Lukas Aguilar was gone.

No, it would be more accurate to say that the information representing Lukas Aguilar was overwritten. Something strange and alien infected him from within, corrupting his soul, his very existence, and marred it beyond recognition. There was no agony, there was no wound. Rather, it was an intimate violation of his very conscience.

In that moment, Lukas felt like he had been rebuilt in another’s image, only to be found lacking and deconstructed for the process to begin anew.

Again.

And again.

The loop went on and on, and through it all, he could sense a darkness moving inside him, a murky shade that was twisted and terrible beyond comparison. There were no words to express the sheer wrongness he had felt.

Then, it was done.

And something within him fundamentally changed.

His body was no longer his own. His thoughts, his memories, his desires, his habits— all of it was scattered into the endless void, leaving him naked and alone. A consciousness that had no choice but to spectate, unable to dictate the flow of his own life.

A prisoner in his own body, one that did and did not exist at the same time.

It was like watching a movie where the lead character was someone that looked exactly like him, and yet there was the knowledge, the absolute certainty, that he was not him.

Without warning, his body moved.

Energy rippled across his skin like liquid lightning, exploding out in a radial wave with a huge, crackling roar. Space itself warped and shattered around him like the flickering wisps of an inferno.

And in the middle of it all was the khorkhoi.

Electric blue flames held it in place, searing its scales and causing the monstrosity— once a powerful predator —to scream like prey, wounded and broken. The scales burned and burned, eventually reducing to motes of dust, only for the monster’s innate regeneration to try and refill the wound each time with fresh tissue and scales.

It was not long before its own regenerative prowess turned against itself.

A smile twisted its way onto Lukas’s lips as he watched the monster scream.

No, not his eyes.

There was no scientific explanation that could justify how he was able to see through his own field of vision while simultaneously observing his body from a different vantage point.

But that’s exactly what happened.

Lukas had no mouth, but he gasped in surprise at the sight he drank in.

Gone were his cozy brown irises. In their stead sat vivid green orbs thrumming with power. Power ready to burn, destroy and annihilate anything and everything that stood before it.

It was... intoxicating.

And judging by how the screen was also going haywire, he wasn’t the only one affected by it.

System Overload!

Unable To Allocate Resources.

Mana Forge Available.

Linking...

Mana Forge Activated.

New Skill Created!

Skill

Soul Capacity Consumed

Mana Manipulation (Level 3)

17

“Pathetic!” a strange feminine rasp escaped his throat. Abject disappointment flooded through him, as if judging his very existence to be insignificant.

His lips dangerously thinned.

“I had forgotten of the frailty of mortal flesh. Even the meanest of skills risks the shell’s destruction.”

There was a brief pause.

“No matter.”

Lukas looked down at the fallen monster, crawling along the floor dozens of feet below him. The creature, once a gargantuan monstrosity, was now whimpering upon the ground, begging for its existence to be spared.

Like a measly rat. A twitching insect awaiting death.

As was its place.

Why his thoughts were suddenly so morbid, he had no clue. But the mindset itself felt completely natural, and along with it came a dangerous arrogance, a feeling of natural superiority.

It was an absolute belief— no matter what stood in his path, victory was a foregone conclusion.

He was…

He was…

“Tell me, mortal,” the voice called out, amusement coloring its tone. “Is my mind pleasing?”

Mind? Was he in someone else’s mind? What was going on? The number of questions he had only increased with each passing second, yet one truth rang true, discernable above all else— this entity could squash him like an insect.

That he, like the many-fanged monster, meant nothing to her.

He, it— they were all vermin.

Once again, a sense of amusement flickered through his mind, and the voice spoke again.

“You need not fear me, mortal, not whilst we are in bargain. I have thus spoken, and my word is my bond.”

The khorkhoi screeched out in agony as its abdominal region tore open, belching out multitudes of tiny... wormlets? Baby worms? Was this creature the mother to those slime-worms he’d faced a while ago?

Did that make it a slime-mother worm? A mother slime-worm?

Amusement flitted through him a third time. “Has anyone ever told you that you are a very entertaining mortal?”

“...What do you mean?”

The voice did not respond. Instead, an overwhelming sense of disinterest slammed into his mind like a sledgehammer. Even the tiniest sliver of his— the voice’s —emotions felt monumental to his feeble mind. It was like taking hundreds of terabytes of data and forcing it into a floppy disk.

