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Evehime Gevurah     Gilgamesh had professed intent to track down Evehime Gevurah in person. This isn't easy, because all she'd said of her location is that she'd found 'a good mountain to train on' and only provided coordinates to a dumbass bird who wanted to come get some; which are coordinates to a completely different mountain that she had to figure out from there. Gilgamesh thus has to work with the same coordinates, though not being a dumbass himself, and not being imminently expected, has less of an 'exciting' time of it.

    The mountain range itself could probably pass anywhere if one isn't particularly used to mountains. For one accustomed to them, the sheer height is certainly unusual. The air, or rather lack thereof, is practically unbreathable where the snow starts, and were it not for the other mountains in the way, one would be able to see hundreds of kilometers around.

    The coordinates of choice do, indeed, seem to be the longest sight line. An unusual corridor between peaks, where several cols line up, Such that the tallest peak in the area can look down on a smaller one a whopping fifteen kilometers away. Given that he's arrived a day late, the action there has stopped, and only the aftermath is left.

    All of the snow on that mountain has fallen away to its foothills. Endless sequences of minor avalanches have cast it all off, and what look almost like demolition explosions have cracked centuries old ice and excavated the rest into the air. Ten thousand arrows do indeed litter the mountainside, though each of them is a near six-foot long spear of what looks like pure tungsten, each having landed in a small crater of its own. At a distance, one could probably assume it to be the remains of a battlefield.

    Given that all ten thousand have been shot, Gilgamesh doesn't have to contend with a barrage. He can easily tell the direction by using his big brain and seeing where the shafts are pointed. Atop that mountain, when he gets close enough for it to stop being tinted blue, he can see the light of a fire.

    That fire is built on a surprisingly wide, flat, and level jut from the peak, as if a chunk of the mountain tip were cut off at a right angle. A five pointed bonfire has seemingly been blazing for a while, surrounded by ten simple censer stands, and adjacent one shallow pit filled with meltwater, and another empty and black. Oddly, some sort of rug, black with gold woven into it, has been unfurled near the very edge, and a few bags and pots have somehow been brought up here, featuring various simple sundries.

    This must be during those 'two hours of focus', because Evehime is currently occupying the rug on knees. How goddamn big she is comes second in impressions to a sort of distant cousin feeling to that which radiates from Gilgamesh himself. The 'perfect'. Not the divinely radiant perfection in form and gesture, but a kind of perfect that registers on a level in the human third of his brain. Perfect features, perfect physique, perfect performance, perfect symmetry, perfect presence. Beautiful incidentally for the way that such a thing is naturally perceived and admired by monkey brains, but it's a raw sort of earthly perfection that would no doubt gather up a suicidally dedicated tribe without lifting a finger.

    The bow used for all the shooting is nowhere in sight, so her lack of current armament probably doesn't say much.
Gilgamesh      The conflict was inevitable. It was impossible that the King of Heroes would not cross the path of the Gevurah at some point. They were two beings too close, too alike, to ignore each other forever. They were twin predators in a world of prey, circling their territories, looking for a moment of weakness. And when it became apparent that neither of them would show it, the King of Heroes made a decision.

     And since the conflict was inevitable, all he had to do was look into his own future. All roads led to this battle. All roads led to this.

     From there it was a simple matter of using the Vimana to follow the fastest road.

     So the Golden King approaches. He passes over the battlefield with barely a glance. He didn't need, or care, to look for survivors. There either were none or they were broken in ways that he couldn't fix even if he did care. They were soldiers. They died like soldiers. That's what soldiers do. That's what *humans* did. That universal constant. Die. Even he would die one day, if he chose the path of humanity and rejected the way of immortality. It was the last moment of wisdom.

     He flies past them on the Vimana with all the cruelty one would expect of something that is not and never has been human, but may yet be with time.

     The flying machine stops only a bit away from the mountain. She does stand out. It's easy to see how humans would fall in suicidal love. In that love called 'obsession.' Were he not the King, he might even be intrigued by her - might even be interested in her. Were he not the King, he might even fall prey to that same beauty.

     But he is the King. No one sits above him. Only two sit beside him. And he has a love strong enough to match his own ego.

     He says nothing, not yet. The Vimana simply hangs, slightly above and apart from the camp, as he considers her. He, too, is perfect, a perfect, inhuman machine sculpted for the sake of leading mankind, of inspiring mankind to reach higher and higher and higher without end or regard for their own limits.

     He waits for her. He is, after all, the King. It would be impolite to hurry his host. It would be impolite to simply land and sit down in front of her. He may own all things in this world, but even the King observes the laws of hospitality.
Evehime Gevurah     It's impossible to miss that arrival unless one is blind, deaf, and simple. Still, whatever Evehime is doing inside her head, with such statuesque stillness, apparently can't, or won't be aborted so immediately. Certainly not a state of absolute awareness. There's a question of such a thing would even have a point for her.

