Christian Bernardino: Not THIS Hakuno.
drewbear89: Probably, Shirou has no chance against Iskandar. A Reality Marble is NORMALLY the materialization of the soul of the one who generates it. When two creatures (normally two powerful beings far away from puny humans) use Reality Marbles against each other, the most powerful Reality Marble supplants the other. It is cannon! However, Iskandar does not have a 'standard' Reality Marble... His is the very emanation of the collective faith of his army. Sure, Shirou have an inhuman's willpower, far exceeding the will of any ordinary human... but even he cannot fight the collective will of Iskandar's army.
Misaka Phenex: No, Shirou defeated a fragment of Lancelot's consciousness not the True Heretic God.
Sentinal Slice:
Heretic God: No, they descend into our world to take shape. A god who manifests himself partially is not heretical.
Iskandar and Gilgamesh: I was just tired of explaining their relationship over and over again, "friend" is not so wrong. One can be friends to another without the two being equal.
Lancelot and Shirou: That's exactly it. I wanted to make an epic fight.
Author Note: Hurrah, for the first time in two weeks, I have some time to write. Ashurbanipal's quotations in this chapter are inspired by a clay tablet found in Nineveh in 1854 by Henry Austin Layard.
The Sack of Susa
With her eyes closed, Ishtar was dreaming.
It was not a pleasant dream, quite the contrary...
She was falling into a blurred nothingness where colored forms contortioned. A voice resounds... a cruel, arrogant voice that the goddess had already heard... but a very long time ago and the Mistress of Heaven couldn't put a face to that voice. The man cruelly enunciated the terms of a ruthless triumph, an abysmal disregard for both men and gods:
"Susa, the great holy city, abode of their Gods, seat of their mysteries, I conquered. I entered its palaces, I opened their treasuries where silver and gold, goods and wealth were amassed...the treasures of Sumer, Akkad, and Babylon that the ancient kings of Elam had looted and carried away. I destroyed the ziggurat of Susa. I smashed its shining copper horns. I reduced the temples of Elam to naught; their goods and goddesses I scattered to the winds. The tombs of their ancient and recent kings I devastated, I exposed to the sun, and I carried away their bones toward the land of Ashur. I devastated the provinces of Elam and on their lands I sowed salt."
The terrible words crossed a chasm of 2500 years of history and put their seal on Ishtar's nightmare. The colorful mists condensed into a landscape of devastation... Immaterial and powerless, the Mistress of Heaven drifted between a sky obscured by the smoke of the bonfires and a ravaged land, illuminated by burning cities and villages.
She was reliving the downfall of Elam.
This ancient country evoked in the Bible had flourished in the southeast of Babylonia, in present-day Iran. Relations between the Elamites and the Chaldeans had been... complicated to say the least.
At certain times the Babylonians had been at war with the Elamites, at other times they had traded with them. There had even been a dynasty of Elamite kings who had reigned over Babylon and they had not been tyrants...
One thing was certain though; the cultural exchanges had been fruitful. The Elamites had adopted cuneiform writing, Mesopotamian architecture and even the gods of their neighbors.
The problem was that the Chaldea was not limited to Babylon, a relatively peaceful city-state. The Assyrians were bloody conquerors. The manner in which the Great Kings of Assyria regulated their external policy was simple: the brutal conquest of 'civilized' nations like Babylonia or Egypt and the extermination of 'barbarian' populations like the Elamites (semi-nomads). Domestic politics was almost as simple: the least disobedience was punished by fierce repression.
The violent wars between Assyria and Elam ended by taking Susa in 648 before the Common Era.
The voice resumed, and this time the Goddess of Venus recognized the arrogant speaker, Ashurbanipal King of Assyria, King of Sumer and Akkad, King of the Lands (1), 'humbly' self-proclaimed King of the Four Corners of the World and King of the Universe, the destroyer of the Elamite civilization.
"I opened its treasures chambers, which had been piled up with silver, gold, goods, and possessions which had been gathered and possessed by the ancient kings of Elam up to the kings of the day, and in which no enemy, other than myself, had laid hands. I took them out to count them as loot."
