Nightmare Fuel / Daikaiju Yuki

Per wiki policy, Spoilers Off applies here and all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.

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In a world of monsters and villains, there's bound to be plenty of things that can make you wince in horror.

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Daikaiju Yuki

• The great fire, AKA, the atom fire. Five centuries ago, mankind basically blew itself up with nuclear war. Even worse, that was when the kaiju awakened with one goal in mind: eradicate humanity so that it doesn't destroy any more. As Narajin describes to Yuki, even he killed humans without a second thought back then. Had it not been for Mokwa, we would pretty much be extinct by both our own hands and terrifying monsters.
• Yuki's PTSD flashbacks of her time in the Hopeless War between Narai and both Scythia and Laurentia. The most vivid memory she has is of her commanding officer getting bit in half by Alkonoth.
• The civil war that serves as the backdrop of the story. Basically, the empires of Scythia and Laurentia have formed an uneasy alliance in order to take over the rest of the Five Nations. The kicker is that they've brainwashed two of the Pantheon Colossi to act as their aces in the hole. Specifically, Alkonoth and Mokwa. So imagine for a second you are a soldier, and you see your fellow men getting picked off by a giant bird with a beak like a blade and a bear as big as a mountain. No wonder Yuki came out with so many mental scars.
• Yuki's initial henshin with Narajin isn't a pleasant one. At first, she has no idea what just happened. All that she knows is that she's buried under the ground, understandably making her feel very claustrophobic. Once she rises, she realizes quickly that she's in the body of the lion kaiju. It seems like a very nasty dream at first, though Narajin manages to clear things up.
  • Not long afterwards, Yuki, in Narajin's body, ends up destroying a portion of the town near the temple by total accident due to her lack of control. It wasn't a great surprise for the people there, seeing their guardian kaiju make a lethal scene like that.
• The dead lands. Large swathes of land that, unlike the rest of the world, didn't recover from the nuclear apocalypse, and now stand as monuments to the extinction of the old civilizations. Huge cities and structures, reduced to jagged blackened ruins that no creature could hope to live in. Suffice to say, Yuki and Narajin's time there is mercifully short.
• The fauna of the world is mostly comprised of rather unsettling wildlife mutated by the atom fire. This includes featherless birds, skull-faced monkeys, and deep-sea leviathans. We don't see what the latter look like, but a dark shape is seen lurking in the abyss. Come later stories, and we see exactly what Yuki is so wary of.
• The arrival of Mokwa and Alkonoth at Tarakona. Both emerge out of a volcano in explosive fashion. And very slowly, out of the smoke, the two kaiju's obscured silhouettes gives off the impression of a Bat Out of Hell.
• During their fight, Alkonoth manages to gain the upper hand, and impales Narajin several times across his body with her sharp beak. She's only prevented from dealing the killing blow by Ganejin's involvement.
• The Burial Mound has the Pantheon get tricked into destroying a town full of innocent people. Indeed, Laurentia's leaders, or at least Houston, were perfectly okay with selling a large amount of civilians out to their deaths in order to throw our heroes off. Let that sink in.
• The full scope of Houston's plan. Having recovered un-detonated nuclear bombs, he plans on using them as leverage to Take Over the World, as well as controlling every kaiju as he sees fit. As several characters point out, it will only lead to a repeat of the great fire.
• THE GARGOYLE. Once one of the bombs is detonated near a volcano, out of the Earth comes a twisted, skeletal Humanoid Abomination that's in constant screaming agony. According to Narajin, it's a new destroyer kaiju, except this one looks as if the Earth was in a hurry, hence its horrible looks.
  • It gets worse. The monster starts out as a moderately-sized kaiju that fights like a feral madman, taking chunks out of Narajin with its huge teeth before an even larger version of it emerges out of the volcano, crushing it violently. And then, after the true Gargoyle is brought down by the Pantheon, it emerges AGAIN with better armor and a pair of large wings befitting its namesake.
  • The way its defeated isn't exactly pretty either. Narajin uses the broken-off tip of a skyscraper to impale its chest, nearly decapitate it, and then impale it through the eyes just as it was charging a plasma blast. After its head explodes, the monster falls over and blows up. It just goes to show that even when saving the world, the Pantheon doesn't mess around.
• Houston's demise. He deserved it more than anyone in the story, but Ivan wasn't kidding when he wanted his revenge. After the villain's plan is foiled, Alkonoth impales him through the chest with her beak. Bad enough already, but then the bird starts to open her mouth. Houston's last moments are spent screaming in agony as he's violently reduced to Half the Man He Used to Be. Blood and guts rain down as Alkonoth screeches in victory. Even Yuki is rather disturbed by it all.

