Crossroads [Exemplary]

[King Ghidorah]

The weather is miserable today. 

The rain crashes down with a relentless, pounding fury, pouring in windblown sheets from a green-tinted sky which resembles nothing so much as a pit of boiling tar. It rings against my golden scales, running in rivulets down the lithe, muscular contours of my magnificent chest and dripping from my clawed fingers (a word I am certain by now that I'm never going to like, regardless of how useful they may be), and the tips of my pointed ears. Both my ridiculous hair and my horrible trousers are soaked through, and the latter are blackened by mud; with every step I take, I sink ankle-deep into the muck of the road.

Thunder breaks in the distance, illuminating a landscape of sodden fields, tempest-tossed trees and shuttered homesteads in an instant of pitiless white light. The aftermath leaves me squinting, but even so, I know where I'm going; A barn looms ahead, beyond a low stone wall, it's granite foundations rising above the surrounding mire. High in the loft, a lantern has been lit, a soft orange beacon glowing in the night.  

I break into a run - and instantly slip, falling heavily in a manure-scented puddle. The cold doesn't bother me - it's as nothing beside the frigid wastes of the Spacehunter nebula. Rain has always been beneath my notice - its just water, after all. Even the storm's fury pales before the devastation I've visited upon countless worlds; but I've never had to deal with mud like this before. In my original form,  my sheer titanic mass made soggy conditions a non-issue. Bellowing in anger I rise from the humiliating, foetid sludge and vault the stone wall, slogging my way through the mire to the barn's front door: a simple affair of wooden planks and iron fittings.

I rip it off its hinges, and then in two. The old, sodden timber pops and cracks within my grip, offering no more resistance than brittle paper, and the spectacle of its ruin takes the edge off my ire. Discarding the remains, consigning them to the murky sludge, I stomp my way indoors.

[King Ghidorah]

The interior of the barn is dimly lit by shafts of feeble lantern light which filter down through the floor of the loft overhead. The diffuse rays of  pale, smoky radiance create strange silhouettes and deepen the pools of shadow which creep among the detritus and gather in the corners. Wooden crates and rusted tools are piled everywhere,  neatly stacked or strewn haphazardly in equal measure, and the sugary-sour scent of rot is practically overpowering. Water drips from my body, pooling on the creaking, mildewed floorboards. 

"Chatterly!" I demand, clenching my fists and glowering dangerously as I move deeper into the gloom. I shove aside a stack of corroded ploughshares, and they crash to the floor. The sound vanishes in the dark, leaving no echo, devoured by the clutter and drowned by the moaning of the wind.

At first there's no response - only the continued drone and drip of pounding rain on a decaying roof, and the muted howling of the storm. 

"I know you're here! Show yourself!"

Just when I'm about to lose my temper, there's a rustle of moving fabric. A stocky, hooded figure drops gracefully from the loft, lantern in hand, to alight atop a pyramid of iron-bound crates. The sudden blaze of light casts brilliant shades of molten bronze off my golden hide,  its stark illumination transforming a place that had previously possessed a certain quality of intriguing solitary desolateness into a mere room full of garbage. 

"Ah," says the spymaster,  hidden within his oiled cloak "You've arrived. Capital. I'd been concerned that you wouldn't be able to find the place, what with this bloody weather."   

"Damn the weather. Why are we here Chatterly?" I snarl, "I don't understand why we're meeting in an abandoned  tool-shed. I demand an explanation."   

Chatterly hangs the lantern from a rusted hook adorning a nearby wooden beam and dismounts his perch, appearing before me in a whisper of cloth and leather. The light is behind him now, but it reflects off my scales, casting odd contrasts within the shadows of his hood. "I wanted to be certain that we weren't observed. It may not have occurred to you, King Ghidorah, but your presence in Harnburg hasn't gone entirely unnoticed by the 'verse at-large. Certain diplomat's within his Grace's court have begun to take an interest in your daily comings and goings - just as certain other parties have begun to notice the unusually high turnover among the castle staff. I'd prefer that neither category of person were aware of our business today." 

I pull my lips back in a grin (an expression whose savage subtleties and double-meanings I continue to enjoy). "I have no idea what you're talking about. The missing servants have vanished utterly. Nobody can prove anything, Chatterly. Not even you."

He shakes his head, though whether he's frustrated or laughing I can't tell. The latter possibility sends a bolt of fury up my spine.   

"Regardless," he says, in that calm and collected tone of his that I've so grown to loath, "they have noticed. Now, let us attend to the matter at hand." 

He reaches into the folds of his cloak and retrieves a roll of parchment, which he unrolls across the top of a nearby crate, flattening it crisply with his gloved hands. I loom behind him, twice his size and shining gold; the urge to bring my fists crashing down on the back of his skull pulses behind my eyes, echoing the more brutal drumbeat that haunts my every thought: the relentless urge to burn this fiefdom and everyone in it and finally relish the intimate beauty of their eternal ruin.

Soon now. Very, very soon.  