While the cruel tyrant spoke, Ishtar saw Susa's looting. The Assyrians had swept the conquered city like a cloud of rats, setting fire to the houses, breaking the doors of the warehouses, emptying the grain silos, and chained the robust men to make slaves. As for what they did to women... it was better not to talk about it.
"I destroyed Susa's storey tower, built of blue-glazed brick."
Behind the soldiers came an army of workers with their tools. They attacked the great ziggurat of Susa, hitting the fired bricks with their picks, and rolling the blocks below the walls. These abuses went far beyond simple looting. It was not only a matter of plundering and killing but of murdering the memory of the people of Elam, erasing all traces of the existence of this people, of condemning the Elamites to oblivion.
"I took everything for Assyria, the gods, and goddesses with their trousseau, their possessions, their material, as well as their priests. I took for Assyria thirty-two royal statues, of gold, silver, bronze, and marble."
The Goddess of love and war clenched her teeth in helpless anger, forced to revisit a trauma that had haunted her for millennia.
It was often thought - and wrongly - that the gods had nothing to fear from mortals.
Of course, weak humans had little chance of harming a god... apart from the Campiones of course... Except that the influence of a god, his power and radiance in the world of the living were weak points that could be targeted even by mere mortals.
Before Ishtar's eyes, the Assyrians smashed the doors of her great temple.
Assurbanipal's merciless voice continued to celebrate his triumph:
"I sent away the genies, male and female, which guarded the temples, as much as there were. I ripped out the ferocious buffalo that adorned the great gates. I destroyed the temples of Elam. I counted for ghosts its gods and its goddesses. As for their forbidden groves, in which no foreigner was allowed to enter and from which they could not even cross the border, my soldiers entered, they saw the mysteries and set fire to them. I destroyed, devastated, and exposed in the light of day the tombs of their kings, old and new. I took the bones for Assyria. I forced their shadows to never find rest. I deprived them of offerings of food and drink (2). I devastated the provinces of Elam for a month and twenty-five days."
Now, the sacred statues of a god are conduits through which he exercises his power. By killing her faithful, deporting her priestesses and sacred prostitutes, and above all by taking the representation of Ishtar out of her forbidden grove, Ashurbanipal had deeply weakened the goddess of Venus.
With tears in her eyes, Ishtar watched the death of a civilization that was swept away by the haughty voice of Ashurbanipal, relishing his triumph:
"I was sweeping Elam in its entirety for a good month. I drove out of its countryside the words of the human, the trampling of the big and small cattle, and the pleasant song of the reaper. I left the fields of the Elam countries to the onagers, gazelles, and all the breeds of beasts of the plain as if they were in a meadow."
Adolf Hitler, Stalin, or Mao Zedong held a (hopefully) unbeatable record of victims... but they had lived in the age of train and telephone. They had dominated huge territories and the heavily populated cities of the twentieth century.
The Assyrian tyrants had conquered their empire at the speed of human steps and had nothing more sophisticated than the sword, arrow, and war chariot to slaughter their enemies.
Yet in two centuries of conquest and repression, the Assyrians were credited with three million deaths! Compared to the human population of the time it was genocide of an unprecedented scale (3).
Even the gods were finally moved by so much barbarism. Ishtar - the sower of discord- inspired the revolt to the governor of Babylon, the Akkadian Nabopolassar. Proclaiming himself king of Babylon, and making an alliance with the Medes, he advanced on Nineveh.
The ruthless cruelty of the Assyrians turned against them. No people of their empire came to their aid and no one cried when Nineveh was offered to the flames, its population massacred... An almost unique case in the history of humanity, Nineveh was not plundered by the victors. It was destroyed with all its treasures. In an act of pure hatred, everything was destroyed by fire. For archaeologists, it was a chance. Instead of being scattered among the winners, the clay tablets in the Assurbanipal library survived the fire and waited 2500 years for their rediscovery. But the great empire of Assyria had ceased to exist, the Assyrians would never again have an active role in history and Nineveh would never be rebuilt.
The arrogance of one man had destroyed two nations.
The captive Elamites were freed, the statues of the gods returned to the priests, and the son of Nabopolassar, the famous Nebuchadnezzar II, had the temple of Ishtar rebuilt in Susa.
The tyrant was defeated. One might think that the crisis had passed but... the Chaldea had existed for millennia with two centers of civilization. With the disappearance of Assyria, one of them ceased to exist.
