Battle for Babylonia: Final continuation (263)

The sole and primary weakness, if it could be called that, with Angrboda's Noble Phantasm, was that she couldn't activate it instantly. This was also the saving grace of such a power from the perspective of the Counter Force, the only reason that it would allow it to activate, and for Angrboda to possess it.

If, and when, Angrboda decided to use her Noble Phantasm, the Counter Force would have about thirty seconds before it reached its full power. Thirty seconds during which the Counter Force could summon its champions and attempt to destroy Angrboda before the complete activation of her power if she were to aim it against Humanity.

Some might think of it as an overreaction. 

They’re all fools.

If not for the fact that Ainz was fighting against the extinction of Humanity, Angrboda would never be allowed to be summoned, the Counter Force would do everything in its power to prevent her summoning. Or, at the very least, seal her Noble Phantasm.

Not because Angrboda's Noble Phantasm was not an embodiment of her nature as a monster who birthed the creatures of Ragnarok; though it was directly linked to that. But it was because of what Angrboda represented. 

She was not just the mother of monsters, she was the mother of those who brought the Twilight of the Gods into this world.

The enormous, bloodied abscess of flesh continued to grow upward while Tiamat resisted the golden chains of Enkidu, breaking hundreds and thousands of them with each of her movements, as the mass of flesh rose before her eyes.

The quivering lump of meat grew in size until it was half the size of Tiamat herself; still smaller than the primordial mother, but much, much larger than any other creature around. Before, the piece of flesh extended to the side, forming an arm, then on the other side, forming a second.

The grotesque creation of flesh stretched out, forming something resembling a maw where a face would be in any other living being, before it let out a howl from its newly formed maw; it was something between the howl of a wolf, the cry of a child, and the rasping sound of the dying, before collapsing forward, unable to support its own weight. 

The flesh stretched and pulsated like a fresh wound, only, considering that the entire body of the creature continued to pulsate and bleed in places that tore apart one after another from the strain, it looked less like a wounded living creature, and more a wound on the world itself. 

As if agony was not just a sensation, but part of its natural essence, like a child born with a disease could never be free of it. It could mitigate, disguise, or even learn to live with the disease, but it could not change the cruel truth of its existence.

The creature seems to distend forward, before its flesh began to sprout with bone needles that immediately turned gray. In its empty, elongated maw, upward-growing fangs appeared, as if in a grotesque ritual of the creature's growth.

Tiamat rushed forward again, breaking one chain after another, gradually, the very points from which the chains sprouted gave way under her pressure, even the full strength of Enkidu couldn't withstand Tiamat. One after another, the restricting Golden Chain of Heaven gave in, Enkidu burning every particle of its flesh in an attempt to hold Tiamat; but in the end, the outcome was preordained. 

Enkidu fought not for victory, but for every extra moment he could prevent Tiamat from taking another step.

The grotesque creation opened its mouth, before howling again, this time the howl came out much more wolf-like than before. And the flesh, changing with every second, began to extend again, the bone needles became more and more numerous until they covered the entire body of the creature, graying with time, as if conveying the aged nature of the monstrous creation.

The blood flowing through the monster's body seemed to change its very essence, from torn flesh causing suffering, it became a symbol of the blood with which the monster coated itself. And, when Tiamat broke the last chain still restricting her body and emerged before Angrboda's spawn in her full power again, she now faced not a lump of flesh, but the Wolf of Ragnarök – Fenrir.

Fenrir, the wolf that slays gods, seemed a creature born from a terrible dream of both the divine and mortal minds simultaneously. The sight of him would drive humans insane, and the blood dripping from his bloodied maw would poison the very earth wherever it landed. Each paw print, each step, left beneath it a canyon that is instantly filled with black, repulsive liquid that seems to be striving to escape its banks and devour the nearest living thing near it.

The bone needles that are the substitute for the creature's fur bristled a moment later, before the blood running through them changed its color to a sickly dark, becoming a poison, from a single touch of which would dissolve the flesh of anything that came into contact with it.

If Ainz were present at this moment, he would surely have delighted in analyzing every detail of the newborn Fenrir, fondly recalling its in-game abilities, weaknesses, and tactics on how to fight it; but he wasn't here. Therefore, rather than the excited babbling of the Overlord, a moment later, the only voice that could be heard was the howl that seemed as if it could crack the sky even in the underworld.

With its roar as the starting pistol, the monster rushed forward at Tiamat.

