CHAPTER ONE-HUNDRED AND THIRTEEN: THE BANQUET OF BLOOD

The Tomb killed dozens in the blink of an eye.

The world drowned in darkness, and walls of screaming flesh encircled us beneath a screaming ceiling. A mansion made of Jaguar Women trapped us within its bowels and began to drain the life of everyone inside. Soldiers at the peak of their vigor and virility aged to dust in an instant, their wrinkled flesh drawn into the depths of the Tomb where their souls would find no rest.

My witches barely had time to save my consorts. Necahual, Lahun, and Killa grabbed Eztli, Chikal, and Ingrid before the Tomb could consume them, their bond with me shielding them from instant death for now, while Mother called upon the Doll and attempted to restrain Nenetl with phantom arms.

This gave me a brief window of opportunity to activate my Tomb… or so I tried. My fear erupted around me in a whirlpool of blood and screams, but it failed to expand beyond one meter of myself. A powerful pressure weighed down on my soul and clawed at my heart. My attempts to paint over this canvas failed one after the other, the horde of screaming Jaguar Women refusing to let my dead emperors’ birdcage take shape again.

The souls the Nightlord had stolen during her initial strike let her press against my spirit with renewed strength. Their deaths had tilted the balance on her side. She lacked the power to crush me outright, but she had gained just enough of an edge to keep me in check.

How long would my witches’ power suffice to keep away this tide of death? Seconds? Minutes?

I had no time to waste.

“Nenetl!” Mother shouted as her daughter struggled against the phantom restraints. “Nenetl, you must fight–”

My sister let out a hellish roar, the mere shockwave throwing Mother back across the Tomb and into my father’s arms. Nenetl’s flesh rippled with power and fury.

The Jaguar Woman twisted my sister’s flesh and forced a transformation. Bloody fur grew over Nenetl’s skin, her nails turned into claws, and her fair face morphed into a monstrous maw of fangs. The creature she became resembled a twisted chimera between a wolf and a man, with a jaguar’s fangs and bloody spots all over. Stripes representing sinuous white serpents shifted across her back as if trying to escape; the last remains of Iztacoatl struggling inside her own sister’s bottomless stomach of a soul.

She had two mouths and two pairs of eyes, the red pair larger than the blue one, the latter fighting not to close. My sister struggled inside her own body, but without the embers of dead suns, she had no hope of regaining control by herself.

The lost emperors’ skeletons all rushed at the Jaguar Woman in an attempt to contain her, but she threw them out of her way, her bloody glare set on me alone. She cast no spells besides her Tomb, either because maintaining the former took everything she had or her control over Nenetl’s body prevented her from using her full arsenal. She simply leaped at me with bestial strength and ferocity.

This was a last stand.

I barely managed to clad myself in an armor of bones before my foe pounced at me in a flash of speed and fury. Her fangs tried to close on my throat to tear it out, only to crash against hard layers of protection. I called upon the Doll to force her off me, the two of us wrestling among fear and dead men.

“The difference between us, Iztac,” the Jaguar Woman hissed through my sister’s lips, “is that I worked hard to obtain this power.”

Her words left me speechless. Insults and threats would have washed over me, but the sheer weight of her deluded entitlement and hypocrisy stunned me. She struck me with a backhand that would have torn a mortal man in half and sent me flying backward, my back hitting a wall of hands and screaming faces.

“You were born with sorcery,” she said, seething with distorted hatred and disgust. “You never had to beg for scraps for power, or suffer in the shadows of someone like my father. You never had to bleed to earn your spells, to kowtow to people you knew did not deserve their power.”

The arrogance of this deluded abomination—who had always sacrificed others rather than herself and murdered countless innocents in the name of her own tyrannical satisfaction—beggared belief and filled me with greater resolve. I knew I could have easily burned her to cinders and ended this battle in an instant, but the fear of harming Nenetl stayed my hand. Perhaps that was why the Jaguar Woman had taken her over in a last-ditch effort to cheat death.

How could I exorcize the beast without harming my sister?

I could only think of one option; the one which my foe would never expect.

I rose to my feet and grabbed her wrists with my own hands when the Jaguar Woman tried to fall upon me. Her weight and strength pressed down on me while the cold breath of her Tomb besieged my very soul, her many faces screeching at me to die, die, die.

“You Nahualli disgust me!” the Jaguar Woman shrieked with all of her envy and jealousy. “Why is it that the gods blessed a fool like you instead of the truly deserving?! What gland or organ lets you call upon sorcery?! What secret did Father share with you that he didn't share with me

?!”

