“I have not heard before of Ragnarok,” said Gangler; “what hast thou to tell me about it?”
“There are many very notable circumstances concerning it,” replied Har, “which I can inform thee of. In the first place will come the winter, called Fimbul-winter, during which snow will fall from the four corners of the world; the frosts will be very severe, the wind piercing, the weather tempestuous, and the sun impart no gladness. Three such winters shall pass away without being tempered by a single summer. Three other similar winters follow, during which war and discord will spread over the whole globe. Brethren for the sake of mere gain shall kill each other, and no one shall spare either his parents or his children.
“Then shall happen such things as may truly be accounted great prodigies. The wolf shall devour the sun, and a severe loss will that be for mankind. The other wolf will take the moon, and this too will cause great mischief. Then the stars shall be hurled from the heavens, and the earth so violently shaken that trees will be torn up by the roots, the tottering mountains tumble headlong from their foundations, and all bonds and fetters be shivered in pieces. Fenrir then breaks loose, and the sea rushes over the earth, on account of the Midgard serpent turning with giant force, and gaining the land. On the waters floats the ship Naglfar, which is constructed of the nails of dead men.
—the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson, translation by I.A. Blackwell
Kong’s rage built as he charged alongside Godzilla. The Skar King was riding Ice Breath and he was shaking Kong’s axe in one hand. His axe. The other apes came behind him. The apes for which Kong had searched so long, that he had hoped would be his family. But they hadn’t been what he hoped, and now he had to fight them.
Of course. He had been fighting since he could remember. It was what he did.
He hoped Suko was safe, that he’d found a good place to hide.
They were almost on the enemy. He flexed his arm, the pains of his battle with Godzilla forgotten. He roared again, threat and promise.
He had almost forgotten how big Ice Breath was. She was bigger than Godzilla. Bigger than anything Kong had ever seen that was alive. And although the Titan beside him was screaming and rushing to the fight, Kong had the sense that Godzilla was… not worried, exactly, but maybe not sure. Like in the fight with the Machine Godzilla, when the metal monster was winning.
Except they hadn’t even started this fight yet.
Red mist rose before his eyes, as they at last met Shimo and the Skar King. The Red Ape sprang from Cold Breath’s back, and Kong vaulted onto Godzilla’s back, used the elevation and speed to leap higher, arcing to meet his foe in midair. The jump carried him further than he had expected; he didn’t weigh as much as he had a moment before, as if he were further up in the sky, where everything floated.
He drew his yellow arm back, timing his blow as the Skar King prepared to swing the axe. Below, Godzilla and the other Titan howled at each other as they prepared to collide.
And then, suddenly, everything turned. Kong felt like a huge hand had grabbed him and thrown him away from the Skar King, who also went tumbling wildly through the sky. Land and sky-land whirled around him; he felt like he was pulled in every direction at once. He was falling, but not falling down—or up. He was falling everywhere.
* * *
The pyramids crashed into one another with such force that their summits splintered into crystalline shards, borne away on pale blue spheres rapidly expanding away from point of contact. Before Ilene could draw another breath, it overtook them. The g-forces pressing her into her seat suddenly vanished, replaced by the dizzying sensation of free fall. Bernie yelped and Trapper swore. The Iwi queen somehow kept her face placid as everything outside the windows somersaulted into chaos. The cloud of boulders that marked the transition between the two “downs” were now freely whirling around everywhere, along with Great Apes, Godzilla, and Shimo.
The H.E.A.V—aside from the exclamations of its passengers—was exceptionally silent. Its brightly lit consoles and internal lighting were absent.
“The engine’s out!” Trapper shouted. “The shockwave did something to our power… battery… thingy.”
She shot him a look.
“Hey!” he said. “I’m not a mechanic! I went to vet school!”
“Well, you better do something,” Bernie said. “The gravity could come back any time now.”
“I’m trying!” Trapper said, working furiously at the dead controls.
Ilene pulled in a breath, wondering if this was what it was like being in outer space. Weightless, tumbling aimlessly, struggling to find a point of reference.
A floating ape the size of a skyscraper whizzed past her field of vision.
Probably not. There was probably literally nothing else like this. Anywhere.
