Space tore like wet parchment. Purple lightning crackled across scales harder than diamond, melting the cosmic dust clinging to his back. Gorgo roared, a sound that shattered passing space-debris, though no ears remained to hear his agony. Bitter guilt burned hotter than the radiation eating his flesh. Images of his homeworld flashed in his mind—the sacred peaks of Gorgaras crumbling, the hatchlings crying out as the void swallowed them whole. He had failed them. Ripped away by a sudden, violent tear in reality, he had left them to rot in the cold dark. Falling. Tumbling through a kaleidoscope of broken dimensions, he watched his home fade into a speck of dying light. Suffocating rage filled his massive chest. His heavy tail thrashed, striking a stray meteor and reducing it to powder. Why had he survived when they had perished? Gravity suddenly grabbed him with invisible, crushing hands. Oxygen burned in his nostrils, a strange, toxic chemical mixture that tasted of salt and nitrogen. Clouds shattered around his descending bulk. Friction ignited his skin, turning him into a falling star of blue fire. Wind howled in his ears, a high-pitched scream of pressure and heat that threatened to peel his protective outer hide away. He closed his inner eyelids, bracing for the inevitable impact with whatever lay below. This was a world of water and dirt, a primitive sphere he had only glimpsed from the edge of the cosmos. Now, he was falling into its depths, a discarded god cast out from his throne. --- Water met flesh with the force of a nuclear detonation. Ocean water boiled instantly, vaporizing into a massive wall of white steam that rushed toward the sky. Gorgo sank deep into the dark depths, his massive claws digging into the ocean floor to arrest his momentum. Silt and sand swirled around his burning eyes. Pain racked his giant frame, but the cold water was a mercy to his scorched hide. He stood upright, his head breaking the surface of the alien sea. Air rushed into his lungs, heavy and wet, unlike the crisp cosmic winds of Gorgaras. This was a prison. This was a strange, soft world, and he was entirely alone. Memories of the screaming hatchlings echoed in his skull. His chest tightened with a physical ache that no physical wound could match. Weakness had allowed this. He had been too slow, too fragile, and now his world was dead. A low, rumbling growl vibrated through his throat, shaking the waves for miles. --- Metal giants floated on the horizon. Gray, blocky shapes cut through the steam, their hulls painted with strange symbols. Flashing red lights blinked from their towers. A high-pitched, irritating sound began to pierce the air—sirens, wailing in panic. Pings echoed through the water, vibrating against his inner ears. Active sonar searched him, mapping his massive silhouette. Gorgo bared his teeth, rows of jagged white daggers dripping with superheated saliva. These small, metallic insects dared to hunt him? These fragile creatures presumed to challenge a god? Fire bloomed from the decks of the gray ships. Missiles escalated across the darkened sky, leaving white trails of smoke in their wake. Explosions erupted against his shoulder, throwing sparks and soot across his blue-black scales. They didn't pierce his armor, but the impact jarred his bruised flesh. Anger, volatile and blinding, pushed aside his grief. He snarled, his hot breath vaporizing the seawater that splashed against his chest. Men on the decks of those metal vessels stared up in absolute horror, their tiny faces pale under the searchlights. They were nothing but ants playing with fire, entirely unaware of the cosmic titan they had just provoked. He would show them the true meaning of wrath. --- Water churned as underwater missiles sped toward his legs. Torpedoes struck his shins, detonating in a series of muffled, concussive thuds. Sharp pain flared through his lower limbs, forcing him to take a halting step backward. He hissed, steam rising from his parted jaws as the shockwaves rattled his bones. These gnats had teeth. These tiny, fragile beings dared to draw his blood on this wretched, alien world. Rage swamped his mind, obliterating the lingering fog of his spatial travel. He roared, a sound that shattered the glass windows of every ship within a five-mile radius. Screaming metal echoed across the water as his massive tail lashed out. A destroyer, caught in the path of his tail, was snapped in half like a dry twig. Fire leaped from its broken hull, reflecting in the black water. Above him, the sky began to screech. Iron birds with fixed wings descended from