[b]Shamash, Bound in Glory.[/b]

[i]It is Ishtar who is waiting for you at the Bridge of Heaven, before the array of your chariots. It was always Ishtar who would. The curtains of her palanquin part as your priests approach their holy vessels, and one gauntlet wreathed in lapis lazuli makes an imploring gesture.

“Shamash,” she says, and she dares to use her Voice on you. On YOU. On Shamash who Breaks the Horizon. As if you did not have Dampeners worked into your helm. “Stay. I have prepared a feast in honor of your aspect as Champion of Heaven, First of the Fleet. A year has passed since I gave birth to this festival, all in your honor. Stay with us.”

“It is my prerogative and duty to conquer the proud sky,” you respond. A check. “Nothing may bind me or keep me in check.”

“Yet stay,” Ishtar pleads, stony-faced in serene radiance under her crown of many banners. “I will offer you whatever you may wish. Babylon the Great is the perfected world, and all that may be wished is within it.”

“Save for that which Shamash brings on swift wings, and Marduk with the tramp of many feet which are not his own. Are you perhaps lost in memories of the days before creation, sister, that you must be comforted?”

As direct a rebuke as you can make. The gauntlet withdraws sharply. Good. Ishtar has been getting too proud for someone who has only been part of the Pantheon for a few centuries now.

“I will bring you trophies, sister,” you say, and bow low. “Ones befitting a Queen of Heaven.” Because you will, inevitably, win.

You just hope the Zhianku makes their struggle entertaining for a little while.[/i]

***

Smoke rises and is filtered out by your helm. You could (and have) walk on the outer shell of a chariot and never for a moment struggle for breath. Struggle is for those beneath you. Struggle is for those who fear losing their lives.

...that creature is strange. It puffs and parades itself around like one of your exalted servants, taking pride in its barbarity. Yet you have held this world for years. How has its pride not been broken by seeing the ruin of its world’s champions? (It is Zhianku. It trained in their rude academies, belaboring under the useless thought-construct of a soul. There is no such thing. There must not be. When you die you will [i]stop.[/i])

Still. You find yourself interested in bringing it back. The way the court ogles at it is entertaining enough, and its brashness, its spirit... perhaps maybe you will not kill it. Maybe this time you will be like your brothers and sisters who do not kill, who do not glory in the fires in heaven, who do not dash chariots against the rocks and know their captains to be dead upon impact. Maybe you will bring it back and ask Ishtar to break it in, to gouge out its higher functions until it never so much as thinks (ha!) of Looking at you.

Of seeing the you inside of Shamash.

You rise with a grunt. The music stops instantly. You wave a hand. “Continue. I merely follow the wind.” That is enough to keep the idiots from panic as you take the slow path to the rear chambers where your true tribute is being made ready.

And there it is. The Zhianku student. The one who sees. The mocking trickster. It stands among your gold as if saying: I know the secret, too. This is my power now. I will take it and pry the helmet off your skull and now there will be two dead gods on this planet.

And no wild death-yearning can stop the blind horrified panic of [i]losing your gold.[/i]

The Furnace in your chest ignites. You burn gold without thought. The distance between you is cut roughly from existence. Your fingers curl around its throat and you lift, the words of your arm an inferno branded on your being. [i]POWER. STRENGTH. GLORY.[/i] The Furnace roars hungrily as you bring it close.

It Looks at you again, or tries to: the lenses of your helmet filter out the cognitohazard battering at you, reducing it to a smoky figure writhing in your grip. It is like holding smoke. It will be out soon. It will have your gold.

The generators in your helm flicker to life with a thought, triangulating on its head. You unleash your Voice. Let Ishtar have her irresistible commands; you have the Wind That Consumes.

The wall behind it cracks like a hammerblow from the backwash of your Voice. The creature goes limp, and before you boil the brain in its skull, you disengage the generators and toss it down to the floor.

There is silence but for the ragged whine of aftershock. The Inquisitor and her servants are on their faces, not daring to rise. You watch the creature.

Get up, you think.

You’re not done with it yet.

[Never Give Up, Never Surrender, Canada.]