Blood & Fur-Chapter Ninety-Seven: Burns the Stage

A cosmic balance shifted.

I sensed it in the air within and without; within my breath and the wind. The world grew cold and the Fifth Sun dimmed in the sky, its radiance forever diminished. All lights around us, even the flames cast by my own Blaze, had lost some of their luster and cast darker shadows.

“It is done,” Lahun said at my side, her eyes wide with awe and fascination as her gaze lingered on the spot where she watched Sugey be dragged into the silent dark. I had fulfilled her wish and shown her true magic. “Your Majesty has slain the undying. Your Majesty has slain a Nightlord.”

Lahun’s voice had shifted, as did the way she called me Majesty. The word, once merely respectful, now brimmed with near-religious reverence. Our relationship had been only transactional yesterday, built on the promise of sharing my sorcery and risky promises.

All doubt had cleared from Lahun’s mind. I had delivered what I promised. I’d delivered the impossible. My authority was now unquestioned.

I had become her god in words and deeds, and she would never doubt me again.

“She’s dead…” Mother muttered to herself in utter disbelief. She had spent so many years cowering from Sugey and her kind, thinking them beyond any mortal’s reach, only for me to prove her wrong. “It is finished.”

“No,” Necahual replied more wisely. “The true battle has only just begun.”

The cosmos agreed.

I’d known that this victory would come with a price the moment I cast the Pit spell. All vampires’ souls were forsworn to the first of their kind, even the Nightlords who had usurped him. Xibalba only claimed Sugey because the First Emperor let go of that claim to ensure her demise; and even then, none of the souls she consumed in her belly were allowed to move on to their proper afterlife.

My predecessors still stood trapped at the Gate of Skulls, the threshold between life and death. They should have seen the thousands, if not the millions of souls Sugey had devoured across centuries pass through; yet I had only sensed the Bird of War’s demise through our bond.

The First Emperor would not relinquish his daughters’ bounty of stolen lives. They would all weep in his stomach until the final nights.

A chill colder than winter’s frozen heart swelled from within me, old and bitter. The glow of ancient suns alone kept the frosty embrace of undeath from claiming me. The new balance of the universe found its incarnation in me.

Two Nightlords’ chains remained to bind me to the darkness; two embers burned to keep the flame alight in my heart. Day and night were now equal within me, my soul dwelling in the twilight.

The world was on a precipice. The fragile balance hung by a thread, ready to topple into the silent dark. The night would have already prevailed without the ossified and occult weight of the Nightlords’ ritual keeping it grounded. With Sugey’s loss, my capture no longer guaranteed that the Nightlords could complete their yearly sacrifice; but they still had a chance. The universe knew that, so long as the Nightlords found a way to replace their numbers before the Scarlet Moon.

And so, the world held its breath.

The wheel had turned for too many centuries to stop now. It would roll down the road until the final crash. Whether it happened because I slew the Nightlords or they failed to replace their lost members before the final deadline was irrelevant.

This universe lived on borrowed time.

The signs of its incoming end unfolded around us. Red clouds obscured the sky and wept tears of blood across the land. Previous rains had been limited in scoop, but I knew deep within me that this flood now blanketed the entire world. The rivers and streams would turn crimson, and the sun would soon set on an ocean of the dead.

I heard the whispers of the dead rattling in their coffins and hungry screeches of pallid white bats. Undeath used to be a sickness; but it would now become a plague, a flood of corruption sweeping the land. Carrion feeders would feed on the living and the undying would not rest in their tombs anymore.

“These are the end days,” I uttered with a voice that wasn’t entirely my own anymore. “When carrion worms rule the world.”

I heard the laughter of Xibalba echo in the distance. The Lords of Terror danced in the Earth’s depths, delighting in the age of terror I’d brought upon the living. Fear would rule the hearts of mortals and immortals alike until the final night. I had fed them more than Sugey’s soul; I’d ordered a banquet of blood and dread for them to feast upon.

I had lived up to my name. When men would look up to a crimson sky weeping for them, they would remember how to pray.

So would the Nightlords.

The odds that Eztli could fit in for Yoloxochitl had already been astronomically low; the chance that the Nightlords could find a replacement for her and Sugey was near null. But a fool’s hope was still hope, and the remaining sisters would pursue it with all their might and despair.

They had sensed what fate befell their siblings, and they would do anything to avoid it.

It would fall to me to crush their last hopes and save the Fifth Sun from setting for the last time; one way or another.

No sooner had the thought crossed my mind than the chill within my soul returned, shaper and crueler. I barely heard my knees hitting the ground in my sudden exhaustion. The bat-shaped darkness within me grew thicker still, and I felt the First Emperor’s shadow loom over me once again.

