Battle for Babylonia: Yet another continuation (260)

The monstrous form of Tiamat turned its gaze upon the Servants arrayed against her, they were so laughably small that they seemed nonexisten

The monstrous form of Tiamat turned its gaze upon the Servants arrayed against her, they were so laughably small that they seemed nonexistent when compared to her. They were more like gnats, than humans.

Her huge, grotesque mouth opened in a grimace, an expression halfway between a feral snarl and the maw of a starving monster reaching for its prey. Yet from Tiamat's mouth emerged neither a monstrous roar nor wrathful beast's breath.

"Aaaaah…" The voice was akin to a human, moreover, the tone itself sounds maternal; carrying melancholic sorrow and ineffable love, it seemed to be able to reach a level far deeper than physical sound. Traveling not through vibrations of air, but through one’s soul resonance with the mournful song of the forgotten mother of all things.

It seemed not an exclamation but a wordless song, overflowing with emotions so strong and pure that using words to express them, would itself be a sacrilegious crime against Tiamat, who could only convey this emotion rather than express it.

The human mind was incapable of resisting such a thing. Not that the volume would deafen them, even if the whole world could hear Tiamat, but from the ineffable impulse of their soul.

Yet where humans could not withstand the song, stood the King of Kings, rising above humankind through all the ages.

"Ramesseum Tentyris!" The world, rippled from Tiamat's new appearance, rippled again, but this time not at the primordial mother's command, but at the order of one of her most outstanding sons.

The world, changed by Ozymandias's command, seemed to turn into an empty, cracked desert spreading around Tiamat. And like parched earth, it absorbed the ineffable emotion of sorrow and love contained in the wordless song that appeared before the first sound of the first word of the first human was uttered.

The Soul Mirror, the Noble Phantasm separated from reality, reflecting Ozymandias's own ambitions and achievements, absorbed Tiamat's body and all her surroundings, cutting them off from the real world and enclosing them in reality subservient to Ozymandias himself. It was a reality that Tiamat was anathema against. She, who is devoid of ambition and power, devoid of human origin and human arrogance, such a world was the ideal weapon against Tiamat.

The real world was a paradise, Tiamat's own beloved garden, but Ozymandias' Noble Phantasm was a strange fiction for her. A dream in which all basic parameters of her existence were distorted; wild and changeable, like any dream.

While Earth was her natural abode, a place that remembered the descent of Tiamat's sea upon its empty land, Ozymandias' endless temple palace was a fictitious product of his own decisions and thoughts, ambitions and deeds. A creation existing outside the natural order of things, a place where Tiamat herself couldn't, and didn't exist. A world where she wasn’t the mother of all things and didn't give birth to everything alive in the world.

And so the endless sorrow of the Primordial Mother was dispelled and the ineffable song older than all languages turned into nothing more than a monstrous howl, as Tiamat rejected the world with her whole being.

"Aaaaaaaah~!!!"

As her enchanting song had fallen on deaf ears from all the Servants, Ozymandias struck first.

"Dendera!"

All the magic contained in Ozymandias's endless palace surrendered its powers, blasting forward in a blinding radiance. As Ozymandias could command the magic of all the eras of his kingdom, the secrets, and curses that great kings of the past and magi of the future could only dream of, spilled out.

But, against Tiamat, they were worse than circus or parlor tricks. At least at the end of a circus trick, after a complex acrobatic pirouette, the audience is supposed to applaud, at least out of politeness.

Instead, hundreds of magics seals around Ozymandias simultaneously flared, before extinguishing, completely giving their power to supply power to a single spell. The Light of Dendera, the embodiment of the Sun's power and divine authority of Ra himself, fed on Ozymandias’ magic, then struck forth towards Tiamat.

It is an attack that would kill an entire Army, annihilate entire mountain ranges, create tsunamis and earthquakes if it were to strike the ocean or the ground. Against Tiamat, it was not even worth a thought.

Tiamat moved her hand aside and a wave of air, no, rather, a wave of trembling reality, obeying Tiamat's commands and easily swept Dendera's light away.