Y2K: Yuki Conquers The World

• After a trip through Africa's lush savannah landscape, the Pantheon come to their destination. Kinshasa, or rather, what's left of it.
  • First, the buildup. It's stated earlier that the city seemed to just disappear, and no one knows why. When the Pantheon come near where it is, noises go away, the animals seem to be begging them to leave with their calls, and the air is a chilly as Laurentia...
  • But then, a truly ghastly sight lays before them all. Piles upon piles of animal corpses are scattered around the perimeter, most of which show no signs of injury. It's as if something sucked the life out of them. And then it goes From Bad to Worse. Kinshasa is shown to be a huge gaping hole in the Earth's crust, and right near it is the corpse of a large gorilla that looks positively flayed and pulled apart near the edge of the hole. It's only at the bottom of said hole do we find the culprit, and it's just as bad as it would seem.
• The alien monsters the Pantheon encounters at the bottom of the hole. Three of them, later referred to as the Buggos, are arthropod-like abominations, and their leader, later called Charybdis, is a hulking monstrosity with oversized eyes, a roar that instantly fills our heroes with dread every time, and a massive gaping mouth that can summon A GODDAMN BLACK HOLE!
  • As many scenes in the book demonstrate, you don't just get sucked in like a vacuum. No, the process of spaghettification is in full effect here, as everything caught in that vortex ends up violently pulled apart. And if this is a truly realistic black hole we're talking about (it isn't, but perhaps close enough), time is bent to a degree that the pain and agony of being pulled in is drawn out.
  • As for the Buggos, despite the ridiculous name, they're almost as nasty. One looks like a crab with too many legs and big eyes, and the other two resemble flying insects with blade-like raptorial limbs. Oh, and they can combine into an unnerving two-headed mockery of a Combining Mecha.
• Aten manages to tell our heroes what those aliens were...by unleashing a pulsating mass of tentacles out of her floating orb eye thing, ensnaring Yata, and having some of the tendrils go into his ears as he stands there foaming at the mouth, his friends helpless to save him. The process very nearly kills him, and leaves him in complete shock and despair at the sights he's seen. Sure, it was the only way anyone could know of the threat, but damn, that bites.
  • More to the point, there is what Aten is actually trying to tell them. Those four aliens they all fought earlier are just a small part of a nefarious galactic army known as the Dreadnoughts. These are the beings that Houston was warning Yuki about in the previous book. Basically, they go from planet to planet taking all of their mana, and killing all beings there in the process. Those who survive are either on the run, or end up joining their forces. In that moment, the Pantheon feels like they're way in over their heads facing what amounts to the Greater-Scope Villain of the trilogy.
• During the Dreadnought kaijus' assault on Mombasa, several people are seen being pulled into Charybdis' black hole. If you read the above, you'll know why this is a horrid thought.
• Alkonoth getting her head sliced off by the Big Buggo.
• As awesome as it is, once Midori henshins with Aten, her personality does a complete 180. Up to this point, the alien giant has been fighting in a very standard way. But then comes this priestess who turns out to have a LOT of repressed fury within her. What follows isn't even a battle. It's a massacre. One that leaves almost everyone shocked and terrified of Midori for a time.
  Midori: I'm gonna crush them...I'm gonna fucking rip them apart!
  • And she does. In less than half a chapter, the Dreadnought kaiju die HORRIBLY. First, she takes a Flying Buggo and crushes its head so that it's brain is exposed. Then she summons a set of very toothy jaws from her head orb to tear into it.
  • The Land Buggo attempts to retreat, but Aten catches up, and proceeds to rip all of its legs off before tossing it towards Ganejin and Mungonde. The former has the latter lift him up so that he can land on the alien and crush it, which he does. Quite messily, with the monster's innards bursting out of every orifice.
  • The last Flying Buggo is dealt with quickly, being thrown into Charybdis' black hole. It's ripped apart slowly and violently.
  • And finally, Charybdis' demise. Aten manages to fire a ball of energy into its mouth, causing its black hole powers to malfunction, and proceed to suck it into a singularity. The monster basically gets pulled into itself as it's turned inside-out before blipping out of existence.

Scythian Frost and Other Stories

Scythian Frost:

• The titular frost. Basically, the Arctic Circle has become so inhospitable to most life due to the nuclear winter all those many centuries ago that the mere breeze is enough to unleash the worst case of frostbite unto any unfortunate soul who happens to not be equipped enough. Sasha ends up affected by at in the end, his bullet wound freezing up and his fingers smashing apart with the slightest friction upon reaching the tomb.
• According to legend, when Alkonoth defeated Vulpog, he did not survive whatever the bird did to her...but his endless amount of giant wormy parasites did! Enter the Wooly Worms, huge parasitic monsters that became the apex predators of the frozen north after their host died. Somehow, they took on the characteristics of the fox kaiju, and are practically unstoppable when our protagonists run into them. For these three, it's just Run or Die when four (later three) worms find them.
  • The build-up is worth mentioning. The trio finds a base, only to find that they are also Late to the Tragedy. They only find one corpse, half-frozen and ripped messily in half by...something. Upon finding some white fur next to the carnage, Kirill speculates that the Vulpog might be Not Quite Dead. Then they find documents on the Wooly Worms, and it becomes clear that the menace is only slightly worse than a giant fox.
  • After one of the worms gets blown up by a landmine, another worm gleefully eats through it while in pursuit of the humans.
• On that note, the land mine field. Imagine being faced with technology now rarely used, and it could kill you just with one false step where an explosive could be anywhere. And sure enough, one takes the life of one of our protagonists.
• Over time, the captain reveals to Kirill and Sasha that they are very expendable to him, not helped by his frequent info-withholding and Arbitrary Skepticism regarding the worms. Then, when the monsters are in pursuit, he shoots Sasha in the shoulder, madly raving about getting the glory for awakening Alkonoth and exploiting her power. And then...
  • ...the worms give him an appropriately awful death. One grabs him by the torso with its mouth, then the other nabs his legs. They pull in opposite directions, and he ends up Half the Man He Used to Be. The little worm feasts on the shower of gore that comes pouring out.