Ignorant of how close he stands to his doom, Chatterly continues talking. 

"I assume, given your recent haunts, that you're aware the next caravan to Shatterdun is due in several days. Naturally, his Grace would prefer that it never reaches its destination, and that is of course you're job. However, this time it will require a somewhat different approach." 

He jabs at the parchment - a map, as it turns out (a strange concept, and once for which I have little if any use) - with one finger.

"Here is the crossroads where you destroyed the previous caravan. It's unlikely that the next shipment will take a route which has proven so dangerous. My agents indicate that the teamsters have opted for the second most direct route - Which means that the best place to intercept them is here."

Chatterly points to a different crossroads, some dozen kilometers further north. 

"The terrain at this point is uneven, and extremely rocky," the spymaster continues, "which is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, an ambush will be easy, but on the other there will be plenty of places for the teamsters and their escort to hide from your attack. No survivors, Ghidorah. I'm afraid you'll have your work cut out for you."

I stalk around to the other side of the crate, and glare down at the map. I wave my hand above it, sparking with golden astral charge, and it turns to ash, the miniature landscape vanishing in a puff of amber flames. 

"No survivors," I echo, relishing every syllable of what may very well be my two favorite words. I hardly needed to be told - the idea is one of the pillars upon which my very being rests. "And my payment?"

"You will, of course, be compensated handsomely, in line with our previous arrangements."

Outside, lightning flashes, actinic brilliance blaring through the slats in the walls, doorless entrance and the holes in the roof. Thunder splits the air, and another grin twists my features. 

I don't mention Mothra, though I'm certain she'll try to intervene - Chatterly doesn't seem to know about her, and she's none of his business, though I doubt he'd agree. I'm going to destroy her. That added bonus will only sweeten an experience which promises to blunt the edge from my thundering aesthetic appetites, that deep-seated need to take, and thereby appreciate things lost. It will not sate me for long - but it doesn't need to. 

All I require is one last revelation before the finale. My restraint need only last long enough.

[King Ghidorah]

The storm is over by the time I leave Harnburg valley, though the sky remains bruised and angry. The road North has become a broad quagmire of grasping mud and deep, stagnant puddles in the aftermath of the recent tempest. The grasslands and hills are silent, battered down the by the pounding rain. The intermittent forests appear ragged, marred by  tossled branches, fallen trees, and the vibrant yellows and whites of broken, living wood. 

The path is deserted, saving an abandoned wagon half-sunken in the mud, but every isolated farmstead I pass is buzzing with activity as the pathetic occupants set about assessing and repairing the damage to their intricate-but-meaningless lives: re-thatching rooftops, mending fences and clearing debris from their fields. 

Every sign of my previous passage along this road has been erased: consumed by time, growth, scavengers, and the weather. 

All of this irritates me. Such mild destruction is fleeting - superficial. There will be a recovery, and life here will go on, as though the storm had never happened. It's so depressing that it squelches any satisfaction I might have taken from blasting the landscape as I travel, highlighting my own excruciating inability to leave any permanent scars with my limited powers. 

Cutting across higher ground whenever possible in order to avoid slogging through the muck, I make good time, but after an entire day's travel through such lush countryside without incinerating anything I just  can't take it anymore. I veer from my course and set off across a rolling grassy plain towards a hovel in the middle-distance. Two human figures are patching the roof, and another is doing something complicated with a horse in a nearby field. Even from this far away, there's a certain resemblance - a family. 

Here at least, is a hole I can leave in the world. Though I'm on a schedule, and unable to take as much time as I'd like, the emotional ties between my soon-to-be victims should add ruinous facets to this experience that I haven't yet had the opportunity to explore. I smile, baring my fangs in eager anticipation - and a blast of crackling prismatic energy explodes in my face! 

The world blinks out, and then comes screaming back. Starbursts of color blot out my vision and a droning whine fills my ears. Something feels wet against my back, and it takes me a moment to realize that I'm lying on the ground, and not entirely sure how I got there. As my eyes begin to clear and the fact that I've just been attacked finally filters through the static afflicting my thoughts, raising a tide of world-shaking anger at the sheer audacity, a familiar voice echoes in my brain.

"I warned you, Ghidorah. I'd hoped it wouldn't come to this; You were given every opportunity to leave this 'verse in peace, but you just won't stop." 

Mothra.

[King Ghidorah]

Another blast of searing rainbow light erupts, striking me in the chest with such force that the sodden loam compacts beneath me, oozing filthy water, and golden blood leaks from my armored hide.

Lying prone, now can I see her. She floats above me, high in the air, eyes shining with polychromatic energy. Her robes flap wildly in the breeze around her slender human form.  Her tightly bound hairstyle (a baffling affectation for a creature such as she) is tossled and frayed, stray strands twisting in the wind.

I bark out a mirthless laugh and stagger to my feet - but just as I open my mouth to speak  Mothra reaches out her hand, and a sudden overwhelming current of violent, twisting air sends me tumbling backwards as though caught in a hurricane, scrabbling for handholds in the mud. 