Even in the creation of such a being alone would have been the cause of the death of millions of humans, not from the madness it spreads, but from its very existence. Its birth would have violated the primordial laws of Humanity, momentarily bringing back the Age of Gods. Fenrir is a creature that should not have been allowed to exist in the Age of Humans. Even under the most stringent control, its existence would have become an event that left a scar on Earth and humanity.

However, in the World of the Dead, where Angrboda had found herself in, there was no Humanity to be harmed; there is Nothing stopping Angrboda from spawning such a being.

Fenrir rushed forward, his jaws clamping down on Tiamat's arm, and a foul, rotting blood surged into her wounds, striving to burn away every cell it could reach.

A moment later, Tiamat's flesh rippled, and flowed like hot wax, hardening into a new form, and now the jaws of the Wolf of Ragnarok closed only on bare bone, which reshaped itself once again, the fangs gripping it, gnawing, but not shattering it.

Tiamat's other enormous arm slammed down from the other side, impaling itself on the bone spikes of Fenrir’s furs; the extended claws of the primordial mother pierced the flesh before her, breaking each spike.

The Fenrir could fight, but could he defeat Tiamat? Unfortunately, the answer to this question was obvious.

However, it was equally obvious that even the spawn of a monster capable of disfiguring the very face of the Earth with its breath, would not be reason enough for the Counter Force to oppose the use of such a Noble Phantasm.

A moment later, another orb of flesh swelled again into a bloody mass of meat, beginning to grow rapidly. Angrboda wouldn't be the mother of all monsters if she created only one, and her Noble Phantasm wouldn't be called ‘Endless Twilight of the Gods’ if she birthed merely a creature destined to perish in the end.

Angrboda's Noble Phantasm was terrifying because, while it had a beginning, it had no end at all; just according to the legends, where Ragnarök itself had no end. 

In the battle between all gods and monsters, the greatest would be slain, but none would achieve victory, and Surtr would bring his flames down on both sides, destroying both good and evil. Then, from the ashes, new humans and new gods would arise, just as new monsters would be born, and the world would continue anew, moving from a new beginning, to a new end, to the next Ragnarök. Where heroes and monsters would clash again, and once more, none would claim victory; history was a cycle, and Ragnarök was not a finale, but merely a significant comma in the passage of the entire world.

Therefore, Angrboda's Noble Phantasm did not consist of birthing a single monster, but in the act of endless creation of them; one after another, without ceasing. As long as the world still stood and she herself still lived, monsters would be created, monsters that were meant to clash with the heroes. And, after bringing the world to ruin, to perish, clearing space for the new creations.

Of course, creating each such monster took some time, but after the first thirty seconds imposed on her by the world, Angrboda, at any given moment could command the powerful monsters, all the while never stopping in the creation of new ones. In other words, as she had unleashed her Noble Phantasm, she had become an existential crisis for all of Humanity, that only grew stronger and more dangerous with each passing moment. 

That was why the Counter Force had given the restriction to an ability that previously could be started in mere moments. Otherwise, all hope would be lost for humanity.

The fact that the Counter Force did not send an immediate force of Counter Guardians to eliminate Angrboda at this moment, spoke volumes about how desperate the situation with Tiamat herself has become.

Fenrir, as if finally realizing that he couldn't tear off Tiamat's arm, and that the claws embedded in his flesh were now striving to reach his skull to end its life, released Tiamat's arm; after which, his bristling fur shifted and move, like enormous sandpaper, to grind away flesh from Tiamat's arm, causing her to hiss and step back. In response to the wounds, Tiamat's flesh rose, then instantly surged to close her wounds, binding torn muscles together and covering her flesh with tough scales for protection against further similar attacks. 

Tiamat retreated again, with a sharp leap moving so far that her own figure, scraping the sky with her horns, seemed to become smaller.

A tremor ran through the entire World of the Dead, not a physical one, but as if space itself twisted into an endless spiral, disrupting the logic and causality of the surrounding world.

"She's concentrating on a strike!" Merlin's voice resounded through the World of the Dead.

Tiamat understood that relying on her form and size could not win her the battle; realizing that if she’d focused on Fenrir again, Angrboda would simply spawn another monster, or, perhaps, as in the past, someone would strike her while she was distracted. Tiamat could fall for this trick once, because she had foolishly regarded the attack as dangerous to her, twice due to her inexperience, but she wasn't foolish enough to fall for it a third time in a row.

