Blood & Fur

Chapter Twenty-Four: Welcome Home (Book I Conclusion)

Word of my ambush spread quickly.

The dead did not waste anything. By the night’s end, a new stand made from the Tzahualli’s remains would join the Market of Years. I had no idea what kind of goods someone would sell within the bones of a giant spider-totem’s corpse though. Trinkets made from dead bugs? Clothes made from colored webs? Or perhaps Huehuecoyotl would repurpose it into a new attraction? That coyote had a flair for the dramatic.

In any case, Queen Mictecacihuatl swiftly arrived once alerted of the commotion. Much like her husband, she seemed aware of anything happening within Mictlan’s walls at any time. The presence of a Tzahualli, even a dead one, probably invited her full and immediate attention.

“That was a brazen attempt,” the queen said after she listened to my tale. “I suspected a few Tzahualli lurk in the lower layers, but it bothers me to hear one is still stalking the land of the living.”

“That one won’t harm the dead anymore, at least,” I replied.

“You have my gratitude for this. Those consumed by the Tzahualli are denied an afterlife. You have avenged many souls and preserved others yet to come.” Queen Mictecacihuatl looked up at the Land of the Dead Suns’ stone ceiling. “Still, I cannot help but wonder if there are others active among their kind. If one has survived our purge, why not more?”

I feared as much. Inkarri must have recruited the spider-totem who would let him organize this ambush the quickest. He would certainly be able to secure contracts with a more competent Tzahualli and organize another ambush in time.

“Is there any way to avoid a similar trap?” I asked the goddess.

When the Queen of the Dead paused for a brief moment, I already knew the answer would be a firm ‘no.’ “Violence is forbidden within these walls and shall not be tolerated. If your enemy attempts to slay you here, he shall suffer my wrath. However, your foes are correct. Neither my king’s reach nor mine extends to souls trapped on the threshold between life and death. Otherwise, I would have helped your predecessors pass on properly.”

“Not to my knowledge. The passage between life and death always shows the soul at its most vulnerable. Your Teyolia is like a candle in the night, easy to track for those who can see in the dark.” The Queen joined her skeletal hands together. “There is another possibility, child, albeit with its own harsh cost.”

“Moving into Tlalocan,” I guessed. She had already suggested a similar scenario to escape the Tumi’s surveillance.

“That would be the easiest solution,” the goddess confirmed. “Once you cross into the second layer, your soul will skip the first layer once you fall asleep. Instead of crossing the Gate of Skulls that separates the land of the living from our realm, your spirit will instead pass through my husband’s everwatching gaze. No spider will be able to catch you mid-fall, because they will not know in which layer you would land; and if they try to find out, my king’s hand shall squash them.”

A thought I relished immensely.

“However, I must remind you that Tlalocan is a perilous place,” Queen Mictecacihuatl said. “There is no sanctuary to be found under its rain of fire, no city of the dead to offer you peace and repose. The dangers you will find there might exceed those your foes up above can come up with.”

“Perhaps, but I can prepare for Tlalocan’s dangers while Inkarri’s attacks will always come as a surprise to me.” I let out a sigh. “It seems I will have to move deeper earlier than expected.”

A true shame. I had grown to enjoy Mictlan over the nights I spent within its rattling walls. As odd as it sounded, a city of honest corpses felt more welcoming than a luxurious palace full of servants and traitors. It helped me escape the Nightlords’ grasp and that nagging, constant sensation of danger.

Mictlan helped me breathe.

Without it as an escape for my troubles above… my life in the waking world would only grow wearier. I could tell.

Queen Mictecacihuatl gave me a look of pure compassion. She had sensed my distress. “I am truly sorry, Iztac. If I could offer more help, I would.”

“You have already helped me more than you can imagine, oh kind Queen of the Dead.” My heart overflowed with gratitude. “You have shown me more compassion than most of my own kind, and your wise advice helped guide me in troubled times. I shall not forget it.”

“I shall not forget you either, Iztac. You will always be welcome in Mictlan.” Her gaze lingered on my chest. “However, I feel great doom stands between you and your eternal rest.”

“Nothing escapes you, Your Majesty.” I hoped she could offer one last piece of advice before I continued my descent into Tlalocan. “A sulfur flame burns in my palace.”

Queen Mictecacihuatl listened attentively as I recounted last night’s tale. How the Nightlords’ ritual led to the creation of a smokeless fire connected to an ancient and primeval horror. Having existed since the dawn of life, I doubted the goddess of death could feel fear.

And yet… and yet the way her flayed flesh tensed up as I recounted my tale did not escape me. I couldn’t tell if it was out of anger, annoyance, or another human emotion, but my story definitively unsettled her.

