He made a show of mock peevishness, but in truth he was hoping for something more exciting than the usual fracas over territorial borders between rival nobles to sort out. “Oh very well Nis. Show him in, let’s hear it. I can eat and listen."
Sumu-Abum hurried in and prostrated himself. “Mighty King, I must apologise for this intrusion in your private hour.”
“Get up, Sumu. Spit it out man, what’s going on now, that you can’t sort out yourself? We both know you’re more than capable of running the Kingdom.”
“Sire, I bring grave news. The village of Naram Kush in the hills close to the edges of the Great Southern Desert…”
“Aye, I know of it.” He knew every town and village within his realm.
“It has been…destroyed, sire. Almost entirely, many dead, including the local Lord, and extensive damage to its structures. It happened swiftly, not long ago, the message was carried by a rider, a young man, from the frontier as far as Sumai where it was received by the priest of Enki there who was then able to contact the temple here in Uruk. It has been divined to be truthful in import. The village has been scryed upon to verify the claims.”
“What caused this destruction? We have no enemies to the South.”
“A monstrous centipede, sire, of unprecedented size. The ground shook at its passage like an earthquake, and toppled buildings. Also, it was surrounded by a poisonous miasma that slew any who approached its flanks.”
Gilgamesh brightened. His day was improving by the minute.
“How long ago?”
“By my reckoning, sire…given the time for the rider from Naram Kush to have alerted Sumai…the destruction would have occurred around 3-4 hours ago.”
He shooed wife the second Bam-Ninki off his lap with an affectionate pat on the rump and rose to his feet. “This calls for some direct action, Sumu. Has Anu blessed you in your daily devotions with divine power to do his bidding?”
“Oh My King, yes, may his blessings be heaped upon your house always. I am fully prepared to most humbly serve Uruk and her great and majestic King with my own small measure of divine empowerment, though it is but limited in comparison to your own mighty birthright.”
“Limited by some measures but far more versatile, Sumu, as you well know. I will have need of your miracles of faith in Anu to help us swiftly locate the monster. Have my arms fetched and find Ed-Wyna, and Ur-Zababa. We four will depart before the next hour is sounded. We will put an end to it before it reaches Sumai.”
As the broad-shouldered King of Uruk donned his shining armour, he considered from whence this beast might have arisen, and felt concern that it may have also caused harm to his Janni allies whose caravans frequented the Southern Desert. It sounded like no natural creature. Could it be some harbinger sent by an angry god? Had they failed to appease some divinity? His priests routinely reassured him that all the proper sacrifices were being made on the allotted holy days.
It was in the Southern Desert, when visiting Luzahn Al-Qadir the great Janni chieftan who laid claim to those lands, where he first met his current future wife (for she would surely see that he was the greatest and most potent of her three remaining suitors, and not reject his incipient proposal of marriage), the lovely young widow Mishari Al-Khalifa who was visiting with her grandfather. At that time, she was still in mourning for the loss of her husband who was the second son of the ruler of their people, slain battling an abomination on some far-flung realm of existence. When in recent months he heard that her period of mourning had ended, he lost no time in pressing his suit, for she was surpassingly beautiful and talented in all manner of feminine accomplishments. Not unblemished, but the attraction of virgins had long ago worn thin with him and nowadays he preferred a more experienced partner.
Also, being of the Janni, she was very tall. Gilgamesh was himself a giant among men, over 8 feet tall. He had married many times in his long existence. He was mortal – a fact that still woke him up at night in a trembling sweat - but through divine ancestry he was blessed with a far longer span of years than an ordinary man. He thought of himself as an old romantic at heart, always looking for that perfect match, but in the end never quite being satisfied.
Life was unfair, like that, he thought.
This Janni woman had captivated him, though, like none had for many years. Maybe she would be the one, who would so satisfy his desires that he would never want for another. (A prayer that many nobles and priests of Uruk whose only too willing wives and daughters he had taken to his bed, in spite of their protestations, would doubtless hope also to see fulfilled…)
The Janni were a strange folk. They claimed ownership of those desert lands, and their shining oases, but they came and went mysteriously. There were times when one might ride through the whole desert and never once encounter one. Other times the oases were teeming with them, and their stalls were open for trade. Strange goods they sold there that were not of this world. For the Janni only appeared to be human. In truth, they were elemental spirits whose origins were pre-human. At some point in their distant past they became bound into human-like forms. But they were related to Djinn, and Ifrits and Daevas and other such spirit beings. For this reason, his advisers had counseled him against pursuing a union with one such as they.
Advisers. They were just a thing you were supposed to have as a King. The main advantage, as far as he could tell, was in having someone else around to blame when things went wrong.
