By James Webster

Prologue:

Suffering. Agony. Raw, aching, torturing pain overflowed the beings tired, but acute soul. Overflowed its spirit. The ravaged beast had been taxed to his limits. The battle had been long, had been savage, and had been more than he could take.

A long mournful elephantine roar filled the skies, as the gigantic reptile, Gamera struggled to rise. The legs trembled and quivered. The mighty limbs were like pistons, tens of thousands of pounds of white bone, sunk in thick ropes of muscles, sheathed over in a gleam of a jade color scaly-like skin. Almost like the mail of some terrible warrior. Each powerful clawed arm were tons of meat, bone, and blood mesh.

His left arm scourged with pain. His hand had been taken from him, through his own sacrifice. The lacerations dripped and trickled with sanguine fluids. Rancored pools of his own blood filled the streets. Dribbling from houses and signs, the red life-giving fluid gave testament to the war that had been fought.

After what seemed an eternity of endless agony, the monster stood. His great and nightmarish head, a ton of sculpted stone, lifting into the ash filled sky. Gamera’s mouth gaped, exposing its many small bony teeth. The two large saber-like canine fangs dripped with blood. His blood.

The city of Kyushu, meanwhile burned on. The rain had stopped, and the fires that had greeted him, burned with new intensity. Hellfire and brimstone raced through what remained of the once beautiful city. Black clouds of smoldering soot filled the air. The brief drafts of wind doing little to remove the poisonous smoke. Whatever the fire didn’t kill, the fumes of ash would.

With each movement, Gamera wailed in pain. His spiny carapace, of armored scaly plates clanging together with each step. The shell glittered like a million emerald coins, each bolt of lightening bringing brief flashes of reflected light.

Far away, off to the distance, he could hear the sound. He could sense the rushing wave of evil. The plague of darkness that was coming for him. Hundreds of the vile and corrupted Gyaos were swarming, congesting. Death is what they screamed for. His death.

Slowly craning his neck, he faced her. The one who first brought him back. She brought him to save what he was destined to. His eyes, tinged with tiredness. Burned and ached. Almost glazing over. So much did he want to fall and rest, but his will would not let him. He could not. He must do it for her; he must do it for the world he so loved. The world he was created to protect. And the creatures he was to destroy.

The city, without warning, was then rented and filled by a deafening roar. The air tingling with an unnatural scathing heat.

The ground beneath the mammoth turtle, suddenly gave way. The harsh, scalding plasma fire blasted from the hind leg ports. The strange blue flames jetting the terrapin creature, screaming into the atmosphere. The air was within seconds fresh and crisp. Leaving the burning city and ashy sky, the Guardian of Earth raced to his death. The swarm was too large, to many. Even in full condition he could not win. But he would still try. For her, for this world. One way or another the future of either creatures was going to end.