Authors: Anorrack and
TyGently
The Fruit of Eight Millennia
(3,811 words)
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A History of Reaction: Information retrieval specialists have attempted in this archive to provide the clearest possible history of POI-1844. Certain events described in this document may be presented out of order, or in contradictory ways. This does not mean they did not happen. by TyGently
SCP-7890: …the Puebla Cartel has developed a bespoke manufacturing process taking advantage of the inherently large EVE output of human sacrifice (utilizing enhanced Nordic pagan rituals) as a crude replacement. by Anorrack
𒌍 SLAYER OF WICKEDNESS 𒁹 Hub 𒁹
Look, over the rooftops, past the soot-black chimneys, taller than even the lapis-inscribed domes of the great temples, look and see the grand palace of Kur la Nippur. It is a towering beauty of gold and cedar, every brick lain with love and strength. It sits atop the city like a watchful hawk, regal and wary, ready to defend its nest with beak and talon. At the brow of this bird of prey, see the balcony of the great King of Irkalla, where he stands to look out upon his vast kingdom.
From his vantage, all the city is laid bare to him, and the people flow like water. His keen eyes follow the copper-merchant leading a six-legged mule, loaded with coiled wire, heading to the market where shades trade in goods and memories. He sees the furnaces of the grand cookhouse roil with fragrant smoke as spices and bone-dust are woven into scores of meals to delight even the grim palates of the dead. He monitors the edges of the city, where streets give way to rocky plains, on which the ashen brush grows, and scribe-engineers tinker with machines of steam and steel, harnessing the might of the Dumzu for the betterment of all. He listens, and hears radio devices tuned to the sound of strumming lyres with goat-gut strings, playing songs of joy and merriment and life. Hear the heart of Nippur, beating free once more after a thousand years of slumber and tyranny.
His robes are woven from modest fibers, each thread drawn from a different strain of cotton from Irkalla, and beyond. It is a garment of peace, bearing exotic colors from the thousand corners of the world. See his simple iron crown, smelted by Humbaba from the chains that once bound his people, and how he bears its weight upon his temples with gravity and wisdom. See a smile grace the face of GILGAMESH, King of the Dead, as he sees his people flourish once more, almost as they once did in life.
Behind him, the grand doors of cedar swing open. A warm breeze envelops the king, and he turns to greet the new arrival.
NERGAL, SON OF NERGAL: Father, have you called for me?
GILGAMESH: Yes, my son. It is time for you to meet the peoples of our kingdom.
In the outskirts of Dul-Eridu, in the outskirts of a city reborn, rebuilt out of marble and glass to mend the scars of the Great Revolt, children scamper in fields of red spider lilies and purple wolfsbane and yellow marigolds, chasing and tackling and rolling and playing ellag amongst the beautiful flowers that fill the corpse-grass fields with wild color. These children were taken before their time, by war and disease and famine, but they frolic nonetheless, the cares of life washed clean by the sands of time. See how they play, with knobbly knees and discolored skin and yellowed tongues, see how they smile and laugh nonetheless. See as Shamhat and Ereshkigal, twin jewels of Irkalla, harimtu and goddess, lounge amongst the corpse-grass and ash-flowers, keeping a watchful eye on their orphans of circumstance, on their children of feathers and clay.
GILGAMESH: Hail Ereshkigal, my Goddess of the Dead! Hail Shamhat! Your combined beauty outshines even Ishtar herself on this blessed day.
Ereshkigal laughs, her clockwork eyes whirring to focus upon Gilgamesh’s face.
ERESHKIGAL: Be ever careful with such words, my king and champion. Ishtar may be dead, but she may rise up again in this place, then you must beware her wroth most bloody, as it was in life. Hello Nergal, son of my once-husband. At last I see you are a man grown.
Nergal bows and ducks low, red coloring his blackened cheeks. His body of orichalcum and gold shimmers in the dim rays of Ashurbanipal’s false sun that hangs above Dul-Eridu, granting it life and light in equal measure.