The disguised lepidopteran titan descends. Her arm never wavers, the constant tide of tearing gusts flowing from her palm continuing to send me twisting and rolling over the damp, muddy ground.

"PLease, just leave. Where we come from, you were a figure of terror for my family - but here? I have had far longer than you to rebuild my strength. If we keep doing this, I'm going to kill you."   

She drops her arm, and the wind-tunnel dissipates. I begin to rise, astral charge surging through my veins and sparking across my fingers. I start to bellow my denial and contempt - only to be struck with such force that I'm driven to my knees, my blood - my blood! - flowing freely from what's now become a shallow wound in my rippling chest, interrupted again by  Mothra's punishing prismatic eye-beams.  

Enough! I categorically refuse to be humbled by an insect! Least of all by one that shoots rainbows - and especially - especially! - not one of Mothra's line! 

The two dormant serpentine muzzles which perch upon my shoulders stir, two additional pairs of red eyes snapping open, and I unleash my golden lightning. Power leaps and crackles, bursting from my hands, burning in my throat, blazing a triple-helix of arcing actinic destruction. 

My opponent is caught by surprise, forced back as the coruscating (a word that brings frantic movement to mind, independent of definition) cosmic energies tear at her frail form, but she doesn't fall. The cascade of power, though I can sustain it for only a short time, summons a cloud of steam from the waterlogged grasslands around us, raising a mist which reeks of boiled cabbage. Snarling in vicious satisfaction, I charge. My path is marked by sucking splashes as I bear down on the staggered feminine figure in the newly-risen fog. Intent on finishing my prey, I scream defiance, deriding her folly.

"Arrogant Moth! The difference between us is nothing so-

I am interrupted yet again;  Seemingly unhurt, at the last moment Mothra jumps straight up, half-turns as she rises, torn robes billowing, loose hair streaming. With seemingly intuitive grace, she tucks one leg beneath her and drives the heel of the other into the bridge of my  ridiculous human nose.

The pain is abrupt, intense, exploding white behind my eyes, leaving stabbing confusion in its wake. The strength of her hominid disguise is nearly - but not quite - a match for that of  my own.  I lurch backward, unbalanced and dazed, barely able to stay upright. It's more than just the impact - what just happened makes no sense! How did she move like that, with such speed and precision? Could she really have adjusted so well to that repulsive body?

I'm not able to dwell on it, or even to focus; I fire my lightning wildly, stumbling in the muck, but before I can recover Mothra is upon me again. She shocks my body with a cascade of blows which I can barely process, much less defend; My knee buckles, the breath rushes from my lungs, my head snaps one direction, and then the other. A rush of cool air and the taste of my own blood fills my mouth - and as a creeping numbness sets in, the red rage rises.


Mothra way well have mastered the use of these pathetic puppets of meat and bone in which we are forced to hide, but this is not what we are - and it is not how this contest will be decided! 

I reach inside myself, and reveal my true shape, ascending on a tide of cosmic fire.  As the inferno shifts and divides, arms becoming wings, one head  becoming three,  our awareness sharpens, our extra brains compensating for our battered brother. There is still pain, yes, one head dazed and an ache in our chest - but there is also power, and the satisfaction of sheer size. Larger than the Duke's keep, we spread our wings, and they rattle like golden thunder. Bronze serpentine necks and twin tails writhe. Three razor-toothed mouths open wide to the heavens, and we scream defiance!


As expected, ours isn't the only transformation.

A blinding mote of rainbow light is rising into the iron-gray sky, beginning as a spark at our feet and moving rapidly away - and then, with a deafening crack  it expands, a massive moth-shaped silhouette composed of sparking prismatic radiance. Red and green lightning arcs around it, and a keening cry rings out as it rapidly solidifies into a familiar physical form. 

... a massive physical form. 

She's actually.... bigger than us. Not tremendously so, but her fluffy black-and-white striped thorax is almost one-third again our size, and her rainbow-swirled wingspan looks to be nearly double our own. Each of her enormous compound eyes is a little more than half the size of one of our heads.

... 

This may be more difficult than we had anticipated.

[King Ghidorah]

For several seconds, neither we nor Mothra move. A kilometer of waterlogged fields lies between her and ourselves, the four of us towering above this dismal, soggy little province. We steal the opportunity to draw upon our astral wellspring, hoarding cosmic charge in anticipation of an unexpectedly difficult fight.

"This is your last chance," says our rainbow-winged challenger, a wheedling voice in our minds. 

We make a show of hesitation - and then we strike, flooding our body with the living light of a cosmic catastrophe as we launch ourself into the muted  sky, wings and scales shining scintilating astral radiance from within. The rush of the chill, damp wind beneath our wings, the tug and twist of complex air-currents among our writhing necks and and streaming double-tails forges a cold, solid certainty: 

We are King Ghidorah - and diminished we may be, but this is not the first time a creature whose stature eclipsed our own has stood  in our way.

