Author: Matthew Freese | Banner: Santiago Fontalvo

Harsh winds whipped across the surface of the dead world, once vibrant plains of green and oceans of blue now a single grey wasteland. Above, where there had once been an azure sky, there was now nothing, leaving only the blackness of space.

Stars glittered dimly in that dark curtain, images from millennia ago only now reaching this world. Before, they had been appreciated by all who walked this fertile ground, a sight of beauty to inspire and unite. But now, there was nobody to look upon them.

Nobody except the three-headed horror who had brought about this annihilation. In the radiance of those stars of the distant past were likely other planets who had met the same fate at his claws.

Golden scales interlocked upon the colossus’ body, forming an impenetrable armor. A duo of tails waved behind him, thin whip-like limbs which ended in spiked clubs. Legs like pillars supported his weight as he stared off into the sky, three coiling necks shifting subtly as the heads at their ends tilted their horns in search of a signal. Wild patches of dark hair swayed in the wind as the crescents upon each brow were pointed in every direction amidst the dragon’s search. Immense wings, golden sails upon which the demon king of the cosmos was ferried to his destinations, twitched in anticipation to begin another journey.

But the impetus would not arrive.

No matter where King Ghidorah flailed and twirled his heads, he could not find it. The driving force behind every last action the destroyer took, the sole thing that had been on his mind since birth.

Life, to destroy.

This planet had been picked clean, so there was nothing left for him to do but leave and descend upon the next. His horns served as his radar to find targets, life force pinging no matter where it lingered.

Yet only silence greeted him now.

High-pitched growls rolled from between his teeth. King Ghidorah’s wings flexed as they carried him into the air, leaving this victimized world behind. He did not even look back, all three sets of eyes forward to the wide void.

Time had no meaning. Not in the vacuum of space, unbound by the rotations that defined days and years. Not for a being who was biologically immortal, unaffected by the wearing down of cells that occurred in aging for most living things. And not in a universe where nobody was left to perceive it.

King Ghidorah traversed a million star systems, his horns scanning a hundred million, but there was nothing. Lifeless worlds, either by his actions or due to random chance condemning every soul upon them to oblivion, were all he saw spinning around uncaring stars. Just gray and brown spheres, some with magma spraying onto the surface like a pierced artery, others with tremendous craters blighting them. Where once the winds of his wingbeats cast living bodies to their doom, all they did now was disturb stone and dust that had once been skeletons.

Eventually, his travels lead him to a system that he felt subconsciously pulled to. If he was supposed to recognize it, however, he did not.

A red giant star pulsed at the center of the system, ancient and dying. Four gas giants drifted around it, as two more husks of rock and metal hung far too close to the doomed star. The closest one, actively being charred into nothingness, drew King Ghidorah’s eyes for reasons he did not know. Fragments of memory danced in his mind as he loomed over it, as if something noteworthy had happened here.

But like the fog when the Sun rose, it faded soon.

He chose to land on the other solid world in this system, a red sphere like the horrid ball of unstable plasma that dominated the skies. King Ghidorah stood there for a long while, threefold mind unusually calm.

Was this it? Was there nothing left in the universe but him? For as long as he had lived, he had only thought of destruction and death. He supposed at some point this would end in a complete annihilation of life, but that had never truly crossed his mind as he flailed and cackled madly amidst genocidal pleasures.

It was always a constant ringing in his heads, the presence of that scourge called life. Whether it was mere meters away or entire parsecs separated him from it, there was never a time he knew such silence as he did now.

His six eyes peered back and forth between themselves. The subtle swaying of his necks, the movement of his tongues against his teeth, the muscle contractions in his legs and wings. A chorus of pulsating meat and pumping liquid, emerging from within his chest and gut.

Life still existed.

But not for long.

With a haunting shriek, his three jaws bit down on his own necks. Like a tangle of fighting serpents they tore at each other, teeth grinding away and peeling off scales to get to the skin beneath. Cackles tore their way out from his mouths before they were filled with his own flesh, pain and pleasure filling him at once. Crimson blood ran down his lips, staining his golden scales and dripping down the red surface below.

Under a scarlet sun, upon red rock, crimson upon gold tearing into gold. The only death he could have asked for.

All three of his heads pulled back, tearing out chunks of skin and sinew with them. Frantically, he swallowed the pieces of his own necks, shaking with the same rabid glee a quadrillion lives had last seen, as he felt the meat and blood slide down into his stomach. His skulls bashed into one another, horns grinding against one another.

An eye popped as the crescent upon his center brow speared into the right head’s organ. Blackness covered a sixth of his vision, but it was not enough.

He was not striking the right spot.

Covered in their own blood, the three necks of the destroyer curled downwards. He looked at his abdomen, organic processes still churning onwards deep within.

Disgusting.

Golden bolts like lightning speared forth, crashing against his pectorals and kicking up sparks and smoke as the gravitonic forces peeled apart his armor. The anguish that filled him as they bored into his chest only pushed him forth. Eventually, he felt them break his skin, prompting him to stop.

A patch of burnt flesh marred his once perfect form, in the center of his chest. He swung his heads like hammers into his own body, puncturing that exposed area with his horns. Blood pumped out from the wounds, flowing in ever greater volume as he pushed his outer heads in opposite directions to widen the wound. His center jaws tore at what remained, peeling and spitting out strands of muscle as he worked his way deeper.

Agony and ecstasy flourished all throughout his form, pumping through him like the blood from his heart. Exhilaration and the desire to push it further eventually found his teeth and horns grinding against his ribcage, his outer heads tearing their way free to observe it as well.

Pale and dark red squished against one another underneath the bones that kept his abdomen together. Intestines churned as they digested his own flesh, organs he did not even know the function of throbbing against the coiled tubes.

Once more, his heads came down like hammers, cracking his ribs. When a horn got lodged between and punctured an organ within, freeing a dark liquid to flow, King Ghidorah shuddered. He thrashed that head back and forth, breaking the ribs trapping it before finally being freed. His teeth grasped the broken bones, a free head slamming into them further down to allow a large chunk to be ripped free.

With a series of groaning creaks, like a chopped tree falling under its own weight, two ribs came free and were tossed aside.

The demon king of the cosmos stared at his exposed organs for a moment, relishing in what he was about to do. His jaws lulled open, the golden glow of his destructive bliss forming in his throats.

Gravity Beams rippled forth, incinerating his own innards. Foul smelling fumes rose to the empty heavens as his blood and other bodily fluids boiled.

He fell to a knee, continuing to fire even as his body lost the strength to function. King Ghidorah wanted to feel every last bit of this, the joy immaculate as he finally purged the one lifeform who had escaped his notice for his entire existence.

Eventually, his rays faded, the organ responsible for powering them detonating and spraying out its flash-boiled meat due to the strain. King Ghidorah let loose one last laugh, his burned throats bleeding internally as he forced out a last decree of putrid joy to an empty existence.

And with that, he went limp, shredded heart ceasing its beat. And for the first time…

The universe finally knew stillness.