Outrigger:

• The deep-sea leviathans that menace the oceans of this post-apocalyptic world are scary just thinking about, but this story shows there's more to it than standard giant squids. This one features a gargantuan bobbit worm. Basically, imagine a burying worm with HUGE blade-like jaws for catching fish, and you have the right idea. Except this one's so big, Kai and Taika's boat is barely as big as its head!
• Of course, the worm isn't the true aggressor here (it's even an Accidental Hero later on). That would be a huge sea urchin that fights it, seemingly to the death at first. And sure enough, it hunts like a regularly-sized one as well. It gets Taika Impaled with Extreme Prejudice, and drags him below to eat. When it nearly gets Kai, it unveils a large mouth described only as horrible. Had the worm leviathan not intervened, Kai would have been dead.
• For some reason, even after eating Taika, the urchin still goes after Kai's boat. But it's not a Super-Persistent Predator because nature says so. Instead, it's because of the Death Patch, a huge pile of harmful materials from the Old World that many leviathans feasted on before it disintegrated. They were all driven mad by whatever was in that stuff, and the urchin was one of them.

Lair of the Devourer:

• Enofe Chuk. An esteemed poacher and criminal, this madman not only gets his kicks putting animals on either the endangered or extinct species list, but is also a Villain with Good Publicity (or at least he was until he became a crime lord). According to Akuma, one of his most heinous acts was massacring an entire group of giant mountain gorillas and getting away with it. And he didn't just shoot them either. He hacked some of them to pieces like a serial killer.
• Although Ammit is portrayed in a sympathetic light, keep in mind that this is an animal based off of one of the more intimidating monsters of Egyptian mythology. Namely, the one that eats the souls of the dead. Thankfully, she doesn't do that here. She just eats them alive.
• The giant mountain gorilla squashing Tooth flat by jumping onto him. That must have been messy, though deserved.

The Pantheon Arrives!:

• The unnamed monster that attacks the alien city is stated to have void-like face with a mouth that looks a lot like those of the citizens below it. It's described as a sight that has a major Uncanny Valley effect on everyone there.
• Earlier, the boss getting splattered on his own limo.
• Although he's a hero, Deinler's method of execution is rather nasty. He injects his foe with an acid-like poison (probably digestive juices) through a thin syringe-like thing from his mouth, and lets them die there. Sentencer of the Gods, indeed.

Pharaoh of Eels

• The books is full of illustrations by Alex Gayhart. Anyone familiar with his art style can be prepared for some rather gritty pictures...and the series' particularly gory moments being brought out in vivid detail.
• The pirates and the eels' assault on the party boats. First Laki's head gets a hole blown through it by a powerful gun shot. Then out of nowhere, an eel attacks Niko. He manages to get it off, but then Jun gets his face riddled with bullets. Then Jae has the half of his skull with his face torn off by another eel. Then Manu gets his hand shot. Then it becomes clear that the pirates and the eels are working in tandem. Then Shaheed's ship gets set on fire and blown up by an eel's electrical pulse (killing everyone else on it). And finally, Captain Faro arrives to take prisoners.
• CAPTAIN FARO. Easily one of the coldest and most evil human protagonists seen so far. Sure, he doesn't have the world-ending abilities that Frank Houston would have access to, but he's still a ruthless, scarred-up pirate crime lord who controls the eels by force through his amulet (a mockery of the henshin amulets) and rules the Lost Continent of Oz with an iron fist. His first instinct is to sell the survivors on the slave market, and keep them imprisoned above the eels while they wait. Just an exceptionally cruel and dangerous man.
• A couple pirates watching their drunk companion drown and die, and they just laugh it off, taking Niko as a replacement. It just goes to show how heartless these crooks can be in the Wretched Hive they call home.
• Once the eels are released, they end up ripping several pirates apart. We even get an illustration of some being Devoured by the Horde.
• Those eels? They're actually living components of Pirangon, having been separated from him via henshin magic by Jharlaragon. So when the amulet gets destroyed, the eels merge together...and as the illustration shows, it ain't pretty at first.
• Pirangon's rampage through the pirate base is undoubtedly an awesome moment, but it's also very much a Mook Horror Show for the pirates, especially the earlier mentioned pirates who got their kicks off of drowning companions. Their leader gets drowned personally by him.
• Captain Faro's demise is one HELL of a Karmic Death, but it's by and large one of the most painful things to happen to a human villain in this series, perhaps even surpassing Houston's demise. Pirangon grabs him with a tentacle, and slowly charges it up. The electricity causes Faro to graphically burn alive, his hair and clothes catching fire, his veins bursting, and his left eye popping before the rest of his body explodes. And yes, there is an illustration. Hope you like it.

