Before 15,000 B.C.E.
The sky remained clear, and so did Riru's mind. The drought had finally lifted. For the first time, his pregnant wife had hope that her children would be born into a time of plenty. Riru pushed through the large ferns in his way. Most of the buildings in Klephis remained far behind him.
He dwelled in thoughts of his wife and the joy he had finally seen in her. But his thoughts shifted to something else. Yesterday. When the disturbance had come. But thinking about that only annoyed Riru. For now, he concentrated on finding his horse. Dusk would come soon, and he hoped to find the horse before then.
Riru pushed his way through the foliage. The plants had clearly forgotten there was ever a drought, even if the people did not. They seemed lusher and deeper than ever. Their savage fragrance filled his nose. Wet dirt squelched beneath his sandals. He swatted his hands at buzzing insects that flew about his ears. He scratched his beard. He'd always known his horse to be skittish, yet this was the farthest she had ever run after throwing him off.
His wife had suggested that riding a bull might be easier, but he didn't think so. Anyway, it was best that Riru did the thinking for both of them. She was only a woman, after all.
The sound of running water reached his ears, a loud and tumultuous sound. He imagined a massive river sounding like this as it cut its way through a great canyon. Riru immediately headed toward the sound of the rushing river. Perhaps his horse had gone there. He escaped the crowded ferns and ambled by a couple tall trees. Lianas, thick and ropey, lay between some of the trees like green hammocks. He ducked under them. Black flies alighted onto his tunic every moment his hands weren't there to dissuade them.
A flapping noise came from overhead. Riru looked up to see bats flapping by. He paused, trying not to see the land as alien. This place was close to Klephis, which was familiar ground. It would not master him. There was no need to be scared. Yet he couldn't shake the feeling that the bats' sudden appearance was a warning. He pushed on, with only his horse as his goal.
A low mist started to come, like smoke from a dying fire. It wreathed around his legs as he came out of the trees into a grassy, bush-filled clearing. Riru looked straight ahead as the fog clung low to the ground. He saw the river, boiling and stampeding through its path cut in the crumbly rock. Thoughts of the lone traveler from the faraway land in the direction of the rising sun invaded his mind. Riru tried to forget the traveler's words and how they had made the citizens of Klephis gather.
The squalling of birds high above gave Riru cause to look up again. A massive flock, bigger than any flock he had seen, beat its way across the sky. They all headed in one direction, their harsh cries radiating everywhere. Their immense number continued to increase. For a few moments the sky, forest, and even the mist at his feet went dark as the cloud of flapping wings blotted out the sun. The flock flew high, dragging itself over the forest and out of sight like a passing storm cloud.
He had come looking for something, but he failed to remember what. Riru found an unexpected word on his lips. A name.
"Gojira…"
But he found that he didn't say it as a fearful utterance, nor an apologetic offering. He whispered it as the beginning of a prayer. A plea for Him to come.
Like the rest of Klephis, Riru and his wife worshiped the Great Gojira. They also worshiped His mother. They knew her as Mosura, the Eternal Mother. Whenever crops had been plentiful or enough rain had come, they gave thanks to Mosura. In fact, the last thing his wife had done before he left home today had been to give thanks to the Eternal Mother for ending the drought.
Prayers to Gojira were different. When brave men went to the sea in their boats, they prayed to Gojira to send them smooth seas. But within the borders of Klephis, people only prayed to Him to apologize for their transgressions and to dissuade His anger. None dared pray for Gojira to arrive, for He wouldn't bring peace. He would bring the wrath of fire and the rage of the sea. Woe betide the city if Gojira actually decided to come and punish them in His full form.
There was a way to call upon Gojira other than prayer. Klephis housed a group of massive horns known as rahkokans. If the rahkokans were blown, the sound would surely call out Gojira. If an invader such as a stronger army or an Unclean Thing came towards the city, the rahkokans would be brought out. The highest ranking warriors, known as Nizirs, were the only ones allowed to blow the horns. The rahkokans hadn't been blown in his entire lifetime. Even his grandmother had never seen them blown. Only a select few people in Klephis knew where the rahkokans were locked away. The laws forbade anyone other than a nizir from blowing the horns.
