CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND NINE: THE ESSENCE OF LIFE

I heard the cry of the earth when nightfall came.

It was an inviolable law of the world that all suns must set, and though I had blessed this world with a dawn, the fangs of night still gnashed without pause or pity. The great light in the sky completed its exhausting course behind the mountains, announcing the onset of twilight and the end of day. The distant peaks reminded me of taunting teeth shrouded in shadows. For all the miracles I had blessed Hananpacha with, my victories had proved awfully short-lived.

The night never retreated; it simply waited.

And as I watched the sunset from the royal palace’s balcony, I was swiftly reminded of my mortal weakness. Any triumph I might achieve would only be temporary against the darkness besieging the Fifth Cosmos. The divinity within me blazed back to the forefront, raging at the chains of mortality and the fact that the Last Emperor remained lesser than the First.

I had to shed my mortal coil for the sake of everyone.

“I am done,” my Necahual said as she presented her potion to me, a foul brew of herbs and poisons harvested from the imperial gardens. “This should put any man to sleep.”

The permanent kind, went unsaid. I did not hesitate even for a second, although I required neither drink nor food anymore. The black and baleful potion boiled the moment my hand seized the cup, and most of it evaporated when it touched my lips. It tasted of ash, and not the kind that my divinity craved.

I did not sleep.

I could not sleep.

I saw the truth clearly written in Necahual’s eyes. This was the best she could provide. There was no mortal poison that could lull a God-in-the-Flesh to sleep, nor enough women on this earth to exhaust me. I had spent the day delivering miracles, bending reality to my will, and my heart-fire burned brighter than ever. Mother’s sleeping spell would not work either.

Lord Quetzalcoatl was right. Gods did not dream.

“Are there any other ways?” my Necahual asked.

“There is one,” I replied. “I could die.”

Sleep was little more than a taste of death. It was how I had first traveled down into the Underworld in the first place, by impaling my heart on a dagger in spite’s name. I knew such a weapon would break if I tried that again, but surely there were other ways to perish. Even gods could die.

However, I could not revive myself by will alone. I had only returned from the Land of the Dead Suns by the will of the Nightlords who held my soul in bondage. They would not return me so easily this time, and not unless I was entirely at their mercy.

“I did not mean sleep,” Necahual said with wisdom.

My dearest concubine saw farther than any other. She knew that sleep was only a means to an end, and that time was of the essence.

I had tasked Zyanya with leaking information about our destination to the Nightlords, and that we would depart for Paititi after our final night in Hananpacha. The information would soon reach them, and I expected they would fly all the way to the golden city in a dark day’s time with all their nightkin at their backs. I doubted they would be arrogant enough to fly under the sun in enemy territory like Sugey did, doubly so after I’d exploited that weakness to slay their sister.

It was true that I had achieved much greater miracles lately than I’d ever seen the Nightlords achieve, but I had no idea what tricks they had up their sleeves. I’d barely defeated Sugey when she had been weakened by sunlight and taken by surprise. The Jaguar Woman and Iztacoatl had received advance warning of my betrayal and would prepare for our battle accordingly. I could not afford to underestimate them.

Moreover, defeating them would only lead to an even more dangerous conflict.

Battle of the Three Wings. Golden city answers the tide of sorrow. Such was Lahun’s prophecy, and should my own predictions be correct, the fateful dance of death would begin in a day’s time. To the banquet of blood the dark one triumphs.

Now that I gained insight into the workings of fate, the last line’s meaning appeared clearer to me. Only the First Emperor was guaranteed to prevail in my final battle with his wayward daughters. Whoever won would have to contend with him one way or another. I could feel it in the strands of fate binding us all.

And if I lacked the strength to repel the night, what chances did I have against its harbinger?

I needed to ascend to godhood, to fully cast away my mortality and become the light that could shield the living from the encroaching darkness. Only then would the Fifth Sun rest easy in the sky without fear of Yohuachanca consuming it, and my loved ones would prosper on this earth.

If I could not sleep… If I could not ascend to godhood before my hands finally tightened around the White Snake and the Jaguar Woman’s throats… what next? It wasn’t the unknown that I feared, but the certainty of defeat should the First Emperor escape before I’d gained true godhood. I already struggled to banish his night for a time when he remained sealed beneath the earth.