Mothra counters immediately, prismatic beams of mystical power as thick as our necks erupting from her over-sized compound eyes. We try to dodge but our aerial agility remains disappointing, and we're struck in spite of our efforts. The power of the beams is astounding: the resulting technicolor explosion nearly knocks us from the sky, spinning us around in mid-air, but its force is blunted by the cosmic  aurora gleaming from our golden hide.  Several frantic wing-beats correct our course, and we accelerate, returning fire as we close the distance; Arcing golden lightning bursts from our mouths in stutter-step rhythm, crackling through the atmosphere. Our target dodges easily, rolling aside with a casual, thunderous flick of her wings and gaining altitude rapidly, spiraling higher. The luster suffusing our gleaming metallic scales gutters out, spent. We flap our wings furiously - far more than should be necessary - and follow her into the sky. 

At the top of our climb, we burst through the clouds, and into the light of the sun, trailing mist and shining like a dying star in the late-afternoon light. A landscape pure white vapor stretches out around us, stinking of water and oxygen, great billowing fields of evaporated water punctuated by roiling towers of thicker, denser mist, all burning with shades of rusted orange and ruddy gold. 

The engagement becomes a duel. Mothra circles us, and we circle her, ducking and weaving among the clouds as bolts of incandescent power scorch the air between us. To our monumental irritation it appears she's faster than we are, and far more nimble, capable of sudden bursts of speed and unlikely stops. It's only by sheer sustained volume of fire we manage to hit the presumptuous bug, raising bursts of sparks and steam from Mothra's fuzzy body and gouts of flames from her polychromatic wings, but she simply rolls with the impact, spinning through the air, trailing oily smoke, before recovering with a flick of her wings. She barely sees affected saving the scorch marks and a slight raggedness in her flight.

If we could only get closer - but we don't get the opportunity. The clouds suddenly swirl up around us, moving unnaturally against the wind, obscuring our view, and when we emerge again into the open sky we take a blast of electric rainbow light full in the chest. 

For a moment, we don't know what's going on. Our wings have stopped working. A furious howl of moving air batters us constantly, and there's a pain in our torso the likes of which we've only rarely felt before - not merely hurt, but deeply wounded. It shouldn't be possible: not by this insect whose kind I've slaughtered previously with such ecstatic ease!  As the shock passes one of us notices that we're trailing a cloud of smoke and blackened scales as we fall - and another notes that the ground is approaching very, very quickly. 

We spread our wings, try to glide, to control our descent, but the best we can manage in our dazed and injured state is to slow our plunge. There are green hills below us  -  miniature landscape-textures marred by darker patches which we recognize from long experience soaring above doomed continents as rocky outcroppings, growing more prominent defined with every passing moment; If we fall on those, stunted and battered as we are, we might actually die.

Half-frantic, straining to focus, we draw upon our astral wellspring - and as we tumble that final, fateful thousand feet we flood our scales with cosmic potency, and hit the ground amidst a halo of light.

[King Ghidorah]

*     *     *

Venus is in ruins. 

We soar above the boiling oceans on wings of gold, my gleaming scales the only light in a scorched and blackened sky riven by clouds of sulfurous ash. A half-sunken continent stretches out below me, the shattered peaks of terraced pyramid-cities squatting silently among the waves beside the crushed and flooded domes of their suburban arcologies: all that remains of the great garden-megalopolis that was the Venusian capital. 

It was the work of millennia, a wonder of the galaxy without equal - architecture blended seamlessly with botanical beauty, a living jungle that was also a bustling city; Mountains of metal and stone stretched from one horizon to the other, their platformed slopes home to vast forest-canopies and flocks of brilliantly colored telepathic birds. Below the trees, and deep within the pyramids, civil society thrived, a race of artists and scholars, psychics without peer in the galactic Western Spiral Arm.    

Not a growing thing nor thinking mind remains now - not one patch of ground exists that hasn't been bathed in cosmic lightning or pulverized beneath our mighty stomping feet. The scorched and bent durasteel skeleton of their sky-dome, Venus's premier spaceport and the heart of their doomed efforts at self-defense, rises above the churning red  seas like a broken rib-cage ten kilometers wide. Our left head rakes a bolt of astral fire across it as we pass and it half-collapses, slowly deforming and subsiding into the sea with a thunderous metallic groan. 

We cackle and spit more lightning, further ravaging the sinking ruins as we pass, leaving behind only hurricane-winds, burning rubble and churning seas. Tiny, dark shapes are tossed by the waves, lapping and pounding against half-drowned bones of a dead civlization: swirling rafts of ashes, corpses and debris. 

Ahead of us, something moves in the red-tinted gloom, rising from under the ocean between two low, broken pyramids. We know (because this is a dream of something which has already happened) what it is: one last war machine sent to stand against me - Venus' last knight; the very pinnacle of their technology, cast in their own image for the purpose of saving their world but completed too late. Now it's nothing more than a desperate attempt at revenge for a murdered culture, and we know it's going to fail. 

