Tamara Hashioka was playing host to six strangers in her home, but this was no impromptu dinner party. The visitors in question were all superhuman women who, up until a few minutes previously, had been locked in battle with their enemies – Llyra of Lemuria, and her nightmarish hordes of Unforgiven Dead – in the depths of the ocean, before being teleported back to the surface world – specifically the upstairs hallway of Tamara’s London townhouse – via the dimensional conduit of an ancient Lemurian mirror. All in all, it was a very curious afternoon. But the most alarming aspect of all this madness was that there was still something far stranger and more terrifying to contemplate…

“You don’t understand,” Tamara persisted in frustration. “I’m sorry for your friends, but we’ve got a far bigger problem on our hands right now, and I mean that literally. Godzilla is coming. Here.”

The Black Panther studied the woman with an amusement that was evident despite her face being hidden by her mask, and Spitfire ignored her completely, dividing her attention between the group’s two wounded members, Clea and Namora. Only the Wasp seemed to be taking Tamara’s warning seriously.

“This device is attracting the creature?” Janet asked, holding up the appliance she’d taken from Tamara’s young daughter Suki. “And you can’t just turn it off? Destroy it?”

“It’s based on high level satellite relay tech, linked with a micro-transmitter embedded in the creature’s brain. One of many experimental methods SHIELD employed to try and predict or even control Godzilla’s movements when his activity was most extreme. Once the relay’s been activated Godzilla will home in on the signal even if it’s subsequentlydeactivated; he’ll simply focus on its most recent location.”

“Not the most appropriate children’s toy,” the Panther declared. “What else has your daughter got in her closet? An EMP generator? A couple of hand grenades?”

“I thought the device was defunct,” Tamara said, hotly. “I had no idea her capability for technical engineering had advanced so quickly. I mean, yes, she’s a genius, I’ve had her tested and she’s already attracted interest from the Stark Foundation, but she’s only seven for goodness’ sakes—”

“Stop it! I’m sorry! I’m really sorry!”

Suki Hashioka burst into floods of tears, grasping at her mother’s arms and burying her face in her hip so stifle her sobs. Tamara looked mortified.

Case in point, the Wasp thought. Seven-year-old girls loved to be the center of attention, unless something bad was happening and they were implicated…

“This isn’t helping anyone, least of all Clea,” Spitfire murmured, finally paying note to the conversation. “We need to get her to a hospital. So, there’s some gigantic, prehistoric lizard advancing on London? Fine. We deal with it. We’ve got a former leader of the Avengers and a distinguished Wakandan strategist in the room, not to mention an ex-SHIELD scientist and engineer with specific experience relating to the problem. Stop posturing and upsetting small children, and let’s end this.”

Shuri sniffed, but didn’t retort. The Wasp nodded and looked to Tamara, her tone softening as she realized that Suki was also looking at her, her lower lip still trembling. “Has this device been used before?” she asked.

“Not this exact model, but another like it, yes. We tried to lure the monster inland, where we hoped to trap him and then somehow anaesthetize him so we could transport him to the Savage Land and deposit him there. It… didn’t work. We were then forced to use the device to bait Godzilla back out to sea.”

“So we could do the same thing again?” the Panther asked.

“Theoretically. Last time we used a SHIELD jet. You think you could call in a favor for something similar?”

The Wasp’s brow furrowed. “I doubt we have time. We—”

“I could take it somewhere else, at speed,” Spitfire offered. “I mean, I can’t run on water so usually I’d be restricted to the British mainland, but my powers have… developed recently. The chemicals in my blood, the ones I received from Jim Hammond, the original Human Torch, they allow me to fly, for short distances at least. But—”

“I’ll do it. I have no such limitations.”

Everyone turned at the sound of Namora’s voice. The Atlantean looked on through dark eyes, her teeth gritted against the pain of her injuries.

“You’re wounded,” Janet said, quietly. Namora scowled.

