Blood & Fur

Chapter Eighty-Eight: Eyes of the Damned

Chapter Eighty-Eight: Eyes of the Damned

Not even death could end true madness.

Itzpapalotl had warned us that the Third Layer’s damned souls underwent an eternal cycle of rebirth, and I soon witnessed it unfold beneath the clouds. A rift first opened up to split the desolate lands devastated by the goddess’ hurricane, and hills with maws of sharp fangs soon vomited up a river of green poison to fill it. I could smell its hideous stench of rot and corpses all the way from the sky above. Immense fish soon arose from beneath the surface, but when they opened their mouths, human faces peeked out instead of tongues.

I watched them lay eggs bigger than cribs onto the riverbanks. They cracked the moment they reached the shore and monsters crawled out of them: twisted mockery of monkeys with limbs twice the length of their whole bodies, cackling birds with human heads, or faceless masses of flesh with wings that soon took to the sky. Horrors soon filled the clouds, from flying fish to ships with legs-oars and sails of skin. Their cries, moans, and twisted songs soon filled the once-peaceful silence of a dead world.

I observed as villages rose from dust from above as my ebon wings carried me across this mockery of civilization. Ruined towers and egg-shaped houses of glass sprouted from ashes like wildgrass. A few of the apes haunting the layer set them on fire the moment they reached them without cause nor reason; others danced and rutted among the stones, or drank putrid river waters with cups filled with worms and bloated toads. I saw fiends playing the harp while riding headless turkeys into the water while laughing maniacally.

Disgust swelled within my heart. These beasts had barely returned to life for a few minutes and immediately went back to reveling in their own corruption. They were utterly beyond help.

Moreover, the sensation of a predator’s gaze staring at my back continued to weigh on me. I couldn’t see its source no matter how often I looked over my shoulder, but I knew it was growing closer with each flap of my wings.

“We are being followed, my son,” Mother stated the obvious. Her own flight had grown more nervous the more the night went on.

“Our pursuer is welcome to try and fight me,” I replied without fear. I’d been itching to test out my new power on a foe worthy of them. “They will be served with fire and death.”

Mother didn’t answer my boast. I couldn’t tell whether she deemed me overconfident or trusted in my sorcery to defeat any attacker.

In any case, I had other things on my mind. The more I considered the consequences of going through with the soul-transfer ritual, the more I grew convinced that it would cause the Sapa conflict to escalate beyond measure. A war of conquest would become one of extermination, and the Mallquis’ fears would come to pass. The Nightlords’ armies would drown their mountains in a sea of blood by the will of their wicked emperor.

I couldn’t think of a way to lessen that impact. The Nightlords would investigate the loss of their replacement for Yoloxochitl, and if I failed to divert their attention onto another, suspicions would turn onto me. I could blame the First Emperor, but doing so would invite more chains to bind me, more restrictions. I would sacrifice future options to defeat the Nightlords for the sake of lessening a war that would unfold anyway.

Moreover, Sugey had already tipped her hand in the most dramatic way. That feathered demon wanted blood. Would blaming everything on the Sapa change anything?

I focused on the distant morning star. No matter how quick I flew, Quetzalcoatl’s light seemed forever out of reach. The wind pushed against my face, carrying the maddened cries of the filth below.

“--sons and daughters of Tamōhuānchān, heed the words of Topiltzin!”

I almost froze in mid-flight. That sentence, uttered in archaic Yohuachancan with a strong and clear male voice, cut through the cacophony like a sharp blade through flesh. I looked around to find the speaker and quickly found him below.

A figure stood alone atop a shattered tower of dusty stone, addressing the rutting hordes of monsters below. This person’s appearance took me back not because of any demonic features so common around these parts, but by his lack of them. The dead man looked like an utterly normal skeleton with dry yellow bones that wouldn’t look out of place in Mictlan. He wore a priestly dress of tarnished feathers and a metal headpiece adorned with a macaw’s beak, while carrying a curvy staff and shield adorned with a spiral-shaped jewel.

“Children of Quetzalcoatl, have you forgotten what you were?! What you could still be?!” the dead man called out to the crowd of apes and abominations celebrating their wickedness at the spire’s foot. His eyes burned with ghostlight brighter than stars. “You are the flowers of the earth, and even a withered flower can bloom again after being thrown underfoot!”