I took it as a dire warning.

Queen Mictecacihuatl was as old as the first humanity and watched the world end four times across countless eons. She had welcomed my pleas to travel into the depths of the Underworld and defeat the Nightlords with compassion, but never personal concern.

Whatever my captors had planned bothered the very architects of the cosmos.

“Do you know how the fifth sun came about, Iztac?” the goddess finally asked me, breaking the silence.

“Only the Yohuachancan myth,” I replied after recovering my composure. A tale I already knew to be deceitful. “When the fourth world came to an end, the great Yohuachanca, the First Emperor, offered a covenant to mankind. He would sacrifice himself to become the fifth sun and return light to the world, but in exchange mortals would have to sacrifice their blood to keep him and his descendants fed.”

“A lie inspired by the truth, but a lie nonetheless,” the queen commented. “The truth, as you no doubt suspect, is very different. I was fortunate enough to witness the momentous occasion with my own eyes.”

I nodded sharply and listened in respectful silence. The goddess paused for a short moment, gathering her thoughts before revealing to me the secret tale of creation.

“Long before Yohuachanca arose to dominate the land, the gods gathered after the demise of the fourth humanity,” Queen Mictecacihuatl explained to me. “My husband argued against the recreation of life, as he always does whenever the world is remade.”

It didn’t surprise me. King Mictlantecuhtli had never been alive and considered death to be the true state of existence.

“Quetzalcoatl stole the bones of the dead to create a new incarnation of mankind, but there was no sun to illuminate the darkness.” The goddess waved her hand at the fire in my chest. “To ignite a sun, a god must give up their Teyolia, their heart-fire. Even among the divine, few possess a strong enough flame to achieve this feat. Of the celestial host, only two gods proved worthy candidates: proud and mighty Tecciztecatl, son of Tlaloc and Chalchiuhtlicue, born of two suns and with the arrogance to match his origins; and humble Nanahuatzin, who had suffered a life of hardship, poverty, and misery, yet gained a strong will from it.”

“I’ve never heard of either of these gods,” I confessed.

“The vampires erased word of their existence, as they try to extinguish mine,” Queen Mictecacihuatl replied before returning to her tale. “Tecciztecatl volunteered for the task because he believed it an honor; Nanahuatzin, because he thought it was his duty.”

I had heard similar folktales often enough to guess how it would turn out.

“We gods gathered at the apex of a stillborn world and lit a great bonfire atop a mountain. Tecciztecatl and Nanahuatzin were asked to step forward and sacrifice their most valuable possessions to the flames. The former gave rich offerings of gold, jade, and coral; the latter could only offer his own blood. It was decided that strong and noble Tecciztecatl would become the new sun, while Nanahuatzin would become his moon and assistant. Tecciztecatl was asked to jump into the bonfire, so that his Teyolia might rise from it and ascend into the sky.”

“But he did not,” I guessed. This always happened in the priests’ stories, who loved to condemn the proud and rebellious to better exalt the humble and dutiful. “He proved unfit for the task.”

“He did.” Queen Mictecacihuatl let out a laugh. “Four times Tecciztecatl tried to jump into the sacred fire. Four times he recoiled upon sensing the searing heat on his skin. Tecciztecatl had never tasted pain before, and now he learned to fear it. The gods were disappointed, none more than Tecciztecatl’s parents, who had both made the ultimate sacrifice without hesitation. After their son’s fourth failure, they called upon Nanahuatzin.”

The goddess marked a short pause. “Do you know what his name means, Iztac?”

I nodded. “Nanahuatzin means ‘full of sores.’ It is a cruel name.”

“Nanahuatzin lived up to it. He was born so deformed his godly parents abandoned him, and lived an existence of shunned misery. Though kind Xochiquetzal adopted him he had few friends, chief among them were my faithful Xolotl, noble Quetzalcoatl, and his cunning brother Tezcatlipoca. But his pain had taught him resolve, and the little kindness he received showed him the value of life. When he was called to the bonfire, Nanahuatzin did not even hesitate before jumping in.”

Was that respect I detected in the queen’s voice? “You sound like you admire him, oh goddess.”

“I do,” Queen Mictecacihuatl replied with fondness. “The living forget acts of valor quickly, but we dead ones remember them forever.”

Coming from a goddess as old as time, that was high praise.

“I cannot boast of raising a sun into the sky,” I said, “But I hope to become as worthy of remembrance as Nanahuatzin one day.”

“You do remind me of him, Iztac,” the goddess said with a small chuckle. “Nurture your inner strength, child. Bravery does not rise from magic or power, but one’s resolve in the face of suffering.”

