The Great Flood
"Did I just mishear you?"
Enki doubted his own ears. He wasn't being sarcastic — he genuinely wondered whether something had gone wrong with his hearing.
"You heard correctly. I will sweep away every last human with a flood."
"You call that a plan—"
"Father has already given his consent. And a command from the King of Gods is not something you get to challenge, Enki."
Though Enlil had become King of Gods, a matter as grave as the extermination of an entire race still required An's permission. But that also meant that once An's consent had been granted, Enlil's order carried absolute authority.
At his unyielding declaration, the gods who had gathered at the royal palace under the pretexts of situation reports and force reorganization all fell silent at once.
Even knowing deep down that it was pointless, Enki made straight for his father An's palace.
An's palace stood at the highest point in the heavens.
"Father! What in the world is going on?!"
Enki, uncharacteristically, could not rein in his emotions before An. He was that agitated.
Surprisingly, An did not scold him for the outburst.
"Why did you agree to the extinction of humanity?"
"Enlil told me that every human who dies at the hands of those monsters only swells the enemy's ranks."
Snip.
An trimmed a small branch from a miniature tree. Bonsai was one of his modest hobbies.
"I was told that monsters fashioned from human corpses pose a threat to the gods."
"But the war is not going against us! If we keep pressing the attack as we are—"
"The monsters already number over a hundred thousand, do they not? Against that, the gods barely exceed a thousand."
"Numbers alone mean nothing! We can still win! With the powers of gods like Inanna or Ninurta, we could wipe them all out!"
"Then we can deal with the monsters after the humans have been cleared away."
"Father!!"
Enki's voice rose.
"When you passed the throne to Enlil, I believed you had your reasons. That you simply saw things differently from me. So even though it stung, I never once raised an objection."
"Indeed."
"When Enlil mishandled the Igigi and they rose in revolt, I quietly cleaned up the mess and did everything I could to minimize the damage."
"I am well aware of your contributions."
"But this is going too far!"
"It is not. I have never believed Enlil was wrong."
"The humans are like my own children."
"They are not your children. Asalluhi and Dumuzi — those are your children."
"Marduk was my child as well."
"…Sealing that boy was something you agreed to."
"Yes! Because he had no intention of controlling his power at all. I believed it was for the good of the world."
"I share that belief. Humans are nothing more than creations made out of necessity. Mere thinking tools, fashioned to labor in the gods' stead. However troublesome it may be, if they threaten the safety of the gods, they must be eliminated at once."
"They are part of this world too! You would annihilate all of humanity over something so trivial? After all the benefits you have reaped from them, how can you fail to see their worth?"
"…No matter what you say, my mind will not change. If you are so determined to prevent humanity's destruction, then go persuade the King of Gods yourself."
An never pressed his opinions with force, but neither did he possess the flexibility to take back words once spoken.
Perhaps it was a generational divide. As one of the most ancient gods, An's values differed greatly from those of his children's generation and beyond.
In the end, Enki gave up and shifted his plan to persuading Enlil. His half-brother was stubborn to the core, but Enki judged there was still more hope with him than with An. That he would think so even of the very man who had proposed the extermination of humanity only showed how thoroughly he had concluded that An was not someone one could reason with.
"What is this?"
In the brief time it took to travel between palaces aboard a sky-ship, rain was already pouring from the heavens like a waterfall.
"Have you lost your mind? Stop this at once!"
Enki frantically tried to halt the torrents of water, but Enlil invoked his command power.
"Kh—!"
He could not move. Their divine ranks were not so different, yet that single power of command left Enki utterly helpless.
"What on earth is going on here?"
Just then, Inanna appeared, leading her children. They had been hunting beasts and monsters when the rain kept pouring without end, and the strangeness of it had brought them to the royal palace where the gods were gathered.
"What is everyone doing standing around? There's a flood happening right now? Instead of just sitting here—"
"This was my decision."