Yuki vs. Fleshworld

• Aten's world has been reduced to a Ghost Planet by the Dreadnoughts. Absolutely no life is left on it by the time the pantheon shows up. And then we see a recording of what happened. The Dreadnought kaiju are described as eating the inhabitants and/or crushing them under their feet while Aten and her now deceased pantheon companions can only retreat.
  • That's not even the worst part about this place. Shortly after everyone finds out that the planet's pantheon is dead, a storm gathers, and down falls acidic rain. It doesn't do anything to the kaiju, but it's so corrosive that it eats right through Yuki's hand, and turns a short run towards an alien base into a painful life-or-death scenario. By the time they get to the entrance, the rain is more intense, they're getting hit more often, and they all sound more panicked than they've ever been before or since.
• Not long after escaping the rain, the base is revealed to be booby-trapped, and for a moment, everyone's stuck in a room set to steadily go up in temperature until they burn up under a bright-red light. Thankfully, there are no injuries this time.
• Fleshworld. Imagine Unicron, except it's an organic planet-shaped predator several times bigger than Jupiter, it has teeth and tentacles, and it goes around eating entire planets without any rhyme or reason. "A kaiju's daikaiju", indeed.
  • There's another detail about Fleshworld that retroactively makes the Dreadnoughts scarier too. As the pantheon later finds out, Aten's planet's pantheon were so overwhelmed by the marauding aliens that they TRIED TO ATTRACT A PLANET-EATING MONSTROSITY just to make them go away. Rather appropriately, it was called the Doomsday Contingency.
  • We get to see Fleshworld eat a planet. In this case, the one Yamanra's Dreadnoughts were on. First its visage blots out the sky, then its sheer gravitational force causes atmospheric disruption and flooding, it tears the planet apart, and then it finishes the job with its microwave beam. The result is a crispy, tasty dead planet. Nom nom.
  • The entire chapter demonstrates how hopeless the war against it really is. In an instant, Fleshworld reduces Yamanra's massive legion to about 150 out of what must have been thousands. One unlucky Dreadnought ends up staring into its maw, and is torn apart by the sheer gravitational force.
  • Being on Fleshworld is no picnic either. It's a whole landscape full of tentacles and Meat Moss, to the point where you'd be forgiven for thinking you were standing on a being turned inside-out. Oh, and the gravity is so strong that you stand a good chance of breaking all of your bones just by moving.
  • And now for the most glaring detail of them all...FLESHWORLD HAD NO IDEA THAT HE WAS KILLING BILLIONS THE WHOLE TIME! He's in fact a Gentle Giant who was just acting on his instincts, and is horrified to learn what he's been doing. Thankfully, Yuki's able to convince him to stop eating populated planets, and even gives him a friend in the process.
• As one might guess, the Dreadnoughts are no laughing matter. Admiral Yamanra's legion consists of HUNDREDS of varied kaiju, all gunning to kill the pantheon. And they come in all sorts of shapes and sizes too. Some are utterly bizarre, like sapient geometry and odd Mix-and-Match Critters, while others have freaking GUNS for limbs and even heads! And yet despite all of this, [[The Worf Effect, they still don't stand much of a chance against Fleshworld.]] And of course, many die very nasty deaths at the hands of our heroes.
  • A few of the monsters seen include other members of the species that gave us the Buggos (actually Arthroguards) and even Charybdis, something that unnerves Midori greatly. Though it is acknowledged that that particular black-hole monster was out of line.
• Admiral Yamanra. A nasty combination of Dreadnought leading - General Ripper and shapeshifting seductress. To give you an idea of how awful she is, that kaiju she's bonded with isn't even alive. She killed it and is now basically using it like a puppet.
  • It doesn't help that the kaiju itself looks positively gnarly, like a humanoid demon horse turned inside-out with glowing purple tentrils on the back and massive talons.
  • What makes Yamanra so awful though is her role as a Shadow Archetype to Yuki. She's a powerful soldier, she's got tons of blood on her hands, and she can henshin with a kaiju. The difference is that she doesn't care who gets hurt for the sake of the mission, she'll gladly send her own soldiers to die for something as small as making a point (in the story's case, showing the pantheon the dangers of the Dreadnought's base), and she saw no problem killing her kaiju for the sake of control, something that wracked Yuki with guilt when she almost did it. In short, she's every horrible thing Yuki could become if she didn't have her friends. And she knows it. Several times, Yamanra attempts a Breaking Speech, trying to make Yuki embrace that violent side of hers. Good thing it never works, but you can tell from the text that Yuki feels personally attacked every time.
• While being escorted by Yamanra, the pantheon are surrounded by her legion of Dreadnought kaiju. It is described as a wall of the damned, surrounding them like a sphere of monstrous beasts.
• The Dreadnought legion's chosen world to form a base on at first appears to be a verdant tropical paradise...until it slowly dawns on the pantheon that the aliens have effectively cleansed it of all sapient life. The sea monster that briefly attacks and kills the scouts is killed in front of our heroes, all while Yamanra treats it like a simple case of pest control. It's a major red flag that she's nowhere near as benevolent as she presents herself.
  • Not to mention the main facility the Dreadnoughts are kept in. It's huge and it goes down several floors underground. And we get a little tour of most of the floors, each housing a different kind of vicious Dreadnought. Of particular note is the seventh level, which houses just one monster. A centipede/crocodile-looking colossus that encompasses almost the entire floor! And even worse, it shows up during the Final Battle (though it's thankfully dealt with with not too much hassle).
• The fight between Yuki and Jorguis might just be one of the most visceral and bloody battles in the entire series. In order to use the henshin device, Yuki is forced to exit Narajin. Thing is, they're on Fleshworld, which has gravity many times stronger than on Earth. Every step is a herculean feat, and Jorguis is still active after the loss of his kaiju. They end up coming to blows, and every attack they utilize hurts them as much as it hurts each other. Bones break, limbs are destroyed, blood flies, and by the time the battle nears its end, Jorguis is a broken heap missing most of his arms, his lower regions mulched, and at Yuki's mercy. She ends up smashing the lieutenant's head to bits with her fist. Had it not been for the henshin device, Yuki would have died from her own injuries and the gravity slowly crushing her.
• Upon seeing her plans fall apart thanks to Yuki befriending Fleshworld, Yamanra orders what remains of her fleet to attack the neighboring planet, presumably out of spite for her ambitions being ruined.
• Yamanra threatens to blow up the planet, something she tells Yuki before their final fight. During said fight, she digs her energy ribbons into Narajin's sides, filling them up with mana in order to make them explode. It leaves Yuki in screaming pain as Yamanra demands she kill her kaiju in order to embrace his power. Thankfully, Yuki and Narajin's bond ensures an 11th-Hour Superpower.
• The remaining Dreadnoughts' last resort is causing one of the Warrior Beasts' planet's stars to go supernova. It very nearly does before the pantheon is able to redirect its energy. Whatever the case, the loss of the star is implied to start an ice age for the planet, even if it's presented as not too big of a deal.

