It had been a long time since I took a bath with all four of my consorts at the same time.

The water heated up the instant I slipped inside it, so we didn’t even need to light a fire to keep it warm. I could have boiled it into steam, but settled on a more comfortable temperature that my wives and sister could enjoy.

My moving palace had taken its first steps towards Paititi and the battle that awaited us there, so this might very well be our last moment of reprieve before death, recapture, or endless night; a bubble of peace in a stormy sea of chaos and uncertainty.

Or at least, that had been the plan; yet none of my consorts relaxed. I could cut the tension in the air with a knife. Nenetl eyed me with the same worry she had shown at our family dinner, Eztli obsessively combed Ingrid’s hair as if to distract herself, and the latter constantly shifted in her unease. Only Chikal appeared somewhat at peace with our current circumstances, though the way she looked at the darkness beyond our window betrayed her true feelings.

“Are we truly ready?” Eztli finally broke the silence, her voice far quieter than usual.

“As much as we can be,” Chikal replied calmly. “Our archers will take position the moment we arrive at our destination.”

My amazon queen had formulated a brilliant idea to deal with the Nightkin that would inevitably come to face us: gather some of my holy blood and anoint weapons with it. My lifefluids continued to burn with sunlight long after they had escaped my body and ought to slay those vampires in a single strike.

I doubted those projectiles would be enough to slay the Nightlords, but every dead red-eyed priest or Nightkin would deprive them of precious blood to strengthen themselves with. Every advantage we could get would count.

Nonetheless, Ingrid and her sister remained the true crux of our plan. I had used the Legion to confirm that Iztacoatl kept her brother Fjor—whose consumption of a skull had allowed me to form a tenuous spiritual bond with—close at hand, though I dared not focus too much on him for fear of alerting the Nightlords of my surveillance.

Ingrid took a deep breath before offering us a heavy nod. “We… we are ready to begin when my lord wishes.”

“Will this plan of yours truly slay Iztacoatl?” Chikal pondered.

“It should at least weaken her enough for the kill,” I replied. “She will be the easiest of the sisters to deal with.”

The White Snake did not frighten me in the slightest. She was cruel and smart, but her heart remained ruled by fear, pettiness, and cowardice. She had folded when faced with far less power than the amount I currently wielded.

The true threat lay elsewhere.

Chikal rested her head on her fist. “It is the Jaguar Woman that concerns me the most, too. Her pride blinded her once, but she will not underestimate us anymore.”

Us. Somehow, that word warmed up my sunfire heart even further. We had gone through so much together, I felt we had formed an unbreakable bond deeper than any chain or spell. Pain and shared suffering forged the strongest of kinships.

Nonetheless, the mention of the Jaguar Woman cast a dark cloud on our gathering. We had all suffered at her hands one way or another. My sister’s soul remained bound to her; Ingrid had lost her mother to her cruelty, and Necahual had nearly taken Sigrun’s place on the sacrificial altar.

“I will bring you her head, Ingrid,” Eztli whispered in her fellow consort’s ear while stroking her hair. “Your mother will rest in peace once we sever that heavy skull from her shoulders.”

Strangely, Ingrid didn’t seem all that tempted by the prospect. “All I want is for my sister and I to live in peace, free of fear,” she said. “If there was another way, I would take it.”

“Oh?” Eztli raised an eyebrow. “Surely part of you must relish the thought of those old bats getting what they deserve.”

“I do… but I love my family more than I hate them.” Ingrid let out a heavy, tired sigh. “I would leave the Nightlords alone if it meant I could have my family back, alive and safe… but it cannot be helped.”

It saddened me that I could not fulfill Ingrid’s prayer. Ingrid would be the one paying the highest price in our endeavor. I wished there was a way to return her brother to life without sacrificing him for our future victory, but some curses could not be lifted so easily; especially the kiss of undeath.