“But, despite Llyra’s best efforts yet again, I’m not dead,” she snarled. “Just get me to the water and buy me some time. I have a set destination in mind…”

THE ABYSS

Part V: God Save Thee, Ancient Mariner, From The Fiends That Plague Thee Thus

By Meriades Rai

Located in the East London Borough of Greenwich, the Thames Barrier was a truly magnificent feat of engineering, an enormous, moveable flood barrier designed to withstand exceptional tide swells and storm surges rolling in from east to west along the River Thames. It offered the heart of the city the comfort of protection from certain natural hazards – but not from the monster that was now advancing along the lazy meander of this historic waterway, forging its way upstream through the Thames Estuary and towards England’s capital, creating panic in the streets.

Godzilla was truly gargantuan, thirty storeys high and armored with a crust of green and black scales, his back arrowed with a crest of spines. His eyes were a deep, almost soulful green, but there was nothing more expressive than his elongated, crocodilian snout, crammed with teeth the length and sharpness of sword blades – and that expression was destructive fury. The King of Monsters was destined to wreak havoc and murder upon the city and those hundreds of thousands of innocent lives in his path…

…if not for those who now rose to face him with a combination of courage and uneasy awe.

“Whoa! Big buggering bastard dinosaur!” Lady Jacqueline Falsworth exclaimed as she leaned forward against the rail of the Barrier, squinting against the chill, violent river wind with frightened eyes. “Suddenly I’m thinking we need a new plan. Anyone have a new plan? Anyone? Don’t be shy now.”

“Speak for yourself,” the Black Panther growled. “I’m looking forward to cat-scratching the hell out of his kneecap.”

“Wait. Was that a joke? You do funny too?”

“She does have a sense of humor,” the Wasp cried above the noisy rush of the wind and churning of the waters below. “It’s just usually hidden beneath the bloodthirsty, sociopathic pelt!”

Skadi, in her human form and clinging on to the Barrier rail for dear life, glanced among her companions curiously. “You mortals… do you always react to imminent danger in such a way?”

“What, gallows humor banter?” Spitfire yelled. “Absolutely. You don’t get a costume and a codename otherwise.”

Skadi looked unconvinced. “That’s another joke, yes?”

Spitfire offered a half-hearted smile but her attempt at throwing off her earlier depressive mood was short-lived. There was a haunted quality to her eyes that suggested she was troubled by something more than the imminent threat posed by Godzilla – she was thinking of the absent Clea.

The four companions lapsed into tense, momentary silence, looking out across the gray water at the creature that was advancing upon them, now just a quarter-mile distant. Janet Van Dyne’s eyes narrowed.

“Namora asked us to buy her some time,” she said, softly. “So that’s what we need to do, by any means necessary. Ready, ladies…?”

Watching events on a live television feed from a North London hospital ward, Tamara Hashioka wrapped her arms about her daughter and closed her eyes in silent prayer. She then glanced up again to look at the motionless figure in the bed alongside her, her expression etched with concern.

“Will she be okay, mummy?” Suki asked.

Tamara’s frown darkened still further. “I hope so, sweetheart,” she breathed, reaching out to stroke a lock of silver hair from the sleeping Clea’s eyes. Because I’ve got a funny feeling that if she’s not, then none of us will be…

Godzilla forged on towards the Flood Barrier, his head rolling from side to side on his thick, crest-ringed neck and an oddly shrill shriek emanating from the back of his throat…

…and then an enemy strode forward to block his path, rising tall and strong from the murky waters of the Thames just as he did. Godzilla had fought his share of fellow giants, including other mutates and the armored construct known as Red Ronin, but this was the first time he’d ever come face-to-face with a Jotunheim frost giantess. There was something undeniably formidable about her – but there was also a palpable aura of fear. And Godzilla, primal beast that he was, knew no such thing himself, continuing to stride forward.

Skadi pursed her lips as if blowing a kiss and the air between her and her enemy immediately began to freeze, smothering the behemoth in a swirling blanket of ice crystals. Godzilla reared backwards, surprised – but then roared his defiance and countered with his own fiery breath, far more potent than anything Skadi could offer. The air suddenly clouded with hissing mist, and Skadi screamed and staggered. Godzilla exhaled another stream of scalding flame…

…but this unearthly fire was immediately diverted upwards in some uncanny backdraft, manipulated by an outstretched hand. High above, circling rapidly in haphazard spirals within a personal cocoon of ambient flame and superheated plasma, Spitfire redirected Godzilla’s infernal breath away from Skadi and up into the clouds where it dissipated like a crimson aurora.

