Chapter Text
“Sreng singled out Nuada, and with a blow of his great sword, smote the rim of the king’s shield, and cut off the royal arm. The king was rescued by ‘Aengabla,’ his northern ally. The wound was soon healed by his physician, Dianceacht […]: Credne Cérd, or Credné, the artificer, made for him a silver hand.”
– Pre-Christian Ireland, Ulick Joseph Bourke
<Sanctioned Hollow Earth documentary footage excerpt, 2-9-2027>
<Video transcript>
[Hayes is descending into the valley where Titanus Kong is lying inert. He approaches Dr. Andrews and Jia, on a lower cliff ledge overlooking Kong. Andrews glances at Hayes, Jia doesn’t react. Camera pans to the ground and Hayes’ anti-radiation bodysuit boots.]
Hayes: How’s she doing?
Andrews: Worried about Kong. She hasn’t left this place since he came back.
Hayes: She knows Monster X and Mini-Kong are coming back with that Project Powerhouse, right?
Andrews: She knows. She also knows there’s no guarantee they’ll get Project Powerhouse back in one piece with the Scarred Ones out there, nor that Project Powerhouse will save Kong. Even if it works, the drugs will just get him up and running for a while, they won’t heal his injuries perfectly. If one of Kong’s limbs sets wrong, he won’t last a week down here, rival Apes or no.
Hayes: (Pause.) How are you doing?
Andrews: How do you think?
Hayes: Yeah. That figures.
<End excerpt>
THE SURFACE
<News footage, 2-9-2027>
1
[Satellite still depicting a cyclonic snowstorm over southwestern Japan.]
“Sources have just confirmed the abrupt formation of a snowstorm over the Ogasawara Islands south of Japan. How is this linked to the ongoing Titan crisis on Izu Oshima, less than 900km to the north?”
2
[Satellite still featuring thermal imaging of the Myanmar snowstorm’s formation atop the Irrawaddy River: a Titan-sized, four-legged, vaguely reptilian outline with a black colour indicating extreme cold in place of body-heat.]
“We’ve just received these satellite thermal images of Sagaing-Mandalay in central Myanmar, where the blizzard began. As you can see, it appears there is in fact a Titan visible in the eye of the storm.”
3
“The weather anomaly in the Northwest Pacific continues to spread, as a second major snowstorm has appeared over Myanmar; causing ground temperatures to drop by a staggering 68 degrees Fahrenheit within hours, as urban residents are taking shelter indoors from the sudden and blistering snowfalls and frosts.”
[Satellite stills: (1) South and East Asia, depicting cyclonic snowstorms over central Myanmar and the Northwest Pacific Ocean southeast of Japan’s main islands, (2) satellite thermal imaging of the four-legged Titan on [DATA REDACTED] Ogasawara Subprefecture. Various videos of Burmese streets and landscapes, some populated by struggling people and vehicles, all being pelted by heavy snowfalls: Monywa and Meiktila skylines and landmarks.]
“The second blizzard formed directly over land 1 hour ago, and it’s currently covering 300 miles and still growing.”
4
“This new Titan, which does not match any Titan in Monarch’s public records, is believed to be using the Hollow Earth to navigate the world to launch each of its attacks unimpeded, emerging through Hollow Earth-connected vile vortices and volcanic vents. The questions remain, how far will this disaster spread, where will this new Titan strike next, and how will humanity’s protectors combat what is now believed to be two new hostile Titan events that are occurring simultaneously?”
<Social media video file, 2-9-2027>
Handheld recording of a second-floor window view of the Chiang Rai Clock Tower and surrounding streets, Thailand. The area outside is covered in snow by ongoing heavy snowfall; vehicles are visible stuck in the road, the streets are largely deserted except for a small number of pedestrians rushing through the snow. The cameraperson comments in Vietnamese about the unnatural weather’s onset.
<News footage, 2-10-2027>
1
“A worldwide Titan readiness alert has been issued after a third Titan-induced blizzard formed over Turkey. Satellite stills indicate that the new snowstorm began over the Nemrut Caldera in Eastern Turkey, and is already expanding into neighbouring countries including Armenia and Iran.”
2
“Monarch have confirmed that Mothra is withdrawing from the Izu Islands for the time being, in the wake of what now looks to be an entirely second Titan crisis which is already spreading on a potentially global scale. All commercial airflights in Asian, European, African and West Pacific airspace have been grounded, and commercial fishing vessels have been advised to follow suit.”