No. Rather my shadow changed to fit his own.

He was a god, after all; and I, his dreadful messenger.

“Iztac!” I heard Eztli call out my name and her hands reaching out for me in an instant. Her skin felt unbearably hot against my own, like hot metal pressed against my flesh. Her eyes widened in fear. “Iztac, you are so… so cold.”

“I am fine,” I lied with a breath of pale white mist. My own lungs hurt from all the ice within them. “I am alive.”

I knew that because I thirsted for life.

I was cold, and yet I hungered.

Eztli didn’t buy my excuse for a second. Her fear and horror were plainly written all over her face. She had spent too long struggling with the vampire’s curse not to recognize its hold on my flesh and soul; she knew that look of thirst all too well.

“No, you are not,” she said with deep and sincere concern. “You are… you are sick, Iztac.”

“Only because I require rest, Eztli,” I replied. I had spent so much power fending off Sugey that my inner fire lacked the warmth to banish the First Emperor’s curse properly. “Let us return to our camp. I need sleep.”

Eztli clenched her jaw, clearly holding herself back from arguing with me. Nonetheless, she ended up nodding reluctantly. She wouldn’t drop the matter, but decided to take me at my word; hoping that a mere night of rest would let me recover.

I suspected both of us would be disappointed, but we could do little about that yet.

My witches of damnation helped get back while Mother watched on with unease. Part of her knew exactly what I had become; what I risked becoming. I had slain a Nightlord and become a conduit for the darkness from which they sprang forth. She had sensed my appetite for her blood, my thirst for the dead sun’s warmth coursing through her veins. How long until I added her to the menu, she wondered. Whatever little courage I helped her find within herself now struggled with her natural caution.

I didn’t let her flee this time.

“Come, Mother,” I said with a tone that broke no disobedience. “Your daughter awaits us.”

My words hit her like a slap in the face, both as a reminder of what she had lost and could now regain. Mother met my gaze for a moment, her teeth biting her lips, and then nodding slowly.

She had already made her choice when she decided to return and help her son rather than leave him to his fate.

When it mattered most, Mother chose not to run away.

I had seen the light Father first loved in her, and I would not let it fade away again.

The camp had become a graveyard by the time we returned. The rain of blood had lasted an hour and washed away corpses before disappearing, though I knew it would return tomorrow.

True to Necahual’s warning, my loyalists had struck the moment I flew to confront Sugey in the Sapa sky. Chikal’s cunning decision to keep her soldiers in reserve, coupled with the assistance of Zachilaa’s troops and my Mometzcopinques raining down fire from the sky, had proved decisive in the conflict that followed. Part of me had almost expected Zyanya to betray us and throw her lot in with the Nightlords, but in the end her instincts led her to bet on my victory. Sugey’s decision to collect her followers’ blood, followed by her very public demise, had only put the final nail in the imperial loyalists’ hope of victory.

I thus returned to the camp to find my troops keeping watch over surrendering survivors. My consorts, concubines, and surviving generals welcomed me. I was surprised to find Amoxtli and Coaxoch among them, free of all restraints.

Amoxtli’s decision to side with me didn’t surprise me all that much, considering he had secretly supported Nochtli’s coup last year out of resentment for the Nightlords denying him immortality, but Coaxoch was the true oddity. The Shorn One fought for the strongest side, and while he promised my predecessor he would side with him should he prevail over Sugey, he hadn’t put his hand where his mouth was. I guessed I’d either earned his respect on the battlefield or impressed him enough for him to roll the die.

In fact, I immediately sensed a change in the atmosphere. Amazons and soldiers alike averted my gaze the way men dared to stare straight at the sun. A quiet silence followed each of my breaths as hundreds waited for my wisdom. Near-religious awe filled their eyes.

I had always been an object of reverence as their invincible emperor, a warrior that no mortal foe could slay; yet I had also been little more than a prophet speaking on behalf of the Nightlords. A holy idol worthy of respect, yes, but one that lived on borrowed time. They knew another emperor would have replaced me at the next year’s dawn, my face little more than another blur in an endless procession.

But they had watched me become something else entirely. Something that they feared, but could not understand.

A prophet should not kill his god.

So what could I be then? The entire camp had witnessed me transform into a Tlacatecolotl and defy Sugey herself in an epic battle worthy of ancient songs. Many emperors had died defying the Nightlords, and countless nations failed to defeat them, but I had become the first person in the world to kill one.

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What else could achieve such a feat besides a god or demon?

