Chapter 29: The Three, Accusation and Information
"Who is the Goddess of the Underworld? And who is the Venus Goddess?"
Inside the courtyard residence beside the Uruk palace, sunlight spilled through the window lattice and lit the dust on the panes. The tiny motes drifted like sparks caught in slow water.
Enkidu sat close to Rowe, her emerald hair falling over her shoulders as she looked up at him.
"Rowe, have you been hiding something from us? Did you go and fight a god?"
Her clear voice echoed softly in the room. Her cheeks were puffed, her expression openly dissatisfied, like a child who had just realized someone kept a secret snack.
Rowe almost choked.
For a Divine Construct, she asked that with startling righteousness. Fighting a god sounded less like blasphemy and more like asking whether he had gone out to spar with a neighbor.
But he understood why. The first person Enkidu met was not some devout priestess who knelt at divine altars. It was him.
Because of that, she held no reverence for the gods. To her, gods were just powerful passersby. And after Rowe had already declared war on them, they were not even that. In Enkidu's mind, gods were simply enemies. Simple, tidy, and brutally direct, the way a heart stays before it learns politics.
"It's nothing," Rowe said, choosing his words as carefully as he would choose a blade. "I just met… new friends."
There was no need to hide the truth from her. Enkidu was practically raised by him. Their bond was closer to siblings than anything else. She was worried about his safety, nothing more.
Unfortunately, the golden nuisance on the other side of the room chose that exact moment to sharpen the knife.
"Hmph hahaha… New friends?" Gilgamesh lounged with arrogant ease, scarlet eyes bright with trouble. "Then your relationship with these new friends must be quite good."
"So good that your mouths were pressed together."
Even though he could only infer the past from what the future showed him, Gilgamesh had still caught two blurred figures close enough to be unmistakable.
A vein twitched on Rowe's forehead.
"Is a so called King just a peeping tom now?"
"Peeping?" Gilgamesh looked offended in the way only a tyrant can look offended. "This King is the Lord of All Phenomena. The world itself is my courtyard. Do I need permission to inspect what belongs to me?"
Rowe's reply stabbed clean through that grandeur.
"Is that why you once declared, without distinction or shame, that you would take the first night of every man and woman in Uruk?"
It had happened.
Back then, Gilgamesh had just come of age. He had shifted from a boy who adored the gods into a youth who realized they were trying to make him a pawn. His rebellion was loud and ugly. He slid from wise ruler to tyrant almost overnight.
The first "proof" of that rebellion was the right of the first night.
He had not even managed to carry it out before reality slapped him across the face.
Uruk was not a little village. It was a sprawling city state with countless surrounding towns and settlements, hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of citizens. Men, women, old, young, the numbers were absurd.
Even if he only counted the newly married. Even if he was a demigod of flesh and blood.
An iron kidney still would not survive that schedule.
So after less than two days, the so called right was abolished by Gilgamesh himself, then buried as dark history.
Rowe had just dug it up and held it to the light.
Gilgamesh's face went rigid.
"Mongrel."
"Who is the mongrel?"
"The mongrel is talking about you."
"All right, Mr. Mongrel, hello."
It was an old trick. A childish trick, really. But old tricks win because they work.
Rowe burst into laughter.
Gilgamesh stared at him in disbelief.
This mongrel dares to imitate my laugh?
Enkidu, who had shifted from questioning to watching, tilted her head. She looked at Rowe, then at Gilgamesh, then at Rowe again. Her expression softened.
This was nothing like the forest. Nothing like their previous quiet days.
It was noisy.
But maybe… not bad.
The faint irritation she had held toward Gilgamesh diluted into something lighter. Enkidu smiled faintly and leaned against Rowe, her posture small and trusting.
Outside the window, the sun was bright and generous.
The weather was perfect.
The King argued with the Sage on that day.
The Divine Construct listened quietly to the wind and the murmurs of humanity.
The original three met formally on that radiant morning drenched in sunlight.
Yet the crisis stood right behind that warmth.
The Epic of Gilgamesh.
Bang.
A heavy thud struck outside the door.
The two bickering men froze at the same time and looked over. Enkidu straightened, green hair lifting like a silent warning.
They saw a figure outside the doorway scrambling to her feet after falling from the sky.
Fair bare arms gleamed in the sun. A red coat now covered most of her graceful body, its hem reaching past her thighs. Compared to her usual attire, she looked far more dignified and conservative. The style even leaned toward the Underworld's ruler, as if she thought wearing her sister's mood would make Rowe look her way.
"Ishtar?"
Rowe and Gilgamesh spoke the name at the same time.
Enkidu's gaze cooled, alert in a heartbeat.
The Venus Goddess stood there, undeniably the same one Rowe had just met last night.
"Cough, cough."
Ishtar adjusted herself with theatrical dignity, then planted her feet in front of the door. Arms crossed, back to the sun, she pointed her chin up at them like a queen announcing judgment.
"Hmph hmph hmph. Gilgamesh, Rowe, and you, Divine Construct."
"I, Ishtar, Mistress of Heaven, hereby declare war on you all."
"My Main body in the heavens has petitioned Father Anu to unleash the strongest Divine Beast under my command, the Bull of Heaven, and the strongest Demonic Beast, Humbaba, to punish you sinners who defy the gods."
"Fear and tremble."
"This is only a warning, a declaration of war. It is absolutely not a reminder."
"Do not misunderstand."
All right.
This was a reminder.
Rowe understood immediately. Humanity had infected the goddess too deeply to let her watch the world burn without flinching. The method was awkward, and the pride asserted itself so hard it bent into a pretzel, but the intent was clear.
Ishtar had come to give them a heads up.
Humans and gods were different. And the human part of her could not stay calm if a calamity this large truly descended.
…
At the same time.
In the heavens.
A dimension above the human world, running parallel to the present age, where light was a law rather than a blessing.
The gods gathered in their radiant hall, thrones aligned like constellations in judgment.
"I believe you have all heard Goddess Ishtar's opinion," Anu, King of Gods, said from the head of the hall. Crown on his brow, scepter in hand, his hawk like eyes swept the assembly.
"Since she is willing to yield the Bull of Heaven that lies under her authority, then."
"I, Anu, Sky God, declare it so."
"We shall inflict the gravest punishment upon those who defy the gods."
"I will release at once the strongest Divine Beast, the Bull of Heaven, and the strongest Demonic Beast, Humbaba."
"Gugalanna, the Bull of Heaven, is the embodiment of the storm's vortex and the omen of drought. It will trample every inch of land and destroy every place it touches."
"Humbaba of the Cedar Forest is the resentment of countless silent souls, the embodiment of death. He will bring an eternal end to the living beings on earth."
As Anu's decree fell like a stone into fate, two rays of light burst from the celestial hall.
One was white.
One was black.
They descended into the present world together, landing in the east and west like closing jaws, flanking Uruk from both sides.
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