Despite its initial successes, the Neo-Babylonian Empire founded by Napolassar was weak and unstable. 35 years later, Cyrus the Great, king of Persia, invaded Babylonia ending the independence of the Chaldean civilization.
The Mesopotamian religion decayed, and when the cuneiform writing was forgotten - five centuries later- the very name of the gods of Babylon fell into oblivion.
Ishtar awoke with a start.
Sitting next to her, Shirou took her hands to prevent her from getting hurt in her convulsive gestures.
"Rin, Rin, it's me, Shirou... you're safe, calm down."
With her heart beating as fast as a galloping horse, Ishtar looks around her to discover an anonymous hospital room.
"Where... where am I?"
"Still in Vegas. Ereshkigal chose to treat you here instead of taking you back to Tokyo."
"treat me?"
With her mind still in the mist and oppressed by the memory of the downfall of Susa, Ishtar could not remember what had happened.
"I... uh... don't you remember? We faced Gilgamesh, Iskandar, and Lancelot yesterday."
"Oh?"
Ishtar frowned. She really couldn't remember.
"What the hell happened?"
"Uh... I thought you were going to tell me. Gilgamesh used some kind of tablet and... and you started screaming."
The Goddess of Venus swallowed, the memory had just returned to her. Dingir... Gilgamesh had used Dingir on her... This nightmare was the punishment the King of Uruk had inflicted on her.
As she reflected, Shirou looked at her with a mixture of curiosity and worry.
"Uh... and you're okay now?"
"Shirou, I am a goddess who rules the sky, nothing can destroy me permanently."
The redhead laughed nervously scratching the back of his head. He hesitated. He had questions but didn't know how to talk about them.
Ishtar smiled, amused.
"What is it, moron?"
"I just want to know if you're okay. And don't tell me you're an invincible goddess. You're so pale! Are you sure you're okay?"
For a moment, Ishtar wanted to tell him the contents of her nightmares... but Shirou was only a human, the moronic redhead could never understand the torments of a goddess. She preferred to lie.
Crossing her arms on her chest, she uttered an exaggerated sigh.
"I dreamt that Gilgamesh was using Gates of Babylon to bombard me with Blu-ray disc recorders and alarm clocks that sounded the alarm clock at five in the morning! Five hours! Do you realize? This is torture!"
As Shirou turned his head to hide an amused smile, Ishtar pretended to be offended. Nothing amused the goddess more than an argument with this specific mortal... when she drive him crazy, Ishtar really felt alive.
The echoes of the dispute awakened the sick and wounded with a start and made running away the most devoted nurses and patients doctors... Ishtar was the most unbearable daddy girl of all universes known... She had over five thousand years of experience in this field.
Far beyond, in Japan, the sun had already disappeared behind the skyscrapers of Tokyo and the shadows were getting longer.
In this late afternoon, Athena was engaged in her favorite activity. Standing on a metal needle at the top of a high building, the wind shook her clothes and her hair but the little goddess remained impassive, motionless.
Her eyes were turned towards the Jounan Academy. Without blinking, she followed the slightest movements of her 'prey', the young Godou Kusanagi.
However, something disturbed her inhuman concentration. Not surprisingly, she turned to three young women who had just appeared on the roof of the next building.
Two of them were unknown to her, but the goddess of wisdom felt a power of divine origin in the two strangers... a power capable of rivaling the divine power of the daughter of Zeus.
As for the third, she looked like an adorable little blonde girl of a dozen years. Athena immediately recognized her and greeted her with a nod.
"Queen Guinevere."
The Divine Ancestor raised the bottom of her Victorian dress and bowed gracefully.
"This Guinevere salutes the noble daughter of the divine treasure of heaven, the cronid Zeus."
Athena found the greeting appropriate and nodded again. Although Guinevere was not a deity, she still had a high rank among the Divine Ancestors and her politeness deserved an answer.
"Although you are disturbing me in an important task, I acknowledge your presence, Queen Guinevere, and allow you to speak to me as long as you do not abuse my time. Get to the point, what do you want from Athena, the queen of the night?"
Guinevere bowed again.
"First let this Guinevere introduces you to her allies."