    But she does, gradually, open her eyes. So ridiculously blue they're almost cyan, but nothing seems unnatural about them, save perhaps, ungenerously, the singular intensity of her stare. "There aren't many who seek me out." she says, in that voice untarnished by a single lie. "You must be brave, foolish, or desperately need something. Or all of those things." There's a ghost of a critical pause. "Or none of them. You aren't a man who needs anything. And I wouldn't call a man who doesn't know fear 'brave'. What do you want? I'll honour your time in coming here, but I have only a few minutes to spare."

    From there, she slowly stands to her feet, clapping a thin gathering of frost off the front of her culturally ambiguous pants, and, after stepping off the rug, slipping those boots back on. A chunk of pine wood, thick as a waist, is picked up off a pile, broken in half like snapping a twig between her hands, and tossed into the middle of the enclosed bonfire, causing the warmth to climb back up to a more even level. She picks up what seems to be a book, fastened with multiple loops of cord, a metal sliver of a pen with it, bites the tip of her finger, and begins scribbling something complicated in it with the closest thing to ink available. God knows what she could be writing.
Gilgamesh      He can wait. His patience is remarkable. It's simply a facet of a being like that. Of beings that have enough power to afford to wait.

     She opens her eyes. Brilliant red meets intense blue. The overwhelming ego of the King meets the icy light of the Gevurah. It is a stare that he does not intend to break. Indeed, she has the right of it. He is something that does not know fear. It is arguable that he could not know fear, he who would plunge into Humbaba's cedar-forest, he who would wrangle the Bull of Heaven. That it was his fate not to know fear until the day his only friend will be killed.

     And that fate has been averted by that love strong enough to sit at his side. So fear...no longer matters to the King.

     If he would die, she would save him. If she would die, he would save her. There is nothing to fear from death now that he and it sit side by side.

     "I am Gilgamesh, King of Heroes." He does not need to announce himself, he knows, but he does anyway, because it's polite. He stands and steps off the Vimana onto the mountain, arms crossed over his bare chest. He is smaller than she is, but no less imposing in his presence, a power that makes him seem so much larger than life. The red tattoos pulse with mana. The gold of his armored pants glitters around the snow. The woman he loves is ice and void - this is something he is familiar with, now.

     So he sits down opposite her at the fire, cross-legged, and snaps his fingers, and holds out his hand. A pair of goblets of pure and marvelous gold fall into his hands. He tosses one of them at Eve as a jug of heavenly ambrosia drops into his palm. It smells indeed like something that could only come from Heaven, something divine, something perfect. Slowly, he fills his goblet. Then he sets it down for her.

     "Ten minutes is enough."

     He sips from that goblet slowly, still considering her.

     "I am here because a group of mongrels is looking for ways to contain your violence, and I am the gracious King who volunteered to find them on behalf of his idiot property."

     Another sip of the goblet. "Honestly, I don't really have any interest in fighting you. I stand to gain no entertainment, and you stand to gain no amusement or challenge. We are two things opposed on a level too fundamental for us to need to fight to understand each other."

     "So I thought instead that I would challenge you to a game."

     A massive golden board just falls out of nothing. It looks much like a paddle - a large end, a hilt, and a smaller end. Four-sided dice hit the ground nearby, each as big as a table. Seven checker-like pieces hit the ground around them.

     The Royal Game of Ur. The original board game.

     "Strategy, and luck." Gilgamesh waves his hand. "Neither of us believes in luck, I am sure. So it will be strategy."

     "You are something that lives for combat. It is obvious to me that you have no weaknesses in combat. So I am going to take the measure of you like this, and you will enjoy a moment of challenge in a way far more interesting than what any of these barking dogs can give you."

     He raises the goblet to his lips. "What do you say, Gevurah? Do you accept the King's challenge?"
Evehime Gevurah     "Ah. I recognize your voice. Indeed, you are the king I recall." Evehime says, blowing on the page once to dry it, then snapping it shut and re-binding it again. Her eyes come back to Gilgamesh. "The one who claims to embody the path of Keter. Though, I don't have any reason to think of that as a lie. It's been a long time, since I've seen one of your . . ." Oddly, she reaches for a word, and doesn't find it. "Kind? No. Cast? Something like that."

    With the kind of casual posture of one who is used to Being Given Things, she takes up the goblet as it is offered, visibly swirling it around and sniffing it briefly before bringing it to her lips. After a moment's taste, she tilts back her head and chugs the entire thing down in one breath. Far from an ascetic attitude of moderation, and far from someone merely addicted to its exquisite taste and body, it has the distinct feeling of someone out in the wilderness for six months sipping their favourite soft drink again, or perhaps their first beer since, looking to forget something.