3
<Interview with Professor [DATA REDACTED]>
“It is no coincidence that this cryonic Titan is attacking these particular locations. Japan is not just the location of an ongoing offshore Titan crisis on Oshima Island, it’s also within the current territory of an established Titan.”
News anchor: That’s the one with the long name, yes?
“Yamata no Orochi. But Myanmar has also been in the dead centre of a Titan territory since the aftermath of the Mass Awakening. Eastern Turkey and the Armenian highlands? Another Titan’s territorial centre.”
News anchor: So you believe that this Titan is deliberately creating these massive snowstorms above other Titans’ territories?
“From what we’ve seen so far, the creature emerges through a vile vortex, always in or near an occupied Titan territory’s centre, just long enough to trigger a snowstorm which then spreads and grows without it. While it retreats back into the vortex so it can navigate to its next location, all without directly confronting the Titan who now has a blizzard growing over its home in a runaway effect.”
News anchor: At least two more Titans are based in North Africa, just below Turkey. Are you saying this creature is going to strike there next?
“Perhaps. But ice and snowstorms don’t form out of thin air, they require water vapour in the atmosphere to crystallise. The Pacific Ocean, Southeast Asia and even Eastern Turkey at this time of year are wealthy enough in water vapour. The North African Titans’ territories on the other hand are much more humid.”
HOLLOW EARTH
<Sanctioned Hollow Earth documentary footage excerpt, 2-10-2027>
<Video transcript>
[Camera appears to be on the ground. View of Hayes sitting on the ground next to Dr. Andrews.]
Hayes: You know, uh, there’s this story I told Jia yesterday that made her laugh, so it might cheer you up.
Andrews: What’s that?
Hayes: This one time, I had a really horrible nightmare. Where that high-up Monarch family from China whom are connected to Mothra, the ones whose daughters that Steve Martin guy recorded singing to Mothra? Some morons forcibly cleared them all out and replaced them with a crappy synth band. And it was horrible! The most horrible sound I’ve ever heard anyone associate with any Titan, let alone the Queen Bitch! It was almost like Walter Simmons himself came back from the dead and decided to a be a music composer or something! I’m pretty sure they were pro-AI music even.
[Dr. Andrews chuffs with slight laughter.]
Andrews: You’re right, that does sound pretty horrible.
[Hayes chuckles.]
>FRW>>
[Audio picks up rustling and footsteps. Hayes picks up the camera, starts walking with it in hand. Pans to a view on the cliff near where Titanus Kong collapsed; Jia is still present. Camera pans left to Monster X and Mini-Kong entering the valley, carrying a large, semi-cylindrical, yellow-painted mechanism identified as Project Powerhouse (storage mode) between them; due to the two Titans’ respective sizes at under 200 feet in height relative to the Glove’s size, they are forced to carry the Glove between them.]
Beasley: Oh, yes, yes. Whooh!
[Camera briefly pans over to “Trapper” Beasley and Dr. Andrews jogging into view. Dr. Andrews approaches Jia and holds her close. Soft growling; camera slightly pans to a partial view of Kong past the cliff edge, stirring on the valley floor in his injured state. Monster X and Mini-Kong’s footsteps grow larger and closer; slight audio tearing. Camera pans up to a low-angle view on Monster X’s upper-body as Monster X turns towards the camera’s general direction.]
Andrews: Any trouble with the Apes?
Monster X: Not with those scent-masking flowers’ sap that this brave young man led us to. Trapper. What now?
Beasley: Bring it over here!
>FRW>>
[Close view of Project Powerhouse planted on the cliff; “Trapper” Beasley is inputting the presumed access codes. Beasley finishes inputting with a flourishing gesture and saunters backwards. Project Powerhouse audibly clicks, the yellow activation light begins visibly flashing.]
Beasley: If you’d care to do the honours!
[Loud, bull-cough vocalisation identified as Monster X’s laughing vocalisation. Shadow shifts, external audio hissing. The following dialogue is predominated by the light, female intonation specifically associated with Dr. Vivienne Graham.]
Monster X (Graham): Happily, good sir.
[Monster X’s arms reach into view, followed by Mini-Kong’s arms and lower body as they drag Project Powerhouse off the cliff edge to the valley floor.]
Beasley: Just get it on his bad arm.
[Hayes begins approaching the cliff edge; Monster X shifts Project Powerhouse out of view below the cliff, steps backwards out of view. Audible mechanical clunking and whirring; Kong groans softly. Camera approaches the cliff edge, providing a high-angle view of Kong on the valley floor; Project Powerhouse is now attached to Kong’s right arm; finishes reconfiguring into its glove-shaped active mode.]