With a gesture of her hand, the adorable girl pointed to a woman with snow-white hair contrasting heavily with her sun-kissed skin strangely marked with white PCB-like tattoos.
"This Guinevere introduces you to Altera, Sefar's envoy."
The Divine Ancestor then turned to an older teenager with blond hair on a heavy mat and beautiful purple eyes.
"And this beautiful lady is no other than the French heroine Jeanne d'Arc."
Having participated in a meeting of the History Compilation Committee where Sefar had been the main topic of discussion, Athena immediately understood that Guinevere's allies were the Servants coming from the Moon Cell that had been much talked about recently.
She remained silent and impassive, waiting for the continuation.
The Witch-Queen of Brittany hesitated for a moment and then spoke again.
"Humbly, the handmaiden of the King Who Manifests at the World's End solicits the wisdom of the divine Athena."
"And what's your question, Queen Guinevere?"
"Is it true that you know where my king is?"
There was a moment of silence, barely disturbed by the wind that made Athena's silver hair dance.
After a long minute, the goddess of wisdom finally answers.
"That is true."
Zeus' daughter did not explain how she had learned this well-kept secret... Was it not normal for the wisest of Greek goddesses to know what was known only to a few initiates? As for the secrets whispered in the darkest places they were heard by the queen of the night. In fact, there was no point in hiding anything from the Goddess who rule Woman Wisdom, the Memory of the Void revealed to her all the knowledge, all the secrets of the world.
Throughout the Campioneverse, there was no source of knowledge and wisdom that was better informed than the goddess Athena.
Moved, Guinevere rose adorably before joining her hands in a gesture of supplication.
"Divine protector of the arts and reason, please take pity on this humble Guinevere. In this incarnation as in the previous two, the purpose of my life was to awaken my noble lord from his long slumber. Please show me my king's resting place."
There was a brief moment of silence. Anxious, and troubled, Guinevere dared not look away from Athena, as if she feared that the goddess would disappear at any instant.
"I can probably tell you the position of Avalon," finally conceded the child-goddess. "Queen Guinevere, like all your predecessors, you didn't look for the wonderful island in the right place. Legend has it that it is a wandering island... it is not false. But it is not on or under any of the seas of this world."
Athena raised a finger to the sky. By reflex, Guinevere, Jeanne d'Arc, and even the impassive Altera looked up... almost expecting to see the legendary tomb of King Arthur floating in the air... but they saw only the blue sky and some lazy clouds.
"Avalon is an asteroid in geostationary orbit over Japan. No magic, no technology can reveal its presence because Avalon is veiled by mystical mists that hide it in the eyes of all."
While the three women were still stunned by the revelation that had just been given to them, Athena spoke again.
"I can take you to Avalon."
Guinevere clapped her hands with joy.
"Thank you, I..."
Athena shook her head.
"Only it won't do you any good. King Arthur is asleep and won't wake up, not even for you Queen Guinevere."
All joy disappeared in the queen of the Divine Ancestors' eyes, replaced by grief and doubt.
"Even for me? What do you mean?"
"The King of the End will only wake up when the conditions of his awakening are met."
"And what are these conditions, divine Athena," asked Jeanne, speaking for the first time.
"The purpose of the King of the End is the extermination of the Campiones" answered the adorable silver-haired teen. "King Arthur will wake up from his long sleep when the number of Devil Kings roaming the Earth will become too high. I do not know the number of illegitimate Childs of Epimetheus necessary for his awakening, however, one thing is certain. With the death of Duke Sasha Dejanstahl Voban, the time of the King of the End's awakening has moved away and not close."
Initially in shock, Guinevere remained open-mouthed, refusing to believe what the Greek goddess had revealed. But Athena had no reason to lie. Moreover, during three reincarnations, Guinevere had searched for her king and she had never discovered a trail leading to Arthur... There was also what Black Prince Alec had said during their last confrontation. The English Campione had suggested that her quest... the very purpose of Guinevere's existence... was in vain.
If Arthur had decided to sleep until the conditions of his awakening were fulfilled then... then... This Guinevere seeking to find and awaken her king was... an embarrassment for Arthur!
Despair replaced the shock in the eyes of the Witch of Brittany as she put a hand on her mouth to contain a scream.