We descend, skimming just above the waves, steaming spray wetting our body as savage anticipation rises in our throats.The dark shape grows larger as we close in - and then an electric crackle races along its spine, a sapphire-white nimbus dancing down three bony ridges of jagged dorsal plates. A battle cry like the warped tolling of a great and terrible gong splits the sky and batters the waves, echoing off the ruins - and the sharp, sour taste of fear fills our mouths.

We swoop higher, pulling up short out of sheer panicked shock. He isn't supposed to be here. He can't be here! This isn't his time! It's not even his planet!

But He doesn't care - the Anomaly, the Warrior, the great saurian god-beast whose every heartbeat is world-killing anger and blue solar balefire, stands here in place of the Venusians' tin soldier, and the history we know is just one more trash-heap drifting on the tide.

Suddenly we're smaller, younger - soft and vulnerable, our wingspan stunted and our scales lusterless and dull. The Warrior is practically on top of us, towering above us, three times our size. He flexes his mighty clawed fingers. His powerful tail crashes against a ruin, sending masonry tumbling into the sea, and his thick, massive legs churn the water to froth with every step he takes. His predatory eyes narrow to slits - and as he curls back his upper lip in a vicious hundred-dagger snarl, we can see white light building, shining blindingly from between his teeth. 

We wheel about in the air, try to run, to flee into the spoiled and poisoned heavens - but the boiling sky is full of enormous rainbow-winged moths, blocking our escape. We can hear the hissing, throaty growl of primal energies racing along our murderer's dorsal crest, undercut by a subtler whine as the Warrior readies his most fearsome weapon. 

And when he unleashes that piercing lance of elemental destruction from within his fanged maw, the very flame of creation itself which our diminished form is completely unable to withstand, in the moment before it obliterates us utterly we see its glare reflected in the compound eyes of ten-thousand sanctimonious insects. 

*     *     *

     

[King Ghidorah]

I jolt awake, terrified beyond reason, but whatever phantasm is responsible has already slipped beyond my grasp leaving only confusion in its wake. 

Where am I?

I'm in my hominid form, lying at the bottom of a shallow, irregular pit, surrounded by wooden debris, bits of canvas and pulverized corpses - men in armor I don't recognize. There's a dull brown haze in the air, enough to limit visibility, and a vague scent of scorched soil. My chest feels wet and hot, itching unbearably, and when I touch it my claws come away dripping with golden blood.  Sitting up brings a wave of vertigo, a worrying pulse of moist warmth from my wound, and a symphony of internal pain. Things are shifting inside of me, broken and jagged, that aren't supposed to move.

It all comes rushing back: Mothra's unexpected potency, our battle, my humiliating defeat!  This desolate hole in the ground must be the crater my falling body left when she blasted me out of the sky, and its other occupants the remains of whomever I landed on. The sheer impossible outrage of it - King Ghidorah, beaten by one of her kind! - burns worse than my injuries, and it can't be allowed to go unanswered; Killing that overbearing insect was supposed to be an entertaining distraction, but now its a matter of pride. 

I'll have to retreat for the time being, of course. Leaving aside what I suspect are incapacitating wounds, my energies are sorely depleted. Even against the likes of Brock Coxley at the moment I couldn't do better than an embarrassing death - but I'll return. I'll bide my time, cultivate my power, and the next time Mothra and I meet the result will be very, very different.

I try to stand,  but simply kneeling blots out my vision with black starbursts rimmed in red; My injuries are too severe. It seems that I'm stuck in this place for now, at least until I can affect some basic level of healing. Unfortunately, I don't get the opportunity. 

There's a brief impression of diaphanous silk as a heavy blow strikes me alongside the face, knocking me to the ground. When my vision clears, I find myself staring up past scorched robes and feminine curves into a pair of multifaceted rainbow eyes. 

No.

"It's over, Ghidorah," Mothra says: the first words I've heard her speak aloud. Her voice is surprisingly low, but very bright, suggestive of a song. "For almost any other Prime, I would simply kill them - but your'e too dangerous, too cunning and too destructive. I can't allow you to come back." 

She pulls a circular metal knicknack from among her robes; it gleams strangely, catching the light in spite of the haze. I don't know what it is, but I'm struck by a strange, instinctive bone-deep terror, even more threatening than the prospect of my imminent demise. Fighting to remain conscious, I push myself up on one rippling golden arm. 


"What," I gasp, tasting blood, "are you talking about?" 

She gazes impassively down at me as I draw desperately on my astral wellspring. Power sparks within my throat, but I can't focus it, can't make it do what I want. 

"You really don't know," she says, just a hint of surprise coloring her tone. 

Gingerly, I roll over onto all fours, grinding my teeth and biting back the humiliation of kneeling before my enemy. Mothra is right in front of me! If I can just manage one blast...  

"Know what, you arrogant bug?" 

"Primes are immortal. We can't die, not permanently-

I sneer, interrupting her with a brief fit of coughing which leaves flecks of golden blood steaming in the dirt. "Of course I know that - I've been here for months, doing nothing but gathering information and killing people. I'd have to be stupid, not to know."

