Blood & Fur-Chapter One-hundred and Eight: Setting the Stage

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I spent the morning fulfilling prayers.

The only building in Hananpacha larger than the imperial palace was its Temple of the Sun; a massive circular monument built with ashlar stones paved with gold and excised of any imperfection. The Sapa oracles used the parabolic-shaped wall for astronomy purposes by measuring the movements of the sun and the stars. Every inch of its central pyramid was gilded in the smoothest and purest of metals, while gemstone benches occupied its steps. The Mallquis once sat there to hold court and entertain mortal petitioners, but their flight from the capital had left the pyramid empty, which bothered the god in me. An emperor ought to have an audience.

Hence, I summoned my own court of the dead.

The Legion spell once allowed me to grow skulls out of my own skeleton, but the power within me was no longer restricted to such trivial limitations. My flames turned energy to matter, crafting bones from the ether and then clothing them with sunlight.

My predecessors and Father thus appeared fully formed at my side, a legion of over six hundred gilded skeletons sitting along benches meant for ancient mummies that outlasted their welcome. Their skulls burned with my channeled Blaze like an assembly of ghostly bonfires.

I myself perched atop the pyramid’s highest altar in my divine form, my wings casting light upon the entire temple. The highest benches closest to me were reserved for the living. On the left side sat my four consorts, and on the right my transformed Mometzcopinques—with Mother settling in for the fourth member in her owlish form in order to preserve balance. All shifted in their seats and kept their heads down in a mix of respect and caution, for my light would blind those who dared to look too long upon my glowing majesty.

I had swept them all off their feet.

It had been one thing to see me summon Father’s bones and have him walk around the roaming palace or invite skulls to speak at a council meeting, and another thing entirely to command a legion of the living dead while rising in the form of a great fiery bird whose wings could envelop a pyramid. All those present understood they were witnessing a miracle, and it dazzled them.

A long line of petitioners had formed in front of the temple to request audiences. Whereas previous protocol gave precedence to the well-born and state officials, I had them go last. The needy and the destitute deserved a god’s attention more than the powerful.

Nonetheless, I didn’t make it easy either. Petitioners had to climb the pyramid’s steps to reach me and make their demands, even the old and the infirm. I had learned from experience that mortals did not appreciate what they didn’t suffer or struggle to earn, so those who required my help would have to prove they needed it. Toil was the wellspring of respect and humility.

I did not summon Manco to the proceedings either, even as a puppet or furniture. No one was blind anymore to the situation. Having the empress showing up as part of an assembly of wives and family already spelled out the truth of our situation; that the true emperor ruled in the sky from a temple fit for gods.

The first petitioner was a young man, who praised me and then asked me to soothe his grandfather’s suffering; for he was so weak of knees he could not ascend the pyramid’s steps himself. I answered that his filial piety would be rewarded and his prayer fulfilled.

I cast no spell nor used sorcery. I simply thought about the man’s grandfather walking on his own again, and I knew that it happened. My words and will alone bound fate to spin my way.

Then came a farmer who praised me for the sunlight I brought, but informed me that the long nights had delayed the harvest and that lack of rainfall might leave the city’s fields barren. I told him to praise Tlaloc and raise an altar in his house to the Lord of Storms, then called the clouds to nourish the soil.

A couple who had been unable to conceive for years petitioned me for a child. Though part of me was tempted to sire it myself, I simply took a feather from my plumage. The Curse spell had once been an omen of sorrow and destruction, to bend fate towards disaster; yet my feathers now glowed with sunlight rather than hatred, and the words I whispered into them carried hope for the future rather than maledictions.

“May thy womb quicken,” I blessed the wife upon placing the feather into her shadow, so that it might brighten her path.

Perhaps I had fathered so many children already that the domain of fertility had become part of my purview. A violent impulse seized me whenever a woman came to beg for my guidance and protection, to add her to my harem and sire a new bloodline upon her. That urge wasn’t overwhelming, and I contained it, but it lingered.

Then came a woman whose son had died at the hands of the hungry dead. She brought me his bones and begged me on her knees to bring him back to life.

“That, I cannot do,” I replied, the words flowing out of my mouth on their own. My heart felt compassion for her plight, but my hands were tied. “I can bring the dead to visit the living, but the door between life and death opens only one way.”

It was odd. The flame within me yearned to blind and awe, to showcase its strength and mastery over the mortal world, but it was also acutely aware of where its authority stopped and that of other deities began.