Riru found it abhorrent to consider using a rahkokan today. He felt regret for even using Gojira's name just now. Had he still been a boy, he would have gotten many lashings from his father for using His name so flippantly. And he would have deserved every one of those lashings.
As the plague of birds passed him, he tried to concentrate on matters regarding his horse. Riru walked away from the river, his sandals barely visible in the mist. Luckily, it began to thin. He'd be able to spot the horse's tracks on the ground. Just then, it began again. A feeling of unfamiliarity washed over him. Something rushed by in the bushes. Then another. More things crashed past him in the foliage unseen. Sharp, high pitched yelps sprang up from the cover. But none of them sounded like his horse. Riru had heard that animals could tell of approaching danger. The things in the bushes had fled in the same direction as the birds.
Something was coming, and the animals of the forest knew it. More animals crashed through the brush past Riru. The man froze as the creatures passed, leaving silence in their wake. He only heard the rushing river and clattering of thin tree branches.
Things were too quiet for Riru. His horse became forgotten again as he listened to the pregnant, waiting silence. He became certain that something would happen. But he didn't know what. He felt like a nervous child in a storm, waiting for the inevitable thunder to shake the reeds of his bed after seeing the flash of lightning.
Once the silence broke, Riru became acutely aware of it. But he didn't hear it. A steady, low vibration came. It danced over his skin and made every hair on his neck stand on end. It felt like a low, invisible thunder. It had no tone, rhythm, or melody. The sound, if he could even call it that, was empty. A void.
Riru stumbled, feeling the vibration coursing from the rough skin of his feet into his sandals and into the ground. Dizziness overtook him and the world turned sideways. The sky swung down to his right and the ground flew up to strike the side of his face. He moaned in pain, hearing a tinny ringing in his ears. As he rose to his knees in the grass he felt the world swing wildly again. The green and yellow grass swayed one way, then the other in the calm wind. In his eyes the strands blurred together. He wiped his eyes, trying to clear his vision.
His tendons went tight as the steady vibrations traveled through him. They arced into his head and he felt a tingling in his arms and calves. The empty vibrations grew, swelling like a river about to burst its banks.
The sky.
Riru, while on his hands and knees, looked up as if on command. Not wanting to but unable to stop himself he searched the sky. The ringing between his ears became loud and discernible. The sun lay behind the tops of trees, giving them a burning yellow outline.
The vibration took on a voice of its own, a voice of thunder. Riru's eyes became drawn to what appeared to be a second sun in the sky. The light flashed, then dimmed ever so slightly. But it didn't feel like the sun. He sensed no warmth from it. The ringing in his ears grew louder still. All around him, the verdant forest went completely still. The wind seemed to die and the noise of the rushing river seemed to shrivel like a dry fruit.
Riru understood now. He looked upon the face of Death. It came from the sky. Staring at the light, Riru thought about his wife. She had no knowledge of what he was witnessing, yet she did know about the prophecy. She had believed the stranger. He recalled the traveler's words.
"I came to tell you. Something is coming."
Driven by curiosity, Riru and his wife had followed the crowd to hear the traveler at the entrance of a garden. In fact, the traveler's prophecy had disrupted many activities of the day. Everyone left the market to listen to this stranger, halting business for many hours. The traveler spoke of a vision he had as he journeyed to Klephis. As he spoke, Riru knew his words would poison his wife's mind.
In the vision, the traveler saw something unspeakably evil come from the sky. It had covered many cities in its malevolent shadow, including Klephis. According to the traveler the evil had many faces and could take on many forms.
"So great is the evil that even Mosura will turn her face away from the city. Her wings will no longer shield you. Her grace will no longer guide you. The evil's shadow will harden your hearts."
His wife had become afraid then and had groped for his hand. Riru had gently taken her through the crowd away from the so-called prophet. He had reassured his wife that once the monarch heard about his blasphemous words, the traveler would be hanged and they'd soon move on with their day. He had simply gone mad or had been one of those men from Lemuria, nothing more. He had assured her that life would remain normal, she would give birth to his son, and they would watch him grow.