So many questions, yet I sensed only one root inquiry behind them all: Why are you better than me?

I could have offered a thousand reasons why, but in the end, fools deserved no answer. The thought that I had earned my strength through blood and toil had never entered her mind, and I felt too superior over her to enlighten her.

“You were never fit to rule,” I retorted, calling upon Bonecraft. Blades of bones surged from my wrists and impaled both of our arms. Our blood met and mixed into a union of the body and the soul.

Seidr connected us.

The world around us faded away in a flash of light and fire. My soul melded with that of my sister and the shadow which had entrapped her. The battle of the spells had turned into a clash of the wills.

“Iztac,” I heard Nenetl’s soul call out to me with all of her strength.

I was the sun calling out to the moon, my light piercing through the night in between; yet the shadows did not recoil and fought back. They obscured my sister’s moonlight and tried to envelop me, to consume me in a final strike.

“Mankind is weak,” the Jaguar Woman’s soul said. “Human lives are like candles, that shine and then fade away in the blink of an eye! Time kills them one day at a time, rotting their flesh and dulling their minds!”

She barreled down on me with all of her might. Waves upon waves of anger and frustration hit the rock of my spirit. In this realm of merged souls, with no flesh nor material illusions to hide the truth, I saw Ocelocihuatl for what she truly was. The Jaguar Woman was flayed bare, revealing the stinking rot of envy and jealousy at the core of her personality; the impotent frustration of a diseased, overambitious heart.

“What was Yohuachanca before I arrived?!” The Jaguar Woman ranted, her waves of shadows striking the sun of my soul. “A wasteland of degenerate tribes and fools begging my fool of a father for salvation! I granted them peace and purpose! I overthrew a god and forged the greatest empire this world had ever seen!”

Beneath all the power and the pomp, buried beneath the cruelty and the lies, hid the most pathetic and loathsome things of all.

“I deserve to rule!”

A spoiled brat.

“You deserve nothing,” I retorted. “Not even death!”

I exploded in a flash of fire that forced the Jaguar Woman’s shadows back and exposed Nenetl’s soul beneath them. My sister’s moonlight reached out to me, and our Teyolias were reunited.

We merged as one, our souls intertwining into a pure star whose light banished the dark. Our combined power, born of an union that stretched all the way back to the beginning of time, incinerated the Jaguar Woman’s parasitic soul.

“Do you feel this?” I asked the Jaguar Woman as her shadows writhed at my feet. “The light of true love?”

That was something which she had never experienced. Even the likes of Yoloxochitl held a warped seed of affection for her sisters, but the Jaguar Woman only ever saw them as tools and weapons. Her father had been a wellspring of power, her sisters allies to be discarded at her convenience, and her followers slaves bound for the altar.

While we had grown into the sun, the Jaguar Woman’s spirit shrank before our shared radiance until she became little more than a black spot; a diseased kitten facing a longneck. Deprived of her souls and power, she was quite pathetic indeed.

“She is so small,” Nenetl whispered, her voice filled with pity rather than disgust. Only my sister would choose empathy in a moment like this; and even then, it did not extend into compassion.

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“She has always been small, inside and out,” I replied. I had seen her Tomb and her deepest fear. “A heart so small it couldn’t even love itself.”

The chain that bound our spirits remained, so frail, so thin, so fragile. Nenetl and I seized it with hands of light in perfect harmony, guided by trust and the will of freedom.

“You are a mere parasite, Ocelocihuatl, fit only to be squashed.” I glared down at my greatest foe, my fallen master. “You are no goddess of mine.”

I pulled the chain and turned it into rope for the damned.

My Tomb was the fear at the root of my soul, and with Nenetl at my side I had no issue opening it inside this realm of shared spirits. A bird cage erupted around us, and a horde of spirits emerged from it; a legion of skulls grinning in anticipation. They grabbed the Jaguar Woman with a thousand grasping hands.

“At long last,” they sang with glee, carried by six hundred years of silent hatred. “At long last, the cycle is complete!”

More than emperors joined in. The soldiers the Jaguar Woman had so callously slain with her Tomb earlier, the countless souls she had feasted upon when she consumed their blood, and even the shadow of her White Snake of a sister joined in the effort, united in shared pain and hatred.

All the Jaguar Woman’s victims had gathered to drag her to her own personal hell.

The leech tried to fight back, but she remained a vampire burned by my light. The curse she drew her strength from had become her weakness, and the chain she used to bind us a noose tightening around her neck. The Parliament of Skulls drowned her under its weight, seizing and burying her.