No matter how bright it burned, a flame could not rival the sun, even a dark one. The blaze within me yearned to ignite my human flesh, yet lacked the final spark to do so.

“There is a fourth set of embers within your reach,” the wind blew through the fading sunlight. “If you have the will to claim it.”

A mortal chill traveled down my spine and briefly quelled my burning desires. A horrifying thought and temptation had crossed my mind, one which I had long struggled with back when the First Emperor’s shadow held sway over me.

I sensed Necahual’s gaze lingering on me. My closest and oldest advisor knew me too well. The bond that united us had been forged during my first steps towards godhood and remained far stronger than any other. She sensed much.

“We are in the last stretch, Iztac,” she said, her head turning towards the horizon. The sun had almost entirely set beyond the mountains. “Our final battle is at hand.”

“I know,” I replied with a voice too quiet for a god.

“Then whatever you have to do, do it.” Her tone was confident, sharp, without mercy. “Now is not the time to waver.”

My jaw clenched tighter than the earth before a quake. “You know not what you ask.”

“But we both know what is at stake,” she countered. “I am reminded of it each time I look at the sunset, when I wonder if it will be our last.”

“The sun will rise tomorrow,” I prophesied, and the night was still weak enough to indulge me.

“And on the next day? And the next? Or shall the sun limp like an old man fearing his end?” Necahual already knew the answers to these questions. “I do not fully understand where your magic comes from, but I could sense our frustration during our last coupling. You are a step away from godhood, and this world will soon need a miracle.”

Her hand took mine and squeezed. Her firm was strong with fear, with love, with resolve, perhaps even stronger than my own.

“We will fight by your side to the bitter end… but we must win,” she pleaded. “Whatever it takes, we must win.”

She had been willing to do anything for her daughter. Would I be willing to do the unthinkable for her, for the world? I would already endanger Ingrid’s sister and sacrifice her brother on the altar of victory soon enough, on top of luring the Nightlords to a sacred site. Wouldn’t that be enough?

The irony wasn’t lost on me. I had tried to wash away the rivers of blood I’d shed, to step back from the lines I had crossed, and destiny seemed intent on presenting me with newer and ever cruel temptations.

“Leave,” I said. “This night is yours to dispose of as you see fit.”

I uttered no Word of power, but Necahual nonetheless vanished in smokeless fire. I knew she would spend these last hours of peace with the daughter for whom she had given up so much for.

The sun vanished, and the darkness crawled back in colder than ever.

I had dinner with my mortal family.

We sat at a table in a great hall with windows giving us a good view of the city outside. Father sat in the form of a gilded skeleton next to Mother, who continued to hide her throat beneath a scarf in the vain hope it would stave off the thirst that once threatened to consume me. My consort and sister Nenetl faithfully sat at my side, the moon to my rising sun.

None of us ate much. Neither Father nor I needed food, and my mother and sister lacked an appetite. All of them sent me glances now and then while the shadows outside took all of my attention. However bright I shone, they constantly sought to crawl back in.

I sought a brief escape from my intrusive thoughts and call for divinity, but found only silence.

“Iztac?” Nenetl dared to ask me, my name sounding so weak when coming out of her mouth. “Iztac, are you… are you in there?”

“I am in front of you,” I replied.

“That’s… not what I meant.”

I knew that. Iztac, the man, was inside me indeed, struggling to hold back the hungry god he was slowly becoming.

“I am here,” I said.

Nenetl marked a short pause in her skepticism. “It doesn’t look like it.”

“My son, if something bothers you, we can talk,” Father said, pleading for a response.

‘My son’… the word used to hold such meaning once, but it had lost some of its power. It didn’t ring as loudly as it used to in my ear, however much I valued it. It wasn’t that I had stopped to respect Father—I loved him with all of my burning heart—but the rift between us had grown wider.

And that terrified me.

It was Father who brought me back from the brink in Xibalba and stopped me from becoming a blight upon the world of the living. I’d only seized my third set of embers thanks to his stern guidance. Growing deaf to it might cause me to relapse.