She couldn’t do anything to help Trapper. She couldn’t really do anything. She tracked her gaze around, feeling queasy. Still no sign of Jia or Mothra. But the exercise helped her get her bearings. If she moved her gaze against their rotation, she could focus on and decipher what was happening outside. It was better than running a preview in her head of their inevitable plummet to oblivion when gravity came back.
Godzilla had adjusted quickly to the situation. Of course, she realized, moving in all of this must be something like swimming, which was exactly what it looked like Godzilla was doing. He was bouncing from boulder to boulder with his hind legs, sometimes catching one with his arms for leverage to propel himself forward, sweeping his tail to-and-fro—not to propel himself, but to stabilize his flight—and to club away the Great Apes stupid enough to come near him. For a creature of his size, he was weirdly elegant.
Godzilla was different, wasn’t he? His colors, his spines, everything about him had changed. He was more… crystalline. And glowing more magenta than blue. It wasn’t the first time he had undergone a transformation, but to her it seemed the most dramatic. What exactly had been going on on the surface while they had been down here?
She hoped she would get to find out, although right now it wasn’t looking that great. Trapper was still trying to cajole something out of the vehicle, but it was just a metal box caught in a tornado.
She kept her focus on Godzilla.
Kick her ass, she thought, as the Titan launched himself directly at Shimo.
* * *
Kong seemed to getting the hang of things, too. But the Skar King was adapting as well. Jumping and swinging from rock to rock, they pitched toward one another.
Suko was tired of hiding. He knew Kong was protecting him, but even with the new monster he’d brought back through the sky, it was clear that Kong was outnumbered. Before he had only fought the Skar King and Shimo, and Shimo had nearly killed him. Now all of the other red-stripes would fight him too. The monster was terrifying, but he was smaller than Shimo, and Shimo would do what the Skar King commanded. She would freeze the whole valley and everyone in it. He did not think Kong and the monster would win.
Even so, he knew which side he was on. He belonged with Kong. And if Kong fought, Suko would fight too.
He took a deep breath, then beat his chest and howled. No one heard, but it made him feel better. Stronger.
As Suko charged out of his hiding place, everything went crazy.
His feet no longer stuck to the ground. In fact, the land pushed him away, sent him flying into the air. He screeched in fright, failing to find purchase that wasn’t there, but that only made him spin head over legs.
At least the same thing was happening to everyone else. In the distance, Kong and the Skar King were both tumbling aimlessly. So was Shimo, and Kong’s monster. And the rest of the apes.
The ground was getting further and further away from Suko and the sky-ground was getting closer. He thought this must be like flying, so he tried waving his arms and legs like a flier, but that didn’t do anything that he could tell. A huge boulder drifted past. He reached for it, but it was too far away, and he couldn’t control where he was going. A smaller one came closer, and he managed to grab it. It wasn’t much, but it gave him a sense of steadiness, of a small amount of control.
Another big one went by. He pushed himself off the smaller rock, which went flying off behind him, but it had the intended effect, propelling him straight toward the larger rock. He hit it a little harder than he intended to, but managed to cling to it. He screeched, this time not in terror. But in amazement.
It was frightening, but it was also… fun. And now he had an idea.
He got his bearings. The boulder he was on was moving away from Kong. But now he thought he knew what he was doing. He picked out another rock moving the right way and launched himself toward it.
* * *
Kong had been in the in-between sky before. It hadn’t been like this, but the feeling of being light, not pulled on by the ground—that was familiar. He fixed his gaze on the Skar King and tried to swim toward him. It didn’t work.
Then a flying rock bumped into him, sending him in a different direction.
That made sense. He looked around for another rock. One came near enough and he grabbed it, pushing himself toward the Skar King.
The other ape was figuring it out, too. He turned to face Kong as he approached, pushing off another boulder with his hind legs, pulling back Kong’s axe to hit him with it.
Kong roared and met the axe with his yellow arm. The blow shocked up through the metal, but there was no pain. It deflected the axe easily, but the impact knocked the two apes apart.