I thought over the lesson, and offered a nod of appreciation. The goddess continued her tale soon after.

“Tecciztecatl was so shamed and humiliated that he immediately followed his rival into the bonfire to prove himself,” she said. “Soon two lights rose in the sky, each a reflection of the gods who gave them life: Nanahuatzin, who sacrificed himself out of bravery, ascended as the fifth sun; Tecciztecatl, who gave his life out of wounded pride, became the moon. The remaining lesser gods thus gave their Teyolia to fuel the wind and give movement to the stars. They sacrificed themselves to breathe life into the cosmos. Now mortals have taken upon that duty.”

“Mortals?” My gaze wandered to my chest, where my Teyolia burned. Whereas the dead only had darkness between their ribs. “Is this linked to our heart-fires?”

“Very sharp, Iztac. Yes indeed. When a mortal dies, whether man or beast, their Teyolia ascends to fuel the fifth sun while their Tonalli goes on to rest in the Underworld.”

This meant that by devouring both, vampires did worse than prevent the dead from enjoying their afterlife. They slowly starved the sun of power and threatened the universe’s very stability. They were an infection cursing life itself.

“This is a heartfelt tale, Your Majesty, and I thank you for sharing it with me,” I said, albeit with some confusion. I believed the queen told me the unblemished truth—she had witnessed these events in person after all—but their significance escaped me. “However, how does it relate to the Nightlords’ sulfur flame?”

She answered me with another question. “Why do mortals create statues of the gods and give them offerings?”

“Because they hope to establish contact through them,” I replied with confidence. That was why Queen Mictecacihuatl needed a priestess to run the Day of the Dead ritual. The latter would serve as her anchor into the living world.

“We gods have power over our representations and representatives,” the goddess confirmed. “But the reverse is also true.”

It took me a moment to realize the magnitude of her statement. “Acts visited upon your representations affect you?” It beggared understanding. “But… that’s not possible. If so, then any statue’s destruction would harm you.”

“Most gods are so powerful that symbolic acts rarely affect them much. The destruction of my temples and statues left me disturbed, but it did not shackle my power.” The goddess met my gaze, the ghostly hue in her empty eyes reminding me of the sulfur flame’s radiance. “However, a symbolic ritual, complex and thoroughly repeated, might eventually weaken my very essence.”

A shiver ran through my spine as I connected the dots.

The Scarlet Moon.

“I am the First Emperor incarnate, or so the red-eyed priests say,” I muttered under my breath, horrified. “They affect him through me. Like a doll burned to curse the one it represents.”

“You play the role of your land’s founder, who ascended to divinity as the god of pain and hunger,” Queen Mictecacihuatl whispered, her tone as haunting as a skull rattling in its tomb. “You are wed to four consorts, who each stand as the living reflections of the people your captors used to be. You all play at being emperor and masters of the realm, until one night these four living women are devoured by the vampires they were fated to become. Your captors then proceed to ritually tear apart the living incarnation of their divine father.”

A rehearsal. The Scarlet Moon was a rehearsal. The echo of an ancient crime kept alive and meant to entomb the past. A betrayal which the Nightlords repeated each year on their father’s precious human doll.

Which meant that the New Fire Ceremony represented a similar ritual. One targeted not at the First Emperor, but at Nanahuatzin.

At the sun.

At the sun.

They’re… they’re insane. I thought Yoloxochitl was the only madwoman among the Nightlords, but now I realized all four sisters were completely and utterly mad. They spent over six-hundred years refining a ritual aimed at the sun on which all mortal life relied on. Insane.

What could they hope to accomplish? Extinguish the sun and enshroud the universe in eternal darkness? It would kill the very humans on which the leeches rely on to feed! Certainly even the likes of the Jaguar Woman realized that!

“Why?!” I begged Queen Mictecacihuatl for an answer, my voice breaking from the creeping dread and disbelief. “Why?! What could they hope to accomplish?!”

“I cannot say what the vampires plan to do,” the queen replied, her voice heavy with concern. “But the place that you people call Smoke Mountain is where we once raised the fifth sun. It cannot be a coincidence.”

No, it could not. This did not reassure me at all. The Nightlords had spent centuries rehearsing a parody of the world’s creation, until at last a cursed god of hunger and hatred blessed their vile enterprise.

I tried to calm down, telling myself I still had days to stop whatever they planned. I had time to think it through. Precious little time. I replayed the New Fire Ceremony in my mind, searching for any detail that might help the Queen of the Dead enlighten me.