A catastrophic wave of shapeless power from Tiamat swept through the world around her; after which Ishtar, who had only managed to lift her head from exhaustion, supported by Ushiwakamaru, looked at Tiamat with fear and childlike resentment as she pointed at the Beast’s gigantic form. 

"Hey, that's my ability!"

Tiamat, for all her inexperience, was not stupid. And, as the mother who birthed all living things, she was not devoid of the abilities possessed by her offspring; therefore, imitating Ishtar's powers was not impossible for her.

However, where even Ishtar required concentration to use Venus, Tiamat could wield a hundredfold force with a tenth of the preparation time.

Perhaps using such a destructive force could even destroy Tiamat; possibly, it might erase her completely, and irreversibly as here, in the World of the Dead, there were no living beings Tiamat would be able to find as a new vessel for her rebirth. 

Perhaps this would be the end of Tiamat.

But along with the end of Tiamat, it would be the end of all Servants, all the Gods, the World of the Dead, Humanity, and all existence. Earth wouldn't just be split apart like a rotten watermelon, it would simply be erased, perhaps the Solar System itself would suffer from such a level of destruction. It wouldn't be surprising if half the planets ceased to exist and the Sun itself altered its trajectory relative to its Great Attractor. 

But scientific questions regarding such changes would no longer interest any living being, due to the complete absence of the latter in the foreseeable cosmic scale, should Tiamat be allowed to finish her attack.

Which, of course, she wouldn’t. But it was too late.

Fenrir lunged forward, but he wasn't fast enough; unlike Ishtar, Tiamat required no time to prepare such an attack.

Tiamat closed her eyes for a moment, as if internally bidding farewell to the world before her… Before her attack ceased, Tiamat opened her eyes again.

However, where Tiamat's beastly pupil had danced in the eye sockets just a moment ago, this time there were only violet eyes with rectangular-shaped pupils. Eyes that don’t belong to Tiamat, but a certain Medusa instead.

"Cybele," The voice escaping from Tiamat's throat sounded strange, not at all like Tiamat's own voice, but rather like that of a beast fallen onto asphalt and dragged across it for hundreds of meters. The sound of wounded and torn apart beasts. No, to a more sensitive hearer, they could tell that the voice was dual-layered, oscillating between that of a young girl and a mature woman, simultaneously youthful and experienced, clear and hoarse.

Tiamat paused for a moment, Medusa's eyes, preserved through all her iterations, were not strong enough to halt Tiamat, even for an instant.

But if some part of Tiamat remained, if within Beast II, there still lived an innocent being capable of opposing her final drive to destroy everything, if the young Medusa possessed the strength and acted in unison with the Gorgon.

If a certain ‘beloved elder brother of Humanity’ had created the most complex magical seal possible, a seal approaching the power of a ‘True Magic’, in which he linked the aspect of ‘Humanity’ with the Gorgon, then bound the Gorgon to the younger Medusa, and then convinced the younger Medusa to ‘sacrifice herself for humanity’? Then forced Tiamat to absorb them both, thus creating an emergency fail-safe, just waiting for this moment exactly, where they would use Tiamat's own power from within Tiamat herself to oppose Tiamat?

After all those convoluted actions, where failure hangs in a razor’s balance in each of the steps? Then it was possible.

Tiamat’s massive form seemed to pause for a moment, before one of her horns shattered into pieces, unfurling like a flower, transforming into a multitude of snakes that bit into her own body.

A part of Tiamat, the tiniest remnant still existing within Tiamat, that part awakened by Ainz, Tiamat herself, both more and less than Beast II, who had turned into the Gorgon, resisted herself.

"Pandemonium Cetus!" The Noble Phantasm not of Tiamat, but of the Gorgon herself, resounded from within.

The Gorgon, after all, was a Goddess; born a Goddess, and cursed as a Goddess, she became a monster, a crazed beast driven solely by her want of devouring, death, and murder. The Gorgon had consumed her sisters and became a monster that deserved only death, yet, until the very end, she still retained the fragments of her divinity.

Just a small part, mere remnants, mere crumbs, but she was still a divine child; thanks to this remnant, Merlin was able to bind her psyche to Tiamat, and thanks to this, he was also able to bind the Young Medusa to her. 

Because in the Gorgon, there was something beyond mere monstrousness.

In her death, the Gorgon was not killed by Perseus’ effort alone, discounting the meddling of the Grecian Gods, she herself had positioned her head for the final, decapitating, strike. Because until the very end, the Gorgon remained a goddess.

