Tanya’s legs continued to tremble. After everything that had happened, it was a miracle she was still standing without help from her compatriots. And yet, nothing had shaken her like the word Bergott had used to describe their attackers.

Yokai. He had said yokai.

And it was no mistake, either. She had asked twice just in case. The ghosts of her past were back for her. To drag her back into the endless nightmare-fest that ended with the death of—

“Yokai?” Elena’s bleary tone broke her from her downward spiral. “What are those?”

“Hold on,” Zuken interrupted. “I know those things were similar to the reiki we read about in stories, but yokai? Seriously?”

“They were yokai,” Olfric affirmed, glancing towards Zuken. “I’ve seen it with my own eyes. They enthralled Cyffnarian soldiers to do their bidding. You know the old tales as well as I do, Banksi.”

Zuken looked back at him with a deep frown, but said nothing.

Tanya knew exactly how he felt. In another life, she had been much like him. Educated in Asukan history and culture, she had studied the bloodied past Asukans shared with the species that once dominated these very lands.

Six hundred years ago.

Yokai were of the Other, her father had taught her. Non-bremetan creatures that were fully capable of disguising themselves as bremetans and preying upon them for food. The more conservative folks referred to them as monsters disguised underneath a flesh mask, to track and entrap their prey.

But Tanya remembered them differently. They were an aspect of her past that had taken away everything she held dear. As much as she thought Goddess Amaterasu was to blame for everything that had happened to the yokai, it still didn't change her passionate hatred towards them.

And now, they were here.

Just like before.

“I don’t know much about them,” Zuken finally said, briefly meeting her eyes. “All I know is that they were incredibly dangerous.”

“Not surprising,” Olfric agreed. “I was held captive by an entire community. They were using enthralled Cyffnarian soldiers to do their bidding.” Tanya glanced at the still-unconscious and bleeding soldier a little further away from them. “They only left me alive for one reason.”

“To tell the tale?” Elena asked, wrinkling her nose. “They do sound creepier than your average nasty, I’ll give you that much.”

“Enthrallment,” Zuken repeated. “They’re truly capable of it?”

“Enough to make me do their bidding,” Olfric defended. “They wanted me to lead a cohort into the anomaly and kill every adventurer inside. It was only my faith in the Gods that helped me break free from their wicked trance.”

Tanya narrowed her eyes. As far as she was concerned, she couldn’t ward off so much as a beetle with her faith in the Asukan pantheon. But more importantly, enthrallment didn’t work the way Olfric described it.

She would know. She had first-hand experience of it.

He was a lying bastard. For whatever reason, Olfric Bergott was hiding his true involvement with those creatures, and she could do nothing to prove it. If she did speak up, it would only lead to Zuken asking her justified, but uncomfortable questions.

Questions she wasn’t ready to entertain at the moment, if ever.

“Let’s see if I’ve gotten everything so far,” Zuken snapped his fingers. “A yokai community still lives, and they live here in this desert. They probably killed some other adventurers, trapped you, and enthralled you to hunt down the rest of the adventurers. Is that about it?”

“They wanted me to kill the others,” Olfric nodded, “but I also had another task.”

“And what was that?” Tanya couldn’t help but ask.

“They wanted me to destroy the anomaly.”

…

“Well,” Elena broke in, “that was unexpected.”

Surprisingly enough, the changeling’s expression described her bubbling feelings rather well. Tanya sighed, sharing a long look with Zuken, whose brows were furrowed and mind furiously churning in deep thought.

Because for some reason, they shared the same goal as the yokai.

“Unexpected indeed,” she murmured.

“You… you killed Enki?” Lukas whispered in disbelief. “As in, the Sumerian God of Water and Wisdom? That same Enki?”

“Enki, Enlil, Ea… He has been called many names, across many lifetimes. Enki was many things, but one of wisdom, he was not. He who stole the Truths of Sacred Water from the dying tears of Ancient Queen Tiamat, he who betrayed the city of Eridu… That was the god I slew with my own two hands.”

“Slew…” Lukas murmured, as if tasting the word on his lips. “So even Gods can die.”

“Not as such. A true God is a Truth incarnate. So long as the Truth exists, so will the God. No matter how weakened, no matter how despicable of an existence it may be, he will linger around as would a weakened parasite, latching onto reality and biding his time.”

“But you just said you killed him.”

“Indeed,” she agreed.

“Then—” Lukas furrowed his brow. “I don’t get it. People die when they’re killed.”

“People,” Inanna agreed. “Not gods.”

“I still don’t get it.”

“An understandable notion,” Inanna sighed, “given your mortality. Gods may be killed, but they do not necessarily die. In fact, it is rare that a God ends up dying. Even the greatest Mother of Dragons, Queen Tiamat, existed as a helpless, unkempt child long after her demise.”

“So how did you manage to slay Enki?”

“I took away his Truths. I erased his dominion in its entirety and built Uruk on those very rocks. I made him worse than the meanest wraith—”

“But he stayed alive, right?” Lukas prodded.

Her silence spoke volumes.

“So what exactly are these Truths you keep bringing up?”

“The answer to your question is not something you can comprehend, mortal. But tell me this. Why does the demise of this God by my hands sound so impossible to your ears that you keep denying its veracity?”

“I— I can’t begin to tell you the number of issues in that one regularly sized sentence,” Lukas groaned.

He could feel the weight of Inanna’s stare resting on his shoulders. Instead, he tried to explain it in a different way— a more human way. Closing his eyes, he began to recollect the phrases he’d meticulously studied in the past.

“‘She will offer you a gift. Ask her only for the corpse that hangs from the hook on the wall. One of you will sprinkle the food of life on it. The other will sprinkle the water of life. Inanna will arise.'”

