An Age of Ending

There had once been a time Marduk could create and destroy at will. He could raise cities to the ground, flood entire kingdoms, and from the ashes, flooded wastes, and plains raise up creations all his own. He would walk the earth, inspiring Kings and priests to not only worship his name but to dole out justice, based upon the laws he inspired the men of the world to write in his honor. 

Now, instead of praising the great and powerful Marduk, people credit Hammurabi. “As if Hammurabi could have come up with even a quarter of those laws on his precious stele without my help.” The world is changing, all the gods have felt it. They are growing weaker, and the people are suffering. Not that human suffering has ever particularly bothered Marduk and his fellow gods who rule over the plains of the Tigris and Euphrates. But without their power, to help or to destroy, there’s no doubt the world would change drastically for humanity. “Not to mention what becomes of us?”

It began with the eruption of a volcano far from the territories of Marduk and the other gods in his pantheon, beyond the reach of those irritatingly calm Egyptian deities, outside the influence of the Mycenaean upstarts and the wayward Elamite gods too. Marduk and Nabu had even gone to question Hephaestus. They found him hiding in a cave beneath Thera, one of his previous victims. Hephaestus had destroyed the island of Thera with a massive eruption a few hundred years before, the resulting tidal waves had ravaged the Minoans on Crete and destroyed the civilization on Thera. The Minoan gods had diminished and vanished within a few decades, and now Thera was a desolate caldera in the Aegean Sea, that people were beginning to call Santorini.

Marduk and Nabu had demanded answers from Hephaestus. They had questioned how a volcano could erupt with such force that its ash was blocking out the sun, and not even Anu or Shamash could do anything to stop it. It was said even Ra had raged at his inability to break through the clouds of ash and nourish the crops of the rich Nile Delta. Hephaestus was at a loss for what was happening, and no matter what Marduk and Nabu had asked he could supply no more insight. Every pantheon seemed not only helpless to fix the problem and let the sun shine fully upon the earth once more, but as events spiraled they all grew weaker.

The people turned to their pantheons for help, desperate for the sun to break through the orange and brown haze. They needed their crops to grow, for the rain to fall, and they needed their people to continue to trade and produce as they once had. But it was all breaking down around them. Even Marduk and his fellow gods, the most capricious and aloof of the pantheons, were not immune to the cries for help. True, he had made plenty of his worshippers miserable from time to time in anger, and even boredom, but this crisis moved him like no other. “Not entirely out of love, not even with full fidelity…” Nabu knew, before any of the others, the danger. As more and more people turned from the gods they believed had turned their backs on them, they became weak. Nabu had discovered the secret, the power of the gods was linked to the worship they received from the people.

People who could no longer grow enough food to support their cities, towns, and villages moved. They sought out places of abundance, they forsook the gods and armed with bronze weapons set to the seas to pillage and destroy. With each passing month they had grown in size and power, not a single host, but multiple smaller groups with a similar goal. Survival. Survival culled from the destruction of societies that had always held them at arm's length. The gods of war were pleased at first, but as the people of the Shardana were joined by other tribes such as the Peleset, Lukka, Weshesh, Shekelesh, and many others, their faiths mixed and stagnated. The various gods of war soon found they had lost control, even influence, over their champions. These people of the sea set about laying waste to shipping routes, fields, settlements, and everything good and civilized in the world, and as they did so less people were left to worship the gods, and those who were left continued to turn from them. The cascading collapse of the material human world had somehow touched the more immaterial realms of the gods.

Marduk had begun suspecting a deeper connection between the gods and their worshippers when the Minoan pantheon had gone missing after the destruction of Thera and the desolation of Crete and large swaths of the Aegean. Which was why Nabu and Marduk had sought out Hephaestus. 

“Marduk?” 

Marduk turns from his view of the Mesopotamian lowlands upon his vantage point on the walls of Babylon. Hidden from the mortals around him by the aetheric magics and powers he feels himself losing. “Nabu. It is good to see you, I assume you bring only bad news as is your habit these days.” Nabu the god of writing and wisdom, called “the announcer” in other tongues approaches Marduk, similarly concealed from the mortals around him.

“It is not my wish to bring bad news, but sometimes that is the only news there is to give.” Nabu bows with a slight incline of his head. Although they are friends Nabu shows Marduk, the patron god of the city of Babylon and the creator and lawgiver his due respect. “The Elamite pantheon is no more. At least as far as I can sense.”

“What? How is this possible?” Marduk says.

