A granite statue of a female just like the queens at Gilgamesh’s feet, only this one wasn’t kneeling. She was running, fleeing from the king’s golden statue with her back turned on the caged demons below, because this was the ninth queen. The one who’d run away from Gilgamesh and left her people to die. The story was right there, engraved beneath the queen’s running feet for every demon to read while they waited to be sold. Behold the Coward Queen, it said, who chose her life over yours.
