Trinity

[King Ghidorah]

It's been almost two months now since I first arrived in Harnburg, and the urge to cast off this charade of collaboration and raze the entire valley to the bedrock has reached new and feverish heights. 

Since I exterminated the elvish encampment in the western forests I've spent my days in thorough, fascinated exploration. I've walked the streets and back-alleys of every town and village beholden to Harnburg Castle, observing and interrogating their denizens as they've gone about their various plebeian pursuits. With only minimal prodding, the structure of this place has unfolded beneath my probing crimson gaze: as word of my presence, the Duke's public sanctioning of my activities, and Chatterly's creative embellishment of my deeds has spread, the reticence of the gormless populace has evaporated. They've become positively eager to discuss their ultimately meaningless lives.  

I've learned of scrivening, and ironmongery and midwifing (though there are aspects of the last that I find confusing). I know the schedules of the caravans that carry goods between this valley and the neighboring Duchies, and I've listened in taverns as the self-satisfied mammals who drive the wagons told tales of the perils of the road. Thousands of small, sordid (which is a word that positively wallows in its shameful implications) human dramas have made themselves known to me. I've discovered the intricacies of the autocratic political machine which 'His Grace' the Duke William Conrad van Harnburg controls, its aims, participants and methods, and memorized the names and duties of every one of the servants within Harnburg castle; I even know what many of them really think of their masters. 

I've discovered more than enough about this land to make its annihilation a destructive masterpiece without equal. I have the power, though my overall potency remains depressingly low. Just picturing it makes my horns crackle with arcs of astral charge, brings a predatory grin - but two factors remain which hold me back, straining against my unfulfilled aesthetic need, neither of which I anticipated when I first set out upon this unprecedented endeavor.    

The first is a recurring complication which could strike at any time. The second is a mystery - barely more than a persistent cloying suspicion - that makes me think I may have missed an important piece of context as I've gone about my self-appointed quest to understand (and then to utterly ruin) the Duchy of Harnburg.

[King Ghidorah]

I used to think that all of the various threads of life in Harnburg valley, the entire entrancingly pathetic spiral galaxy of toil, ego and experience, all swirled outward from the person of the Duke. I'm not so certain about that anymore.

The first hint came on the day I destroyed the elves in the western forest, when the spymaster Chatterly attempted to steer my indiscriminate curiosity away from a dark-haired woman in a green dress who we'd seen on our way out of the castle - the Duke's niece, Isolda. Chatterly cautioned me then, in spite of my obvious superiority, telling me to stay as far away from her as possible. Naturally I scoffed at his warning, moving the conversation along to other, more broadly fascinating topics. I'd assumed I'd be able to inquire further after I returned to the castle, but even as the rest of this place has unfolded itself before me I've uncovered practically no new information regarding the Lady Isolda.

She's young, and personable, and cares for her uncle, who she visits several times a week. She has a room in the Northwestern tower of the castle, but no political duties, and no demands upon her time – and that is all that anybody in the entirety of this valley seems to know about her. I've mostly refrained from pressing the issue for fear of losing the chance at an explanation, although on one memorable night I did drag a scullery maid down into the catacombs below the castle, commandeering a disused and half-flooded cellar in order to obtain a more complete picture.

Her name was Desiderata, and after twenty minutes spent periodically acquainting her face with the bottom of a pool of stagnant water, she didn't turn out to know very much at all excepting silver-polishing, soap-making, and cookery. However, my efforts weren't completely wasted. Just before I extracted her Omnilium essence, erasing her from the world, Desi (as her friends were known to call her) informed me that the Lady Isolda was an object of paranoid myth for the Duke's household staff; They go out of their way to keep her happy because they believe she possesses unknown and terrifying powers. This is apparently exacerbated (a word which has the delightful tingling cadence of a horrible crime) by the fact that the Lady's personal retainers have never been seen to eat, or sleep, or speak to anyone except the Duke and the Lady herself.

Two other servants subjected to similar methods yielded only more of the same, and my efforts to interrogate Isolda myself have been frustrated at every turn; I can't even get close to her! She disappears around corners, flitting down hallways and ducking casually behind statuary, at which point she vanishes utterly. On one memorable occasion, when I came upon her atop the battlements, she vaulted over the crimson balustrade in an unlikely rush of rustling green silk and white cotton skirts (which are an even more confusing affectation than clothing in general) only to evaporate during the brief moment it took me to reach the edge and look down.

It's maddening! Is she a Prime? Is she something else?  If so, then why doesn't she rule this valley herself? Why is she going to such lengths to avoid talking to me, and how does she always seem to know when I'm coming? How does she fit into Harnburg's social reality – or, given her evanescent qualities, reality in general?

Sometimes I wonder if she's even here at all, or if some unknown, doomed third party is having a complicated joke at my expense. However, regardless of the Lady Isolda's nature, she suggests a hidden layer to the power-structure here that runs deeper than the intrigues I've already discovered. She represents something hidden, and deeply strange, and I won't be able to finish my ruinous work until that mystery is solved.

If only my other problem would leave me alone long enough to do  that.

[King Ghidorah]

Her name is Mothra, and I was warned that this was going to happen.  

