The moment she felt it, Bex knew the limb was gone. She could use her fire to regrow it, but she was too focused on the arm she still had as she frantically called Drox out of his ring. She still couldn’t see anything but blinding white sludge, butthe overwhelming pain that was finally spreading through her severed shoulder painted a perfect picture of where the sword strike had come from. She only had a second before Gilgamesh moved on, so Bex ignored everything else and swung Drox in that direction, feeding him with her fire so her sword could launch the glowing whip he’d used to slice through Havok.
The result was a line so bright Bex could see it even through the quintessence’s glow. She couldn’t hear anything over the gods screaming in her ears, but she felt Gilgamesh’s kicking legs go still in her grasp, and she knew—knew—she’d hit him.
Her body moved on instinct after that. Bex let go of Gilgamesh and blasted herself forward, spending the last of the fire she’d gotten from her anger at the gods to regrow her left arm in an instant. Her hand had just finished reforming when her bare fingers bumped into something hard, metal, and sharp—so sharp that merely touching it sliced a deep gouge into her new palm. The pain was a present, though, because when Bex finally blasted herself out of the quintessence lake she’d fallen into, she was holding Gilgamesh’s white sword in her newly-formed hand.
“Give it back!”
The order hit her like a physical force, sending waves of quintessence washing over her head as Gilgamesh rose from the white pool like a figure from legend. They were down in the tank the chopped pipe had connected to, but it could’ve been the waters of creation from the way Gilgamesh set his golden boot upon the waves and glared down at Bex with silver-mirrored eyes that were no longer clouded by age. He actually looked younger now than he had when they arrived, more like Adrian’s brother than his father. Even his battle scars were healed, leaving his skin practically glowing with health under thedripping sheen of quintessence that coated him from head to foot.
The new Gilgamesh was a terrifying, beautiful sight, as close to a god as someone born mortal could possibly become. Bex, meanwhile, looked every inch the demon with her black blood leaking out into the flawless white of the gods. At least, that was what the dead gods themselves were whispering in her ear before she shook their voices away, clutching her stolen sword even tighter as she glared up at her enemy.
“I must congratulate you,” Gilgamesh said as he walked over the surface of the choppy pool of quintessence toward her. “You and that brat Adrian forced me to take the plunge I’d been avoiding for five thousand years. I’ve always felt that a human king should remain human in order to understand his subjects, yet despite my best intentions, here I am.”
He spread his dripping arms with a shake of his handsome new head, but Bex wasn’t buying a word of it.
“If you wanted to be a good king, you should’ve tried killing fewer of your subjects,” she snarled. “You’ve been a horrible ruler and an even worse father, and I will drown in this pool with the gods before I let you win.”
“So be it,” Gilgamesh replied, raising his golden fist. “That sword wasn’t made by the gods. They have no claim over its creation, so if it sinks with your corpse, I can easily retrieve it. Quintessence holds no risk for me now that you’ve forced my hand, so have it your way, Queen of Failure, anddie.”
He swung his fist as he spoke. The pool of quintessence followed the motion, surging toward Bex in a great white wave. She didn’t know what would happen when it hit her, and she didn’t wait around to find out. As soon as Gilgamesh moved to hit her, she struck back, swinging the white sword in front of her in an arc just like she’d seen him do when he cut the Wheel from the sky.
She’d been hoping for an attack so big it was inescapable, but this new, young Gilgamesh was even squirrellier than the old one. He flickered out of the way before Bex could finish the swing, but the giant sin-iron tomb behind him couldn’t dodge. Bex’s attack hit it right across the middle, painting an enormous white slash across its pitch-black surface. The mark grew bigger as she watched, burning through the sin iron like a seam of white phosphorus. She was still staring at it in confusion when Gilgamesh reappeared.
“No!” he screamed, throwing out his arms like he was trying to catch something. “Hold together!”
Bex had never heard him yell out sorcery like that, but it worked. The moment the command left the king’s tongue, the giant slabs of sin iron started pulling themselves back together. The whole pool shook with their effort, but no matter how desperately the tomb tried to obey its king, it couldn’t heal the wound, because something inside was pushing out.
It broke through a few moments later, ripping the weakened metal apart like paper. At first, it looked like the coffin had been attacked by four huge spears, but when the white lengths bent to grab the edge of the new hole, Bex realized they were fingers. Four emaciated white fingers the size of telephone poles were ripping the lid off the gigantic sin-iron coffin. When Gilgamesh shouted at the metal to push them back in, the first and longest of the fingers straightened out to point at the tank where Bex was still swimming.
Her first terrified thought was that it was pointing ather, but that wasn’t the case for once. The finger was pointing at the quintessence, and the moment it did so, all that thick white blood began pouring back up the pipe Bex and Gilgamesh had dived down. It flowed out even faster than it had fallen in, gushing back to the coffin it had been drained from, and asthe lake of quintessence vanished, so did Gilgamesh’s restored youth.