NERGAL, SON OF NERGAL: Hello, Lady Ereshkigal. My father speaks truth, for you are as radiant as the sun, as pale and as fair as the moon, those brilliant things I have read about in the tablets of the scribes.
SHAMHAT: Hm. you are a charmer, child, but do not let it nurse your ego, as it once did for your father. I may have to find another wild-man to come wrestle you and bring you to heel.
NERGAL, SON OF NERGAL: No, my lady, of course not.
He bows again, and glances at Gilgamesh, then at the children playing in the field. Gilgamesh nods at him, and with a bright and beautiful smile that so closely resembles the one that Gilgamesh’s beloved once carried, with eyes that shine brightly like burnished gold coins at the bottom of a well, Nergal runs to join the children in their joy, in their games and in their play.
SHAMHAT: So.
GILGAMESH: Speak, wise Shamhat. Do not let your thoughts weigh upon your tongue, for your jaw will surely tire.
SHAMHAT: Then speak I shall. How much of a resemblance does he have to his sire?
GILGAMESH: In face and form? Striking, near identical. In words and in deeds… he could not be more different. He knows of pity and forgiveness, of joy and love. He is still young, and may grow to be a wonderful man, and a fine king.
SHAMHAT: Do you worry that the people will not accept him, that they will not forgive him?
GILGAMESH: He is not the same as he once was. The time before our wrestling match is but a dream to him, a memory so vague as to be a mirage. But we already have one who has suffered so dearly at his hand, so why do we not ask?
Ereshkigal’s new eyes click and buzz in her contemplation, as she gazes down to her arms, heavily scarred from the surgeries by the great doctors of the Living to return to her the use of her limbs. She then looks to Nergal reborn, playing with the dead children in that grim meadow. His skin is the carapace of iridescent dragonflies illuminated by the sunset, his laugh is the whisper of the wind through poplars, exuding pure joy and gaiety as he juggles the ball in the game of ellag, as he chases and tackles and lifts the children in the air, the innocence of youth brought to root in the land of the dead.
ERESHKIGAL: I have suffered much at the hand of my dread husband, I will admit. But this creature, hewn of the efforts of man and god, adopted by Gilgamesh to be his own son… I would be hard-pressed to hold hate in my heart for him. And I hope that it is the same for others.
SHAMHAT: Do you truly believe he may be king after you, just and fair?
GILGAMESH: I do, fair Shamhat. I love him as I loved Ur-Nungal, my first son lost long ago to the corpse-wind, truly and deeply. Only time shall tell if the shades of Irkalla will bear malice towards him for the faults of his sire, and only time shall tell how he copes with this misplaced blame. I believe he has the potential to be the best of us, a god-man built from the efforts and love of all Irkalla, given from each the qualities that make us good and fair and kind. In time, he will surpass even me. Of this, I am sure.
They sit there, under the false sunlight of Dul-Eridu, in the meadow of many colors, and watch the children play with their future king.
In the center of Ugal-Nineveh, there lies the five-pointed Palace of Whispers, and the Hall of Pages, the Grand Library of Ashurbanipal reborn, built in the shade and image of its counterpart on Earth, a sorcerous place pillaged and burned by the Scythians three millennia ago. Yet here it is again, greater than it ever was in life. Mirroring the Hall of Clay, its basalt walls are washed with gold, stamped with the text of Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, and its shelves struggle under the weight of paper texts and scrolls, groaning with sorcery, coruscant with thought, heavy with words.
But also lined from east to west, from top to bottom with countless whirring mechanical computers, towering monoliths of silicon and steel, the great terminals of Bloomberg ticking every milli-gesh with updated economic outlooks, news reports and price quotes from across the world, from cities and enclaves, from Berlin and Tokyo, Carcosa and the Kowloon Walled Cortex. Here, in the center of the library-palace, at the heart of the spider's web, Gilgamesh and his son find Ashurbanipal the Invincible, Vizier and Sukkal to the Kingdom of Dust, awash in the sum total of human knowledge.
