Swimming within silent, unconscious darkness, Gilgamesh's broken spirit roamed free, unrestricted by the seal but severely weakened. With the release of his spirit, the suppressed memories slowly squeezed through the seal, returning to him.
Since these suppressed memories were a side effect of a seal created by Heaven for a specific purpose, it locked away all memories regarding that purpose. It also suppressed memories that, in some way, regarded Heaven and the matters it wished to keep secret.
With Gilgamesh's spirit being torn from under the seal, the memories that were more closely intertwined with his spirit were slowly beginning to come loose. The first rush of memories that returned to him played out in his mind like a dream.
"Uruk is my Holy City, after all," An ebon goddess, standing at a height that would instantly tower over any mortal man, gave a seductive look with her bright, piercing gaze. Her eyes glittered and shimmered, like polished rubies, and her smile was bright, casting out a hint of her flirtatious intent. Her hair was dark, mostly black, but there were faint purple streaks present in the bangs that hung over her forehead.
Her skin was as bright as her smile, and she seemed to have no reservations about showing it off. She wore a white top and and a black thong, with gold ornaments all around her body and a single dark blue legging on her right leg. Her arms were folded over her chest, adding to the allure of her breasts without her even intending to.
The person she was speaking to was a man, slightly taller than she was, with golden hair and fierce eyes, crimson like hers. His face was elegant and angled, but there was smirk on it that betrayed the truth of his personage's incredible arrogance.
He wore, on his lower body, heavy golden boots and greaves, but no armor on his upper body. Instead, he chose to expose his bare chest in all its masculine glory, giving everyone who could see him a clear view of his abdominal muscles, and the red tattoos that lined his torso and arms.
There was a large golden neck collar, adorned at the center with a large ruby, and another chain that went around his neck, under the collar. From this chain hung a golden pendant, also adorned with a ruby, albeit a smaller one. He wore earrings in his ear from which hung large golden accessories, and with every movement he made they glimmered in the sunlight.
He was sitting on the steps leading to a large palace, colored golden by the sun's rays. The tip of a large red blade pierced the floor in between his feet, keeping the blade standing upright. The pommel and hilt of the sword was also golden, but there were red engravings on the hilt that glowed with some sort of spiritual power.
"This may be your 'Holy City,' but I am its King. I rule over all things within its borders, not just the foolishly devout fanatics that choose to worship you people. What right do you have to impose your authority on me?"
This man was Gilgamesh, as he had been in his first life, and the woman he was speaking to was Ishtar herself.
These were memories of his life in the World Beyond Heaven's Door.
Ishtar grinned, not taking offense at all by the way he spoke to her. "Your recalcitrance is, perhaps, the most unique thing about you. You don't choose to direct it toward meager opponents like the other mortals and demigods. Instead, you choose to direct all your rage and frustrations towards my family- the Gods of Heaven."
Ishtar licked her lips, but in a way that would only serve to suck in the attention of anyone that looked at her tempting tongue. Gilgamesh, however, was unfazed.
"Who else is deserving of my wrath but your family? You pride yourselves on creating all this, and maintaining it all, then you should pride yourself on the decision you made to banish my mother. After all, your actions created me- there would be no Gilgamesh of Uruk without you gods." Gilgamesh adjusted his position and rested his head in his hand, leaning forward as he looked down at Ishtar.
She took a single step up, "Those choices were well within my family's rights. You should be grateful, not vengeful. It was merely banishment."
Gilgamesh's eyes twitched.
"Grateful? Merely banishment?"
He straightened up, expressing the rage he now felt with a villainous smirk.
"If Anu had simply stopped at banishment, perhaps he would not need to cower in fear of me. However, he and your kin chose to pervert Fate itself, did they not? They turned the very laws of this universe against my mother and she lost the man she loved- my father."
At the mention of Anu's name, the clouds above had already begun swirling.
Then, Gilgamesh stood up and placed a hand on the pommel of his sword, "Do not ever tell me that I should be grateful, Ishtar. Do not belittle my parents as you do the mortals, or I will not rest until your head rolls at Anu's feet."
