Metaworld Chronicles

Chapter 549 - Sacrifices

While China erupted into a new “Golden Week”, the Regent of Shalkar “soon” returned to the dream womb under Tryfan, either two days late, or merely a thought away, depending on the perspectives of man or Dragon.

The way back wasn’t nearly so instant. She had to ISTC to Shalkar, then hitch another ride from her resident Druid, which took about ten hours of ceremonial administration. When she finally faced the Green Dragon again, she was mentally exhausted.

“Picking up where we left off,” Gwen informed her most senior member of the Council of Mythical landlords. “Can you hook us up with Quetzalcoatl?”

“That’s Mister Quetzalcoatl to you.” The Green Dragon’s smirk was a little irksome, but Gwen knew she had to show the proper respect when communing with senior citizens. “He is… roughly four centuries older than you are.”

As he spoke, Tryfanvius plucked something from the air, pulling the fabric of space like someone throwing out bed sheets. Space and time, or what felt like it, wrapped around them like a giant pavilion, dissolving the abstract like a churning of milk.

“Whoa…” Slylth was starry-eyed. “So this is the Dreaming…”

“Is that a kind of magic?” Gwen whispered to her Red Dragon.

“It’s the closest thing to the Unformed Land,” Slylth said with a solemnity he rarely held for anything, not even his mother. “We’re looking at causality itself. It’s the fabric of… being, I guess? Of both magic, both physical and metaphysical, past and present. There’s really no Human notion for it.”

This Gwen understood. Dragons, according to Dragons… were formed in the primordial era from the world itself. Their language wasn’t so much as taught as had “existed” long before the Dragons, even as the latter Dragons shaped “Dragontongue” into a formal form of Draconic sorcery.

Axyins’ Chronos Magic.

Tyfanevius’ Emerald Dreaming.

Phyr Quar-Tath’s Dark Space.

Sythinthimryr’s Summer Flames.

They were notions, concepts. There are no ideograms for Draconic magic because it imposes itself upon the Prime Material as literal manifestations, a form of phonography that tells reality to shape itself, or else.

Gwen’s unique Translation Ioun, probably one-of-a-kind now that she’s abused it for almost a decade, was capable of speaking guttural Draconic and High Draconic.

But her words had no meaning, no “imposition” upon the world around them.

Slylth’s IMS Magic was irrationally powerful because he didn’t just poke a hole through the canvas of reality to draw on the erupting mana; he “literally” told the world that this spell would manifest this way, and it did.

For a Dragon of the Mythic Class like Tyfanevius, Dragontongue wrapped the space around them in layers of reality, like a moth spinning a silk cocoon—which Gwen understood to be this very space they now inhabited—the belly of Tyfanevius.

Whatever her understanding of the “matter”, the “reality” was that the veil was pulled, and they now stood somewhere else entirely.

Gwen recognised the place from her previous visit during a guided tour from her old life.

They were at the Temple of the Feathered Serpent. Teithuacán.

This time, there were no parking lots, no tourists, no souvenir shops on the Avenue of the Dead. No glass-and-concrete museum existed behind the Temple of the Sun, and no hawkers peddled their handmade wares below the Palace of the Quetlpopaloti.

There were people all around them, citizens and soldiers, tattooed in tunics, armoured or shirtless, going about their business. To the south, the Avenue of the Dead stretched toward the Plaza of the Moon, its path punctuated by structures that looked like jagged jaguar teeth.

The temple was no longer “archaeological” but alive and functional, its great structure piercing through the earth as a rupture, its ornate walls enclosing a small city.

From the base, the monolithic structure rose six tiers into the sky, each set back from the one below in the talud-tablero style, with each sloping base cascading to the next. Vertical panels gave way to slope, slope to panel, a rhythm that repeated upward like a grim ritual carved in stone. There were altars. Very ornate altars. Running in dark, rusted lines from the golden altars…

Gwen felt suddenly uncomfortable.