But the axe wasn’t the Skar King’s only weapon. He unwound his bone-whip and lashed it at Kong. He blocked that with his new arm, too, but the bones wrapped around it and pulled tight. Then the Skar King yanked, pulling the two of them together. Kong was fine with that. But before he could get close enough to strike, the Skar King kicked him in the chest with one of his long legs. Kong grunted and lurched away. The whip was still wrapped around his arm, though, so he pulled himself back. The Skar King, off balance, tried to swing the axe again, but Kong punched him in the face and then again under one arm. He unwound the bone-whip with a twist of his arm and followed with another punch. Then he reached for the axe, still in the Skar King’s hands.
An ape hit him from behind, hard, then grabbed him around the waist with his lower legs while hitting him for a second time in the back of the head. Kong’s grasping hand closed on empty space instead of the axe. Both of his arms were busy, but he couldn’t let go of the Skar King to fight the second ape.
He felt teeth clamp on his neck. But the next instant he heard a dull whump and the hold on him instantly loosened. The ape behind him grunted in pain and let go.
His last punch had sent the Skar King flying beyond his reach. Kong growled, looking for a stone to help him maneuver, reach the Skar King, kill him, and take back his axe.
* * *
“We should be flying!” Bernie said. “We need to fly! We’re going to fall any second now.”
“I hear you,” Trapper said. “And I’ll hear you when you say it for the fifth time. But the power still isn’t on. If you have a solution, I’m happy to hear it.”
“Make it fly,” Bernie said.
“All right then,” Trapper said. “Suggestion noted. Maybe try and enjoy the ride? You don’t see this every day.”
No, you don’t, Ilene thought. She was trying to watch Godzilla. Their rotation had become regular, so it wasn’t that hard, she just had to keep turning her head and try not to throw up from the motion sickness.
It was hard to comprehend the sheer scale of what was happening. Godzilla was almost unthinkably huge for a living creature. Next to Shimo, he looked merely middle sized. Like a humpback whale next to a blue whale. They rammed one another; Shimo snapped at Godzilla’s neck, but Godzilla reared back, rolled up, and kicked Shimo with both hind legs, knocking the two saurians in opposite directions. Godzilla recovered first, twisting and slapping a nearby ape with his tail, thrusting him back toward the World Ender. Shimo fetched against a boulder and clawed at it. Their trajectories were not quite lined up: Godzilla sailed past Shimo, who struck him solidly with her enormously thick tail, sending Godzilla once more plunging out of control.
Bernie yelped. Ilene tore her gaze from the Titans in time to see why—one of the Skar King’s apes was heading straight toward them. Even if the H.E.A.V had been working, there wouldn’t have been time do anything but brace for impact. Which wasn’t going to help at all.
Blue radiance overwhelmed her vision and a high-pitched keening cut through the metal walls of the cockpit. For a split-second Ilene thought it was just her brain processing the shock of the fatal collision, but then she realized the ape hadn’t hit them. Something had hit it. It flew off as if struck by a giant, invisible tennis racket. An instant later, Mothra shot by. Ilene had a brief glimpse of Jia on the Titan’s back. Something spewed from Mothra, striking another of the apes and wrapping it up in what appeared to be silk. Then the huge insect and her daughter were again out of her field of vision.
Jia was back. She was okay. And she had just saved their lives. Of course, the H.E.A.V was still at the mercy of gravity, still very much out of control. She craned her neck, trying to relocate Mothra, and instead saw Shimo launching herself toward Godzilla. This time the World Ender didn’t wait to close the distance. Instead, she unleashed the energy that had begun the last Ice Age directly at Godzilla, who was hurtling toward her, head-first. There were no floating boulders nearby, no way for him to change course. The icy beam struck him full in the snout. Ilene watched in horror as ice immediately began forming on him, crusting his face and neck. His fierce glow sputtered and subsided, overwhelmed by Shimo’s power.
But then Mothra was there again, her wings beating into the freezing ray and into Shimo’s face. The ice-Titan hesitated; the beam faltered. Godzilla’s eyes glowed through the ice, an eerie red color. He flashed red-violet, and the ice shattered and sloughed away. He shrieked, and the two Titans hit with enough force that the shockwave knocked the H.E.A.V on a new trajectory.
You could never count Godzilla out. Just when you thought you understood him, he proved you wrong. Especially, it seemed, with Mothra by his side.
* * *
Suko hooted in delight when the rock he’d thrown hit One-Eye in the head. The older ape let go of Kong and went reeling through the air. Suko slung another of the smaller stones and was rewarded when it hit the howling One-Eye in the chest.
