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When you first awake, you are deathly aware of the fact that you do not fit in this body.
You push against the edges of the clay and squirm like a worm failing to breach the earth. The fingers do not curl the way you want them to, and when your voice erupts from your throat, it sounds like someone else speaking in your place. It is a horrific, terrible thing. But a hand comes to cover your mouth. Warm, and sharp-nailed.
Your mother tells you that it will hurt at first. It will be agonizing. It is agonizing.
But she also tells you that it is worth it. It is worth it, and you are special. Endure it.
So, you do. You learn what it means to move, to shape tongue into words, though it still feels like a mere echo of something that never existed in the first place. Your mother does not smile at you, but she gives you a nod, which is enough. You are enough, for right now. A beautiful child borne from her womb.
But she is not really there. She never was.
You already knew how to do all of this. Waking up was the painful part. The moving, the eating, the breathing, the speaking... it was all like second nature. You had already learned this, but you did not know where. You figure it was the blessing of your mother, the goddess who gave you life. But something in you begs to differ. You do not listen to that serpent’s whisper.
You have a job to do.
There is something heavy in your chest. It fills the hollow space left inside of you, but it does not beat like a fleshy heart. It feels cold, but you cannot pull it out of you. You do not want to pull it out. You are reminded that you are special, that you are brave, that you are pure. You are your mother’s child, and you will always listen, even when she does not speak.
Humanity is flawed, and you know this. The two-legged rats you meet are nothing more than failed nothings that came after you. For you are the purest form of life, the one that came before, the one that came first. And you laugh at these pitiful things and take them away to be made into beasts. It is what they deserve. You look to the sky for praise, but your mother remains silent. She always is.
You are not satisfied.
There are others here, fellow gods brought forth by the influence of what is buried inside of you. You have a strange group, now. The Gorgon woman, whose serpentine attributes make you think of your mother, in some foreign, untouchable, undesirable way. Quetzalcoatl, too. Scales and feathers, woman who claims to be a god. They are not like your mother. The third is the most unlike her— Ereshkigal. You feel like you’ve seen her before, some other place, some other time. You do not want to look at her.
They are the allies you’ve been given. They are violent, like you. They are hungry for power and rule. And they know that you are special, too. They know enough to let you band them together, an alliance of three. You do not include yourself with them, for you are more. You are humanity’s beginning, after all. You are the blueprint for what is best. Mother said so.
Yet she does not speak with you, even still. It doesn’t matter. She will eventually.
In this flawed, disgraceful world, only the strong survive. Somehow, some way, Uruk’s walls remain steadfast against the force of three goddesses. You cannot comprehend why, for the only things defending these walls are humans. Humans led by a worthless king who failed to steal immortality. A worthless king, two-thirds god, one-third man. A worthless, weak, tyrannical, beloved king.
Beloved king. Beloved Gilgamesh. Beloved Gil.
When you scrape your hands through the mud, when you rip the grass from the earth, you can almost remember grasping strands of golden hair to force those ruby red eyes to look back at you. You can almost remember the sound of his laughter, boisterous and proud. How he looked when the sun hit him just right, the marks along his skin and the splendor seeping from every pore. But these are fabricated thoughts, memories scattered like seed spilling from a torn bag.
He makes you angry. You swear it is because he is the one thing standing between you and your mother’s goal. You pound your fist against the nearest tree and hear the bark crack beneath your knuckles— or perhaps it was the cracking of clay skin, that which mends itself quick. This body is resilient, the work of your mother’s power. You thank her for the blessings. She does not respond to you.
There are little beasts here that you do not recognize.
Two-legged bastards and a white monster that clings to the shoulders of the one in Chaldean uniform. You know these are the intruders you were warned about, and you know you must deal with them. They are tricky. They will hurt you. You will hurt them back.
But they escape. An illusion is pulled over your eyes, and when it is over, you scream and kick and thrash and vow vengeance. You are the perfect blueprint for humanity. You cannot be stopped.
You do what your mother wants you to do. You lead the beasts of hell and heaven, you tear down the forts one by one. You face them at the gulf, and when you arrive, you see him.
He is different than the visions you see when you close your eyes. His armor was traded in for what looked like cloth and simplicity, and the marks on his skin had gone from red to purple. He looked at you with a depth to those ruby eyes, some kind of emotion you had never seen before. It pisses you off. You want to run over and rip his head off his shoulders, yet to do so would break something inside of you that you do not understand.
That Chaldean Mage, born of determination and will, she yells at you— “You are not Enkidu!”