“Drain,” I muttered twice, once a mere hush, another a firmer word. “They said they would ‘drain’ power from the flame. Were they talking about the flow of Teyolia?”

Were they trying to rob the sun of its own sustenance?

To my sorrow, the goddess had no more answer than me. “I cannot say, Iztac,” she said, her flayed skin tense as a bowstring. “However, the danger is real. Like the moon and the tides, the cosmos follows a cycle where magic ebbs and flows. The cosmos is at its most malleable on the last five days of a fifty-two year cycle, for this is the moment when the power of chaos is at its apex. Usually impossible feats of sorcery become possible on that date.”

There were no curse words strong enough to answer that revelation.

I wasn’t blind to the goddess’ worries. She couldn’t tell what the Nightlords planned to do at the ceremony’s conclusion, but what mattered was that they might succeed.

I must stop it, I told myself, my hands shaking, my fiery blood now colder than winter snow. No matter the cost, no matter its aims, I had to stop that ritual. Not only for my sake, but that of the world itself.

“The fifth sun shall be the last your kin shall see, Iztac.” The goddess marked a short pause heavy with finality. “The gods have all sacrificed their Teyolia so that the current world might live. Should the current sun be extinguished, no one shall step up to raise its successor.”

As if I didn’t have enough weight on my shoulders as it was!

“Can’t you stop it?!” I dared snap at Queen Mictecacihuatl, too fearful and frustrated. “You are a goddess, a real goddess! Surely this situation warrants your intervention!”

“I have no dominion over the living world,” she reminded me, her voice oozing sorrow.

“But I do! I can travel between worlds!” I knelt before her. “Trade me the power to break this ritual before it’s too late! I shall give thee my flesh and soul if I must!”

Queen Mictecacihuatl bristled. “You know not what you ask.”

“I do!” This situation went far beyond my personal salvation. The Nightlords’ ritual might threaten the world and the very existence of mankind as a whole. “Don’t you have more spells to give?! More secret strength to lend?!”

“I have given you all the help I could provide, more than you know.” The goddess shook her head and let out a rattle of pure regret. “There exist laws that have bound me since the dawn of time. I am powerful, that is true. But I am not free to do as I please.”

I opened my mouth to argue further… when the queen avoided my gaze.

There were gestures so simple that, coming from the right person, carried more weight than mountains. Queen Mictecacihuatl was the first woman to ever die, a goddess only two generations removed from the universe’s origin. She commanded all souls who had ever perished.

Yet she avoided a mortal’s gaze.

Out of shame. Out of sorrow. Out of frustration.

The gesture took the wind out of my sails. The goddess wanted to help from the bottom of her divine heart, but she was just as lost on how to proceed as I was.

Even the gods had limits, I realized. Otherwise they would not need humans to keep the sun alive.

The world above belongs to mortals and its fate would remain in mortal hands. I breathed the chilly air of Mictlan and fought to regain my composure. In my hands, and the few I can convince to fight with me.

Much like Nanahuatzin, all I could do was to remain resolute in the face of danger and push on anyway. I had done so on the night of the Scarlet Moon. And I would do so again.

“I shall disrupt this ritual before it reaches completion,” I swore to the goddess. “One way or another.”

The queen met my eyes again, though the light in them flickered weakly. “I cannot offer insight on how to extinguish the sulfur flame, but I can tell you this, Iztac: even the strongest lie eventually yields to the simplest truth. No matter how powerful your enemies appear, remember that their rule is built on weak foundations.”

“I shall keep your advice in mind.” For all the good it would do. “I promise.”

I would also make sure neither Nanahuatzin’s memory, nor even Tecciztecatl’s, would be sacrificed on the First Emperor’s altar. No matter their reasons, both had given their souls to bring mankind light. I would not let them be forgotten to the profit of a vampiric usurper.

“It is time for me to go,” I whispered with a heavy heart. “I only have a few hours of sleep left.”

“The doors to Tlalocan await you underground.” The goddess’ skeletal teeth morphed into what could pass for a sad smile. “We shall meet again, Iztac, on the Day of the Dead.”

If I lived that long. “I shall provide a suitable priestess,” I humbly promised. “I already have my sights on potential candidates.”

Necahual seemed like the best choice for a priestess, followed closely by Sigrun, if I could convince them to go along with it.

“Much will have changed by then, but I can tell that you will deliver.” Queen Mictecacihuatl put a hand on her heart and waved it at mine. I recognized it as a humble gesture of goodbye. “You have my blessing on your journey, Iztac.”

I knelt and offered her my warmest thanks. I would miss her greatly.

I had the feeling the gods I would meet below would prove far less pleasant.