And as they looked to the sky, to crimson clouds filled with heavens’ bloody tears and a dimmed sun shining over a land where the dead walked among the living, they all wondered: “What does this mean for us?”

The question weighed on my mind even as I rejoiced to see all of my consorts and lovers were safe and sound. Nenetl’s smile of relief upon seeing me return morphed into surprise the moment she spotted Mother among my retinue. A tense silence settled between them, with Ichtaca rubbing her arms as she struggled to meet her abandoned daughter’s gaze. One could almost cut the tension with a knife.

Then Nenetl embraced our Mother, as I knew she would.

A rare look of surprise crossed Ichtaca’s face when her daughter’s arms coiled around her in a tight hug which we had never shared ourselves. My sister hadn’t hesitated for a second, her grip so strong as to bend metal. Mother gasped in surprise at first, before clumsily returning the embrace with immense awkwardness. It was almost painful to watch, and yet it warmed my heart of ice nonetheless.

Nenetl’s warmth had reached Mother, the same way Father’s once did. The road would be long, but they had taken the first step.

I glanced at my other consorts and concubines. While the likes of Tenoch and Atziri lowered their heads to avoid my gaze out of fear and respect, Chikal didn’t hide her glee. She had felt Sugey’s demise in her heart and relished the freedom that came with it. Lady Zyanya’s reaction also took me by surprise. She stared at me with awe and desire like a woman possessed, her eyes darting to Necahual and Lahun now and then. Watching my power had awakened an ungodly appetite and ambition in her heart; one that I feared I would need to manage carefully.

Only Ingrid appeared torn between hope for what my victory represented, and unease for what would follow. The worried glances she sent Mother’s way betrayed her concern for her lost sister and what would happen to her next.

She knew our lives now hung in the balance, and that the long-awaited war had begun.

“Welcome back,” Chikal said with the respect owed to kings and gods. “You return to us victorious.”

“What of our troops?” I asked sharply. We had reached a critical juncture where time was of the essence. I needed to know everything about our current situation before reaching a decision.

“The dead rose almost as soon as we slew them,” Chikal said as she briefed me on our current situation. “We had to hack them to pieces and burn them on the spot. Otherwise, our losses were minimal. Shock and surprise carried the day.”

“What of Cuauhteztli?” I asked her. The Eagle Warriors’ leader was nowhere to be seen, and his military order was dedicated to the late Sugey.

Chikal shrugged her shoulders. “I killed him myself.”

Unsurprising, but welcomed. I gazed at our troops. Less than three thousand had survived the chaos, purges, and undead depredation. It was a fraction of the army that followed me to the Flower War, but it remained a formidable, hardened force; and most importantly, a mobile one.

Retreating back to Yohuachanca’s territories would be suicide. The Jaguar Woman and the White Snake would advance on the Sapa Mountains with all their forces, all their reserves. They would mobilize every citizen of fighting age regardless of the consequences. They knew their immortal lives were now wavering on a perilous balance.

There would be no safe refuge waiting for us, only a tide of vampires and enemies. I had only managed to defeat Sugey because I’d caught her under the sun and exploited her ungodly arrogance. The other Nightlords would not be so easily taken aback. Having sensed their sister’s death, they would come to me cautious and prepared.

I could not afford to take them on in a direct brawl now; not until I either took them unaware or collected another set of embers.

Retreating to Chilam or Zachilaa would only serve to endanger the cities. Their military force had failed to hold back the Nightlords’ conquest once. Their walls would crumble before a moon’s turn.

This only left us with one option.

“What of Manco’s forces?” I inquired.

“They are in disarray, my lord,” Ingrid replied.

“They cannot have fled too far,” Chikal said, her gaze lingering on Mother. “We could catch up to them with a local guide.”

Chikal had read my mind and anticipated my strategy. I hoped to count on her expertise in the battles to come.

“Send a messenger back to Chilam,” I told her. “The Nightlords will be wroth with all those who fought by my side.”

“We’ve already abandoned Chilam,” Chikal said. “I ordered the amazons that stayed behind to evacuate to the jungle after our army’s departure.”

My eyebrow raised. She had given this order before the Flower War? “Did you anticipate…” I turned to gaze at the sky. “This?”

“That you would duel a Nightlord and win?” Chikal’s lips curved into a smile. “I simply feared that someone would eventually catch on to our plotting and feared the consequences that would follow. You expect too much of me, Iztac… and I expected too little of you.”

Her cunning and foresight never failed to amaze me.

“You are free, Chikal,” I reminded her. “The chain around your soul has snapped. No Nightlord will ever hold you in bondage again.”