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He was right, too. Something did bother me; but I could not exactly say it outloud. I would rather enjoy the silence and quietness so as to focus on the present moment, the very last that I might share with my family.

Yet Mother insisted on tempting fate.

“Do you lack the strength of will to look at us?” she asked.

The god in me could not resist a challenge, no matter how much the mortal side of me wished to restrain it. I turned to look at her, at the woman who brought me into the world, at the sorceress who had taught me so much about magic, at the figure I had both loathed and forgiven in equal measures.

Mother was all of those things, but I could only see the embers.

They seemed to shine in her bosom, beneath her clothes and skin. They bloomed with life and infused her bones with light. Mother would never wear the crown, but she had enough gold in her to lift me to the gilded throne. A vicious lust and hunger stirred within me, craving her flesh, craving her soul, craving the final spark she might be able to provide.

I found myself looking at her with new eyes, seeing past the veil of motherhood and kinship, past Mother and at Ichtaca. Only now did I notice that she was the same age as Necahual, lively and healthy, with a fair face and tender flesh. I could see why Father had fallen for her. She was a lovely witch.

She was still young enough to remarry and fertile enough to carry another child to term. It seemed like such a waste not to expand our prized bloodline, but the mere thought that another man could touch her sickened me. It would have been different had Father been alive, for he was my blood, but he was dead and she still lived.

Then again, I was a god above the laws of men. I could seize her for myself, sire a pure scion of divine lineage which the Nightlords had so craved to bring into the world. My blood boiled at the thought of seizing her, of melding flesh harmoniously until the fires joined and ignited my su–

No. No. No. I suppressed that vile intrusive thought with all of my willpower. No, I… I do not need this.

No, I did not. I could simply choke the life out of her with my hand, inhale her last breath, and drink the fires–

No. I forced myself to avert my eyes from her before I acted on an impulse I could not take back. Coming here was a mistake.

“I must leave,” I declared upon rising to my feet.

“Iztac?” Father called, but his words fell on deaf ears. “Iztac, please–”

It hurt to ignore him, but I had no other choice. I left the family I had struggled so hard to reunite and returned to my bedchambers. The doors opened on their own at my approach and closed after I stepped through the threshold, leaving me in my lonely abode with only the wind and the darkness for company.

Iztacoatl had told me how her Dark Father had struggled with his urges upon rising to godhood. Was that what he had to endure each time he looked at his daughters? That constant struggle between the man he had been and the all-consuming hunger he was becoming?

I was starting to understand why few gods of old mingled with mankind even in the realms of the dead. The gods were power incarnate, concepts made flesh. They struggled to coexist with mortals the same way an eagle would fail to understand the lives of hares burrowing beneath the earth. They saw the world around them through very different eyes.

No shadows would crawl at me when I shone so brightly, and I did not remain alone for long.

Mother entered my lair.

I did not have to turn away from the balcony to know it was her. Her warmth was faint, but she reeked enough of godly embers for the fire in me to quicken my burning blood. I did not move an inch in spite of the immense pressure this put on me. I remained a stone facing the darkness, even as I heard her step near the torches keeping the bedroom lit.

The wind had grown quieter, though I knew it listened. It drank the uncomfortable silence while the world watched in expectation.

Mother could sense my hunger, too. She still wore the scarf covering her neck, and I heard her hands rubbing her arms in unease. The steps that separated us felt wider than a chasm, because both of us were afraid of what might happen should we cross it.

“Do you still want to drink my blood?” Mother asked cautiously.

“No.” I shone too bright for the vampire curse to shroud my judgment. “It is the light that craves your embers now.”

I had been able to contain the urge when I had asserted my divine authority and basked in the daylight, but my self-control wavered now that the night had returned. My blood boiled again in veins too small for the might it carried.

“I feared as much,” she whispered beneath her breath. “Would my embers complete your transformation?”

“I am not certain.” I had already received a set of Chalchiuhtlicue’s embers in the past. Would another infusion ignite my Teyolia into a living sun? Or was the gift of Tezcatlipoca indispensable? “But the unborn god in me is desperate enough to try.”

I looked at my palm and clenched it. The faint flames of the torches flickered and grew on their own in response to a rush of sudden pressure swirling within me. Mother briefly gasped in surprise, though she quickly suppressed it.

