The Nameless Sage
"Whoa!!"
What was this?
The fallen god could not close his jaws, and the fact filled him with bewilderment. What came next was the voice of his prey.
"You have quite the large mouth."
Sunya was holding the fallen god's upper and lower jaws apart. No matter how much force the creature applied, the jaws would not shut. That alone should have been enough to tip him off that something was wrong. Even an ordinary demigod would have been incapable of prying his mouth open — which meant, conversely, that this was a being of demigod rank or higher.
"I'm hungry!"
But the fallen god was too starved to think straight. From the mass of darkness that seemed to serve as his torso, several tentacles burst forth.
"Pardon me."
Sunya tightened his grip on the jaws. The fallen god's jawbones crumpled. Tentacles came whipping in from the side, each tipped with something like a human mouth, snapping to tear into him. But the mouths on those tentacles never got the chance. With a light flick of his wrist, Sunya swatted them aside, and the tentacles burst apart along with their maws.
"Huh?"
Even the fallen god was thrown by a phenomenon that should not have been possible — and in that moment, Sunya drove a fist forward.
Thud.
Even though the punch never made contact, more than half the darkness composing the fallen god scattered and vanished in an instant. Of course, fallen or not, he was still a god — the dispersed darkness gathered again at once, restoring him to his original form.
"What?"
There was no face to read, but the way his eyes darted about made his confusion plain.
"Strange…?"
"Shall we try talking first?"
"Why can't I eat you?"
"Let's start with introductions. My name is Sunya."
"You're human — so why can't I eat you?"
"Well, if you ask why you can't eat me, I suppose I'd have to say it's because I don't wish to be eaten. More to the point — what should I call you? You needn't give me a name if you'd rather not."
"That's not it…"
"Excuse me?"
"Why can't I eat you?"
The fallen god paid no attention to Sunya's words. He simply babbled on, idiotically, about whatever he felt like saying.
"Why can't I eat you!!"
The fallen god opened a vast maw. The grotesque mouth, easily ten times larger than the body Sunya had just seen, looked ready to swallow the entire surrounding area — and in truth, it was large enough to do exactly that. Transforming his body into tentacles or into a single enormous mouth appeared to be this fallen god's power.
"That won't do. Destroying nature is unacceptable."
Sunya dropped low, almost prone, and shot forward. The fallen god's lower jaw skimmed over his head. Before the creature could retract it, Sunya struck the jaw from below. The rebound launched the fallen god's massive bulk into the air, hurtling skyward.
"Huh?"
"If we fight on the ground, the mountains might collapse."
The creature's bewilderment lasted only a moment. Before he knew it, Sunya was floating in front of him.
"Strange? Humans can't fly…"
"As I am now, I am closer to a god than a human. And that is not what matters at the moment."
The fallen god kept sprouting tentacles from his body and thrusting them forward — less a deliberate attack than a reflexive one. Sunya swatted them aside and shattered them with ease, all the while continuing to try for a conversation.
"Why did you come looking for this place?"
"Why?"
It was to eat the human who lived here. Devouring a human who lived alone left fewer complications. Appear in a densely populated settlement or a village blessed by the gods, and you risked being hunted down by gods or demigods.
"I came to eat the human who lives here."
"I'm afraid that won't be possible. I have no desire to become anyone's meal just yet."
As he spoke, Sunya pulverized the fallen god once more. Every time he threw a fist or drove a kick, the fallen god exploded and regenerated, over and over. He was struck, and struck, and struck again. He clung on somehow, recovering again and again with stubborn persistence — but—
Crunch!
To call it persistence was generous. In reality, he was simply being beaten without mercy. No matter how he worked his mouths or sprouted his tentacles, none of them could touch Sunya.
"Why can't I eat you?!"
The fallen god screamed as if in agony. With the cry, far more tentacles than before erupted and came surging at Sunya from every direction. The swarm was countless — a vast, roaring torrent. From the outside, it looked as though a colossal mouth were trying to swallow a speck of dust named Sunya.