“I’ve noticed.” Chikal bowed with all of her respect. “You have my gratitude for it."

“Then you know that your will is your own,” I replied. “We will fight because we must, but you and your sisters of battle may leave should you wish for it.”

Chikal scoffed, as if the mere idea of walking away was insulting. “You know well enough that I cannot, not so long as my people remain in bondage… and even if I could, I do not wish to. I shall fight with you to the very end, Emperor Iztac.”

Then she did what no other Queen of Chilam did before her.

She knelt to me.

Her knee hit the bloodsoaked muddy ground with a thump, without fear or hesitation. This should have been a social death sentence in Chikal’s society, but a thousand souls imitated her one after the other. All soldiers, whether they be amazons, Zachilaan auxiliaries, or Yohuachancan warriors, bent the knee before me. I glanced around to see a sea of bent backs surrounding me. Everyone, from my highest consort to my least important soldier, acknowledged my guidance.

No amazon queen would kneel to a male emperor… but all mortals should kneel before a living god.

Once they respected me; and now they worshiped me.

The embers of my burgeoning divinity fed on their faith and trust, their flames brightening enough to repel the darkness coiling around my soul. I sensed power radiating from within and without, begging to be nurtured and unleashed. An urge dwelling deep within my heart spurred me to take action; to break the silence with an unforgettable proclamation.

I had long wondered how to introduce my divine image in a way that would not corrupt me, and I had reached a conclusion.

This was the first step; my consecration by fire.

“Heed my words, mortals!” I shouted with all of my power. “Listen!”

My Word spell echoed across the land and mountains, opening a thousand minds to my call. All listened and watched as I shed my image of mortality and showed myself as the powerful warlord I’d always been meant to be.

“I am Cizin, Fear of the Gods! I am the Tlacatecolotl, the owl-fiend and sorcerer of chaos!” I declared to the Earth and Heavens alike. “I have shown myself to you in the flesh of Iztac Ce Ehecatl, but my soul rose from the Underworld’s depths to restore true faith and justice across this sinful world!”

My body grew ebon wings burning with sunlight. My face changed from that of a man to that of the Tlacatecolotl, the Thirteenth Lord of Terror and half-god of chaos.

“I come to you bearing a message from the great Tlaloc and the gods of the dead, who were there when the world began and shall witness its final sunset!” I raised a finger to the sky and the Fifth Sun shining upon us. “The Nightlords are no goddesses! They are usurpers stealing the power of their dark father Yohuachanca, the destroyer, and mocking the true gods’ faith! They are false idols who have offended the heavens long enough! The fool who called herself the Bird of War was not the first to fall to my divine judgment, and will not be the last! As I plucked the Flower of the Heart, so shall the Jaguar Woman and the White Snake perish by my hand!”

I waved my hand and cast a brief Veil showing my people the fires of Smoke Mountain, Yoloxochitl’s last pleas, the lies the Nightlords wove to parade Eztli in her place. I felt a current coursing through the crowd as I did so, like lightning surging from one heart to another. The true meaning of my proclamation sank into their souls: that Sugey’s death was no aberration, but the latest blow in a great conflict that would spare none.

“A war of the faith is upon us, and all of mankind shall stand trial!” I said, my words brimming with divine power. “The heavens will weep tears of blood and the hungry dead will walk among the living! There will come nights where bats rule the sky and worms the land, but fear not, for the brave and the faithful shall not be left bereft of the dawn!”

I punctuated my words by calling upon the Blaze and surged with otherworldly fire. A great purple and blue pyre arose behind me in a great column of flames reaching all the way to the clouds.

For a second, my flames seemed to burn brighter than sunlight.

“I am your redeemer!” I announced. “I am the wings of rebellion, who shatters shackles and punishes the guilty! No man or woman deserves to be born a slave, whether they chafe under a Mallquis’ rule or scream on a Nightlord’s altar! Those long nights of pain and suffering will end by my hand! Look upon these hands of mine, by which the Nightlords shall find the death they so richly deserve! Look upon me!”

At long last they dared to raise their heads and stare at me. I felt my power wax with each set of eyes brimming with awe and zeal, my flames burning brighter with the strength of their beliefs. The First Emperor’s shadow had waned behind me, obscured by the light I cast upon all.

“I shall not ask of you what I am not willing to do myself!” I declared. “If your heart wavers even now, then you are to leave now and never return! If you are to fight by my side, then do so out of your own free will! I offer no immortality, no thrones nor paradise; I only offer you tears of struggle, everlasting glory, and the hope of brighter days to come! All I offer… is a chance to seize the dawn!”