When the reality around them grew clearer, she understood why.

This was a dais, and its mandate was heaven’s will.

The architecture was built to brutalise the viewer, to instil fear and obedience.

That, and every surface of every panel was alive.

The relief carvings were divided between depictions of living beings and living sacrifice.

There were Coatls living inside the crevices and spaces. They had colourful heads of emerald, or ruby, or sapphire, with the wings of colourful rainforest birds. They slid into and out of the temple walls like eels, their scaled bodies forming metallic sheets that shifted and moved with the pulse of the sun. Some were the size of a man’s torso, others as small as a child’s arm. Their eyes were jewels, from obsidian to sky, their heads hidden in the mass of overlapping reptilian undulation.

There was a priest, a Whip like Lei-bup, Gwen guessed, who glanced their way with an expression of puzzlement. The man was the tallest Mexican Gwen had ever seen, a light-skinned giant. He wore an enormous headdress of Coatl feathers. One of his hands was soaked in gore. Behind him was a strange calendar that Gwen could not discern, laid out in a way that implied both cosmic and civil affairs.

Gwen gulped. Don’t judge. She told herself, even as she knew she would.

Tyfanevius walked forward. They followed.

Inside the temple, the walls were painted in crushed hematite red, with excess drops clinging in crystalline threads from the recesses, giving the place an eerie expression of menace. Here as well, Coatls slid in and out of the small spaces, their mana-filled eyes acting as shifting lanterns that gave the interior a psychedelic hue.

A throat. Gwen realised with a gulp.

They were in the gullet of the beast. The entryway was designed to clearly communicate the supplicant's role—food.

Deeper, glowstones replaced natural sunlight, softening the atmosphere into something more ceremonial and ambient. They were not actually walking on the stonework, but when Gwen looked down, she nearly yelped.

Snakes on the floor, in stone and in life, moving and still, sifting with complete ease.

This temple wasn’t just a temple. It was the body of a God made manifest.

“Quetzalcoatl!” Tyfanevius called out into the belly of the complex, his Dragontongue bouncing from the walls. “Be you so mighty now, that an old Uncle is not worth greeting?”

“This one was merely unprepared,” a rasping voice replied from deeper in the belly of the complex. “The Eldest is welcome, as always.”

Tyfanevius took a step, and the scene changed as though they were in a projection theatre.

Gwen knew not how much distance they covered, but she knew that if Tyfanevius wanted to walk around her World Tree, or if he wanted to tour the interior of Sufina’s Grot, there was no stopping the Elder Green Dragon.

They were now in the Court of the Feathered Serpent.

The hissing made a tangible ambience.

Row upon row of Coatls, their rippling bodies lining the golden platforms, stared at the intruders. They dared not look at Tyfanevius for too long, lest their minds implode, but Gwen and Slylth were fair game.

“Welcome, Eldest,” said a voice in a form of Draconic that was somewhere between High Draconic and something else Gwen did not know. A Draconic dialect? “And you are welcome as well, Scion of the Summer Queen, and the Vessel of the Elder One.”

Gwen did not bow her head.

She was here for diplomacy, and among Dragons, there were no equals. She was only in her twenties, but her Patron was as old as Tyfanevius, if not older. Likewise, Slylth might pay lip service, but there was no doubt what Quetzalcoatl had to face if it even considered insulting the adolescent Red.

“Greetings, clutch-Kin,” she used a polite Draconic expression of diplomacy. She presented herself as neither older nor younger, but close enough to discuss without seniority.

If Tyfanvious had not been present, she suspected Quetzalcoatl would have loomed. Unfortunately for it, because the Green Dragon was present, it merely presented itself in the best light.

Quetzalcoatl was beauty and terror personified.

