The Unnamed Sage
"What the hell is that?"
Watching Sunya through the pond in his garden, Enki let out a hollow laugh. To put his feelings into words as he watched Sunya casually annihilate a fallen god — he was, frankly, stunned. Extremely. Thoroughly. Profoundly. Incredibly. Utterly. Completely…
The reason Enki had gone so far as to use magic just to spy on Sunya was nothing special. He had more or less stumbled into it — tracking Inanna's whereabouts and discovering him by chance.
Whenever trouble arose among gods or mortals, sorting it out had always been Enki's job. And Inanna was a famous troublemaker; her name alone was enough to make anyone anywhere nod in recognition. That meant her movements needed regular checking. Lately she had been unusually quiet, which only made him more uneasy — like the still night before a storm.
Once Enki learned that Inanna had been visiting Mount Ebih every day of late, he cast his magic across the entire mountain. Before long he found Sunya living at the summit. More precisely, he found Sunya telling Inanna something — and Inanna sitting there, eyes bright and shining, hanging on every word.
"So the quiet stretch was because of that human?"
The mere fact that Inanna was sitting still was bizarre enough. At first Enki found it absurd and impressive in equal measure. To keep that little hellion well-behaved for any length of time with nothing but stories… He even wondered whether Inanna and Sunya might share something deeper. Sunya was, after all, an exceptionally rare beauty among humans. But the longer he watched, the more it seemed there was only a certain current between them — nothing he could yet call a full-blown affair. When the story ended and Sunya ruffled her hair, Inanna flushed scarlet and fled; the sight was thoroughly amusing.
"Well, even if she is the goddess of love, she's still just a little brat. What would she know about desire between a man and a woman?"
Enki shook his head. Still, the man seemed to have caught the fancy of his precious junior, so he decided to look into him a bit further. He kept watching — and then the pond captured the image of a fallen Igigi slipping onto Mount Ebih, carefully avoiding human eyes.
"And where has that thing been hiding?"
An ugly monster that could no longer be called a god. Enki made a habit of cutting down fallen ones whenever he found them. Other gods did the same, but Enki was the most diligent of the lot. This one was clearly targeting Sunya. Enki didn't know the details, but whatever its intentions, they did not look good.
"I should… help, right?"
At the same time, he was curious. People tended to show their true faces when cornered — or so Enki believed. He wanted to see how the human who had caught Inanna's interest would handle the situation. Call it a bad habit if you like; to Enki it was something like a private little game. Of course, if things truly went south, he intended to step in.
"Huh?"
What followed completely defied Enki's expectations. Sunya thoroughly thrashed the fallen god and, in the end, annihilated it. Overwhelmingly. Utterly.
"Does that even make sense?"
The destruction of a fallen god itself was not especially strange. Even a god, if killed, dies the same as anyone else. The problem was that the one doing the killing was a mere human. Even a demigod would struggle to take down a fallen god alone; for an ordinary human, it was effectively impossible. Yet Sunya had done it with effortless ease.
In truth, that practical limit dissolved under a single premise: if Sunya were a god, every problem would vanish as if it had never existed. The divine power he had just displayed was nothing a human could claim. And yet…
"I can't feel any divinity from him at all."
Divinity. That essential something every god possessed from birth. From Sunya, Enki felt none of it. Why else had Inanna, Enki himself, and even the fallen god all taken Sunya for a human without a second thought? Because no divinity radiated from him whatsoever. Nothing else was worth considering.
"Come to think of it, he did say he was closer to a god than a human, didn't he?"
Could that be related? A god was a god and a human was a human — what did "closer to a god than a human" even mean? Even demigods were still "humans" who possessed divinity. Enki turned the thought over and over, but no answer came. He was called the god of wisdom, yet this was a first even for him, and he could not settle on any firm conclusion.
"Haa… Inanna! You've dumped another headache on me, haven't you?!"
Enki clutched at his hair and let out a strangled cry.
"Damn it! Shit! Why?! Where the hell did he come from?! Waaagh—kwaaagh—kwaaagh—"
Only after several rounds of unearthly screeching did he manage to calm himself. Then he decided how to handle Sunya.
"Fine… leave him alone for now. For now…"
Poking at his identity might only provoke him. And once provoked, there was no telling which way he would jump. In the worst case, it could endanger Inanna. Better to leave him be and keep watching. Using Inanna herself to dig up information in reverse wasn't a bad idea either — though the exact method would need some thought.
"Does that little monster brat Inanna even know how much trouble she's putting me through?"
He looked down into the pond again — and for a moment, words failed him.
"…"
Sunya had opened his eyes and was looking straight at him. As if he knew he was being watched. Those blue, luminous pupils seemed to pierce straight through Enki's core.
"C-coincidence, right? Hehe…"
Had Enki been human, he would surely have broken out in a cold sweat.
"Aaaagh!!"
Parting from Sunya, Inanna shot into her palace like an arrow, screaming, and flung herself straight onto her bed.
"What's wrong, Lady Inanna?"
Her attendant Ninshubur rushed over in alarm.
"Forget it! I want to be alone — leave me alone."
"But—"
"I said leave me alone!!"
"…"
Stay out of worry and she might well catch hell for it. In the end Ninshubur hesitated, then left her mistress alone. Alone, Inanna buried her face in the bed.
"What is this? Why do I keep getting so weird whenever I'm with you…"
Her chest was hot. How to put it? It felt like thrashing about inside a dream. A cool, soft wind brushed her face. Sunya's face kept rising unbidden in her mind. She tried to erase it and could not. At the same time she was tormented. A small flame seemed to be burning in her chest. Worst of all was the sheer frustration of not knowing why. She had never once felt anything like this before — and yet lately these feelings seemed to come more and more often. With every passing day, Sunya grew larger inside her.
"Just who are you…"
A belated adolescence had come for the goddess. It was summer.
While Enki and Inanna fretted over him in the palace of the heavens, Sunya quietly looked up at the sky.
I can feel a gaze… Is this the magic of this place?
Well, it hardly mattered if someone was watching. He had no particular designs of his own. It might simply make things a little more tiring, he thought.
It won't be long now.
Just a little. Wait a little longer and he could go home. Until then, he meant to stay as quiet as possible. For the time remaining he would simply close his eyes and shut his ears — so please, just leave him alone.
"…It's funny, thinking that. I've already gotten involved more than enough."
Heh. Sunya mocked himself. No clown would be more ridiculous than he was. Don't think. Don't think. He murmured it low, as if hypnotizing himself.
"What is it that I even want to do?"
There was no one to answer. As always, he would have to find the answer himself. With a bitter step, Sunya returned to his home at the summit of Mount Ebih.
Come to think of it, I haven't decided what story to tell that child tomorrow.
A forgotten bit of homework suddenly came to mind. How had he let that slip? Sunya scolded himself in a different sense from a moment ago.
The Lord of the Rings? Or Remember? Adapting Spider-Man wouldn't be bad either. Or something simple — Superman, Batman?
It was a strange thing. Just thinking of stories to tell Inanna was enough, for a little while, to clear away Sunya's afflictions. Perhaps, for him as well, Inanna had already become someone out of the ordinary.