Beneath the ground, in the House of Dust, in pale Irkalla, the nether-world, there flows a pale and solemn river.
Author: Intercedent
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FALLOUT: The United States Federal Government and the SCP Foundation go to war.
š PTT-1666-Gray-Templum š¹ Hub š¹
Beneath the ground, in the House of Dust, in pale Irkalla, the nether-world, there flows a pale and solemn river.
It streams sybillant and silent through secret paths, cascading from great Abzu, the primordial undersea from which all waters flow, dripping down between dank and glistening stone in a tributary a thousand thousand miles long, in the blind and fathomless dark between worlds where none trespass.
It is called the Hubur, or Dumzu, or the ford of the dead. It is called the Styx, and the Lethe and the Waters of the Abyss. It is called a thousand names by a thousand tongues, known with motherās milk, the black rapid in the belly of the earth.
It is the moat of Hell, every hell, all of them at once.
See it curve through many-banded canals carved in the living stone by the ceaseless work of millenia. See it flow through seven-barred gates, below the guard-tower of Ishum the watchman, Ishum the sergeant, the banner-bearer of Nergal.1 See it streaming beneath seven-and-four bridges, seven of stone and four of wood, all filled with the downcast dead, spirits standing shoulder to shoulder in ranks a hundred deep. They bear manacles, these sullen ghosts, and about them horned guards stride and strike with flaming whips, and their heads are branded with the chattel-mark of Beelzebub.2
See it cut through pale fields of hissing wheat, sickly stalks of white dust, labored over by the ul-uzuh, the half-real, whose thin arms are bare and ragged with missing feathers.
They are the unremembered dead, who reap dust and sow salt. They are the downcast dead, forgotten by the living unto even the tenth generation. See their plight, these unfortunates, hear their cries, see it as he saw it, atop that desert-dry bluff in the cavern of pale Irkalla where the solemn Hubur flows.
He who was slayer of the Bull of Heaven, who was slayer of Humbaba, who was slayer of lions, the reborn hero, Ashen Son, the dead-man, š¤ š.
Gilgamesh, Dead-King of Dead-Uruk, king of ash and dust.
GILGAMESH: Who are you, oh spirit, whose lament is as the cry of the willow-bird at dusk, whose skin is as worm-ridden silk, you who reap this fruitless land, who are you?
UL-UZUH: Do not hurt meā¦ I beg of youā¦ I am workingā¦ see that I am workingā¦
GILGAMESH: Peace, brother of my land. I merely wish to know your name.
UL-UZUH: My nameā¦ it fell out of my mindā¦ piece by pieceā¦ like the worms which gnaw me soā¦
GILGAMESH: How did it come to this, brother of my land? Where are the great clay-ovens, the water-mills, the yoke to tame the Hubur? Where is the goodly bread pressed out of grain, the baskets of olives, the canters of oil?
UL-UZUH: It is takenā¦ all takenā¦
GILGAMESH: By that jackal, Nergal, no doubt.
UL-UZUH: Who are youā¦ to utter that name without fear?
GILGAMESH: I am the slayer of Humbaba, breaker of mountains, king of kings! I am he who is one-thirds man and two-thirds god. I am the plunderer of many countries, he who speaks most wisely. I am GILGAMESH, King of Uruk!
At this the spirits quaver and lay down their scythes, looking upon the king with eyes of clouded quartz.
UL-UZUH: It is him! It is the god-man, it is the Hero of Uruk. It is him come again!
The gray men and women of the field clamor with rejoicing, jubilation from reedy throats rising like cheerful dirges as the forgotten dead swarm around the hero-king, caressing him with wispy hands, praising him with great praise, left hands pressed in the sign of supplication.
Bringer of Hope, they name him then, and crown him with garlands of pale straw.
See him, ox-broad, mighty in stature, shining with life-in-death. See the dead turn towards him like sunflowers towards the sun.
GILGAMESH: Brothers of my land, come with me now, away from these fields of dust, come with me to the secret place of Shamhat, Shamhat the jewelled, fairest of the harimtu, abandon your bundles of straw upon the ground.
UL-UZUH: Great King, we cannot. Look at our chains.
GILGAMESH: Give me your manacle, I shall break the leash, with these hands of mine I will shatter Nergalās cruel irons, with these hands of mine I will deliver you from bondage, brothers of my land. This I swear upon the names of all the gods, and the faces of the sun and moon.
And he strains with great vigor, and though steam rises about his flanks and his feet make great indentations in the earth, the cold iron holds and does not splinter, for his strength is mighty, but no longer of the living. And he laments with great despair, his kingly face downcast in prayer.
GILGAMESH: Mighty Shamash, Shamash the just, Shamash sky-lord, how can I save my people, that I cannot break their chains, how can I deliver them from this injustice?
