CHAPTER 19 #2
She’d been hoping for an attack so big it was inescapable, but this new, young Gilgamesh was even squirrellier than the old one.
He flickered out of the way before Bex could finish the swing, but the giant sin-iron tomb behind him couldn’t dodge.
Bex’s attack hit it right across the middle, painting an enormous white slash across its pitch-black surface.
The mark grew bigger as she watched, burning through the sin iron like a seam of white phosphorus.
She was still staring at it in confusion when Gilgamesh reappeared.
“No!” he screamed, throwing out his arms like he was trying to catch something. “Hold together!”
Bex had never heard him yell out sorcery like that, but it worked.
The moment the command left the king’s tongue, the giant slabs of sin iron started pulling themselves back together.
The whole pool shook with their effort, but no matter how desperately the tomb tried to obey its king, it couldn’t heal the wound, because something inside was pushing out.
It broke through a few moments later, ripping the weakened metal apart like paper.
At first, it looked like the coffin had been attacked by four huge spears, but when the white lengths bent to grab the edge of the new hole, Bex realized they were fingers.
Four emaciated white fingers the size of telephone poles were ripping the lid off the gigantic sin-iron coffin.
When Gilgamesh shouted at the metal to push them back in, the first and longest of the fingers straightened out to point at the tank where Bex was still swimming.
Her first terrified thought was that it was pointing at her, but that wasn’t the case for once.
The finger was pointing at the quintessence, and the moment it did so, all that thick white blood began pouring back up the pipe Bex and Gilgamesh had dived down.
It flowed out even faster than it had fallen in, gushing back to the coffin it had been drained from, and as the lake of quintessence vanished, so did Gilgamesh’s restored youth.
“No!” he cried, clenching his rapidly skeletonizing fists. “It shall not be yours!”
He slammed both fists against his chest in a motion that was clearly meant to call the quintessence back, but for the first time in Bex’s memory, the magic didn’t obey him.
It just kept flowing back to the coffin until the whole tank was empty, leaving Bex standing at the bottom of a deep bowl of sin iron.
Gilgamesh dropped to the ground beside her a few seconds later, unable to even hold himself up as all his new white blood—the stolen power of the gods—flowed back to its original source.
It would’ve been the most satisfying sight of Bex’s life if she hadn’t been so terrified.
The first white hand had a partner now, then two more appeared for a total of four bony arms ripping the coffin apart.
Between the emaciated flesh and the waves of returning quintessence, everything inside was blindingly white.
It wasn’t until the lid broke off entirely that Bex finally saw the figure’s shape.
It looked like nothing she’d ever imagined.
The gods she’d seen had always been beautiful and only slightly larger than human scale.
This monster was as tall as a building. It was so thin that it looked like a skeleton as it pulled itself off the bed of spikes that lined the inside of the coffin, but when it finally rose to its feet, it looked like an angel.
A terrifying, biblically accurate one with six wings, six arms, and six black horns that rose from its head like a crown of spikes, the only parts of its entire body that weren’t white.
Even its eyes were the color of fresh snow, staring down with a look so alien, Bex didn’t realize which god she’d accidentally awoken until it pointed one of its many fingers at the once again ancient-looking Gilgamesh and said,
“Perish.”
The word was spoken in the ancient language of the Riverlands, but it was the voice that shook Bex’s body. She’d never heard it so loud before, but that was absolutely Ishtar’s voice, and the moment it spoke, Gilgamesh’s body tore itself apart.
It happened too fast to feel real. It couldn’t be real. If Ishtar could destroy Gilgamesh with a single word, why hadn’t she done it during the first war five thousand years ago? It made no sense at all until Bex looked over and saw Gilgamesh’s new white blood boiling through his skin.
Ah, she realized numbly. That was it. Every other time Gilgamesh had faced the gods, he’d been a red-blooded human.
The moment he’d taken their quintessence into his veins, though, he’d become a semi-divine creature just like Bex.
He didn’t have a sacred name as she did, but the white essence of the gods ran through every cell in his body now.