“How good then that we can achieve both,” Eztli said in an attempt to comfort her. “Perhaps Iztac could grant us wings and flames to rain down upon our foes as he did with my mother.”

“I cannot share this power with you, alas,” I replied. None of my consorts met the conditions to become Mometzcopinques, either because they were born on the wrong dates or were still bound to Nightlords holding their soul in bondage.

“I wouldn’t accept that gift even if I could,” Chikal replied with a scoff and no hesitation. “I have spent too long as a slave to forswear my life to another, whether they be men or gods. There is no prize worth the cost of one’s freedom.”

Though the divinity within me felt slightly offended by her rejection, I couldn’t help but respect her decision. Chikal was a true queen who had never wavered in her pride. It brought a smile to my face.

“Chilam will prosper so long as you sit on the throne, Chikal,” I told her, half a compliment and half a prophecy. “I am certain of it.”

“That makes me think, what will we do once we win?” Eztli asked, as if our loss was inconceivable. I did not need the Gaze to see that it was partly a front for morale, a wish to focus on the future.

“I will return to Chilam and stabilize the region once Yohuachanca collapses,” Chikal replied. “There will be much to do… should we win to see the day.”

Somehow, the way she phrased that last word made it clear she understood that far more than our lives were at stake. It was quite foolish to make plans for a future in a world on the verge of collapse, but the flame of hope kept tomorrow alive

“I would like for my sister and I to see Winland,” Ingrid said wistfully. “That is what my mother would have wished.”

“I am tempted to join you… after mother and I rebuild our home,” Eztli replied before slouching in the bath. “What about you, Nenetl?”

“Oh.” My sister, who had remained eerily quiet so far, cleared her throat. “I… I haven’t thought about it yet.”

“Well, there is time,” Eztli replied.

There will be time. The thought would have seemed so pointless a few months ago when my lifespan was measured in the span of a year. Now, I knew within my bones that I would never age again. Should I triumph over the Nightlords and their dread father, I would be able to do so much.

However… something about my consorts’ words bothered me, and Nenetl’s behavior filled me with concern. Something about the way she looked at me was unbearable to both the man and the god within me.

In the end, our short relaxation time proved far too short, and what had gone unsaid weighed far more heavily on my heart than the few words we exchanged.

“Iztac,” Nenetl said once we left the bath. “Can I… talk to you for a minute?”

I saw no need to deny her request, and I would have asked the same myself anyway, so I indulged her. I brought her to my room in the roaming palace once she dried herself up—the water on my skin evaporated the moment I stopped paying attention, so I had no need to.

“What bothers you, Nenetl?” I asked once we were alone, my arms coiling around her waist to pull her into my embrace. My sister and consort bit her lower lip as I did so, which took me by surprise. Was my heat unpleasant? “Is my touch uncomfortable to you?”

“No, it… it is comforting…” she replied as her hands rose up to touch my cheeks. “You keep me warm inside and out…”

Yet something weighed on her nonetheless. I waited for Nenetl to find her words when she suddenly gathered her breath and moved her face closer to mine.

Then she kissed me.

It was a surprise, but one that stoked a fire. Memories of more innocent times when neither of us knew the truth about our shared parentage flooded my mind, reminding me of her taste, of her smell, and warmth. I immediately tightened our embrace as our lips touched, one of my hands moving up her back and stroking her hair. She briefly surrendered herself to the kiss, although I could sense the fear and unease which I lacked.

I held her, kissed her, and I would have taken her if she hadn’t suddenly pushed my lips back with sudden regret.

“Why did you do that?” I asked her as she gathered her breath. It had been a surprise, but a pleasant one nonetheless.

“I wanted to see if you were still in there.” My consort shook her head. “You are, but… you have changed. You would have recoiled from that kiss once… back when you still felt human.”

Why did she say the last part as if I had to be ashamed of it? She had a point, though; all the fear and disgust born of fears of breaking a taboo and Iztacoatl’s cruelty had vanished from my heart. The fires of godhood had scorched them away.

