EPILOGUE: THE END

Blood & Fur

It was warm the night when the living gathered to celebrate the Day of the Dead.

The drums of Chilam pounded inside the city’s walls and into the night beyond, followed by the song of flutes and the footsteps of dancers forming circles around campfires. Amazoness’ and priestesses of Queen Mictecacihuatl, goddess of the dead, beseeched her to visit them under the pale glow of the moon.

Chikal observed the ceremony from atop her throne, a hand on her heavy belly. Her mother-in-law Ichtaca was the star of the show, her face coated in black and white paint, making her resemble a skeleton who was crowned in marigold flowers. Her fluid movements and the glow of dancing fires made her look like a ghost shimmering in the night.

Chilam hadn’t held a Day of the Dead in a very long time, even before Yohuachanca conquered them and suppressed the festival as part of its efforts to erase the old gods’ memories from all minds. The idea that they could celebrate such an event—let alone in a world where Yohuachanca had fallen—would have seemed impossible to her a year ago.

The celebration had taken on a new dimension. The people who had gathered today—amazons from Chilam who had survived the world’s end and rebirth, refugees they had taken in, and foreign visitors from other enclaves of mankind—did so to celebrate life as much as death. They had come to praise the gods for giving them another chance, for keeping death at bay one more day, and to celebrate the return of the sun once the night came to an end. The worshippers of Iztac-Cizin—the name by which most knew the Sixth Sun—had come in great numbers, bearing cloaks of feathers and wooden owl masks honoring their new god in the sky; and though males were still frowned upon in Chilam, the amazons had granted these men entry out of gratitude for the one emperor who had given his life to light the dawn anew.

It felt as if decades of history had happened in a few months’ time.

All of Chilam and many of its guests had gathered in the plaza to witness the ritual, from young Nenetl and Ingrid to their handmaidens Tenoch and Atziri. Eztli and Necahual couldn’t attend due to the latter’s labor, while Zyanya and Killa had remained in their respective realms; with the former ruling Zachilaa as an independent queendom while the other reformed the remains of the Sapa Empire by granting its old territories independence and autonomy.

Chikal remained in contact with them, sharing troops and intelligence, strengthening trade, and fending off tribes and marauders who prospered in the wake of Yohuachanca’s fall. The ‘Three Queens’ Alliance,’ as some had nicknamed them, had become the dominant power in the region since the old empire’s collapse; though all of its components had changed in one way or another. Chilam’s culture had become a little more tolerant of males after witnessing Iztac saving the world; the Sapa’s central power had collapsed to the profit of its former tributaries, with Manco, while alive, being reduced to little more of a puppet to his wife-in-name-only; and Zachilaa had begun to establish itself as an independent queendom in its own right in the west.

Much remained to be done, however. The Nightlords’ fall—alongside the disappearance of the priesthood and Nightkin which formed the bulk of the empire’s bureaucracy—had thrown the land into chaos. Old rivalries once suppressed by Yohuachanca had resurfaced, upstart warlords attempting to crown themselves emperors, and violence ruled the new world.

Chikal knew it would take years before the situation truly stabilized. Her city no longer feared conquest due to its renewed military strength, sorcery, and Lahun’s prophecies, but she currently lacked the forces to pacify other regions. However much her seer had predicted that Chilam would prosper in spite of the troubles ahead, Chikal was no fool resting easy on past victories.

Complacency had killed the Nightlords, and she would not fall into the same trap.

“I am surprised you would not join the dance, Lahun,” Chikal told her cousin, who dutifully stood behind her. “I thought you would enjoy it.”

“There is no need for my involvement, Your Majesty,” her seer replied while mapping out the stars in preparation for tomorrow’s prophecies. “And I have few dead friends I wish to meet again.”

True, Lahun had always been happy finding peace and companionship in her books rather than people. Chikal wondered if motherhood would change that. Her seer and Necahual had already grown close lately.