Mokwa: Lifesblood of the Earth

• The cover. Just the cover. The visage of a crazed toothy Slasher Smile with a tiny splatter in the middle is a perfect Establishing Series Moment for letting the reader know that horror is in store for them in this particular spin-off.
  • Sure enough, this image comes up a couple of times in the story proper, and as one might guess, it endlessly unnerves Allie.
• They very premise of the story. That being the Laurentians going in to resurrect and control something literally described as the incarnation of evil. That's right. After the disaster of trying to control previous kaiju, they're throwing the lessons learned out and gunning for something explicitly described as being a menace.
• The jungles of South Laurentia are very wrong. Unlike the jungles of Alkebulan, there is little to no life, and most of the plants look dead. It's as if the whole land is poisoned...which we later learn isn't far from the truth at all.
  • One scene in particular stands out. A Laurentian soldier cuts his leg slightly on one of the plants...and it causes him to completely rupture from the inside, fall to his knees, beg for death, start throwing up profusely, and then vomit an upward geyser of blood before collapsing in a dead withered heap as red droplets rain on the forest and the people around him. The kicker? This is implied to be how the plants sustain themselves.
• Of all the kaiju seen in the series, none are quite as psychotic nor sadistic as Supayra. At first, a giant poison dart frog doesn't sound too frightening. But until he's awakened, just about everything related to him refers to him as pure evil, and the one destroyer they couldn't truly kill. When Allie approaches his tomb, she can subconsciously feel a deep hatred. And yet, the Laurentians have no problem bringing him back, despite Lieberman appropriately describing his resting place as a tomb not for him, but for them. They even plan on using Allie as a blood sacrifice. Failing that, some soldiers shoot themselves during the ceremony.
  • It's during his awakening that we get to see what he is truly. As General Ryan tries to use the makeshift henshin device, the frog proceeds to mentally blast his chest cavity open and blow him up! He reveals that he can communicate with other creatures with his mind, WITHOUT A HENSHIN AMULET. In other words, he's free to mentally torture his prey for as long as he likes.
  • Then there's what he does to the rest of the soldiers who went on the stupid mission. He lays it out to them that they're not needed, and they're screwed:
  Supayra: I have to thank you. Thank you for working so hard to restore this planet's true heir, and for accpeting that humans no longer have claim to it...or the right to live. Let me show you a true daikaiju, unlike those...(glares at Mokwa)...who have enabled your ways to continue. Never again...will you see the light of day!

