You probably need to be brought up to speed, don’t you? It has been a pretty long time, I guess… even longer than it feels. I’ll start from the beginning, then.
Ten years ago I was on one of my mountain hikes when I did something stupid. I found something I’d never seen before, a round metal object, and like a dummy I went and picked it up, bare handed. As soon as I did the thing clung to me like a magnet and starting burning like hell. Eventually I got it off, but when I did it broke into a million pieces, and they were so brittle that all I have left is dust. Since then I’ve figured out where the sphere came from and what it was doing to me (at least in a general sense), but if you asked what it was for or what it was made out of I still couldn’t hazard a guess.
Without anything left to show I figured there wasn’t any point in telling anyone, so I just kept an eye on my health and tried to go about the rest of my week like normal. It didn’t work. The sphere’d changed me on some level: not physically or genetically (the doctors said everything looked normal to them), but somehow I was getting stronger and faster. I just woke up one morning and accidentally ripped my sink off the wall.
Then the mental side effects came in. At first I thought I was going crazy, like I had schizophrenia or something, because I kept hearing these voices. Technically “hearing” isn’t the best word for it, but it’s so hard to describe to someone who’s never felt it…
You know how in those old science fiction stories there were always those psychic people called telepaths? The ones who could just look into someone’s head and know exactly what they were thinking? Well, I was becoming what’s called an empath, which is kind of the same idea, but with feelings instead of thoughts. Without even meaning to I was picking up on the emotions of everyone and everything around me, so it kept feeling like I wasn’t alone in my own head anymore. In a way I guess I sorta wasn’t.
For about a week after I went on like that, accidentally using this new sense I’d acquired and losing my composure. Getting freakishly strong overnight was hard enough to get used to, but the “voices” were just too much. I was sure there was something wrong with me, and no matter which doctor I went to or what medicine I took, nothing helped. So I got desperate. Really desperate.
Instead of trying to shut the “voices” out, I started listening to them. I realized that one in particular was louder than all the rest, and I got it in my head that if I went looking then maybe I could find out who they were, and somehow that might give me answers. It sounds like a terrible idea now, almost as stupid as sticking your hand on some damn thing you’ve never seen before, but sure enough it actually worked. I found out exactly who that “voice” was coming from.
A kaiju. Theraga.
I’m sure I never would have gone if I’d known he wasn’t a person, but I’m glad I did. It was my first step towards being able to see things the way they really are. Kaiju aren’t demons, or even monsters, really. Not the kind we’re used to, at least. They’re like the minds of human beings, in the bodies of natural disasters. Nature personified. None of them are inherently good or evil, but they’re all smart enough to make that choice for themselves, and strong enough that when they do the whole world feels it.
Theraga’s one of the good ones, just a big, saber toothed softy. I was terrified of him at first, of course, but his only reaction to seeing me was curiosity. Once I understood he wasn’t gonna eat me, I gave the empathy thing a shot and… well, I guess you could say the rest is history now, huh?
Fast forward ten years. Me and the big guy have been keeping ourselves busy; we’re officially partners now, part of a larger alliance tasked with the protection of the human race. No big deal. We’re actually a really good team now, because even though he can’t talk, we’ve gotten to know each other so well that he doesn’t need to. We’ve been all over the continent, doing everything in our power to be a force for good. Stopped disasters, shut down a terrorist organization, and yeah, fought a whole lot of kaiju.
It hasn’t all been fighting, though. Remember how I said I figured out more about that orb? That’s because I found more of them up in the mountains, and the place where I think they came from: the Gens Perdita. The scholars all said it was the greatest discovery of the modern day, but unfortunately there’s a little more to it than that. The day I set foot in that ship was the day I changed Tarrun.
The Gens Perdita is not of this world. My team and I checked it out front to back and so did others; there’s not a single bit of that craft made from materials found on Tarrun, and what’s left of the captain sure doesn’t look human. There’s tech on that ship so advanced it makes the Iridians look like cavemen. The computers look nothing like machinery and the holding cells in the back are taller than a house. I can’t think of anywhere else those orbs could’ve come from, but at this point they’re the least of our concerns.
New technology comes with new information. Cracking the Perdita’s archives took linguists years, and time after time their breakthroughs always lead to some kind of suspicious disaster that sent our knowledge backwards. When I interfered enough to finally get the truth out, the public lost their mind. Riots in the streets, vandals after the ship, and more than a few attempts on my life. People just couldn’t handle what the Gens Perdita had to say.
The alien race that built her, whoever they were… they knew our gods. The Elder seven, straight out of Hebdomism. And they did not have kind words for them.
The Elder Gods, the peaceful and all-knowing deities that most of modern civilization’s been worshipping for centuries, are assholes. They’re not divine, they didn’t make Tarrun, and they don’t care about us. They’re cosmic parasites.
The ship’s archives say they feed off of emotion, so to ensure a steady supply they masquerade as gods and surround themselves with sentient life. If all goes as planned they get pampered and praised for as long as their subjects exist, constantly growing stronger from the misguided love being heaped on them. And if it doesn’t go so well? Then they keep their subjects in a state of perpetual torture to harvest their suffering. Either way it makes no difference to them. Food’s food.
Now that the toku’s out of the bag, you can probably guess which fate they have in store for us. As I write, the gods are already descending on our world. The first one touched down in Nalassa this morning and it was a bloodbath. All seven will be here by the end of the day, and I can confidently say that we as a species are not even remotely equipped to defeat them. A lot of people still don’t even believe that we need to.
There is one key thing working to our advantage, though. Our planet is infested with their natural enemies.
Whatever kaiju are- mutants, mega-fauna, some other kind of “god”- they’re the antithesis of the seven. They’re the only thing we know of that comes anywhere close to being as powerful as them, and I’ve seen with my own two eyes that they can hurt each other. The builders of the Gens Perdita knew it way before I did, because that’s exactly why they built it. The cells in the ship’s rear are all locked and full of comatose kaiju. Monsters from other planets that they gathered up as their army against the gods. I guess they got found out and wrecked before they could ever use it.
There’s something else, too. Not quite as amazing as a celestial conspiracy, I suppose, but pretty close.
We’re not alone. Not just in the universe… but on the planet. Tarrun is not the only continent. We are not the only humans. And there are many, many more monsters than Theraga and I ever could have imagined.
Now we just have to figure out how to get them on our side.
Did I reblog this, or did I just like it so that I would be able to go back and reblog it later at a more opportune time?
I don’t remember…
I don’t think you did, but at any rate thank you for doing so!