the clouds, their engines roaring like dying beasts. They dropped heavy payloads of explosives directly onto his head. Smoke and fire enveloped his skull, blinding him for a crucial second. He swatted at the sky, his massive claws cutting through the air with supersonic speed. One iron bird caught the edge of his claw and disintegrated into a ball of burning fuel. Another crashed directly into the sea, its pilot unable to pull up in time. Gorgo did not celebrate. He only felt an all-consuming need to destroy every single thing that moved. His guilt demanded blood. If he could not protect his own world, he would make sure this one suffered for its insolence. More jets screamed overhead, their machine guns spitting lines of yellow tracer fire that pinged harmlessly off his neck. He ignored the stinging fire, focusing on the source of the steel hornets. Across the choppy black waters, the carrier loomed, a floating fortress of metal. He wanted it broken. He wanted them all to feel the weight of his loss. --- An aircraft carrier, the largest of the metal beasts, tried to turn away in a desperate attempt to escape. Its massive propellers churned the water into a white frenzy. Gorgo would not let it flee. He lunged forward, his massive body displacing millions of gallons of water. Each step shook the seabed, sending tremors through the tectonic plates deep below. He reached the carrier in seconds, his towering form casting a shadow of absolute doom over the deck. Men in yellow and red vests ran in every direction, throwing themselves into the freezing water. He brought his massive fists down on the flight deck. Steel buckled under his strength. Fighter jets parked on the deck were crushed flat, their fuel tanks igniting in a chain reaction of explosions. He gripped the edge of the carrier and pulled, tilting the ninety-thousand-ton vessel onto its side. Water rushed into the hangars, dragging the colossal ship down into the dark depths. Screams of the drowning sailors faded beneath the roaring of the flames and the crashing waves. He watched the giant sink, his expression cold and unyielding. No pity lived in his heart today. Only a hollow, devouring emptiness remained. --- Deep within his chest, a blue glow began to hum. Energy surged from his twin hearts, traveling up his spine and lighting his dorsal plates one by one. Ocean water around him began to hiss and bubble. He opened his massive maw, the air around his teeth distorting from the sheer heat. A beam of pure, concentrated plasma erupted from his throat. This spit ray, capable of carving canyons into his homeworld, sliced through the dark night. It swept across the water, vaporizing three remaining destroyers instantly. Steam blinded the remaining forces, but the smell of melting iron remained. He roared again, a challenge to this entire foreign planet. Every vessel that had dared to stand against him was now nothing but sinking scrap metal and burning oil. Silence descended, broken only by the crackle of burning wreckage. He stood amidst the graveyard of his enemies, chest heaving, his claws dripping with soot and salt. --- Loneliness settled over him like a suffocating weight. Staring up at the alien sky, he recognized none of the stars. Constellations he had never seen blinked back at him, cold and indifferent. His home was gone. Trapped in this concrete-choked, fragile world, he was surrounded by weaklings who feared his power. A deep breath filled his lungs with the scent of burning oil and ozone. He was the last of his kind. A failure. Bitter guilt twisted in his gut, a sharp, physical pain that demanded release. He wanted to tear this world apart, to burn every city until it matched the ash of Gorgaras. But his thoughts were cut short. A strange vibration hummed through the soles of his feet, traveling up from the abyssal trench below. It was not the mechanical vibration of human machines. This was organic. Malice, ancient and hungry, radiated from the dark abyss. Water around his knees began to swirl. Bubbles rose to the surface, smelling of sulfur and rot. Deep in the dark, a dormant terror stirred, disturbed by his violent arrival. He tensed his muscles, his tail dropping low into the water as he braced for a threat. Human ships were gone. Only the dead remained on the surface, but the depths were coming alive. He stared down, his slit-pupil eyes straining to see through the murk. As the last burning destroyer sinks, the ocean depths below Gorgo begin to boil with a sickly, bioluminescent green light that is definitely not human in origin.

Chapter 1: Ash of the Cosmos