[Hereafter] Too Many Gods (omake) (Patreon)

Too Many Gods

The summoning circle glowed, surging. The familiar light grew blinding and the grinding wind whipped about as a figure formed in the center like a shadow cast in three dimensions.

The tempest collapsed inwards, flowing rapidly back towards the vague figure in the middle like a supernova in reverse, and it compressed down into the form of a young man, a study in strangeness and contradiction.

He looked vaguely East Asian, in a way that said one or both of his parents was at least half Japanese, but his hair was closer to brown than black and his eyes were a startling red that I had come to associate with the divine. He wore a friendly, easy smile, made sinister by the contrast of his sharper, less human features.

And contrary to his pale skin and obvious Japanese ancestry, he was dressed like something straight out of a sixties adaptation of Arabian Nights.

Except no, we'd seen this sort of dress before, hadn't we? This wasn't Arabian, this was Sumerian. The white cloth trimmed in gold, the ornate vest with a four-pointed star pattern on each side radiating wavy lines out from the center, the golden armor that was far more decorative than functional. It reminded me of Gilgamesh, the form of the wise king we had met just recently, not the terrible tyrant who swept aside everything in his way.

"Hey, there," he said, lifting one of his hands in greeting. "It looks like you've summoned me in the form of a Rider Servant. This is a bit different from how I usually manifest, but my true name is —"

The door to the summoning chamber burst open, prompting a squawked, "Hey!" from Da Vinci, but Ishtar paid her no attention, because her focus was entirely on the new guy. She pointed at him, face contorting into an angry snarl, and I prepared to intervene with Command Spells in case she tried to kill him.

"You! Why did you follow me to Chaldea, you idiot?"

"Little Ishtar is here?" the new guy blurted out.

"Stop calling me that!" Ishtar spat out. "You're seven minutes older, not seven years!"

The new guy just burst out laughing, and Ishtar's face morphed into an expression first of surprise, and then embarrassment. "W-where did that even come from?" she muttered to herself.

"S-Senpai, what's going on?" Rika asked me with quiet urgency.

I don't know, I didn't say. Whatever it was, it looked like it wasn't dangerous. Yet. I still wasn't sure that wouldn't change.

"Alright," the new guy said once he'd gotten it out of his system. "Let's try this again, now that my little sister can't burst in to interrupt."

"Again," Ishtar grumbled, crossing her arms almost petulantly, "who are you calling 'little' exactly? We're twins!"

"I'm a Servant of the Rider class." The new guy pressed a hand to his bare chest. "My true name is Shamash, god of the sun, justice, morality, and truth."

He smiled. "Just think of me as an older brother, here to look out for his younger siblings, yeah?"