Stirrings
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Just outside Tripoli, Greece
August 3rd, 2017
3:08 PM
Athan Kokkinos and Gilgamesh
It was an awful lot like training a dog.
Gilgamesh was beginning to think that keeping such a useless organism alive was pointless. Yet he’d already determined to make a proper vassal out of this weak creature, this poor excuse for a police officer. It insulted him that his occupational progeny were so inept, so incapable of enforcing the will of the law.
Well, it didn’t have anything to do with destroying Athan’s police station. Useless things are better off not existing, it was just a simple fact. But a mongrel refusing to succumb to a weapon not even meant for him was to be expected, however admirable it might be between themselves. Still, he was here, and that was that. The king’s will is absolute.
He thought back briefly to that blue wildman from the Emerald Island. Dogs will always be lesser than humans, but that one should at least be the standard among his fellow mutts.
This Greek stray he’d picked up was incapable of reaching the same league as that hound. Truly, he hadn’t even reached maturity. The alpha among a pack of puppies, with no knowledge of anything outside the world of an immature canine. Barking and biting at the world it failed to understand while submissively whimpering to the greater institutions it had no chance of escaping, anything for a scrap. Such a mindset was unacceptable.
So Gilgamesh lectured.
It was a nice enough day. The morning cloud cover that had just finished burning off a few hours prior was already creeping its way back inland from the shore, bringing with it the oncoming chill of the evening.
“Do you understand, policeman?”
…
No. Not really. It was something so utterly divorced from the reality that Athan knew it couldn’t help but sound ridiculous. Or like an American movie plot, at best.
Seven heroes magically summoned to the present to do battle, all for the sake of an all-powerful wish? It leaned too heavily on tropes from young adult fiction to be actually believable.
Well, ordinarily at least. This golden man who summoned destruction on a whim, the man who called himself the king of everything: Gilgamesh. He was the sole disproving factor.
Perhaps, that is, so far.
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Madrid, Spain
August 2nd, 2017
11:00 AM
???
Morning light filtered through the stained glass windows of the city’s largest building of worship. One of the largest buildings of worship in the world, actually.
The Almudena Cathedral. Built only very recently in the 19th century, despite plans that had extended back to the 1500s once the capital of Spain had been moved from Toledo to Madrid. 1,275 meters squared, it was designed to be the largest cathedral in the world at the time. Although inevitably eclipsed by Saint Peter’s Basilica and other international cathedrals, Almudena was less about occupying as many people as possible as it was pure image.
Image. That which is portrayed to the world for others to see. Far too many believe that such a concept was a paramount aspect of society.
His Doberman, Raul, sat politely at his feet as he meditated many meters beneath the public face of Almudena. The face the Spanish church proffered to the public was ordinary in every way; but as with many old things it held secrets, systematically collected and squirreled away in minute detail. All for the future purpose of...something, probably.
Clack.
Clack.
Clack.
An elderly man in fine silk robes approached. A black scarf hung around red and white layers beneath, this was undoubtedly the cathedral’s bishop.
“You can’t keep coming down here like this, Santino, hijo.” The bishop said.
“Why not?”
“Because it isn’t proper decorum for...well, maybe it is alright given your...occupation.” Santino didn’t like how the man was treating him. How they all treated him. Always like this, like he was some kind of delicate vase to be kept in pristine condition for fear of the evil genie that lived within. Santino was sure the bishop had been told his first name through the various channels the church has access to, because he sure never introduced himself. Why couldn’t he simply serve God how he wanted to, among the rank and file? But to even wish such was disrespect to the Church’s wishes, and so Santino put up with it.
“Los Ejecutores have called on you, Santino.”
“Las Albaceas.”
The bishop looked at Santino quizzically. Because he could clarify the reason for the correction, Santino stood up.
“Go to Greece, hijo. The southernmost part, in a town called Tripoli. The Church has reason to believe that beast TATARI has manifested there, or something like it.
Dead Apostles, known to the rest of the world as the culturally incorrect term “vampire”. Hunting them wasn’t usually in the job description for an Executor. Maybe the Church leaders thought a simple Eighth Sacrament Judas was easier to control than the Burial Agency. Maybe they were right.
“You have been granted the right of a Holy Scripture.”
Santino’s eyes widened.
A Holy Scripture, the greatest weapons of the Church...this was undoubtedly serious. No, more than that, there was no way he could be asked to carry something that important. It wasn’t an honor he deserved. Truthfully, he wanted to go home. Home to his beautiful Canary Islands, where he could forget about the troubles of the mainland.
But.
“...Which one, might I ask?”
“The Third. According to your personal history this item might possess a certain level of irony, or so I’m told. Do your best to get over yourself.”
