Terra Monstrum

Chapter 12: Murmur

It was a warm, breezy morning, the Shobijin kneeled in meditation beneath a tall pine. This was a daily ritual for them, used it to clear their minds and connect with the spirit of the Earth. They could feel her heart beat today, but strong as ever, but slow and weary. A spiderweb of aches and pains stretched across her globe, each strand leading to a singular center: the mistakes of a few powerful, shortsighted men. Movement pulsed through that web, wrathful and sporadic. Another soul had become entangled in its thread, thrashing and fighting against the fate it had received. A monster. The Shobijin would have to memorize it's location and investigate later. Unfortunate, but a daily fact of life by this point.

They were just about to stand and end their prayer when something seized them. Dread. Cold, heavy, palpable dread. It reached through the colorless void to touch them, wrapping its long, oily fingers around their twin hearts and dragging them into another time. They felt the air around them grow salty and hot. Smoke flooded their lungs, and fire and blood danced around them. A cacophony of indescribable animalistic fear fell on both their ears, and a titanic silver monolith rose before them. Its featureless mass parted the heavens, then shattered, split from the inside out by its own beating heart.

The fairies snapped awake, gasping for air. Pale white light illuminated their fragile forms, and not a gust of wind blew. The warmth of morning had completely gone, replaced by stark blue night.

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In far off, sunny Australia, Anguirus plodded along the coast in search of trouble. He had felt the fairies call on him early that morning, but for what, he wasn't sure. It was less of a direct request and more of a vague, unspoken feeling. They didn't or perhaps couldn't tell him what he was up against, expressing only fear and urgency, over and over again. It was a confusing and rather unsettling way to start his day, but he trusted that anything that important to the cosmos must be worth his time.

Apparently it was not just him that had been summoned, though. He had crossed paths with Titanosaurus earlier, gliding through the waves in the small hours of the morning, and now he felt a familiar vibration in the ground that no doubt meant Baragon. Rodan passed overhead, and a deep call in the distance sounded like Caesar. Was everyone here?

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Farther along in Sydney, a bizarre spectacle was unfurling at the Harbour Bridge. Refuges, wealthy tourists and local onlookers crowded around the water's edge, inching as close as possible and packing themselves like sardines to get in line for their photo opp. The center of their attention dangled from beneath the structure, swaying weakly and connecting it to the water. It looked like a pair or ropes, or perhaps large cables, but no one had put them there. Each was moving slightly on its own, subtly twisting and squeezing independent of the wind. Police offers had already confirmed that the ends were not knots, but rather wiggling, worm-like ends that had affixed themselves to the suspension.

"What do you think it is?" one woman murmured in the crowd.

"A plant? Like some kinda seaweed, maybe?" asked another.

"No, I don't believe kelp grows like that..." concluded a nearby man.

"Sea trash, then? A loose cable?" they suggested.

"My money's on an octopus!" said an excited child. "A real big one, like from a Hollow!"

"It can't be any of that stuff ya pelican, they said they couldn't cut through it." interjected his teenage brother.

"Can't cut through it?" a peer inquired.

"Yeah," the older boy explained, "I asked that police officer right over there. Said they've been havin' a go at it all morning, won't budge an inch. They broke a chainsaw tryin' to cut through it."