“The Shardana and the Peleset have laid waste to the Elamites and the Hittites. Their cities lie in burning ruins and the people flee inland for the safety of the hills and mountains. The people of Cyprus have buried their weapons and wares, the forges lay cold and unused, and they have fled the island. I fear, never to return” Nabu moves to stand next to Marduk and stares out across the plains. “These marauders from the sea are set to move on Egypt soon. Amon-Ra and the Pharaoh must be made aware of what is at stake.”

Marduk looks over to Nabu and laughs. “God of writing and wisdom… can’t you send a letter?”

Nabu stares into Marduk’s eyes with no humor “No, I can no longer communicate with the other pantheons in the normal manner, we are diminished. Only the worship of the Assyrians keeps us in this sort of half-life. I fear our time is short, even if we can discover whatever is at work in this realm, what has set itself against us, I do not think we will ever hold sway over the mortal world as we once did. The age of gods and heroes is coming to an end my old friend.” 

“What do you propose we do? Could we make the trip to Egypt ourselves, and use a close physical proximity to send a message? Surely the partially divine Pharaoh could hear us.” Marduk has known for a long time the end might come, but now that it is rapidly approaching panic is setting in.

Nabu shakes his head “Sadly, no. I do not believe we can speak to the other pantheons, but you are onto something with using a half-breed. We need to use one of our own to talk to their Pharaoh.”

Marduk never likes the demigods, the half-breeds, at every turn Marduk usually opposed creating any. “Who would we send, certainly not Gilgamesh. He hasn’t aged well. What about Utnapishtim? That old man already survived the great flood, and he’s known outside our pantheon. It’s said even those odd Hebrews have him in their genesis stories.”

Again Nabu shakes his head, “I do not believe Utnapishtim would do it, he is happy in the underworld, and he’s never quite gotten over his dealings with Gilgamesh. He blames us for that you know. No. I think we need to use Ninurta.”

Marduk sneers at him. “Ha, she does not like being reminded that she is not a full deity, you know that. She hopes that because she was raised by us so early on in our own history that we would forget.”

“I think she hopes we would accept her, as I have, not forget Marduk.” Nabu and Marduk have had this discussion before. “She is extraordinarily important to the humans, not only as a deity but for what she did while alive. The reason we raised her.”

“Please, discovering how to throw some seeds onto the ground and make them grow the way you want is hardly a reason to be deified.” 

“Marduk, you do realize that I have traveled far and wide in search of all knowledge, and nowhere else have I found evidence that anyone else has ever discovered agriculture on their own. All the rest had at least heard of what Ninurta had done. Without her there would never have been humans in large enough numbers to worship us, growing us in power to what we. Well, what we once were, not what we are.”

Marduk disliked the idea of having to use a half-breed and disliked the idea of approaching Ninurta even more but he could see no other option. “Fine, let us go.” Nabu nods in agreement and turns to use his aetheric powers to open a portal in their realm to Nippur, a city that’s not far from where Ninurta first discovered how to farm living with her small tribe nearly 10,000 years before. Marduk glances around at the oblivious humans on the walls of Babylon, he looks below at the bustling city, his city, and the inhabitants going about their day. People he could no longer touch or speak to. People who could no longer see him, and whose presence he feels less and less each day. A melancholy has set into Marduk’s bones. A deep sadness and anger for a failing connection, a connection he had far too often taken for granted. A connection he never fully understood, and a connection he used more often than not for his own pleasure and entertainment. “I never did enough for them, and I probably did too much to them, ironically.”

“Hmmm? Did you say something Marduk? Are you coming or not?” Nabu is standing in his portal to Nippur.

“Nothing, Nabu, it is nothing,” Marduk says as he steps through the Portal with Nabu and finds himself standing on the barley fields outside Nippur. A small, humble mud hut sits next to a small irrigation canal. “She lives here?”

“Perhaps if you had ever taken an interest in her you would know that she is far more human than any of us, and for that reason, she really is our best hope Marduk.” Nabu turns toward the hut. “Ninurta!? Ninurta, it’s Nabu and Marduk, we have something we want to discuss with you.”

After a few moments, the cloth covering in the doorway of the mud hut is pulled aside and a tall, slender woman with bronze skin, and long dark curly hair emerges. In her mortal life, Ninurta had been a beautiful woman, and her deification only enhanced her already wondrous features. “Let me guess Nabu, you and Marduk have discovered you can no longer play with the humans and ruin their lives for your own amusement and you need me to fix the mess you all got yourselves into by being petty, feckless, capricious, poor excuses for gods?”

Marduk’s anger was near to bursting in seconds, a half-breed god speaking about them that way. The real gods. “I told you, it was no use Nabu. She will never agree to save those she doesn’t feel a part of. No caring for anyone not like her.” Marduk sneers, “Much the same thing she accuses us of, no?” 