Chikal had half-expected Lahun to make a ploy for the throne of Chilam. She had retained the great and mysterious powers Iztac once bestowed upon her, from her ebon wings to otherworldly flames and the gift of prophecy. As a seer of the White Sun and mother of an unborn child of his loins, Lahun could have easily formed her own faction and overthrown Chikal.

Thankfully for Chikal and her throne, Lahun had shown no interest in rulership and continued to serve Chilam dutifully. She had repeatedly assessed that Chilam would continue to prosper so long as Chikal’s lineage ruled the city and sounded content with pursuing her studies of magic in the city’s service.

Was that your wish, Iztac? Chikal wondered as she looked at the horizon. The sun wouldn’t rise for many hours past the smoke that continued to rise from the magma consuming Yohuachanca’s fallen capital, but she had never failed to witness its coming in the morning since the White Dawn. Was this the fate you had planned for us since the start?

It surprised Chikal that she had to come to care so much for a male, even a god. Chikal wasn’t sure what she felt for Iztac could have been called love, not when compared to the likes of Ingrid or Eztli, but she had respected him more than any other person on this earth. She missed his strength, his ambition, and his flawed nature, which had made him so interesting. Though their dalliance had been short, its conclusion filled her heart with a pervading feeling of emptiness.

The women of Chilam always saw such attachment as weaknesses that dulled the blade and filled the heart with empty sentimentality, and a few of her warriors had beseeched her to find new consorts to ensure her line would have spares in case anything happened in these chaotic times, but Chikal knew it was unlikely she would take another male to bed anytime soon.

Every other man would come up short when compared to a god.

The smell of marigolds suddenly filled the air while the bonfires glowed with a bright blue shine. The song intensified while Ichtaca froze in place, the paint on her body rippling like oil on water. Her eyes radiated with gilded power and Chikal sensed a sharp, heavy presence taking over her flesh and soul. A power both wise and ancient now dwelled within the sorceress, wielding her like a piece of cloth the same way Iztac had often seemed possessed by an urge stronger than him in his final nights.

The Queen of the Dead walked among the living in a borrowed body.

She clapped her hands once the song reached its apex, calling upon the wind to blow among them. Spectral figures appeared near the fires, ephemeral silhouettes of swirling ashes that swiftly solidified into human figures of flesh and bones. Men and women appeared as they did in life to partake in the pleasures denied to them in death, along with the great feathered shadow of Itzili the Younger, whom Chikal ordered fed as an old friend.

For one night alone, the dead would rejoin the living and celebrate the glories of life.

Her father appeared to her as he did when alive.

Nenetl had only ever seen him as a skeleton in the past, yet he appeared to her clothed in flesh tonight. His face looked so much like that of Iztac, but older, darker, with the black hair and eyes of a mundane person lacking the Nahualli gift. His smile had all the warmth of summer and his arms held her with all the strength of his love.

“Nenetl,” Father said so kindly. “How good it is to hold you, to truly hold you.”

His joy and relief was palpable. Bones did not carry the sensations that flesh and skin provided, and though her father’s gentleness always shone through, she enjoyed hugging him in this form much more than as barren bones. They held onto each other in a tight embrace for what seemed like forever until Father let her go.

Only then did Nenetl see a small shape following in her father’s footsteps. The humanoid creature was barely taller than a human baby, albeit with great blue eyes and a black feathered face with a beak for a mouth. It looked quite cute in a strange clumsy way, his human hands holding on to her father’s leg.

“Let me introduce you to Celic,” Father said upon taking the child creature in his hands and lifting him up. “Your unborn brother.”

Nenetl smiled sweetly at her sibling, whose totemic nature was on full display. She kissed him on the forehead and earned herself a chirping cry of happiness in return. Father smiled and then invited Nenetl to hold her brother herself, which she did. He was as lightweight as the owlish bird he took so much after and quickly buried his face into her bosom.

She had heard his spirit had been appeased, and although he would never be entirely human—since he had never been born as one—he seemed content in his current form. Such a pity she would only be able to hold him once each year.

