mid-day seas. Maria grabbed her daughter and ran, unsure of exactly where she was running to.
Pandemonium broke out on the many decks of the ocean liner as the snarling beast looked down at the ship. The beast's thick, dark hide was jagged and uneven, giving the impression of ancient power. Tyrannus' fist swung downwards towards the ship, crashing through the upper decks and into the main deck. Metal shattered with a loud bang as the entire ship lurched in the face of the vicious hit. As the ship's hull buckled under the force of Tyrannus' blows, the bow rose out of the sea. Maria held onto Carmen tightly as the two of them slid down the deck towards the middle of the ship. In an instant, the hull of the ship finally gave up entirely, the bow of the ship breaking off and falling back into the sea.
With the ship now broken into two pieces, passengers and crew alike were thrown into the sea, even as debris fell all around them. Maria held Carmen in her arms as she desperately tried to stay afloat. Another thunderous roar grabbed Maria's attention. The mother looked up towards Tyrannus in time to see the beast's chest inflating larger and larger, before the beast let loose a deluge of fire from its mouth that engulfed everything and everyone in an inferno of burning hot destruction.
~X~
Manazura Island
An Uncharted Section of the South Pacific
August 6th, 2023
The jungle on this island was something else. For William, jungle like this was the kind of thing only depicted in fantasy books. Thick, dense underbrush choked the jungle floor, even while enormous trees blocked out the sun. This place was almost primordial, it felt so ancient. William had done things like this before; his time in British Intelligence was mostly spent in jungles like this. William's employers had said they were searching for evidence of ancient humans, but William couldn't understand why they'd want to explore such a far-flung place. This island was thousands of miles from civilization and right in the middle of Tyrannus' winter territory.
It had been stressed to William that exploration of this island had to be completed before Tyrannus headed south for the winter and the south pacific became a prehistoric ocean of death. After a week of hacking through dense jungle, William was ready to call it quits and declare the expedition a bust. At the moment, William and his two companions, Clay and Lewis, were trying to make their way towards the gigantic mountain at the center of the island. Up ahead, William could see a clearing, something he hadn't seen much of on this god-forsaken island.
"What's that ahead of us?" asked Clay as the three of them made their way through the jungle. When they stepped into the clearing, they saw something extraordinary. Ahead of them was a mountain that seemed to stretch up into the heavens themselves. At the base of the mountain, William saw a cave, flanked by a pair of enormous stone statues.
"Do they look like someone familiar to you?" William asked with a smile as the three of them walked up to the pair of statues that were each as tall as a house. The statues themselves bore a vague resemblance to Tyrannus, but one had folded wings and no arms, while the other had elaborate horns coming off the back of its head.
"Look at the inscription at the base of the statues!" Lewis said, pointing to the inscription. "Ancient Japanese inscriptions on an island four-thousand miles south of the Japanese home islands?"
"Incredible," William said as he reached out and touched the inscriptions.
"The Tower of the Goddess, guarded by her champions. Inside, you will find the key to the redemption of all things," Lewis read aloud.
"What's that?" William asked as he stepped back to look at the statues.
"Why we're really here," the tall man said as he pulled out a satellite phone and dialed a number. "It's Clay, we've found the cave," Clay said into the phone as he eyed the statues.
"Only those of pure heart dare enter, lest she strike down all others," Lewis continued to read on the other statue.
"Pure of heart, eh?" William asked as he looked at the wide cave entrance.
~X~
Fuji City
Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan
November 19th, 2023
Sarah Walker loved Japan, it was such a beautiful country, with wonderful people. The month she'd spent in Japan had been a wonderful break from her everyday life. Sarah was blessed, in more ways than one. Her career was a blessing in the fact that it wouldn't even exist if it wasn't for the giant, fire-breathing murder lizard that had stalked around in the Pacific since nineteen fifty-five. Tyrannus was an inescapable part of life. For a nation like Japan, Tyrannus was an especially grave concern. The enormous monster was highly territorial by nature, spending the months of April through September in Japan's territorial waters, before migrating to the south pacific for October through March. This reality meant that life in Japan was a strangely bipolar existence, alternating between peace and terror depending on the month.
For Sarah Walker, the winter months had been her only chance to get to Japan to continue her research. The Hyperfauna Interdiction Agency was the United States' agency dedicated to all things Tyrannus, from research to military responses. Sarah had been doing research on the origins, behavior, and societal impacts of Tyrannus for the last four years, publishing several books from her research. The funds for much of her research came from the H.I.A., so when they told her she couldn't travel to Japan to do research until Tyrannus left Japanese waters, Sarah ended up waiting six months for a chance to get away. Sarah's obligations at Caltech, where she was a professor of hyperfauna science, had put the work on her latest book on hold for months. Advanced as Sarah was as a child, she'd graduated from highschool at fourteen and gotten a PhD. in hyperfauna science at only twenty-one years of age. Now, Sarah Walker was the youngest professor at Caltech, while also being one of the most contrarian voices in the field of hyperfauna science. Sarah was twenty-six years old, and she was already a highly accomplished professional.
Right now, Sarah was combing through an archive of old Japanese books and documents, looking for anything that could help her find signs of Tyrannus' existence in ancient Japan. She'd spent a month in Japan, scouring archives all over Japan, though she'd found very little so far. The shelf of old books was all in old Japanese, though Sarah was thankful that her father had taught her Japanese as a child. The archive was rather dark and dusty, as if time itself had left this place behind. Her finger skimmed down the row of books, reading the titles on the books. As she continued to skim, a title caught her eye.
The Great Evil of the Sengoku Period (1466-1467)
Sarah's brow furrowed curiously, so she pulled the old book off of the shelf. The book itself was clearly much newer than the years it was talking about. Sarah flipped the book open and began to read. As she read, her eyes grew wide in shock. The story that unfolded in those pages was beyond anything Sarah could have expected: monsters from beyond the stars and a titanic battle that consumed the countryside. As Sarah read page after page, she couldn't believe what she'd found.
"After the Great Evil was banished to the stars," Sarah quietly read aloud. "The Goddess Noriki, banished the Destroyer to an eternity of rest, far away from the Goddess' domain." She flipped the page, only to find the next few pages torn out. The only thing Sarah could make out from the torn edges was a single word… "Manazura." Sarah looked up from the book, knowing she'd stumbled on something important. She closed the book and made for the front desk, intent to inquire about the origins of the book in question.
As the blonde walked away, a lone figure in the shadows pulled out a phone and made a call. "This is Clay, we've got a problem."
CHARMING'S AUTHORS NOTE #3: So there's the setup! Sarah's found something interesting and shadowy forces work in secret. I don't know when the first chapter will come out, so just stay tuned. If you enjoyed this prologue, please leave a review and share your thoughts! Be sure to follow this story as well, FFN will get email notifications going eventually LOL.
Until Next Time :D