I extended my hands to my army, my flock, my first followers.

“So what shall it be?!” I asked them. “Shall you cower in fear, or will you seize a brighter tomorrow?!”

The thunderous chorus of shouts and acclaim that followed was music to my ear.

“This I like!” I said with a wide smile. “Then let us raise a pyre for the dead! My feathered tyrant deserves a bonfire worthy of a king, as do all those who perished fighting in my name!”

“And then, my lord?” Ingrid asked, her body tenser than a bowstring. “What next?”

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“Then…” I glared at the mountains in the distance, where the Mallquis ruled from rotting and dusty thrones. “We shall march inland.”

I would change this world with my own bare hands.

I slept in dreamless darkness.

I had my men burn a pyre for our dead, Itzili included. My feathered tyrant died so that we might live, and I paid him my last respects under the light of the Fifth Sun. Perhaps one day I would see him again in the Underworld, as friends and companions.

Afterward, I went to sleep in my roving palace, only to be woken up once we caught up to Manco’s troops. For all the strength and hope warming my heart, I felt so very exhausted. The battle with Sugey and my speech to my soldiers had drained me, but more than that, I could sense the First Emperor’s shadow gnawing at my Teyolia like a maggot chewing on a root of flesh.

I had repelled the night for a time, but the darkness was relentless. It always returned with each sunset, ready to fight again. I could not keep it at bay forever. There would come a time when the door to the final sunset would open, and I would have to fight for a new dawn.

I awoke in the Third Layer under the light of Quetzalcoatl’s morning star. His light had grown brighter than during my last visit, its radiance closer and warmer. I took it as a sign that my decision to stand up to Sugey pleased the Feathered Serpent.

A warmth touched my soul on arrival, followed by the silent support of over six-hundred grateful spirits. A wave of reassurance coursed through the chain that bound the Legion of dead emperors into our shared fate.

I shaped a skull in the palm of my hand, and many spirits watched back through its empty orbits. Their ghostfire gleamed with joy and pride.

“Thank you, our successor.” Over six-hundred voices forming the Parliament of Skulls spoke at once, yet their words were uttered in perfect harmony and synchronicity. “Thank you, for lightening our burden. Thank you, for putting the future of mankind back in its hands. Thank you, for giving us hope.”

Another voice broke their symphony of gratitude, quieter and yet warmer than the sun.

“I am proud of you, my son,” Father said. “More than you can possibly imagine.”

Father was proud of me, and my predecessors stood beside me. I would not wage this war alone, and drew strength from it.

“The road ahead is still a long one,” I warned them. “A greater terror awaits beyond the Nightlords.”

“Yes… we feel the First Emperor gnawing at the chain that binds us, his hunger sharper than blades…” The Parliament’s eyes flickered with determination, a single voice piercing through their chorus. “Yet you slew his daughter without borrowing his strength. You won this battle by your own wits and hard-won strength. If the spawn can be defeated, then so can the father.”

I recognized this voice, having sought his advice in the past. “Are you…”

“I am Nochtli the Fourteenth, who once sought to slay Sugey and failed,” the ghost answered. “You have my gratitude and respect for completing my task. Your deeds have mended my broken pride and soothed my restless spirit. Know that I believe in you, even if you may doubt yourself.”

“You and your mother will pull through, Iztac,” Father added with warmth and confidence. “I’ve never doubted it.”

Speaking of her, a figure appeared at my side under the morning star’s glow. I turned to face her, expecting to face Mother.

I was mistaken.

I briefly thought that Mother had fallen asleep and joined me, but the person standing in front of me was no living visitor descending into the depths. This was an ancient ghost from an age past, oozing wisdom and solemness.

“Welcome back, Iztac Ce Ehecatl,” he said with a raspy voice heavier than dusty stones. “Welcome back, Cizin.”

Topiltzin, priest of Quetzalcoatl, had come to greet me.

“I bear a message from Quetzalcoatl, who was there when the world began and helped create it,” he said, his staff stomping the ground. “Though you have wavered on the edge of a precipice, you have proven that the flame of righteousness still dwells within you. A quest I thus present; a trial of the heavens.”

“A trial?” I inquired, my fists clenching. A god’s ordeal was no small feat. The last time I received one, King Mictlantecuhtli ordered me to deliver him an ocean of blood. I hoped Lord Quetzalcoatl would be kinder, but he knew he would be no less demanding. “What will await me at its end?”

“Redemption. Wisdom.” I could have sworn that the ancient priest’s yellowed teeth morphed into a smile. “Light.”