“I want to escape this skin,” I confessed. “I am water that wishes to flow, a blaze that seeks to burst out of the oven. Your presence tempts me too much.”

I couldn’t even cast a Word spell to compel Mother to leave. My own magic would twist my wish and revolt immediately, the same way it forced me to summon the rain after claiming Tlaloc’s embers.

“If I touch you, I will either claim you or kill you,” I warned her. It was a constant struggle to resist doing either, and I feared I might do both. “I will not be able to resist stealing your power.”

I hated it, hated the fact that such thoughts even crossed my mind, but that was a fact. It was a true torment to be bound in my current shape, and the temptation too great. It would likely be even safer for everyone if Mother simply left.

Yet she remained resolute.

“You do not need to steal anything, my son.” Mother took a deep breath. “I… I will give them away.”

Her words lessened the pressure within me, though not by much. They did surprise me enough that my head turned slightly to look at her.

“My spirit has left the Third Layer with your father and sibling. The door is barred behind us.” Mother closed her eyes, holding back tears. “I… I will never become a goddess… but you still can.”

We had both known that since Xibalba, but now she meant it. She had accepted the truth that her journey to divinity had ended; her only consolation being that the family she had neglected welcomed her back and that she had paved the way for her son’s own ascendancy.

Giving away the embers remained an immense sacrifice because King Mictlantecuhtli would never let her access another set of them. She would lose the power for good… if she could even give it away.

Besides, what would happen to a soul who had gained a spark of godhood and then lost it? Could the two even be separated? And at what cost?

I couldn’t kill her even for godhood, not after she had finally turned a new leaf and certainly not after Lord Quetzalcoatl entrusted me with guiding the world onto a better path. Such bloody crime might stain me into a god of betrayal and wickedness.

I didn’t doubt for a second that the thought hadn’t crossed Mother’s mind already. Her gaze wandered at the darkness outside for a moment, then she removed her scarf. My eyes immediately lingered on the veins across her pale neckline pulsating with life and sweet, burning blood rich with sunlight.

A surge of hunger coursed through me, and I found myself closing the gap between us before I knew what to do. Her breath grew heavy with fear and distress, yet she did not recoil from my arms as they seized her.

“This might kill you,” I warned her, my blood boiling in my veins.

“I do not fear the Underworld now that your father and sibling await me there.” She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. “Do it.”

My teeth sank into her neck and drew blood.

Seidr, at its core, was the connection and merging of two Teyolia. Its greatest powers required the union of a man and a woman in a primal embrace, but the mere exchange of blood sufficed for many applications. I had practiced the Embrace so often that merely touching Mother’s lifeblood let our fires connect.

This kiss… it was no kiss of the vampire taken by force. Mother offered me her lifeblood the same way Necahual fed Eztli when she suffered from the dark hunger. She did not resist nor repel me.

She simply gave.

The connection was even stronger than the one I’d shared with Nenetl, as it should. Mother had given life to me, and the blood remembered. The Web of Life that bound us tightened its strands until our souls joined. It was an unequal union, a sun absorbing candlelight, but we bonded nonetheless.

In that impossible moment I knew Mother more than anyone else—even Father. I saw, and I felt.

I remembered the taste of water filling my mouth as a father I’d never met tried to drown me in a river, cursing me for ruining his crops; I recalled the desperate struggle to resurface, his scream of pain when I slammed a stone against his face, and then the panicked flight through the woods. I heard Mother’s sob with each new vision, each new sordid detail, each new flash of a lonely and bitter existence as a savage hermit hiding in a forest, loathing humanity and yet envying it.

I felt her sharp agony when the Nightlords forced her to flee for her life, the shame she felt when she abandoned Nenetl to save herself, the agony of losing a child; and I answered with the deep wound of her abandonment, the grief and resentment. Our memories merged, first with feelings, then souvenirs of spells great and small.

That connection was unnatural. It wasn’t us, not entirely; our totems resonated together in a deeper way than mine and Nenetl’s did. We were two owls hooting together as much as we were humans. The presence of godly embers trying to join up only strengthened the connection.

For a moment, we brightened like the sun.