And why wouldn’t they have? I had never stopped lusting for her, loving her, the same way that spark never left her either; I had simply ceased to dread those feelings. She was the moon to my sun, my blood and consort. Didn’t we deserve to be happy? What harm could there be? A part of me whispered it was sick and wrong to think this way, but it was such a small corner of my mind…

“Is that not what you wanted?” I asked.

“Of… of course I… I wanted to be with you… but not like this.” Nenetl gave me a look of absolute sorrow. “Didn’t you notice what the others said? What they didn’t say?”

“I did,” I confessed with some sorrow, and I didn’t require the Gaze to do so.

“None of them are including you in their plans for the future, Iztac, because we all know you will leave us in one way or another.” My sister took a long, deep breath. “You just fly too high for us to reach now. Soon you will fly to the heavens and you won’t return.”

And the worst part was that I couldn’t deny it, because that would have been a lie.

If I ascended to godhood… then I would become the wind. I would become light. I would become fire and victory. The power I was turning into yearned to escape my flesh and bones to ascend into a higher state. Only death could smother that flame.

I might learn to wear a human disguise the way Lord Quetzalcoatl or Lady Mictecacihuatl could pass for creatures with two legs and two arms rather than universal concepts, but it would be no more than that: a disguise. A mask to wear.

I wished to become a god that cared for mortals, and I would fulfill that pledge; but to care was not the same as to be.

Most of my witches, save Necahual, would worship me like priests worshiped a god, a source of power and guidance, yet my consorts had loved me for who I was. They didn’t ask for a god. All they wanted was a husband or a brother. It hurt Nenetl to know our paths would irrevocably diverge in a day soon to come.

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All the comfort I could offer would be fleeting… but that didn’t make it worthless either. My arms moved up to hug my sister into a tight embrace.

“Nenetl,” I whispered in her ear. “There may come a time when I will shed my human flesh and form… but never will I abandon you nor the others. My spirit shall be with you at all times.”

She closed her eyes and rested her head on my shoulder, praying for a miracle. “Do you promise?”

“Yes,” I replied softly. “I love you.”

That, at least, would never change.

—-----

I kept Nenetl company until we reached Paititi.

The sun did not rise when it should have, yet I did not need its light to see the Golden City, for it deserved its name. Killa had guided us through secret pathways through the mountains protected by magical wards that would have disoriented most mortals, though they simply folded at my approach like rotten houses cast down by the wind. My forces eventually reached a valley nested deep in the mountains that reminded me of the memories I had extracted from Aclla’s mind before her death.

Our target stood there on a hill surrounded by a lake of molten gold.

A vast amount of steaming, bubbling metal kept alive through the fires of the earth surrounded a gilded city. Three pyramids plated with gold glowed with faint and otherworldly radiance behind walls topped with statues of condors and other animals, tumi, and carvings of Sapa Emperors long gone.

I could tell that Inkarri and the Mallquis wove great magic in this place with a mere glance. The gilded waters echoed with a song inaudible to mortals; the hum of old fools clinging to a half-life that should have ended long ago, to the ill-gotten wealth which trapped them in a way they could not see. I briefly wondered how many mouths all this gold could have been used to feed.

For a culture that pretended to put the group above the individual, the Sapa and their undead leaders had quite an appetite for hoarding wealth.

“Quite an impressive achievement, I must say,” Chikal mused once we came into sight of this hidden marvel. “Building this city must have taken an unfathomable amount of effort.”

“This is no city,” I replied. “It is a throne and a tomb.”

This was the Sapa Mallquis’ idea of a god’s abode, gilded and shining… but the wind had long taught me that true gods had nothing to prove. One simply had to look upon Tlaloc’s countenance to understand his power. All these precious metals and the search for gaudy luxury only betrayed these mummies’ lack of understanding when it came to divinity.

I would have felt pity, if the god within me didn’t look down upon them with such contempt. False idols only deserved to be knocked down.