For all the power I wielded and the urge I possessed to prove it to all who would see me, I felt no desire to violate the taboo of raising the dead. I struggled to articulate that very thought the same way the sun struggled to envision darkness when blinded by its own radiance. I could banish the night, shake mountains, and paint the world ablaze with the brush of flames, but I could not breathe life back into the departed; I could only allow them to visit my kingdom because their liege allowed it. King Mictlantecuhtli held sway over all dead unclaimed by other deities, and even then, he would not allow any other to violate the final promise that all life must end one day.

The Parliament of Skulls and Father were bound themselves to me through the curse, the same way an invisible contract bound Tlaloc to those who perished by his lightning or the unborn to Itzpapalotl. I knew I would hold dominion over a category of souls—perhaps those who perished by the flames I embodied or future emperors—but all others slipped through my grasp for now.

In a way, growing into divinity had only sharpened the boundaries that separated my burgeoning purview from that of the other gods. We were forces that could meet and conflict over liminal frontiers, but never overstep into another’s domain. Fire could not become water, though it could boil it. I could summon the rain because Tlaloc had entrusted me with the role of messenger to restore the true faith that the Nightlords and other usurpers had obscured, but only for that purpose.

Nonetheless, it was within my power to compel the shade of the woman’s son to appear, and that I did. The silent spirit appeared long enough to hug his mother and then faded into the sunlight.

“Only on the Day of the Dead, sacred to King Mictlantecuhtli and Queen Mictecacihuatl, will you be able to touch your child again,” I told the woman before sending her on her way. I did not miss the way my own Mother shifted on her bench.

I had barely managed to alleviate that petitioner’s pain, though I felt oddly pleased nonetheless. A satisfaction greater than what I would have expected from merely showcasing my sorcery filled my heart. It took me a moment to figure out why.

Most of my petitioners did not come for themselves.

The realization hit me like a wall of bricks and stone. I had been exposed to the worst that mankind had to offer for so long that I had expected asskissers and ambitious fools to petition me for money or prestige.

The needy instead thought of their blood and community first. They were willing to bear the pain of ascending this pyramid knowing that this may be their once-in-a-lifetime’s chance for a god to listen to their pleas, and yet they put others ahead of themselves; an act of selflessness which both my godly and human parts praised in equal measure.

It was such a joy to be pleasantly surprised for once.

Was this the result of the Sapa’s culture and focus on the group over the individual shining through in its better aspects? Or simply the true character of humanity shining through when they had no undead rulers or bloodthirsty vampires to darken it? Whatever the case, it put me in a good mood.

I had tried so hard to believe in Lord Quetzalcoatl’s message, and here I finally had some evidence that mankind could indeed be better.

Of course, not all petitioners came on the behalf of others. I did not turn down those who prayed for themselves, however, though I cast the Gaze upon each of them. My blinding spell now revealed more than empty lies; it let me see the shadows coiling around the hearts of mortals and the weight of their sins. It let me see the nobles’ sneers, the hidden envies of the poor, the cheaters, the traitors, the liars, and the frauds. I heard the pleas of the corrupt, and I denied them all.

There was power in restraint, too. The flames of my godhood yearned to showcase its might and authority over all of reality, but denying my blessing to those I deemed beneath my benevolence reinforced it as well.

I fed on judgment; on the right to decide who was worthy and who wasn’t.

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Perhaps that was what I was meant to embody. An emperor was supposed to be the highest mortal authority in the land, the judge of the living and the heavens’ godspeaker. I had the power to enforce the laws of the Gods-in-Spirit, but I could not violate them either. It was such an odd feeling, to be so powerful and yet so constrained. freeweɓnovel~cѳm

Every prayer I fulfilled or answered quelled the fire in me a little more. It continued to burn, and I knew the urge would return in the future, but the flow of praise and miracles satisfied its hunger for recognition. I had finally regained a presence of mind by the time I ended the audience at the midday mark.

I sent away the petitioners and shrank back into my human form at the top of the pyramid. I still felt smaller and constrained inside my ill-fitting skin, but this day of prayers had alleviated the pressure for the time being.

My human flesh didn’t feel comfortable, but it had become… bearable.

“Iztac?” Nenetl called out my name. “Are you… are you alright?”

I looked down on my sister, my consorts, my witches, and predecessors. Hundreds of gazes turned to me with shared unease. My power hung in the air, as ephemeral as the wind and heavier than the mountains surrounding this valley. I inspired fear and respect in equal measure.

They were so close I could hear the breaths of the living, yet a gulf had widened between us.

“Be not afraid,” I reassured them, my words echoing with the wind. “I am well.”

Nenetl didn’t look convinced for a reason that escaped me. Did she think my godhood had changed me? Quite the contrary, it only magnified me.

“Explanations shall come in time,” I promised my sister. “For now, do you not rejoice at my light?”