"I will ask you once more."
Sunya drew his fist back. It was the preparatory stance for a straight punch. Delivered in midair, it was not identical to the ordinary form — but the principle and the purpose were the same.
"Who are you?"
The instant Sunya drove his fist forward, the countless tentacles burst apart all at once. A pale, blue-white light surged from his knuckles and crashed over the fallen god.
"I am…"
To humanity, the gods were all eternal and magnificent — yet even in their society, rank and class existed.
There were the great sky god An and his bloodline, the Anunnaki. Beneath them, the lesser gods who served — the Igigi. And he had been one of those countless Igigi.
Before humanity was created, the Igigi had shouldered nearly all the menial labor and toil. Enlil, rightful heir to the King of Gods, ordered them into a vast canal-building project to solidify his own royal authority. The work dragged on for thousands of years.
They were gods, incomparably stronger than any human — and for that very reason, Enlil drove the laborers all the harder. After millennia without proper rest or food, even gods grew gaunt and sick. For a god, "wasting away" meant something different than it did for a human. Gods whose minds broke lost their original forms and became creatures lower than beasts, slaves to a single craving.
"We can't go on living like this," Weila said, watching comrades reduced to fallen beasts and put down. "What meaning is there in a life like this?"
"So what do you propose? That we raise a rebellion?"
"Yes."
"We could all end up dead!!"
"Better to die than live like animals."
He listened to the Igigi arguing among themselves and felt a rising panic.
"○○ — you'll join the uprising too, won't you?"
"I… I…"
It was not a simple question. The eyes of every comrade fixed on him burned with a strange, feverish light. Refuse here, and he might lose his life. That thought circled endlessly through his mind.
"Aaaahhh!!"
He fled. He ran and ran, so that no one would ever find him. "I don't want to die! I don't want to die!! I don't want to die!!!"
Evading the eyes of the gods, he hid himself in a blind corner of the world. After years of seclusion, word reached him that every comrade who had risen in rebellion had been slaughtered. In truth, the rumor was distorted. Aside from Weila, the ringleader, and those who had fallen in the fighting, few of the rebel Igigi had actually died. The warped rumor had spread not because gods could not lie, but because rumor thrives on misapprehension and exaggeration. Still, the distortion only deepened his terror.
Desperate not to die, he burrowed deeper still — and his mind continued to unravel. Ordinarily, gods almost never feel hunger. Sleep alone restores spent vitality. But even after fleeing the gods' sight, he still could not sleep properly. Without sleep, he could not replenish his strength. On the brink of extinction, with no stimulus left to him, all that remained was a crushing hunger.
Then humanity appeared. He knew by instinct that they wore forms similar to the gods, yet were weaker than any beast or monster. If I eat them, I can restore my strength.
And so he began to eat humans. Hiding from the eyes of gods, humans, and every other powerful being, he hunted them in secret. Even so, he still could not sleep. He merely patched the unending hunger with cannibalism. Gradually his flesh evolved into a form suited only for devouring humans — not the evolution of the natural world adapting to its environment, but an evolution driven by instinct and a shattered mind.
In this way he had consumed hundreds of thousands of humans. And then…
"Ah…"
The flood of memories ended. Countless stars studding the dark night sky, and Sunya, looked down upon him.
"Have you… remembered your name?"
"No… I still don't know. My name."
The fallen god's form had become vaguely humanlike — but he had not fully become a person. Only a portion of his upper body remained, and even that was turning to ash, fading away bit by bit.
"Still… now I can rest."
The fallen god quietly closed his eyes, his face at last at peace.
"To have lost your name… Our situations are rather similar."
Was it emotion welling up? Sunya opened his eyes. Pupils more beautiful than the blue of the open sky reflected the vanishing god.
"If there is a next life… may it be kinder."
As if mourning the fallen god who had forgotten even his own name, Sunya pressed his palms together in prayer.
And far away, someone was watching him.