After returning to her grand temple, the Mistress of Heaven grew increasingly aggrieved the more she dwelled on her defeat.
Who was she?
She was the Goddess of Venus, the supreme star adored by the entire pantheon, the absolute sovereign governing beauty and the harvest!
Yet today, she had been ruthlessly rejected by that barbaric King of Uruk in front of the entire universe!
If that were all, she might have endured it.
But what drove her past the brink of sanity was the sheer humiliation of taking the Bull of Heaven down for vengeance, only to be single-handedly pulverized by that mortal!
Even if the man clearly bore a divine blessing secretly funneled to him through Ereshkigal’s authority, the hard metrics remained: Ishtar had descended with her original divine vessel, steering a star-born engine of global demise!
By comparison, this was a public declaration to the entire celestial realm: her taste in men was inferior to her sister’s, and even her feminine allure and martial capability had been thoroughly eclipsed by that gloomy woman!
This monumental disgrace pushed the proud goddess into a state of unbridled, chaotic tantrums.
Slamming open the doors of her temple, she charged once more before the Sky Father, Anu.
This time, she wept bitter tears, shrieking and demanding the absolute, most ruthless execution of divine punishment upon those two insolent mortals.
High upon his divine throne sat Anu—possessing an appearance that seemed practically engineered for staging a backstab.
He shook his head with a heavy sigh.
Yet, the absolute majesty of the divine could not be trampled without consequence.
The King of Uruk’s exponential surge in power and his systemic disrespect toward the pantheon had genuinely crossed a red line.
Anu recognized that a severe reprimand was mandatory.
However, the primary complication was that Gilgamesh’s spiritual foundation could not be erased directly.
Since they lacked the administrative bypass to destroy the man himself, they would systematically sever his bonds to the mortal plane.
Thus, the gaze of the King of the Gods locked firmly onto Enkidu.
Meanwhile, down upon the surface world.
A colossal bonfire crackled to life across the scorched earth outside Uruk’s walls.
Humbaba had dragged back the carcass of a massive magical beast to serve as ingredients, and Gilgamesh and Enkidu sat closely around the flames, roasting premium meat to celebrate their historic victory.
Yet, just as Enkidu smiled, preparing to pass a skewer of roasted meat over to Gilgamesh, his kinetic movements froze mid-air.
Crack—
A faint, localized fracturing sound echoed from Enkidu’s forearm.
The flawless vessel originally fashioned from pure divine energy and sacred clay began developing a web of visible, shimmering golden fissures.
The divine catalyst fueling his core was being forcefully retracted by the heavens.
His life force began violently leaking away like sand through a broken hourglass, draining at an irreversible, terrifying velocity.
The very parameters of his existence were being systematically deactivated.
“Awooo!”
Humbaba was the first to register the structural anomaly.
The Guardian of the Cedar Forest unleashed a panicked, sorrowful wail, lowering its colossal head close to Enkidu’s frame, its massive eyes swimming with profound grief as it watched its friend begin to disintegrate.
“It is alright, Humbaba…
do not weep.”
Enkidu looked down at his crumbling hands, a serene understanding flashing within his verdant green eyes.
As a weapon crafted by the divine, the moment his creators revoked his operational clearance, this was the pre-programmed destiny he was always meant to welcome.
Offering a helpless, gentle smile, he turned his head to bid farewell to his dearest brother, fully intending to comfort the King so he wouldn’t initiate a catastrophic retaliation against the heavens.
Yet, the moment Enkidu’s gaze settled onto Gilgamesh’s face, he went completely rigid.
Gilgamesh’s expression was impossibly, bafflingly serene.
He sat comfortably by the bonfire, completely unbothered.
He even had the casual presence of mind to lift his wine flask, taking a slow, measured draught.
When he looked across at Enkidu, his eyes held zero traces of grief, despair, or the agony of a permanent parting.
It looked exactly as though he didn’t give a single damn about his best brother ceasing to exist.
But Enkidu understood Gilgamesh far too intimately; he knew with absolute certainty that his brother was no cold-blooded, unfeeling monster.
Therefore, this bizarre, absolute composure could only mathematically represent a single reality.
“Gil, you—” Enkidu began, his voice laced with bewilderment.
“Sit properly and stop moving.
You are not going to die today.”
Gilgamesh set down his flask, cutting Enkidu off without a filter.
He raised his head, gazing into the vast night sky as a smile of absolute, unwavering trust curled the corners of his lips.
“The exact microsecond the previous battle concluded, Eresh contacted me through our mental link.
She gave me her absolute vow: this specific complication is hers to resolve.”
“And the transaction fee for her intervention was a single parameter: I had to agree to one condition of her choosing.”
Gilgamesh paused, his gaze softening into an incredibly gentle warmth.
“I accepted the terms instantly without even asking what the condition was.
Because I know with absolute certainty that she will never let us down.
Therefore, Enkidu, our story does not end here.
I will see you shortly.”