Her Noble Phantasm allowed her to forsake her divinity, her mind, her body, the reason for her anger, her pain, and her very nature. For a moment, discarding her Divinity, and transforming her into an ‘absolute monster’ to battle her foe.

This is precisely what the Gorgon had done to fight against Tiamat and protect Humanity in her own way; an absolute monster attempting to save people from their own loving mother.

Tiamat's body froze, facing yet another realization that her opponents, her own children at that, had once again resolved to confront her and once again held an advantage over her, halting her actions for a moment.

In that split second, Tiamat's mind pondered, she was breaking down Gorgon's Noble Phantasm, but it required time. Insignificant against a confrontation with an ‘absolute monster’, but still too significant to simply surrender the initiative back to her children, her enemies. Tiamat had already paid the price for such actions multiple times, and therefore, instead of fighting the Cetus, the Gorgon’s Noble Phantasm; all of Tiamat's power was directed toward her body.

On the places where the snakes sank their fangs into Tiamat's body, halting her for a second, her flesh rose up, transforming into flesh again before absorbing the snakes sprouting from her own body.

No, now Tiamat no longer sought to absorb and rebirth her suffering offspring, now Tiamat fought them. And so she desired to consume her enemy not to grant them new life, but to assimilate their flesh, their soul, and their power; to transform the enemy into her own strength, and to overcome her own ‘rebelling’ body, integrating their biomass into herself.

Where there was flesh exposed from Fenrir's attack, it was replaced by the Gorgon's flesh, torn muscles, were replaced with the scales from her snakes. The snakes flowed like mutable liquid wax, reassembling itself into a massive clawed arm. Tiamat's body surged, stretching like a rubber toy, striving to cover all her wounds, all limitations were forgotten, and every particle of Tiamat's soul, flesh, and power were now aimed towards one thing. 

To continue the fight.

"Harpe!" - the voice, far younger than the Gorgon's, but still similar, echoed a moment later as the young Medusa's voice resounded, before a sickle-like weapon pierced through Tiamat's chest. 

The other half of the absorbed Medusa, the Medusa she once was, the embodiment of human dreams and the divine youth of the youngest of the Gorgon sisters, had made her move. An existence that exists because even if the Gorgon renounced every drop of her divine nature, she could not renounce the fact that there once existed a much younger version of herself. The embodiment of her nature as a child and a goddess.

Wielding Harpe, the legendary weapon of Perseus, there existed a cruel irony, and yet a deeper meaning, in the fact that it became the young Medusa's Noble Phantasm. The Harpe was a divine weapon crafted for the slaying of monsters, for the destruction of their very nature, and Medusa hated herself. She hated the monster she had become, she hated and desired to destroy the Gorgon to which all the outcomes of her life had led. In the world, there existed no being who hated Medusa more than Medusa herself.

Wasn't it fitting, then, that the perfect weapon that killed the Gorgon was wielded by Medusa herself in her form furthest from being the ‘absolute monster’?

The Harpe was so small compared to Tiamat that the tip of the sickle piercing her chest was hardly noticeable even under the most careful observation, it would take an outside observer hours to even notice the barely protruding edge above the creature's flesh. So, it might seem, that such an attack was utterly meaningless; it made no wound, inflicted no significant damage, and couldn't even inspire confidence in the fighters by its appearance.

Yet, as the tip pierced Tiamat's body, she let out a howl of pain as if she had just suffered a mortal wound.

The Harpe was a weapon created for ‘killing monsters’, but against Tiamat, it was little more than a toy. No matter how renowned it was, if its opponent was the ‘primordial mother of all humans and the divine’, the Harpe was simply an unfit weapon to battle her; just as the deadliest of poisons is useless against a golem, and all the flames of Hell are powerless against a summoned fire elemental.

However, Tiamat had renounced her existence as the primordial mother.

She renounced her love for her children when she became Beast II. She’d renounced her motherhood when she forsook the plan to rebirth her children and wished to absorb them solely for her own biomass and strength, effectively killing them. And Ainz's Deicide had stripped her of her divine origin. The World of the Dead stripped her of her origin of life. Cetus shackled her. And Gorgon, as a reborn and absorbed part of Tiamat herself, became the "perfect monster."

Under such conditions, the Harpe was ideal for its task.

And so the sickle piercing Tiamat's flesh damaged her in a very fundamental, painful way. Because the Harpe, a weapon to combat monsters, was potent in many ways, enchanted to confront any adversary, but most of all, it was designed for one primary function.