Nenetl swore she would never miss a Day of the Dead from now on, no matter who officiated it.

Her mother—or at least her body—walked up to them, her feet leaving marigolds in their wake that quickly turned to dust with each step. Her very presence had changed and carried a similar kind of pressure that Iztac used to project during the last days of the Sapa Empire, but gentler, colder, less fierce; more akin to a comforting breeze and flowery scent than raging sunlight. Her eyes gazed upon Nenetl and her brother with a look that seemed both warm and distant.

“Mother?” Nenetl cleared her throat. “Are you… are you in there?”

“Yes,” Mother replied with two voices at once. “We are one and two. We do not fight, we share.”

Nenetl sighed in relief. Her heart had filled with concern when her mother told her she would allow the goddess of the dead to possess her until dawn. She had feared the process would be fatal, or that the divine spirit would overwhelm its human vessel the same way her brother’s godhood had changed him.

Nenetl wasn’t sure what kind of deal her Mother had made with the goddess of the dead, but she had spent the last several months promoting her cult and acting as an official priestess of the reborn faith. The Nightlords’ suppression of history had almost wiped the name of Queen Mictecacihuatl from many minds, but what was once forgotten could be relearned.

“I see…” Nenetl gasped upon remembering her manners, her back hunching in a sign of dignified submission. “I-I mean, it is a pleasure to welcome you among us then, Queen Mictecacihuatl! Your presence tonight honors us all!”

“You are too kind, young Nenetl,” the queen replied wisely, smiling through her mother’s lips. “Know that I appreciate the prayers you send my way on behalf of the deceased each night. It is your gentle heart that honors me.”

“Oh, that’s…” Nenetl blushed in embarrassment. She had taken to praying for all the poor souls that perished at the hands of the Nightlords and during the White Dawn disaster that followed their demise. “That is nothing. Many others must do the same each night.”

“A few do, but nowhere near as fervently as you do,” the queen replied. “I am aware as well of the relief you provide to the living too, especially the weak and the sick. I suspect you will be kindly welcomed by many souls in my city when your time comes.”

Nenetl wasn’t especially eager to die anytime soon—she had buried too many people already—but she thanked the queen for her words with grace. It warmed her heart knowing that another god looked gently upon her efforts.

While she had grown into a better witch under her mother’s tutelage, the ability Nenetl saw the most use from was the blood-fueled Teyolia transfer she learned from Iztac. She had sharpened this skill until she could heal the sick with a touch and alleviate pain with a smile. The White Dawn had left many orphans and widows in its wake, not to mention plagues spread by all the shambling corpses that used to roam the world during the long nights that preceded it. Countless people needed her help.

Whereas Ingrid was set on reaching Winland, Chikal had a city to rule, and Eztli had spoken of her desire to rebuild Acampa, Nenetl was currently set on becoming a healer. She already ran Chilam’s orphanage in all but name and felt more comfortable using her power to help others rather than search for knowledge for knowledge’s sake like her mother. This world had shown her equal cruelty and kindness, so she would rather bring more of the latter into the world than the former… along with her little one.

Nenetl glanced at her belly. Although the child she carried had been born of incest and trickery, it was also a scion conceived through love. She hoped the gods would look kindly upon them in spite of the circumstances of their creation; Nenetl knew she would shower them with all the love the Nightlords had robbed her of in her childhood.

Nenetl hoped that one day her brother would rise from the horizon to shine upon a world of the gentle, and where their child would grow up happy. That was her sincerest wish.

“It has been centuries since I last oversaw this festival and wore living flesh,” the queen of the dead mused before turning to Father. “I am looking forward to partaking in its pleasures.”

“I see that the kind people of Chilam raised a buffet for us, Your Majesty, with plenty of drinks,” Father said. “I am told they have some of the best gardens in the world too.”

Mother gave Father a very long hard look which caused Nenetl to blush, at which point the truth finally hit him. “Oh.”