After spending the last few nights surrounded by the mad and the wicked, a coherent soul’s mere voice became a marvel in itself. I deviated from my path to circle above the tower out of curiosity, with my cautious mother following soon after.

“You cannot bury your beauty in filth!” the dead man sermoned the demons of the Second Cosmos. He pointed his staff at a pair of monsters waiting at the tower’s foot, the former a four-legged tree beast with a mirror for a face, and the other a birdlike humanoid enraptured by its own reflection. “Let your light shine through so it illuminates the blind! This hell is but a cesspool whose muddy waters you may escape for clearer streams! The peace of Mictlan is not beyond your reach!”

Who is this? Itzpapalotl warned us that all good souls had long left this layer for King Mictlantecuhtli’s realm above; yet here stood a ghost preaching repentance to the wicked. Does he truly expect those blighted fiends to listen?

But to my surprise, a few of the creatures did hear this ‘Topiltzin,’ albeit not with the kind of reaction he sought. The mirror monster briefly looked upward with its mirror-face, which infuriated its birdlike companion. Denied the pleasure of watching its own vain reflection for all eternity, it squawked in fury and unveiled a sword for a beak. Its flapping wings quickly carried it to the top of the tower with murderous intent.

I had no time to waste with the lost and the damned, but something about that dead messenger’s words struck a chord with me. This soul was trying in vain to appeal to the better nature of these monsters, and only received naked violence in return. This sickened me.

I had seen too many good deeds be punished not to intervene.

I descended upon the demon and blasted it with the Blaze spell before it could skewer Topiltzin, sending the fiend plummeting back at the dirt from which it came. The creature let out an awful cry mixing pain and pleasure—the latter of which particularly unsettled me—as its feathers burned to cinders, then fled into the darkness. Its mirror-faced friend watched it disappear without a sound or care.

The so-called Topiltzin looked up to Mother and I as we landed on the tower. I retook my human form and then asked, “Are you well, stranger?”

The ancient soul responded with a grateful nod. “I am most thankful for your assistance, great owl, however unnecessary.”

“Unnecessary?” I scoffed. “That creature would have impaled you had I not intervened.”

“Quetzalcoatl’s winds protect me from any danger,” the ghost answered without shame nor fear. “These poor souls cannot harm me, no more than my words are meant to wound their hearts.”

His answer gave me pause enough to cast the Gaze spell upon him. My sunlit eyes easily revealed the gown of gilded starlight and the invisible scales in which he was clothed; magic so pure and powerful that a normal man would have gone blind at the sight of it. Moreover, I saw a scintillating beam shining from Quetzalcoatl’s sun to him.

The man spoke true. He did have a god protecting him.

“I am Topiltzin, fallen priest-king and founder of Tollan,” he introduced himself with a bow. “It has been many cycles since a Tlacatecolotl ventured so deep.”

The name Tollan did not ring any bells to me, but Mother gasped in surprise. “The legendary first city?”

Her question appeared to amuse the ancient ghost. “So the people of the Fifth Cosmos do remember their ancestors? I am pleased to hear so.”

“I’ve never heard of Tollan,” I said. Yohuachanca’s history says that Yohuachanca’s capital, Mazatilia, was the first of its kind. I guessed the Nightlords rewrote history to claim that achievement for themselves, as they always did.

“According to a few rare texts, Tollan was the world’s first city,” Mother explained. “Yohuachanca’s people descend from its inhabitants.”

“I hear you speak the Yohuachancan tongue,” Topiltzin noted. “Tollan fell to Camazotz’s fangs many years before the rise of the one called Yohuachanca.”

My heartfire burned with curiosity. “Camazotz?” I asked, sensing the opportunity. “You lived while that god roamed the earth?”

“Aye, I have seen the dawn of the Fifth Cosmos,” Topiltzin confirmed. “I had long been exiled from my city by the time it fell for a crime for which I still atone for in death, but the departed have told me of its fall. I am happy our blood has endured across the long centuries.”

Mother narrowed her eyes at the specter with suspicion. “Why would a king of the Fifth Sun be so deep?”

“I preach by the grace of Quetzalcoatl.” Topiltzin pointed at the wicked hordes delighting below us. “You have seen these poor souls damned to a hell of their own making. Each night I plead with them to break the chains they bound themselves with and to ascend towards a better place.”

I couldn’t help but scoff at his naivety. “Looks to me like they don’t listen often.”