Nonetheless, the magic they drew from the earth’s bowels was genuine enough. The mountains hummed around us, waiting in anticipation for the horn of battle to call the start of a heavenly war.

And that time was fast approaching.

I could feel it through the bond I shared with the Legion. I sensed a wayward skull making its way to us from the northwest, closing in on us with a thirst for revenge and the frantic energy of cornered animals eager to fight for one final breath of life. I turned my Gaze to the horizon, my eyes piercing through the darkness and leagues of distance. I saw further than an eagle in a night that would have blinded owls to see the wings of bats flapping towards us in a great swarm.

Nightkin.

“They are here,” I said.

The Nightlords had come to face their doom.

I would have feared this prospect once, the way my allies held their breaths and tensed around me as I uttered those words, but I now trembled with anticipation. At long last… at long last, the day of reckoning was finally at hand.

I finally wielded the power to fight my tormentors, and one way or another, one of us would not walk out of this valley alive.

I couldn’t pinpoint the sisters' exact location yet, as the Jaguar Woman’s magic proved powerful enough to hide from me, but it didn’t matter much yet. I didn’t need to know where my foes were to harm them. Discover more novels at NoveI-Fire.ɴet

The opening shot would be mine to fire.

I retreated into the roaming palace while Chikal organized the troops. I moved into my room where I found my mother and my three witches gathered around the bed. They had drawn a circle around the bed with young Astrid’s blood, whom Necahual was busy bandaging the arms of.

Ingrid sat naked on the bedsheet with her fair skin laden with runes. A complex script ran from her navel to her heart and beyond, forming a spell blending multiple magical traditions into one potent trap.

“It is time,” I told Ingrid and her sister. “Are you ready?”

That was their final chance to walk away and spare their doomed brother… though I already knew the answer.

“Yes, my lord,” Ingrid said while her sister nodded. “We are.”

They would rather see Fjor perish than endure as a vampiric thrall of their mother’s murderer; and I would fulfill their wish.

I undressed and moved over to Ingrid, holding her in my arms. I would rather have my time with preliminaries and ensure she enjoyed the process, but we had no time to waste on pleasantries. She welcomed me inside her flesh and soul as her sister and our assistants watched, the runes on her skin glowing brightly once our heart-fires connected.

This would be my final Seidr ritual; one that would spell death rather than life.

Knowing Iztacoatl, she and the Jaguar Woman would immediately expect me to attack them through the connection; and they would inevitably turn it into a trap to ensnare me. The White Snake had managed to hijack that bond once as a method of psychological warfare, and I suspected she had deliberately allowed me to pull back in order to give me a false sense of security. She must have hoped I would try to use Ingrid as a way to harm her and then turn the tables on me.

That would have worked back when I had only two sets of embers rather than three, but I was prepared now. Prepared and fearless.

My sense of reality faded away as the chain binding my soul to Ingrid and the Nightlords tightened. The room around me blurred along the edges, the walls unfolding into darkness under moonlight, the women surrounding me transforming into bats, the bed turning cold like stone, and the woman in my arms becoming colder than ice.

“Welcome home, songbird,” Iztacoatl whispered in my ear as she pulled me into her loving embrace. “Did you miss your cage?”

The trap’s jaws closed upon me.

Once again, my mind connected to Iztacoatl through Ingrid, with the Nightlord taking her place. Her arms and legs coiled around my spirit in a strong grip while an invisible noose tightened around my neck. The chains holding my soul grew heavier than mountains and sharp like a jaguar’s fangs.

“Certainly part of you must have known it would end this way.”

I would never forget that voice, so cold and heartless yet filled with so much malice. I turned my gaze up to the figure overseeing this vampiric ceremony, wrapped in jaguar fur and wearing a blood-soaked mask through which red eyes glimmered.

“It seems you have forgotten the cost of disobedience, Iztac,” the Jaguar Woman said with fury colder than anything I had experienced in the chilling Underworld. “The fault lies with me for showing you leniency, when I ought to have given you a reminder.”