In spite of Jeanne trying to comfort her, Guinevere began to cry.
—her whole existence was a lie...
—she wasn't the devoted handmaiden of King Arthur—
—just a nuisance for her King...
Altera looked at Athena and shook her head, showing emotion for the first time.
"This is unacceptable!"
Athena nodded.
"I know how to awaken King Arthur. The combined power of three Gods of Steel could force him to wake up. Nevertheless, I have absorbed only the power of the god-hero Perseus... or Mithras if you prefer his real name. But if you help me to seize the power of two other Gods of Steel, I would be able to release the King of the End from his eternal dream."
Altera breathed for a moment the proposal of the little goddess, the Scourge of God was not naive and she easily understood that the Greek goddess was helping them only because it suited her own purposes.
"And in return?"
"When I wake up the King Who Manifests at the World's End, I will kill him and absorb his power. You must give me your word not to interfere. "
"Why?"
"I don't have to answer that question," said Athena without showing any emotion.
But her gaze had returned to Godou Kusanagi, her 'prey'.
What King Arthur would do with the other Devil Kings wouldn't matter.
But nobody had the right to deny her rights to her dear 'prey'.
New Year's Eve's special episode
Your first Sumerian language lesson
With Ereshkigal
Ereshkigal coughed more to hide her embarrassment than to clear her voice. She swirled her cape and pointed to her class: Hakuno Kishinami, Godou Kusanagi and the Campione harem, Erica Blandelli, Yuri Mariya, Liliana Kranjcar, and Ena Seishuuin.
"Be grateful that a goddess of my rank deigns to lecture you."
The Goddess of the Netherworld stood behind a professor's desk in a Jounan Academy classroom.
Her 'pupils' were sitting at empty tables. Except that most of the girls surrounded Godou... only Hakuno and Yuri had sat in the distance.
Godou stood up and smiled politely.
"I am pleased with this proposal. My father, mother, and grandfather are archaeologists. I am very pleased when they tell me about the lives of ancient people. However, I doubt that any of them can boast about having a goddess as a teacher. Thank you."
Ere blushed violently and turned her head, hiding her confusion under a feigned indifference.
"It's... It's the role of a goddess to teach mortals."
She coughed again and quickly pulled her notes to give herself time to regain her calm.
"So in the first place, the Sumerian language is called eme-ki-en-gi-ra by the Sumerians, that is, 'language of Kingir'. Kingir (the native country) is the common name of what historians call Sumer."
On the blackboard behind her, Ere quickly drew a map of modern Iraq and the Arabian Gulf.
"The Sumerians appear in the Fourth Millennium before the Common Era, they arrive from the sea and settle on the coasts. The fact that their cities are now well inland is the result of the silt deposited by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers that pushed back the seas since this ancient era. It is often forgotten, but the Sumerians have also populated the coasts of Arabia, especially the islands."
Godou raised his hand.
"Goddess Ereshkigal, where did the Sumerians come from?"
"Good question... actually we don't know. The Sumerian language is a linguistic isolate; it is not related to any known language. However, there are some similarities with the Chinese. In the 1920s and 1930s a theory was that the Sumerians came from China. But recent discoveries in archaeology and genetics have shown that the cultivation of wheat and the manufacture of bonze have appeared in the Middle East and then later spread to China (and Europe, and northern Africa) and not the reverse. It is now assumed that the Sumerians came from the Indus Valley."
Ereshkiga looked at his cards again.
"The Sumerian language is a language known as 'agglutinative', meaning that to create a complex word you create a longer word by associating simple words. Fortunately, the words in Sumerian are short... try writing long sentences on dried mud tablets... most simple Sumerian words have one or two syllables."
She turned to the board and wrote what was to be a cuneiform word.
"This word is pronounced lu which means 'man'... now... " She drew a second sign. " There I wrote gal 'chief'. By associating them we obtain lugal that is to say 'king'. Sumerian vocabulary is limited, but with a little bit of imagination, you can create complex terms. Thus ur-sag means 'hero' and can be broken down into 'man' + 'head'... a head man, a leader. Logical, isn't it? Sometimes the Sumerian language can be very funny. Do you know how you say 'bedroom' in Sumerian? It's kinú literally 'the place where one lies'... Apparently, the Sumerians had little illusions about the compliments of their wives about their performances in bed... "
There was some laughter among the girls, but Godou blushed.