An attack that could wipe cities off of the map, and Tiamat dispersed with a literal wave of her hand.

That did not mean that the Sun King would give up.

"Mesektet!" Ozymandias's barque appeared a moment later, then struck with all its might, not even waiting for the moment when it could manifest in reality completely.

Again, Tiamat responded, a sharp movement of her head crushed the divine barque, which was supposed to carry the Sun itself across the firmament, into the finest dust. The barque instantly rotted from Tiamat's divine power.

"Abu el-Hol Sphinx!" The roar of the star-born, king of all sphinxes, holding in itself the immeasurable heat of thousands of stars, became a whimper a moment later, when Tiamat's huge clawed paw struck down on it. A grotesque splash of flesh consisting of nothing but heat and endless void of distant space and the brilliance of hundreds of stars, nothing more than giblets and pools of blood under the Primordial Mother's power.

Again, Ozymandias would not give up, even if his full effort had amounted to less than nothing.

Now, darkness concealed Tiamat’s form, but this was no magic at all nor as a result of her actions. As Ozymandias embodied the Sun, Ra himself, and his Mesektet carried the Sun across the firmament, so he commanded in his world the very concept of day and night, sunrise and sunset. The darkness of night that fell around Tiamat was as natural as any other outside this world.

It was a necessity for the next attack.

"Jaguar in the Black." The words reached Tiamat's mind before they reached her ears, something that distracted her from responding. Not that it mattered.

The Jaguar, the forgotten deity of Mesoamerica, was not the most outstanding of all deities in the world. Neither her worshipers nor her great temples survived, if, of course, they ever existed at all. Rather, it would be correct to say she wasn't a ‘real’ deity, from those whose power is feared and whose disposition is appeased with offerings. Rather, it would be more right to call Jaguar a ‘divine spirit’, only not done so because it would cause confusion.

As the Jaguar was not a Divine Spirit like Quetzalcoatl, but rather that the Jaguar was a spirit with divine nature.

The Jaguar was the embodiment of a jaguar spirit, whose divine nature stemmed not from her origin nor from deification by her worshipers. It wasn't a divinity ‘handed down from above’ or ‘earned among equals’, but the result of the veneration of jaguars. Divinity born from reverence of the mighty cruel beast, the jungle king, a divinity taken ‘from below’.

In other words, it wouldn't be wrong to consider Jaguar Man the ‘least’ of all deities.

But even if this was so, even if Jaguar was least of all, even if all her power came from nothing more than the reverence of a fierce beast. This didn't mean that this ‘least of all deities’ held no power of her own.

Even if the jaguar was ultimately just an unreasoning beast, it was still the king of the jungle, who had earned its reputation by right. Confirming its ferocity with blood, its own and those who decided to prove their strength in battle against it.

And so when darkness fell, along with the veil of night, the time of the hunt came as well.

In darkness, when Humans lit fires and peered into impenetrable blackness with fear, waiting for the soft steps of their prey turned hunter, the Jaguar felt in her element. All her senses were heightened, her muscles filled with strength, and her divine nature could finally manifest at full power.

Should a human detect her gaze, then even years of spirit tempering and confidence wouldn't save them from chattering their teeth in fear, and their primal desire to throw themselves away to safety. To be as far away as possible from this source of fear, breaking through to his most bestial and ancient instincts.

Jaguar Man wasn't the most outstanding of Servants, but under the cover of night? She was a predator that humanity feared from the times when they themselves couldn't call themselves more than beasts.

"Great Death Claw!" Jaguar Man moved silently, even her spoken words were more whispers noticeable only noticeable in the air movement rather than audible sounds.

Perhaps Jaguar Man wasn't the most outstanding of all gods, but she excellently managed with what little power she did possess. All her divinity, under the night's cover, within Ozymandias's palace, turned into a single attack, so strong that, even if a real Divine Spirit were before her now, then the clash's outcome would be unambiguous.