The exact millisecond the words left Gilgamesh’s lips, the golden fissures violently fracturing across Enkidu’s frame were abruptly blanketed by a dense, profound wave of dark-crimson, ghostly light.
Enkidu’s eyes widened in sheer astonishment.
He discovered that his spiritual dissolution had ground to an absolute halt.
The absolute conceptual authority of death surging out from the deepest basins of the earth had forcefully overwritten the deletion protocol of his clay vessel.
To claim his death had been canceled wasn’t entirely accurate; rather, his existential baseline had undergone a fundamental structural mutation.
The celestial attributes that defined him as a tool of the heavens were systematically stripped away.
In their place materialized the distinct, high-frequency fluctuations of a peak-tier deathless entity.
His spiritual foundation was permanently stamped with the absolute, unyielding crest of the Underworld.
Meanwhile, high within the celestial realms, a fierce debate of unprecedented proportions erupted inside the supreme pantheon.
“You absolute idiot who does nothing but roll around in the dirt!
Do you have any comprehension of the disgrace you have brought upon the entire divine name today?!”
Ereshkigal—the goddess of death who spent eons hiding in the silent isolation of the Underworld—currently stood dead center in the grand audience hall, completely shattering her usual pattern of behavior.
Her finger pointed directly at Ishtar’s nose, unleashing a furious, rapid-fire verbal thrashing.
Ishtar was completely turned red from the tongue-lashing, her face flushing violently as she gnashed her teeth, firing back:
“Silence!
What does a gloomy woman like you know?!
Even if my tactical execution suffered an error today, that Gilgamesh dared to publicly humiliate a deity!
He must pay a lethal metric of compensation!
Since we cannot delete his vessel directly, we systematically cut down Enkidu’s life force to teach him the meaning of absolute agony!”
“Do not dare dream of it!”
Ereshkigal cut her off without a single millisecond of hesitation.
Turning her frame, she looked straight up at Anu upon his high throne, speaking with absolute clarity:
“I possess zero administrative right to alter the structural laws established by the pantheon.
Since Enkidu’s operational duration as a celestial tool has concluded, fine—his surface-level existence has indeed been executed.”
“However!” Ereshkigal took a deep breath, her voice booming through the hall with thunderous, unyielding authority, “The exact microsecond he expired, his soul and physical remains automatically fell under the absolute, non-negotiable jurisdiction of my Underworld!
From this moment forward, Enkidu descends to the realm of death to serve as my Supreme Underworld Judge!
Once he rests within my borders, how I choose to deploy him is strictly my administrative business.
The celestial heavens possess absolutely zero authority to interfere!”
This was a flawless political compromise.
Enkidu had “died,” fulfilling the parameters of the divine punishment; yet he remained conceptually “alive” within the Underworld as a deathless entity, preserving Gilgamesh’s absolute brother.
Anu sat in absolute silence upon his throne for a lengthy pause.
Ultimately, gazing down at the unyielding, defiant stance of his daughter, he delivered a slow nod, authorizing the judicial transfer.
Yet, just as the celestial storm prepared to dissipate, Anu spoke once more, vocalizing the singular, burning question locked within the minds of every deity present in the hall:
“Ereshkigal…
For the sake of a mere mortal’s companion, you did not hesitate to march upon the celestial realms and wage diplomatic warfare against your own sister.”
“Tell me: why on earth have you driven yourself to such extremes for that Gilgamesh?”
The entire pantheon instantly fell dead silent.
Every single divine gaze converged upon the Goddess of Death.
Ishtar perked up her ears, her teeth clenched in absolute fury as she waited for the data.
Faced with the unified gaze of the gods, Ereshkigal did not retreat a single millimeter.
The image of the youth who sat within her dark, cold temple, smiling as he spun magnificent stories through the entirety of the night, naturally filled her mind.
She recalled the warrior who stood before a coalition of tens of thousands like an absolute god of war, yet always offered her a gentle, helpless laugh.
Most of all, she recalled the King of Uruk who had stood before the entire world this morning, loudly proclaiming his absolute preference for her.
Ereshkigal took a deep, steadying breath, her eyes blazing with a brilliant, unprecedented pride.
“Why?”
She tilted her chin upward, releasing the crispest, most triumphant declaration of her immortal existence to echo across the universe:
“Because I love him with all my soul!”
“Because he was the entity who brought radiant light and profound change to my silent Underworld!
He looked upon me as an absolute, equal companion, rather than a reviled, terrifying monster of death!
He granted me supreme dignity, gave me his sacred vow, and gifted me a pure joy that I never dared to dream of through eons of loneliness!”
Ereshkigal’s gaze swept across the utterly flabbergasted Ishtar, the corners of her mouth curling into the victorious, sweeping smile of a maiden completely secure in her affection:
“Therefore, I will utilize the absolute limits of my power to protect everything he holds dear.
Furthermore, I intend to utilize that specific condition he agreed to hand over to me…”
“To propose marriage to him!”