The Present, Snowfield, a Luxury Residential District
“Hmm . . .”
A woman’s voice rang out in the real Snowfield. There was a somehow unreal beauty to it.
“I was sure he’d come rushing to track me down right away . . . but Utu is high in the sky and there’s still no sign of him. He’s surprisingly cautious, considering his best friend just got crushed.”
A luxury residential area in the Snowerk district.
Its largest mansion belonged to the owner of the casino building in the city center.
Publicly, at least.
The owner was a proxy put in place during the city’s construction—a businessman who had died from illness at a young age and was merely made to appear alive.
The casino building was actually managed by one of the mages “on the inside,” who used magecraft to disguise himself as the late businessman to fool the eyes of the public when it was absolutely necessary for the owner to put in an appearance.
As a result, this elegant mansion, which looked like it might belong to a minor Hollywood star, had no real owner—its only visitors were servicepeople who performed the bare minimum of maintenance necessary to keep up appearances.
And yet . . .
A group was currently using the mansion as if it belonged to them.
A woman lounged on a pure white sofa so luxurious that it probably cost as much as a small house on its own. She was just sitting casually, but she gave the impression that she would make a perfect picture no matter who looked at her or from what angle, as if she were the very definition of beauty.
“Oh well, it doesn’t matter. I want to let Gugalanna do the honors of wiping out that piece of junk, anyway.”
The person stuck having that impression seared directly into her eyes was a girl still in her late teens.
Haruri Borzak, the girl who was watching that goddess from a corner of the enormous room, was staring at Filia, the woman on the sofa, with a somewhat gloomy look in her eyes.
“What’s got you looking so down?”
Haruri answered Filia’s question in a tone of mingled caution and fear.
“. . . Would you please tell me your name?”
“Oh, you’re still hung up on that? Didn’t I tell you—if you’ve realized how charming I am, you don’t need to know anything else.”
“Right now . . . it isn’t just charm. I feel afraid, too. I know I said that all I cared about was that you’d saved me . . . but since we’re going to fight together, I’d at least like to know your name.”
Haruri was terrified, but she still looked Filia in the eye as she spoke.
“Oh?” Filia answered with a faintly bewitching smile. “I see you’ve gotten awfully assertive.”
“You told Bazdilot and his Servant that you were a goddess. As a mage, it’s hard to believe . . . but at the very least, you’re not a mage. You’re something much ‘higher’ . . . aren’t you?”
“That’s such an obvious question I don’t even know how to answer it. I mean, all I can say is ‘of course,’ and that’s boring.”
Filia shrugged, taking a sip from her glass. Even that gesture seemed so beautiful that it almost convinced Haruri that she was looking at the ideal form of relaxation.
“Still, I suppose you have a point. Now that I’ve practically finished off Gilgamesh, there’s no real point hiding my name . . . is there? And I was the one who told you to get away from the hospital because you’d probably get dragged in and die.”
After a brief pause for thought, Filia rose leisurely from the sofa and continued speaking to Haruri.
“What I told that Avenger and his Master wasn’t a figure of speech. I’m not a human who was called a goddess, either. I’m a genuine goddess.”
“What?”
“I’m a goddess of beauty who governs abundant harvests, bestows fortune, glory, and ruin on warriors with the radiance of Venus, and protects people . . . That’s enough to give a mage like you at least an idea, right?”
“. . .!”
Haruri gasped at the declaration that “goddess” was meant literally.
Still, she had half expected it and did not fall into doubt or confusion.
She would have liked to be wrong, but she had already put her life in Filia’s hands, and it was too late to refuse.
And the numerous fragmentary hints Filia had dropped lead her to a name.
“A goddess of Venus . . . Aphrodite . . . Venus . . . Astarte. No . . . Closer to the source . . . Inanna?”
“That’s ‘me’ too, but I prefer my Sumerian name. Although that depends on my mood when I manifest.”
“The goddess . . . Ishtar.”
“You got it. Good thing you didn’t get it wrong, huh?”
Filia left her glass, which was still partly full, on a marble table. Walking casually, she picked up the TV remote and pressed the on button.
She flicked through several channels before a jeweler’s segment on a shopping channel caught her eye, and she began to mutter with great interest.
“The cuts are gorgeous. Magecraft has declined, but if this is the result of specializing in technology, that may not be such a bad thing. In terms of taste, the artisans of Uruk suit me better, but . . . Oh well. I’ll respect this era’s sensibilities when it comes to that, at least,” she said, toying with the jewelry she had found around the house and smiling happily.
“After all, in the end, all techniques and tastes come down to whether or not they suit me.”
They had probably been prepared either as camouflage or as mystical catalysts for the mansion’s real owner, but any of them might still have cost over fifty thousand dollars in an ordinary jewelry shop.