GILGAMESH: Hail Ashurbanipal, scion to my usurper, my trusted advisor. How fares the world above, and how goes your quest for knowledge eternal?
ASHURBANIPAL: Oh, Lord Gilgamesh, it goes well, as it ever goes. The cosmos, vaster than our wildest fantasies in life, dazzles me with its depths and mysteries. Stars of burning hydrogen, mechanisms of Hawking and Heisenberg and Pauli, fantastical! If it takes me six centuries to master it all, no matter, I begin with utmost haste. Yet the surface-politic is fascinating in equal measure. The Soviets are crumbling, as foolish Gorbachev never took my counsel, nor heeded my freely given omens and portents, to his detriment. There will be much bloodshed in the coming years, I am sure. As there is ever. Ah, Nergal, son of Nergal! Finally venturing out of the capital, I see?
NERGAL, SON OF NERGAL: Yes, my lord. Just a small excursion, at that. Though I have kept up on my studies still; I have mastered the principles of Newton and Leibniz, and have begun an exploration into astronomy. As I am lord of Mars, I believe I should learn more about it, and perhaps go there one day, as is my dream.
ASHURBANIPAL: Wonderful, wonderful. Now tell me, what gives Mars its scarlet hue? Is it the blood spilled by the gods war-mongering? Is it the color of love?
NERGAL, SON OF NERGAL: No, my lord, it is the rusted sands, the iron oxides and the dry deserts that give the body its luster. It is a cold celestial body, much farther away from Enlil’s burning gaze than Earth, and though it is of nothing but rock and ice and dust, it still compels me with its beauty.
ASHURBANIPAL: Good, good. Keep at your studies, young one, and you will make a fine man of science. You may one day even come close to reaching the dizzying heights of my knowledge, but that day is far off, yet. Lord Gilgamesh, I have heard rumors from Shamhat of turmoil and death in the Duat, is that right?
LEDGER: [Unintelligible] God damn it go in and get those files— blow the safe and get them [unintelligible]… slaughtered and castrated two million South Vietnamese but nobody would’ve—
GILGAMESH: We will not talk of this now. Send word by courier or radio once our travels have finished, and only then will we gather in the wardroom to discuss matters of logistics and war.
Hear the scraping chuckle from the vizier’s sevenfold throats, watch as his eyes dart from screen to text to face and back again, ever-watchful, ever-analytical. For as much as the spider has taken to modernity, he remains unchanged in his ways, his plots and schemes as deep as the oceans, as impenetrable as steel.
ASHURBANIPAL: You of all of us know that war does not wait for moments of happiness to pass, my lord. It is like the coming of the tides, and the orbit of our planet around the sun. War will come to Irkalla once more, and you must be ready for it. This, as vizier and sukkal, I tell you. Now, do not let me detain you. I have matters of state and economy I must discuss with Hammurabi, that dry fool, in regards to our trade deficit.
In the outskirts of Kur la Nippur there is a neighborhood where Sumerian is seldom spoken, where the languages of Akkad and Assyria and Persia are rarely found. Here, the cultures of America, Russia, China, and other modern states flourish, for it is here where the foreign veterans of the Great Revolt reside, both living and dead. Here they are safe from the reprisal of their governments, safe from the blood-curses and poisons and assassins of the living, and these veterans may know peace and sanctuary. It is here that they flog their wares, that they buy, barter, and sell products of their own making, made by the sweat of their brow, under the engine of their own labor. It is here that a grizzled shadow does his grisly work.
It is here, with his background in ancient history and experience as a warrior, as a death-dealer, that this shadow may bring new life back to Irkalla. See him sit upon his stool, a discorporated Hittite warrior laying upon his workbench in tatters. See him talk gently of battles won and lost, of cities built and buried, of ancient kings both noble and tyrannical. See him stitch together the threads of what was once a man, weaving together the feathers composing his patchy skin, massaging his throat back into place as if it was clay upon a potter’s wheel. Hear the Hittite whisper faint praises to the shadow for his labor, for his efforts and his success, as the Hittite, his body once strewn leagues apart in the Ashen Plains, was whole once more, able to stride out of the shop under his own power for the first time in an age.