It took me hours of preparation and paying a dead merchant with unforgettable illusions–he had asked for a full night’s worth against his Macetail carrying frame, to which I haggled down the duration—but I finally descended into Mictlan’s depths well and fully prepared.

I walked down bone-stairs with a mask of Tlaloc on my face and blue body paint all over my flesh and bones. My back bent under the weight of the heavy armored carrying frame and its contents: my second volume of the First Emperor’s codices, the urn Chalchiuhtlicue asked me to deliver to her husband, and other supplies that should help me brave Tlalocan’s incendiary landscape. I should be able to avoid the worst of the second layer’s hazards by combining my disguise with a well-crafted Veil.

All in all, I was as prepared for the next step of my journey as I would ever be. Mictlan’s bowels opened up before me and led to the Gate of Torment. The doorway to Tlalocan hadn’t changed since my last visit. The obsidian archway leading to the second layer awaited me with pulsing flames and blazing flashes of crimson lightning.

A golden tumi floated in front of it.

If I still had a beating heart inside my chest rather than a searing flame I would have had a stroke on the spot. Instead, I immediately triggered my Gaze spell while summoning the Doll’s talons, ready for yet another fight…

Only for the mask to disappear before my sunlit eyes.

“Awww!” A familiar trickster raged from one of the chamber’s corners. “That’s cheating!”

That voice, I thought, immediately recognizing the bastard to which it belonged. Impossible. He said he didn’t want to see me again.

In spite of all reason, here he was, waiting for me with other guests.

Huehuecoyotl hadn’t changed a bit since I last had the displeasure of encountering him. He still radiated the same empty bravado and insolence he showed in all our interactions, lazily leaning against Tlalocan’s archway as if it were normal furniture rather than a window into an underground hellscape. He wasn’t alone either. Xolotl was also present, alongside two familiar skeletons I could never forget.

After all, I had saved their afterlives.

“Ueman? Chipahua?” I could hardly believe my eyes. “Is that you—AH!”

I had almost forgotten the sensation of Xolotl’s jaws closing on my arm. I did not miss it though. Huehuecoyotl held his empty rib cage as he laughed at my pain while Ueaman and his sister exchanged an embarrassed glance.

“Do you, uh…” Ueman scratched the back of his skull. A futile gesture since he had no hair left, but living habits die hard. “Need help?”

“No, it’s fine,” I said while gritting my teeth. Xolotl actually released his grip a bit earlier than usual. “Was that truly necessary?”

“I am entitled to chew your flesh and bones each time you visit the first layer,” Xolotl reminded me. “Did you think you could escape without paying good Xolotl’s due?”

No. No, I definitely did not.

But still, I was surprised to find him waiting for me at Tlalocan’s threshold with company. I assumed Xolotl wanted to remind me of our second deal and the message I had to deliver to his brother Quetzalcoatl, but the others had no stake in my departure. One in particular had made his displeasure with me known.

“Why are you here, Huehuecoyotl?” I asked the trickster as he finally calmed down. What was his game? “I thought you never wanted to see me again?”

“I stand by what I said. Your heart is full of hate and its light will bring naught but destruction to the living.” Huehuecoyotl shrugged his shoulders. “But you know me. I’m a playful man. I always bet against the odds.”

I squinted at him, unsure how I should take this. I thought he would ask me a favor, or laugh at me, but he did neither of these things. It took me a while to realize he had no ulterior motives, or at least none that I could identify.

“Are you here to tell me farewell?” I asked, utterly flabbergasted.

“Well, you did declare your undying love to me atop a giant spire.” Huehuecoyotl smirked at me as he dared to remind me of that particular fiasco, the shameless bastard. “It would be uncouth of me not to tell you goodbye, little bird that you are. Not after the passionate night we spent together.”

“Brother, what is he talking about?” Poor Chipahua asked her brother while I fought back the urge to strangle Huehuecoyotl where he stood.

“You will understand when you’re old–” Ueman suddenly stopped himself before he could say something terribly stupid to his dead sister. “I will tell you another day.”

“We did not…” My protests died in my throat when I heard Huehuecoyotl’s cackling. That wily trickster delighted in embarrassing me, so I decided to deny him. “Whatever. I don’t care.”

“We didn’t break up on the best conditions,” Huehuecoyotl lied to the other undead.

“How surprising,” Xolotl replied with heavy sarcasm. Clearly, he too had suffered from the coyote’s pranks. “I wait for the day someone will scrap you with great expectations.”

I cursed myself for my stupidity. Of course Huehuecoyotl had an ulterior motive. He wanted to laugh at me one last time.