“You shall harm us no more,” Nenetl said. Her hands softly tightened on the chain that bound us, and then snapped it with a gentle flick of the wrist.

We cast our foe down into the darkness. The Parliament of Skulls dragged her screaming into the depths of my Tomb with a final wail, burying her spirit in the shadows of my fear, where she would suffer her due. She would cry as one final skull on the pile, weeping in the silent dark under the final cosmos came to an end.

Lahun’s prophecy was at long last fulfilled.

You are avenged, Sigrun, I thought as I imprisoned the Jaguar Woman’s soul in the depths of my subconscious, so deep no light would ever reach her. It is done, my predecessors.

I returned to reality in the blink of an eye, my hands holding my sister as she regained her human form and fell into my arms. The Jaguar Woman’s Tomb collapsed around us under the glow of faint starlight. My witches, consorts, and family were here, safe and sound.

“Nenetl!” Mother rushed to my side alongside Father, her fear and panic sharper than a vampire’s fangs. She seized her daughter and immediately took her pulse with feverish dread, followed by relief. “Thank the gods, she is breathing…”

Father moved to hold Nenetl too, but his gilded hands cracked along the knuckles. His teeth breathed dust, and the ghostlight in his eyes flickered. I felt the very bond that let me supply him with a body fade out.

“This is it,” Father said. “My spirit wavers…”

The rope that bound us had snapped.

A weight I had grown so accustomed to that I barely noticed it anymore began to grow lighter. The Nightlords’ occult ritual, performed across centuries until it became enmeshed with the very tapestry of reality, was finally unraveling. The endless chain which had enslaved over six hundred dead emperors to their cruel mistresses had begun to rust.

I felt lighter and freer with every breath I took… but the consequences quickly became apparent as I glanced at the army of the dead that I had gathered. My gilded predecessors and fellow emperors had begun to turn to dust, their souls unable to inhabit the skeletal bodies I had prepared for them.

The dead did not belong with the living.

“It is done,” I said, my words a divine commandment. “You are free at last.”

Our long struggle had come to an end.

My predecessors were too old for cheers and applause, but their joy was as palpable as it was quiet. Many bowed to me, the final chink in the chain who had completed our long-prepared revenge. Others whimpered and cried tears of dust, while a few crumbled to their knees in quiet elation. None feared the chilly grasp of death, which would finally lead to the end that they all craved.

“Others might condemn you for what you have done tonight, our successor,” the Parliament said with a hundred fading voices. “They will curse you for fighting and challenging this cruel order for the sake of an uncertain future.”

“But know that whatever awaits, we shall never forget your bravery,” others said, even as their spirits departed one after another to the depths of Mictlan. “You shall have our gratitude until this world returns to dust.”

“Our daughters shall live on free because of you,” a few said, glancing at Ingrid and Eztli. No doubt a few other spirits looked upon Astrid and the other women of the harem whom they had fathered in decades past. “Our bones shall rest easy, knowing the future is in your hands.”

Gods did not kneel, but this time only I bowed to these ancient spirits who had guided me through so many difficult nights. Come what may, I would always cherish the knowledge that I had helped their tormented souls find rest.

“It has been an honor, my predecessors,” I said with all of my respect and sincerity.

“Only one regret do we all share,” they whispered as one, “That there is one last battle we cannot fight at your side.”

“Perhaps,” I replied, “but I swear to you that I shall win it nonetheless.

The emperors of the past bowed as one, and then vanished together into their well-earned rest.

My father alone endured the longest, and used the last of his strength to embrace his family. Mother and I held him in our arms even as he turned to dust, knowing we would meet again on the other side.

For a brief and impossible instant when the Nightlords’ ritual finally collapsed, I felt truly free in a way I had never been before. The wind blew into my face and hair with a triumphant gust. The sacrificial dagger which had hung over my heart for so many months was gone, and I knew I could do anything; that the sky was the limit.

And then it all came crashing down.

A terrible cold spread from the north in a wave and struck me in my flesh and in my soul, nearly snuffing out the fire which gave me life. I was thrown backward and hit the ground, my burning lifeblood growing cold in my veins. Mother and my consorts opened their mouths and rushed to my side in an instant, but no words escaped their lips, and their fingers lacked any warmth.