Still, Haruri could not shake the feeling that price had nothing to do with it.
Even if they had been cheap gems, or even glasswork or marbles, the mere act of her holding them seemed enough to make them standards of beauty and enhance their inherent value.
“A goddess of beauty . . .”
It was true that she was so beautiful that it seemed disrespectful to even look at her directly.
At the same time, that frightened Haruri.
Genuinely perfect beauty could become great magecraft—nearly Magic—in and of itself.
For instance, Haruri had heard rumors of the “Gold and Silver Princesses” of the Iselma family, powerful mages of Valué, the School of Creation, at the Clock Tower. Those twins were ultimate beauty, the arbitrary product of generations of magecraft research. They were supposed to project a “beauty” so perfect that it blotted out the consciousness of anyone nearby just by existing. Haruri had never seen their faces, but she surmised that the goddess of beauty in front of her was something else entirely.
If the Iselma princesses were the result of generations of mages studying to approach the Root from the perspective of “beauty” and achieving a height at which their forms seemed to reflect the universe itself, then what this goddess had ought to be described as a completely different category that just happened to also use the word “beauty.”
The goal of the Iselma family’s “beauty” was ultimately a method to reach the Root. If they ever did reach it, it would be a domain worthy of the name “otherworldly beauty.”
Ironically, what the goddess possessed was the opposite—otherworldly “beauty” befitting of the heavens applied to earthly forms. You could call it the end goal of “beauty” as it is meant near the human sphere. The kind of “finished product” that fell from an unreachable height and painted over its surroundings with itself.
The self-proclaimed goddess before her eyes was like if the golden ratio defined everything it wore as fashionable and fixed that conception on its surroundings. Her way of being broke the rules.
If the human sense of beauty is a type of crisis avoidance or pleasure mechanism developed for survival, then her beauty was the opposite. Her beauty was something that gave to humans.
The goddess was aware that she possessed perfect beauty and that she was the standard of beauty. As a result, she must regard beauty as something that inevitably belonged with her and the act of studying herself as totally alien.
Haruri could not help surmising as much, even though the goddess was just standing in front of her. That was why Haruri admired her freedom and also why she feared that she would be eliminated if she deviated even slightly from the aesthetic sense of this entity beyond human understanding.
A feeling worthy of the name “awe” welled up within Haruri. She fought the urge to fall to her knees as she expressed a doubt that had suddenly occurred to her.
“I thought it wasn’t possible to summon a divinity in a Holy Grail War . . .”
“No, it isn’t. It’s normally impossible for a Holy Grail. There are a handful of nearly heretical ways to do it, but it would be impossible to summon a divinity of my caliber with a localized ritual like this, and especially not with a fake Holy Grail that’s lost its proper function. Oh, but . . . if you used the Holy Grail as a wish-granter at the end of the ritual, for example, you could probably at least get me to listen to you.”
“Then, how . . .”
Haruri persisted in her question.
“I only manifested here,” the goddess within Filia answered carelessly, “because power I’d left in this world from the start activated.”
“Power?”
“That’s right. A blessing I bestowed on this world.”
“. . .?”
Her existence here was the result of a blessing to the world.
Haruri’s face made it plain that she did not understand what the goddess meant. Filia shrugged and continued.
“Of course, it would probably be a curse to those blasphemers.”
“You mean . . . the goddess Ishtar’s power resides in that ‘vessel’?”
“Not just my power; my personality too. Although they’re basically the same thing to beings like us. . . . This body just had a program in it, you know. It was easy to overwrite. I think she’s a sacrificial priestess prepared as a final terminal to receive the Grail’s power, or something like that.”
The goddess seemed uninterested in her vessel’s origins. She returned the topic to herself as she stared happily at jewelry.
“There was a time when we could manifest in our proper forms, but if this were back then, the humans in this town would have burst and died a long time ago.”
“Modern human bodies can’t withstand the magical energy of the Age of Gods. . . .”
Haruri had heard something like that before.
The age when gods and humans had coexisted was over, and magical energy was vanishing from the world. Humanity had adapted to that environment, and their bodies could no longer withstand their original one.
Haruri did not know if it were evolution or regression, but just as humans could not survive in too high an oxygen density, they had already begun to part ways with the world of magecraft. And not at the societal level—with the exception of mages and magecraft-users who actually continued to use magical energy.
“Well, the environmental changes and my inability to manifest are for different reasons. Even if you recreated the same environment and tried to summon me . . . I suppose it would be noble if I thought of it as a sacrifice, but there’s really no point if there aren’t any humans to praise me in exchange for protection.”
“Then why go to the trouble of manifesting in an era like—”
“I told you, I bestowed a blessing on the world. It just activated successfully.”