Skadi blinked, unnerved but standing her ground through sheer pride. “Thank you!” she called to her ally. “I had no idea you were a flaming mortal – or that Midgard had its own mighty, fire-breathing dragons as exist in other corners of the Nine Realms!”

“Life’s full of surprises,” Jacqui cried. “Watch yourself! He’s—”

Godzilla reared forward once more, pivoting with alarming speed upon his enormous tail, but Skadi was ready for him, freezing the water molecules in the air about both fists – creating the equivalent of icy boxing gloves – and wading into the battle like an experienced prizefighter. Her gloves shattered and needed to be reconstituted with each blow she landed, and the wincing expression on her face suggested it was hurting her as much as her foe, but she persisted without flinching.

Godzilla staggered, shrieking his displeasure. His tail lashed out and slammed into one of the concrete and metal fortifications of the Thames Barrier, loosening a section of the edifice in its foundations and causing it to skew a good half dozen feet with an unholy shriek of bending girders. It was a telling demonstration of his strength but, nonetheless, the beast’s initial momentum had been curbed.

“If there was any doubt before,” the Wasp said at Skadi’s ear, surprising her, “then I’d say that established your hero credentials without question. Keep on him, honey…!”

The Wasp shot forward, peppering Godzilla with an annoying barrage of stings, whilst Spitfire swooped down from above and began cascading the beast with molten fireballs from the opposite flank. Down below, the Black Panther had launched herself from the top of the Flood Barrier in a devil-may-care skydive and was now making good on her earlier promise, ripping sheer chunks of scaly flesh from the monster’s knees with her vibranium-tipped claws. This was one feline who evidently didn’t ascribe to the popular cliché of abhorring water, as Skadi could swear she heard the strange cat-woman singing to herself rather than merely punctuating the moment with standard battle cries.

The giantess suppressed a smile, despite the gravity of the situation. These mortal women were a rum bunch and no mistake, and genuine instances of camaraderie between them were few and far between, but they possessed good heart in abundance and that appealed to Skadi’s own virtuous nature – and it buoyed her nerve. She still looked on the rampaging Godzilla with fear, but now she allowed herself a defiant – and oddly liberated – croon of valor, and pressed forward with steely resolve.

This beast would not be allowed to menace this mortal city whilst she stood.

But, of course, all this might prove academic, for any ultimate victory was now reliant upon one other fulfilling her duty…

Before taking her leave of London, Namora had staunched her own wounds to the best of her ability, disinclined to let human practitioners of medicine swarm about her in their white-coated shoals at the hospital where Clea had been taken. However, that didn’t mean she was healed; far from it, in fact. The megalodon’s attack had impaired her movements severely, but she was still able to swim at an impressive rate of knots even if she couldn’t get close to her top speed.

It hurt like hell, but in its own way the agony was… welcome. Pain meant that she was alive, and in the time since her recent resurrection from her death-like stasis Namora had come to relish all physical sensation, even those that were deeply unpleasant. Besides, allowing Spitfire or any of the others undertake the task presently allocated to her was out of the question.

Namora glanced at the human device clutched in her fist as she swam, her eyes black with hate.

She had a gift for Llyra. And it was a gift for her and her alone to deliver…

Godzilla raged, frustrated by these annoying fleshlings with their curious powers and the way they were so intent on delaying him. All he cared about was tracking the source of the infernal pulsing in his prehistoric brain…

…but then, now he began to concentrate on that pulse, he realized that its trajectory was slowly altering. The monster paused, ignoring the relentless attacks upon his body for a minute or two so that he could concentrate. Up until that moment the pounding in his head had been summoning him inland, but now that same signal was drawing away again! Godzilla snarled, his fury rising. He stretched his jaw wide and exhaled a colossal gust of flame – but then recoiled, lashing his tail back and forth in the murky waters as he turned his reptilian bulk in a half-circle.

