Out of force of habit, I reached for my neck, expecting to find a bow-tie there to fidget, but I just scratched my topmost belly-scute with my claws.
Then the first squadron of aerostats launched their missiles. They were within arm’s reach, and fired all at once. The aircraft swerved up before I could swat them or their missiles out of the way. The missiles hit my right flank, sending off five explosions that felt like wasp stings. I flinched, yelping at the unexpected pain.
Over on the horizon, Kosuke continued to speak. “You aren’t alone, Kosuke,” he said. “Your universe isn’t alone; it’s one of many. Some are completely different. Others are more alike. I might not be a perfect carbon copy of you, but… our souls are the same. That’s how you can hear me. Kléothag showed me how to speak through your dreams.”
I stared Mr. Himichi in the eyes. “What’s a Kléothag?”
He shook his head, his mane ruffling in the wind. “I don’t know.”
The aerostats buzzed around us like flies, liberally spraying us with bullets.
One of their munitions hit me in the eyes. “Gah!” I yelled. “Why are they shooting my eyes?!”
“Wouldn’t you?” Mr. Himichi said, grunting as he endured some bullets of his own.
I tried to hit the attacking aircraft, but they darted around so darn quickly, I couldn’t keep up!
Wait, I realized. I have plasma breath now.
On a whim, I tried breathing out a stream of plasma. My lips tingled as the spicy energy beam sliced through the air. I had to turn my head to aim it, which was easier said than done. I hit pretty much everything except the aerostats. Skyscrapers collapsed and exploded as my awful aim sliced the metropolis with my coruscating green plasma.
Seeing a second aerostat squadron approaching, I tried the same trick, and failed again. Staticky tingles danced across my lips as the plasma left my mouth. The energy stream disappeared into the sky, but not before grazing Mt. Aoi’s flanks and triggering a wave of rock slides.
Oops…
I growled as the top of my head was pelleted by bullets and concussive missile fire.
I looked up; darn it, the first squadron was attacking me from above!
I raised my arm to block the incoming fire.
Mr. Himichi turned to the copy of himself on the horizon. “What is Kléothag?”
“This is both a dream and not a dream,” the kaiju replied. “It’s an echo from me to you. It’s…” Kosuke sighed. “It’s from my own memories.”
Mr. Himichi cupped his hands to his snout. “Can you hear me?!” he yelled, blasting out a streak of green plasma.
“Kléothag needs you to hear his message,” the image said. It didn’t seem to notice Mr. Himichi’s words. “You have to tell whoever you can, however you can. It’s coming, Kosuke. The darkness is coming.”
I pulled Mr. Himichi’s arm. “I don’t think he can hear you,” I said. “It’s a recording.”
Mr. Himichi nodded. “Let’s get out of here!”
He lumbered off, and I followed him, running as quickly as our kaiju bodies allowed—which actually wasn’t that quickly at all. We raised our arms around our heads to block incoming fire.
I rubbed at my aching eye as I ran.
Several tank-launched missiles impacted my spiked shell. The explosions’ pressure pressed against my back, sending vibrations rattling up and down my shell. Thankfully, I didn’t feel any pain.
I guess kaiju shells were pretty durable.
“Can you use any of your mind-powers?” Himichi asked.
“No—and you can thank the fungus for that—but, I guess there’s no reason not to try!” I said. I gave it a good go, closing my eyes and clenching my sharp, serrated teeth.
Back to Thick World, I thought. Back to Thick World.
I opened my eyes.
We were still very much kaiju, trapped in another world’s Noyoko.
“Fudge,” I muttered.
Actually, double fudge was more like it. Looking, I saw trails of white smoke rising through the air. Craning my head back brought the rockets’ fiery glow into view as the warheads climbed into the sky. The massive missiles were just beginning to curve, turning downward—heading straight for us.
“Let’s head for the mountain!” I said. “At least there, we’ll have room to move!”
Nodding, Mr. Himichi took charge, leading us toward Mt. Aoi. As we hiked across the gently rising urban terrain, dodging munitions as best as we could, Mr. Himichi cried out in surprise. “Wait a minute! Genneth, your comrades, Yuta and Geoffrey; perhaps they can help?” But then Mr. Himichi groaned as a red heat ray singed the feathers of his mane.
I might as well give it a shot, I thought.
“Geoffrey, Yuta,” I said, “please, if you can hear me… help!”