“Yes, you are… overwhelming,” Eztli conceded. My oldest and truest love struggled to breathe in my presence. “Suffocating even.”

“You have become awe-inspiring like a jungle fire,” Chikal replied with queenly wisdom. “Best observed from afar lest it burns us.”

Burn? I would never burn that which belonged to me, only that which defied me.

“Iztac…” Eztli muttered under her breath as she eyed the Parliament of Skulls. “Do you think you could bring back Father?”

“I stand by what I said,” I replied. “Only on the Day of the Dead can the departed truly return for a time… and in many cases, it shall come after I burn Yohuachanca’s brood to cinders.”

That was a prophecy.

“There is more, our successor,” the Parliament of Skulls said through over six hundred flaming faces. “We warned you once that your light would one day become too bright for us to conceal once you reached your third set of embers. This prophecy has come to pass. The enemy has seen your soul brighten, and they will hunt you.”

I knew that. I could feel the leash on my soul tighten the chinks of its chain, the thieving hands holding it growing closer as they followed the sunlight I cast upon the darkness in which they thrived.

The Nightlords were on their way to put me back in my birdcage.

The Sapa Empire was a beast with many eyes, even when it lost many arms.

Messengers birds continued to fly back to Hananpacha at regular intervals in spite of the chaos spreading across the land. Soldiers holed in distant fortresses, spies in villages, and seers recording movements of the earth and sky all fed the capital’s hunger for knowledge with scrolls and codices whose authenticity my witches confirmed one after another.

Back when I was a bird in its cage, I watched the Nightlords travel across vast distances using pools of blood as doorways. I had considered destroying them when I still planned a long conventional campaign of rebellion against Yohuachanca; and in doing so, failed to understand a critical detail.

The pools were only a vessel.

It was the blood that mattered.

I knew for a fact that red-eyed priests were extensions of their thieving usurpers of false deities, their souls and flesh bound so tightly that the likes of Sugey could harvest their lives like a maize farmer with its bounty. What I hadn’t considered was that they could use their faithful as living gateways.

Yet that was exactly what happened, according to the Sapa spies who had witnessed the landing of Yohuachancan troops. One eyewitness observed dozens of priests gather in a fishing hamlet, slaughter hundreds of prisoners—whether they were Sapa citizens or Yohuachancan soldiers—and then slit their own throats under the gaze of the Nightkin. A small lake of blood spilled out of their moribund flesh and boiled under the blackened moon.

Two figures had risen from these crimson waters of life and death, twin witches clothed in fur and scales. One emerged from the blood with feline claws out and a beastly snarl of absolute fury, while the other seemed to struggle to hide her dread according to onlookers.

The Jaguar Woman and the White Snake had both arrived in the Sapa Empire.

I had hoped—even expected—one to stay in Yohuachanca in order to both keep an eye on the Blood Pyramid beneath which their Dark Father was sealed and maintain order, but I guessed that these cowards weren’t foolish enough to challenge me on their lonesome after I had slain Sugey. Sensing my ascension to my near-divine station probably spooked them too.

They knew that they had to stop me now, lest I risk growing beyond their combined power to overcome; and they would take no chances.

The divinity within me raged at the mere thought that bloodsucking parasites could withstand my light when I had crushed their sister with a fraction of my current power, but my mortal quarter remained cautious. I had regained enough clarity of mind to assess the situation without the foolhardy arrogance of an unborn god with something to prove.

Sugey had wielded power similar to my own by gorging herself on the blood of her priests, and her sisters wouldn’t hesitate to follow her example when pushed into a corner. Neither of them would underestimate me either, and the Jaguar Woman… the Jaguar Woman’s knowledge of sorcery and magical powers was without equal. Sugey might have been the warrior of the group, but even she deferred to her sister’s leadership.

I relished the thought of finally confronting the Jaguar Woman in a contest of sorcery after she had put me and my loved ones through so much fear and terror, though I knew it would kill or be killed. She understood the chain that bound us better than anyone else, which might provide her with many advantages in our inevitable confrontation.

I had to weaken the sisters beforehand, and I already had a plan to do exactly that.

I thus summoned Lady Zyanya to my imperial bedchambers to deal with it. The last of my concubines slithered into my newfound quarters with renewed eagerness. Although she kept her head down and avoided looking me in the eyes, I did not need the Gaze to sense the burning ambition within her heart. She had not been among today’s petitioners, but she had witnessed my divine form and miracles like the rest of the city. Moreover, she had witnessed the Empress of the Sapa arise among my coven on newfound wings.

She knew the power she craved was within her reach… if she played her role correctly.

“How may I please you, Your Divine Godliness?” she asked me on her knees, begging to serve, begging to kiss my feet so that I might one day lift her up ever higher.