I neglect to tell her how long it took me to figure it out - but in my defense the fact of Prime immortality is so utterly revolting, so anathema (which is a word possessing truly delightful shades of loathing) to everything I value and desire that I couldn't help but avoid it for as long as possible. My own indestructibility was easy to accept, but other Primes? The very thought that Dawnika Snow might have recovered  from what I did to her... I dismissed the idea as the ignorant rambling of peasants until I heard it from Chatterly himself during one of our weekly check-in, and even then I took some convincing; it entirely spoiled my afternoon.      

"...But we can," Mothra continues, "be sent away." 

She raises the metal circlet in front of her - and a volley of small crossbow bolts erupts from the haze, cutting the air with a subtle triple-hiss, perforating her arm, grazing her side, tearing her sleeve and knocking the menacing trinket from her hand.

[King Ghidorah]

Chatterly fades silently out of the haze beside a heap of shattered timbers, shadows and impressions resolving themselves into the shape of a man. How long he was standing there I have no idea, but somehow neither I nor Mothra noticed him; He's clad all in leather armor and travelers clothes, mottled shades of green and brown smeared with mud and charcoal. His customary cloak is absent, and his hood is pulled low over his face. He wears his sword at his side, a bandoleer of leather pouches across his chest, and he has an intricate,  strange little crossbow strapped to one arm. I only recognize him because from my low vantage point I can see the thin sharpness of his face, which he's covered in a dull green paste, and just a hint of his slick gray hair. He bows his head to Mothra by just the slightest fraction of an inch.

"It would be in the best interests of both of us, madame, if you were to step away from the banishment circle and allow the gentleman an opportunity to catch his breath." 

I bristle at being called a gentleman; I've met gentlemen. They're fascinating, but also weak and useless. It's a grave enough insult that I forget myself and attempt to rise, to strike him for such insolence - only to be driven immediately back to my knees by a wave of overpowering vertigo. It occurs to me that the golden puddle I'm leaving on the impact-ravaged soil is getting quite large; I put a handful of soil to my chest, attempting to stop the flow.

Mothra's  eyes are wide, her mouth open, a mask of incredulous shock. Her feathery antennae quiver with agitation, clutching her wounded arm. Bright blue blood is soaking through her sleeve. "You don't understand what you're doing," she says. "There's never going to be a better opportunity than this - he'll be prepared next time, don't you see? I didn't think it was possible, but I've been watching him - Ghidorah is learning. He won't underestimate his next opponent, and he's getting more powerful!  He has to be banished now!"   

I growl at the implied insult to my intelligence, but there's little feeling behind it; I'm too satisfied to see Mothra losing her composure. Even now she's afraid of me, and that takes a small part - a very small part - of the sting out of this blasphemous defeat. 

Chatterly shakes his head and raises his wrist-bow, pointing it at my nemesis, and puts his free hand on his sword. Dust motes and dirt-particles dance in the air between them. "Nevertheless: I must insist." 

Mothra regards him with caution, releasing her injured arm and facing him squarely. Her glittering jewel-like eyes narrow. "I'll fight you if I have to. But I am not letting him go. This is too important."

"Hm," says Chatterly, sounding vaguely disappointed. "If that's what you think, I invite you to consider the following: One, you are doubtless very tired. You may have thrashed our golden friend here quite soundly, but it has a cost, doesn't it? Two: Even if you could manage to transform again, these hills are riddled with caves, which I have thoroughly mapped. This sink-hole intrudes on no less than four of them; We'd escape you easily. And three - you wouldn't just be fighting  me." 

A single black-fletched arrow streaks from somewhere above us and lands quivering between the three of us. 

"I have this pit surrounded," the spymaster explains, his avuncular tone at odds with his words. "You are outnumbered, tired, and hurt. My men have been specifically trained and equipped to deal with your kind, and not to put too fine a point on it, but there is a banishment circle lying right over there."

Mothra stares at him, her face slowly settling back into its customary infuriating impassivity as the tension leaks from her body - but there's a new element present, a vague downward caste to her mouth that makes me wish I had the strength to laugh; She's sad.

"You're going to look back on this one day and wish you'd acted differently," she says. "This is a terrible mistake."

Chatterly acknowledges this with a sideways nod. "Possibly. That is, however, a risk I am prepared to accept." 

My nemesis is silent for moment, then she nods and turns away, rising into the dusty air. The haze swirls around her, and her torn, stained robes flutter as she departs. For the first time I notice that each of her flowing sleeves has a large red circle upon it, similar to the markings on the wings of her true self. Leaving us behind in this pit, I hear her voice in my mind:

"I know you're not capable of gratitude, Ghidorah, but please think hard about what just happened here. Appreciate what these men have done for you, because the next time we meet, things will be very different." 

I manage to bark out a single, contemptuous laugh, but even that small exertion proves to be too much; red and black swirl in from the edges, and everything goes dark.