  • He then proceeds to let out a croak so loud it causes their minds to melt out of their ears and the rest of their insides to be liquefied.
  • While killing the rest of the Laurentian invaders, he gets one in-between his lips, desperately trying to break free. With nary a care, he chomps down, taking off the poor soldier's head.
  • The way Supayra torments Mokwa. All he does most of the time is keep his distance and stare at the bear, knowing that she cannot harm him physically without hurting herself. He knows Allie and Mokwa suffer every time he instigates a massacre, and he's loving it.
• Allie and Obasi encounter Thyrus while in the forgotten lands, and he nearly kills the young woman by taking a chunk out of her leg. It just goes to show that, despite saving a little girl in the short story preceding this one, the reptilian giant is a case of Nature Is Not Nice.
• Umbria, the village that Thyrus lives near, is at first presented as a very creepy place, with everyone hiding in their homes and an old lady being extremely cryptic about where she's leading Allie and Obasi. The former even starts to believe that they're cannibals, and they'll be serving them for dinner. Of course, it turns out that they're just afraid of vampires and not at all harmful, but then the elder says that the last person who couldn't pass the test got a stake through the heart. How many have met that same fate?
  • A more subtle disturbing detail is that we're dealing with villagers fanatically paranoid about supernatural activity in Europe...in the distant future. This is the sort of thing that should have died with the witch trials from centuries before kaiju were even a thing. But here in the post-apocalypse, some societal vices have come full circle.
• The forgotten lands are revealed to be the home of a line of aristocrats known as the Heimanns. What makes them so frightening is what they've done to the resident kaiju. According to the locals, the current Heimann, like his predecessors, is a Mad Scientist who took either the kaiju his family trapped or their corpses after the war, and did...something with them. It doesn't help that his residence is a dark castle our heroes find in the middle of an intense rain storm. Such a visage is only fit for a case of Gothic Horror.
  • And boy howdy, the truth about Heimann's experiments is no picnic. It's revealed that he took the three kaiju of the forgotten lands, and stitched them together with metal to create a bipedal Chimera of a beast. And it's awful to behold. It's got the head and torso of a wolf, the legs of a ram, a ram's head for a left arm, and the wings of a raven. The kicker is that this thing is in a constant state of agony just from existing. Small wonder it instantly tries to kill itself when it's freed.
  • Speaking of which, there's the way it's freed in the first place. Heimann is showing our heroes his work, when suddenly his voice gets lower, and he begins spouting about how weak their monsters are. It's revealed that Supayra has learned how to control minds, and the actual Heimann is begging him not to release his monster. The frog responds by making his eyes burst out of his skull, leaving a glow in their place before the scientist pulls the lever and collapses dead.
• When our heroes get to Gael, everyone they meet is in a trance-like state. The people who aren't are all gathered in the local pub. According to the bartender, Supayra has made his throne in the nearby Sterling Castle, and he demands a sacrifice per day. Some people come to the bar to get drunk until they can't remember that he's always lurking in their minds. In less than half a week, this evil frog took over an entire town.
• During the Final Battle, Mungonde gets his fingers bitten off by Supayra's jaws clamping down on them. Ouch.
  • Later, Supayra starts absorbing the energy Mokwa is unleashing onto him, and unergoes a metamorphosis into a giant bipedal frog monster that's Red and Black and Evil All Over. He declares himself to be the first Dreadnought of Earth, and then unleashes a mouthful of tongue-tendrils to drain Mokwa and Mungonde of their mana. Had it not been for the extra energy from the rest of the pantheon, Supayra would have won then and there.