The words were barely off my tongue when two tiny whorls of light coalesced at the tip of my snout. I had to cross my eyes to see them as they staggered about, their shocked footsteps tickling my nose.
I zoomed in as best as I could, until I could more or less make out their faces. “Yuta, Geoffrey, it’s me,” I said, as softly as possible. I also had to keep myself perfectly still, otherwise…
I didn’t want to think about what would happen to Yuta if he fell.
“Dr. Howle!?” Yuta yelled. I could barely hear him over the wind.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
But I could tell that both he and Geoffrey had appeared as their Lantor avatars.
“Quick,” I said, “there’s no time!”
The second squadron of aerostats chasing after us had gotten close enough to fire again. They launched the remainder of the missiles, along with a boatload of bullets. I had to raise my arm to block the munitions from harming my tiny companions.
“Stop those machines, please!” I used my other arm to point at the approaching aircraft and tanks.
Geoffrey’s wings buzzed like a fly’s as he flew off my snout. He descended toward the aerostats, electricity crackled around his enchanted halberd’s blade.
I gritted my teeth as tank fire blasted the underside of my arm.
“I can’t get down!” Yuta yelled.
I glanced at Mr. Himichi. “Cover me!”
Nodding, Mr. Himichi leaned back and breathed out a stream of plasma while slowly turning his head. The blast swept out a wide berth with a brightness that left afterimages flickering in my eyesight.
Mr. Himichi had better aim than me, hitting several aerostats with his plasma sweep. The vehicles exploded like miniature fireworks. Geoffrey darted above and below the passing plasma stream, hacking through the aerostats’ wings and tails.
“Yuta,” I brought my palm up to my snout. “Get on—and hold on!”
Yuta jumped onto my palm and grabbed one of the scales on my fingers. I lowered my hand to the ground as carefully as I could, wriggling my tail to keep myself from losing my balance as I bent over.
Yuta leapt out of my hand and ran along the street.
“Genneth!” Mr. Himichi called.
Looking up, I saw several missiles plow through the smoke and falling debris.
“Run!” I roared. I coughed up plasma as I stood up. “Yuta, Geoffrey, missiles!”
Lances of lightning flashed around Geoffrey’s body. For an instant, they hovered around him, crackling with power. He launched them with a wave of his hand, aiming them at the tanks that were coming down the street. Electricity rippled out in shockwaves from each impact, blasting pits into the pavement. The lightning melted the tanks’ treads and fried their internal circuitry. Two of the tanks outright exploded; their fuel tanks must have ignited.
The first aerostat squadron descended, pelting the ground with bullets to clear the way for the approaching missiles. After slicing off the tanks’ barrels with waves of ink, Yuta started to run down the street. He hurled his kanakatana up at the aerostats and the missiles. The blade passed above the aerostats, failing to hit them on the way up, but this had to have been intentional, because the very next second, he used his kanakatana’s
The hummingbird warrior darted toward the missiles and sliced them in two, but the aerostats had been enough of a distraction that two of the warheads managed to make it through. Thankfully, by then, Himichi and I had turned our backs to the missiles, and my shell absorbed the brunt of one of the impacts. However, the other missile struck my tail—and it hurt. I flopped forward, yelling out in pain. My belly scutes scraped against Mr. Himichi’s shell spikes, sending off sparks as big as human beings, but Mr. Himichi shouldered my weight well, helping me back to my feet.
“Don’t stop,” he said. “Just run.”
And I did. I ran and ran. I crushed ancient, low-lying pagodas and stumbled through elevated highways too tall for me to jump over.
I glanced toward the horizon as Kosuke continued to speak.
“…and as to how I got like this,” he said, “there was an accident.” He shook his head. “It was a field trip gone horribly, horribly wrong. I heard this sound—mwirr, mwirr, mwirr,” he said, “and then next thing I knew, I started changing into… this.” The kaiju held out his arms, examining himself in dismay.
Finally, panting—hearts racing—we made it through the final stretch of tall apartment buildings that separated us from Mt. Aoi’s forested foothills. Stupidly, I tried squeezing my way through the gap between two of the apartment buildings, which caused my tail and shell spikes to tear through them both, snagging me in place. I tried to pull myself free, but the building was surprisingly well-anchored, likely due to some kind of earthquake-resistant design.
“Genneth!” Mr. Himichi said.
