Last Command of the Witheld Arc 1: Rebirth

THE CITY OF KISH, MESOPOTAMIA (MODERN-DAY IRAQ), 2143 BCE

Up above Etana, Bārû Naram-Sin inclined his head again. The Temple Guard stopped immediately and Bārû Naram-Sin allowed Semiramis to summon forth Etana. The fat man bowed his head obsequiously and stood, clearing his throat before intoning in his reedy voice “The high priest of Zebaba, god of battle, god of blood and conquest, patron of Kish: the great Bārû Naram-Sin, calls forth the supplicant, Etana of Ur!” The guards all pounded their spear hafts once more on the stone floor, but only once. On the other side of the circle of pillars, from the side of one of the pillars, a pair of ornate brass doors opened and everyone in the plaza leaned forward to see the warrior emerge from the great double doors.

Etana strode out of the doorway with a warrior’s swagger, his burnished armor catching the sunlight and gleaming. He glared at the temple guards arrayed around the Plaza, not stopping in the center of the Plaza like he was supposed to. He strode right up the steps of the dais, climbing to the top before kneeling in front of Bārû Naram-Sin. His head was not bowed, though, and his eyes shone with rage.

The guards had, of course, raised their spears at his temerity, but Bārû Naram-Sin seemed to be amused. He was smiling, though the expression did not seem to reach his cold grey eyes. The priest leaned forward and studied Etana. Etana shuddered despite himself. Even through the Song of Zebaba and his righteous fury, he felt like the priest’s gaze was piercing. He supposed all high priests would look like that. “You have survived twenty-nine days of battle, Etana.” Bārû Naram-Sin said, his voice deep and commanding in the silence.

Etana glared up at Bārû Naram-Sin and said loudly enough for the temple guards at the very back of the plaza to hear, “You cannot kill the Son of War, high priest!” The other priests arrayed around Bārû Naram-Sin murmured and whispered in shock.

It was approaching heresy to speak like that to a priest, let alone a high priest. “You give yourself quite a title, man-child,” Bārû Naram-Sin said, his voice stern but with an edge of mockery and Etana reacted almost like he had been struck, his face going red and his hands clenching into fists. “But the avatar of Zebaba—one who hears his Song—must do more than merely kill a few temple guards. He must breathe war and live for battle.”

Bārû Naram-Sin stood and addressed the rest of the plaza. “Etana the Invincible! The warrior of far Ur who cannot be killed, though he wades into battle with no care for his life. You have slaked the lord of battle’s thirst for blood these past twenty-nine days. Now, on this, the thirtieth day, I have heard the voice of Zebaba. The blood you shed in holy battle has pleased Zebaba, Etana. Now hear what Zebaba has revealed!” The priests leaned forward eagerly, though Etana narrowed his eyes in suspicion. “Etana the Invincible, Zebaba has revealed a great secret to me. A secret about you!”

Etana narrowed his eyes in suspicion. This was going wrong. The high priest’s eyes looked too knowing. All Bārû Naram-Sin did was cut his eyes over to the guards to quell them as he let Etana approach him. “What secret did the Lord of War reveal to you?” He had risen from kneeling and now stood at his full height, though he was still frustratingly short of Bārû Naram-Sin's height on his throne to look him in the eye.

The priest smiled down at Etana and pronounced, in his deep and sonorous voice, “Etana of Ur, Zebaba revealed to me that you are indeed one of his holy children! Let all rejoice in Etana’s glorious presence!” He commanded and everyone in the room fell to their knees in obeisance, including the guards that had been menacing Etana just moments before.

Etana closed his eyes and felt the Song of Zebaba rise in him until it was thrumming in his blood. He felt the moment keenly. Soon, his vengeance would be upon him! This is what all the battles had led up to! Finally, he could take his—but the priest was not yet done.

Bārû Naram-Sin’s deep voice cut through Etana’s reverie. “And yet your divine father commands that you perform one last miracle of battle! Now, son of Zebaba, bathe your father’s brow in the blood of a hundred temple guards!” He clapped and the cold cauldrons positioned between the pillars around the plaza blazed to life, burning their specially treated fuel. The rainbow flames climbed twenty feet tall and released purplish smoke that billowed and sank to the plaza, filling the air with their cloying sweet scent.

