Chapter 470: The First Heartbreak 3
Time slowed. The sounds of battle faded to a distant murmur. Two figures stood frozen in a moment that contained entire lifetimes of shared experience—friendship forged in adventure, brotherhood tested by trials, love that transcended death itself.
"My friend," Gilgamesh whispered, and somehow his voice carried impossible distances across the screaming chaos of the battlefield. "My brother. My heart. What have they done to you?"
The words were barely audible, but they cut through the noise of war like a blade through paper. In them was contained all the grief of the world’s first hero, all the rage of a king who had watched his dearest friend die while he remained helpless, all the love that had driven him to challenge death itself.
Enkidu stood among LonelyWolf’s forces, his wild hair whipping in the hellish winds like a mane of living darkness. His eyes—once gentle with the wisdom of the wilderness, bright with the joy of friendship—now burned with Marduk’s divine fury rather than the honest wildness Gilgamesh remembered. His body had been enhanced by divine power, muscles corded with strength that could shatter mountains, but it was the change in his expression that struck deepest.
There was no recognition there. No memory of shared laughter, of adventures that had shaped the world, of a friendship that had taught both men what it meant to be truly alive.
"You abandoned me to death," Enkidu snarled, his voice distorted by divine power until it was barely recognisable. "Left me to rot in darkness while you chased your selfish dreams of immortality. You cared more for your own fear of dying than for the friend who had already died for you."
Each word was a dagger thrust with surgical precision, finding every wound in Gilgamesh’s heart and twisting. "Now I serve a god who values strength over sentiment, who rewards loyalty rather than punishing it with indifference. Marduk has shown me what I was—a fool who thought friendship meant something in the face of divine will."
"No." The word came from Gilgamesh’s lips like a denial of everything wrong with the universe. His grip tightened on his golden axe until his knuckles went white, tears streaming down his face like rivers cutting through stone. "No, my brother. You died because I was too proud, too foolish to see the trap the gods had laid for us. You died because I was blind to their jealousy, their fear of what we represented—mortals who dared to be equals to the divine."
His voice grew stronger, carrying across the battlefield with the authority of absolute truth. "I mourned you, Enkidu. I raged against heaven itself for taking you from me. I wandered the earth like a madman, seeking the secret of immortality not for my own sake, but because I could not bear a world without you in it. Everything I did after—every quest, every battle, every moment of my existence—was to honor your memory or find a way to bring you back."
"Lies!" Enkidu charged across the broken ground, volcanic glass cracking and splintering beneath his feet. "Pretty words to ease your guilty conscience! You cared more for your legacy than your friend! More for your precious city than the man who died protecting it!"
Their weapons met with a sound like breaking worlds, like the fundamental forces of creation clashing in cosmic discord. Gilgamesh’s axe—forged in the fires of creation itself, blessed by gods who had since become his enemies—rang against Enkidu’s divine gauntlets with a noise that made reality itself flinch.