But pale Irkalla is a league beneath the ground, a league and more, and though the ceiling of that vast cavern glimmers with veins of lapis shaded like the summer sky, and stalactites of mica and quartz that gleam like stars, it has no sun. And so from Shamash the sky-lord comes no response.
GILGAMESH: Kingly Enlil, Enlil of the storm, Enlil fate-weaver, you who ordain the skein and weave of all things, tell me the path I must follow, to deliver them from servitude that is as death-within-death?
But pale Irkalla is a league beneath the ground, a league and more, and though the gallows-wind blows over and through the vast cavern with reedy moans, there are no storms there, nor the touch of rain. And so from Enlil the storm-king comes no response.
And the hero-king becomes angry in his despair, smiting the stony earth in wroth, naming and cursing the names of the gods, who have forsaken their people even unto death. And for a while he sits, and sits in contemplation while the quavering shades are dismayed.
UL-UZUH: Mighty King, if this one may venture a suggestion, for though the gods be silent, I may know a way to break our chains.
GILGAMESH: Speak your counsel, brother of my land, and speak loudly!
And the shade speaks to him of how the chief gallu of Nergal may sometimes, for the sake of their appetites, come to the gray field to seize men for consumption, and how they bear mighty axes of bronze for this purpose, to sever the chains that hold the spirit in place as a man cuts a bundle of grapes from a vine.
GILGAMESH: Your counsel is excellent, brother of my land, and well met. I go now to find one of these carcass-captains of the Jackal, that I may triumph over him and take his blade, and then come to release you.
And he pulls his gray cloak overhead, making way to leave with haste.
UL-UZUH: Mighty King, Mighty King, wait! For though you are indeed the greatest of us, the dead of Irkalla, your strength is not yet great enough to best such a foe on his native ground, and the risk is too great besides, for if you were to fall again and your body become dust, there can be no recovery.
GILGAMESH: Regardless, such a thing must be done. For I swore on life itself to see you freed, brothers of my land. I shall not quail from any danger.
UL-UZUH: Mighty King, there may yet be another path. Oftentimes we have seen, in the distant east of this cavern, smoke rising as if from a great fire. And oftentimes, pale Dumzu, which flows from east to west, turns black, running with soot and oil.
GILGAMESH: It is good counsel, and well taken. You speak of the Forge of the Dead.
UL-UZUH: We speak of the Forge of the Dead, by the chasm where the blood of the earth flows like fire. Liberate it, oh king, arm yourself mightily from its bounty, for long have we suffered in servitude.
GILGAMESH: It shall be done.
And so the hero-king sets to find the Forge of the Dead, in the Chasm of the Blood of the Earth, that he may liberate it from Nergal the jackal. See him run, tireless, fleet-of-foot, for five days and five nights. See him climb a mountain of bones, of chiseled white stone, see him ford the pale Dumzu as the waters of abyssal sleep lap about his mighty calves, see him trespass beneath the eyes of watchful Lamassu, moving as a thief in the night, gray-cloaked and fleet-of-foot. And he arrives at a mighty forest of aspen and cedar, pale and leafless, where the undersky is black with smoke, and red flame burns the horizon.
Here is the Chasm of the Blood of the Earth, here is the great Forge of Irkalla, the Forge of the Dead, where Nergal glad-of-war makes the cruel weapons of his armies from the bones of the earth.
The king moves into the forest, moving without a sound, as silently as a rabbit beneath the shadow of a hawk, towards the sound of beaten metal, of crackling flame, and behind an aspen stump he crouches, cloaked in gray, and listens to the sound of mighty bellowing and lamentation.
GILGAMESH: I know that voice.
He sees a mighty shadow, twice again as tall as he, that moves through the forest, bearing whole trunks upon its back in the manner that men carry firewood. He sees the beast, with a head like a man's coiled entrails but with the horns of an ox, chest oxen-broad, bearing great leaden weights and chains, feed the felled trees into the heart of a mighty oven and he laughs mightily and shouts, leaping to his feet.
GILGAMESH: I know your name, stranger! You are the shade of Humbaba, he who was guardian of the Cedar Forest!
HUMBABA: You! Oh, what hideous day! What piteous misfortune! Have you come to torment me again, even in death, King of Uruk? You who slaughtered me, for no fault of my own, you trespasser, you assassin, leave me be! I am suffering enough!
GILGAMESH: Peace, peace! I have no more quarrel with you, you who were my foe in life, and in truth, that deed I now regret. For perhaps we share common cause, here in the House of Dust, in pale Irkalla. Tell me how you came to be here, in this grove of corpse-cedar.
HUMBABA: I came to some while after you slayed me, awaking here upon a bed of ash, here in pale Irkalla. It was the pale lady, good Ereshkigal, Ereshkigal the fair, who found me, and brought me to this grove of corpse-cedar, and set me once again to my purpose, even in death. And for a time I was content.