Santino gulped. Oh.
The bishop approached, lording over the young man in the underground pew. Raul the Doberman looked up curiously.
“Santino Murciélago de Vallombrosa, do you accept your duty as a warrior of God?”
“Yes.”
“Will you slay all that stand in your path, becoming as to God’s shadow so that the light may thrive unmolested?”
“Yes.”
“Are you ready, hijo?”
Santino’s next words were in a language that wasn’t his native Spanish. Nor was it a language that had been witnessed by most humans for the last many thousands of years.
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Tripoli, Greece
University of the Peloponnese
School of Economy, Management, and Informatics
8:02 PM
Dean’s Office
It was never enough. It had never been enough. A university dean’s salary? It was fucking degrading is what it was. He should have gone into drugs like his brother, or human trafficking. Anything was better than dealing with these bumpkin fuckers sailing in from the islands to learn how to screw in lightbulbs for a living.
Originally Posted by
Athan Kokkinos
“So you say this thing grants wishes...er, sir.”
No, but at least he could make tenure...and make a fraction of what his brother can pull in by the weekend in 20 fucking years.
Originally Posted by
Gilgamesh
“Correct, policeman. And what do you think about that? Also, don’t call me something so boorish.”
It wasn’t his fault, honestly. He just loved the stuff. Money had been tight growing up, its importance was stressed to him on such a constant basis was it any wonder he grew to love money so much?
Originally Posted by
Athan Kokkinos
“I don’t think I rightly know. What’s in it for this...Grail to grant wishes of nobodies?”
Green. Copper. Nickel. Silver. Gold. Platinum. Gold. Jewels. Gold. Gold. GOLD.
Originally Posted by
Gilgamesh
“You’re overthinking it, surprisingly. It isn’t a sentient being that decides who it empowers based on anything preexisting, I suppose that’s why mongrels have such a fascination with it. Rather, the Grail is merely a machine that does what it’s programmed to, to borrow modern diction. In other words, if you wanted a smoothie, you would put the necessary ingredients into a blender. You aren’t making a smoothie from thin air, you’re simply recombining fruit that already exists to make it for you.”
All he’d wanted was a way to get it. It didn’t even have to fall out of the sky. Hell, earning it was half the fun. But it had to be fun. Being a dean wasn’t fun.
Originally Posted by
Athan Kokkinos
“I get it.”
Then again, what harm was there in wishing for it. Wasn’t that how Midas got his golden touch?
Originally Posted by
Gilgamesh
“You’re lucky I don’t cut your tongue off for lying so blatantly to me, policeman.”
Just a wish.
Originally Posted by
Athan Kokkinos
“I can’t help it, it sounds like too much fucking bullshit. I didn’t grow up that way, it’s…”
A forgotten yearning, lost to the definition of daydream.
Originally Posted by
Gilgamesh
“Speak, your inanity threatens to drive me mad.”
It was too damn easy.
Originally Posted by
Athan Kokkinos
“It’s too damn easy.”
The first thing he did was turn his entire office into solid gold. The color, the sheen, the smell even of gold was overwhelming. But it still wasn’t enough, despite its immaculate perfection.
The entire building, now, was solid gold. Faculty and students had been turned into brazen Venuses de Milo mid-stride, without a thought spared for the lives that had been ended in an instant.
He had an erection.
There was no limit. He could do anything! Turn anything into gold! Even...Even the ocean. The ground beneath his feet. The air itself!
Originally Posted by
Gilgamesh
“That’s the fault of your own mongrel perspective, of which I can’t and refuse to help you with. Wishes aren’t restricted to the realm of humans. Anything that possesses a will, no matter how abstract, possesses the capacity to wish for something.”
Sisyphus: Forced to roll a boulder up a mountain for eternity for assuming his cunning superior to Zeus.
Narcissus: Fell in love with his own reflection and drowned.
Icarus: Flew too close to the sun on his mechanical wings and plummeted to his death.
Arachne: Unable to best Athena in a weaving competition, and turned into a spider.
Niobe: Entire progeny killed for insulting the mother of the Archer Twins.
Originally Posted by
Gilgamesh
“Even the Earth itself.”
Something exploded in the dean's chest. He died before he hit the ground he had planned on turning into gold only a few seconds prior.
And so he joined the rest suffering from hubris and greed, another nameless soul in the swirling vats of Tartarus.
The woman that stood over the man's body retrieved her spear.
Frankly, the Earth had put up with quite enough nonsense for too long.
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[1] Rido Ridograph
Decided to truncate the next bit into this chapter to make it a somewhat more worthwhile length. Especially since the next chapter is most likely going to be a fight scene.