“I have waited so many years,” both divine and mortal voices replied through her mother’s lips. “Neither of us shall wait any further.”

“Are you certain, Ichtaca?” Father cleared his throat in embarrassment. “I… I have no greater wish, but the current circumstances–”

“My husband will not care,” the queen replied through Ichtaca’s lips, before Mother’s voice alone broke through. “I do not mind sharing this moment, Itzili, so long as I am with you.”

Nenetl giggled as her father was then passionately kissed on the lips by her mother and the queen of the dead acting as one. She wondered if the child in her arms would soon have a new sibling by the time the next Day of the Dead rolled around.

Speaking of Celic, he had turned away from his parents to stare at the sky. Nenetl thought he was focusing on the stars before realizing he only had eyes for the pale crimson moon gazing down upon them.

“Is this your first time seeing the moon?” Nenetl asked her sibling, who answered with a small nod. “We have so little precious time, so…” She smiled ear to ear. “I will show you everything I can.”

Her family had returned the same as the day she had lost them.

Part of Ingrid had always been jealous of her mother’s beauty, and Sigrun’s death hadn’t changed that. She appeared pale and radiant, dressed like the uncrowned empress she had always been. The first thing she did was to look at her hands and admire them. Ingrid guessed flesh was a luxury—if not entirely unknown—in the land of the dead.

Meanwhile, Ingrid’s brother Fjor walked up to her in the garb of the warrior he had wanted to be, rather than the vampire he had eventually become. He immediately moved to hug Astrid in his arms the moment he saw her. Ingrid’s heart fluttered in her chest at the sight.

“Welcome home,” Ingrid greeted her family with ladylike poise and grace. “I hope you had a good trip.”

“Greetings, Mother, Brother,” Astrid said with tears in her eyes. “I’ve missed you so much.”

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

Whereas Lady Sigrun assessed her daughters with a mix of sorrow and caution in uneasy silence, her brother moved to embrace her without care.

“Have you forgotten the face of your brother, Ingrid?” he asked her with relief. “It’s been so long, I am so glad to see you again as…” A look of dread passed over Fjor’s face. “As myself.”

Ingrid returned her brother’s embrace. She knew all too well what he had gone through. Her friend Eztli still had nightmares from her time as a vampire, back when blood and hunger ruled her mind under the Nightlords’ yoke.

“I am so sorry,” Fjor apologized. “I tried so many times to free you, to get Astrid away from it all, but Iztacoatl… I could feel her stinking presence in my mind, crushing my hopes whenever she sensed defiance…”

“But defy her you did, brother,” Ingrid reassured him. She had felt his sacrifice during the ritual that put an end to Iztacoatl’s life. “Your warrior’s heart prevailed when we needed it most. We would not have won without your sacrifice, and for that, we will always be grateful.”

“I know you tried to save me during the hunt, brother,” Astrid reassured him before wiping a tear from her eye. “You were so much braver than all of Yohuachanca’s priests combined.”

Fjor smiled at his sisters. “I had hoped to rest in a heaven for warriors, but seeing the two of you alive is reward enough.”

“I still cannot believe you did it,” Sigrun commented, finally breaking the silence. “You… are free. You are alive and free.”

“We are,” Ingrid replied before assessing her mother, that woman she had looked up to and been a pawn of all her life. “You never imagined it, did you?”

“No,” Sigrun conceded with a hint of regret in her voice. “The vampires snuffed out the flames of rebellion from my heart twice. The first time, when they killed my crew; and the second when they took my son away.”

Ingrid gave her mother a look of pity. Part of her had resented Sigrun for raising her children as tools to secure her own survival and position as a Yohuachancan concubine, but she had had many months to process her feelings. They had all been birds seeking to become queens of the birdcage when the thought of escape died in their hearts; victims of the Nightlords’ system of cruelty.

Ingrid knew she was only alive today because of Iztac, Eztli, and the many people who joined forces to break Yohuachanca’s chains; and the best she could do to honor those who gave their lives for them was to ensure mankind would never suffer such tyranny again.