With the bludgeoned but resilient Thames Barrier and the terrified city beyond now behind him, Godzilla began to retreat.

High above, Spitfire whirled in the grip of a self-induced cyclone as she struggled to manipulate her enemy’s final fire burst, whilst the Wasp darted away to a safe distance on miniature wings. Skadi also stepped back, clutching the Black Panther in one hand in rather undignified fashion but rescuing her from the tide surge all the same. The four companions hesitated, watching Godzilla’s belligerent departure.

“Is that it?” Skadi cried. “Did we give Namora enough time? I can attack again if you think—”

“No!” the Wasp barked. “Leave him. We’ve protected London, driven the beast back… that’s our remit. In the water, any damage he’s inflicting is structural only. If we antagonize him again we risk him heading inland.

“We’ve done everything we can here. It’s up to Namora now…”

The abyss where Llyra had assembled the Unforgiven Dead was a trench in the North Sea, midway between the United Kingdom and the west coast of Denmark. Whereas the earlier transportation to this location via the dimensional conduit of the Lemurian mirror had been instantaneous, it now took Namora half an hour in her injured state to physically navigate that same distance. She knew that Godzilla would be following on close at heel, as soon as he realized that the sonar signal he was tracking had started heading away from land – but the Atlantean warrior was determined to reach her destination, driven by a rage that was like a nagging pulse in her own brain.

When she arrived back at the abyss she found Llyra waiting for her, reclining leisurely in the looming shadow of the megalodon that had already come so close to biting Namora in twain.

“I assumed you’d be back,” the Lemurian witch hissed, her green eyes bright with delight. “I can launch a new assault on the surface world at any time, you know. I don’t need an undead army, not when I have all the beautiful horrors of the planet’s oceans at my command. But I wanted you to understand. Perhaps I’ll keep you in chains, Namora… a pet, forced to look on as I ravage these human parasites who so freely pollute our seas with their filth. Perhaps—”

“Death is coming for you, Llyra,” Namora breathed. “That is what I’ve traveled here to witness. I can only hope it’s as painful as you deserve…”

Llyra scowled, a flicker of doubt in her gaze. What was Namora talking about? She was wounded, weakened… she couldn’t stand firm against the megalodon, let alone Llyra herself… so what—

Namora drew back her arm and hurled something through the water. Llyra flinched, expecting some crude manner of grenade, but she stilled when she saw that her enemy had simply deposited some manner of electronic device at her feet. She snorted in disgust and snatched up the device, studying it for a moment or two before then crushing it in her fist with formidable brute strength.

“What curious gambit is this?” she asked, discarding the crushed remnants of Tamara Hashioka’s sonic relay with disdain. “You’re trying to track me? Or summoning your friends here to somehow defeat me…? I expected more, old foe. I’ll be gone from here long before—”

Suddenly the ocean floor trembled, as if heralding the commencement of a seaquake – but this was no natural occurrence. Llyra stilled, her senses prickling and her pearly eyes narrowing. She turned slowly where she floated, her gaze penetrating the murky depths. She was sensitively attuned to her environment and she now detected the swift approach of danger without doubt; a far greater menace than Namora. That Atlantean witch, what had she done…?

The megalodon surged forward, its black eyes wide and its teeth bared. Llyra was pleased; sharks were notoriously difficult to control, but this behemoth seemed dedicated to protecting her. Whatever was coming for her would soon regret—

The ocean depths reverberated with an unearthly roar that chilled the Lemurian queen’s soul, and moments later there came a rush of dark blood and sundered chunks of cartilage and fish meat. The ruptured carcass of the megalodon followed on soon after, propelled backwards through the water with incredible force. Llyra gasped, turning quickly away from whatever was advancing – but not quickly enough. A gigantic claw swept out of the gloom, and then came the gargantuan shadow of the beast that the claw belonged to, all ridged scales and jagged spines, massive limbs and tail, and a reptilian head that alone dwarfed the size of the prehistoric shark it had just butchered with one blow.