“They all listen, Tlacatecolotl,” Topiltzin replied calmly. “Else they would not be so angry with me. My words remind them of what they gave up on, and that truth is unbearable for some. After so many eons spent crawling in the mud, the mere sound of pure water is painful to their souls.”

I remained skeptical nonetheless. “Have you words ever reached any of these animals enough to change their ways?”

“Now and then, yes,” Topiltzin confirmed, much to my astonishment. “Those I led to Mictlan myself by the grace of Tlaloc and Mictlantecuhtli, who granted me safe passage through their realms.”

He could have been lying, but the godly magic shielding him attested to the divine favor bestowed upon him. This ghost did have Quetzalcoatl’s direct protection and benediction, enough to be spared from Itzpapalotl’s destruction. The Feathered Serpent believed in his cause, however impossible it sounded to me.

“I am surprised,” I admitted. “Lady Itzpapalotl seemed to say that all salvageable souls had left Tamōhuānchān.”

“Itzpapalotl was born of a transgression for the purpose of punishing it. Her nature is condemnation and castigation, not forgiveness.” Topiltzin shook his head. “All these souls can be saved, Tlacatecolotl. My penance shall not end until this hell is empty and its doors rattling in the wind.”

I shuddered at the immense task ahead of him. A world’s worth of madmen and damned souls surrounded him. How long would it take for each individual soul to listen to reason? How many sermons and arguments could reach the lost and the insane?

This man would toil for eons; maybe until the last days of the Fifth Sun and the darkness beyond. He had already been at it for over six centuries at the very least. The kind of willpower required to even undertake such a quest beggared belief.

I had my doubts he would ever succeed in his task, but I admired his determination... if it was determination. His words of penance made me wonder if guilt might have been the driving force behind his arduous quest.

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His eyes... I stared at Tayatzin’s eyes, as crimson as the stillborn beast’s had been blue. I hated all the things that it represented from the very bottom of my soul: slavery, vampires, injustice...

Those eyes had only caused me pain. I desired nothing less than to tear them apart with my bare hands.

A thin streak of red tainted Tayatzin’s pale skin. Blood dripped from his nose and onto his squalid lips. I hadn’t cast a spell nor said a word to cause this reaction; I simply hated.

My magic had grown so strong that my mere focus could cause humans discomfort.

“I only saw death, Tayatzin,” I replied with venom. “Death and darkness.”

Tayatzin dared not answer. Anyone wise wouldn’t have spoken a word in his situation. It did little to quell my rage. The very sight of this man disgusted me.

“Leave,” I ordered everyone; even Necahual. “I wish to be alone for a while.”

“Y-yes, of course,” Tayatzin replied with a sniveling bow. He was the first to leave. My concubines exchanged glances and all looked at me with concern before beginning to dress themselves. Necahual’s gaze lingered on me the longest, but she too eventually left.

I did not rise from the bed, nor did I put on clothes. I simply stared at the ceiling trying to quell my fury. A single obsession occupied my thoughts.

My mind was set and devoid of doubts. I would run the soul-transfer ritual. The Sapa would suffer, but so would the Nightlords. Eztli’s soul would escape their grasp and their plan to keep their monstrous father sealed would forever be tarnished. Let the very monster they tried feeding my child too devour them in turn.

I simply wanted them gone.

Soft steps interrupted my concentration. I glared at the newcomer, an order on the tip of my tongue, only to face eyes bluer than my own.

“Can... can I come in?” Nenetl asked while standing on the threshold.

The sight of my sister tugged at my heartstrings. The sorrow that the concern in her eyes inspired in me was only matched by my unease. Her presence was both a balm and a wound.

“Did Necahual send you?” I asked.

“Yes, uh... somewhat.” Nenetl cleared her throat in embarrassment. “She... she told me, and I felt I should come.”

My favorite knew me better than anyone, the clever witch.

Nenetl gathered her resolve, then stepped forward without waiting for my answer. She sat on the bed next to me and I did not push her away, though part of me wished to. I simply didn’t have the heart to repel my sister, not after... not after what I saw.

Nenetl stayed by my side in silent support for a moment, her fingers fidgeting with unease. She eventually mustered the courage to take my hand into her own. Her fingers felt warmer than Tenoch’s, but I did not clench them either.

“Is... is this about our mother?” Nenetl asked with a little hesitation. “I’ve heard she’s here.”

News travels fast nowadays. “Who told you that?”