“Oh very good Marduk, the deft negotiator as always.” Ninurta rolls her eyes. “I often said in the last few centuries you and your fellow gods would come to regret how you had begun treating humanity.”

“Ninurta. Please. Listen to me?” Nabu’s imploring, the begging tone was an affront to all Marduk held dear as a god. “You are a good person, I know you want to help us. Even if you disagree with how we’ve changed over the millennia deep down you do not want to see harm come to anyone.”

“You underestimate how much I have grown to dislike most of you Nabu.”

Nabu frowns but continues. “It isn’t just our pantheon that is affected, Ninurta. The Elamite pantheon has followed the Minoans into oblivion. The Mycenaean gods are, weakening and changing, only the Egyptian pantheon and people have a chance to stem the tide that rises against us.”

Ninurta looks almost, sad, to Marduk. “I know for a fact you and I do not see eye to eye Ninurta,” Marduk growls “but understand we need you, we think someone who is part human and part divine would be able to speak to and still influence, the Pharaos of Egypt and events taking place there. Even if all you agreed to do was deliver our message, it might save us.”

Ninurta looked from Marduk to Nabu and back. “Millennia ago you all raised me to the pantheon. You looked upon what I had given to humanity by discovering agriculture, and spreading its use, and saw in that a new future for humanity. You gifted me with your aetheric godly powers and personage, as a reward for my discovery.”

“Yes, yes, I know that, I was there Ninurta.” Marduk had limited patience for this.

Ninurta’s eyes narrowed. “You miss the point as usual or interrupt before it can be made I suppose. Also, typical of you Marduk. You all rewarded me for helping humanity proliferate across the globe, but as the populations grew and the worship of the humans grew your powers, your hubris blinded you to the truth. Humans' worship of you, as gods, is what provides you your power.”

“I was not blind, nor were any of the others. We know the worship of the humans made us great.” Marduk spat back. “Why do you make these foolish points? These old arguments?”

“Because you still fail to see your own guilt!” Ninurta roars at Marduk. “You pathetic god” she draws that last word out dripping with sarcasm as thick as honey from a comb, “you think you’re owed it don’t you!? You truly believe that you’re owed their worship, that despite anything you ever did they should still fall over themselves to worship you! That is what your precious pantheon of gods fails still to understand. This is all your fault.” Ninurta’s chest heaves with anger.

“Ninurta, please, I know it is our fault. I recognize it. I do.” Nabu is practically groveling again. “I know it is not too late though, I can correct the pantheon, we all can. We can set them straight, I just need you to stop the bleeding. Go to the Pharaoh, let him know what is happening, and convince him and his pantheon to put an end to the Shardana, and other tribes’, burning of the world.”

She scoffs. “Please Nabu. Nobody will convince any of them” Ninurta jerks her head defiantly in the direction of Marduk, “that they’ve been wrong. You could have helped and nurtured humanity Marduk. All of you. Anu, Ishtar, Enki, Shamash, and even Tiamat. If you had partnered with the people of Mesopotamia if you had helped them as they begged you to do. None of this would be happening. I would even venture to guess you would be stronger now if you had.” Tears of anger run down Ninurta’s cheeks. “I have tried. I have helped foster the people’s love of growing things and helped them discover ways to provide even more bountiful harvests. I helped them combat the floods your lot so flippantly sent their way. I watched helplessly as their crops, livelihood, and even children were so recklessly destroyed at your whims. In your petty squabbles or for your entertainment. I would sooner die here and now than help any of you survive what is coming. This world will be better off without any of you.”

Marduk’s blood boils, “I will gladly kill you where you stand!”

“Marduk no!” Nabu yells as he feels the little aetheric power left building up in Marduk. Ninurta spreads her arms wide and smiles as the wave of pulsing purple and blue power strikes, envelopes, and swirls around her. Marduk is gleeful in his chance to doll out justice one more time. But something is wrong… The power dissipates and Ninurta still stands, arms wide and smiling.

“Fool,” she says, but with a voice that is somehow, less than it was. Her eyes glance around almost as if she is lost. Marduk quietly lets go of his breath, “no…” he whispers.

“I know you can still hear me, even if I cannot hear or see you any longer, fool of a god!” Ninurta shouts, “Your pride and failure to understand humanity once again is your undoing. Your power is so weak now you can only affect the realm of the gods, and I was only half-breed.” Ninurta sneers at the last word. “A half-breed no more though, made fully human by a half-whit.” Ninurta laughs. “I may be fully human now, but at least I won’t be a half-breed living whatever half-life you are in for. Good riddance to you. After almost 10,000 years living as one of you, I can now go to rest at the end of my life knowing what I have done for humanity will live on forever. While you will only be remembered as false gods.”