“The journey was long and difficult, Mother, but we saw it to its end,” Ingrid replied. “I hope you take solace in that knowledge.”

“Yes… Yes, I do.” Sigrun took a deep breath and glanced at Chilam. “I have spent so long in Yohuachanca’s imperial palace that I had forgotten what a proper city looked like. I feel like I have woken up from a very long nightmare, one that began long before those blue flames drowned me in silent darkness.”

“Would you like to hear me play the harp, Mother?” Astrid asked with a kind smile and slight tears in her eyes. “I have improved so much since we last met.”

Lady Sigrun’s lips shifted into the rarest and most sincere of smiles. “I would like that very much, Astrid.”

“I would like to hear it too, sister,” Fjor said. “What will you do now? Will you stay and rule this city?”

“We intend to reach Winland with an expedition of volunteers,” Ingrid replied. Although she had shown great skills as a diplomat and Chikal offered her a place to stay, her dream had never changed. “We will return to the land of our ancestors and bring word of what happened here, on this side of the world.”

Ingrid had offered Eztli—with whom she had grown extremely close to over the last year—and her mother to join them on their journey to Winland. They had yet to give her their final answer, but Ingrid hoped it would be yes.

The people beyond the sea deserved to know what happened. They deserved to know what this world’s salvation cost them, and whom they had to thank for a new dawn.

After that… after that, the sky would be the limit. There were so many lands to explore beyond the sea and earth, beyond the horizon set alight by the rising sun and the waning moon. The possibilities were as endless as the sky’s horizon.

For the first time in her life, Ingrid finally had the freedom to choose what she wanted to do.

Lady Sigrun nodded at her daughters, and then kissed them both on the foreheads. Her lips were warm, letting Ingrid recall happier times in her childhood when Fjor was still among them. “I know the words of the dead matter little to the living… but I am proud of what you accomplished, all of you.”

“I know.” Ingrid accepted her mother’s praise with a smile and a bow. “And I am ever so grateful.”

She was glad she could make peace with her mother in the end; to obtain that sense of closure the Nightlords had robbed her of.

Ingrid remained a bit behind while Astrid guided her mother and brother to her harp and the other musicians. A light had caught her eye; a small wisp akin to a faint star, barely perceptible unless one paid attention, yet that followed Sigrun without a sound.

Her mother had yet to notice her unborn child’s soul casting its faint light on her.

Ingrid had heard from Ichtaca that the unborn went to a paradise of their own, and certainly, the son of a god had to be especially graced. She offered a prayer for that unborn sun as it vanished in a wisp of light and promised to give the queen of the dead an offering on its behalf.

Ingrid sensed movement and noticed a dead man clothed in flesh approaching her. She knew who he was the moment she laid eyes on him. She had known the moment she had spotted him looking at her face, searching for the slight facial traits that might identify a familial resemblance of some kind. She had seen two other men look at Fjor and Astrid with the same longing, though those two had yet to find the courage to ‘break the ice,’ as Mother used to say.

“I am Emperor Tezcacoatl, whom some called the Lord of War,” the mysterious man finally introduced himself to Ingrid, picking his words carefully. “I… I think I might be your father, Ingrid.”

That might certainly have been the case. Although Ingrid had inherited her mother’s hair and eyes, the shape of that man’s cheekbones and jaw were eerily close to her own.

“I do not know what to say,” the man whispered softly after the awkward pause. “Besides the fact I would have given everything to see you grow into the fine young woman you have become.”

“No, you are wrong. There is much for you to say.” Ingrid took his hands into her own with a smile. “So much to catch up on.”

She would inscribe her father’s words to her codexes, as she did with so many others, so that others many generations in the future may remember that they had both lived.

For the only true death was oblivion.

Her mother’s screams echoed in the chamber, and the moonlight filtered through the open window. Eztli held her hand as she screamed on the bed amidst blood and other fluids. A host of amazon midwives gave her water and tried to drag the child out into the world.