The feathers began at the crown of the skull, where the quetzal plumage fanned outward in a great iridescent corona, an emerald so deep it was almost black in shadow, then, catching the light, it became something that existed only at the intersection of blue-green flames. The individual feathers were enormous, each the width of Gwen’s thighs, their barbs rendered with such precision that every metallic bristle was visible. At the base of the serpent's neck, the plumage merged with the scales, projecting a body so vast that, where it coiled along the temple facade, it stretched from pillar to pillar, each coil taller than Gwen in heels.

She studied the Quetzalcoatl. The Quetzalcoatl studied her.

Its presence was a rising sun over a dark sea, the scales moving from rich earth to sunset. Its mouth was huge. The myths said that the throat of Quetzalcoatl was a portal, a door, a threshold to the interior of the world. Gwen knew, as very few existences in the world knew, that this was bullshit.

Quetzalcoatl was the guardian of the Serpent Mound. The Mound, like the Summer Queen’s Mount, was a pillar of the Axis Mundi. The myth, as it were, was a Kirin Tale as old as the extinct race and their Chinese Dynasties. She knew they made sacrifices here. She had seen the altars on their way in. The hunger, the threshold, the story—they were just justifications.

Their eyes met.

Quetzalcoatl’s eyes were black ovals, its pupils golden, slit and smooth as glass. Its eyes were like refractive jewels, though nothing like Tyfanevius’ depthless gaze.

Should she trust this creature? She had promised the Americans that she would put an end to the war, but now she wasn’t so sure. The Quetzalcoatl was paradoxically regal and childish, old, very old, but not old enough to be mellow like Tyfanvious. The Quetzalcoatl was a God who did not demand sacrifice the way a tyrant demands tribute, which consisted of rage, anger, and the anxious need for validation. It waited for sacrifice the way a child waited for love, possessing absolute confidence that her mother would yield eventually.

“Great Quetzalcoatl,” Gwen’s voice echoed through the chamber. “I come bearing the gift of diplomacy. I wish to trade with the people of your domain, both Human and Demi-human. There is much to discover, I believe, in the form of mutual profit, growth, and advancement of our civilisations.”

The great serpent considered her words with head cocked, for Gwen could not convey meaning directly like the Dragonkind.

“Allow me,” Slylth stepped forward, then spoke in a series of rapid Draconic that may as well be Spanish. In a silent Message, he warned her that Quetzalcoatl may have zero understanding of economics. It was older than they were, he said, but its bloodline was closer to Almudj than it was to a True Dragon.

The coiled Quetzalcoatl nodded its head very slowly. “You desire Iztac Teocuitlatl and Macuahuitl?”

True Silver and Draconic Obsidian.

“They are merely byproducts,” Gwen said. “What I desire most is the sanctity of our domains.”

“The Precious Feather will not barter with the lost world,” Quetzalcoatl’s head tilted sideways. “We shall not trade with Itztlacueyan, for their nation is born on the bones of serpent ancestors. They do not respect the sanctity of domains. They are apostates who do not sacrifice. They only consume. Their kingdom is doomed.”

Itztlacueyan, Gwen’s Translation Ioun glimmered. A Place Where the Obsidian Wind Cuts.

Did it mean the Grand Caynon? Gwen was starting to see where the problem lay, why the Americans were so happy fighting the Mexican Empire, and her hope for an alliance grew a little slimmer.

The problem was ontological.

Neo Tenochtitlan was a theocracy. It was a theocracy because it was a civilisation wrought of cosmologies. The Winged Serpent, the Creator Beings, Good and Evil were literal manifestations with teeth and claws. There are no gardens and serpents in a place where the snake IS the garden.

The United States of America was a bureaucratic creation, and this was why Gwen was in a real bind.

How would Quetzalcoatl see their faux-theocracy neighbour? A nation that has made Consumerism into cosmology? Here, the priest wore feathered masks and carried jade blades warm with gore. They made sacrifices to the Quetzalcoatl, understanding that everything had a cost.