But she had insisted that they leave Klephis right away. It wasn't just the traveler's words about Mosura that had shaken her, but what he had said about Gojira as well.
"This is far beyond any of us, do you understand? Not even Gojira will be able to protect you or your children from this evil. The breath from his mouth will not be enough to extinguish it."
That had provoked several men and women into throwing all manner of things at him-fruits, rocks, and even old pots. The traveler had soon left Klephis, likely to escape the wrath of the monarch.
No being in existence could stand against Gojira. All were familiar with the stories of him slaying the Unclean Things from beneath the earth. If he was called to Klephis, anything in his way would fall, no matter how powerful it considered itself. The idea that any evil could be stronger than Him was nothing short of madness.
But as Riru looked at the second sun in the low overcast sky, he found himself uncertain. The forest kept still, but as the rumbling crescendo of sound continued to rise the sky became alive. The second sun didn't hold still, but moved. Its path met the clouds in the west, and they bloomed with red and yellow fire. The suddenly bright clouds swelled like a beating heart before bursting as the second sun flew through them.
That was when the wind came, flattening the grass and making the trees all around him bend backward. Riru felt the searing heat and turned his face down. Then he looked up again to see the object coursing down from the sky. It left a trail of ominous yellowish color in the heavens. It traveled on, growing brighter and bigger. Riru averted his eyes. The loud rumbling sound grew more thunderous, rising into a roar. It filled the entire world, incinerating all courage left in him.
This had to be a star falling from the heavens. He felt the brightness and heat. As he sprang to his feet to run away he became dimly aware of the lightning arcing from the object. He ran as fast as he could in his sandals, not wanting to be around when the star hit the ground. His feet churned through the forest. He grabbed branches and leaves to pull himself forward. All the while the shattering, rumbling roar bore down on him like the crackling of the biggest flame on Earth.
Then the roar became an explosion. A rolling concussive blast knocked Riru to the ground. Another explosion came and the forest shook. It left thunder in its wake. Riru rolled into a sitting position and looked back. Through the trees he could barely see what the thing in the sky had left behind. His mind whirled as his eyes focused on it. The clouds had become a pillar of swirling black and yellow, spiraling towards earth from the highest heavens. The twister wore a gown of lightning. A few of the clouds high in the twisting pillar blinked golden light on and off.
Trembling, Riru found himself in a fresh wave of prayer for Gojira. Tears rolled from his eyes to his cheeks as a devastating unreality came over him. Then he heard it. A high pitched otherworldly scream came from an unseen place on the earth. Then another scream joined it. And finally a third cry. The screams coalesced into a great wail that filled the heavens. They sounded like the mightiest trumpets Riru had ever heard. Their sound invaded his body through all its pores, rising into a thunderclap that cracked the ground like an earthquake. A distant rattling noise joined them, sounding like the biggest rattlesnake in the world. The voices eventually stopped. Yet their ringing echoes remained in his head and thundered over the drumbeat of his heart. He wanted to scream but his mouth failed to find the voice to do so. The ringing drifted away to leave only a deafening, rumbling silence.
The animals in the forest had left, Riru was sure of it. He became just as sure that the thing that had fallen from the sky was alive. The wind came up toward him, bringing with it a stink of what he imagined a dead ocean might smell like. It overpowered the damp earth smell of the forest and forced its way into his nostrils.
He got up and ran again. Thoughts of his wife flashed out of the shadows of his terrified mind. He thought of what cruel fate might befall Klephis. Then he thought of Gojira again. He also thought of Mother Mosura. Whatever had just come to their world, they needed Gojira now. Wherever the rahkokans were kept, they needed to be blown at once. After hearing the sky thing's voice, every bit of Riru's being became sure that only Gojira could save them. He thought back to the traveler's words, the claim that even Gojira couldn't hope to stand against this evil. He prayed that the traveler had been wrong. Riru ran on, desperate to get home before the evil did.
He wouldn't have to bring the news to Klephis. Simply from looking up every man, woman, and child would know the sky had come alive with death.