The King of Monsters.

Llyra, witch queen of Lemuria screamed helplessly as the one horror of the oceans she could not control descended upon her…

Once the relay’s been activated Godzilla will home in on the signal even if it’s subsequently deactivated; he’ll simply focus on its most recent location. Those had been Tamara Hashioka’s words back in London, and Namora was gratified to see that this statement was true. The infernal pulsing in the mutated dinosaur’s brain might have stilled, but its rage remained lit bright – and Llyra was now paying the price for that fury.

Namora lingered awhile, listening to the agonized shrieks and watching the ocean depths darken with spilled blood. She then glanced at the nearby abyss one final time, her eyes cold. A terrible battle had raged here, one that might yet cost the daughter of Atlantis her life, as well as the ailing Clea… but this was also a place of catharsis. With one final snap of the steel trap that was Godzilla’s elongated jaw, the oceans were now purged of Llyra’s evil – and she’d been on hand to witness it.

For Namora, and for all those decades spent in near-death stasis, that was triumph enough.

The shrieking ended. Godzilla turned his head, his deep green eyes searching… but Namora was gone. The monster snorted, then swallowed. And then, no longer driven by the pounding in his brain, he began to drift north, searching for colder waters and some new location to sleep once more…

Laying in her hospital bed, still unconscious, Clea of the Faltine flinched.

She was dreaming. Dying. Dreaming, dying, dreaming…

Seeing.

There was a chamber: a scrying chamber. An amphitheatre of stone floors and crumbling pillars and shadows, and at the heart of it all, a circular pool of curiously opaque waters. An oracle.

There was a girl, naked, with soft, milky skin and honey-gold hair. She sprawled languidly at the pool’s edge, a delicate hand trailing in the water.

“Many travel here, to the mountain at the edge of the known world, and to the oracle of Delphi,” the girl murmured. “But so very few appreciate the portents they receive. I can regale you with hidden significances of past, present and future, but the interpretation of those episodes is yours alone to determine. Do you understand?”

Clea was startled. Was this girl, Delphi, talking to her? Could she see her? Was she even truly here…?

But no. In the shadows, another watcher moved. Breathed.

“Show me,” the voice demanded.

Clea stilled, her heart in her throat. She was witnessing something important here, she knew. Something… momentous.

The girl, Delphi, smiled shyly and then began the languid stir of her fingers once more. The water in the pool was thick and discolored, and exuded an odd fragrance that was in one moment reminiscent of flowers but in another the scent of fresh blood. The water began to shimmer. Delphi leaned in close. An image formed, but it was no reflection.

“Tell me what you see,” the voice from the shadows said, keenly, “so that I may see it too!”

“Your urgency has no merit here. This place exists beyond the usual laws of time and space, as you of all people should—”

“Now, child!”

Delphi’s eyes flickered, becoming opal white now, and she pressed her unclothed flesh against the cold of the ancient flagstones beneath, writhing as the rapture of prophecy came upon her.

“As you wish,” she breathed. “Let the first of the five you seek be revealed…”

Clea looked on then, seeing an image appear in the oracle’s waters, and she gasped—

And then she awoke abruptly, in her hospital bed in North London. At her bedside, Tamara and Suki Hashioka both cried out, startled – but then both glanced at each other and smiled with genuine relief.

“You’re alive!” Tamara sighed. “Oh, thank goodness. Your companions, they’ll be back here soon. They drove Godzilla back at the Thames Barrier, and now—”

“The fate of everything is in the balance!” Clea exclaimed, her beautiful eyes lit with an alarming mania. “You don’t understand, you don’t know… but I’ve seen it. I’ve seen how it begins, and I know how it’ll end unless we stop it. The oracle, the Mistress of the Ten Rings… she means to challenge death, to control it. To become it.

“The time is now. We six, we could be the saviors of the world… or the progenitors of its destruction. We are the Heralds….

“…and we’ve got a long and terrible journey ahead of us.”

NEXT: A brand new story arc! The Heralds head to the mountain at the edge of the world – and you want believe what they find! Don’t miss HERALDS # 6!