The universe held its breath, and silence ruled. My eyes wandered to the sky where stars blinked out in the dark. The crimson moon glowed with a dark, red glow, its black spots shifting into a gloomy skull glaring upon us all. I stared at it, and as I did my vision faded, my gaze piercing through the veil of reality. I found myself back in Yohuachanca’s capital, to busy streets now quieter than graves, and to the Blood Pyramid that loomed over all. I heard a faint shudder beneath its foundations, the whispers of a corpse rattling in its coffin, the quiet joy of a fellow emperor receiving his first taste of freedom in over six hundred years.

Ţ̶̨̥̯͓͙̳̳͎͙̜̇̇̏̽̎͐͑̂͋͝ǫ̴̨̡̟͚̜̗̱̟̝͚̬̬̜̟̱͔̿͛̏̈́̉͑̓͐͂̎̽͊͝͝ ̷̛̠̥͙̟̜͉̮̟͊̾̐t̷̻͂́̒̊͌̕h̵̢̛̲̼̻̣̦̤͖̻͍̻̳̺̜͆̃͐̑͑ͅe̷̛͓̠̤̋̉͒͐͂̐̎̈́̔̄̓͝ ̶̡̰̪͇̰̻͓̫͇͔͈͖̟͚̘̪̥͒̀́̈́̉b̷̳̙̙̳̬̲̫̦̬̯̼̲͔̞̣̩͘̚ͅā̶̢͎̥͎̽͐̔̓̈́͐̒̇̂̒̇͗͋̐͠n̵̢͉̺̠̦͓̺͖̬̺͎̣͈̮̻̍̌̽̂͌̏͜q̷̧͇̝͚̝̗̲͙̀̿̓̀̄͜ͅú̶̡͍͖̬̟̗̬̤͔̃̀͗̓̾̈̓̀͝͝͠ͅē̵̫̹̆͋̒̉̎̃̿̾̐͘t̶̢͚̼̫͖̦̲͇̫̞͎͔̦̟͍̂̒͂̈̑ ̷̭͓̭͎̫͚̻̙́̾̉̒͛͛̍̐͝͝͝ȍ̸̠̮̩̬͔̬̔̃̃̀̐̐̑͘͠ͅf̸̧͎̰̥̻̮̩̼̲̌̂͋̀̊̿̉̀̉͗́̀̕̕̚͜͜͝͝ͅ ̶̧̡̨̨̝͉̞̲̣̝̤͚̦̥̻̤̦̍̔̈̃͑̓̌͛͗̋̉͠b̵̨̬͙͖͚̥̯͓͍͍̩̘̯͇̰̩̞̆̊̽̐́̆͂̔l̶̠̻̗̖̣̜̣̗̖͙̘͈͇̣͓̼̫͐͗̑͆̇̍̇̾̽̾̌͛ǒ̴̲̈́̒͐̌̈́ǫ̸̛̜̠͕͙̮̟͌̃̈́̈͐́͒͂̇̃̋͊͜d̸̢̫̳͕̭̻̼̘̺̤̠͕̜͎̄͌̍͒̒͑̆,̶̢̡̨̛̰͉̪̟̲̗̬̓̆̃̐̓́̕ ̸̠̦̤͓̔͂̀t̶̺̭̩͇͇̲̻̹͇͍̝̞̞̩̆͌͊̊̓ḧ̸̰̖̤͖́̈́̓̃̀͑̌̄̽̐ȇ̷̡̨̡̛̫̭͖̭͈͍̪̺̖̤̩͓̈́̓̐͊̈́͆͝ ̵̨̨̧̢̫̜͖͓̟̺̜̮̭̀̌̏͋ď̸̛̖́̌͒̍̓̅̏̏̀̅͊̕͝͝ā̶̢̧̨̤̰̙̜̗̙̜̘̥̮͓͑̎̒̂͐ṛ̵̡̢̛͔̱̣̻̦̼̬̼̦̜̌̀̈̏̾̑́̉̒͋̍͗̚͘k̶̮̭͔̱̦͙͈̺̐̈́̈́́̓̽͛̔́̚̕͝ ̸̧͇̰̺͚̻̺͍̙̘̤͋̃̓̐̀͌͜o̸̹̟̾̂̉͆̂̂̐͘͝n̵̢̤͇̣̣̥̭̬̤͔̯̆̿̇̓̍̓̈̔̀̍́̄̚ē̸̱̥̫̮̓͊͆̄͗̍̚͘̕͠͝ ̴̠̣̞̱̼͉͔̳̥̾̌͑͒͋̊̎̓̓͝ť̵̫͎̪͂ŕ̷̛̥͚̳̲̩̓̽i̶̢̛̛͈̖͈͚͕̤͎̺̽͐̓̋͛͛́͝ù̶̢͇̯͙͔̙̗̒͛͋m̸͇̪̫̺̀͘p̴̘͓̱̳̬̼͖̫̤̦̱̈̀̇͆͘ͅh̵̨̢̛͖̼̮͍̅̉̓̋͗̑̍̀̐́̉̚͝s̵̡̝̜̪̙͉̖̥̫͇͝.̸̝̟͙̠̱̲͚̩͉̳̓͑͑́̾͗̚͠͝͝ ̷̡͍͇̙̠̃͆̿͑̀͊̅͊̀̊͒̆̅͊̈́͘ͅ

