'In my sleep, I could feel it. Coming from Gilgamesh and Miss Inanna's room.'
'It was cold, and dark, and poisonous to even try to comprehend. It reminded me of Crimson's grip on my mind, only it was more devastating to feel. It scared me, and I lost myself in that fear yet again.'
'I hope I didn't wake Marshall, but I just had to go out to get some fresh air. It was simply too much.'
'I don't know where it was coming from, but a part of me feels as though Gilgamesh is going through another change. He has slowly been morphing into something that I cannot understand. Something strong.'
'Something different than anything and anyone else. With each advancement we make, it is as though he gathers new components- all of which will lead him to that final transformation.'
'I worry that we may lose the Gilgamesh we know.'
|Sylvia Hautaine's Thoughts As She Leaves The House|
Atop the roof of Inanna's condo, more than twenty crows had gathered in silence, directly above the section of the house where Gilgamesh and Ishtar were. Their eyes, though the light of dawn did shine down on them, caught no light.
Those lightless beads would remind one of the eternal abyss, and the entrapment of death that inspired fear in mortal souls.
Gilgamesh and the others had often wondered after the crows, and had a number of speculations regarding them.
Any attempt to chase them away was futile, but they would follow wherever Gilgamesh went. If they were attacked, they would evade but never retaliate, and only Gilgamesh could get them to shut up when they were in one of their voluminous frenzies.
They listened when he told them to shut up.
The strangest thing about them, though, was that their number slowly increased with each spirit Gilgamesh used Samael to reap. No one knew where the new addition would come from, nor did Samael know why its use spawned them.
They were purely an enigma.
With the new increase in his Spirit Potency after fighting with Crimson, Gilgamesh assumed he would be able to have some sort of spiritual conversation with the crows.
When he failed to sense any kind of spiritual presence coming from them, he realized that he could not speak with them as he would another living being.
So, he tried to use the 'Knowledge of the Old Power,' to drain them of their inherent energy, thinking that it would allow him to come into contact with their nature.
He went out onto the roof and put his hand on one of the crows, attempting to drain it of its energy. The crow simply stood there, staring into Gilgamesh's silver eyes with its own entirely black ones.
It showed no reaction to his touch, but did not shy away from it either. The others slowly hopped over, and gathered around Gilgamesh and the other crow, all staring.
"Well that isn't weird at all," Sylvia said in a soft voice.
Looking behind him, Gilgamesh saw her standing at the front of the house, where she had a clear view of him and the birds on the flat roof.
"What are you trying to do?"
"Trying to figure out what purpose these accursed birds might serve. If they aren't here to provide some sort of service to me, then I see no reason for them to be here."
Hearing this, Sylvia gave an 'oh,' and then started for the door. "Well, I'm going to try to get some sleep."
Gilgamesh grunted in response and refocused. When he turned to look at the birds again though, they were all gathered in front of him, bunched up with their necks stretched out toward him.
"What if you've been going at it the wrong way. You keep trying to reach out to them, but maybe you simply need to give them a way to reach out to you?"
Samael's voice reached him, and he fell into thought.
"But how would I even do that? They have no kind of spiritual presence or energy to speak of. It's as if they're all..."
At that moment, Gilgamesh gasped. In the back of his mind, an itching sensation arose, frustrating him as he tried to reach for and scratch it.
"As if they're all dead?" Samael asked, and Gilgamesh nodded.
"There's only one way to reach out to that which has no life," Gilgamesh sat and straightened himself.
"What way is that," Samael seemed concerned in its tone, but Gilgamesh ignored it as he composed itself, shutting his eyes.
"What are you going to do...?"
"I must invite the crows in, and give them access to a living form."
If Samael had a face, it would be wide-mouthed with incredulity.
"That is a horrible idea!"
Gilgamesh paid the sword no heed, and instead picked up one of the crows from the group. He held it before his face and stared into its abysmal eyes, seeing himself in them.
"I am Gilgamesh, son of Lugalbanda and Ninsun in my first life, son of Logan and Angelica in my second life, and am now without mother or father. I have felt the embrace of death many times, but have welcomed it only once."
"For trillions of years, I lived within the Abyss but was never conquered by it, thus I spent too long there without being able to reincarnate, a curse placed upon my soul by Anu and his god-children."
"Death is a close friend, and so I invite you all in."
After hearing that, the crows seemed to understand.
In a torrent of black feathers, the over twenty crows were all sucked into the one in Gilgamesh's hands. Like formless beings, they were all assimilated by that crow, and vanished from sight.
Gilgamesh knew, at that moment, what he needed to do. As he performed the act, the itching in his mind was finally halted. With his mouth wide open, he forced the crow in, and swallowed it with difficulty.
The instant he did so, his mind and spirit were once again hijacked by separate entities. A part of him wanted to focus on the power of death he had just welcomed inside of him, while another aspect of him was receiving another memory.