Eztli had often assisted her mother when she worked as an herbalist and healer in Acampa, including one childbirth. Priests celebrated such occasions as sacred moments that would renew Yohuachanca’s blood and pool of sacrifices, saying that women fought like warriors to bring a new soul into the world. Eztli was glad they were all dead and that they didn’t have to suffer through their drivel anymore. Childbirth was long, painful, dirty, and often deadly.

But the result was beautiful all the same.

It came out with a shrilling cry that sent shivers of pleasure across her mother’s flesh. Necahual relaxed all at once with a final sigh while an old crone called Ixmucan covered the child in a crimson blanket.

This battle for a new life had been hard won, a victory purchased with pain and blood.

“My congratulations,” Ixmucan said. “It is a girl.”

Necahual let go of her oldest daughter’s hand to gently seize the new one, a babe with the same pale skin and hair that had marked his father as a cursed child since his birth. It astonished Eztli how small and frail she was with a god for a father. It seemed that all the weakness and innocence of mankind had been gathered into her body.

It felt strange to look upon her half-sister when she carried a child of the same man in her belly. Others might have seen their family as warped once, but the midwives all bowed as one before the child and its mother. Some had already come to call their family the Radiant Lineage, the Sun’s Legacy, and so many other names.

They had been the wives of the White Sun, savior of the old world, prophets of the new one, and all those who owed their lives to him would honor them.

Eztli was heavy with a child as well, but not due before a few months still. Pregnancy was a difficult experience in spite of her powers, though she didn’t complain. The likes of Chikal—who had to deal with this on top of ruling her city—had it much worse. The amazon queen would likely be the next to give birth alongside Lahun and Tenoch, and Eztli would be the last.

She had been the first to love him, and the last. There was beauty in that, and sorrow.

“What name shall you give her?” Eztli asked Necahual.

She chuckled. “Ichtaca.”

Eztli smiled ear to ear. She knew it was half her mother’s idea of a dig at her mother-in-law and half a show that they had moved past their past enmity.

Eztli knew that her mother and mother-in-law didn’t get along. Their hatred had simmered down to quiet dislike in the months that followed the White Dawn. Shared grief hadn’t made them closer to each other, but it brought their feud closure.

It did, however, strengthen the kinship Eztli shared with her fellow former consorts. She considered them sisters, especially Nenetl and Ingrid. Part of her was very much tempted to follow the latter on her journey to Winland after rebuilding Acampa. Part of Eztli knew it was foolish to rebuild a destroyed place only to leave it immediately for an uncertain journey beyond the horizon, but she wouldn’t be ready otherwise.

She needed a home to return to.

And then, the ghost of the last home she had limped into the room.

Men were usually forbidden to set foot inside Chilam’s palace, with the exception of the queen’s consort; but the dead had been granted permission to wander the homes of the living for their brief night of revelry. The guards did not deny this one entry, and Eztli understood why the moment she saw him.

Although she said she wanted to help her mother give birth, the reason why she tried to skip the Day of the Dead now stood before her.

Silence filled the room for a moment, and tears flooded Eztli’s eyes. She didn’t say a word at first, for it would have hurt. Instead, she moved across the room and grabbed him with all of her strength and guilt.

How else could she react in the presence of the father she had murdered?

“I…” Eztli struggled to even speak through the tears and sobs. The floodgate of her heart had swung wide open. “I am so sorry…”

Guatemoc embraced his daughter in his arms. She sensed no regret in them, no recrimination, no hatred or anger; only the gruff acceptance he had always shown her.

“I bear you no ill will, Eztli,” her father replied kindly. He might not have been her kin by blood, but the bond they shared transcended such petty matters. “That wasn’t you back then, but the hunger.”

“But I… I killed you anyway…” Eztli didn’t dare look up to him. “I wasn’t… I couldn’t…”

More than that, vampirism had clouded her mind, made her a monster that thought consuming her own father had been a good thing. She had spread so much pain and waded through so much filth her soul would stink even in death.