Ishtar took a step back. She had not expected this reaction, and immediately realized that she had unintentionally touched upon a subject that Gilgamesh felt strongly about. She did not know how to respond without apologizing, but her strong sense of pride prevented her from offering a proper apology.
The memories continued to surge, and Gilgamesh saw a new scene.
In it, him and Ishtar were standing together above the clouds, on one of the flying islands in the sky, looking at the rising sun. Gilgamesh had never seen such a sight, and it had left a deep imprint on his mind. As for Ishtar, she had grown tired of such sights, but seeing Gilgamesh's genuine awe was something she had never seen before and it totally mesmerized her.
She was so out of it that she didn't even hear Gilgamesh' speaking right next to her, pointing something out in the sky that he had never seen.
"Ishtar, what's the matter with you?"
Finally, she snapped out of it, "Huh?"
"What's that star? I've never seen it before."
Ishtar looked to where Gilgamesh was pointing and saw a single, brilliant star. It shone in close proximity to the sun, but did not lose to it at all. When Ishtar saw this star, her eyes reacted without her knowledge, creating an effect that had never been achieved for her before.
Gilgamesh noticed the change in her eyes and was taken aback.
"I once heard ...someone... call it the Morning Star." Ishtar had almost said her father's name, but she knew better than to do that around Gilgamesh.
"I heard that, the morning of the day I was born, it shone brighter than it had ever shone before." Ishtar finished explaining, and that was when she noticed the look on Gilgamesh's face.
"I see it! I see it in your eyes!"
She blushed uncontrollably; Gilgamesh had never looked at her this way, and his face was much too close. She pulled back and tried her best to regain her composure, but the image of Gilgamesh's transfixed expression would not leave her mind no matter what she did.
"What are you talking about, you weirdo!?"
His face, upon hearing that she called him a weirdo, changed instantly and he raised a finger at her. "There's no way you're calling me a weirdo. You do know that your relationship with your ex was where the mortals drew inspiration for their sexual experiments, right? All the dominating and belittling-"
"Okay, okay, enough!" Ishtar raised her hands to put an end to Gilgamesh's explanations, not wanting to think about her ex.
"No, it's not enough. You called me a weirdo, but you were the one that had to make up a story about your boyfriend dying and you being all sad about it, when in reality you were the one that killed him and then celebrated it for months! Who would want to be with you?"
Gilgamesh seemed offended, but in reality he was joking around with her, throwing her horrible past relationship in her face.
"Alright, alright! Ugh!" Ishtar groaned, but she also was glad that Gilgamesh was back to normal. She didn't know what she would do if he had continued looking at her that way. Just the thought of it made her blush again.
Finally, Gilgamesh's vision blurred and he saw the last memory within the cluster that had broken free.
In it, he was laying down on a desert battlefield, with nothing around him but hundreds of swords planted into the sand. The sun was half covered by the clouds, given the landscape an equal measure of light and dark.
Gilgamesh looked to the sky, a spark of indignation present in them. His clenched fist was slowly loosing strength, and before his arm fell it had already unfurled.
There was a flash of blinding light, and five gods appeared, standing over Gilgamesh's withering body.
These gods were Enki, Enlil, Marduk, Ishtar and Nanna.
"Damn you, Gilgamesh!!!"
Enki rushed forward instantly, then dropped his foot down onto Gilgamesh's stomach with all of his concentrated fury. The world trembled under the force, but Gilgamesh's body was relatively unaffected. He merely spat up some blood, and found the strength to smirk at Enki instead.
"You! Even after we won, you still find it in you to act this way!? You have lost. Your plans have been thwarted, and the power you stole will continue to be suppressed until the seal is finished. Your spirit itself will be split, and you will lose access to the majority of its power. In light of all these things, you still wear that fucking smirk!"
Enki was beyond pissed, since Gilgamesh had only just humiliated him.
Marduk put a hand on his brother's shoulder and shook his head.