Beasley: (Hoots.) What do you think of that?
Monster X: That’s quite an augmentation.
Beasley: Only the best for mister Kong!
[After 3 seconds, camera pans to Jia and Dr. Andrews signing to each-other. The following exchange, which exclusively consists of sign language, has been translated.]
Andrews: It will get him up and running for a while. Long enough to fight and stop the Scarred Ones. But he might not like it.
Jia: He’ll like it.
[Dr. Andrews turns to Beasley; verbal dialogue barring Jia resumes.]
Andrews: What now?
Beasley: It needs a few minutes to finish configuring.
>FRW>>
[Clear view of Kong and Project Powerhouse from the cliff edge. Project Powerhouse clamps begin sealing around Kong’s arm. Music has ceased.]
Beasley: Alright, it’s ready to go. The injections should act like steroids and morphine, get him up and running, and the healing boosters should at least help with his injuries.
Monster X: I hate needles.
Andrews: (Pause.) But they won’t just regenerate his injuries away completely.
Beasley: No. This is just a temporary patch-up with a booster attached. If he can’t find something better soon, or if his healing factor doesn’t get far even with this, then he might never be as strong or fast as he used to be ever again.
[White electrical sparking from inbetween Project Powerhouse’s plates. Kong growls and grimaces. His partially-bruised eyes open; he begins slowly standing up despite his injuries; Monster X and Mini-Kong do not intervene. Hayes moves carefully backwards from the cliff edge as Kong stands, towering out of shot initially; camera pans up to view his upper-body. Kong grasps the opposite cliff edge with his Project Powerhouse-equipped arm; the stone crumbles loudly in his grip and he slightly staggers, unbalanced while loosed boulders fall a far distance towards the ground. Kong turns his equipped hand over, appears to be examining Project Powerhouse. Mini-Kong chirps. External audio hissing.]
Monster X: Trapper?
Beasley: It looks a bit rough and ready, but it should hold.
[Pause. Kong slowly straightens back up, re-examines his equipped hand.]
Beasley: He’s either going to love it, or he’s going to rip it off with his teeth.
Andrews: Monster X. Can you please tell Kong not to rip that thing off?
[External static hissing.]
Monster X: Will do.
[Kong turns his equipped arm palm-down. Kong pauses. He lifts his equipped arm skywards and roars, causing audio tearing. Monster X and Mini-Kong join their roars with Kong’s; audio and visual tearing. Inbetween visual tearing, Kong appears to punch the ground below the cliff; loud clap of a sonic impact.]
Hayes: (Inaudible) -nk he loves it!
Abraxas’ roar wasn’t quite as loud or long as the one they’d normally give in Godzilla’s presence if he roared, partly because there were humans and Malenkans so close to them whose ear drums they didn’t want to split, and partly because Kong wasn’t their king like Godzilla was. Though they respected Kong and considered him a friend. Honestly, the way Kong talked at times which showed his lonely past made Abraxas’ female half think fondly of her brother-half. They watched Kong lift his B.E.A.S.T. Glove-equipped arm again from where he’d punched the ground, producing a dust cloud and lightning-forks which the chimera could taste on the air. He was smiling thinly at his new armament. Despite how battered he looked with the dried blood, incisions and bruising on his face and body, he didn’t seem to have any trouble staying conscious and moving now. Abraxas intoned with a leonine growl.
Not bad, eh?
Kong chuffed.
I agree. I like it! It’s useful. Flashy! Good!
Then Kong’s smile slowly fell as he turned his eyes (one of which was bloodshot from the bruising) outward, towards the valley’s end where a veil separated Malenka from the open Core World jungles beyond. There was now a dark look in his eyes – not just the look of a warrior prepared to kill, but a look which made alarm bells faintly ring in Abraxas’ head. Despite both of Abraxas’ halves itching in their own ways to hunt down the Scarred Ones – whose unnatural music they’d distantly heard on the air and felt through their feet in the earth pounding from their Living Caves dozens of miles away – the San half agreed with the Vivienne half that they needed to at least do their best to address Kong before they went into battle again.
What are you thinking?
The taller Ape’s eyes turned diagonally to meet theirs, and they saw that softness in his gaze return for them, but they also saw something more there – a hard, hurt, angry edge.
The SCARRED ONES.
Kong bared his teeth in a hateful grimace, the venom in his grunt palpable. His battered state only made him look even more livid.
Murderers, ape killers, ape-eaters. WRONG, ABOMINATION!
