The Tablet of Destinies
A meteor shower falling from the heavens was a magnificent sight.
From a distance, at least.
For those standing directly beneath that rain, the experience was rather different.
A continuous roar of explosions shook the earth to its foundations. Every time a spear drove into the ground, a crater bloomed outward and swept the enemy ranks away. Grasslands ignited; the firestorm swallowed whole armies of corpses. Using the terrain for cover was useless. Whatever stood in her way, she simply shattered it and burned it to ash.
"Is this… the power of the goddess of love and war?"
"It barely makes sense."
The gulf between them was absolute. They could scarcely believe they were gods of the same order. The soldiers watched Inanna's might with open awe and reverence.
A low snarl rolled across the field.
The hairless Uridimmu howled. The intelligence it had possessed in life was gone, but its wild instincts remained intact. Even a mere beast understood the fundamental truth of battle: kill the leader, and victory follows.
The Uridimmu dropped low, weaving through the golden rain as it charged straight at Inanna. For something so massive, it was astonishingly fast — not merely swift, but faster than sound itself. Sonic booms cracked in its wake with every stride. Spears occasionally streaked toward it, and it swatted them aside without difficulty. Each deflection shredded the flesh from its forearms down to bare bone, but the wounds closed in the blink of an eye.
The distance between the mad dog and the goddess shrank at a terrifying rate.
"The enemy's leader is closing in! Everyone, protect Lady Inanna—"
"You're in the way. Stay back."
Inanna did not dodge. She had always been skilled at close combat, and sparring with Sunya and playing with the children had sharpened her far beyond what she once was.
The Uridimmu leapt — and in a single bound, it was upon her.
Inanna moved first. With the barest motion, she brought her spear against its staff-like limb and deflected the strike aside. The beast lunged for her throat next, but her spear was faster, driving up through its lower jaw and out through the crown of its skull.
Any ordinary creature would have died there. The Uridimmu was a monster of myth. Another head sprouted from the base of its trapezius and snapped at her. Inanna swung her spear the other way and hurled the beast clear across the field.
It slammed into the ground and crumpled like raw meat. Moments later it regenerated, restoring its original form, and growled low in its throat.
Stronger than expected.
The Uridimmu decided that a direct confrontation was inefficient — another wild instinct. Sensing it could not win this way, it fled into the nearby slopes of Mount Ebih, calculating that the dense undergrowth and cluttered terrain would give it the advantage. A thoroughly stupid calculation.
"You diseased mongrel—how dare you!"
The moment the Uridimmu vanished into the mountain, Inanna's fury ignited. That the reeking filth would dare defile a place steeped in her memories was more than she could stomach. If it was going to be soiled, better to erase it entirely. There was also the practical need to eliminate the monsters as quickly as possible — but that was secondary.
"Die."
The golden rain began to fall once more. After the earlier bombardment, Inanna showed not the slightest sign of fatigue. She was not tired in the least. Even the Uridimmu had not expected the barrage to resume so soon.
The mountain collapsed.
Pierced by countless meteors, it burned and crumbled. The ground itself gave way, the terrain reshaping in real time, and the beast found its movement severely restricted. The collapsing Mount Ebih became a prison that trapped the Uridimmu inside.
It howled — not in rage this time, but in raw terror. It was already little more than a walking corpse, yet even so, it felt fear before such overwhelming power.
"Found you."
Inanna's voice seemed to drift faintly through the smoke. An instant later, dozens of burning spears punched through the Uridimmu's body, tearing it apart and pulverizing what remained. The last scraps of flesh burned to ash and vanished.
Uridimmu — the creature once infamous as the most terrifying hound of the war against the gods, before the world was even made — was annihilated without leaving so much as a trace.
The soldiers, who had done nothing throughout, could not close their mouths at the spectacle Inanna had wrought alone. An entire stretch of forest was simply gone, replaced by craters large and small. The great mountain had collapsed beyond all recognition. Flames continued to spread across the wreckage. Among the other Iminbi, none seemed capable of exercising physical force on this scale. That a goddess of such power had lived so quietly until now was almost more astonishing than the destruction itself.
While the others regarded her with awe, Inanna's thoughts were elsewhere.
In a moment of unchecked emotion she had destroyed the mountain — but after a few seconds of reflection, something felt off.
…It happened just as Sunya told me it would.
The event her husband had described — the thing that was "supposed to happen" — had actually come to pass. The details differed, of course. But the result was the same. It could have been pure coincidence. Even so, watching something she had believed would never occur unfold before her eyes left a strange feeling in her chest.
"…We're moving. We don't have time to linger here."
Inanna gestured, and the flames devouring the forest vanished at once. Fire born of her will was just as easily reclaimed.
I'll think about it later. I'm busy right now.
The goddess led her soldiers toward the next nest of monsters.
"O Goddess…"
Countless humans prostrated themselves in the direction they believed Inanna to be. The divine forces had evacuated the people, yet even from the shelters they had watched her rain meteors from the sky. The earth trembling, hordes of monsters reduced to ash — it was a relentless succession of shock and terror. Power that could set the world ablaze and rewrite the very landscape struck the helpless humans as something wondrous beyond measure.
"That is… Father's younger sister. Lady Inanna…"
Among them, a young man stood speechless with reverence. He bore a resemblance to Utu, and in truth he was a demigod born of the sun god and a mortal woman. His name was Meshkianggasher — the man who would one day serve as Inanna's priest and be remembered as the founding king of Uruk.
Much had changed. And yet, as if someone were carefully fitting the pieces back into place, the gears of fate were finding their proper alignment once more.
Throughout the evacuation of nearby humans and the advance toward the monster horde, Ninurta and Nanna said nothing to each other. Originally each was meant to face a separate pack of beasts, but the sudden merging of the monster forces had thrown their paths together. They had never spoken much in ordinary times, and Ninurta knew that Nanna harbored complicated feelings toward him, which made striking up conversation all the more difficult.
"Ah… perhaps we should at least work out a simple plan?"
As the one responsible for commanding troops, he could not simply keep his mouth shut forever, so Ninurta spoke first. He was a diligent god, after all.
"…Very well."
Nanna nodded. Refusing here would have been stranger still.
"My unit will draw the monsters' attention from the front. Lady Nanna, if you would support from the rear…?"
"…That works."
So Ninurta would stand out again. She knew she shouldn't care, and yet even now Nanna fretted over being compared to him. Whether it was something inherited from his father Enlil, he could never quite shake the inferiority coiled in his heart.
"The beast called Ugallu is said to control weather and climate, so I should be able to handle it somehow. Girtablullu is a giant scorpion-monster — I would be grateful if you took the lead against that one, Lady Nanna."
"Fine."
And that was the end of it. That they had exchanged even this much was remarkable enough.
Just then, the monster horde came into view in the distance, surging toward them.
"…I see. Now I understand why Lord Enki was in such a hurry."
The monsters' advance was far faster than expected. Their numbers easily reached the tens of thousands, and most had mutated so severely that little of their living forms remained. They had once been human corpses, yet they ran without rest, faster than any living animal — and every moment of delay would only swell their ranks further.
"All forces, prepare for impact!"
"You don't need to bring them down! Just hold them until the other gods arrive!"
Ninurta issued orders with practiced ease. Watching him, Nanna clenched his fist until the knuckles went white.