Chapter 44
“Revenge is always the weak pleasure of a little and narrow mind.”
— Juvenal
Crystal Empire
Titanus Amhuluk was dealt with. Mothra could not aid them any longer, for Titanus Rodan was locked in a deadly collision with her in the skies. And from what Celestia, Luna, and Cadance could see, Godzilla was losing steam. His fighting spirit was growing weary.
They didn’t understand why, but Godzilla was faltering.
It was noticeable the longer he and Ghidorah battled. Their raging clash tore apart the Crystal Empire to its roots, miles of devastation traveling from one end of the Empire to the other. Lying in the destruction were the unconscious forms of the defeated Titans, with the armies of the world having properly dealt with them. Containing them. Holding them still. Keeping them alive, per the orders of the Radiance and those that led them into battle.
But they couldn’t spare all of them. There were some casualties, as to be expected. Numerous lives from T.I.T.A.N. and from the world’s armies lost in the crossfire from the colossal beasts tearing one another apart. Even a couple of Titans lost their lives, despite T.I.T.A.N.’s best efforts. Sargon and Typhon’s bodies lay scorched and torn, crushed and bloody. Dead, without any hope of resuscitating them. Even then, there were still others fighting. Still so many still battling for dominance.
Godzilla and Ghidorah raged the longest, the hardest, the two alphas in the heart of the storm. King Ghidorah remained as vicious as ever, the bloodlust in his fearsome expressions never once cracking or falling apart. Godzilla, on the other hand, was slowing down considerably.
His dorsal plates pulsed brighter and brighter, steam radiating from each spine. The rainbow of colors and the whiteness clouding his veins were slowly consuming the rest of his body. With each thumping pulse of his radioactive heart, the infection only grew. The colors spread even further. The veins cracked deeper across the skin.
It was noticeably affecting him, the white cloud in Godzilla’s eyes fading and his pupils becoming visible. His breathing was heavy and ragged, his movements slowing considerably while his body only elevated in temperature. Deep within, he was reaching a critical breaking point. His heart and the power flowing throughout his being was growing so unbearably intense that Godzilla’s mind alone could not handle it. His body was finally beginning to weaken to the overwhelming forces clashing within him.
By then, Ghidorah had already taken advantage.
He shrieked, charging forward and flying over Godzilla’s head. Spinning around, he wrapped his tails around Godzilla’s neck, the Titan crying in shock at the action. He was suddenly yanked off his feet, pulled backward and crashing into various crystal structures. The devastation he crafted was catastrophic, paving a canyon of unhinged desolation with the body of another as his tool. Ghidorah proceeded to drag him for several hundred more yards, finally relinquishing him and sending Godzilla crashing and rolling across dozens of houses.
There he was laid, unmoving, hardly breathing, his eyelids slowly covering his wounded gaze. The Golden Devil zeroed in on him, poised for the kill with his fangs bared and forked tongues flicking in unsatiated desire. That desire for blood was not met, for when the Alicorns finally struck it earned the king’s attention almost immediately.
The powers of the ones who once wielded the sun and the moon could be felt as if they still controlled such celestial bodies. Ni and Ichi visibly flinched back and stumbled as the golden and dark blue beams pierced his armored hide. It was joined shortly by the light blue magical blast from a certain Princess of Love, the explosion striking Ichi right between the eyes and earning a piercing roar from the center head. San and Ni focused forward, hissing at the approaching insects.
Across the blizzard they soared, all three Alicorns pelting the tyrant king with unrelenting magical beams. Their intent wasn’t to defeat him, or to even hurt him. They knew their power alone wasn’t strong enough to match Ghidorah’s. It was never their goal to try and match him; it was only their goal to try and distract him. To keep him busy while Godzilla recovered.
His recovery was slow. Agonizingly slow. Godzilla crawled back up to his feet, slamming his claws against the rooftops of different buildings just to try and bring himself to stand. Steam and heat were exhausted from his jaws, his eyes flicking open and closed again and again. He needed a minute more to fully stand, to ready himself for the next inevitable round with the Demon of the Stars.
And there was Ghidorah, as relentless as ever, cackling and stampeding his way to Godzilla once more. The only thing stopping him now were the Alicorns.
“Our magic…!” Luna cried, keeping up the pressure on the charging hydra. She grunted, “… will not hold him back forever, sister!”
“Godzilla isn’t ready!” Cadance added, twisting her wide and worrisome eyes rapidly back.
“Ugh!” Celestia grunted, her furious expression tightened as her golden beam struck Ghidorah’s hide and didn’t even slow him down. His rushing body only proceeded to tear through the crystals before him, his hellish glare latched only with his rising foe. His storm pushed and pulled on the Alicorns, but they remained. Their magic continued to fire. Their hearts continued to race.