Just before I arrived in Harnburg castle-town, while approaching a small stone bridge, I was stopped by a pair of mysterious feminine voices, their owners having wisely hidden themselves. They prophesied my doom if I didn't leave Camelot, and revealed to me a vision of an insectoid titan. I responded with utter contempt. The idea of King Ghidorah being cast down in defeat by a mere overgrown bug is so ridiculous that just the act of putting it into words fills me with incredulous disgust. 

I wasn't wrong, naturally - but what's happened instead, while not an unthinkable outrage against the very order of creation, is still tremendously irritating:      

She's following me.

I first noticed it about a week after my successful resolution of the Duke's elf problem. I was stalking through the valley along a wagon-worn dirt road, golden and - if not quit perfect in my diminished, diminutive form - at the very least glorious, shining in the afternoon sun. It was on my way to one of the smaller villages subject to Harnburg Castle that I spotted her atop a nearby hillock, watching me. 

At first I thought she was just yet another pathetic human being, albeit a very strangely dressed one possessing a deeply tan complexion, and after a quick survey of the surrounding fields to be sure there were no witnesses I strode confidently off the path intending to interrogate and incinerate her; I only noticed her wispy white antennae, and the rainbow prisms occupying her eye-sockets in the instant before she spoke.

Mothra's voice echoed in my brain, like those of her messengers before her, only far more powerful. For just an instant I could see her face in my minds eye, her real face, not the hybrid, diminished human form she affected for our meeting, and I immediately knew this was the creature about whom I'd been warned. "Leave Camelot, Ghidorah," she said. "I don't want to fight you, but I will if that's what it takes to make you leave this 'verse alone. Go directly to the Nexus gate, and that can be the end of it. Otherwise, the next time you leave this valley, I'll be forced to stop you." 

I stopped, feeling a grin creeping across the flat, apish face of my own humanoid disguise. She looked so graceful, so delicate, standing there amid the sheep-shortened grasses, her black hair piled in a gleaming bun, robes and antennae fluttering in the breeze; the urge to feel her her bones crumble in my hands was overwhelming.  

"Denied," I hissed, and took a step forward, intent on rushing to the attack. 

She struck instantly. It came in the form of a highly focused prismatic ray: two narrow beams, glowing in the same constantly-shifting spectrum as her eyes, traced a line between Mothra's face and my body. The impact was tremendous, detonating in a kaleidoscopic flash against the rippling contours of my powerful chest, scoring and blackening my effulgent natural armor. I was so surprised by the sudden blow- so strong I felt genuine pain, that tiny flecks of golden blood leaked from between my scales - that it knocked me off my feet!  

I was only down for a moment, but by the time I rose, flexing my clawed fists as an ascendant tide of astral charge cracked in my throat and surged within my limbs, she had vanished. I could still feel her presence though, a voice within my head, lyrical and somehow disappointed.

I don't remember what she said - I was too enraged, my fury brought to a boil by the sheer presumption! This insect - this literal insect - would dare to strike me!? To judge my actions?!  TO THREATEN ME?!  The eyes of the two dormant heads that adorn my humanoid form's shoulders like puldrons snapped open as my powers surged.  I howled my rage across the fields, unleashing a storm of golden cosmic lightning, blacking the road and carving trenches in the green. I kicked through a low stone wall, smashed a plow where it lay in its furrows, and was well on my way towards beginning the final harrowing of Harnburg valley when - just for a moment - I could have sworn I spotted the Lady Isolda. She stood at ease, watching me from atop the thatched roof of a nearby farmer's cottage, all dressed in green silks and with flowers in her auburn hair. 

When I looked again she was gone, but the sight was so unexpected, so utterly out-of-place, that it completely derailed the escalation of my rampage. I scoured that field for hours, but found no trace of either the princess nor the meddling moth. Eventually the farmer returned from the market, and, after shuttering the cottage's windows against the glow of active Omnilium I unmade him in his own home, but I was so put off by the entire experience that his demise proved palatable at best.

Since that day, I have yet to spot Isolda outside of the castle, but Mothra has dogged my every step. Any time I leave the keep I see her, watching me from a distance, perched among trees or chimneys, atop walls or distant hills. I hear her voice in my mind, telling me to leave Camelot and promising retribution for my crimes , and its all I can do not to run riot in response.  

I've not destroyed anything more nuanced than furniture, servants, and traveling strangers in weeks, and I'm at the end of my restraint. This can't go on for much longer, so it's a good thing that I don't think it will have to. If what I've heard among the taverns and travelers is to be believed, another caravan should be on the road to Shatterdun soon - which means that Chatterly's next weekly check-in should include something far interesting than the increasingly tedious game in which he tries to parse my motives, explain how difficult having to hide my crimes is making his job, and reign-in my destructive urges while I run down the ever-less-convincing list of reasons not to murder him; This time, he should have a mission that requires my talents. 
 
I expect that when I leave the valley on the Duke's next errand, Mothra will attempt to make good on her threats. When that happens, I will crush her utterly. 

After that, the mysteries posed by Isolda van Harnburg will be the only thing that stands between me and the completion of this grand work.