How he was still able to formulate rational thoughts, even now, was beyond him.

Suddenly, he raised a finger. One that slowly began to move, leaving vestiges of particles that shone like flecks of gold in its wake. It was apparent that he was drawing something, branding it into the air itself.

But for Lukas, it was so much more than that.

Gone was the anomaly, the stone walls, the hideous monster beneath him.

A different time, a different place, a different era began to superimpose itself upon the present.

There, before him, stood a royal throne amidst the shining stars, an enormous ax laying bare beside it. And seated upon the throne was a woman, possessing the kind of beauty that one sang odes of and waged wars over.

Her hair was blacker than the darkest of nights, with skin as white as the finest marble. Her lips were the color of frozen mulberries, fitting perfectly onto a smooth, lovely face that had the most beautiful eyes he had ever seen. And yet, no matter how much he tried, how perfect each one of her facial features was individually, he couldn’t behold her perfection in its entirety.

She wasn’t old.

She wasn’t young.

Words didn’t even exist to describe such beauty.

Her lips slightly twitched, a barely-formed smirk directed at him as he gawked.

All around her were hundreds of entities— real and phantasmal, human and not, creatures of myth and history— all genuflecting in reverence.

She raised a finger.

He raised a finger.

Lukas felt his vision flicker. The world itself distorted, her finger overlaying with his own.

He, she— they smiled coldly as they gazed down upon the tortured monster.

Judgment began.

The limited experience with the slime-worm earlier had borne him a healthy dose of respect for its regenerative capabilities. He had watched his fair share of television, and so knew of how lizards could grow entirely new tails, or how a lone starfish could regrow its entire form from a torn-off arm.

The slime-worm had them beat by miles.

And so it was only natural that something that was effectively the slime-worm’s mother would boast the same ability, albeit exponentially more effective.

But that didn’t matter, since what came next couldn’t possibly be classified as a battle. After all, the word ‘battle’ implied that both sides had a chance of victory.

This was nothing but a massacre. An act of God.

His finger had etched out a thin structure in the air, lending it material form with the floating gold-dust particles.

Mana, Lukas realized. That was what he was seeing. And, if the screen were to be believed, something he was now capable of manipulating.

The mana was so potent that it nearly felt alive. So pure that even the tiniest fleck could power the strongest spell his body could produce. So concentrated that even the smallest of particles held more potency than he could fathom.

All of that aggregated to form a single letter.

A rune.

No matter how much he stared at it, the floating object defied his comprehension. Staring at the left invalidated the right. Looking at the top erased knowledge of the bottom. Despite being able to focus on parts of the rune, when picturing it as a whole, the memory would not hold in his mind.

He could see, but not remember.

Visualize, but not comprehend.

Know, yet remain forever ignorant.

A dichotomy he simply could not twist his mind around.

The rune, letter, strange thing— it slammed into the fallen monster and submerged itself into its body.

And then, something bright and red erupted.

Only it wasn’t blood.

It was like liquid fire.

It spewed out of the creature’s skin like a fountain, corroding the very terrain around it. The worm tried to roll over, to escape the pain and the fire by digging into the ground. It was to no avail.

Finally, it settled on mindlessly screeching in agony as its body erupted into blisters from which more flames spread outwards. Fire leaked out of its scales, out of its jaws, out of its many fangs, out of the tips of its tails.

In the end, all that was left was ash.

The bottom fell out of his stomach.

Mortal. That was what she had called him from the very start. Not human, but mortal, as if she wasn’t one in the first place. That should have been the first omen.

He had ignored it then, fearing for his life. In a different, saner situation, he would have given her words a lot more thought before making a deal with the proverbial devil. Yet, there had been something so primal, so visceral, about her offer that it left no room for refusal.

The concept was simple. She had promised him a way out— a way to survive, living to see another day. In return, he would fulfill one wish of her choosing before leaving this godforsaken place. No matter how sinister it may have seemed, the choice was easy to make, especially considering it was his only one.

But now, as it stood, he was alive and well. And still within the anomaly, which meant more of these monsters and perhaps even scarier ones showing up in the not-so-distant future.