But One-Eye saw him now. He fetched against a boulder and steadied himself, killing in his eyes.
At least Suko had distracted One-Eye from Kong. But now One-Eye was coming for Suko. Fast.
Suko sprang in the other direction. He knew he couldn’t beat One-Eye in a fight. But he could keep him from interfering with Kong. At least until One-Eye caught him and broke his neck.
* * *
The Skar King’s whip uncoiled toward him, the sharp glowing tip seeking his heart, but Kong slapped at a nearby boulder, breaking his path to the left so that the bone weapon cut the air just over his head. He twisted and flipped inside the range of the deadly lash and swung his yellow arm at the Skar King. The other ape wrenched the axe up, deflecting the blow with the flat of its blade. With his other hand, Kong caught the arm holding the whip, stopping the Skar King from turning head over heels, and punched him again, this time in the jaw. Then he backhanded the axe.
The weapon flew from the Skar King’s hand. The Skar King snarled and stretched for it, but Kong used his hold on his enemy’s arm to pull himself ahead. His hand closed on the weapon’s handle.
But before he could try and turn to use it, he was suddenly heavy again. And falling.
So was everything else.
* * *
Suko called a taunt back at One-Eye and was rewarded with a snarl of frustration. The other ape might be bigger and stronger, but he had a harder time changing direction than Suko did. Suko would wait for him to jump, and then dodge on the next rock. One-Eye was getting angrier and angrier, but it wasn’t making him nimbler.
Suko glanced back, saw One-Eye gathering to push off a boulder. This would be easy. He could probably keep ahead of him forever like this. Suko began to think he might actually survive.
One-Eye jumped. Suko waited.
And then the rock he had been planning to push off from fell. So did he. He squeaked in terror.
One-Eye was also falling, but he had already jumped. Suko watched him come, helpless to get out of the way. Then One-Eye caught him around the throat with both hands. Suko tried to suck in a breath, but he couldn’t. He flailed at One-Eye’s arms, trying to pull the chokehold loose, but the half-blind ape was too strong. And by the look on his face, he didn’t care that they were both falling to their deaths, just so long as Suko died first.
They hit the ground sooner than Suko thought they would, and somehow they weren’t dead. One-Eye let go of his throat. As he gasped for air, Suko realized they were still falling. They had hit the top of one of huge light crystal formations. They bounced again, then both went tumbling down onto the lower slope of the translucent stone. Suko scrabbled for a handhold, but the crystal was slick, and there was nothing to grab. Still, he managed to slow down a little. One-Eye was ahead of him, going faster. The other ape’s back legs went over the edge, and for one joyous moment Suko saw the bigger ape was going to fall off.
But then One-Eye swung his arm up and caught Suko by the leg. Suko clutched at the glassy rock, and for a moment, everything stopped; him at the edge, One-Eye dangling over the jungle far, far below, supported only by his hold on Suko.
Then Suko started slipping.
* * *
The H.E.A.V stopped tumbling and fell like a stone. Bernie started screaming. The Iwi queen looked concerned. Ilene stared out the window as her guts climbed up into her throat.
That was a long way down.
Then weight returned, so quickly she was slammed back in her seat. At first she thought they’d hit something, maybe one of the pyramids, but then she realized that something had wrapped around the cockpit, and they were again surrounded by a nimbus of soft blueish light.
Mothra was back, and she had caught the H.E.A.V in midair.
Ilene realized she had stopped breathing. Relief was a wave, washing head to foot. As the Titan settled the H.E.A.V on a flat rocky ledge, she started to laugh. Not because anything was funny, but because she needed to.
“Remind me to buy your daughter a birthday present this year,” Bernie said. “No price limit.”
* * *
Kong was still falling. So was the Skar King, although the Red Ape was far ahead of him. Between them were Godzilla and Cold Breath. They had plunged across the middle sky and were now nosediving toward one of the blue holes. Maybe the one he’d come and gone though. Maybe a different one.
Either way, they were all going to the same place.
As he fell into the hole, Kong swung his axe, trying to slow his fall by digging into the wall. It bit into the stone surface as he intended and then stuck there, so that it was yanked out of his hand. He continued falling, vainly reaching for the weapon. His weapon. That he had just gotten back.