“No!” he cried, clenching his rapidly skeletonizing fists. “It shall not be yours!”
He slammed both fists against his chest in a motion that was clearly meant to call the quintessence back, but for the first time in Bex’s memory, the magic didn’t obey him. It just kept flowing back to the coffin until the whole tank was empty, leaving Bex standing at the bottom of a deep bowl of sin iron. Gilgamesh dropped to the ground beside her a few seconds later, unable to even hold himself up as all his new white blood—the stolen power of the gods—flowed back to its original source.
It would’ve been the most satisfying sight of Bex’s life if she hadn’t been so terrified. The first white hand had a partner now, then two more appeared for a total of four bony arms ripping the coffin apart. Between the emaciated flesh and the waves of returning quintessence, everything inside was blindingly white. It wasn’t until the lid broke off entirely that Bex finally saw the figure’s shape.
It looked like nothing she’d ever imagined. The gods she’d seen had always been beautiful and only slightly larger than human scale. This monster was as tall as a building. It was so thin that it looked like a skeleton as it pulled itself off the bed of spikes that lined the inside of the coffin, but when it finally rose to its feet, it looked like an angel. A terrifying, biblically accurate one with six wings, six arms, and six black horns that rose from its head like a crown of spikes, the only parts of its entire body that weren’t white. Even its eyes were the color of fresh snow, staring down with a look so alien, Bex didn’t realize which god she’d accidentally awoken until it pointed one of its many fingers at the once again ancient-looking Gilgamesh and said,
“Perish.”
The word was spoken in the ancient language of the Riverlands, but it was the voice that shook Bex’s body. She’d never heard it so loud before, but that was absolutely Ishtar’s voice, and the moment it spoke, Gilgamesh’s body tore itself apart.
It happened too fast to feel real. It couldn’tbereal. If Ishtar could destroy Gilgamesh with a single word, why hadn’t she done it during the first war five thousand years ago? It made no sense at all until Bex looked over and saw Gilgamesh’s new white blood boiling through his skin.
Ah,she realized numbly.That was it.Every other time Gilgamesh had faced the gods, he’d been a red-blooded human. The moment he’d taken their quintessence into his veins, though, he’d become a semi-divine creature just like Bex. He didn’t have a sacred name as she did, but the white essence of the gods ran through every cell in his body now. If he could command that stolen power with his sorcery, it only made sense that the original owner would be able to do the same.
It was a suitably ironic ending for a hubristic fallen hero. The same power Gilgamesh had embraced to save himself had become his downfall, leaving the Eternal King of Heaven collapsing like a sand sculpture as the white blood that had powered his entire empire attacked him from the inside out. His flesh dissolved piece by piece, bubbling away like boiling water until the great and glorious Gilgamesh was nothing but a ring of scum stuck to the inside of his golden armor. Bex was still wrapping her brain around the idea that her ancient nemesis was finally and forever dead when Adrian flew in on his broom.
He landed on the opposite side of Gilgamesh’s empty armor and reached out immediately to grab Bex’s hand as he stared at the towering figure looming over them like the god she was. Bex could feel him trembling as any sensible person would, but he still held his ground beside her. That must have pleasedthe goddess, because her alien face split into a smile before her white body pulled into itself like a collapsing star.
It took several seconds to squeeze down so much power, but when it was over, the Ishtar Bex remembered was standing inside the empty quintessence tank beside them. She was still a towering presence, but her crown of six horns rose only a foot above Adrian’s head, and she was back to only two arms. Her hair was dark again, her dress a shining blend of many colors, and her wings—only two—were once more those of the wise owl. It was the way she’d appeared to Bex in the vision inside the bonfire, the way Bex’s instinctive memory was sure Ishtar had always looked. But while this version of Ishtar was unquestionably more approachable, Bex couldn’t get the giant truth out of her head. She also didn’t bow, a slight the restored goddess did not overlook.
“Now is not the time to be petulant, dearest,” Ishtar said, shaking her lovely head. “I created you to be the embodiment of Wrath, not Pride. It seems you’ve taken over a great deal more than you were made to since last we spoke. Fortunately for you, I am in a wonderful mood.”
The goddess’s face lit up with a smile that made Bex’s heart leap.
“Our conqueror is dead!” she announced, turning her glittering eyes on Gilgamesh’s empty armor. “Not that I approve of your methods, but in the end, you did as I commanded. You brought my enemy down. You even delivered him to my grave so that I could deal the killing blow myself!” The goddess clapped her hands in delight. “Those are the actions of a truly loyal servant, and for that service, I am willing to forgive all of your past transgressions. Now bow your horns and return to my side, and I shall reforge you once again into my beautiful, loyal Rebexa.”