Mokwa: Ursa Major

• The prologue has a boy and his father hide in a cabin from...something. Then, a fog approaches. The boy goes out against his father's will to find his pet, only for his house (and his dad) to get crushed by a Giant Foot of Stomping. One that belongs to a great knight-like figure. He and his pet escape, but are understandably shook.
  • It's later revealed that this is Colonel B's backstory, and we have in fact gotten our first look at the Fog Knights.
• During her assault on the Golden Clan's base, Allie gets caught, and the guards proceed to shred her backside up until she's close to actually dying. She henshins just in time to make a full recovery through Mokwa, but the mental scars do not heal. And this is just a taste of the pain she's going to go through in the rest of the story.
• The Lochsleech. It's this world's resident Stock Ness Monster, but instead of a large prehistoric reptile, it's a tentacled leech-like predator with a Flower Mouth full of sharp teeth. Also, it sucks people up to eat them. The Golden Clan attempted to tame it, and they proceed to pay the full price for it when they and their leader, Lord Bastilton, are sucked up.
  • The build-up too. While going through the castle, Allie notices murals of a large creature swallowing people up, signifying that whatever lives here was The Dreaded to them.
  • Bastilton's death is horrifying. Instead of just being sucked into the Lochsleech's mouth, he gets stuck on one of its teeth, his head facing the throat. Once the monster starts sucking again, his eyeballs are ripped out, followed by his skin, and then his whole head before the rest of the body follows.
• Allie's nightmare while still in Gael. She sees Supayra outside of her house, who proceeds to taunt her. Her lack of a reaction is unsettling enough, but then the winds pick up. And suddenly, Charybdis is there, sucking everything into his black hole mouth. Allie and Owen are sucked in right before she wakes up screaming.
• 'THE FOG. An all-encompassing, pitch-black, sentient disturbance in space-time that is slowly enveloping the planet Ganawenda. Anything that gets caught in it gets to witness it turn the place into a lifeless wasteland not disimilar to the dead lands on Earth. And on top of everything else, there's HOW it kills. It conjures knights. Fog Knights. There are three in total. The Knight Watchman and the Berserker Knight are intimidating with their Black Knight aesthetic, but then there's the Plague Knight, designed to look like a skeletal Plague Doctor, who wields a weapon that can infect other life forms with the fog itself! Altogether, they're one of the most formidable foes faced in the series, amplified by their No-Nonsense Nemesis attitudes (if you can call the will of a brainless destructive fog and attitude).
  • The introduction isn't shabby either. A many-limbed kaiju runs towards our heroes, and right after it tells Mokwa that they're all doomed, it's sliced into bloody pieces by the unseen Knights. There's even an illustration. And the kicker? That monster was this planet's last line of defense.
  • As is revealed near the end, the origin of the fog. It came from a huge mechanical tower, presumably to convert the dark matter of the universe into energy. It ended up creating the fog instead, which now seeks to destroy this world and whatever else gets in its way. That's one Hell of a Green Aesop right there.
  • After curb-stomping Mokwa and Mungonde, the Plague Knight stabs Mungonde in the torso, right before spiriting him away with Obasi. Allie has no way of knowing if they're dead or not at that point.
• Allie's vision of Supayra while in the alien castle begins with her seeing the city on fire, and the evil frog in the middle of it all.
• Upon entering the fog once more with the mechas, Mokwa is assaulted by a flurry of negative emotions, as if the fog was capable of manipulating such things. Maybe it can. Either way, it's no mystery that they're all screwed when the Knights show up.
  • Mons Magna gets filled with fog from the Plague Knight, and when one of the pilots foolishly tries to fire at the Berserker Knight, the mech's head gets blown up. Their screams are still heard.
  • The Plague Knight manages to No-Sell the very same move used to vanquish Supayra from the last story. Following that, Allie has Mokwa take Broadsword (who's head is deep in the Plague Knight after that), and swing his head around to fight the Berserker Knight. Tim is still in there, screaming all the way until the Knight gets a good hit in, slicing his mech and himself in half.
• Later, Allie, Mokwa, and the Colonel come across a dead land surrounded by corrupted ground. Spikes jut out of the place on a whim, and our heroes are barely able to escape the onslaught. Then something else rises out of the ground. A horde of armored humanoid man-sized monsters appropriately named Fog Demons. They proceed to Zerg Rush at the Colonel's forces. And while many are shot at and incinerated, they keep coming and coming, eventually ripping all of the ground troops to shreds. They then swarm all over Fortress, forcing Mokwa to blow it up with the Colonel in it (even though he ordered it). Now it's just Allie and Mokwa, all alone against the fog.
• Allie ends up hallucinating the Berserker Knight as Supayra. And while she does eventually get the drop on the Knight, it just goes to show how broken her mind is becoming. No matter where she goes, that damned frog will never go away.
• At the place where Obasi most likely is, Allie and Mokwa come across a large abandoned city. Allie goes on foot, and finds that there's nobody around. She descends into a subway-like place, and finds just one person. When that person turns around, there's nothing in his eyes except the fog. Then more and more people show up to surround her. Every single person has been infected with the fog by the Plague Knight. And sure enough, the Knight himself shows up in human-size to fight her. After she manages to fend him off, he just reverts to normal size to crush her before Mokwa intervenes.
  • During their fight, Allie flings a possessed person at the Knight, whose armor shifts to turn into a spinning flower-like shape that shreds the person like a blender.
• In order to free Obasi, Mokwa has to kill Mungonde. And by Allie's command, she does. Painfully. We get a long sequence of the bear slowly smashing in the mandrill's head. With each 'crack', details of how gory the affair is are not spared at all. It's equal parts tragic and downright sadistic.
  • Even worse, Obasi states that both he and Mungonde felt every second of Mungonde's death. He said it had to be done, but still.
• The very end, in which Allie and Supayra end up laughing in unison, one voice, one laugh, one mind. There is the strong implication that Supayra is Real All Along, and he's here to stay. It's easily one of the bleakest notes the series has ended on, but it's just the preamble for how this trilogy is going to come to it's conclusion...