At that point, the goddess narrowed her eyes and flashed a bewitching smile.
“I can hardly believe that something like this could really happen. . . . I’d like to applaud the me back then.”
“?”
“You see, when I was insulted by a blasphemous king and that piece of junk threw my divine beast’s entrails at me, I seared a blessing into the world. I kept going until I dissolved into the human order and vanished.”
Fear is beauty, and beauty is primordial fear.
That was how it seemed to Haruri when she looked into Filia’s eyes.
Her keen features made Haruri’s blood run cold. They were just too beautiful—if she had been the object of their hatred, Haruri felt sure that not only would she be unable to resist, she would actually feel grateful.
The perfected rage and hatred of a goddess of beauty.
To be precise, a “vestige” of the passions of the deities who once ruled this planet were reigniting an ancient wrath within the vessel called Filia.
“If those two ever returned to this planet and reunited . . .”
Faced with a miracle she had arrived at amid an infinite expanse of possibilities, the being who called herself a goddess wore a smile so beautiful that it would freeze the heart of anyone who saw it.
“I would devote my divinity and soul . . . to protecting humans.”
Then, as if in answer to those words, a grating sound came from the mansion’ courtyard.
Haruri did not turn to look.
She knew that she would see nothing if she did.
Haruri’s Servant, rendered invisible by magecraft, had stationed itself in the courtyard.
Because it had absorbed rubble from Bazdilot’s workshop, which it had destroyed, it actually put more strain on it to dematerialize, so they were getting by with invisibility magecraft and magical-energy concealment.
The woman who called herself Ishtar seemed to still be able to perceive the Servant clearly, because she looked up into the courtyard through a glass wall and said:
“Don’t you think so too?”
In response, a sound like the grating of a massive ship’s propeller rang out from the courtyard.
“Oh, honestly. It sounds like she thinks those tall stone towers are the cedar forests of Lebanon,” the goddess said with a shrug and a wry smile, as if to a pet dog.
“All right, I’ll take you to a real forest later. That piece of junk is probably there . . .
“But now that Gilgamesh is out of the picture and he’s gained reason, he won’t pose a threat.”
X X
The Distant Past, in a Forest of Gigantic Trees
You need to learn.
To learn about humans.
Utu created a “complete human” in the forest of Enlil.
Behold her, tell of her, and mold yourself in her image.
Ninurta will then share his power with you.
Before we loose you into the forests of Uruk, you must spend time with the “human” Utu has raised.
Complete yourself and become humanoid.
For you are a lump of clay that imitates all life.
The will of the gods.
When the lump of clay that had had that “duty” carved into it as an irresistible, comfortable slumber awakened in this world . . .
“—_____—___—_—__—________—__—___”
The world was engulfed in a scream that rent heaven and earth.
It had no meaning as words.
It was just a whirling vortex of pure, undirected emotion.
The first thing that the “tool” called Enkidu observed in this world was an everlasting series of screams.
The chain of sounds alone destroyed nearby objects and soon reduced everything to dust.
In the “process” of being created by the gods, he/she was discarded into the heart of that vortex of shrieks.
However . . . “discarded” was merely an objective description.
In reality, it would be fair to say that the gods were pouring all their efforts into making that weapon supreme.
He/she was a divine homunculus—a tool, a weapon, and an independent processing mechanism—that the gods of Mesopotamia had created to rebind a child who had degenerated into a human to the gods.
That was why, as a necessary step, Enkidu has been placed in the midst of the calamitous voice.
He/she had been dropped there with something akin to love, like an infant into its first bath, as a final precaution.
Enkidu recognized the series of thunderous roars as a “human voice” after eighty days in the noise.
The processor had been dropped into the world in a state of innocence, input only with the role the gods had bestowed on him/her and a bare minimum of information. He/she had to begin building up everything by choosing what would be necessary and what types of knowledge to accumulate.
And intellectually, Enkidu had already been given the answer, defined by the gods, to what the source of the screams was.
It was a being called a “human.”
It was, the gods claimed, the apotheosis and perfection of the human species that Enkidu must go on to confront.
In his/her initial state, Enkidu did not yet know what words were. From his/her perspective, the mighty words of the gods were imprinted as “sensations.”
Even so, Enkidu continued to face that “perfect human” and to expose him/herself to its cries.
As a result, in order to answer the voice, Enkidu was transforming into something like a gargantuan clay doll.
If that automaton had been completely suffused in the “screams” then . . . he/she would not have been able to achieve mutual understanding with the sacred prostitute Shamhat.
Enkidu might not even have been able to recognize Shamhat as “human.”
That was how greatly the “perfect human” that he/she had encountered through the gods’ guidance differed from the humans who walked on two legs in Babylonia.
