Author: TyGently
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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.
𒌍 To be King in the House of Dust 𒁹 Hub 𒁹
In the palace of kings, atop the city of gold, among the fields of bronze, the king Gilgamesh is resting. See his ox-broad chest rise and fall with vibrancy. See an absence, the shade of his end, climb the steps of the great palace. See it slip into the king's bedchambers without disturbing the hanging linen.
The cold falls upon Gilgamesh, and he leaps like a trap and shouts: “Show yourself! I am Gilgamesh, King of Uruk, and you, my attacker, will face me as a man faces a man, that I may die in struggle or live in triumph!”
But death does not face Gilgamesh, for it is a warrior without assault, a fury without malice, a force with no name save for what living men foolishly imprinted upon it. It is total and complete. And Gilgamesh, the first hero, King of Uruk, king of kings, blinks. In that instant he is gone.
The spirit that once was Gilgamesh descends a staircase. The king is hauled step by step, in the arms of an absence, towards the place of silent weeping.
He swings his arms, but his arms do not move. He kicks his legs, but his legs do not move. He speaks: "Shamhat, dear friend, is it you who carries me? Do you hold me as was your promise? Do your arms touch me once more?" But he has no lips, and his captor has no ears, nor throat to utter response.
No light comes to his eyes. His nose is deprived of scent. His skin is as useless to sense as tanned leather to the cattle that bore it. He is like game caught in a snare, fit only to writhe until the hunter's harvest. Now even the writhing feels impossible.
He is becoming less of himself. He strains to cry but he has already cried his last tear. No tear, nor breath, nor ounce of sweat, nor watch of sleep will Gilgamesh ever write upon this earth again. All things will be without him.
Quickly, he is without himself. The wisdom of years peels away like birch-bark and is rendered to less than ash. His cords of muscle, his rough calluses, his trained eye, his laced scars, his hearty laugh, his favorite men, the face of his love, all burn and crack and vanish.
The empty spirit is cast into darkness.
A ring inlaid with pearls-
Golden goblets dripping with finest sacred oil-
A sigil drawn with dense iron ink-
are lain gingerly upon the altar.
LA-BA'SHUM: Gilgamesh, slayer of the Bull of Heaven, slayer of Humbaba, slayer of lions, the first hero, the Mightiest Son, the god-man, dead King of Uruk, I call you to speak!
The fragments of Gilgamesh's memory are plucked from the minds of the living like feathers and woven into an effigy. See it gasp in shock, to be conscious once more. Here it speaks with the voice of the dead king.
EFFIGY: Where am I? Who are you, who has the sculpted form of the jackal, eyes like those of a falcon, and a voice like my own? Who are you, who has stolen me from the great nothing?
LA-BA'SHUM: I am your son's grandson, La-ba'shum. At the time of your death I was only a thought, but now I am flesh, a living king. I have called for your advice, Gilgamesh.
LA-BA'SHUM: The fields that once burst with scores of bushels, as if it could not hold back its bounty, now dries and ails. The great Nabu has forsaken our people, and even the mighty Id-Ugina strains against our yoke and threatens to break loose. How may we restore Uruk to how it prospered when you walked upon its streets and tasted of its sweet produce?
EFFIGY: Has Nabu forsaken you, or have you forsaken him? You clothe yourself in the greatest of fabrics and drink the finest wine from the most gilded of goblets. Your sacrifice to the gods should have twice the glorious excess you hope to receive in turn; furnish your gods and the land will prosper.
LA-BA'SHUM: Thank you, great grandfather. I bid you farewell.
EFFIGY: Halt. You, grandson of my son — how does my boy fare? How is Ur-Nungal?
LA-BA'SHUM: I am sorry, greatest hero, it is twenty years since your son left us to dwell in the House of Dust.
Watch the effigy's silent weeping as the offering is swept away.
A large carnelian jewel-
Frankincense steaming sacred smoke-
A carved talisman from a city witch-
are brought out for the summons.
ARGANDEA: Gilgamesh, sower of seed, king of an age past, bearer of divine blood, who is two thirds divine and one third human. I am Argandea, king of Uruk, and I require your guidance.
EFFIGY: Argandea, king of Uruk, I see you are thin and lithe with a posture like a coiled viper. Are you of my issue?