As the smoke rolled down, the prostrated guards leaped to their feet, spears gripped in sure hands and thrusting at Etana to skewer the warrior where he stood. But Etana’s instincts had been honed to a knife’s edge on the battlefield and the Song of Zebaba made his muscles swell with strength. He dodged the guards’ spears, retreating down the dais and pulling out his war axe as his eyes flashed in fury.

“Very well, Bārû Naram-Sin, I shall kill these Temple Guards—and then you!” He shouted as he backed away from the guards. “I shall bathe the world in blood for the chance to kill you! I am the Son of Battle!” He roared and battered at the guards with his war axe, scattering them.

The priests on the dais seemed unaffected by the drama unfolding before them. The huge, color-changing flames roared between the pillars, giving the entire scene an eerie, echoing wavering quality. The smoke made everything hazy and indistinct, but Etana did not seem in any way impeded by it. Bārû Naram-Sin watched impassively as the warrior he had summoned battled his guards.

Etana charged forward at the guards, bellowing his war cry. Several temple guards fell to their knees at the cry, clutching at their heads and screaming. The others dashed past them, running in to attack the armored warrior. He met their charge on his shield, battering them aside with great sweeps of his arms. The temple guards were knocked aside like children, flying several feet before smashing into their comrades. Still, the guards came on, their spears stabbing at Etana.

Bārû Naram-Sin grimaced in disgust as a bit of blood spattered the hem of his green robes from the melee in the arena below and gestured impatiently, the stain burning itself away and leaving just a thin skein of greasy dust. The dust was just as hard to get out as blood, but it wasn’t as obvious. He wafted it away with a little zephyr with another gesture and rolled his eyes at the little smudge left on the robe. At the same time as he unconsciously used the sparks of tensa, he felt their loss keenly and regretted using it so frivolously. Even minor spells that he’d used without thought back home were an intolerable drain on his tensa reserves now.

He was so tired of feeling like he was starving. The constant headache and nausea from having a low tensa pool was exhausting, even if they were relatively minor. The persona of Bārû Naram-Sin was tiresome. He’d held onto it for, what, forty years now? It was so hard to keep track…He longed to return to his true name, August Vasilias. But even here, that name would speak in the wrong ears. There were some reunions he had no desire for.

He sneered at the primitives that surrounded him. He didn’t bother to hide his expression as he watched the temple guards get slaughtered by Etana. He had seen what he needed to see. The man fairly glowed with stolen tensa energy. It was time to take it back.

“Priest!” Etana’s ragged but still strong voice boomed from the far end of the courtyard and it brought him out of his brooding. “I have slain your hundred guards! I have bathed Father Zebaba in their blood,” he took a long, shuddering, gasping breath before he continued, shouting, “And now,” he stepped forward, menacingly. “I will bathe Zebaba in the blood of his high priest!” He flung his head back and gave an ululating war cry.

Bārû Naram-Sin clapped his hands slowly, mockingly. He ignored the moans of those guards who were not dead but merely too injured to fight. He ignored the eyes of the priests of Zebaba arrayed around him.

“You have proven to be an equal to any man, Etana.” He gestured to the carnage around him. “Surely, you’re a great warrior among men. But that is no great feat. Men are weak. They are frail; they expire when punctured with bits of metal.” He gestured to the dead and dying on the mosaic floor all around.

“Unfortunately for you,” Bārû Naram-Sin continued, stepping gingerly down from the dais, letting his robe drop from his wide shoulders, exposing his muscled chest. “I am not a man, I am a god. And you, my boy, have something I want.” He held out his left hand and an enormous green mace appeared in it. The head of the mace looked like the head of a bald man with furnace-yellow eyes and a frowning, judgmental mouth. Bārû Naram-Sin took the last step off the dais and let a little of his anima loose from his iron control.

He had already thrown caution to the wind. Cerise would certainly learn of the events here, even if it took years. The news would spread and she would know who had been here. Besides, it felt good to use his anima directly against an enemy, even if the primitive animal across from him hardly counted as an enemy. To be a true enemy, you had to be a threat and Etana was no threat to him.