Abraxas frowned, able to hazard a guess as to why this affected Kong.
You were looking for other Great Apes like you for a long time.
Kong glared at his equipped arm.
I thought they could be family with me. Always thought I could be family with other Apes. But I was wrong. Other Apes are just more enemies. So I will fight them and I will kill them before they can kill me and mine. It’s what I’ve always done. What I’ll always do.
Not all of them.
Abraxas’ response prompted Kong to meet their eye again, surprise in his own eyes.
Not Suko.
Abraxas gestured to the child-Ape who was half Kong’s size but only slightly smaller than the chimera. Suko’s bright-green eyes glanced from the smaller adult Titan to the larger Ape nervously. When Abraxas and Kong both glanced to him, the small orange Ape chirped and gestured in the affirmative at Kong.
Yes. I was the Scarred King’s, but now I am yours-Kong’s. YOU are my new King. I choose you over the Scarred King. And there are also other Apes, workers, who won’t serve the Scarred King either when they no longer fear him! He showed us in the Living Caves that he isn’t invincible, when I touched the Great Cold-Breather’s power against his wishes! We can beat him!
As Suko pounded his chest and howled at the last part, Abraxas, briefly smiling at the young Ape’s gesture, felt the urge to emphasise the next thing they said to Kong.
If you get rid of the Scarred King and teach the Apes who don’t fight to kill you to be better, then you might STILL find some family among them yet. You don’t want to set a bad example for him now, do you? Nor do you want to let THEM down.
Abraxas gestured at the watching little humans and Malenkans on the low cliff edge. Kong’s eyes on Abraxas softened, looking almost solemn.
Hunting and killing isn’t all you do. It isn't all you are. Never forget that.
A pause passed between them, then before Abraxas could consider saying more, the distant sound of Malenkans’ little horns turned all three Titans’ heads with startled grunts. Abraxas’ vertical twin cranial horns glowed crimson as they projected their voices through the nearest electronic speakers.
Dr. Andrews, what is that?
One of the three full bodysuit-clad humans was already conversing with one of the colourful robe-clad Malenkans, most of whom were now rushing to clear the area. Andrews didn’t waste time returning to project her voice through the mic-speaker system.
“The scouts have spotted movement. Scarred Ones, at least four. They’re approaching the city’s veil around the same area where you came in.”
…Shit.
Abraxas and Suko hadn’t been attacked while they’d been dragging the B.E.A.S.T. Glove across the Core World’s ground to Malenka, and they’d hoped that meant none had found them, but it seemed that had been to good to be true. For all they knew, the Blood-Stripes could have picked up Kong’s bleeding trail to Malenka from before Abraxas and Suko had gone out for the B.E.A.S.T. Glove, and it had been lucky that the two of them had returned just now. Or perhaps, for all they knew, the Blood-Stripes had tracked Abraxas and Suko back to Malenka during their return trip. Abraxas hissed Andrews’ explanation on to Kong, whose gaze above Abraxas’ skull-helm darkened. The Two Who Are One looked over towards the city beyond the cliff with its central pyramids, the Malenkans retreating back that way. Could the Scarred Ones breach the veil if they tried? Abraxas wasn’t sure, since those veils had successfully kept all the Core World’s megafauna out without fail for millennia, but Great Apes could be a lot more inventive than other beasties with technology. Either way, they were pretty certain Kong wouldn’t be content to just stay inside Malenka amid a siege, and Abraxas theirself didn’t want to waste anymore time knowing those bastards were preparing to head for the surface with Shimo.
Abraxas turned and began sprinting towards the valley’s end, Kong following close behind after a command at Suko to stay back and do what he did best. The shimmering blue veil was parted by the Malenkans’ vast mechanism, and the Titans charged out the way they’d come, into the open jungle where danger now reigned. Abraxas smelled no smoke, ash nor Great Ape. The King of the Primates beside Abraxas, bloodied and bruised but strong, was no nonsense, bellowing out at the top of his lungs.
STOP HIDING AND COME MEET YOUR DEATHS!