The words strike you, though you know they are true. Enkidu... that name rang somewhere in your skull, and something in you wished to respond. But what came out of your mouth was a laugh. “No, I am not Enkidu,” you chide, ripping skin from arm. “I am something better.”
You do not remember learning how to fight. You simply move, and your body responds in kind. Chains wrap around your forearm, searing hot, yet you bite your tongue and wield them like a king. They strike, and they slash, and the king moves to intercept you. He is strong, and he is fast. You are stronger, you are faster. Mother made you that way.
“You fight like Gilgamesh,” the Chaldean Mage calls.
You feel that familiar rage bubble up again. “Gilgamesh is the impersonator!” You cry, “it was I who made these chains! I was the first!”
Gilgamesh grabs you by the wrist, and you did not anticipate his grip. You try to rip yourself away, but he pulls you in, and he looks at you. He looks at you in a way that makes your gut twist and ache, and a chill passes through your body.
“I remember Enkidu calling this method a perfect waste of energy,” he murmurs to you. “You have no efficiency, yet you hunger for the battle. What a sorry thing you have become, Enkidu.”
Your body has never felt more foreign.
The hand that holds you is not harsh. For a moment, standing so close, you remember. When the days were younger, when he leaned in to pin you down with a grin on his face. You would turn and pin him to the dirt instead, sit yourself on his legs, and declare that you won. And you both would play-grapple, laughing, and he’d pull you in just like this and take every single word from your lips with his own.
And for a moment, you scream. You thrash, you swing. You scream so hard your throat feels like its collapsing. You tell them you will destroy them, you will kill them, you will bring them to the depths of hell and bury them even deeper than that. And you free yourself and run, not even looking back to see his expression.
You flee into the sky, and you search for your mother through the clouds. She does not answer your ragged yells. You ask her why there is an imbalance between your body and your brain. You ask her why your heart is defected, when it cannot be, for you are stronger and better than any human being you have ever crossed, those rats included. She does not answer you. You are alone in the sky.
You swear that you will kill Gilgamesh. You dig your fingers through ivy-green strands of hair and pull. You swear, you swear, you swear. And in the back of your mind, you wish you could talk to him.
You set out to Nippur early.
You take every single human you come across. Man, woman, child, you grab them all and yank them into the streets. You cart them with the beasts you’ve brought, and you feel an anger deeper than you can manage. You will kill Gilgamesh, you remind yourself. You will talk to Gilgamesh. You knew these streets like the back of your hand, and it drives you mad.
You take them to the Blood Fort, and you leave them to be turned into more beasts. More monsters for the war. When that Chaldean brat finds you, you laugh at her. You tell her what has happened, you tell her the invasion will truly begin when the second wave of beasts are born. And you demand to know where the king is.
She does not answer. A fight is born.
It is a blur to you in the moment. You know to attack the little one, the one that looks most like Gorgon. But in the midst of golden chains and blackened scythes, you cannot help but see visions. This fight is not as satisfying. It is not the clanging of sword against chain. When you grab a wrist, it is much too thin. It does not fill your palm the way Gilgamesh’s does.
You remember a saying. In Uruk, battle is as intimate as intercourse. To know where to hit to ensure the most damage, while choosing to place your hands where it feels the best for them... that is how to know the depths of a soul.
This is not... satisfying.
The fight is over before you know it. Gorgon has arrived. She spits at you to stand back, and you do. You know that you are stronger than this group, yet for some reason you fall back like a weakened dog with its tail between its legs.
When you return to the Blood Fort, the world feels heavier than before. It is excruciating. You dig your fingers into your skull, and you are nearly dizzy. But you remind yourself that you are special, you swear you are special, you swear. Mother said you are special.
You look to the ones that you have captured. You look to the children, still so young, still so fragile. And you bend the knee and tell them how to escape the woods you have brought them to. They look to you like a god, some sort of savior, a beam of light. And they follow your directions.
That girl, with the ears and the tail. She says something to you.
“You’re not like Gorgon. You only kill those that you consider threats... you’d be ridiculed on the battlefield if they all knew you weren’t as cruel as you seem.”
You feel a pain in your head. In a moment of rage, you take her by the arm, hold her down, and forcefully corrupt her into one of your mother’s children. It was the only way she would shut up.
It’s sad news that Ereshkigal has defected. A traitor to the side of humanity, even if she understood your mother’s grief. It’s disgusting. Quetzalcoatl, too, has become an annoyance. Screaming that she’ll kill Gorgon as a form of thanks... you don’t understand. You don’t understand these people at all. You decide to kill Quetzalcoatl, though this proves difficult, given she is helped by that white beast of flowers. You leave them, and you wish to save Gorgon. The one that looks most like mother.
She is dead the moment you arrive.