[King Ghidorah]

After an interminable, dreamless age the realization that I'm awake once more weedles its way into my aching brain. It's the bumping that does it. Whatever I'm lying on, its being moved, and the ride is anything but even. I can hear men and horses, smell the mud-and-manure scent of the road and the stink of the soddenn fields; When I open my eyes I find myself precariously perched upon a makeshift wooden pallet, being dragged behind a ruggedly constructed horse-drawn wagon laden with crates and canvas bundles.

The first person I see is Chatterly, riding several meters behind me, mounted on a dusky-colored beast which seems more than a little unnerved by my presence. He's flanked by two similarly dressed men riding similarly nervous horses. Of the three only the spymaster isn't wearing his hood, though dark paint still decorates his face. His short, slicked-back hair matches the iron-grey sky. 

The sheer humiliation of my circumstances is practically beyond belief: I've been rescued. Defeated by Mothra of all Primes, I've been rescued (though from what exactly I'm still not entirely clear). And to make it even worse my savior (the very concept of which is brain-twistingly backwards) just had to be him. 

I draw upon my astral well, and cosmic charge rumbles within my throat; The gravitic lightning is mine again. I could blast Chatterly now, and I desperately want to, my anthropocidal hatred for him burning far brighter than it ever has before. The problem is that I don't think he'd die so easily, and as personally grating as the thought may be my loss today has driven one point incontestably home: though I have recovered some power, I'm still far from invincible. Beaten, drained and outnumbered, now is not the time.

My sinuous gold musculature shifts, glinting in the gray light, and the movement catches the spymaster's eye. "Ah," he says, pitching his voice just loudly enough to be heard over the rattle of the cart and the clatter and thump of hooves, "You're awake. Allow me to be the first to congratulate you on another successful mission."  

I glare at him and croak out a question, my words dripping with bile. "What are you wittering about Chatterly?"

His blunt little smile is just one more reason to think of some special and surpassingly vile fate when the time is right to destroy him. "The caravan you were tasked with intercepting," he explains. "By miraculous coincidence, you landed on it when your colorful rival blasted you out of the sky. Seven wagons, ninety men: no survivors. And ahead of schedule, too! Accidental or not, it was very well done."

A low stone wall bumps and lurches past, the waterlogged tips of a barley-field barely visible from this unaccustomed angle. I sit up, the effort making my head pound and my chest feel tender, but no black spots appear before my eyes and no golden ichor flows from my sternum.

 In the heat of my ill-fated battle with Mothra and its scandalous aftermath I had completely forgotten the reason I was out here in the first place. 

"Forget the mission," I snarl. As has happened so many times before, I can't decide whether my 'handler' is mocking me or not, and given my current circumstances its got me very nearly frothing with anger. "Why were you there? And what exactly did that presumptuous invertebrate think she was going to do?" 

One of Chatterly's companions signals for his attention, and they have a brief exchange in hushed private tones.  

"ANSWER ME!"  

My enraged roar panics their horses, setting the beasts rearing and pawing at the air, eyes rolling madly. The stupid beasts may not know what I am, but they certainly recognize that they are in the presence of a destroyer, and that he is not pleased. I watch with interest and more than a little satisfaction as the three riders fall behind, struggling to remain in the saddle while their mounts buck and wheel and try to bolt. Perhaps predictably, it's Chatterly who manages to calm his horse first, spurring it ahead in order to retake his position behind my questionable conveyance. He isn't smiling anymore. I have no idea why, but there almost seems to be disappointment on his narrow face. Still, after a moment to recompose his calm, confident mask, he does as I ask. 

"Mm. In the interest of keeping this civil, I'll have ask you not to do that. As to your questions, I was there because I was shadowing the caravan. Gathering intelligence in order to better predict the impact of its loss - and to evaluate your performance, of course. Your sudden arrival so far from the agreed upon ambush-site came as a shock, but given the results not an unwelcome one." 

"And Mothra?" I hiss. 

"She was attempting to Banish you. There's a 'verse that's isolated from the others - the Underverse. It's a ghastly place. One can send troublesome Primes there using a banishment circle - the very device that was almost used on you - but they don't come back."

He pauses. "...Usually. There was Nealapph, but that one was something of an enigma."   

I stare straight ahead for a long moment, silent. Chatterly's two companions, now far behind, finally manage to control their mounts, and gallop to join us. 

I know about the Underverse, and its ruler, Diablo, a Prime by all accounts whose temperament is very similar to mine. I read - and ate - a book about his war against the Omniverse at large, but it mentioned nothing about any remaining connection between the two realms. I'll have to think about the implications; One, however, immediately stands out which raises my spirits immensely: Though I can't permanently kill Mothra, I have a way to get rid of her, and to send her to a place ruled by one with both the power and the disposition to break her utterly. When she lies beaten at my feet, I'll make sure she knows exactly where she's going. 


I feel a vicious smile creep  across my aching, battered, ugly hominid face. My lips curl back, exposing my fangs. For all that the events of the day have gone against my expectations, my pride and the very order of nature, it seems that something good may have come of it after-all.