"Unlike the Egyptian language that primarily served to praise the gods, the first Sumerian scribe counted cattle. The Sumerian language is therefore much richer in words denoting concrete objects than ideas. In fact, we used the prefix nam- in front of a word denoting a physical object to denote an associated idea. For example lugal, 'king' and nam-lugal, 'royal'. Or dingir 'god' and nam-dingir 'divinity'."
The Goddess of the Netherworld wrote a series of cuneiform signs on the chalkboard.
"Here's a sentence in Sumerian. I wrote lugal-et-un-mu dù literally 'King. House. Built' or 'the king built a house."
Ereshkigal distractedly tapped the chalk on the board to attract the attention of her students.
"You may have noticed that lugal-et-un-mu formed a single word... It's called a nominal string, a word made up of several elements. As I said before, Sumerian is an agglutinative language. There are six elements in a nominal string, placed from left to right, first the central name (here lugal) the adjective, the genitive, the pronominal suffix, the plural sign, and last the declination ending."
She wrote another word made up of several cuneiform signs.
"These words read Uru-elle-là. Which means 'in big cities'."
Ere wrote another word.
"That can be read Uru-elle-en-li-là-Alaska-à. Which translates into 'In the big city of Enlil'. Questions?"
The Croatian knight raised her hand.
"Goddess Ereshkigal, you said that Sumerian is a declension language. Like German and Latin?"
The Queen of the Underworld acquiesced.
"Exactly, depending on whether the nominal string is the subject of the sentence, where you go, or what you're talking about, the ending will change. There are ten endings...actually nine. The absolute ending is just not adding any endings, hence the name. It's a bit complicated at first, but no more than the conjugation in other languages... besides, Sumerian verbs do not conjugate. There is also no time. If the event does not need a time indication, we do not put any. Otherwise, we add 'yesterday' for an indefinite past, or a 'tomorrow' for the future. When it comes to situating events further away, the Sumerian becomes very poetic. For example Eš kalammaka ninda šuaba translates as 'When the bread was first tasted in the sacred shrine of the land'. To evoke the same idea, you can also say Imšurinna kalammka ningtab akaba which translates into 'When the ovens had been lighted (for the first time)'. A bit of your' beginning of time'. But there are other ways of speaking about mythological times, the scribes of Sumer have shown much imagination for writing poetic texts."
Godou was interested in this.
"And how does the world begin for the Sumerians?"
"Gilgamesh loves to tell it... An kita badabaraaba Ki anta badasuraaba." replied Ereshkigal.
"What does that mean?"
"When the heavens had been separated from the earth. When the earth had been separated from the heavens... Never forget that Gilgamesh has Ea, the Sword of Rupture, the weapon that was used to achieve this separation... which means he can use it to bring the world back to the primal chaos."
This brought silence to the classroom. Ere smiled.
"To understand or write in Sumerian, you have to be imaginative. It is not a rigid language, and it is its highest quality. Remember, the language in which you think determines how you think. This is your reading grid to understand the world around you. Poets and scientists continued to use Sumerian for 21 centuries after the peasants abandoned it. Is this not proof that this language has great qualities?"
I Wish You An Happy New Year 2023!
(1) "The lands" is the nickname given by the Babylonians to their country, what we call, "Babylonia". Mesopotamia (or 'the country between the two rivers') is a Greek deformation of this term.
(2) Mesopotamians did not believe that the quality of the 'life' of a dead person in the afterlife depended on his actions during his life. No damnation for the bad people, no heaven for the good ones. A dead man with a grave will have a home in the next world. A dead man who has received funerary furniture and statuettes of servants will have their equivalent. On the contrary, a dead who does not receive food offerings knows an eternal hunger. Assurbanipal thus turned gods and kings into ghosts, destroying temples and tombs, and depriving them of all offerings.
(3)... or almost. Genghis Khan has done worse, with 11 million dead in just 40 years of reign... but it is difficult to compare because the Mongolian hordes have ravaged most of Asia, from Baghdad to Beijing (and then Asia was much more densely populated in the 13th century, than Assyria of the 7th century BCE).