Their resolve remained unshaken.
Celestia knew they had no choice now. “Sedate him!” she screamed
“Which head?!” Luna immediately responded.
“No heads!” her sister shouted back. “Go for the heart!”
There was no argument. No time for it. What little time they had was spent gathering their magic to the appropriate power. They flew together, all three Alicorns lifting their heads high and simultaneously firing off a sedative spell. All three colors clashed, the piercing gold, dark and light blue all colliding in mid-air, spinning toward its target, and meeting Ghidorah dead in the chest. The dragon did not dodge it. The dragon did not have the time to.
A direct hit…
… and yet nothing.
Maybe there was a moment where their hope had risen, where Ghidorah had nearly lost his footing and was pushed backward from the force of the blast. The magic surely had pierced him, but to their horror mere seconds later... he did not fall. Their power was not able to control him. His was an alien power, a force of unknown and unimaginable strength. He did not belong to their natural world. His powers were not bound to theirs. They could not match him. They could not control him.
They could not defeat him.
His glare could melt through solid earth, seeing only the three Alicorns that dared to defy him. They were frozen under the heat of his glare, still shocked to see their magic having no effect despite a perfect hit. By the time they did react, it was nearly too late.
King Ghidorah lifted all three of his heads. His jaws fell open and an electrifying current began to flow up inside his towering necks. He breathed in so deeply that his chest practically inflated like a balloon. And then, he breathed and let loose an ear-splitting, storm-tearing, earth-shattering scream to coincide with his triple gravity beams. Where all three were intended for each Alicorn.
Finally, the sisters came to. They blinked and breathed and ignited their horns while Cadance was still trapped under the blinding rays only intensifying her way. Frozen to it all, Cadance did nothing as the gravity beams reached her. She blinked once more, and Celestia and Luna were there beside her, having formed a protective shield around her. Around them.
Cadance held her breath. Stopped breathing altogether when the gravity beams struck.
The impact was deafening, a clash of magical forces both ethereal and extraterrestrial. Of Equus and of the invasive species. Two of the greatest magical users on the planet met the power of the One Who is Many, where his strength came from the stars. From powers beyond their mortal world. That imbalance was properly shown, as the sheer force of the gravity beams pushed back the bubble the three Alicorns were encased in. Even when Cadance finally joined them and added her magic to the concoction, it mattered little. They fought hard, and they fought long. They fought their hearts out, and it still wasn’t enough.
Ghidorah pressed even harder, and they soared.
They flew over Godzilla’s head, the gravity beams ceasing and their shield crumbling once it made impact with the earth. And once it did, all three Alicorns crashed and rolled. For so very far. In an unrelenting display of bodily torment, only then did they finally come to rest. They slid, all three of them separated across the street, but still somehow together. All finally resting, lying, breathing so very softly.
Blood coated their bodies and bruises painted their limbs, their wings. They were all barely awake, the darkness wanting to cloud their visions but not a single one of them relenting. The sounds of chaos and warfare kept them awake, the mere shadow of an idea of their absence being the downfall of Equestria too much for them to bear. So, they fought on, in their own internal battle to stay awake and stay alive.
They fought and fought and fought…
Until the darkness returned.
The darkness surrounded them, but this was not an internal struggle. No longer. This was something they all felt at once. This was real, happening all around them. All of them together, seeing and feeling and breathing in the shadows shrouding the street. Lying in the ruins, Celestia and Luna tilted their heads to the see the mists of blackness slithering around. Cadance flicked her eyes back and forth, somehow finding the strength to tighten her jaw and lift her head.
She, too, saw the blackness. She saw the shadows like serpents slithering around her, around them. The silence was stifling, and soon it all ended when their breaths were not alone, but joined by another. When the light from the storm and the lightning was doused in a blanket of shadow and they lifted their heads simultaneously to the sky.
And saw King Sombra glaring down at them.
He was practically silent in his approach, startling considering his immense size and MUTO form. Yet he was not constrained by Jinshin-Mushi’s body. His unholy dark arts and magical prowess enabled Sombra to flow as his equine body once had, moving with the shadows and as silent as them. Each of his massive forelimbs were crushing one end of the road to the next, his head hovering over the three Alicorns while his pulsating green visor showered them with light.
Far behind him, Methuselah and the Queen MUTO lay bleeding and defeated. The shadows curled around their bodies and slowly slithered away, leaving the two Titans barely alive from Sombra’s rampage. Those shadows curled throughout the Empire, washing it in an eternal embrace of cold, terrifying, inky blackness.