As Bārû Naram-Sin stepped forward across the mosaic floor, the priest unfurled his anima slowly, relishing in the first opportunity to stretch in decades. As he did, the persona of Bārû Naram-Sin fell away like a shed snakeskin. What was left was August Vasilias, a cold-eyed god from another world. He swung his mace in tight circles, enjoying the feel of its weight. The enchantment on the mace had been used up in his early days on Earth so it wouldn’t make Etana explode on contact, but it was still a passable weapon. Etana, though, had frozen in place, eyes wide with fear.

Grimacing, August stepped down from the dais and started walking toward Etana, who was still rooted to the spot. His mood had soured now that his enemy—a primitive who could not even read—was frozen before him. Why was he drawing this out? There was no savor in this victory. There was no real competition here, only a means to an end. Etana had absorbed tensa and despite him looking like a scared child now, August Vasilias would have it from him.

He would have extinguished every last possible competitor for this world’s tensa reserves if he could find them. It seemed utterly random who absorbed it here and so he had spent decades finding every last creature that had even a few sparks and ripping the power out of them. But it took time and he was tired of waiting. He just wanted to feel like himself again! This slow, starving existence was a fate beyond imagination for him before he had come here with Cerise. Immortality had proven to be more of a curse than he could have ever predicted, and he could feel his patience eroding with every passing second. Etana would crumble before him if he put even the slightest pressure on him. Better to do it now and be done with it than to make this last any longer than it had to.

He let his anima loose just a trifle more. There, just as he’d predicted. A little more anima and even Etana the Invincible was reduced to a gibbering, terror-ruled animal, urine mixing with the blood on the colorful mosaic around him as he scrambled to get away from the terrible majesty of August Vasilias. August rolled his eyes in exasperation while Etana moaned a pitiful little cry as he tried to battle against August’s spiritual pressure. The man had likely never felt such primal terror as August’s anima was able to pull out of him.

With another sigh, August briskly walked over to Etana and killed the crying fool by crushing his head with the mace, face-side down. The man was finally silent as his body slumped to the bloodstained ground. A thin, reedy bird cry from above made August look up at the white Egyptian vultures circling high overhead. They’d eat well today.

He stretched his hand out as Etana’s lifeforce bled out onto the flagstones. He probed the corpse with his anima, sending spiritual tendrils into it with rough, nearly desperate speed, feeling for that spark he knew would be there… There! He found it eagerly and pulled at it modifying his Ten Star Vortex gathering technique into the horrific variant he’d had to employ to pull the tensa out of his targets. The energy seeped into him, sluggish at first, resisting his anima’s insistent pulling, but August Vasilias’s will would not be denied. He bore down on his anima with all of his focus, pulling with all his might until he felt a metaphysical pop, and power began flooding into him. He kept up the pressure, absorbing all he could, as greedily as he could. There was so much! He couldn’t believe his luck! It was a true trove! There was so much he—

It was gone.

He felt his reserves, shocked at the tiny amount he’d collected from Etana. It had felt like an endless amount, but there was barely a megaspark in the man. August’s tensa pool was measured in terasparks and his grafts made use of his enormous store of power. But now he had enough power to use one of his grafts that he’d been saving for.

The corpse at his feet had shriveled into a wasted little waxy thing with little resemblance to the vital, enormous warrior who had strode into the Plaza mere minutes before. August Vasilias breathed in raggedly, pushing his disappointment away. He began circulating his tensa along his tensa pathways again, no longer caring who saw him or what they said.

He felt the rush of his Attributes re-empowering as tensa began reinvigorating him. It was like balm on a burn. This was more like it! August Vasilias was done with the personality of Bārû Naram-Sin and the city of Kish. There were no more threads to follow here, no more mythical heroes with powers that could only be explained by miracles. Now he could finally get away from these creatures and build himself a proper stronghold where he could wait out the years and gather tensa. Even now, he could feel the strain lessen. With this method of extraction, he could recharge those batteries and get back to Nolm. He was sure of it.

There was no one to see the vast wings of light unfurl from his back as he took one last contemptuous look at the blood-splattered arena on the roof of the temple of Zebaba. He launched into the air with a grunt and disappeared into the glaring afternoon sun before anyone else could notice the descending hoard of vultures and other carrion birds. The birds ignored the low moans and cries of the injured just as much as August Vasilias did.