I would have been furious under other circumstances, but to my surprise I couldn’t muster the strength to be mad at him. If anything I felt… strangely pleased. The same way I had been after losing a splash fight with Eztli near the river or playing that Tumi game with Nenetl.

I had forgotten what it meant to have fun.

“It’s been a while, great Iztac,” Ueman said as he found the courage to greet me. His sister Chipahua nodded sweetly at me. “Lord Xolotl informed us that you intended to leave Mictlan, so we insisted that we attend your departure.”

Xolotl informed them? I glanced at the dog god, who scratched his back rather than face me.

“Much has happened since we last met, and I must take my leave of this gray city,” I conceded to Ueman. “But please, stop calling me ‘great.’ Iztac will do fine.”

“I… I’m afraid I can’t do that.” Ueman shook his head in denial. “We do owe you our afterlives. I do not want to sound disrespectful.”

“Fine,” I replied with a heavy sigh upon realizing he wouldn’t budge on the matter. “How have you been since we last crossed paths?”

“All is good. We were sorted with our ancestors, with whom we share a house.” Ueman let out a chuckle. “It is a bit strange to talk with grandparents we never met in life, but they dote on my sister.”

Good for them. They had earned a peaceful rest after spending decades trapped in the Underworld’s mists.

Chipahua approached me and raised her skeletal hands at me. A small trinket shone within them; a rainbowy snail’s shell. Pretty, if a bit tarnished by time and slightly cracked.

“For you,” Chipahua whispered shyly.

“Chipahua found it near the lake of tears outside the city walls,” Ueman said. “We know it’s not much, great and powerful Iztac, but we hope you will appreciate this gift.”

“I do,” I said, touched by the gesture. I took the shell into my palm as if it were a precious treasure. “It is pretty.”

“It is marvelous,” Huehuecoyotl commented with a salesman’s enthusiasm. “A captured rainbow shining like the sun!”

It shone the more since it came without expectations, unlike the gifts I received above ground. This shell might not be a magical tablet or a pet Feathered Tyrant, but I would value it more than the others for what it represented.

Gratitude.

There were people worth helping in this harsh world of ours.

“Thank you,” I told Ueman and his sister after storing the seashell into my carrying frame with my other precious possessions. “I shall carry it with me to the Underworld’s depths.”

“A bold promise,” Xolotl commented with some cynicism, while Huehuecoyotl crossed his arms with an enigmatic look on his canine face.

“No, great Iztac, we thank you for your kindness and bravery.” Ueman and his sister bowed before me. “We shall pray for your success on your journey.”

I offered them a final nod of respect and bade them farewell as well. I stepped towards Tlalocan’s threshold, facing the smoldering hellscape beyond it.

“Remember our promise,” Xolotl said.

“I shall,” I replied. “Until we meet again.”

I took one last breath and then stepped forward.

The veil separating the first layer from the next was no thicker than a scroll of paper. I faced no resistance, no pushback. In fact, I fell through the entire portal the moment I touched it with my hand. My body, my soul, my very essence was called through the gate in the blink of an eye.

I felt the change within the very depths of my soul. A weight that fell not on my body, but my spirit. I sensed the familiar and terrible presence of King Mictlantecuhtli watching over me, like the guardian of a gate granting me passage. The death god offered me no farewell nor blessing. His almighty voice instead echoed in my skull one final time to impress a last warning in my thoughts.

“Do not become what you fight against.”

I crossed the passage, abandoning Mictlan’s cold for Tlalocan’s heat.

No words could properly describe the latter. I felt as if I had walked into an oven, no, a bonfire. I stepped onto ashes warmer than the Nightlords’ pile of them inside my palace and faced a storm of cinders blown by howling winds onto my face. The blue paint and mask I wore repelled them before they could flay the flesh from my bones, but I still felt the terrible heat nonetheless.

The noise of booming thunder erupted above me where once there was only silence. A thick smell of sulfur filled my nostrils alongside old dust and primeval ashes. The underground ceiling of bones gave way to a smoke-filled whirlpool of clouds dominated by Tlaloc’s baleful sun. A landscape of molten rivers and desolate spires sprawled before me, an invitation to desolation. Though I couldn’t see them yet, I knew the Burning Men haunted these ruins, waiting to strike.

I immediately called upon the Veil to hide myself under a cloak of illusions, to no avail. An overwhelming will blew away my disguise like the wind did to a sandcastle. The light of Tlaloc’s sun crushed my illusion under the weight of denial and disbelief.

“A clever plan,” a woman’s voice echoed behind me, high and mighty. “But one that was doomed from the very beginning.”