As Inanna moved to press the surrounding gods, Enlil stopped her.
"Hah?"
"The enemy multiplies its numbers with the corpses of the humans they kill. So it was necessary to clear away the humans before the enemy's strength could grow any further."
"…Enlil, old man, have you lost your mind? You're wiping out humanity over something like that?"
"Watch your tongue, Inanna. Do you not know that one must show proper respect before the King of Gods?"
"Respect, my ass! You have to say something that makes sense before anyone bothers with respect. How am I supposed to show respect or treat you with dignity when you're spouting pure bullshit?"
"So the little wretch, emboldened by her husband, runs wild like some thunderstruck brat."
"Why is Sunya coming up all of a sudden? Forget it — talking like this is a waste of time. Let's go, kids. We'll save the humans ourselves, somehow."
"Yes!"
With that, Inanna and her children made to leave — but Enlil spoke first.
In that instant, Inanna and her party froze in place as if by prior arrangement. Even the most powerful of goddesses could not overcome the command power.
"By order of the King of Gods. You will wait until the flood ends and every last human has been cleared away."
"Don't give me that crap! Why are you doing this? Why are you trying to wipe out all the humans?!"
"…Humans can simply be made again. This is the way to reduce the gods' losses, even if only a little."
It was not a lie — but neither was it his true heart.
Enlil had a separate, deeper reason for resolving to exterminate humanity.
Though he pretended otherwise, he felt it every single day: Sunya's influence among both gods and humans was growing steadily greater.
The gods respected Enlil's authority as King of Gods, yet none of them sought personal closeness with him or showed any inclination to follow him of their own will.
Sunya was different. The gods wanted to grow close to him, and stood ready to side with him at any moment.
Among the humans, too, countless people journeyed from distant cities and villages to Ku'ar, seeking the teachings of a man whose true identity remained hidden.
Enlil had taken what comfort he could from the fact that Sunya showed no ambition for the throne, and had somehow managed to keep crushing down the base emotions festering inside him.
What if Sunya reacts poorly to my decisions?
Even if not now — what if he comes to covet the throne later?
If he joins hands with Enki and tries to establish a new order… could I even stop them?
Yet despite his efforts, the worry and fear only kept swelling. And when he saw the humans who had received Sunya's teachings fighting alongside the gods in this latest conflict, his anxiety reached its peak.
I cannot leave things as they are.
Even now, he had to start cutting away Sunya's arms and legs, piece by piece. He had to shrink the number of those who followed him. He had to wipe out every human who followed him now — or who might follow him later.
And so he had arrived at the conclusion of drowning humanity in a flood.
That one could hate and envy a person one had never even properly spoken with — human emotion was a truly irrational thing.
"Aaaahhh…"
Tenderhearted Ninhursag wept as she watched her creations — the humans — floating dead upon the waters of the earth below.
Still the rain did not stop, and the sea level rose at an unnatural, terrifying speed.
"Why did I ever go along with this?"
She had not gone along with it. She had been made to submit.
Even so, Ninhursag sincerely believed that the present catastrophe had unfolded because of her own responsibility.
"Good heavens…"
"Those are all humans? Not fish?"
"…"
The other gods were little different in their reactions. Watching the human corpses bob and tumble across the surface of the water, the softer-hearted among them shed tears, while those of slightly sterner resolve clenched their jaws until their teeth threatened to crack, or squeezed their fists so hard that blood welled between their knuckles.
In the original myth, Enki — rebelling against Enlil — would have secretly warned Ziusudra of Shuruppak that a flood was coming, and humanity would have built an ark, survived the Great Flood, and carried on its lineage.
But the Great Flood had arrived far earlier than expected, and no ark had even been built. At this rate, the entire surface of the earth would sink beneath the waters, and humanity's extinction was as plain as day.
Yet one god who had not been at the royal palace — having gone to capture Kingu — still remained upon the earth.