"It is over now, Enki. Let your petty emotions rest."
"I only wish that we had gotten a rematch, Gilgamesh. You are the scum of the earth, but crossing swords with you was more fun than with anyone else," Enlil said this, but he did not seem remorseful. He was smugly announcing himself the final victor of their duels, since Gilgamesh was now dying.
"Thanks to how you chose to live your life, your story shall not ring true. We will honor the hero you once were, but your story shall, like many others before you, be ours to manipulate. You leave behind no real legacy, Gilgamesh." Nanna said these words clearly and slowly, then turned around and left.
Marduk then walked over to Gilgamesh, eyes full of disdain.
"Our curse will stay with you forever, Gilgamesh. You will never break the seal and free the totality of your spirit, and thus you will never be reincarnated. Once Father continues to grow in power, he will enter his seclusion and break through into a new realm of power. When that time comes, he will reclaim the power and scatter your spirit; you will cease to exist."
"That is your fate."
Marduk left, then Enlil followed. Enki gave Gilgamesh one last nasty look, then disappeared also, in a flash of light. Ishtar remained, and as she looked at Gilgamesh she felt the waves of a powerful internal conflict start to rise.
She spoke no words to him, but she looked him deep in the eyes and he did the same to her. There was silence, even in the wind that swept across the desert. The clouds made their way across the rest of the sun, and the entire desert was shrouded in that darkness, hidden from the sun's light for only a moment.
"Inanna..."
Ishtar's body trembled, and she almost fell over. This name... Gilgamesh was the only person she had told that name to. He was the only one that knew the details of her time spent among the mortals, masquerading as a god named 'Inanna.' It had become a bit of a nickname for her, but to her it would always reflect that time in her life.
The first time that she had embraced something other than pride, and chose not to hide her emotions. In the era before Gilgamesh, she had felt something akin to motherly love for a certain tribe of mortals, and had spent some time among them.
Ishtar would always fall back on those memories, as it was the only time in her life where she had loved and felt love in return. Gilgamesh's many rejections of her advances had slowly gotten less and less bothersome, but when he had chosen to bed a large number of mortal women, her jealousy reached a boiling point.
More so, she was hurt. She felt like she was not enough, but she did not want to focus on those feelings. She blamed Gilgamesh for everything she felt, even though he had made it clear that he could not feel love for a god- any god.
"I still see it, you know..."
Ishtar's lips quivered. She put every ounce of her mental power into fighting the tears, put on her usual prideful, holier-than-thou expression, and walked over him with her head held high.
"What- Ahem. What did you say to me?" Her voice almost broke as she spoke, and she had to compose herself to Gilgamesh would not see her break down.
Gilgamesh was already passing into the next life, but he needed to say the words that were pounding on his heart, denying to be set free.
"I can still see the morning star in your eyes..."
Gilgamesh's final words were meant to be a proclamation, but he was not able to finish his sentence before he passed into Nether-Earth's embrace.
Ishtar remained standing there, with the memory of Gilgamesh's face from that morning resurfacing in her mind. He had died, and once she was sure he was dead, she let the tears come.
She fell down at his corpse's side and wept, but in her heart she used Gilgamesh as her emotions' punching bag. She promised herself that she would never forgive him, and started to convince herself that she resented him.
It was unknown how long she stayed at his side.
The other gods were more focused on observing Gilgamesh's spirit enter Nether-Earth, so there was no one to notice. She was alone in the world.
She was without Gilgamesh.
When Gilgamesh saw this, in his unconscious mind, he knew for certain that these memories had not been his at all. Realizing this, he also realized that his and Ishtar's spirits were more closely entwined than he had ever thought possible.
They had acquired shared memories, linking them spiritually in a most bizarre way. Ishtar would have no way of knowing, since Gilgamesh had been dead for trillions of years, and Gilgamesh would never have known if not for the situation he was now in. He thought back to the time he had first heard mention of this phenomenon.
It was how his mother came to realize that her and his father were meant to be...