It is here that Gilgamesh fills the doorway, the young Nergal by his side, and calls out to the shadow upon his stool.
GILGAMESH: Hail, Jack Dead-eye, foremost of my battle-brethren, traitor to America and its people. How goes the work?
The shadow turns and stands with effort, revealing he who was once Staff Sergeant Montague, Dead-eye, fierce warrior of the Furthest West, now only known to all as Jack. His back is stooped and his hair is streaked with gray, for it has been ten years since the rebellion, since he departed Irkalla in sorrow. Next to him, Gilgamesh has hardly aged a day.
JACK: It goes ever slowly, as all work does, Gilgamesh. But it goes nonetheless. And as I tell you time and time again, I am no traitor, I am merely… retired.
GILGAMESH: Hah! All traitors can be considered retired, once their work is done and all of their secrets are told. But your work is never done, is it Jack?
JACK: Our work will never be done, not until we undam the Dumzu, not until we prise every soul from Old Nergal’s pneumanite hoard, not until we have freed all the damned souls in the farthest reaches of Irkalla.
GILGAMESH: Then you have a long while until retirement, my closest friend.
Jack smiles then, the crow’s feet deepening around his eyes like vast canyons and valleys. He was aging, and aging fast, at least to Gilgamesh’s static perspective. He has waved off any concerns to his mortality, knowing that if he were to die, and his spirit were condemned to Christian Hell rather than Irkalla, it is a surety that Gilgamesh will delve into the darkest depths to save him. Gilgamesh had assured him with a voice most grave that he certainly would, if such a thing were to pass. He would not bear to lose a friend again, especially not Jack.
JACK: So this is the boy, yes? Crown prince of Irkalla, isn’t he? I remember when his heart was first woven from the memories of the war-dead, when the smiths fashioned him a body of orichalcum and gold. My, how he has grown.
NERGAL, SON OF NERGAL: My father has told stories of you, Sir Montague. He said you fought bravely against my sire for the entirety of the campaign. He said you killed a cyclops with one strike from a sling! He said you lured an entire army onto a bridge, and with one hammer-blow sent the bridge and the army into the Dumzu to drown!
Jack’s smile widens and he laughs the hearty and rich laugh of the living, so unlike the reedy whistle-laugh of the damned. He takes Nergal into his arms in a gentle headlock and rubs his knuckles against Nergal’s chitinous brow.
JACK: That I did, that I did, though not as he tells it. You should tell your father it’s impolite to exaggerate, especially about close friends.
GILGAMESH: It is hardly an exaggeration, Jack. Besides, who am I to stifle the growth of the legend of Dead-eye, fierce rebel leader of the underworld? Why, in the coming centuries your story may eclipse even my own.
JACK: Exaggerating yet again. Have I ever told you that is a sin?
GILGAMESH: One cannot damn someone who is already damned, no? So I will lie all I like, if in doing so I have a good story to tell!
That small shop fills with laughter from both man and god-men, their voices echoing down the twisting streets of the Living Quarter. Jack wipes a tear from his eye, and dons his coat. He clasps arms with Gilgamesh, and he is pulled into a close embrace, one that lingers a moment longer than necessary.
JACK: It’s good to see you and the boy. Dmitri and the others are gathering at the tavern soon, if you would like to join us?
GILGAMESH: No, no, we have other matters to attend to. But farewell, and good night to you.
JACK: I will see you again, my Lord, do not doubt it even for a moment. And you boy, drop by again soon, I would like to correct your father’s tall tales when I have the chance.
See those two figures walk from Kur la Nippur, proceeding on that crooked, well-worn road to the very edge of Irkalla. Together, they pass through each of the Seven Gates, their doors now permanently held open for the flow of commerce and travelers, welcoming all to the realms below. See the throngs of shades gathered around the way to the narrow stairwell that connects dark Irkalla with the radiant surface above, still the dominion of the living. Hear the moans of a mournful spirit, struggling to make the climb.