Those shadows all curled around Sombra. All surrounded the street as his glare zeroed in on the three Alicorns. The banes of his existence. The two who had managed to conquer his Empire and banish him to the deepest, darkest hells of the Frozen North. The one who kept him trapped outside of his own Empire, laid claim to it alongside her nuisance of a husband. The audacity. The travesty. The mere thought of it made Sombra practically breathe raging flames from his jaws.
Instead, he breathed only a soft and trembling growl, his jaws opening wider as his head fell slow to the three Alicorns. Celestia, Luna, and Cadance did nothing, could do nothing. Their bodies were beaten and their magic was all but extinguished. They watched in frozen, perpetuating stillness as Sombra’s quaking groans tremored the shattered earth they laid on. And, dare they say it, they felt a piercing rod of fear strike their hearts and keep them impaled to the street.
Sombra breathed in their fear… and relished in it. How long had he desired to taste Celestia’s deepest fears? How long had Luna hid behind the façade of bravery, only to reveal her true self in her final moments? How sweet was Princess Cadance’s fear brought to its fullest once more, rivaling even that of when Sombra conquered her home, held her child in his grasp, and watched them bow in defeat before him. The fear then was raw, real and true. He tasted it now all the same.
But his desires and his intentions were not to elongate their destruction, even if he so wanted to bathe in their fears. To watch them suffer, as he had suffered. To hear their tormented cries begging for release, begging him to kill them, only to have their cries echo louder, reach far wider, and let their closest friends hear them wail. To show the world that they succumbed to his terror, that the rulers who once wielded the mightiest powers ever seen on Equus now yielded and cried and perished to him, it would have been so satisfying. And yet Sombra had a greater reward in mind. He intended for something far simpler.
Intending for nothing more than the kill.
He needed nothing more than that. It was all he desired for the ones who had taken all he had built and twisted it into their vision. Their deaths would bring him more satisfaction than the death of the great serpent. But to rival his coming world empire, Sombra did not believe anything could be more satisfying than that. Their deaths certainly came close, for it was a vengeance more than a thousand years brewing. For a vengeance that was finally ready to be satisfied.
Sombra opened his maw wider, his teeth mere feet from their heads.
But just then, he heard them…
From his shadows hiding in every corner of the Crystal Empire, he heard them approaching. Galloping. Flying. Stampeding his way. Sombra closed his mouth only slightly.
Down the road to his far left, he tilted his head to see them. The Elements of Harmony. Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy flying as fast as their wings could push them. Rarity and Applejack galloping as quickly as their strength could give. Pinkie Pie breaking the laws of physics and bouncing, zipping, flying, and racing from one building top to the other. Twilight Sparkle leading them all from above, the Alicorn holding the ferocious stare of a princess intending to defend her friends. Her heart could be felt in the cry she gave. Raw, powerful, true, the testaments to a real and rightful leader.
Just then, Sombra felt her cry and realized that he would have never been satisfied just with the Alicorns. It was them. The Elements of Harmony, the ones who had miraculously bested him in one fatal fluke that never should have been. They were the ones he desired beneath his global empire. They were the ones whose deaths would cement his unstoppable rule.
Twilight, the Elements, Celestia… they were all going to perish this day.
At last, he was ready. The time was now.
For a vengeance finally ready to be satisfied.
First chapter o the new year whoop
Wow, and considering this is the first chapter of the new year, this is great and wow this is gonna be interesting on what Sombra might do to take out the elements and the princesses, and man, Godzilla is really putting up the fight with his arch enemy, awesome work on this chapter, keep up the great work
Oh Shit Godzilla is starting to reach critical mass like in the movie and it's being a real bitch in the worst time, here I thought Harmony magic would be much more stable than Nuclear energy.
The outcome of the Alicorns vs Ghidorah was expected after all what good is their combined magic when the latter's power makes Tirek's with all the magic of Equestria(their's, Twilight's and Discord's included) look like a mere thug to a Olympic body builder.
Shit and here I thought Godzilla was going to use the Infamous Kiss of Death on Sombra M.U.T.O like in 2014, they just better know how to make him stay still this time.
What a good thing to start off the year with. Happy new year, by the way.
Yeah, not having computers to know what the hell's going on with the giant lizard is kind of a pain. Tho this is to be expected, Godzilla wasn't built to use such power, much less so for extended periods of time like here.
Harmony energy or however you want to call it may be in theory more stable than nuclear energy but what they're doing here is like trying to run an electric car with fossil fuels, maybe the car will handle it for some time but it sure as hell won't hold for long.
Not to mention that the Elements aren't exactly weak, so even for Gojira that kind of power must be overwhelming, at least in the long run. It's a wonder he's even been holding that long without any problems.
This here represents almost perfectly the situation that happened in Godzilla VS Destoroyah: Godzilla's got so much power that his body can't handle it, and if nothing's done soon he won't live to tell the tale, and neither will anyone in a pretty damn big radius.