Anyway, this monster insect, was it a beast the Janni had brought with them on their travels between worlds, and it had broken loose? Or was it some horrific daemon from the nether realms conjured by a lunatic dabbler in the dark arts?
Gilgamesh, his vizier Sumu, Ur-Zababa a trusted warrior-priest of Marduk, and the fierce marshal of the palace guard Ed-Wyna, his daughter by Nisaba, made ready to depart. Once outside the palace they were on strict instructions from their King to drop the ceremony and honorifics which they paid him in front of the staff and populace. “When we are battling this monster, there will be not a second to spare for you to even think about whether you are paying me due respect. Except for you, Ed-Wyna. I’m still your father.” Ed-Wyna poked her tongue out at her father as soon as his head was turned.
“Sumu, can you take us to Naram Kush?”
“My King, I fear I am not sufficiently familiar with our southern frontiers to safely place us in that village particularly in view of its recent, ah, re-arrangement. I can ask around the temple district if you wish to find someone…”
“No time for that, we must get moving. What of the town of Sumai?”
“Yes, I know the temple there well.”
“Take us to Sumai, Sumu, then we will range forth in Wind Walk to seek our quarry. It surely should not be difficult to spot from the air if we head southwards from there.”
His vizier bowed. “As you command.” Reading from his prayer-sticks he made the mystic passes and invocations of Anu, and whoosh! There was a momentary perception of cold air rushing upwards beneath their feet, then a mist swirled up around them, and in seconds it evaporated into nothingness again and they found themselves in Sumai, and on target.
Following Gilgamesh’s plan, they next sallied forth under Sumu’s Wind Walk spell, and managed to locate the monster after 20 minutes. It was attacking farms to the south of Sumai.
Four Neutralise Poison spells and a few other protective magics, and they were ready to do battle with the creature.
They hurled themselves into battle, fearlessly fighting beside their King who inspired them with poetry as he fought. The tale of every blow they struck, and every wound they took from the terrible beast’s mandibles, will not be told as they struggled to retain their footing on the shaking, rolling ground around it. Gilgamesh fought like three mighty warriors rolled into one, his great Khopesh would not be denied by the creature’s chitinous armour as it sliced into the beast’s flesh again and again. He laughed as he fought. “In truth, comrades, I have fought worse, for this oversized insect is not taxing me greatly. In fact I am sorry to have brought you all out here, for I think I could take on this creature by myself.”
But it was not quite so, for though they put the monster down in less than a minute, its body kept re-assembling itself. Again, Gilgamesh struck the brute down, and again, it regenerated and began stirring again. And again, the ground began to shake.
Ed-Wyna spoke. “Father, look, where Sumu’s conjured Fire Elemental has struck it, the wounds remain and alone are not healing. We must kill it with fire!”
“Ha! Well spotted, Wynnie, I was testing you to see if you would notice. Yes, fire is the way. Stand back!”
Reaching within himself, Gilgamesh brought forth a spark of his divine power and with it ignited the air all around the creature in a storm of fire.
The colossal centipede was reduced to a charred ruin.
And then, the burns swiftly healed before their eyes….all except those inflicted by Sumu’s conjured elemental (which, for its part, continued its attacks on the regenerating corpse unabated, crackling with glee).
Realisation dawned upon the King. Once before, in the past, he had encountered beings whose physical form could be destroyed by no hero of this world, even himself. They were even more dangerous than this creature, for they possessed magical powers to enter men’s dreams and kill them from within. They were known as the Seven Jenni, led by the hideous, formless An-Azuth-Ba. His divine patron Shamash had helped him then to secure outside aid to destroy them. His own blade could only effect a temporary ruin of their bodies; only beings from another world to this could complete the job of their destruction. Those heroes had long since departed back to their own world, but true to his word, statues had been erected in their honour, and he had even named some of his children and grandchildren after them, such as Ed-Wyna whose namesake had taken the wondrous Sonic Sword of the Jenni An-Saptam as her share of the spoils. He wondered what had become of those extra-planar heroes. Were there none of them still left around?
He came out of his reverie in time to unleash another whirlwind of Khopesh strikes to put the monster down again before its snapping jaws had his leg off. “Sumu….it will be destroyed only by the aid of summoned creatures from other planes. How many of those fire elementals can you summon?”
Soon, there were half a dozen large fire elementals leaping and stomping over the monster’s remains setting it on fire. And by the time of their departure back to their fiery realm, the monster was finally destroyed at last.
“Deep fried centipede, anyone? I hear they pay good money for these in the markets in Uruk.”