“Aclla. She, uh... she overheard guards discussing it.” A kind way to say her handmaiden had been acting like the spy she was. I still wondered what to make of her. “Is that what bothers you?”

“Among other things.” I wouldn’t lie that Mother’s behavior factored into my dark mood, but the pain ran deeper.

Every time I considered taking the high ground, every time I thought I could try to do good, I was only met with pain and difficult options. Every crime the Nightlords committed, every wound they inflicted reminded me of the cost of letting them live another day.

How could Quetzalcoatl expect me to do good when the world constantly ground me down to pieces?

“I... I can imagine what else.” Nenetl let out a small, sorrowful sigh. “You’re trying very hard not to look at me right now, aren’t you?”

My jaw clenched and I did not answer. Nenetl nodded in acceptance. She knew the answer before she asked.

“I... I... I told Necahual about...” Nenetl put a hand on her womb, her expression twisted with concern. “She said that if... if we didn’t wish to keep it... there were options.”

The memory of my own twisted flesh and blood haunting me in the Underworld flared into my mind, vivid and raw. I knew exactly what options Necahual had in mind; and even if the Nightlords slipped up enough to let us get away with it, I could expect another pair of eyes to welcome me in the darkness below.

And it might still have been a kinder fate for that soul than whatever the Nightlords planned for it.

“What do you want, Nenetl?” I asked her. A... a father always did his part, but Itzpapalotl had been right about one thing. Once a man planted his seed, the pain and labor were no longer his to bear. My sister had more of a say in the matter than I did.

“I...” Nenetl took a long, deep breath. “I want to keep it, Iztac.”

This time, I turned to look at her. My sister and consort had uttered those words without doubt. Her body radiated that quiet, gentle confidence that had made me fall in love with her once.

“I’ve thought about it for a long time. I know what we did... what we did is frowned upon, and that it bothers you, but... they had nothing to do with it.” Nenetl gripped her belly tightly. “I know what Lahun said, but I think she’s wrong.”

She looked me straight in the eyes, and this time I did not look away.

“Our child was born of love,” she said softly. “Nothing created from love can be an abomination, Iztac.”

She said those words with such innocence, such kindness, such confidence, that I almost believed it.

Father had loved me too. I looked at Nenetl’s belly and imagined the creature growing within it. He tried to raise me right, even with all the difficulties my birth entailed.

Nenetl was right, our child had been wanted. Iztacoatl had twisted my joy with a lie to cruelly humiliate me, but if I had wallowed in ignorance... if I hadn’t known the truth, the news would have been blissful. And even if our child was born cursed, so were we. They deserved better than an eternity spent in the Underworld.

Nenetl’s words about Lahun’s prophecies gave me pause too. I had spent my time since I first heard its words being haunted by the verses, counting and fearing the days until my fate came to pass. Yet had I not been fated to die in a year’s time? I was fighting with all my strength against the Nightlords’ prophecy, so why not Lahun’s too?

What was divine power worth if it couldn’t break my chains? Whether bound by vampires or fate, I had a duty to rebel. Whether I succeeded or failed, at least I would have done my best without regrets.

“I want to keep it too,” I said softly. “Give them a chance to live.”

I hoped to at least give our child a better afterlife than a madhouse filled with pain and fiends. I owed them and Nenetl that much.

Nenetl’s smile of relief felt warmer than the sun. It briefly soothed my wounded soul, and for a short instant I could lie to myself that all would end well somehow.

After a moment’s hesitation, Nenetl moved closer to me and gently rested on my shoulder. I briefly froze at her contact, but the warmth of her gentle hug put me at ease. I slowly put my arm around her shoulder to draw my sister close. It was no lustful embrace between lovers nor an attempt at comfort, but something else; a gentle moment I had only felt with Father.

“Do you think Mother will accept it?” Nenetl asked shyly.

I scoffed. “You’re concerned about her opinion? Even after everything she did to us?”

“Well... yes, I am,” Nenetl replied innocently. “I think she cares too, at least little. Or else she wouldn’t have shown up today.”

Nenetl wore her heart on her sleeve. She had taken so much from Father... and the more I considered it, the more I realized the same could be said for me and Mother. I had inherited more than just her power.

I guessed there was some truth to Nenetl’s words. Mother did try to help me fight the Nightlords in her own way. Even if she expected a return on her investment, the risks she had taken—and continued to take—could not be guided by greed alone.

“I won’t leave her a choice,” I told Nenetl. “One way or another.”