Blood & Fur

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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What crime would warrant such a harsh and self-inflicted punishment?

Mother, of course, paid little mind to the fate of Tamōhuānchān’s souls. “Topiltzin of Tollan was known to be the high priest of Quetzalcoatl,” she said, drawing my undivided attention. “Is this still the case?”

“My people once knew me as Quetzalcoatl’s Godspeaker, and through my mouth he taught them the foundations of civilization,” Topiltzin confirmed. “It is by his will that I wander these lands.”

I saw an opportunity and seized it. “We seek an audience with Lord Quetzalcoatl on behalf of his brother Xolotl. Could you intercede on our behalf?”

“Intercede?” Topiltzin appraised me for a moment. “Quetzalcoatl is the god of knowledge. Nothing escapes his notice, not even the lies one tells themselves. If he has not invited you within his hall yet, then he will do so when he thinks it appropriate.”

“We have no time to waste,” I insisted with growing frustration. “I do not even have a year.”

“You may pursue his star’s radiance for a thousand of them and be no closer to it.” Topiltzin studied my Teyolia with a scholar’s focus. I felt his gaze peer into my soul the same way my spell unveiled illusions. “Your heart burns with torment, pain… and fear. Fear of being judged and found wanting.”

Was the glow of my inner fire so baleful? I guessed an ancient spirit who had spent countless eons reaching out for lost souls had grown sensitive to such things; and that if I could not deceive him, then what hope did I have of convincing his god?

“Certainly you must know Quetzalcoatl better than any other mortal,” Mother pushed, refusing to give up. “What would earn us his favor?”

“Your deeds.” Topiltzin shook his head with a ghostly sigh. “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others in order to be seen by them, Tlacatecolotl. Those empty actions will not benefit your soul nor earn Quetzalcoatl’s favor. True righteousness is practiced in secret, with no hope for reward.”

Mother and I had committed so many crimes in public and in private. If Quetzalcoatl knew all things, then…

“Are not sinful acts forgiven when done in the service of others?” I asked. “To spare oneself and others a living hell, and to cast down the wicked?”

Topiltzin gave me a long and heavy look. “I will tell you this: the chains of sin are loose,” he said. “Redemption and forgiveness are always within anyone’s reach, so long as their heart is brave and their resolve true. While the path to Quetzalcoatl will not open when you expect it to, it is not closed shut either; and it never will be.”

My heart lit up with a glimmer of hope. “So you say an audience is not impossible for us to obtain?”

“Tamōhuānchān is the birthplace of good and evil. It is here that the gods passed their first judgment upon mortals. This land will put you, the both of you, to the test; the same way it has tormented its prisoners.” Topiltzin peered at the horizon behind us. “I fear your first ordeal has come already.”

A soul-rending shriek silenced the madness.

I heard in my ears and my heart, high-pitched like a child’s first cry and filled with a beast’s primeval hunger. The songs and moans of the damned turned to cries of fear. Their debauched revelry came to an abrupt end as shadows darkened over the horizon and shrouded the riverbanks in thick darkness. Mother and I watched them flee in a mix of shock and apprehension. They hid in the burning houses or dived into the fetid river to disappear under its muddy surface.

These demons had almost embraced Itzpapalotl’s apocalyptic destruction and her handmaidens’ feast. What could frighten souls jaded enough to enjoy their own demise?

The predatory presence I’d sensed earlier grew stronger than ever. Its source came closer and closer, its steps shaking the very ground. The shrieks cut sharply through the air, calling out to my Tonalli and Teyolia.

I sensed… a kinship.

My body froze in place. My soul trembled with recognition at the voice of whatever abomination was approaching us. It recognized its own, the same way my heart-fire welcomed that of Nenetl during our incestuous unions. Mother sensed it too from the way she trembled in a mix of dread and disbelief.

Whatever horror lurked in the dark was our kin.

The river’s waters transformed into a thick yellow fluid reeking of childbirth, and the few demons who hadn’t escaped to safety yet now attempted to find a hole to crawl away into. The tower on which I stood trembled under the pressure of earthshaking steps. A great beast the size of an adult feathered tyrant lurked in the dark near us.

I dared to use the Gaze spell, and then I saw the awful truth.

I had seen many horrors both among the living and the dead, but this one filled my stomach with an almighty sickness. I mistook it for an owl at first, with its jet-black wings and sharp talons.

But the body… the body was a face, a human child’s face, pallid and rotting like a corpse, with filled cheeks spreading apart into a ghastly grin filled with teeth half my size. Its hair was black feathers stained with blood and bile. An umbilical cord slithered out of its horrifying maw instead of a tongue, coiling around one the slowest apes to drag it screaming into its gullet.

It was its eyes that haunted me the most, however. So pale, so blue, so human… so familiar.

I knew what the thing was the moment our gazes crossed. I even knew it before I saw the flicker of mutual recognition while it swallowed demons one after another with a child’s unending hunger. I knew, and it hurt.

“What…” Mother’s voice broke in her throat. “What… is that?”

“This is the land of the stillborn,” Topiltzin replied with a voice heavy with grief and sorrow. “Where souls who were denied their chance to live linger in anguish.”

Those were my eyes.

That monster had my eyes.

A woman’s fingers had never felt so cold on my skin.

I awoke in a dark daze, my mind burning inside my skull. The arms of my concubines weighed on my chest like heavy chains. My pillows seemed hard like stone against my hair, and the ceiling was suffocatingly too close.

“Have you slept well, Your Majesty?” I heard Tenoch ask me at my side with a bashful smile on her lips.

I simply stared at the ceiling with empty eyes.

I barely remembered the end of the dream. I recalled the screams of the devoured, the steps, the encroaching darkness… and the terrible silence that followed. That I would not forget.

My silence grew unbearably uneasy for my bedmates. Only one likely had an idea what happened. She shared a bond with me deeper than blood.

“Iztac?” Necahual asked with a hint of concern. “What did you see?”

I didn’t want to look at her. Not because I hated Necahual—at this point, she had become my wife in all but name—but because I knew a mere glimpse of her stomach would twist the knife even further.

I had seen what our child could become should I fail.

Forbidden unions beget abominations.

That single sentence had haunted me the most out of all of Lahun’s prophecies. It found new ways to torment me again and again, the wound never closing. I had lived through one of my worst fears once again.

I had a child once. The Nightlords murdered their mother before my eyes and then fed her corpse to their Sulfur Sun. I thought that the unborn soul went to feed the First Emperor’s hunger like its mother, but it had somehow managed to escape to haunt its father beyond the veil of death.

I had planted my seed in Sigrun’s womb, and a monstrous revenant crawled out of it upon her death.

Someone entered the room, and this time I mustered the strength to look away from the ceiling. Tayatzin walked in front of the bed and bowed.

“Greetings, Your Divine Majesty,” he said before delivering words that cut deeper than any sword. “I pray the goddesses granted you good dreams.”

My holy blood boiled within my veins, and a great fire swept away the numbness of my soul.

Tenoch let go of me and Atziri pulled the bedsheet to herself. Tayatzin himself froze in fear and terror, his skin paler than a corpse.

Because for a moment, my mask slipped.

And there was only hatred behind it.

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.”