If he could command that stolen power with his sorcery, it only made sense that the original owner would be able to do the same.
It was a suitably ironic ending for a hubristic fallen hero.
The same power Gilgamesh had embraced to save himself had become his downfall, leaving the Eternal King of Heaven collapsing like a sand sculpture as the white blood that had powered his entire empire attacked him from the inside out.
His flesh dissolved piece by piece, bubbling away like boiling water until the great and glorious Gilgamesh was nothing but a ring of scum stuck to the inside of his golden armor.
Bex was still wrapping her brain around the idea that her ancient nemesis was finally and forever dead when Adrian flew in on his broom.
He landed on the opposite side of Gilgamesh’s empty armor and reached out immediately to grab Bex’s hand as he stared at the towering figure looming over them like the god she was.
Bex could feel him trembling as any sensible person would, but he still held his ground beside her.
That must have pleased the goddess, because her alien face split into a smile before her white body pulled into itself like a collapsing star.
It took several seconds to squeeze down so much power, but when it was over, the Ishtar Bex remembered was standing inside the empty quintessence tank beside them.
She was still a towering presence, but her crown of six horns rose only a foot above Adrian’s head, and she was back to only two arms. Her hair was dark again, her dress a shining blend of many colors, and her wings—only two—were once more those of the wise owl.
It was the way she’d appeared to Bex in the vision inside the bonfire, the way Bex’s instinctive memory was sure Ishtar had always looked.
But while this version of Ishtar was unquestionably more approachable, Bex couldn’t get the giant truth out of her head.
She also didn’t bow, a slight the restored goddess did not overlook.
“Now is not the time to be petulant, dearest,” Ishtar said, shaking her lovely head. “I created you to be the embodiment of Wrath, not Pride. It seems you’ve taken over a great deal more than you were made to since last we spoke. Fortunately for you, I am in a wonderful mood.”
The goddess’s face lit up with a smile that made Bex’s heart leap.
“Our conqueror is dead!” she announced, turning her glittering eyes on Gilgamesh’s empty armor.
“Not that I approve of your methods, but in the end, you did as I commanded. You brought my enemy down. You even delivered him to my grave so that I could deal the killing blow myself!” The goddess clapped her hands in delight.
“Those are the actions of a truly loyal servant, and for that service, I am willing to forgive all of your past transgressions. Now bow your horns and return to my side, and I shall reforge you once again into my beautiful, loyal Rebexa.”
She finished with a glorious smile, but Bex just moved closer to Adrian.
“No.”
The goddess’s beaming expression faltered for a second before snapping back into place.
“Maybe you didn’t hear me,” she said in a decidedly less magnanimous tone. “I am offering to wipe the slate clean. Your sins against Enki, against myself—they will all be forgotten. I’ll even spare the life of your handsome paramour.”
She winked at Adrian, who shivered.
“This is my reward for your eons of loyal service,” Ishtar went on. “But such divine mercy shall only be tendered once. I know many things were said in the heat of our last meeting, but I’m willing to put all that behind us if you bow your head right now and return to where you belong.”
She held out her hand as she finished, reaching for Bex not as a daughter but as one would grasp the hilt of a sword. It was a move she must’ve made often, because part of Bex instinctively responded, stepping closer to her mother before she could drive her foot into the ground.
“No,” she said again, digging her boots into the sloping sides of Gilgamesh’s empty quintessence collector.
“You were our goddess once, but the demons born today don’t belong to you.
” She reached up to grab the six horns that still rose from her head.
“They put this crown on me so I could free them from Gilgamesh, but I didn’t go through all of that—they didn’t go through it—so I could turn around and hand them back to you. ”
“There’s nothing to hand,” Ishtar snarled, snatching her radiant hand back to her side.
“They are demons. Therefore, they belong to me. There’s no such thing as freedom for them, just like there’s no such thing as a crown for you unless I put it there.
I am your creator, your god. You will bow to me, or you will be destroyed. ”