I looked down on this vile woman whom I had taken into my bed and confidence. I Gazed upon her with eyes of light that revealed a soul almost entirely blackened like charcoal. A single sliver of virtue remained buried in a sea of tar she called a heart, a faint starlight drowning in a night of sin.

The stain of one particular crime hovered over her. The smell of a betrayal most foul and intimate, a treachery against her own kin. It was no crime to scheme against the Nightlords, and her desperation to earn my approval was sincere. This treachery was older than our journey into the Lands of the Sapa, yet she committed it under my reign. I delved further into the shadows of her soul until I found the truth I sought.

“This child of mine is your second,” I stated.

This wasn’t a question, but it raised many.

Lady Zyanya’s back tensed like a bowstring, her mind no doubt wondering how I had learned of this information. That had been a secret she kept close to her chest, not because of shame, but because she hardly considered it worth discussing.

“My first husband did sire a child with me before I met Your Majesty,” Lady Zyanya confessed. “However… I had to make room for yours.”

There was no sorrow in her voice, no tears of remorse, no guilt. In fact, she sounded quite proud of her decision, to expel the brood of a mortal to house the seed of a God-in-Waiting. Much like the Sapa Empress, she would rather be a deity’s mistress than a man’s widow.

I had her married to Tlaxcala after her husband perished because of my own schemes, because she feared she could not inherit his family’s business and wealth in her past situation. I thought she had played along with this alliance, but in truth she had always plotted to find her way into my bed by using Tlaxcala as a stepping stone. A pregnant woman would not be an alluring concubine to a young emperor with a single year to live and tasked with siring a legion of vampire bloodstock, so she… lightened her load.

I had seen what happened to the unborn in the depths of the Underworld, to which state they had been diminished. That Zyanya would unknowingly reduce her own blood to such a state, not out of necessity but ambition, inspired much disgust in me. An impulse to burn her to cinders on the spot, barely contained by fear for my unborn child’s safety, crossed my mind.

The Iztac I had once been would have spat on her, cursed her, used her… but as I focused on that sliver of light in her soul, I recalled the light of Quetzalcoatl’s morning star shining at me in the Third Layer’s darkest night. It had been reduced to little more than a glow after I ran the foul ritual that saved Eztli at the cost of thousands of lives, yet he did not forsake me.

“Why?” I asked her.

Lady Zyanya opened her mouth to answer, her tongue twisting in her mouth. I cast no Word nor compelled the truth out of her, but the weight of my judgment forced her to tell her sincerest opinion nonetheless.

“In this world, the only power a woman like me can wield is the one a man lends her,” she said with a hint of shame. “The dead offer no protection.”

A heavy silence settled in the room as I judged her.

Lady Zyanya was guilty and hardly repentant… but I had committed crimes much darker than her own. I had killed men and women, tortured my foes, used kin and friends alike, abused Necahual, started a war, and unleashed the horrors of the First Emperor upon the world. Even her first husband’s death, which drove Zyanya to such extremes, was the result of my own scheming. Had I not framed him for my own crimes, his widow would not have felt the need to discard his brood and live a very different existence.

That chain of harm began with me, in more ways than one.

If Lord Quetzalcoatl retained his hope that I would change and atone for my crimes, who was I to refuse the same chance to this woman?

“It was I who committed the crimes your husband died for,” I said, my hand waving a Veil showing the blackened Haunt I’d placed across Smoke Mountain and how I had deceived her husband in the form of a condor spirit. “But you had already guessed as much.”

“Yes, I did… the truth wasn’t hard to glimpse after you slew the Bird of War.” She dared to take my heel into her arms and kiss my feet in penance. “I am certain Your Divine Godliness’ wisdom guided his decision…”

“There was no wisdom involved, only convenience,” I replied. I had risen too high to justify my crimes behind false excuses and sweet lies.

“Yet it is not the servant’s place to question the master,” she replied softly. “I am always your faithful slave.”

Was she? It was ambition that drove her, but Lady Sigrun schemed for the very same reason, and I still would never forgive the Nightlords for murdering her. They were so similar at the end of the day.

In a way, Lady Zyanya was simply another child of Yohuachanca; the result of the Nightlords’ twisted teachings and obsession with bloodlines. She played by the rules she had been forced to live by all of her life.

I would thus give her the chance Lord Quetzalcoatl once extended to me.

“I have a mission for you,” I said, choosing my words carefully. “You will inform the Night’s Herald that we shall soon make our way to the sacred Sapa city of Paititi, where I intend to seize divine power. You will not know the location today… but you will learn it soon.”

The Battle of the Three Wings would soon be upon us all, and its outcome would decide everything.