Forget fulfilling the bargain, he didn’t even know if he could stay alive long enough. Would he then have to make another one to save himself? Lukas could mentally picture himself drowning in an ever-rising ocean of bargains to the entity in his mind. And debts only became worse as they compounded.

Just like with credit card companies. Now that was real evil.

Fear rose within him like ice, freezing him to the bone. Even breathing felt like a burden, his fatigued body and shaking knees at the verge of collapse.

But still, Lukas stood.

And he spoke.

“What are you?”

“Oh? Are you sure you wish to know, mortal? The truth is a very dangerous thing. Once shown, it cannot be unseen.”

Lukas mustered up the courage to answer. “If I’m supposed to fulfill your wish, it’s only fair I know who I’m bargaining with.”

“Fair enough. I am the leader of Akkadia, the chief goddess of Sumer.”

Lukas stilled.

A goddess. A goddess.

A real, live goddess was before him. He was talking to a goddess. He had bargained with a goddess.

And yet, he would not, could not, look away from her delectable face.

Lukas swallowed.

The action made her smile.

“You’re wise to be afraid, mortal,” the goddess commended. “How does it feel to encounter that which you thought did not exist?”

Lukas paled. He knew what she was talking about. His own agnostic views. The rational and cynical parts of him were furiously trying to deny what his eyes were seeing, what his mind was telling him. The power that this being— this goddess —had just wielded was beyond his comprehension, and she described it as a mere sliver of her power. Whether that statement was a truth or a lie was inconsequential, just the limited experience he’d been shown was unexplainable by science.

Unexplainable by any law.

That left only one alternative. To believe that it was the truth, that this entity before him was an honest-to-God goddess.

She smiled, as if following the flow of his thoughts.

The inference was not comforting.

Lukas steeled himself. If he was going to accept that his assumptions were wrong, that gods were real and he was actually talking to a goddess, then he would need to get to the bottom of this.

He’d need to be sure, beyond any reasonable doubt.

“Show me,” he stated as firmly as possible. “No matter how dangerous it might be.”

“Very well.” He felt the goddess smile. “This is who I am.”

The world around them changed.

“I am called Anunit.”

He recognized that name. Anunit. The daughter of Annunaki, the guardian deity of Ancient Mesopotamia.

“I am the morning star. The Supreme Queen of An, the Daughter of Ki.”

In the background, lightning streaked across the heavens. The starry sky was filled with meteors, asteroids and countless comets outshining everything in existence. Lukas was no expert, but his recent study of Babylonian creation myths allowed him to instantly recognize what An and Ki meant.

Heaven and Earth.

In Babylonian genesis, there was only one entity that could wield such a title.

And the one sitting in front of him was not her. Not if she was Anunit.

“My wrath breaks the divine thrones, my whims defile the most sacred of relics.”

A sea of shattered cities formed around him, empty castles littered with broken thrones.

“Cities turn to mold, shrines turn to graves.”

The fierce winds of a hurricane billowed, and giant chasms opened up beneath his feet, eerily similar to the one that had opened up underneath him right before he was whisked away.

He idly wondered if this goddess had anything to do with that.

The thought did little to settle his growing apprehension and horror.

“Existence is unraveled by the fire of my presence.”

The sun behind her exploded in a giant supernova, only to keep spinning and reform back into shape. A thousand new worlds manifested around her just as a thousand others were instantly decimated, atomized without a care.

His mind went back to the ancient goddess, the original entity that could be called the one true Queen of the Heavens.

The one that existed before the Heavens themselves.

Before genesis, or as they called it, the Enuma Elish.

“Where I tread is battle...”

Sumer. Babylonia. Akkadia. Chaldea. Surely there was something. Something he was overlooking. After all those nights poring over those books for his job, not being able to decipher this mystery leavened his heart with failure.

Especially with how the goddess consistently gave him hints with each passing description.

A battle god. Gilgamesh was two-thirds God. Or perhaps Marduk?

“...Where I sleep is lust.”

And now he didn’t know what to think.

“My pleasure is prosperity, my wrath annihilation—”

It was then that it clicked. A goddess that was primarily a wargod, albeit one far more cruel, far more dangerous. One who also represented the darker aspects of beauty and lust.

The one who brought the Bull of heaven down to face Gilgamesh himself.

There was no other like her.

“I am—”

You are— Lukas began.

“INANNA!”