BAZI: Oh, my legs, how they are tattered and unwhole. I cannot make the journey to the grand garden above, and place my offering of pale myrrh upon the grave stele of my companions in death.
NERGAL, SON OF NERGAL: Hail, kind shade. If you cannot walk the steps of Irkalla, I may carry you, such that you may still lay the pale myrrh on the grave stele of your companions.
BAZI: You, strange boy, you bear the face of Nergal the jackal-god, but your expression is softened, alloyed by foreign material. It was the wearer of your face that condemned my companions to twice-death. It was the wearer of your face who tore my legs to splinters, solely for amusement, to see how I crawled upon the dust.
NERGAL, SON OF NERGAL: I am sorry, kind shade, but I am not Nergal glad-of-war. I am rendered anew, and thoughts of those ancient actions are as distant from me as the memories of a stranger. Regardless, I am wracked by remorse. May I still carry you to the surface?
BAZI: Hm. Fine, not-jackal. You may carry me, as I still bear my grave-gift.
See the boy lift the shade with arms of chitin, toned by work but unscarred. See his gentle hands, unbloodied by the stain of murder. See the pair, and Gilgamesh besides, climb the staircase, joining in a grand procession of shades from Irkalla.
Miles above, they emerge in a grand garden, a work of beauty nestled in the Zagros mountains as a secret glade, where even the forces of global order will not begrudge Irkalla a modest shrine. See the grape vines, the pomegranate blossoms, and damask roses which grow between the memorial steles of lost family, of shades consigned to twice-death and made one with the grave-wind. Here, the sun, kept from the dead of Irkalla for countless years, shines upon their translucent flesh once more. Feel its warmth.
BAZI: Let me down, boy.
NERGAL, SON OF NERGAL: Of course, sir.
The shade stumbles off into the crowd, leaving the pair behind.
NERGAL, SON OF NERGAL: He resents me, but he does not know me.
GILGAMESH: The sins of your sire weigh heavily upon your new life, my son. We must all bear burdens not of our choosing, such is the price of birth, and some burdens are all too great. But you do not bear your burdens alone. I am here with you, to support you until you may walk on your own. Now come, for we too have offerings to make.
Gilgamesh leads his son to a shrine past the others. It bears a relief, carved into the mountain stone by master artisans under the eye and direction of the King himself. It is a man with the eyes of a beast, a wild-man who fought the forces of fate in life and in death.
GILGAMESH: Hello, Enkidu.
See how Gilgamesh lays the offering of fine herbs and boar-meat on the plate. Beneath it is an inscription: “Praise be to Enkidu, 𒂗𒆠𒄭, slayer of the Bull of Heaven, Slayer of Humbaba, redeemer of Gilgamesh, most beloved of Uruk, martyr of Irkalla.” See the mighty king wipe away his tears of dust, and how his son moves to console him.
NERGAL, SON OF NERGAL: How I mourn for poor Enkidu, that he is not here for you to hold him, for you to be with him and walk together once more. How I wish he could be here with you.
GILGAMESH: My son, when I look at you, I am sure beyond all doubt that Enkidu is here with me. What is gone is never truly lost. All Irkalla is testament to this fact.
They walk together, back down that stairway to the realm of the dead, through the Seven Gates, through the streets of Kur la Nippur. See how the shades praise Gilgamesh with kisses and prostration as he passes. See how Nergal reborn smiles, how he endeavors to fulfill the hopes of his fathers. See them take their rightful place in that palace of gold and cedar, how together they guard their people from harm.
Behold, as all of Irkalla labors to bring the desert to bloom, as every spirit works to bring life to the dead lands of the Netherworld.
Come close, and taste the fruit of eight millennia.
𒌍 SLAYER OF WICKEDNESS 𒁹 Hub 𒁹