The alliance is over. But that is fine... the plan will still continue. You are special, you declare. You declare it to the heavens themselves, as the world bestows upon you the title of Avenger. You will avenge your mother. You will avenge her will, her wish, her everything. You raise the chains of heaven, you aim to strike the rats that have sullied everything, the humans who won’t stay dead.
Then, the unthinkable happens.
She wakes.
Your mother wakes.
It is beautiful. Her wrath. Her strength. You look to her with tears in your eyes. She had not spoken to you this entire time, and now here she was, finally awake. You wish to sob with joy, you boast, you open up your arms.
“Tiamat’s humanity will be beautiful!”
She is so beautiful.
The Lahmu she summons are grotesque in ways that only she could manage. There are so many of them. Yet, something makkes you curious. You look at the demon king through a projection, the one who sought this place out. Solomon tells you that there is a seal on your mother, and that you must break it. He leaves you with a single question.
“Does Tiamat truly want a new humanity?”
You find that question ridiculous. Why wouldn’t she? She created you for that very purpose. You are the blueprint for this new era.
You look to the Lahmu as they tear apart the humans. You wonder if that is what they consider observation. Fleshy, writhing, two-legged things with blades that cleave flesh. You briefly wonder the purpose of those things... why Tiamat chose to birth them. You decide that they are soldiers. You look to the sky, you wish to hear her voice. She is awake now, and she must speak with you. Even only once.
You do not hear her words. When you close your eyes, really focus, you are sure that you hear her crying. You wonder who could possibly have the power to place a seal upon your poor mother.
The Lahmu quickly become annoying. When you ask them to kill the party of the Chaldean Mage, they instead turn their blades upon the captured humans. Idiots. You scream at them, demand to know their motives. They must be faulty, created so soon after your mother’s awakening. They are mass-produced, after all.
But they are still your siblings, aren’t they?
You feel weirdly attached to them, in a disgusting, horrifying way. You cannot stand to look at these bloodied, mindless monsters, but you still order them away to save them from being slain. That party of rats is back. Your head hasn’t stopped hurting this entire time. You are ready to welcome them with a battle, as you have time and time again.
The shielder tells you something.
“You are a soul placed in a shell.”
You are a soul placed in a shell.
You are a soul placed in something that has existed long before you.
You are an intruder upon something that has long since died.
You feel nothing. The pain in your head fades for a fraction.
And then a grin splits your wicked features. You laugh, sorrowfully. You tell her that you are thankful, at least, that mother gave you a body. Even if it was not created by her, it is still yours. You are still her child. You are still special, still perfect, still strong. You stand by this, you—
The Lahmu are killing again. They aren’t listening to you.
“Stop that, brutes!” You yell, and the ache in your head returns tenfold. “Stop! I command you! Stop! We need those! We need those!”
But they do not stop. They rip, and they tear, and they laugh. They turn to you, and they tell you that they were mimicking humanity, that this is what they learned. They learned to kill, and they enjoyed it. This is what mother told them to do.
Your blood runs cold. That is what mother told you to do.
All at once, something rips right through you.
A pain blossoms through your ribs, crackling outwards, bursting from your chest. Bathed in a red more vibrant than the eyes of Gilgamesh, you see a bladed arm reach through the cavity it had created. And in those claws is a grail. Shining in the sunlight, brighter than anything you have ever seen.
That was inside of you. Now it was stolen.
The Lahmu rips it back through you, and you fall. You feel more hollow than before, grasping at the hole left behind, gasping for breath. There is nothing to hold onto. You reach inside the clay, and your hand comes back sticky with lifeblood and empty.
The Lahmu consumes the grail for itself. It changes, right in front of you. It sprouts wings like your mother, bends itself over you, and cackles. “We are the ones tasked with waking Tiamat,” it chides. “You have become obsolete.”
You lay there. Everything is still.
Your hand remains in that empty space left within your chest. Before, you had felt the weight of that grail, and it had reminded you of a heart. It was an echo of something that never existed in the first place, but it was enough. And now you didn’t even have that. You did not have your mother, no matter the tears that flooded your eyes.
Since the beginning, you were expendable.
You know the Bel Lahmu has raised its bladed arm, and you close your eyes to let the thing kill you. But another Lahmu, far more distant, reaches you through a yell. “Run, Enkidu!” It tells you.
Your eyes open. Run, Enkidu.
You are on your feet, and the wind is rushing against your face. Your legs burn with each pound, but you run. You run from the scene, from the life you had been graciously given, from everything you had built. The hole in your chest seals itself, but you do not notice this. You do not know where your feet are carrying you. You simply know that you must run.