ARGANDEA: Yes, spirit of Gilgamesh, I am made of the blood you sowed in life. But it has been many generations since you walked on this world. I have called you from nothing, for your issue is at stake.
EFFIGY: I seek the safety and fulfillment of my descendants. Tell me of this danger.
ARGANDEA: My ancestor, in the centuries since your death, your bloodline has taken root and sprouted across the fertile land. But today, its fruits ripen and burst in the midday sun, turning to stinking rot that floods the gutters of Uruk. Your divine blood is a gift, but it has been squandered, spread far too wide and too thinly to grace the world with your power. Please, tell me the families you covet most, the ones who are worthy, so that the far-off branches of the tree can be pruned and culled before the orchard entire dries to deadwood.
EFFIGY: What is this craven selfishness? You seek to cull the children of my children? You are like a snake, fit only to slither in the dust and grime beneath our feet. Cease this cause at once.
ARGANDEA: I speak only for the sake of your legacy. I offer you help, selflessly, without hope of repayment, because I wish to see your issue prosper once more.
EFFIGY: You seek to enrich yourself by killing the children of your rivals. You will speak not another word of this atrocity, and I will not hear another syllable, nor see the murderous cause flicker in your eyes.
ARGANDEA: So be it, oh wise former king, who rejects aid when it is needed most. See how Uruk has survived without you. Begone from my city.
And the effigy is returned to darkness without pause.
A dusting of salt-
Torn pages from an ancient manuscript-
A bronze dagger rusty with dried blood-
are scattered across the floor.
LUGAL-ZAGE-SI: O, great architect, nameless one, builder of these walls of Uruk, help me!
EFFIGY: You, frantic one, large of stature but quivering as a dove, who are you? What ails you?
LUGAL-ZAGE-SI: The great city of Uruk is falling. Sarrukin marches on Uruk from Akkad, and he will soon break into my chambers, and beat me, and lock a collar about my neck and drag me to the gate of Enlil. You are from an age without name, you possess the wisdom of the city's founding, do you not?
EFFIGY: You have told me of a great and dire threat. I will assist you in becoming great, as I was. I defended my people from many a threat, of gods, mortals, and in-between. Your time is short, but you possess within you a seed that may be nurtured into mighty cedar. You may face your foes with courage and strength.
LUGAL-ZAGE-SI: No, nameless one, you misunderstand. You built these walls, yes? And the foundation of the palace in which I reside?
EFFIGY: Yes. I placed stone upon stone with my hands to cradle my people in earthworks that would protect their lives for untold ages.
LUGAL-ZAGE-SI: Then you must know. Where are the escape tunnels? Where are the secret hatches through which I may run and never return? Even a hidden cellar, I may hide in it among the casks of beer, and Sarrukin's men will not find me no matter how they search. I will shelter until I can leave this wretched place behind.
Hear the effigy's silence. See the doors to the palace strain against the prying of an army. See the lord of Akkad stride inside, with blade clutched in one hand and club in the other.
See the meagre offering be quenched with blood. Watch the destruction of the dynasty of Uruk.
The effigy evaporates into mist.
The final thread is cut. The hollow spirit of Gilgamesh falls into the bowels of the Earth, into the depths to which all men go and from which no men return. His body is shreds, segmented into scraps of self. It strikes the ground with the rattle of a drum.
The shores of the House of Dust are like bare clay, studded with bone and spirits who still lie where they once fell in ages past. The Waters of Death gently lap at him, dissolving the space where his legs once were. Gilgamesh reaches with his arms, and oh, how they are faint and feathered, how the gaps between reveal nothing but empty space. See how he claws at the mud with incomplete fingers, how he moans a soundless moan for remembrance of a body lost.
With a year of effort, he drags his feeble spirit forward.
In every direction there is a darkness that stretches deeper than black, into shades the minds of the living cannot conceive. Shapes buzz in the distance, boiling like the mirage that tricks the sunburnt traveller into dreaming of water. Listen to the moaning of the shades; let the suffering of scores of thousands of dead ring in your ears.
With each dreadful drag of his withered arms, the hollow body of Gilgamesh scrapes the mud, his vacant chest filling with dust and debris and the teeth and finger-bones of shattered shades.