Abraxas’ bicoloured eyes shifted as a little off to the right, the Titanic-sized trees crunched, creaked and groaned. The new Great Ape sauntered out slowly, not trying to put up an intimidation display. Abraxas’ eyes flit over the Ape’s features, their curiosity melding with the strategists in them wanting to analyse every inch of their enemy. The Ape looked like a serial killer straight out of a slasher film. It had a leaner look than Kong, and what skin showed through its coarse fur – brown but stained with patches of green sap like Kong’s, hence why they’d caught no scent – was paler than Kong’s cobalt skin. Abraxas couldn’t see the Ape’s face, because it was wearing a skull which looked somewhat like a horse’s, but with jagged molars. The Ape held a long bone that was sharpened to a point at one end, as long as the Ape’s entire arm – together with everything else, it made the Vivienne half of Abraxas momentarily think of Jason Voorhees. Titan Jason Voorhees, exchanging the hockey mask and the old burlap sack for a wendigo-styled headdress.
The Blood-Stripe growled softly and lowly.
Surrender; the Tamer of All demands it.
No.
Kong sounded and smelled like he’d slipped into the kind of tranquil fury that Abraxas expected from Godzilla. At Kong’s reply, the Blood-Stripe in front of them tilted his death-skull head – and he sounded like a male – backwards enough that Abraxas could vaguely see the Ape’s real teeth, incisors and pointed canines, behind the half-horse skull’s teeth. He tested his grip on his bone-pike – or was it more of a bone machete – leisurely, not taking his eyes off the other Ape and short chimera for a moment.
GOOD.
More Great Apes, Blood-Stripes, were emerging from the jungle around and behind the first one. Most of them were wearing skulls of varying shapes and sizes as helms, almost like Abraxas’ own face’s natural exoskull. Many of them were carrying various sharpened bones or rocks as weapons, and all of them – the green-stained ones and the ones stained with colourless sap –were emerging with just as little scent heralding them as the first Blood-Stripe had. There were far more than four of them, there was at least twice that number here. Abraxas’ gaze scanned them all, Kong growling next to them as he did the same. The small chimera’s and the larger, glove-equipped Great Ape’s backs almost angularly faced each-other as they moved close together. Abraxas was anxiously aware that they’d lost track of Suko, unsure where the little Ape who’d been behind them in the valley was or if he’d even come out with them. The Scarred Ones formed a ten-Titan semicircle around Abraxas and Kong which closed them from every direction except back towards Malenka’s veil.
Kong roared, followed by Abraxas joining their own deep roar. The Blood-Stripes' leader roared back in kind. Kong charged first. The Blood-Stripes surged forward.
THE SURFACE
The Queen and King of the Monsters hadn’t made the decision lightly, but they’d both agreed that Mothra should chase down the former White Queen. Mothra was usually the serene mirror surface of a still sea to Godzilla’s raging and tumultuous sea, she had an even longer history with the one called Shimo, and Shimo was not a natural enemy before. Mothra hadn’t known what to think when she’d first heard the world’s plants and animals crying out in pain and had felt the discordantly cold winds crawling up and down the world’s air flows, carrying with them the distinct tang of the old White Queen’s power.
Shimo had been queen long before Godzilla was king, her cold storms keeping the world cool when it was needed, beating back the firestorms and winds from the sun and heavens which could drown the world’s life more than they nurtured it if too much of them bathed the world all at once. Fierce and majestic had the White Queen been when it was needed, her cold breath a perfect counter to many other Titans whom would dare challenge her or threaten the world’s balance, but she had also been gentle, even kind. Her power had cooled the world once before, one of the very last times that Mothra had seen or heard of her before she’d withdrawn into the World Root to whereabouts unknown, at the end of a dark time period when the remaining monarchs had fought together to imprison Ghidorah in the ice at the far south long ago – it had been both a necessity to defeat the Dragon and a punishment on those others who’d plunged the world into discord. But this wasn’t the same. Trauma could change anyone. Could it have changed the White Queen? It was too late to change Mothra and Godzilla’s decision now that Mothra was more than a continent away from her king and nearing the lands where she would scour for Shimo. Shimo had returned to the world at the same time that Godzilla and Mothra were already fighting another invasive foe: a cancerous green plague embodied, born of man, which was sapping the life and land of the world, an unfortunate victim in their own right whose victimhood was making more victims endlessly. Mothra and her King had failed to purify the green plague in their first clash and it was still spreading, so Godzilla was staying to continue circling around and watching it while Mothra approached Shimo.