    "I hadn't expected gifts. But generosity is embodied in kingship, so I should think of it as wholly in character for you. My gratitude. I can barely remember the last time I drank thus." She does, indeed, sit down opposite of him, though in a more casual posture, putting the goblet down in a way that suggests she semi-consciously expects it to be refilled.

    "Mongrels? Property? You have a low opinion of your subjects. Much too low." she says, though her lips have already turned subtly down. "Though I don't blame you for feeling that way towards . . . those things." She leaves it vague, ostensibly, on purpose. "But shouldn't you have more hope of raising them up? Or, lacking hope, at least enough spite in your heart for their condition, to want to cure them of it. Even if only a little."

    But she laughs at the words 'contain your violence'. It's an intoxicating kind of laugh; one that begs to be followed along with for no reason in particular; worth sharing on its own merits alone. "Is that what they believe? That these consequences of their own making are somehow random? Beyond their control? That the problem they need solve is where I choose to go and what I choose to do?"

    "That's pathetic. They'll do anything to look outside themselves then. They see how far short they fall of what they could --what they should-- be, and instead of reflecting on that gulf, they find a way to think of themselves as upstanding and in control, caught near some kind of natural disaster. I'm sure it's easier to think that way. That one doesn't feel inadequate in the face of a hurricane. That they wouldn't wonder 'what have I done to be here?'."
Evehime Gevurah     It may be that she interprets his second meaning wrongly, however. "If you believe you pose no challenge, then my earlier measure of you must be right. You really don't know fear at all. But I'm not fully sure that I would say fundamentally opposed. The path you walk is one that touches upon, and derives from, all other paths, without encompassing them. The only thing that Keter directly opposes is those who walk without a path at all." Again, a fickle, bitter mood overtakes her for the space of a sentence, like patchwork storm clouds at high wind, rapidly passing before the sun. "Common as those are, now."

    But she doesn't fail to catch one thing. Possibly a thing that the king didn't intend for her to focus on. "Some*thing*?" An eyebrow goes up into barely tamed hair. "I am someone who lives to achieve perfection, King of Heroes. No one person can be perfect at all things at once, so I chose something that resonated with me. But simply by perfecting combat, you don't *become* 'combat'. Traversing the threshold and becoming an embodiment of combat itself, though grand, would only serve to lessen you as a warrior. Combat itself is without will. Combat is used. A warrior uses. Combat is. A warrior does."

    "But I will play your game." she finally says. "Though it is a very old one. I barely recognize it. Strategy is a form of focus. And it has been a long time since I've shared the company of anything but animals, and people barely better than animals."
Gilgamesh      The King brought gifts, so the King refills. It's not a matter of servitude. It's a matter of courtesy. Sure, he could summon a mindless golem to do it for him, or some stupid animal, but what in Anu's name would be the point of that for the first refill? For the rest - of course there will be more - he will summon something. But that is because they cannot be distracted. This is just how things are done.

     "Cast is more acceptable. I am the King who was cast from divinity before he was planted by human seed." He waves his hand as he sets the pitcher down down. Now a golem does emerge from nowhere, crouching to pour them both drinks in anticipation of what will happen. Whether it is a battle of blades or a battle of wills and wits, they cannot afford to be distracted.

     "What is the point of a King if he has to do everything for his subjects?" Gilgamesh replies idly. "The King's role is to stand apart and guide, not to walk on their behalf. If they do not have the resolve to walk it, if all they can do is make excuses, then for what purpose have they legs?"

     He shrugs again. "Yes. You have the right of it. What they think I am here to do is find them information on how to beat you. How to still you, or stall you, or stop you."

     "As if anything I would find would be applicable to them. It's like they expect themselves to become purebreds just because someone found a way to make them play fetch." A sigh ripples against the ambrosia. "All they could even hope to do at this stage is find a way to minimize what you can do. Flood walls against a tidal wave. And even then, they need hints on how to build it from the King."

     "Still, as you said. The King is generous." A smug smile crosses his lips.

     He shakes his head. "No, no. Our paths are not opposed. We simply aren't a meaningful fight. Besides..."

     A genuine smile crosses his lips. "There's someone else I wish to use my full power to fight. Don't take it personally. Something like that is how I show my affection."

     "And I hold no affection for you. I don't imagine you hold any for me, either."

     He sets his goblet into the hands of the golem. It is an excellent table. He stands. "Yes. I can tell. You came out here to focus, didn't you? To walk a little further without listening to the barking, the howling, the screaming of those who think of you as something to be surmounted."

     His lips press together. Carefully, he explains the rules of the Game. It is not complex. But it is strategic. He does not give her any further advantages than the basic rules - it is understood that he has an advantage, and that it is part of his own test to see how far she can go. Then he stands, and lifts one of the enormous pieces in one hand.