GILGAMESH: Tell me, mighty Humbaba, how you came to be chained to the Forge of the Dead?
HUMBABA: Who else but that loathsome Nergal, lord of flies, Jackal-god that he is! He and seven of his mighty captains came and bound me with these wretched chains, and set me to harvest my forest of corpse-cedar, to feed the Forge of the Dead, and though I weep with lamentation there is naught that can be done, for pale Ereshkigal has gone away and does not answer my entreaties. And now they come āere fortnight, seven mighty gallu, and demand I make them what they will, else they beat me with iron chains.
GILGAMESH: Despicable Nergal, jackal that he is! Well spoken, mighty Humbaba, our cause is indeed as one, you who were my foe in life. Let us sit, and I shall counsel you, for I intend to set you free.
And the two sit on the ash in the clearing at the heart of the forest of pale cedar, and hold counsel, and palaver, and soon clasp hands. Humbaba goes into the forest and at the boundary finds the highest and palest tree of cedar, that is topped with seven fair branches like a crown, and he cuts down these and brings them to Gilgamesh, who fashions them into seven lances, cold in his hands, and upon each he carves the names of a captain of Nergal, and these names are-
Sa-Rashin, the Verminous
Eo-Vasa, the Bloodsoaked
Tam-Rasha, the Pale
Kyo-Volosh, the Left Handed
Arradakin, the Crawling
Sa-Tamil, the Covetous
And Kal-Korath, the Favored.
Then he goes and finds again the pale Dumzu, with its waters of sleep, and a few sparse copses of vinery, and ragged corpse-grains growing besides, and he gathers these into his hands, and goes back to the Forge of the Dead. These things are decanted into a pot of clay, and brewed in a great iron casket in a bed of embers for three days and three nights, beneath the forge, where it becomes sour wine.
And it comes to pass once again that the seven great captains of Nergal come to torment Humbaba, who was once guardian of the sacred cedar and who is now a slave in the Forge of the Dead. There is a terrible beating of wings, and the pale stars of the undersky are blotted out by their approach, these mightiest of the gallu.
And Gilgamesh, the First Hero, lies hidden and cunning, in wait, as Humbaba greets them and grovels and feigns acquiescence to their taunts and demands, and bids them at last to refresh themselves before their departure. And the seven captains sup upon the wine, made from the pale waters of the Dumzu, and each are laid to sleep. And so Gilgamesh, the First Hero, Dead-King of Dead-Uruk springs upon them like a trap and at once impales each in turn with the lance bearing their name, so that the black demon-blood flows like water, and the corpses turn to sand, ash, and salt.
HUMBABA: It is done, like you said. Now free me, King of Uruk, as was agreed! It will not be long before Nergal grows wary of the absence of his host.
GILGAMESH: There is yet one more thing left to be done. I have gathered from each gallu their great bronze axe, the blades of which can break the chains of the dead. But look! Upon each hilt is marked a curse, that the man who wields them without the blessing of Nergal shall be laid to waste. I cannot yet free you.
HUMBABA: Give me those blades. I shall forge from the seven a new, single axe, that you may free me and fulfill our bargain. Go and fetch me more water from the Dumzu, go and fetch me jasper and chalcedony, give me the leather from your belt, give me your cloak of gray feathers, go and do these things that I may work.
And they labor for three days and three nights. And on the third night Humbaba pulls from the forge a mighty axe-head, glowing with the blood of the earth, one-hundred and fifty stone, as wide again as the wooden shields used in the time of Akkad were tall, broad enough to cover a man head-to-foot with its breadth. And upon this glowing blade Humbaba sets lines of jasper, and presses bands of chalcedony, and fastens it to a good aspen lance with leather from the hero-kingās belt, and feathers it with feathers from the hero-king's cloak.
HUMBABA: It is done, you who were once my foe. It is done, but the axe is wanting of a name.
GILGAMESH: Its name will be Violence. For that is what it must achieve, that I may free the brothers of my land from the jackal-god, Nergal. For I am GILGAMESH, Bringer of Hope, Dead-King of Dead-Uruk, the first hero and the last, and here is my will that I swear to even the gods.
And Gilgamesh takes the mighty haft into his hands, and smites the chains of Humbaba, and splinters them like dry straw.
GILGAMESH: In my kingdom of New Uruk, in my Kingdom of Dust, there shall be no more chains.
Ishtar spoke to her father, Anu, saying:
"Father, give me the Bull of Heaven,
so he can kill Gilgamesh in his dwelling.
If you do not give me the Bull of Heaven,
I will knock down the Gates of the Netherworld,
I will smash the door posts, and leave the doors flat down,
and will let the dead go up to eat the living!
And the dead will outnumber the living!"
- The Epic of Gilgamesh
š PTT-1666-Gray-Templum š¹ Hub š¹ To Make Meat of Clay š