The god within me raged at the sudden pressure, but magic potent and strong overshadowed my sun. Sorcery shackled my dawn and dimmed my flames with darkness. I could not wrench myself away from this snare.

“This time, you will not forget this lesson.” The Jaguar Woman’s eyes gleamed with bloody malice. “You shall trouble us no more, our puppet emperor.”

“Choke on your strings,” I replied in defiance.

Then I struck back.

I unleashed the fire of my soul in a wave of sunlight bright enough to turn any vampire to dust. My holy blood had managed to harm Sugey when only the strength of two suns coursed through my veins; three ought to slay her. I vomited flames like Smoke Mountain through our connection.

“Useless,” Iztacoatl mocked me.

She and her sister were ready, of course. They had anticipated my plan and built their own countermeasures. I could sense the cold that would smother my flames in the song of the vampiric congregation that surrounded Iztacoatl, the circle that would trap my essence and defang me.

How the tables have turned, they must have thought, brought down by the poison of ambition.

So I countered their trap with another.

All those Seidr rituals, all that practice had built up to this moment. I had achieved a greater understanding of Teyolia manipulation than most, and that allowed me to redirect that flow through a different path; a different bond that united me to Iztacoatl, but one whose gate she had failed to bar.

The Nightlords had correctly assumed I would use Ingrid as a medium to strike at them and prepared accordingly, but in their obsession to focus on me and my raw power, they had left themselves open for a feint.

I sensed Fjor among the nightkin observing the ceremony. The skull in his stomach, consumed so long ago, and the blood his sisters had coated my bed with bound us. His eyes widened when he sensed my fire move through him, and our souls connected for the briefest of instants. I knew him better than he knew himself. I felt his pain at the loss of his mother, the agony of Iztacoatl’s fangs biting into his neck, the cold rage he felt when he watched his mother slain on the altar, his despair when he had been forced to participate in the hunt for his sister, and the brief hope he experienced when we finally escaped Sugey’s grasp.

His emotions echoed mine in so many ways that I wished we had time to become friends; but life was cruel, and death even more so.

Fjor did not resist.

He could not help—the bloodbond binding him to Iztacoatl was too strong to allow treachery—but he did not shield his tormentor either. He glared at her with all the strength of his anger, then let the fire he knew would kill him flow through his flesh and soul. He had seen my mind as much as I saw his, and understood what would follow with calm acceptance.

He only had two words to offer me.

“Save them.”

Then Fjor blew up.

My flames erupted from him in a wave of sunlight that vaporized all the Nightkin present at the ceremony. They turned to ash in a blinding flash of fire.

Only the Jaguar Woman reacted quickly enough to protect herself behind a shield of woven shadows, but the brunt of the attack wasn’t directed at her anyway. Iztacoatl barely had time to blink until the wave of power reverberated through the bond she shared with the Nightkin she had enslaved, with my attack traveling from Fjor to her.

Then she screamed.

The fire erupted within her rancid womb and rotten heart alike. Light surged through her veins and cooked her from within, leaving trails of smokeless flames along the edge of her bones. Her flesh melted beneath my manifestation even as her claws sank into my back. Her scream turned to sunlight, and her eyes cooked in their sockets. Atrocious pain beyond words and meaning coursed through her until her false and treacherous beauty turned into a ghoulish corpse covered in burns.

This vile woman, who had toyed so often with the bonds family shared, had now suffered the price for her arrogance. It brought a smile to my face.

“Burn,” I said with glee. I was still mortal enough to enjoy this. “Burn.”

Yet, however much I prayed for it, she failed to die.

The burst that I had unleashed had inflicted heavy damage to the point I was embracing a charred living corpse rather than a Nightlord, yet it had failed to destroy her outright. Iztacoatl clung to existence with all of her strength and despair, though it was only a matter of time until she perished.