By the time the moon has risen, and the stars have opened up their eyes, you find yourself at a hill.
It is not a hill of importance to you... but it is important to Enkidu. You are sure of it. You walk the path that they had, so many years ago. Your feet still remember the dirt, the feeling of the crisp air, the scent of flowers. It stings your eyes, because you know you will never understand this to the same depth. You are not them.
You should just deactivate. You are defective, expendable, and useless.
The eyes you have stolen drift shut. At the top of the hill, where the world feels the most distant, you let your consciousness begin to fade. You do not want this body anymore, it is not yours to inhabit. You, Kingu, are nothing.
A voice calls to you. Your eyes open.
Standing there, just below, is the face this body fell in love with. Gilgamesh stands, his form so bright in the moonlight, his gaze stuck upon the god-born being he fell in love with. You do not answer him, not immediately. You don’t know what to say.
He ascends the hill.
He comes to you. He always comes to you. When days are long, when wars are raging, without fail, he comes to you. He looks older than you remember, now that you’re seeing him up close. His eyes have dark circles beneath them, like indents of night trying to tug the rubies out of his skull. You do not move away as he stands just in front of you, towering, yet not intruding.
“I will ignore it,” he says.
Your eyes widen. “What?”
“I will ignore your crime of leaving your corpse upon this hill... if you decide to die,” he whispers to you, and his hand comes forth. His fingers are wrapped around a golden grail... a Greater Grail. Far more than the holy grail you had been carrying for Tiamat. You stare at it, mouth agape, and a thousand questions rush you at once. He is giving it to you.
“Why are you helping an enemy?” You ask him, broken. “I am not Enkidu.”
He only pushes the grail more firmly against your chest. When he leans in, you can smell the familiar scent of pomegranates that always seems to tint his skin. His eyes glimmer in the moonlight, deep with a longing that he knows will stay with him until he dies.
“I know that you are not my Enkidu,” he murmurs, and his free hand comes forth to hold your cheek. His palm is rough, and his fingers calloused from wielding weaponry the likes of which no mortal man could ever even dream of. But his hands have always been gentle when handling Enkidu’s body, no matter the inhabitant. “I know that you are a different person. Even so, you are worthy of my friendship. You are still the carrier of the Chains of Heaven. You are my Enkidu’s trusted successor... and I see no issue with favoring that.”
The grail passes into your chest and fills the space left hollow. When Gilgamesh retracts his hand, you cannot help but wish that it had stayed there longer. You missed the feeling.
He begins to pull away. “Do what you will,” he says.
You move before you can think. You grab him by the wrist, and you pull him back in. You need him to be close, just for a moment. You hold him tight, look into those eyes you so hated and so loved, and you reach up to hold his cheek in turn. He almost flinches.
“What do you mean by that?”
Gilgamesh’s gaze softens, and his rough hand falls over yours. “What I mean, is... the circumstances of your birth are irrelevant. Do what you want to do.”
In the stillness, you have nothing more to say. You can see it in him. He had long since known that he would never speak to Enkidu again the moment he accepted the crown. But standing before him, wearing Enkidu’s face, it must have been so difficult to pull away. To not pour out every word of worship he’d been building since the loss, to not seal his lips against yours and pretend for a little while.
You pull your hands away, and you step back. As Gilgamesh leaves, you know that there is no real choice.
... You have a job to do.
Tiamat’s arrival is catastrophic, even more than her awakening. She is grotesque. She is brutal. She is angry. She brings with her war, and she crushes the walls that had been standing since the beginning. You knew she would come. You once thought that this day would be glorious, but now, looking upon it all... you know something.
You are not on the side of Gilgamesh. You are not on the side of Humanity. You are not on the side of Tiamat.
You are the sole member of the new humanity, Kingu. You are special, and you are perfect. You pull the Chains of Heaven from your single treasury, and wrapped around your forearm, they do not burn. You think to yourself... you did want to be Gilgamesh’s friend. But that cannot happen, as that was a wish reserved only for Enkidu.
As the lone epitome, you must preserve the world you were born into.
So, you take the chains you have reclaimed, and you wrap the searing gold around Tiamat. She screams, and she writhes, but you hold fast. Gilgamesh watches from his perch, watches as you bring forth the shared Noble Phantasm he had made with Enkidu. So long he had wished to see Enuma Eilish again.
As you bind Tiamat, you smile. “You have chosen the wrong child, Tiamat.”
When the chains break apart, and her claws pierce clay and douse the light within your body, you die a testament to life itself. You die as Kingu, not a false god, but a paragon.
The biggest mercy of all was the fact that Enkidu did not have to die twice.