But against Jaguar Man now stood Tiamat, and so the outcome was predetermined before the clash was declared at all.

Jaguar Man’s claws tore the scales on Tiamat's arm, which were thousands of times stronger than everything modern humanity could imagine, but she couldn't reach Tiamat's flesh. Not a single drop of Tiamat's blood was spilled.

Jaguar Man, even being a natural hunter, couldn't inflict a wound on Tiamat's true form at all.

For a moment, Tiamat turned her gaze to Jaguar Man, a moment frozen in time and space, as if she was evaluating her. In her eyes, an emotion woven from indescribable emotions, for whose expression humanity had no words, had no possibility of conception at all, reigned confusion.

Confusion not of what had happened, as Tiamat right now possessed a mind far more ancient and perfect than human mind, but rather confusion born from understanding.

Because Tiamat understood what exactly Jaguar Man tried to do, understood just how unassailable her current being is, and understood perfectly well that Jaguar Man also understood that her attack would be useless from the very beginning. Therefore, Tiamat's confusion was born from this understanding – if Jaguar Man knew perfectly well that her attack would be useless, then why did she still try to perform it?

This Tiamat couldn't understand at all.

After all, even if she gained a consciousness and an understanding of the world, she was still too inexperienced in any kind of battle.

And so when Jaguar Man grinned because she had managed to distract Tiamat for three whole seconds and jumped sharply back to escape a reprisal that wouldn’t come, it was already too late.

The monstrous blow to Tiamat couldn't even be described as an ‘attack’ or ‘natural disaster’, as when speaking of such, people imagine earthquakes, storms, forest fires, something that could be described. Something that they have seen, if not imagined, something you could learn about by reading a book or watching an educational program.

What had happened? There was nothing ‘natural’ about it.

Even speaking of asteroids colliding with earth, of catastrophes that erased entire geological epochs, always in human minds remained one unchanging concept, the Earth itself. Even if a catastrophe were to erase all life on earth, even if lithospheric plates suddenly cracked like fragile eggshells, even if the oceans evaporated, then Earth, the planet would remain. The last living monument to a dead humanity that couldn't preserve it.

But, what if a force so great were to collide with Earth that that permanence could no longer be guaranteed?

Ishtar, according to the archaeologists and historians of old civilizations, was a petty, promiscuous and vengeful goddess, whose beauty was shaded by her envious bile.

According to Gilgamesh, Ishtar was a useless goddess, whose actions created, and then killed, his only friend. Scatter minded and greedy, she was a child that demanded the shiniest rattles like a magpie, dragging any trinket that caught her eyes to her nest, whether a golden necklace or foil shining in the sun. Before, most likely, forgetting them and restarting her quest for the next shiny bauble.

According to Ishtar herself, she was the most beautiful, magnificent, intelligent, generous, and kind goddess, who deserved all earthly honors not because she performed any deeds requiring offerings, and not because she had to be appeased from her anger, but because it was natural that the most beautiful of all women under and in the heavens received all honors that lay beneath these heavens.

However, what all three sources agreed upon, the archaeologists and historians with scientific skepticism, Gilgamesh with irritating forced agreement, and Ishtar with unconcealed pride, was that she was an inexpressibly strong Goddess.

They say that Holy Mount Ebih, which even gods feared to approach, Ishtar once, folding just one of her hands, tore from the earth. Then she crushed it against the Earth, merely because ‘no one dares tell me what I can and cannot do.’.

The reality of the matter, however, was definitely somewhat different. After all, Ishtar was a goddess connected with the brightest star in the firmament… Which, however, wasn't a star at all.

Ishtar, goddess of planet Venus, embodying the heavenly queen, could reach to the heavens and simply… Take the planet for which she was deified with, and then?

Load it into her floating bow as an arrow.

Of course, the projectile wasn't the planet Venus itself, the Ultimate One of Venus would probably have something to say about that. No, the planet continued floating in its place in the cosmic void of vacuum, to be more precise, Ishtar was taking the ‘concept’ equal to the planet. An imaginary object with the planet's mass and size, something that her bow could turn into an arrow, that, if shot, could shatter Earth into many tiny pieces.

