THE child gives a laugh and it bursts from his chest like a concourse of thunderclaps, a hand clutching at his abdomen as rapidly cast materiel continues to crack as though lightning. “And here I thought I caused you nothing but disgust, yet you’re willing to risk your existence just to last the mere flicker of a moment in my mind! Should I be flattered?” The onslaught is, by his standards, still mere whispers of light rain, merciful, even, yet for the unfledged audience to the cavalcade it is a supersonic symphony howling CATACLYSM IN D MAJOR ( the “glory key” suited toward expressions of death, of matter loftiest, of triumphant warcries echoing in the bloodshod welters of armed combat, of violence heard before it is seen ) as the ear struggles without purchase to parse a singular note of reason amongst the bellow and the blare — the string concertos of lyres, violins, and violoncellos supplanted with the blade-edged expression of resolzas, rapiers, fauchards and bayonets, of metals sharp and storied singing warcry salvos as the air throats their inanimate bloodlust and merciless keening, blitzkrieg bereft of pause or torpor as swords descend from above apropos to an aerial assault maneuver primed to decimate ground-position opponents ( bombardments that would enfilade and chew through both biological and inorganic matter with impunity and without discrimination ). It would be far too easy, particularly if one lacked the mental acumen to perceive the utter speed at which these two combatants moved, to presume their waltz chaotic and deprived of cogency, but the intuned would identify causality amidst the large groundswells of upturned dust heaving as the earth was ravaged, the sheer exactitude by which the boy marshaled his armaments in riposte to Calesvols’s tactics showing both his intimacy with precision and the nuances of waging concentrated assault. It denounced excess without aim for efficiency in its numbers: for any blade that is deflected there is a cohort to take its place, primed at the ready as the child toys with discovering the vital points on both the sword-shield and the magics fruiting from its flesh-covered sheaves. Indeed, there is a score to the hellish scene, and Gilgamesh is the undisputed conductor of its anarchy.
“A shield,” he starts, voice a sunlight interlude between the tempests and furies, “How fitting.” Yet how less a subject acceptable for a worthy capture, his will to crush the sword where it stood consorting with the amusement he’d garnered through the deployment of tactics that demanded him to adopt dynamic strategies ( adjusting his aim, range, and speed as he played battle by ear ), finding patterns in his opponent's behavior, the ticks of a weapon — and for all that the child acknowledges how formidable the sword had thus been, its resignation toward what he perceives as complacence tempers his palette with a grey, insipid flavor, timbre mellifluous yet hoarfrost-cold. “For shields have no sense of self-preservation, and you demonstrate that finely. You were never made to protect yourself but that which lay behind you, and you have nothing.”
A bulwark does not move. It cannot advance nor thicken its walls save for the efforts of those it was designed to shelter. Gilgamesh knew well the bulwark; the construction of Unug’s ramparts was an undertaking he had begun early in his life, and it was perhaps the singular shred of memory that linked him to the self he would have inevitably become. But perhaps the greater fact — whether there was commensuration to be found between the spring and winter of his life — is that Gilgamesh would have made the protection of his people inevitable. Unug’s walls were extensions of his will, a great embankment that guarded the things he had deemed worthy; vast, strong arms of mudbrick and clay: something that was meant to outlast him.
“RIGHT now, you are no shield. You are even less than a wall: guarding nothing, holding nothing.” Gilgamesh responds without a single recognizable nuance to grant color to his voice, staring into those alizarin eyes thieved in ignorance. The formation of the Gate’s brilliant portals suddenly multiply — they bolt like drips of golden dewdrops which peal across the field in many groves, positioning themselves such so that they now haloed directly above and around Calesvol: a sphere of aureoles bathing the sword and its bifurcating magicks with blinding light. “It seems you’ve already broken yourself. A shame. But you can at least take pride in the fact that you’ve got that one thing over me.” Each rift cracks with variegated mana pulsing from the tips of swords as sharp and as keen as the day they were born. The demigod does not see anything protected as he looks down on the object from above: instead he sees something caged, a pest ensnared in chains of its own design.
HE raises his right hand, priming his weaponry to bring an end to this farce of a song. “Don’t worry — I have every intention of finishing the job.”
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