“You could not, yes, no more than you could decide where the lightning strikes,” Guatemoc replied. “I was there with you, Eztli. I sensed your guilt, shared your sorrow, experienced the same curse you did… and at no point did I ever blame you.”

He kindly lifted up his daughter’s chin, so that she might look into his eyes

“Have you forgotten?” he asked her. “It is only by sharing pain that we can defeat it.”

Eztli bit her lip and buried her face into her father’s shoulder.

How long did she cry? Minutes, hours? Eztli felt as if she had spent all the water in her body, but once the tears died up and the sorrow with them, only the warmth of kinship and love remained. The wetnurses and attendants were gone too, leaving the family alone in the room.

Guatemoc gently let go of his daughter and faced his widow. She greeted with a faint, if genuine smile, and a newborn in her arms.

Guatemoc only had to take a look at the child to guess who the father was. “Is that Iztac’s daughter?”

“Yes,” Necahual replied uneasily. Although Eztli knew her mother and father never shared the wild passion of other couples, they had grown to respect each other over time. It was probably awkward for Guatemoc to face his widow holding the child of his adopted son in his arms.

Thankfully, he took it in stride. “I admit I couldn’t believe the news when I heard it down below,” he commented with a scoff of amusement. Guatemoc always had the strangest sense of humor, and the situation appeared to amuse him. “She is a beautiful child, like her mother and father.”

Necahual’s expression became downcast. “I would rather have them both.”

Eztli’s face turned into a scowl. They had avoided talking about Iztac in the past months, to avoid twisting the knife into their wounds. Mother would often meditate in the sun at dawn and twilight, closing her eyes. The sorcerous bond she continued to share with her lover and divine patron was strange and difficult to put into words according to her; she felt his presence, and often heard his words in the wind, but both remained as distant as the clouds in the sky. Sometimes Eztli would find her mother staring at it with contentment, and other times with sorrow.

“You will, one day,” Guatemoc said upon taking the child in his hands, which Necahual allowed. “There are tales in the Underworld that not all souls who perished after the change reached Mictlan. Some… some fall upwards, they say.”

Eztli’s head perked up. “Upwards?”

“As those who perished by lightning are welcomed into the halls of Tlaloc, some lives and deaths belong to him. In death, they are baptized in light.” Guatemoc smiled. “Perhaps old souls who perished before that White Dawn and reached Mictlan since will ascend to that place one day. King Mictlantecuhtli is a covetous god when it comes to souls, but I am sure his wife will eventually convince him to relinquish a few.”

“I know we will find our way to him eventually too,” Necahual said with wisdom. “But eventually… eventually can be a very long time.”

But though death inevitably came for all—even gods and suns—neither Eztli nor Necahual were in any hurry to hasten it along. Iztac had given up everything to give them time, and they would cherish it.

The family spent the rest of the night sitting near the window under the starlight. Guatemoc regaled them with tales of the Underworld; how the city of the dead had risen to a new ‘layer’ created from the ruins of lands that had fallen into the depths during the White Dawn and where a new dead sun shone, and how many red-eyed priests like Tayatzin and Tezozomoc had found cold welcome from their former victims in Mictlan. It brought Eztli solace that the false faith of the Nightlords had died both on earth and below.

Afterwards, Eztli recounted their adventures to Guatemoc as her mother breastfed her new half-sister under the pale moonlight. The new moon’s surface was red like blood, with two sulfur pits for eyes and black spots shaped like a grim skull glaring down on the earth as if to remind mankind that it might one day come down to devour life should it be found wanting.

Eztli could feel the will and intent in those black eyes whenever she looked at them; the vampire curse had long vanished from this world, but a part of her soul remained connected to her former progenitor. Sometimes she would close her eyes at night, feeling the cold in her bones and the moonlight on her skin. She would sense something watching from above, a great beast whose hunger had been satiated into complacency. She would feel phantom wings on her back and invisible fur above the blood coursing through her veins.