I froze in shock and surprise.

I’d only heard that voice in passing, whispered to me by the Yaotzin when it revealed Necahual’s darkest secret to me… and whom she feared the most.

I slowly turned around, the carrying frame heavy on my back, my Doll spell ready to fire at the first sign of danger. A copy of the Gate of Torment stood behind me, surrounded by a desert of dust. The obsidian archway was empty, with no door to Mictlan opened within its confines. As forewarned, this had been a one-way trip.

A giant black owl was perched atop the gate, her icy blue eyes studying me. I faced a reflection of my own Tonalli, but bigger, more experienced, and deadlier as well.

“Tlaloc’s sun burns away the lies that caused him distress,” she said calmly. “Your Veil spell is useless on this layer’s surface. You will have to bear his fury or that of his victims.”

I did not answer.

She didn’t mind. She stepped down from her perch and transformed midfall. Her talons became feet before they hit the ground. I faced a middle-aged woman with long white hair and a dress of blackened feathers. A dark wooden mask covered the upper part of her face, revealing only two blue lights for eyes. A purple flame even darker than mine burned inside her exposed ribs. I stared at my twisted mirror, my forgotten past and possible future.

“Welcome home, my son,” my mother greeted me.

Ichtaca. Mother of witches and Mictlan’s greatest criminal. The one who gave birth to me, both to my human flesh and the owl-soul I would later become.

A flood of conflicting emotions burst out from within me. Joy at seeing a family member alive, even one I had never truly known; a gaping emptiness left from growing up without a mother; abandonment issues I had spent years suppressing; anger at her departure; caution for her history of crimes; and fear of what she had done with my father’s soul. I stood still as so many thoughts waged a battle within my soul.

Was a similar conflict taking place within my mother’s mind? Her face was a mask, her eyes unreadable. I noticed her fingers slightly twitch now and then, though I couldn’t tell whether it was out of emotion or wariness. Did she expect us to hug or fight?

I activated the Gaze spell, just in case. My sunlight-fueled eyes pierced through no illusion. My mother had come to me without hiding anything. It reassured me, but not enough to lower my guard.

“How long have you been waiting?” I finally asked, my fists tightened and all my senses alert for any sign of danger.

“Since the day you were born.” A proud smile formed on her lips. “I knew you would grow into a Nahualli the moment the midwife dragged you screaming into the world. I had hoped the owl-totem would select you as its Tlacatecolotl, but I couldn’t be sure.”

“You could have found out earlier, if you hadn’t abandoned me and Father!” My blood boiled with anger. “Instead you left us to suffer alone!”

Her smile faded away.

“Do you think I wanted to?” Though she did not raise her tone, Mother sounded almost as angry as I was. “Leaving you and Itzili behind was by far the hardest decision I had to make in my entire life.”

“Then why?!”

“Because I had no choice,” she insisted angrily, stressing the last part. “The Nightlords were onto me and desired to add me to their sick imperial breeding program. They would have made me a concubine or consort had I not fled into the night. Those parasites wish to breed Nahualli like we do turkeys.”

I wanted to believe her. I desperately wanted to believe her. That there had been a completely rational reason that explained why she had abandoned her family without ever bothering to contact me again.

But for all of my heart’s desire, she was a stranger to me. A ghost I had resented and idealized at different times of my life, yet never truly known except through the tales of her cruelty.

“If you cared, you would have taken Father and me along,” I accused her. “Or at least sent a message.”

“I had to flee on short notice. I considered contacting you many times, Iztac, but the red-eyed priests would have used you as a hostage if I ever tried.” My mother crossed her arms. “Distancing myself from you was the only way to let them ignore your existence. To give you a chance at a better life.”

A better life?

A better life?!

“A better life?! Look at me!” I pointed at my eyes, at my owl mask. “Look at me!”

She held my gaze in silence.

“How could you look at my eyes and hair and think I would ever have a better life than literally anyone else?!” I accused her. “You were there with Father on the day I was born! The day when the soothsayer condemned a cursed freak before our entire village!”

“They were mundanes,” she answered with a touch of arrogant disdain, “and forbidden to slay you. What could they have done to you?”

A bitter laugh escaped my mouth. “Mock me for a start,” I rasped angrily. “And beat me, and starve me, and stone me, and throw shit at me, and slap me, and shun me–”

“Good.”

Her cold answer hit me harder than a slap to the face.

“Good?” I repeated weakly, more shocked than anything.