Mokwa: Exorcism

• The prologue is from the point of view of a bride-to-be. On her wedding day, her fiance doesn't show up. A friend reveals that he perished out at sea. The perpetrator then shows up. It's Supayra, currently running from our heroes in Lifesblood of the Earth. He eats everyone there as the bride can only cross the Despair Event Horizon. Without a second thought, she walks into the evil frog's maw after he coerces her.
• The HORRIBLE things Supayra makes Allie do while living in her head. By day, he's turned her into a bitter shell of her former self, actively alienating her from her friends. By night, he convinces her that she's in a cathartic dream to work out stress, and has her lure gullible people into a furnace, where she straps them to a table, and tells them that they're a blood sacrifice before killing them. The kicker is that this has gone on for several times. And what's more, at the end of each murder, Supayra lavishes her in saliva and tongue tendrils. Allie's life, whether she knows it or not, has become a nightmare of sex and violence.
  It was a fantastic dream, a provocative escape. That's all it was. A dream. Just a dream. Otherwise, it would be diabolical.
  • Not to mention, right before she kills her most recent victim, her eyes go yellow, and she gains Supayra's voice and sharp teeth. It's safe to say that the frog has mastered a frightening version of Demonic Possession.
• The title page. Right behind "Mokwa", you can see the word "Supayra" behind it. He really is taking over...
• The way Supayra acts with Allie is much more unsettling than a standard Demonic Possession. No, it's more akin to something a Bastard Boyfriend would do. Think about it. He gives Allie immense pleasure with the "dreams" and implicitly sexual affairs with his tongue tentacles, but at the same time actively encourages her to give in to her darker impulses and cut the actual positive elements of her life out. And somehow, he's able to make her start thinking that his goals, whatever they are, align with hers. It's scarily similar to how real-life abusive partners act when they want less love and more someone to control.
• While killing the new colonel, Allie ends up stabbed near-fatally. She's forced to crawl all the way back home, barely surviving by henshining with Mokwa. Despite it seemingly being a dream, she can't understand while Supayra doesn't just wake her up.
• The moment everyone starts to investigate the Colonel's disappearance, Supayra encourages Allie to fuse with Mokwa for the investigation. When they find evidence of it being Allie's doing, THAT'S when Supayra shows his true colors, POSSESSING MOKWA. He has her fire upon countless innocent civilians, and even blast the castle apart with the queen in it, killing her. Once again, even for a brief moment, an evil force possesses the great bear.
• While possessed, Allie ends up stabbing Obasi at the base of the neck. She very nearly kills him as she screams for Supayra to make her stop. Mokwa arrives just in time to save the both of them, thankfully.
• The dividing of the mind is a Dangerous Forbidden Technique done before the amulets were used to henshin, and Mokwa does it to get Supayra out of Allie's mind. the following Battle in the Center of the Mind is a trippy and harrowing affair that even has a scene of Allie getting blasted apart by Supayra's super-sonic scream before reforming again.
• After Supayra is exorcised from Allie, his most vile move of all is revealed. Earlier throughout the story, Allie has felt large boil-like growths on her back, causing her to itch. Well...it turn out those boils are INCUBATING EGGS. SUPAYRA IMPREGNATED HER. And sure enough, they hatch right after Supayra is expunged. Allie can only scream in pain and shock as they burst out...one of which speaks in Supayra's voice and calls her mommy. Yup, not only did he impregnate her in the most unconventional of ways (for f*cks sake, they come out of her back like she's a suriname toad), but he also did it to reincarnate. Mokwa manages to crush ten of them, but the rest escape into the woods.
• The sons of Supayra, him included, launch an assault on the soldiers coming to look for them. Many are snatched without warning and dragged into their mouths, and for the most part, it's like watching hapless colonial marines against a horde of huge Xenomorphs. Granted, seven out of ten sons end up dying, but that just begs the question as to what will happen when they grow up.
  • King Supayra is our villain's new name, and he promises Allie that he'll get a lot stronger to face her.
• King Supayra reacting in glee when Mokwa blasts him, reveling in the pain he's currently feeling.
• While rampaging during the Final Battle, Setanayra eats up a lot of people who didn't want to go into the bunker, at one point giving his father/brother a big blood smile when the latter praises him.
• Even after King Supayra is killed, his spirit STILL isn't down, as it possesses the weak-willed Bill instead. He had the Mecha Knight lay waste to the city before Mokwa stops him.
  • Once he escapes the Knight's wreck, Bill/Supayra runs off and stabs random people as Allie chases him. Once he's cornered, the girl proceeds to smash Bill's head in slowly with her boot. It's eerily reminiscent of Mungonde's death in the last story, the difference being that it's happening to the most loathed character. It all ends when Allie crushes Bill's possessed eyes, the last vestiges of Supayra there are.