Therefore, her Noble Phantasm, An Gal Ta Ki Gal Se, had to be put under lock and key at all times, otherwise its careless use would simply destroy Earth, something that she was trying to preserve with all her power. Moreover, to use the full embodiment of all Venus for her full-power attack required time from Ishtar, several seconds, which were impermissibly long, deadly fatal, in a battle between Servants.

But if Jaguar Man had managed to keep Tiamat's attention on herself, not letting her notice Ishtar's preparation? And if Ozymandias’ Reality Marble protected all of Earth, cutting the Servants off from the ‘real world’ completely, imprisoning them in the world of his own Noble Phantasm?

Then, the deployment of her Noble Phantasm became feasible.

A collision of planetary scale crashed into Tiamat, sweeping away her gigantic form, and everything else away. The firmament was turned to dust, ‘Earth’ ceased to exist, the atmosphere was boiled away, evaporating like morning dew, day and night became imaginary concepts having nothing to do with a non-existent place to observe such a thing.

It couldn’t even be called a catastrophe, it was an ‘astronomical phenomenon’ theorized by scientists in their laboratories then discussed by enthusiasts in their leisure.

Because such fantastic conditions required suspension of disbelief, as reality required much more than just belief in the possibility of such.

Luckily for the Servants stuck in ground zero, Ozymandias the Great was prepared even for events of such a scale.

With all regret, Ozymandias couldn't, even if he used the full power of his Noble Phantasm, match the ferocity of Ishtar’s attack. However, his Noble Phantasm wasn't offensive in its nature in the first place.

For, how would you use a ‘Palace’ to attack? Rather, it represented Ozymandias’ reality, in which he was king and god in equal measure, a reality in which he was ‘protected’ to all attacks.

Ozymandias's palace spread around him as an unimaginably huge, practically infinitely expansive fortress, absorbing all the other Servants under its Aegis, weathering Ishtar’s attack without crumbling. The walls, the frescoes, the decorations might be made of gilded gold, but behind it lies the silvery gleams of steel. Hittite steel, to be more precise.

In reality, Hittite steel was nothing more than humanity's first attempts at blacksmithing, a byproduct of trial and error. Something which couldn't, according to general archaeological opinion, be compared against modern steel, even the lowest-grade that went to cheap kitchen knives and locks in everyday clothing was stronger than Hittite steel. However, from the perspective of magic and mystery, as the symbol of humanity's first progress beyond what was allocated to them by the divine, the first step of divine rejection, plus Ozymandias' own protection, it possessed the highest class of protection.

‘Anti-Apocalypse’, that was the property that was imbued against the steel that is choke full of Mystery.

Therefore, when the astronomical phenomenon, a power created by Ishtar, collided with Ozymandias' palace, he didn't even raise an eyebrow.

Divine power? A Planet’s weight and the Earth’s destruction? Ozymandias would withstand it without moving from his place.

There was only one question that matters; could the Primordial Mother of all compete with the height of human arrogance with almost no equal, and claim the same?

***

Tiamat’s figure before Ainz was in some way inspiring. In the sense that grotesque monsters or tsunami waves approaching, that will consume life despite any attempts to oppose it, can be called inspiring. That is, not something that he would like to see constantly in his life, or even personally experience, but it was like looking at a car crash; one cannot take their eyes away from it.

However, unlike many other, more ordinary people or Servants, Ainz had already repeatedly encountered such grotesque monsters before in Yggdrasil. And therefore, after appreciating the dragon-like Tiamat’s figure like how one could appreciate a painting, Ainz raised his hand again, sending the next batch of spells.

He wonders how many more times he could do such a thing.

Slowly, despite its size that broke the balance of Yggdrasil, Ainz's mana reserve was declining. Not at a speed at which Ainz should already sound an alarm, but at a rate that definitely didn't please him, as it made him think that his mana reserve still wasn't infinite. At least not as infinite as Ainz himself wanted to believe it to be.