[King Ghidorah]

Abandoning the crude sledge on which I'd been so unceremoniously deposited, I ride in the back of the wagon for the rest of the trip, recovering my energies among the cloth bundles and wooden boxes while rainbow sparks of Omnilium rise from my mending body. As I watch the farm-speckled countryside pass me by Chatterly interacts with his minions, riding ahead to engage with a larger party of hooded men which preceeds my 'carriage' and circling back for brief, animated discussions with his two followers.

I feel strangely subdued. Typically, as soon as my lithe, powerful body regained the capacity for such activity I would start busily deconstructing the cargo that surrounds me, but mostly I find that what I want to do right now is think; Things that Mothra said to me, and things that Chatterly said to Mothra are making me question my assessment of certain facets of the situation in Harnburg Valley.   

I arrange myself cross-legged between two irregularly-shaped wool sacks with a crate at my back, and my brain begins to march.

What did the Duke's top agent mean when he said that his people were 'trained and equipped to deal with your kind'?  I've listened closely to quite a lot of human conversation over the past several months, listened far more carefully than I think even most humans do, and being as familiar as I am with how they communicate I got the strong impression that he wasn't talking about Primes or moths when he said that. I've known for some time that Chatterly didn't entirely trust my motives: that he found me unnerving, and was aware, to a certain extent, of my murderous desires. Only now it occurs to me that he might have a plan to kill me. While I've been gathering every detail and scrap of information I can find on the lives and hopes of the people in this society and the intricate interdependent social pyramid they weave, preparing for the hour of their delectable destruction, have  Chatterly and his master the Duke been plotting against that selfsame day?

Given all that I know, it seems practically guaranteed; a special unit within the Duke's forces has been created to destroy or possibly even banish me if I turn against Harnburg, and I'm riding in the back of their supply cart!

As recently as twelve hours ago I would have taken their caution for mere justified futility: no better than the howling of children against the coming of the dark or the flailing of plankton against the tide. I would have looked forward to brushing aside their preparations and doing as I pleased while they gazed on in slack-jawed, awe-struck horror at the ruin of all their works and their own inevitable deaths, gliding toward them on golden wings.

But today I was beaten nearly to death  by a daughter of the lepidopteran titans - little more than a cosmic moth.  

By. A moth. This must be what 'shame' feels like. 

I have to re-think what's possible in this diminished state, in this new, bizarre little universe - And I can't ignore the fact that Chatterly appeared when he did , in a place I never expected him to be. 

I obviously haven't given enough attention to the extent of his duties; I need to learn more about what he does when I'm not around, and who else works for him, both for my own safety and to fully appreciate what he contributes to the greater whole. It occurs to me for the first time that besides Cutter and Violent Angus I've never seen nor met another person who works directly for Chatterly until today. I'd thought that his agents operated strictly outside the valley, assumed that locally he just used the guards and his pair of thugs, but there seems to be an entire branch of the Duke's secret service that I've failed to explore, or even notice - and they've been watching me.     

The wagon sticks for a moment in the mud before lurching forward.  A bird scoots by overhead, its warbling song grating to my ears. I frown, but it has nothing to do with the bumpy ride or the miniscule, irritating life-form. 


It hurts me almost physically to admit it, but Chatterly isn't incompetent. He might not even be a fool. If he has a plan to prevent me from bringing sublime ruin to Harnburg and its fiefdom then, in light of the days events, when the time comes I'm going to have to find a way to surprise him with something he doesn't expect.

I've never had to make a plan to overcome resistance before, never required a strategy for anything other than a given instance of the overall destructive aesthetic process: destroy the cities first or break their military, poison the ocean and then choke their atmosphere or simply set everything on fire, see if I can make them destroy themselves with their own weapons in their zeal to stop what couldn't be stopped... Comparatively elegant, dare-I-say artistic strategic considerations. 

The habits of five-hundred million years are falling away in this alien existence.  I feel as though a cool wind is blowing over my brain, forming a frosty rime of new ideas, new avenues for old aesthetics and new dimensions to the ruinous work which defines me. It's thrilling and nerve-racking, moreso even than the vast vistas of depth and detail that my tiny humanoid body has revealed to me.

  
Taciturn and engrossed, I mull and plot and reflect while the astral storm within me rumbles and sparks, surging with quiet strength. I ponder the knowledge I've gathered and the problems before me, what I know of Chatterly and what he might know of me; I avoid the question of Mothra all together. The shame (such a thunderous word for such a strange emotion) is still too fresh, and the gap between us still too embarrassingly wide. 

Eventually, some time well after dark, Chatterly rides up alongside the wagon, hood raised and lantern in hand, and tells me that I should break off from the party and enter the valley by myself. When I ask him why he says its because we're less than a kilometer from home and I shouldn't be seen entering the valley in company of his men, but I suspect that it has rather more to do with the fact that, several minutes past, I finally put my mind in enough of an order to feel comfortable setting the supplies piled around me on fire.