The world beyond Uruk's shadow was a revelation of teeth and thirst. For Lulal, the chancellor of planned irrigation and written ledgers, it was a brutal education. The sun was not a god to be appeased with a festival; it was an enemy that sought to drink the moisture from his eyes. The night was not a time of rest, but a vast, cold expanse where every rustle in the brush was a potential assassin.
Gilgamesh, by contrast, seemed to bloom in the chaos. The restless energy that made him a disruption in his father's geometic city was here the key to survival. He moved with an uncanny awareness, his senses sharp as a hawk's. He found water in root systems Lulal would have passed by, and pointed out edible berries with a confident, untaught knowledge.
"How do you know these things?" Lulal asked one evening, his body aching, as they huddled by a small, mean fire.
Gilgamesh shrugged, poking the embers with a stick. "The world speaks. You just have to listen. My father… he only hears the sound of bricks being stacked."
It was the first time he had spoken of Kur without a tone of defiant rebellion, but with a simple, profound sadness. Lulal saw it then—the boy wasn't just strong; he was deeply, intuitively intelligent, a mind shaped by the raw data of the earth itself, unmediated by another's design. He was everything Kur's sterile world could not contain.
Lulal's own thoughts were a dark river. He replayed his last moments with Enki endlessly. The feeling of the Divine Interdiction—the stolen breath, the lie on his tongue—was a phantom pain. Had his master truly been powerless? Or was his "purpose" as the Witness a higher calling that simply excluded the salvation of a single family? The thought was a poison. He had dedicated his life to Enki's garden, and when the wolves were at the door, the gardener had offered a parable instead of a spear.
Days bled into one another. The land began to rise into rocky, arid foothills. The air grew colder. It was here the mountain lion found them.
It was a tawny shadow, all coiled muscle and silent intent. It emerged from behind a jagged outcrop, its eyes two chips of green ice fixed on Lulal, the slower, weaker of the two. A low growl rumbled in its chest, a sound that vibrated in the pit of the stomach.
Lulal froze, his mind a blank page of terror. This was a death no principle of leverage or written law could counter.
Gilgamesh did not freeze. He did not shout. He simply stepped in front of Lulal, his body tensing. The restless boy was gone, replaced by something ancient and deadly. The lion charged, a blur of speed and fury.
What followed was not a fight; it was a cataclysm.
Gilgamesh met the charge, not with evasion, but with a direct, shocking impact. He caught the lion's forelegs, his own small feet digging grooves in the hard earth as the beast's momentum drove him back. The sound was a sickening crunch of muscle and bone against immovable force. The lion, confused and enraged, tried to bite down on Gilgamesh's shoulder. Gilgamesh shifted his grip, one hand locking under the beast's jaw, forcing its head back. With a grunt of effort that was more will than strain, he drove his other fist into the lion's ribcage.
The crack echoed through the hills like a stone splitting.
The lion went limp. Gilgamesh held the massive creature for a moment longer, its life bleeding out onto the dust, before letting the body slump to the ground. He stood panting, his knuckles bloody, his chest heaving. He was unharmed.
He turned to look at Lulal, his eyes wide, not with triumph, but with a kind of horrified awe. He looked from his bloodied hands to the dead lion, then back to his hands.
"I… I didn't know," Gilgamesh whispered, his voice small again. "I didn't know I could do that."
Lulal walked over, his own fear replaced by a staggering, terrible understanding. This was not just a boy. This was a weapon. A force of nature that could either break the world or save it. And he, a heartbroken chancellor with a head full of broken faith, was now the only one holding his leash.
"You are your father's son," Lulal said, his voice quiet. "But you are not his design."
That night, under a canopy of cold, sharp stars, Gilgamesh skinned the lion with a flint knife, his movements now precise, thoughtful. Lulal watched him, the fire casting dancing shadows. He had set out to find a goddess of life. He had found, instead, a demigod of death, and in doing so, had found the first, grim piece of his own shattered purpose. They were both exiles. One from a garden of lies, the other from a cage of stone. And their path was now paved with blood and shared, silent understanding. The road to Egypt lay ahead.