“Good.” She glared at me with ice in her eyes and in her heart. “You think a parent’s duty is to coddle their child? No, Iztac. A parent’s duty is to prepare their child to face reality. A reality that is cold and merciless, where the weak suffer as they must and the strong constantly look over their shoulder, where pain is common and kindness preciously rare.”

She took a step toward me, her forehead within inches of mine.

“So yes, all the suffering you went through was for the best,” she said with confidence that bordered on the frightening. “Because it taught you how it feels to be weak; that nothing is ever given, only claimed by strength, cunning, and force of will. It is only when the body is battered that it grows a backbone.”

“The best?” I glared back at her in fury and disbelief. “How dare you–”

“You wouldn’t be here otherwise,” she cut in, her words as sharp as a knife’s edge. “Instead, you would have wallowed in the palace’s pleasures or stepped away from the knife that would have awakened your power. You would never have defied the gods themselves and passed through this threshold. Pain is the anvil on which the human heart is forged.”

The worst part was she sounded as if she believed each and every word. Empty excuses were not spoken with such unblinking conviction. My mother truly believed that abandoning me to sixteen years of sorrow made her a good parent.

She was just as bad as Yoloxochitl, except in the other direction.

“I am proud of what you accomplished through your grit and bravery,” my mother whispered, though it came off as empty after all that she had said earlier. “And now that you have stepped beyond Mictlantecuhtli’s reach, I can help you.”

“Like you helped me by surrendering me to Necahual’s embrace?” I snorted. “I’ll pass.”

“I am sincere.” My mother looked at my chest with what could pass for regret, feigned or otherwise. “I’d hoped the Nightlords would leave you and your father alone since they mostly target women, but I should have known they would select a Nahualli this year. They need one to raise their twilight sun in the sky.”

I squinted, my surprise temporarily overcoming my anger. “Their twilight sun?”

My mother opened her mouth to elaborate when a terrible, inhuman howl echoed in the distance. A scream full of rage and suffering.

“We can discuss the past and how to break your curse in Xibalba,” Mother said. “We will be safer there than in the open.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you.”

“Itzili is waiting for you there too.”

The mention of my father’s name shook me to my core. I did not dare address the subject yet, since I feared for his soul…

My mother tilted her head to the side. “You do not trust me.”

I stifled a bitter laugh. “No, I do not.”

“Fair. Let me give you a choice then.” My mother straightened up, the ashes flowing over her feathered dress like water on a turtle’s scales. “You can continue your journey as it is, fighting your way through rains of cinders and the Burning Men’s arrows. It will be dangerous, especially for an untrained warlock like you. You have barely tapped into your true potential, my child. It might be enough to survive long enough to meet with Tlaloc and obtain his benediction. Your chances are slim, but they are not nonexistent.”

I was prepared. As best as I could be in a week’s time. But she was right, it would be dangerous. I clenched my jaw, fought back the urge to argue, and forced myself to listen for the time being.

“Or, you use your reason,” my mother said. “You come with me to Xibalba and meet with your father. There I shall teach you properly. I will show spells you can hardly imagine and rituals that will help you defeat the slavers who leashed your soul. I will show you how deep the abyss of magic goes. When you resume your journey, you will be better than prepared. You will be ready.”

She had rehearsed these words the moment I crossed the archway. I could tell. The conversation hadn’t gone the way she wanted, but it reached its intended destination nonetheless.

“So what will it be, my son?” My mother extended a hand to me. “Will you give me a chance to make up for lost time?”

My first instinct was to spit on her palm. But I had had a week of practice forcing myself to think rationally in the face of great evils.

Though my heart was a maelstrom, I tried to consider her proposal with a cool head. I didn’t have the luxury of making more enemies than those I already accumulated. I had agreed to look beyond Necahual’s abuse, I could at least give my own mother a chance. If only to keep her out of my way.

I couldn’t look past her dark reputation, however; and our discussion clearly showed me that she lived up to the tales. Her invitation could be a trap…

What would it change? I told myself. I had planned to go to Xibalba to check on my father’s soul anyway. Mother would be waiting for my arrival one way or another.

Besides, she held answers to my questions. About magic, about the Nightlords’ plans, and my totem’s secrets. If she indeed offered to treat me as a student rather than an intruder, then… then I would have to bite my tongue. I needed all the power and allies I could obtain to overthrow the Nightlords. Now more than ever.

“If this is a trap–” I said, but she didn’t let me finish.

“You will leave, I know. You have no need to worry.” Another smile flashed on her face, warm, yet with a somewhat sinister edge to it. “Another thing before we fly away.”

She transformed back into an owl of darkness, her great wings cast a dark shadow on the archway behind her.

“How do you feel,” she asked, ever so softly, “about becoming a god?”

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