Depriving monsters of their regeneration.

By stripping away the nature of a ‘monster’, the Harpe was designed to achieve a single outcome by any means, to render the monster before it ‘defeatable’. That is, to implant the concept of ‘defeat’ upon it. 

Perhaps the hero wielding the Harpe couldn't vanquish the foe with their own strength and would perish themselves, such was the fate of a hero, but the monster would have its day numbered. The Harpe's purpose was not to bring glory to the monster hunter who wielded it, but to destroy the monster using any power and any opportunity. 

To deprive the enemy of regeneration, to strip away their immortality so that another hero might one day finish what was started? That too would be a worthy outcome for a hero who became a monster slayer not for fame, but to eradicate monsters threatening the entire world.

Even if, the most famous wielder of the weapon, Perseus, might have ulterior motives for his monster slayings.

And so Tiamat's flesh, which had previously so swiftly obeyed the primordial mother's command, stitching together her torn body piece by piece, sagged in strips. The blood and flesh stopped moving, as if unsure of what command it was supposed to follow at this moment. The blood, which had momentarily stopped, suddenly gushed downward, and Tiamat's flesh, which had held without issue, shuddered violently, as every wound inflicted on her during this battle reopened. Her broken bones ached while some broke, simultaneously, severed blood vessels started spewing lifeblood, and cut nerves refused to obey their mistress.

For a long momentary moment, and it was momentary, the Harpe's effect was temporary on Tiamat; even weakened by all possible means, Tiamat couldn't remain subject to the influence of such a weapon for long.

But for a brief moment, Tiamat was vulnerable.

For mere seconds, Tiamat was defenseless.

Fenrir was at Tiamat’s side once again, his fangs plunging into Tiamat's body, in its rush forcing one of her arms aside, depriving Tiamat of even the defense she could still muster.

A moment later, the second creation spawned by Angrboda, a monstrous serpent whose length seemed to extend far beyond the entirety of the horizon, coiled around Tiamat's body, constricting her in its coils, preventing her from moving her legs or dodging the next strike.

The snakes sprouting from Tiamat's own body, the Gorgon, entwined Tiamat's other arm, spreading her arms apart and leaving her body exposed for a strike.

An attack that would be made by a Hero that was wronged so much by Tiamat.

A fleeting figure appeared, seeming so small in front of Tiamat, yet a moment later, Arthur's strike slashed across Tiamat's face. Her open maw, wailing in agony, gushed out a deluge of blood, unable to even shout a furious howl of pain, as her second horn was severed.

Every means Tiamat had to defend herself was stripped away, and for the first time, finally, after all the efforts and sacrifices, the great mother of all, Tiamat, was utterly defenseless.

And so the attacks came.

A figure standing atop a flying beast smiled, Quetzalcoatl felt no hatred towards Tiamat; she is fighting against her for the protection of Humanity, of course, but she did not see Tiamat as a monster or a fiend that must be destroyed by any possible means. 

She did not see a monster in her.

The reason Quetzalcoatl once became an ally of Tiamat was not due to a hatred of humanity, but because she once desired to understand why a loving mother would turn her wrath upon her children; why a being of infinite love could forsake that love and transform it into hatred. And  Quetzalcoatl had found that answer, upon connecting with Tiamat and joining her side temporarily, that Tiamat did not desire death and bloodshed. That she wished, instead, by any-means-necessary, to rid humanity of the grief they felt from betraying their primordial mother.

‘If they will celebrate only a victory over an absolute monster, then I will become that. If their pain vanishes only with the understanding that they were right by battling me, then I will make them right. If they need an absolute enemy, then I will destroy them all and become that absolute enemy.’

Therefore, Quetzalcoatl felt no hatred while looking at Tiamat, nor did she see her as her absolute enemy; however, whether she saw an enemy before her or not, held no significance for Quetzalcoatl.

The Feathered Serpent did not have a habit of holding back, whether against foe, or friend.

"Piedra Del Sol!" Approaching so close to Tiamat, Quetzalcoatl raised her hand upward, and a blaze ignited on her hand a moment later.

Once, the Sun rose, and the entire world fell under its wrath. Drought and heat exterminated all living things in this world, and Quetzalcoatl had carved out her own heart and the hearts of all the gods as a bloody offering to the Sun, to compel it to continue its path across the sky.