See him shovel the dust into the emptiness of his mouth, see him strain to be nourished by the fallow of a hundred centuries. But it is all he can do to keep moving. He knows who he is. He cannot forget this. Several more months he spends crawling on the ground.
As he is paused aside a porous bluff, he gazes at the spirits around him, the fragments of a half dozen lost men. The shade facing him almost tries to speak, a glimmer of recognition in the half of its face that remains.
Then the half-face crunches to dust, obliterated by a javelin from above. The riders come over the bluff, crooked silhouettes atop beasts with many legs, oh, too many to count. They cackle with glee, bounding over the clay, flinging endless instruments of murder onto the defenceless dead. The shades quavered as reeds in the wind. The shade of Gilgamesh held itself from shaking, but in that he was still as settled dust, still a nothing under nothings.
Look and see, tucked beneath the torn fabric of shredded prey, the shade of Gilgamesh seeks cover. See how the anger seethes within him, such that it nearly spills out onto the clay. He cannot move to protect the souls of his people from senseless assault.
The hunters pass over and vanish, they disappear into a vein of darkness where shadows grow tall and mighty like the boughs of great cedar in the woods. Watch Gilgamesh take to his crawling once more, tears in his fragmented eyes.
Many more years pass. Years of toil and suffering, to strain with the forces of death to move a single cubit, to shed debris and flotsam of one's own self in their wake.
Gilgamesh approaches a hill.
From far off, it appears as a colony of ants, the way those shapes dart about its perimeter as if to defend it. But look closer — each shape has the sketch of a human form, a ghostly skeleton with patches of transparent flesh. They walk on partial feet and in their partial hands they each carry a wedged stylus.
Each takes a step, then kneels, pressing their stylus into soft clay, weaving cuneiform marvels, taking inventory of imaginary storehouses and commemorating the trade agreements of lives past. When the mad scribes finish, they stand and walk onward, their bare, patchwork soles pressing the symbols of their labour back into virgin soil with each careless step across the text.
In this way, every finger of the mound was dense with footprints and the chronicle of ten civilizations.
Atop the hill, the shade of a woman. She is beautiful as the sun, radiant above the low plains of pale Irkalla. She stands tall, but she is thin as a sheet, and the gallows-wind of Irkalla moves her like linens on a line.
Watch as the shade of Shamhat descends to meet fractured Gilgamesh on the plain.
Gilgamesh strains to speak, but can only moan wordlessly until Shamhat lends him use of her lips. He speaks:
GILGAMESH: Shamhat, wise Shamhat, how I have dreamt of our reunion. I worried I would never find you.
SHAMHAT: It has been many ages, my dear king. I promised to prepare the House of Dust for you, and prepare I have. I knew some fragment of your being would survive, strong, beloved, and wise as you were in life.
GILGAMESH: Shamhat, have you seen him? Do you know where the spirit of Enkidu lies?
SHAMHAT: My heart drips with sorrow. I have searched far and wide for the man we both loved, and I have not found him. But my search shall not cease until I do.
GILGAMESH: Nor shall mine.
SHAMHAT: But for now you require care, my king. I will lift you up, and we will go to the hill's peak together and confer with my retinue.
GILGAMESH: Wise and beautiful Shamhat, holy harimtu, I must ask: for what do you have dominion over the scholars and scribes?
SHAMHAT: We of Irkalla have had countless lives of death to consider the origin of all concepts. For sex was the way that Man first preserved His own beyond death, all other modes of knowledge follow, and pay reverence.
Shamhat knelt down and her hands like quartz cradled Gilgamesh, as a shepherd cradles a sickly lamb. She pulled him up, and they went to the peak of the clay hill, from which all of Irkalla could be seen, its vast rocky landscapes, its valleys and crags of soft earth and dust, and looming constructs of hostile fortifications, all the way to the furthest reaches of the realm.
SHAMHAT: The House of Dust ails. Our dead have languished in starvation for centuries. Fair Ereshkigal, mistress of the Underworld, sits on her throne no longer, her godly instruments stolen by her husband, the one of war who now treats us as his playthings. He is Nergal, god of inflicted death, and he is a tyrant without equal.
GILGAMESH: The balance has been upended. The kings who once tended to the gods with cooked meats and waterskins, what has become of them?