The thing that would link Enkidu to human society at the last possible moment . . . was a young girl’s voice that rose amid the endless screams like bubbles from seaweed.
“Who is it?”
“Is someone there?”
Before Enkidu was aware of it, little flowers were blooming around him/her.
The gods’ processor would learn.
The storm of screams calmed as if it had never been, and a series of delicate sounds that seemed to mean something rang out, but only for the brief time that those flowers continued to bloom.
After a long time, Enkidu realized what those sounds meant—what “words” were.
And the independent processor learned.
Enkidu learned that while it was true that the cries like ceaseless thunder had no meaning as words . . . they were continuing to carve the emotion called “resentment” into the world in the form of a curse.
They never ended. They never reached a destination. The “humans” just continued to scream.
To scream a curse that would never conclude in a place that was, to Enkidu, the beginning of the world.
When Enkidu realized that, however, he/she was unfazed.
If these were the beings called “humans” that the gods spoke of, then this must be how humans were. Enkidu dispassionately recorded the fact as a basis for calculations.
Caught between the endless screams and the gentle girl’s voice that occasionally surfaced, the processor—who could not even distinguish “gentleness”—accumulated knowledge about humans with complete detachment.
Only the mission that the gods had given him/her continued to echo within Enkidu’s hollow soul.
Converse with humans.
Pierce them and stitch them fast.
A calculating lump of clay that was not yet even a doll.
Enkidu simply judged that it was necessary for his/her mission and attempted further communication with the “perfect human.”
At that point, Enkidu had merely memorized “her” whispered words and grasped the situation.
He/she had not yet reached the level of conversation.
Groping for a way to fulfill the role that he/she had been given, Enkidu attempted various forms of communication with the “perfect human.”
In the process, one day . . . Enkidu made flowers broom.
Enkidu retained no record of memory of why he/she thought to do that. It may have been a coincidence, or some factor that the then-incomplete Enkidu could not identify may have been involved.
But the result, at least, was burned into Enkidu’s circuits.
The cries of resentment calmed for just an instant, and “she” brought her body to the surface.
“Thank you.
“Pretty . . . aren’t they?”
Enkidu did not notice the slight tremor in his/her system at the sound of that voice.
Later, however, the weapon understood.
That had been the first moment that he/she had succeeded in a mutual exchange of “wills.”
Time, and words, flowed on.
Enkidu remembered the precise number of days, but he/she saw no meaning in it.
To the weapon, it did not matter how much time had passed, only how it had come to understand “humans.”
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
“We’re your friends, Enkidu.”
“But soon, we won’t be friends anymore.”
“Because we can’t go anywhere anymore.”
“We won’t be able to see the same things as you anymore.”
“We’re sure to forget about you.”
“To us, you were like a flower, Enkidu.”
“You saved us from being lonely.”
“We hope that you’ll meet someone like a flower one day too, Enkidu.”
“Someone who will bloom again, even if they wither and die.”
“Someone like a flower . . . that blooms anywhere before you know it.”
Before Enkidu knew it, “she” had begun to form a tiny individual body when she rose from the swarm of resentful voices.
The sound-emitting apparatus and visual and auditory sensors packed into that “little body” caught Enkidu’s attention.
Cranium, face, head.
Enkidu matched the images that the gods had given him/her with the words that he/she had learned from “her.”
The top of that head that seemed as if Enkidu could crush it with the slightest exertion was decorated with a flower that he/she had made bloom a few days before.
Then . . . she picked up a different flower in her hand.
It was one of the tiny flowers that “she” had made bloom when she first surfaced—on the day that Enkidu had first encountered her.
When “she” used that flower to decorate Enkidu’s head, which was just a massive lump of clay, she twisted the visuals sensors and speech emitter on her head into odd shapes.
It was much later that Enkidu learned that it was called a “smile.”
And so, at the time, Enkidu was more concerned with the things that floated around her.
They were seven little rings of light that shone like rainbows just after the rain and seemed to guard “her.”
Enkidu judged that those rings of light were “perfect things” and etched their radiance into his/her soul.
The gargantuan lump of clay, which was massive enough to take all the cries of resentment that “they” let out when the girl’s form was submerged and had tuned his/her mental makeup for that purpose, allowed something like what humans call “hope” to well up in his/her soul for the first time.
Even when he/she obeyed the gods’ commands and left the forest.
Even if he/she destroyed humans for the sake of his/her duty . . . he/she had to see that perfect, beautiful radiance again.
Enkidu etched that wish into his/her system without even analyzing the reason why.
The weapon would get his/her wish a long time later.
But
the next time Enkidu saw “her”
that radiance . . .
Originally Posted by Eclipse
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