Fighting a fight you know you can't win may be foolish in most case, but here I'd say it's more a proof of bravery than anything. Well, that and the fact that if Gojira dies, they all die too. But it's commendable for them to take that stand nonetheless. Would "outdated but not obsolete" fit here ?
I quite enjoy the reminder that Ghidorah's not from Earth. It's something that people often forget (well, aside from some incarnations of it that are from Earth) and that make him act like a terrestrial creature aside from his origins without any change. Even if it's more to just represent his overwhelming power here, it's a good judgment to say that because he's not from Equus, he'd be affected by magic differently by it.
Even if realistically he'd most likely be even more affected by it as his body wouldn't be used to its effects, but what has realism to do in a story about magical ponies and giant monsters ?It's a wonder she's still alive at this point in the series and this story too. She's been kidnapped by a love-eating bug, she's been thrown like a javelin from a balcony by her own husband while she was completely exhausted from multiple days of casting the same spell, she's been kidnapped by a love-eating bug again and here she basically lets herself be hit by an alien gravity-altering lightning bolt. She's either extremely lucky in her unluck or very unlucky in her luck, choose which one.
Still gotta hand it to them for holding that long and for not straight up dying to it. That's a feat in of itself given that even Gojira himself has some trouble dealing with them.
Sombra, never missing an opportunity to be a vulture. But I guess you can't blame him too much as he's completely outclassed in power terms by the two alphas and his forces are slowly losing ground. Still a dick move tho.
But I need to hand it to him, taking on two Kaijus at once is a pretty good feat, even if one of them was basically an "inferior" version of his current body.
A wise choice to just end your enemy while they're completely defenseless. However it would have been a better idea to do it right away instead of pondering until the Elements arrived.
As Pinkie Pie would. Because of course she would.
If I had a cent for every time a villain, actually scratch that, just Sombra said that his enemies "would perish this day" or something similar, I'd probably have enough money to buy myself a piece of candy or something. Still, perseverance and confidence are qualities.
Overall a pretty cool chapter that sets up the coming Thermonuclear (or Thermomagical ? still not settled on that one) form of Gojira and also Sombra's downfall which I must admit I am quite happy that it appears it'll come from the Elements and not another Kaiju, gives them a pretty good role instead of having Gojira take up all the spotlight. Truly a great chapter to start the year with.
As for the art comment, while there's definitely less to say about it than the previous ones, it's of course still really good and I gotta say that I really appreciate the gradient of the bubble to show that all three of them are using their magic to "power" it. I also like the fact that even if they're somewhat subtle, possibly hinting to its regenerative factor, Ghidorah has some bruises on its necks to show that it has taken some damage during the fact.
I also only noticed now, but each head has unique variations in shape. San's got a more rounded and angular shape to his head, possibly to represent a less aggressive nature when compared to the other two. Ichi has more square and cubic features, maybe to represent that it's the center head and that its personality is the "normal" one of the three heads. And Ni has much sharper and straight features, which I assume is to represent its more aggressive nature out of the 3.
I say it often but all those small details really give life to the art pieces and to the characters in the story as a whole, which is great. They're not just words on a page and lines on a blank slate but developed characters with personalities, even for the Kaijus. And even if the story itself does most of the character building job, those art pieces along with those small details do a magnificent job at amplifying it.
11104386 whoop whoop
11104410 Thank you!
11104780 Godzilla's nearly ready to blow!
11104974 Thanks a ton for all the comments on this chapter! Glad you enjoyed it! I'm sure Shrek appreciates all the positive feedback on his artwork as well.
11105204
This calls for celebration!
Whoop whoop whoop!
Ghidorah, you are gonna pass out, and you are gonna like it!
Don't you ever give up, Edgelord?
11105616 He never gives up haha
11105627
I can’t wait to see his face when he gets blasted into oblivion!
11105627
I am so ready for a bad@ss ending like
"I will always come back.", Sombra said with confidence
However, how can Heaven or Tartarus welcome a soul that doesn't exist?
The Elements of Harmony destroyed his soul. Making sure that not a single bit of his soul escapes from his punishment.
11105627
This is getting f**ked up and I like it.
Oh, shit's about to go down.
11107342 yessiiiiiiiiir
11107409
And it’s gonna be glorious
First we attack his heart!!!
Definitely think Sombra is focusing a bit too much on vengeance since he still has 2 alpha Titans to kill if he wants to win.
11109011 True! He's letting his lust for vengeance get in the way of his goal.
11109026
Literally everyone: How many times do we have to kill you before you give up!?
Sombra:
Sombra is so obsessed with vengeance he doesn't even realize he has already lost!
The alicorns did a good job holding Ghidorah off as long as they could. But Godzilla is still in trouble right now.