SHAMHAT: They have been cast aside, torn apart, or worse, rendered less than ash. The followers of Nergal are harsh and cruel and care not for the good one rendered upon the Earth in life. All are to be crushed beneath his feet. He rules without care for anyone but himself.
GILGAMESH: The way you speak of him, he sounds as if he was myself, plucked from the folly of my youth, when I was foolish and careless with the people of Uruk, and did not leave a son to his father nor a wife to her husband. I was selfish and vain.
SHAMHAT: Before Enkidu.
GILGAMESH: Before Enkidu.
SHAMHAT: None have challenged Nergal. None have wrestled with him, as Enkidu wrestled with you in the streets of Uruk.
GILGAMESH: I will strain to save my people, but how will I fight? Shamhat, my body is rot, my muscles and sinew have fallen and been lost in oceans of dust. I waste like a corpse left upon a pike to stew in the sun. It took ages of effort simply to drag myself to you. How will I stand against a god?
SHAMHAT: You will not do so alone. I will make good on my promise. Slowly, surely, you will become closer to whole. I cannot tell you that you will be as strong as you were in life — the truth of death is that it always exacts a terrible cost, and this cost can never be truly forgotten. But you will be strong. You will be our king, as you were once before.
And so the labor of years begins.
Shamhat's nimble hands painstakingly layer strips of feathers, each upon each, to build the shape of Gilgamesh around him. See how she coats him with fine lacquer, made from the dust of Irkalla, the clay of the hinterlands, and the sap of sickly trees that grow in secluded groves of the dead where none may step.
Hear how she whispers truths to him, the forgotten memories of the king's reign in Uruk, from her mind and the minds of countless shades that still revere him in death. Listen to her words, speaking the techniques of raising wheat, crushing flour, fermenting beer, these tasks that make one human and form civilization from dust and mud.
It is deathly slow, as slow as one raises a city of bricks from nothing, but the shade of Gilgamesh is built upon, sculpted into the form of the man who was legend. Slayer of the Bull of Heaven, slayer of Humbaba, slayer of lions. King of the dead.
Now Gilgamesh confers with most trusted and wise Shamhat atop their hill once more, overlooking the caverns that moan and weep.
SHAMHAT: Gilgamesh, you are the pride of all our people. We have mended you beyond any shade here. Why is your expression desolate, your features so haggard?
GILGAMESH: Even though I am tall and broad as a pair of oxen, I am still hollow. Look closely: my flesh is still the dead-flesh of Irkalla, pale and translucent and woven of delicate feathers. I have but one sixtieth of the strength I once held in life. Oh, before me my great task looms, and I fear the oblivion that may come when my form is taken from me once more.
SHAMHAT: It is true, you possess the weakness of death. But you are not alone. Powerful forces reside in Irkalla, with strange and terrible energies to command. If you rally Irkalla against Nergal, you will find the strength to best him.
GILGAMESH: Then I must search.
SHAMHAT: Then you must search.
And so Gilgamesh, whole but hollow, comes down from the mountain with the courage of ages coursing within his body of wicker and clay.
See him as he strides into the wilds of Irkalla. Watch him meet with the tormented shades of the dead, of ages before his and after. Hear him moan with them as he joins their sorrow and eases their pain, and as they burst with the hope of a new era. He dashes over the hills and valleys, past the dark veins of the forbidden paths, into the caves of clay that drip with hatred and malice.
But it is in the outskirts of Kur la Nippur, that grotesque construction, where Gilgamesh lays his glass eyes upon the most curious sight. A figure, standing upon a bluff, and from this figure's mouth there is the fog of an exhalation in cold air. The breath of life.
Gilgamesh approaches, and the figure takes notice. It is a man, small before Gilgamesh but decent in stature. He wears strange clothing of mottled greens, and around his body is slung a metal javelin with a hollow tip, meshed with angular shapes. On his shoulder a patch of fabric is dyed with an elaborate design, a box of red and white and blue with stripes and stars, and the sewn shape of a pentagram.
The man speaks in a strange tongue, a language unlike any Gilgamesh has heard in life or death.
"Well," the soldier says. "Aren't you a big fella."
𒌍 To be King in the House of Dust 𒁹 Hub 𒁹 PTT-1666-Gray-Templum 𒆕