There was a bat asleep deep within her; one that didn’t feed on blood nor wanted to consume the flesh of others to satisfy its hunger. Eztli would hear its call in her slumber, each night bringing her a little closer to awakening that part of herself. Her mother-in-law said it might have been her soul’s natural totem reborn from the ashes of the skinwalker curse Chindi once bore. Ichtaca had wondered what could have caused it, but Eztli had long guessed the truth by herself.

It was a divine gift. An apology from the one whose black blood and hunger had brought her so much misery, and the possibility of opening the door to the same secret that allowed Iztac to burn like the sun.

Eztli had no idea when that sleeping door would open or what she would find on the other side, but she looked forward to it. She missed Iztac, and traveling the same steps as her husband would bring them closer in spirit until the day they would finally reunite.

However, for all the pale light of the moon, it could never rival the sun’s warmth.

Eztli glanced at the horizon. A line of fire appeared to spread beyond the mountains, banishing the night which men feared and bringing back the light which they revered. She felt its warm touch on her skin even as it began to return her late father to the dust from which he had been reborn for only that night. Eztli took Guatemoc’s hand into her own, as did Necahual when the time came for him to say goodbye. His ghost slipped through her fingers like a fleeting life.

The dawn rose, the light of a white sun shining upon the living.

And for Eztli, it was the most beautiful sight in the world.

The End

Author's Note

So sets the sun of Blood & Fur. Special thanks to Daniel Zogbi and Charles Setzer for their proofreading and my patrons on patreon for supporting the story to its final conclusion.

I must say that this epilogue flowed a lot harder than the previous chapter and all others before it, maybe because it was mentally difficult to change perspective after over a hundred chapters from Iztac’s first-person perspective, on top of all the loose ends I had to close. I suppose epitaphs are harder to write than biographies, even for fictional characters.

In any case, I knew from the very moment I wrote Blood & Fur’s prologue that the final scene would be Eztli looking at the sun Iztac had become, left with her descendants to carry on like each dawn follows the last. Much of what happened in-between was in flux, and the very premise of the early drafts were quite different from what the series ended up being (Iztac was originally supposed to be a werewolf/skinwalker, hence the ‘fur’ in the title) but the end was more or less the one I envisioned when I began writing this story two years ago after a long and unexpected dive into Aztec mythology and history. I feel that Blood & Fur was a romance story at its heart, beneath all the darkness, the tears, and bloodshed.

Perhaps that was what I found so appealing about Mesoamerican mythology; that for all of its ugliness and horrors, there was some dark beauty to it like a venomous flower.

I don’t recall exactly what began this journey or how I ended up falling into the Aztec history hole, but Blood & Fur is now officially my longest series yet, clocking at five books collectively. It might be my best-written work alongside the Perfect Run, though its Aztec setting, themes, and darker storyline will probably condemn it to a life of a niche work when compared to other series like Vainqueur or Apocalypse Tamer, this feels like something I had to write. Although I burned out on Commerce Emperor (which I had started around the same time) and concluded many books since, Blood & Fur simply continued to flow easily out of my mind until the final chapter. I am well and truly satisfied.

In a way, this feels like a transition. I began this work in the last days of my twenties and finished it in the first days of my thirties. It’s a page-turner for you and I, my dear readers. All journeys must end, but most conclusions simply announce the beginning of a new path.

And I am very happy to have shared this one with you.

Thank you all for your amazing support, kind comments, and many messages. I don’t think I’ll write something as dark as Blood & Fur anytime soon (if again) and I anticipate a huge fall in the Patreon in the coming weeks now that Blood & Fur concluded (since most of you were here for it), but I hope some of you will remain for Board & Conquest or the new tales I have in store. And more than that, I pray you’ll look upon Blood & Fur fondly. If you did, I would appreciate if you could support it on Amazon now that the series ended on RR ;)