The danger lurked elsewhere.

The Jaguar Woman saw me, saw my power, and the light that eclipsed her shadows. The gulf in our respective strengths finally dawned upon her. Her eyes turned to her sister with a look that chilled me to the bone.

“Sister…” Iztacoatl whispered through steaming vocal cords, her hand moving away from me to plead to her older sibling for help.

She didn’t receive any.

The Jaguar Woman lowered herself, opened her mouth, and bit the White Snake in the neck.

I felt Iztacoatl’s fear and pain through our bond. I had never seen a vampire feeding on another, but experiencing it made me wish I’d remained ignorant. The Jaguar Woman drank her sister. I sensed the blood flowing out of her burning veins, her soul slipping away into a stomach where all cries would fade into the silent dark.

There was no doubt or hesitation, no flicker of remorse, no hint of sisterly guilt. There was only hunger and cold-hearted ambition born of a wicked heart who worshipped power above all else; a darkness too thick for the seeds of love to ever take root in.

“Please, sister…” Iztacoatl moaned through tears of fear and pain. “Please, no…”

Her pleas fell on deaf ears. Her killer didn’t even bother listening.

The Jaguar Woman committed the heinous crimes of kinslaying and cannibalism without so much as a blink.

No force compelled her besides vicious practicality and a lust for power without bounds or restraint. She might have been capable of saving her sister even now; but why bother doing so when the seal was bound to break and they had failed to contain me? It simply made more sense to grab as much power as possible before the inevitable fight.

But true power always came with a price attached, and the Jaguar Woman’s consumption of her sister’s lifeblood was no exception. I heard a crack through the fabric of magic, the rupture of a pillar of the soul, the black stain of heinous betrayal painting the spirit with tar. My last glimpse of Iztacoatl was that of her bloody, smoking skin weaving itself with that of her murderer. Her once-unequaled beauty became a disguise for her killer to wear.

Betrayal with a friend’s face, a snake shedding skin.

Prophecies were treacherously misleading indeed, and I would soon pay the price for it.

The Jaguar Woman’s consumption of her sister shattered the bond Iztacoatl held with Ingrid. I lost my connection, my mind brutally sent back to my body while my consort gasped under me. Her heart pounded in her chest with the pulse of freedom, and then a dash of fear.

“She…” Ingrid whispered as I pulled out of her. She gasped, her eyes lost in a daze. The ritual drained more from her than me. “She… she killed…”

“So it was a success?” Necahual asked. Astrid had collapsed in her arms due to the ritual’s backlash, though her life wasn’t in danger.

“No,” I replied without satisfaction before walking back to the balcony without even bothering to put on clothes. I knew I would transform soon anyway. “Not quite.”

Our chains were lighter than ever, but the last chain binding us to the Nightlords’ ritual had grown heavier than ever before. I found Chikal looking at the horizon with a look of horror.

The Nightkin were falling out of the sky by the dozens.

The vampiric sons of countless emperors turned to dry husks crashing down the mountains or into the molten lake. Their blood flowed out of their veins in crimson rivers gathering at a hiding spot beyond the hills through which even my Gaze could not see. I didn’t need to.

I had already seen this happen once.

“They’re dying,” Chikal muttered. “They’re all dying out, like when Sugey–”

The Jaguar Woman had done more than eat her sister; she was absorbing everyone her coterie had ever shared its blood with. All of her priests, all of her sister’s, all the Nightkin the Nightlords had ever sired. She called in a harvest she had spent centuries laboring for.

All so that she could become powerful enough to devour me.

Her plan became clear to me in all of its mad ambition. Having seen the spark of godhood which I now commanded, my tormentor now sought to consume my power so that she might challenge her father once he inevitably broke free.

Had this always been a plan in the works? Or a last minute decision?

I didn’t know, nor did I care. I felt two powers brewing and preparing to challenge me, one pitch black and the other clothed in gold.

The Battle of the Three Wings was upon us.