My consciousness expanded beyond my body. It flowed like a wave across the air and the stones, becoming one with the strands that wove the tapestry of reality. I became a wave unbound by flesh and bones, a light that filled the sky and hearts alike. I became the wind and the grass that whistled, I became the blood flowing in the veins of all living beings, I became the web that bound us all. For a brief second, I felt I could cast the stars down to Earth and spin the moon alike.

For a second, I receive a taste of godhood.

And a taste was all I was left with.

I was so close, so close to jumping over the tipping point, but it wasn’t enough. Mother’s embers resonated with mine, but they were two shards of the same sorrowful goddess. Devouring her would not complete me, because I didn’t need more paint to complete the canvas of godhood; what I needed was a final pigment, the finishing touch.

Mother’s gift wasn’t enough.

And so our Teyolias uncoiled at the same time my lips pulled back from her neck. Mother gasped for air as a faint drizzle of unfulfilling blood descended down her neckline. I still held her, though my mind was clear and my hunger no longer compelling me. The god in me wasn’t satiated—not by a long shot—but it had understood that consuming Mother’s heart-fire would not brighten my own.

There was no shortcut to divinity.

I let go of Mother and sat on the bed. Frustration had quelled my heart-fire’s glow enough that I almost felt mortal again. It was comforting, though not a relief. Mother looked at me for a moment as if half-expecting me to explode like Smoke Mountain, before awkwardly sitting at my side. Her hand reached out for my shoulder and I did not turn it away.

“I am sorry,” she said from the bottom of her heart in a vain attempt to comfort me. “There… there might be other ways.”

“There is none,” I replied.

I would not be able to access the Underworld before confronting the Nightlords, after which victory would likely result in their father running amok. I would have to fight them with the means at hand.

My last hope was that capturing the Nightlords’ souls with my Tomb might delay the seal’s destruction, and even then, I drew a blank at how I could descend into the Underworld and complete my quest. Even if the dead could rise to godhood, Lord Quetzalcoatl had warned me that deceased gods could not escape the Underworld until the end times that followed a sun’s demise.

Dead was dead.

Mother stroked my hair gently and awkwardly rested her head against my shoulder. Her touch was clumsy, but her attempt at comfort was welcome.

“When I asked you to let your father Ride you,” she whispered. “I hoped he would take me.”

“I know.” I had seen it in her memories once we joined. Mother had craved his touch so much that she would have let him wear his son’s skin for the act if needed. “I do not fault you for it.”

I had shared too much of her pain to condemn her. She had lived a terrible life, part of it self-inflicted, most of the result of circumstances beyond her control. I could tell she might have become a monster in human skin like Chindi without Father to light her path.

Her desire to change was sincere. I had seen her wish to atone, her regrets, her guilt. She had failed her children so many times that she had been willing to surrender her power if it meant Nenetl and I had a chance to survive the calamity we knew was inevitable.

Mother’s heart only held anguish and a sliver of hope.

“I only ever felt alive when in your father’s arms,” Mother admitted. “I assume that is what you seek in all these women you’ve surrounded yourself with… what you sensed when our heartfires briefly joined. The warmth of life.”

Her insight gave me pause, because it rang true.

The first woman I’d bedded was Eztli in a moment when I needed hope. Necahual, I’d first conquered for power, for the comfort of domination, before it evolved into something else. I had slept with consorts and concubines alike, searching for something that escaped me.

Now I understood it was warmth I’d sought, the heat that would keep the chill of night away.

Love was life, its celebrations and wonders. It was a cry of defiance against the encroaching and cold hand of death that shadowed our steps. It was a wonderful spell that warded away doom and dread.

“As long as there is love, there is life,” I replied.

“I think so too. It carried us all farther than we expected, both as sorcerers and as a family.” Mother gently caressed my cheek. “You have people who love you, my son, and not just for your power. You should spend what time you have left with them.” She marked a short pause and sighed. “Do not make the same mistake I did.”

Yes… yes, she was right. I’d been so obsessed with my newfound godlike power and the danger ahead that it twisted me. I should be focusing on those I sought to defend.

Tomorrow would be my last moments with my consorts before our final battle.

I would not waste it.