It was never a problem that he had ever faced before, even against raids against World Enemies, the strongest bosses of Yggdrasil. Ainz was very particular in managing his MP pool, unlike his friend Ulbert who liked to use most, if not all, of his MP pool on one attack.

The most concerning fact however was that Tiamat either possessed a high magic defense, or excellent regeneration. Either that, or like the undead, her wounds don’t manifest in her appearance, not preventing her from acting with a hundred percent efficiency, no matter the conditions and what her state was. That is, until someone destroyed her body completely or reduced her HP to absolute zero.

A situation that in any case didn't please Ainz in any approximation.

However, Tiamat for her part clearly didn't want to make things easy for Ainz, and therefore rose on her four limbs, looking at Ainz, as she prepared for her next attack, clearly without thought of surrendering.

Fortunately her evolution, or form change to her second form, typical for Yggdrasil bosses, had been done by absorbing the surrounding Black Sea making the surroundings much safer, plus reducing her possible attack vectors. Ainz, determining that he should now gradually transition to mana conservation tactics, canceled his flight spell, landing on the ground a second later, before raising his gaze to Tiamat.

Now on the ground, he could finally appreciate Tiamat’s true size.

The enormous monster barely resembled the Tiamat that Ainz had fought before. Except perhaps if someone decided to ignore everything else and focus on her chest, they could discern the rather feminine, and very prominent, contours of a woman.

However, on such a grotesque body of the Primordial Mother, they are completely unattractive, more simply a reminder of her feminine, maternal nature than anything attractive. In any case, even if Tiamat had preserved her human form or chosen an even more revealing or defenseless form, stopping Ainz himself required more than apparent defenselessness and large eyes filled with innocent tears.

Ainz knew well that the true monsters loved to hide behind masks of defenselessness and beauty, something applicable both in Yggdrasil and in the real world.

Slowly, the monstrous creation opened its titanic maw, and screamed, a voice that carried alien thoughts and feelings. It was something that would make any hearer go mad.

In the real world, there existed no words suitable for expressing Tiamat's thoughts, if simply due to her nature. The Primordial Mother was born before the first living creature uttered the first sound, before the first electric signal fired in neural connections, and before humanity gave meaning to symbols bound together, naming them ‘words’.

Tiamat simply could not fit her nature and thoughts into something as limiting as ‘human language’.

However, this did not mean that Tiamat was not intelligent, that her mind was not full of complex thoughts and plans. Simply that trying to understand something as alien as her, would break a human mind, like trying to pour the entire primordial ocean into a rubber balloon. The question was not whether the balloon would burst while trying to contain it, but in what thousandth of a second this would happen.

However, Ainz was immune to effects on his mind.

"Why does it hurt me so much?" And therefore what he heard was neither the roar of a monster nor an inexpressibly sad song from the beginning of time, but a voice. Saturated with both cold melancholy and maternal warmth, Tiamat's voice completely contradicted her monstrous form.

"Why does my mind hurt more than my body? Why does my soul cry while my voice laughs?"

Tiamat spread her enormous wings and a hundred feathers struck forward and Ainz teleported away even while he was suddenly hit with a stray idea, teleporting was already an instinct to Ainz.

And it was a stray thought that merits his full attention. He had finally grasped a chance for victory after all.

When he had encountered Enkidu and Kingu in their shared mind, a conversation had become his opportunity for easy victory, so couldn’t take the same chance now? Besides, Tiamat hadn't spoken until this moment, therefore, raising his hand and sending another fireball against Tiamat as a test, he still spoke.

"Because you fight. Pain comes from collision with another's power, for example, with me."

Tiamat’s massive form unexpectedly froze, completely ignoring the fire that struck her, tiny compared to herself, and therefore spreading across her body like a small flower, not doing much, if any, damage. However, Ainz only noticed with satisfaction that at the point where the fire hit, Tiamat's skin still blackened and was covered in char.