     "Then let us begin."
Evehime Gevurah     "Affection? No." Evehime begins there. "Though I don't hold antipathy for you. Interest. Gladness, maybe. This meeting has been a refreshing change from what feels like endless tedium, so rarely broken for long. But affection is a word with specific meaning."

    She only chooses to backtrack after getting that out of the way. She speaks with a level of confidence that approaches 'earth-shaking' in metaphor, layered so much extra on top of her usual, for precisely one sentence. "If there was mere information that could allow them to compete with me, I would freely give it to them myself."

    Then, "Even so, a leader has many things within his reach, for the purpose of shaping his empire, which is understood to mean his subjects within it as well. To punish the undesirables, to create courses of reformation, to lay down law and ensure that it's followed, to reward those who please him, to elevate those of worthy degree so that others might chase after them first." She considers a second longer. "What I am saying, King of Heroes, is that for human beings, all of life is finding mountains a little taller than they, and thinking 'I can climb that', and from there, finding one a little larger, and thinking 'that isn't too different; I can climb that too if I try harder'."

    "If they're so useless on their own, perhaps it's pointless to expect that they'll suddenly be inspired to climb one of the tallest of mountains at all. All the more because they're so weak, you shouldn't dismiss the value of making you displeasure manifest and real, and your pleasure tangible and rewarding, even for those far beneath you." She then makes a long, slow shrug, as the kind lifting a couple of hundred pounds of arms and chest could be. "I admit though, it's been an even longer time since I've trained soldiers. Mentored disciples. And none as weak as these creatures."

    This time, she takes a little more time to savour her ambrosia, though she still affects the posture of someone who would laze on a throne out of well-earned contentment, or tense boredom, rather than cruel and arrogant superiority, or noble aescetic duy. "I've chosen this place for several reasons, but you aren't wrong. It's just as I said before. Many factors need to be perfect in order to see perfection. If your environment, your preparations, your road, are imperfect, how can you hope to find perfection on it?"

    "Enough of that for now." she says, quickly absorbing the rules at first explanation. The daunting size of the dice is obviously no issue for her, though, she only immediately tosses it to Gilgamesh once he begins rolling the set. She picks the dark pieces with light imprints as a matter of course. "Though, I ask where all of these things come from." Not 'may I' or 'I would like to'. Just asking.
Gilgamesh      There's a quiet pause as the King drinks and sets his piece on the board. "Yes, you would, wouldn't you. Anything to break the tedium."

     He sets the drink back down. "That's correct. The King sets the law. The King determines who is and who is not undesirable. The King is a benevolent despot who rules absolutely as an ideal that stands apart. "

     "The King cannot walk in the mud lest the mud cling to the King in desperation."

     "Make no mistake. It wasn't always this way," he says, when she brings up mentoring, "When the world still held promise and power for me among the masses I would walk among them and show them light. When my garden had not become full of maggots in my absence I would show the people favor, and punish them in my own ways. I, who tasted all the pleasures of the Earth, have done all these things and more. I do not call these things mongrels simply because they're weak. It's because they've become so diluted that they imagine the life of one person whose name they do not know is a tragic loss rather than an expenditure of a world that has made humans currency."

     He's had this conversation with Priscilla and her mother and sister, of course, or something like it - where they found his despair troublesome, though he promised to try and see the light. And, indeed, he had tried - and even succeeded several times. But that wasn't the way to approach this. The way to approach this was his resentment and disdain and frustration.

     He rolls the dice. "It is indeed that very problem. They do not even climb the little mountains, Gevurah. They sit in their little boxes and they think 'ah. This is fine. I am happy.' as they are spent. Calling them dogs is too good for most of them. Therein lies my disdain. Therein my spite. If they would move mountains with their will, even small ones, I may look more favorably upon them."

     He waves his hand. "There are worlds where they do. There are worlds where men still have fire in their hearts. I don't disdain them. But too often I see them give up in their climb. Too often I see reward turn to contentment. That is why I decided that I would no longer reward. I scourge, when I see fit. You must discipline a child when it does wrong. But I no longer give them sweets when they succeed, because then they grow accustomed and demanding."

     "I don't know anything about the road to perfection. You'll have to educate me. I am perfection incarnate. I am the mountain. I was made for that purpose, after all, though the gods believed I would be a mountain for them to stand on and rule from, and cow the people with my perfection.

     "Tell me about the road you follow."

     He waves his hand. "My treasury. The treasury of all the world. I have travelled the world without end. I know all its countries. I know all its peoples. All treasures of the world are mine by right, for all treasures of the world lie in my treasury."

     His face purses. "I imagine you can thereby grasp how often people have wished to steal from it."