The Tablet of Destinies
"That damned bastard Kingu!!"
Enki felt the entire world shudder and spat a curse as he surged roughly to his feet. He had only just finished discussing the path forward with Enlil and returned to his own palace.
A foul premonition drove him to the magic pool at once. Through its surface he scoured every place in Kienkingir where the waves of power ran strongest.
Exactly ten locations.
Across the world, pillars of fierce light erupted skyward, and from each of them beasts steeped in no ordinary divinity stepped forth one after another. Their forms were uncomfortably familiar.
The venomous serpent Bašmu. The exalted serpent Mušmaḫḫū. The great dragon Ušumgallu. The hairy beast Laḫmu. The storm-beast Ugallu. The howling hound Uridimmu. The violent storm Umū dabrūtu. The scorpion-man Girtablullû. The fish-man Kulullû. The bison-man Kusarikku.
They looked remarkably like the eleven monsters Tiamat had once forged to annihilate the gods.
No — they were those monsters. The finer details differed here and there, but the creatures themselves were the same. The one small mercy was the absence of Mušḫuššu, the so-called Furious Serpent. Enki had sealed that one deep beneath his own palace long ago, so of course it was missing.
"…Not revived so much as puppeteered from their corpses, then?"
Stitch marks ran across the beasts' bodies. He had once torn the claws from the dead monsters, flayed their hides, and shoved the remains into a neglected corner of the storehouse. That anyone had managed to find them at all was almost impressive.
Father would never have bothered managing the warehouses himself.
Enki's head began to throb. Finding Kingu would not have been difficult — he had placed a tracking spell on the Tablet of Destinies for precisely this sort of contingency. The real problem was the monsters scattered across the world.
Why disperse your forces like that?
These beasts were beings of power on par with the greater gods. Even diminished from their former glory, they remained far beyond what ordinary deities could handle. Still, they were not unbeatable. In some respects the gods' strength had grown considerably since the first war. Ninurta, Inanna, Utu, Nergal, and the armed hosts of the gods could more than hold the line against a pack of half-dead, degraded monsters.
And yet Enki hesitated — because Kingu could not possibly be unaware of that fact.
There's a reason for this.
Whether fortune or misfortune, it did not take long for Enki to understand why Kingu had scattered the beasts. They did not ascend toward the heavens. Though nothing should have prevented them from taking flight, they wandered the earth instead, each heading in a different direction.
"It can't be—!"
Enki went pale. The monsters were targeting human villages. More precisely, they were hunting wherever people gathered in the greatest numbers.
"Damn it!"
By the time he thought to stop them, it was already too late. The beasts began slaughtering humans without mercy — mauling them, crushing them underfoot, tearing them apart. The frail mortals could not even flee, let alone fight back.
Enki, watching the massacre unfold through his scrying, drove his fist into the floor.
A great crack split the stone. The palace shuddered. But the monsters' atrocities did not end there. The corpses of the slain rose and fell in behind the beasts. These were no mere shambling dead. With every passing moment the bodies mutated, fusing into one another, swelling into larger and more hideous abominations — creatures that looked for all the world like the horrors of the underworld.
"…So this is what you were after, Kingu."
While Enki ground his teeth, Kingu himself was thinking of the gods in heaven and curling his lip in a sneer.
"Foolish gods. Blame your own folly. I will use the humans you created to snuff out your lives."
Then Mother would praise him. The mere thought made Kingu feel as though he might float away with joy.
Enki summoned every god at once. Enlil had only just called them together not long before, yet this time even Inanna voiced no complaint. The situation was clearly too grave for petty grievances.
"I'll start with the conclusion. We need to prepare for war."
At the word war, the gods began to murmur. Enki had no time to wait for them to collect themselves. Even now the monsters were swelling their ranks at terrifying speed.
"Silence! We don't have time for this."
He laid it out plainly: the evil god Kingu was using the corpses of the ancient beasts to slaughter humans, then swelling his army with the dead.
"If they reach the human cities, we won't be able to contain this. We have to stop those monsters as fast as possible."
"What if we gather our forces and bring them down one at a time?" Ninurta asked, raising a hand. Among the gods, he was the sharpest strategist.
Enki shook his head.
"They're multiplying too quickly. Even if we can't destroy them immediately, halting their advance is the better play."
"From what you just showed us with your magic, Enki, a half-prepared force won't hold those beasts and their thralls. Rushing in could cost us more than we can afford."
"…Then we split the army. Whichever unit finishes first moves to reinforce the nearest."
A few more words were exchanged, but the council as a whole was brief. Ten of the strongest among the Anunnaki — Inanna, Nergal, Utu, Ninurta, Ishkur, and the rest — would each take a host of soldiers and move to intercept the monsters and their corpse legions.
"Stay safe."
"Mm. You too, Sunya."
A brief kiss, and Sunya parted from Inanna. He was about to set off on his own when Enki beckoned him to a stop, drawing him aside where fewer eyes could follow.
"We've forced the army into ten divisions, but the situation isn't looking good."
"I see."
"There is one way to overturn this disadvantage in a single stroke."
"I'm listening."
"Take the Tablet of Destinies from Kingu… or destroy it. The monsters animated by the Tablet's power will collapse back into corpses and lose their strength."
"…I assume there's a reason you're telling me this."
Enki hesitated a moment, then spoke frankly. This was a moment to borrow even a cat's paw — or, more fittingly, a lion's.
"I know you're far stronger than the others realize."
Sunya said nothing.
"If anyone has a real chance against Kingu while he holds the Tablet of Destinies, it's that little brat Inanna. And you're strong enough to toy with her. If it isn't you, she'll have to face him herself — and you don't want that either. Am I wrong?"
Sunya understood perfectly well what Enki was asking. He was being asked to kill Kingu. The same man who had kept him at arm's length until now was suddenly making a humble request, but Sunya felt not the slightest resentment over it.
"I intended to do whatever I could from the start. You didn't need to put it that way. Have you located Kingu — or rather, the Tablet of Destinies?"
"…Thank you."
Every god in heaven moved to their appointed tasks. A war that had never existed in the original myths had begun without warning.
"Around here, is it?"
Inanna arrived at Mount Ebih. For all the urgency of the moment, standing on this mountain again after so long brought back the day she first met Sunya. She had never imagined she would find her fated partner on a peak like this.
That aside, she had not forgotten her duty. She evacuated the villagers at the mountain's foot and prepared to receive the monster and its corpse host that would soon arrive.
"So that's the Uridimmu, or whatever it's called. The mutt."
A beast with a dog's head and a man's body came racing toward Mount Ebih at tremendous speed, crowned with a horned diadem and gripping a crescent-shaped staff. It was among the smaller of the monsters, yet still three or four times the bulk of an ordinary god, and densely muscled. In pure speed it seemed twice as fast as any of the others — which made it the one that needed killing first.
In life its coat might have held some luster. Now the fur was patchy and dull, bare skin showing through in ugly stretches. Strip away the raw savagery in its eyes and it looked like nothing more than a mangy, diseased dog.
It fixed on Inanna and snarled.
"Lady Inanna, what should we—"
"Fall back."
One of the soldiers had started to ask. Inanna cut him off.
"Pardon?"
"It'll be over soon enough anyway."
The truth was that Inanna had no gift for military command. The soldiers she had brought were auxiliaries at best, nothing more. Even so, Enki had his reasons for ordering her to lead a force against one of the monster packs.
"You reek of dog. Do me a favor and stay back."
Inanna's body rose into the air. High above, thousands of spears took shape and locked onto the beast and its thronging dead.
"Ever seen a meteor shower?"
A rain of gold came crashing down upon the monsters.