It seemed he had finally transitioned to the next stage of battle with Tiamat, in which she could actually receive damage. It was as if her ‘invincibility period’ had finally ended.

"No," Tiamat said slowly, looking at Ainz, as if truly seeing him for the first time, as if the very idea of having a dialogue with someone was ineffably strange to her. "No. This pain… It's different. Not pain of flesh. Constant pain."

Despite these words, however, Tiamat did not stop. The huge feathers of flesh that crashed around Ainz immediately began to change their form, rising upward and intertwining like tentacles into living creatures that rushed forward. It forced Ainz to blast the ground beneath his feet and strike Tiamat's form with lightning so that he could escape the circling maneuver.

Tiamat was quickly learning how to fight.

"Emotional pain, then. Regret, betrayal, sadness… There are many reasons for such pain in the world."

"Which of them is mine?" Tiamat lunged forward, a scary sight for something as large as her. Powerful clawed paws bent, crushing the earth beneath, as it sent her forward, against all laws of physical reality that protested such movements.

"I cannot say, I know you much less than you know yourself, after all." Ainz teleported to the side, then was forcefully to twist his form, dodging a huge claw that passed near him. Noting with displeasure that Tiamat continued to learn combat at a speed that would be extremely commendable for any new Player of Yggdrasil.

Still extremely lacking, but it was a gap that was being filled. Uncomfortably fast.

"I do not know myself… So how could I tell?" Tiamat answered, then instead of attacking Ainz, she moved aside, evading a deceptively small dim spark that passed near her. Ainz had to commend her instinct to dodge [Black Hole], even if it meant that he had wasted precious MP.

"I do not know why my soul hurts and my mind bleeds."

"When did it begin?" Reasoning that maintaining dialogue would at least distract Tiamat and reduce the effectiveness of her learning, Ainz continued responding to her.

"Long ago. In my imprisonment, there is no time or space…" Tiamat answered, then thought for a moment, allowing Ainz to teleport to her head to make another cut in reality, reasoning that his chosen tactic was effective since it could grant him a momentary advantage.

"Before my imprisonment."

"Why did it happen?" Tiamat rushed to the side like a wild beast, twisting away from the cut that without a note of resistance deprived her of a wing. However, this time the cut did not give any immediate advantage to Ainz, it did not change Tiamat's form itself, because following the attack, the severed wing stump immediately began to regenerate. Black liquid began to rise upward, trying to restore Tiamat's wing to its former form, however, the regeneration was so slow that any observer could easily determine that this definitely required strain even from Tiamat in her perfect form.

Too bad that [Reality Slash] took too much MP, and required him to close the distance with his target, otherwise, Ainz would have been spamming the spell.

"Because of…" Tiamat froze once more, as if contemplating a concept she had been unfamiliar with in the past and was trying to apply to herself at this moment, though, of course, while still dodging another of Ainz's attack attempts.

"A Battle."

The word rolled across her tongue as if until this moment she had never even considered the concept before, which Ainz used as a chance to break distance.

"So you're troubled by a past battle. You don't like the past defeat that led to your sealing, I take it?"

"Yes," Tiamat answered, then tried to spread her wings again for another attack against Ainz, however, with only one wing, the attempt to hit Ainz was quite easily dodged. But of course, even with just one wing, with each pinion being the size of skyscrapers, it was still an attack that cannot be discounted.

“But also no…"

"Would you have wanted the battle's outcome to be different?" This time Ainz simply used [Chain Lightning], which jumped from feather to feather, destroying them, before reaching Tiamat herself.

"Yes… And no," Tiamat’s figure recoiled from the lightning strike, but her retreat was only momentary before she focused her gaze on Ainz and slowly pronounced,

"It was the Betrayal."

Ainz stopped, raising one eyebrow, or at least tried to, as his bony face lacked such features.

"What?"

"Betrayal," Tiamat pronounced more confidently, before raising her gaze to Ainz with a meaningful question, holding ancient pain within,

"Why did humanity… betray me?"