I turned to see his outstretched hand reaching for me. I grabbed hold and then we worked together to get me through the gap. He pulled; I pushed. The ground cracked open as I broke free, uprooting the apartment building with me—pipes, wires, steel beams, and so much else sticking out from its underside over a hole in the earth.
I brushed the building off my shell spikes.
I walked ahead, while Mr. Himichi looked back and stared.
Ink and lightning scoured the ground and air behind us—Yuta and Geoffrey’s magic, hard at work.
I tugged Mr. Himichi by the arm.
“C’mon!” I said.
Beyond that last row of apartment buildings, civilization gave way to wilderness. Without block after block of buildings in the way, Mr. Himichi and I were free to move much more nimbly and easily. We clambered up the mountainside on all fours, straddling valleys and foothills between our arms and legs. Our crunchy footsteps bulldozed forests; reaching to grab something pulled up trees and earth like chunks of sod from a lawn. Boulders and rockslides the size of gravel and dirt trickled down into the ravines my footsteps left in the ground.
It wasn’t long before Mt. Aoi's snowy peak came into view. Climbing up made me feel like I was a kid again, crawling up a jungle gym. Looking down on Noyoko from the top of the mountain was like looking out over the rest of the playground, only impossibly more grand.
“Sword stab me,” I muttered. “I can see… forever.”
It was beyond majestic.
Gripping the summit for leverage, I leaned around the other side of Mt. Aoi to get a better look. The land was far less densely populated than Noyoko at my back, with only scant strips of settlements to break up the otherwise solid stretch of uninhabited woodland that ran from the foothills all the way to the sea.
Kaiju Kosuke loomed over the horizon, as if the rising dawn was a massive hologram projector.
And then he locked eyes with us.
“Kosuke,” he said, addressing his older self, “a creature sleeps under the earth. His name is Kléothag. He’s a dragon, a mighty, mighty dragon. Our world is built around his body. It… it is his body. You can see pieces of him sticking out of the ground. Mu’s Clawpeak Mountain, the Stoney Barrens in Tchwang…”
Hearing those words made my fur and feathers stand on end. I stiffened, freezing in place. Not having noticed I’d stopped moving, Mr. Himichi collided into me, knocking me over. I hit the ground belly first, with a tremendous crash, crunching buildings beneath my scutes. Little pops tickled my chest as gas mains exploded. I pushed myself up with my hands, only to crack a hole in the ground as I pressed through the roof of a subway station.
Mr. Himichi helped me up by pulling on my arm and shell.
“Genneth,” he said, “what’s wrong?”
Turning around, I grabbed Mr. Himichi by the shoulders. “The Godsdial!” I said. “The Godsdial!"
“The what?”
The image of Kosuke flickered as we talked, pausing its speech.
“It’s a rock formation out in the Riscolts,” I explained. “Old Believers think that section of the mountains is part of the Hallowed Beast. According to their tradition, the Beast sleeps beneath the stone.”
My body tingled all over.
“Andalon, are you hearing this?” I asked.
“I don’t know what it is, Mr. Genneth. I… I think it’s imporptant!”
You bet your butt it’s important! I thought.
“It’s like all the myths are coming true,” I said. I shook my head. “By the Angel, the Hollowed Beast really does sleep beneath the earth…
My thoughts were running wild.
“What does this mean?” Mr. Himichi asked.
“It means the power of God is right beneath our feet!” I said. “And from there, the sky’s the limit. Who knows! Maybe we can use Its powers to fight off the darkness, or reconquer Paradise! Maybe we can undo the wyrm transformations and bring the dead back to life!”
Mr. Himichi nodded gravely. “Alright. I get it, I get it.” He turned to the kaiju at the horizon. “Let the man speak.”
I immediately clammed up. Kosuke resumed speaking a moment later, his image flickering no longer.
“Kléothag was injured. He didn’t have enough power to save himself, so he set himself to wake up if he sensed the arrival of anything strong enough to rescue him. The power that changed me into a kaiju triggered the alarm and woke Kléothag from his slumber.”
I gaped. He spoke with God!?
“But… I couldn’t save him,” Kosuke said, lowering his head in shame. “I was a false alarm, a rescuer who couldn’t rescue him.” He looked us in the eyes. “Kléothag is dying, Kosuke. He’s dying in my world, and he’s probably dying in yours, too, assuming he isn’t dead already.”