Lukas paused for a moment, before continuing. “‘The kurgarra and the galatur heeded Enki's words. They set out for the underworld.’”

Slowly, he opened his eyes. “It’s an excerpt from The Descent of Inanna, by Wolkstein and Kramer.”

The goddess didn’t seem enlightened by his citation.

“That,” he slowly continued, “was a paraphrasing of what my world remembers about your descent. Ninshubur, your faithful servant, went to the Gods. To Enlil, to Nanna, to Enki, begging to restore you back to life.”

“That,” Inanna replied, her tone as dry as the Sahara, “was a passable attempt at writing fiction. I pity your ancestors, that they had to conjure such imagined things to cope with their loss.”

“Their… loss?” Lukas repeated.

“Why of course!” the goddess replied. “Your ancestors must have been beside themselves at my descent to have forgotten the true order of things. What else could have forced them to imagine such a drivel instead?”

“You—” Lukas choked. “Next, you’re gonna tell me that Ishtar is actually some Venus namesake.”

“The name does not sound familiar.”

Lukas groaned. He didn’t know why he was getting so worked up about all this. Was it because as a lawyer, he couldn’t stress enough about the difference between fact and rumor? Or was it because everything he seemed to know, everything he had meticulously studied about the Sumerian empire and Babylonian genesis were apparently figments of someone’s imagination? More so than before?

Months ago, back when everything was normal, he wouldn't have cared. Hell, he’d have unequivocally agreed that mythology was a fiction created by imaginative thinkers of the past who wanted people to rally around a certain collection of beliefs. It was, after all, the easiest way to start a community.

But now, a Sumerian Goddess was telling him that despite herself being real, everything he knew as Sumerian mythos was a work of fiction.

He tried wrapping his mind around that, but failed.

Dismally.

“In my world,” Lukas clarified, “Inanna and Ishtar are two names of the same goddess. While the former conjured images of blood and violence and war, the goddess Ishtar is associated with love, beauty and the planet Venus.”

Inanna blankly stared at him, before sighing. “I grow weary of this conversation. Defending my own history against the paltry notes of your historians is far beneath me.”

“I—” he froze, realizing this conversation would lead him nowhere. “Sorry. It’s all just been on my mind a lot lately.”

“It seems unlikely your cares will lighten,” the goddess snorted. “Improve your mind.”

Lukas was going to retort with something witty, but decided to hold off until his proverbial bacon was completely out of the fire. Deciding to take his own advice for once, he bobbed his head lightly and looked around at his surroundings instead.

At the nigh-infinite horde of crystals.

It was a veritable trove of treasure. If he managed to get his hands on all of these, he’d have a significantly greater number of skills to draw from. The khorkhoi alone had opened new avenues he didn’t even know existed until then. He hadn’t yet tried the Kasha or the bremetan prototypes, but he was sure that every single one in his collection had something to enrich him with.

To enrich the Anomaly that was Lukas Aguilar.

For a moment, a mental landscape flickered in front of his eyes, overlaying what was truly around him. A large grassy terrain— almost akin to a mountain. He could picture outgrowths of crystal, living crystals that swayed in the wind like grass yet shone like silver. An unending number of paths all diverging away from him, their sides laden with these crystals, each one of them thicker and brighter and larger than the ones around him.

Something told him that even if he consumed every crystal in this Crypt, the anomaly in him would be no more or less ‘complete’ than before. But there would certainly be more to it.

And wasn’t that a beautiful thought?

“Tell me,” Lukas said, his instincts and analysis over the time spent in this new world guiding his thoughts. “Just how many of you are there?”

“Ask your question clearly.”

“I guess I’m trying to determine the line between fact and fiction. An enormous amount of mythology has found its way to Earth from this… world? Worlds? Greek, Roman, Celtic, Sumerian, Hindu, Christian. Those are only the more common ones, and that’s without the one aspect of history I haven’t considered.”

“Which is?”

“History is objective, not subjective. Just because you weren’t present during an event, that does not mean it didn't happen.”

“Obviously. Why is this a cause for concern?”

Lukas exhaled. Loudly. “You told me you were a reflection, one with the goal of bringing the original back. But that’s just it. One doesn’t place all their hopes on any one person, place, or plan. Like chess, the superior player does not plan to accomplish a single gambit. Instead, he establishes his pieces so that regardless of what the enemy does, he can adapt. Just like you, a reflection, found yourself waiting in this pendant, what’s to say there isn’t some other reflection that didn’t make changes in your absence? Maybe the real Inanna is already free—”

“That is not true, mortal.”

“But how do you know?” Lukas pressed. “Unless of course, you’re the only reflection out there.”

“No.”

“...No? As in, you’re not the only one?”

“No. As in, I do not feel the need to answer that question.”

Lukas frowned. “Why not?”

“Because,” she intoned, her voice colder than an Arctic winter, “I will not stand for this interrogation. I am not your servant, mortal. You are mine.”

“Servant,” Lukas scowled. “I hate that word. You may have given me power, but ultimately it serves your own purpose. Choose a different term.”

“I grow tired of these trivialities,” Inanna spoke. And for once, she actually sounded tired. “The events that led to my awakening were not in a manner I predicted. The pendant had been placed upon your world with another minor purpose in mind but its presence— and mine —made it possible to use as a gambit when catastrophe struck your world.”

“Gambit.” He had the sudden urge to gnash his teeth in displeasure. Something about her words made him feel strange, like He was inconsequential and His existence didn’t matter. He, who had survived countless aeons where paltry gods and goddesses had done their best to instill faith in creatures He had give birth to, was being treated like a—

And just like that, the strange feeling was gone.

Leaving behind an utterly, utterly perplexed Lukas Aguilar.

What the fuck was that?

The goddess inside his head remained conspicuously silent.