The winter of the world seeped into my bones, my vision blurring until all I could see was a waterfall of a familiar red liquid falling from the sky onto the pyramid where I had seen Nochtli the Fourteenth being sacrificed. The steps boiled with tar, and its foundations trembled beneath the glow of a screaming sky.

The moon was bleeding.

The cosmos howled in despair, for its final night was here.

I awoke in the Land of the Dead Suns for what I knew would be the final time.

I lay at the foot of a great obsidian mirror under a reddish sky cast in perpetual twilight. The ground was ashen white, caked with bone dust blown by howling winds. A pitch black sphere surrounded by a glowing crown of fire served as the sun, its ebon surface so smooth it seemed made of glass instead of fire.

I immediately knew that I hadn’t fallen asleep or died. I had done both, and this visit was none of my doing.

I had been called here.

I rose to my feet, the wind blowing dust on my face, and glanced at my surroundings. An endless wasteland stretched around me as far as my divine gaze could see. Great skulls the size of houses stretched across the emptiness, with so many eyes and strange shapes that merely staring at them gave me a headache. Fingers thicker and taller than trees reached out for a dead, dark sky, as if to grasp something forever out of reach. Ancient and twisted structures of stone, whose spiraling shapes should have been brought down long ago, crackled with crimson lightning.

Everywhere I saw great statues of obsidian jaguars overseeing the landscape, their smooth surface unblemished by the ashes. No dust carried by the wind marred their blackened glass fur, perhaps because they would not allow it. Their eyes were mirrors showing distorted reflections of my face, showing me as an owl, a bird, a man, and a beast. Two lines of them stretched forward ahead of me, their heads bent in adoration and silent respect.

Their lord awaited me, sitting on a throne of bones set atop a petrified giant’s back.

I knew who he was the moment I laid eyes on him. He wore the shape of a man better than any other I’d met, but the details were all wrong. He was tall and slim, with smooth glass skin carved from the blackest obsidian, except for yellow stripes of gold replacing his mouth and two translucent mirrors that served as his eyes. His face seemed to shimmer and twist with each instant, never settling on a given shape or facial structure. His right foot ended in a hoof, and the left in a snake with an obsidian mirror for a head.

The stench of blood coming from his garb of crimson jaguar fur was overwhelming. Not even the top of the Blood Pyramid nor the depths of my palace carried such a potent smell… but then again, it was said that he had massacred the first world the gods created in a fit of fury when he found its inhabitants wanting.

I was three-quarters of a god already, with the power to change the world, but even then he found me beneath his notice. His eyes stared into the distance at the obsidian gate through which I fell, and when he spoke, it was at me rather than to me.

“I told you once,” the dread god said, his voice echoing with the winds, “That one night, we would dance in the Land of the Dead Suns, where skulls plot their revenge and the true gods feast.”

The truth hit me the moment I heard his voice, so awfully familiar. I had heard it since my birth, tempting me, taunting me, guiding me.

When the Jaguar Lord spoke, the Yaotzin blew.

“I am the mirror of the human soul,” he said, his words those of an ancient terror who had raised the First Sun and shall bury the last. “I am the slave that plots the master’s demise, the assassin who sharpens his blade on a king’s throat, the jaguar that stalks the village’s edge. I am the hatred of the downtrodden and the unseen grudge. I am the hand that pushes the mighty down to earth and breaks down the door to chaos. I am the enemy of both sides. I am revolution; I am violence; I am change.”

Only then did he deign to look down on me with a gaze carrying the weight of eons past.

“I am Tezcatlipoca, and I await your answer.”

And as I gazed into the mirrors of his eyes, I sensed my mind fading away, my very sense of reality blurring and fracturing at the edge. The universe cracked into a thousand pieces, my soul splitting into countless reflections.

“Do you yield?” the creator god asked as his eyes swallowed me. “Or do you die?”