Knowing the bloody and heavy price paid for the movement of the luminous object across the heavens, the Aztecs who followed Quetzalcoatl vowed not to forget this gift and to study the path of all celestial bodies, whose journey was bathed in the blood of their deities. In their studies they erected the great calendar, Piedra Del Sol, which was to chart the movement of all heavenly bodies until the end of times.

Quetzalcoatl's Noble Phantasm combined two aspects of this event.

By offering her heart as a gift to the Sun, Quetzalcoatl was able to bind its every movement across the sky, meaning she could take control of the Sun with a blood oath. The calendar erected then marked the time when Quetzalcoatl's heart would finally wither in the Sun's embrace, and it would fall from the sky, ending its journey.

Using her heart, Quetzalcoatl could overwrite the established calendar and compel the Sun to recognize that ‘the day the Sun falls’ was this very instance.

The Sun itself, obeying Quetzalcoatl's command, could descend to Earth for a single strike, a devastating attack by any measure. For Quetzalcoatl could forcibly, by sacrificing her own divinity, compel the Sun to fulfill the ancient blood oath and submit to the directive of the Feathered Serpent.

Of course, the descent of the entire Sun would incinerate the Earth entirely, it would consume it, turning all the continental plates into molten magma, so Quetzalcoatl, normally, could not use this power so directly. But in the World of the Dead, where there were no living beings?

Well, in the dark, sunless Underworld, a Sun appeared.

A radiant glow is spreading, unlike Ishtar, who used a battering ram in the form of an entire planet, Quetzalcoatl employed only the ‘essence’ of the Sun, its all-incinerating heat and light. So, in terms of destruction, Ishtar’s attack was more devastating than Quetzalcoatl’s. However, unlike Ishtar, whose attack was physical in nature, the collision of two celestial bodies, Quetzalcoatl’s wielded a concept that was perhaps even more dangerous.

The end of all existence, when the Sun falls down.

The desiccating wind and fire did not seek to destroy everything indiscriminately, they only aimed at one thing; to extinguish all life on the earth.

And Tiamat was the most ‘alive’ entity that could exist at that moment, standing before Quetzalcoatl.

The solar wind and the rising tempest crashed into the living flesh of the Beast before her, and all that was ‘alive’ before it ceased to exist. Desiccated and incinerated until not even the last molecule of matter remained, the fiery blast devoured everything in its path. Fenrir and Jormungandr, Gorgon, Tiamat, they all ceased to exist in the instant the fire spread across their bodies, burning every particle of their life. Even Arthur, feeling such an impact, let out a cry of pain.

A moment later, the raging flames receded. 

For just a second, the Sun had manifested in the Underworld, and in the instant it disappeared, it seemed as though the world plunged into absolute darkness, the kind left behind by a Sun that had long sunk below the horizon. Flesh burnt to ash crumbled a moment later, the roasted-to-dust flesh of Fenrir and Jormungandr fell to the ground… as did Tiamat’s.

The enormous, pulsating core of Tiamat, resembling a heart, manifested in reality once more for a fleeting moment; no longer concealed by the flesh of the primordial mother, the true form of the primordial mother, her greatest strength and weakness, to which her enemies had so long strived to reach, was exposed.

"Finally, the stage is set, and the time has come for the final act!" 

And at that precise moment, Gilgamesh raised his voice. 

"Ea, appear! It is time for us to end this grand epic!"

The emerging figure of the golden king with a blade of strange shape, cylindrical and lacking any sharp edge, seemed to have stepped out of his greatest bas-relief. The invincible king of all heroes, triumphing before an unbeatable monster that proved weaker than just one true human.

Divided into three parts, the unnamed blade, Ea, slowly began to rotate. Each cylinder, spinning in opposite directions, seemed to draw in the air with an indescribable screech of the torn wind. Tiamat's core, left exposed without its flesh, without protection, shuddered, after which ash and earth around it rose, as if striving to shield itself from the inevitable strike.

"Useless…" Gilgamesh extended his hand holding the blade forward, then raised it upward. 

With the gesture, it seemed as though stars shimmered and galaxies moved behind his back, yet Gilgamesh’s eyes himself only saw how his great blade was held by a second hand. That of the only one he would allow touching his greatest treasure. 

The one whose words he remembered, with a scoff masking the gentleness deep within, Gilgamesh addressed his best and only friend. 

"Thank you for the ten seconds. You needn't have worried, do you think your friend could make a mistake?"

A moment later, Gilgamesh lowered his blade, and destruction followed.

"Enuma Elish!"