Mothra flew past the pale, spreading blizzards Shimo had summoned over the warm and wet lands and then the dryer land. The three Titans in the blizzard-hit territories were sensing the Queen’s passing, calling out to her for answers which she replied to in kind, and then they trailed at a distance behind Mothra to answer the disruption to their territories. The White Queen was powerful enough to warrant the intervention of the King or Queen rather than leaving it up to the regional Titans to sort out themselves, but that didn’t mean the Titans her storms had affected weren’t incentivised to help out even without the King or Queen’s orders. It was their own territories that Shimo was disrupting, this was a personal matter for them. Though Mothra insisted that all of them stay a distance behind her while she approached the White Queen first. Shimo could freeze or even kill most of those Titans if she tried hard enough. Few of the Titans had a resistance to being near-instantly frozen by Shimo’s breath or driven back by her extreme cold, it was part of what had enabled her to become the White Queen and maintain that dominance for so long. The consistent, westward pattern in her ongoing attacks, from the islands next to the green plague’s centre over to the two continents northwest of there, was not lost on Mothra, and it occurred to Mothra mid-flight where Shimo was starting each of her blizzards. Always in a Titan’s territory, excepting the hottest, most arid ones on the southern continent, and of course excepting Mothra’s own shrine. Mothra flew westward, calling out repeatedly to the White Queen, not least at each of the known holes leading towards the World Root, but she received no answer. She couldn’t even pick up more than the faintest traces of colour along the Life-Strands.
Mothra was flying through a sky that would have looked to the humans’ naked eyes relatively clear and calm, when in the distance she saw a white beam for the first time in a long time – it was climbing off the ground between the high mountains and into the sky. The clouds and moisture of the air were rapidly gathering and turning to pale snowclouds around the beam, which began blooming themselves into a blizzard that would soon grow to cover much of these lands, raining ice and snow down on them. With a shrill shriek to announce herself, Mothra shot in a straight line towards the beam, determined not to let the White Queen slip away back into the ground. She sensed the eager, anxious and vengeful pulses of the three invaded Titans distantly behind her, and angularly in front of her she saw a distant warble of anxious colour along the Life-Strands from the Titan who currently held these lands and was already sensing the intrusion and the discord being sown inside it. Strange and disturbing that that Titan’s pulses crawled along the Life-Strands to Mothra, but nothing she could see pulsed along the Strands from Shimo.
Mothra approached, and in a narrow valley split between the mountains, she saw her dear old friend. A quadrupedal, bulky body, white like the frost and snow which her breath made, jagged spines crowning her back which were usually sea-blue but now flared with moon-coloured light as she breathed her power into the heavens. Mothra shrieked out, getting closer, her anxiety mounting at how the Life-Strands still barely thrummed around Shimo at all. No reds, no yellows, no purples, no other colours to give away the winter-maker's emotions. Mothra saw a strange flicker in the light of Shimo’s dorsal spines just before her skyward breath cut off, the snowclouds continuing to spread on their own now as Mothra felt the rapidly-building chill in her wings. Mothra beat her wings to hover, flashing her multicoloured lights and trilling her whale-song to the White Queen, pleading for her to reply. Shimo’s neck twitched but she didn’t respond, and this close, Mothra’s compound eyes’ light brightened in shock and horror as she beheld the old queen up close. The White Queen’s spines atop her back and tail were intact, but the frontmost natural crown atop her head was half-gone – her crystalline horn-spurs (a part of her soul)were, with the exception of the rearmost spurs, either worn down to nubs or just completely missing atop her head. Misty saliva was running mindlessly down from Shimo’s sharp-toothed mouth over her chin to crystallise in frozen, crack-shaped rivulets, and her beady eyes were in a perpetual white glow. Mothra reeled and she scented the air, including the stale air wafting up from the fresh and frost-edged hole in the valley’s side where Shimo had dug herself out, but she smelled nothing. Her compound eyes’ glow brightened as along the Life-Strands, she now saw pulses, not from the tarnished White Queen but from something new: blues, purples and blacks of ruthless coldness, and many dull oranges and reds of subdued rage and hate, were all pulsing from the frosted-edged hole in the valley. Mothra was about to fly closer to investigate, when a new flash of light from Shimo’s dorsal spines brought the Life-Giver’s gaze snapping back to her. As the first sheets of snowflakes were reaching the valley floor from the chilled heavens, Shimo was craning her dead-eyed, ravaged head to gaze straight in Mothra’s direction, and her power was audibly building with a rhythmic shriek: not unlike the low thrum which preceded Godzilla’s fire breath, except Shimo’s thrum was whistling and incandescent. Mothra knew exactly what that sound meant, the tempo rapidly shortening. The Queen of the Monsters shrieked and thrust her iridescent wings diagonally in front of herself, rocketing herself into the snow-greyed sky A glowing, white vortex swirled inward around Shimo’s open maw. A moment later, Mothra heard the low-pitched, growling hum of Shimo’s beam firing at her.