In this recollection, Gilgamesh was something less than himself. He could not feel his form, but he knew that he did- in fact- possess one.
He was housed in a world of endless black sand, but too flat and cold to be a simple desert. It was an unending world of torment, and there was no life there.
It was the land of the dead: Nether-Earth, called the Endless Abyss, Hell and the Realm of the Dead. Some worship it and some fear it, but to Gilgamesh in this memory, he hated it with his entire soul.
His consciousness was encapsulated by a strangeness he could not overcome. It bombarded him with weakness and regression, preventing him from thinking clearly, or functioning well at all. All he could do was feel, and because he was not able to deteriorate and pass into reincarnation, he would stay that way forever.
Endlessly feeling.
Nevertheless, as the memory played out, Gilgamesh saw something he was unsure his past self had even observed. Thankfully, he was looking at a memory of his unfocused self with focused eyes. He could see what his past self was unable to.
From the black sands wherein all of Nether-Earths inhabitants would stay trapped until they passed on, dozens of hands surfaced. They appeared to have no form nor shape, but at the same time were not shapeless nor formless.
They all converged on one location, and began to perform a work in Nether-Earth that even focused eyes could not reveal to him.
The memory was, from that moment on, useless to Gilgamesh.
As he was viewing the last of it, the power of death he had assimilated was preparing to spread itself out within him.
"Gilgamesh?" Samael called to him.
"Gilgamesh what are you doing? If you do not contain it your lifeforce will be drained. Gilgamesh!" Unfortunately, Gilgamesh was still reliving his memory, and thus caught by it.
Without action on Gilgamesh's part, there was no way Samael could protect him from the poisonous power of death.
That was when the Obscure Spark and Old Power within him acted of their own accord.
To counteract the effect, the Obscure Spark generated endless lifeforce; to contain the power of death, the Old Power assimilated it into Gilgamesh's own spirit, and thus made it a new part of his nature.
While this was happening, Gilgamesh began to feel the memory complete its reconnection to him. It would be restored, and he would never forget it again. However, before he could be rid of the memory, he once again heard that impossible voice. He recognized it immediately.
It was the voice that had directed him in the usage of the Obscure Spark to save Ishtar's life. He knew it as the voice of the very world he now resided on.
Gilgamesh was unable to speak within the sphere of recollection where he relived his memories, but for some reason the world itself was able to permeate his mind and spirit. It spoke to him within his own imagination.
In addition to that, another voice spoke which Gilgamesh also recognized. It was the voice that he had once heard coming from the Hand of the Old Power.
"Time is running out. This is the last Mastery our combined efforts have been able to provide for you. Receive it and find Truth's Mind, before it is too late."
Gilgamesh's sphere of recollection showed him a different memory of the same occurrence, but it was not his own. He could see himself, as nothing but a figure of dim, silver light, trapped in the black sands of Nether-Earth.
Half of him was covered, half of him was not.
In this new memory, he saw clearly what the hands were doing, and knew for sure where they had come from. They were, all of them, Hands of the Old Power.
They reached into the space of Nether-World itself, and extracted something from it. The thing that they extracted was not an energy, nor a power, but it existed in a form that Gilgamesh could see.
And seeing it filled his being with more wonder than anything had ever done in any of his lives.
When he eventually woke up, he saw the roof of the house once again, and heard Samael's relieved sigh. In addition to that, he felt a newness of self that made it difficult for him to believe that he was the same person.
It was hard for him to understand just how he had changed, but he started getting an idea when he finally noticed the system's notification. Seeing him take notice of it, the system spoke.
In his newness, Gilgamesh felt like he was only just hearing the system for the first time.
'Spirit Potency increased by 20%! Spirit Potency has now reached 35% of User's Total Estimate, new functions unlocked, skill points added!'
'New Skill 'Knowledge of the Endless Cycle,' unlocked!'
'New magical nature, 'Death,' acquired! View magic?'
A bit bombarded, Gilgamesh decided to view his magic. He saw a screen filled with slots, but they were all empty except for two. One of them showed him a silver substance labeled 'Recreate,' while the other showed him a black substance labeled 'Death.'
"So," Samael spoke as Gilgamesh jumped down from the roof, "what happened just then?"
Gilgamesh walked over to a tree and put his hand on it, then spoke a word in his mind.
"Death."
From his shoulder, a spiraling aura of death appeared. From it, tiny black crows fluttered about before rushing to the target of Gilgamesh's magic: the tree.
"I can't say that I am certain of what exactly happened, but I know that I acquired a new Mastery."
"Mastery?" Samael had never heard of such a thing.
"Yes," Gilgamesh said as he watched the tree deteriorate, and a single black crow returned to his arm, merging with him again.
"And now I think I know what 'Truth's Mind' is."