Yet, across the Gulf of “America”, great ziggurats of glass and steel had hidden the altar in the basement. It had outsourced the horror, the fear, the death-dealing, to priests of profit holding calculators, holding Data Slates. Men beholden to quarterly forecasts consumed the land, the soil, the water, the flora and fauna that called the continent home, and called it their constitutionally guaranteed right.

The Americans were terrified of the Neo Tenochtitlanians because they sacrificed mortal men and women to receive miracles from a higher power. The Tenochtitlanians were terrified of the Americans because they believed that a higher being had already died to guarantee their prosperity.

They were at an impasse, and her companions knew it.

Tyfanevius looked like someone waiting to be impressed.

She looked to Slylth, whose very large brain was surprisingly useless at times when lateral thinking was required.

“If the Vessel of the Elder One has no answer,” the garganguan serpent head began to lower. “Then the Precious Feather will slumber.”

“WAIT—” Gwen stepped forth, her mind cycling through a dozen notions before her mouth opened again. She had to say something before her great prize slipped away like a catfish in the murk.

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“I think there is a great misunderstanding,” she said to the giant head with the beautiful plumage, calling itself the Precious Feather. “The Americans, by which I mean the Itztlacueyanians, also sacrifice both kith and kin. In fact, their sacrifice puts the scale of your national practice to shame.”

Slylth stared at her, as did Tyfanevius.

“The Vessel would speak such falsehoods so easily?” The Quetzalcoatl tried once more to do something to Tyfanevius’ domain. It managed a ripple. It hissed, its feathers bristling like those of a pissed ostrich.

“No deceit.” Gwen wagged a finger at the lord of Tenochtitlan. “Allow me to explain.”

She conjured forth Essence and Faith to lend herself credibility. Having now spent some time as the Guardian of Tryfan, she was beginning to grasp the immaterial powers that came with her position, nebulous as they were.

“O Precious Feather.” She bowed her head just a little. “You and I know that the Sacrifice of the Altar is an act of transaction, but more importantly, it is an act of transparency.”

Gwen did her very best to channel an old-world tour guide’s glazing of the old rites, based on hearsay, old tales, and vibes.

“The great cosmos, the centre of which your holy body occupies, requires fuel in the form of Faith. Your Priest is not a sadist, but a technician for a great machine. The sacrificed is not a victim, not in the way outsiders understand. The breath is consensual, the extinction of life is direct and concrete. It is Faith.”

To her and everyone else’s amazement, the Quetzalcoatl nodded its head.

Gwen’s mind brushed over the ornated pits. She had not looked inside. But that was a subject for another day. Right now, she needed the snake on her side.

“You speak with great wisdom, Vessel of the Elder One,” the Quetzalcoatl slithered closer, so that it may taste her with its forked tongue.

When it licked air, Tyfanevius reminded his junior that they were communicating through a dreamscape.

“The Itztlacueyanians say that they have no sacrifice, that their God has sacrificed himself,” Gwen continued with confidence now. “But this is patently false. Slylth, can you translate?”

The Red Dragon nodded as Gwen transcribed her meaning in English, trusting Slylth to convey her intent to the Winged Serpent with at best a high school diploma.

“The entirety of the American Empire,” Slylth transcribed her words. “Is an altar of sacrifice.”

With her PowerPoint magic, she created a visual representation of the economic class system.

“You see, Precious Feather, the altar of consumerism is an abstract one. It is not a physical place at the top of a pyramid, because the rulers are too afraid that their people will see where and how it happens. The American altar is buried in the supply chains and the banking sector, buried in the fine print of ten thousand financial instruments, outsourced to ten thousand agents specifically so that the priests of profit would never have to be in the same room as the people on whom it was performed.”

The Quetzalcoatl recoiled, as did Tyfanevius. They had never heard humanity explained with such clarity. They had never heard such bullshit.

“You cannot hope to defeat the Americans through the rite of arms,” Gwen spoke with great solemnity and seriousness, because she could see just how rattled the serpent was to know that its daily sacrifices were child’s play. “Because they sacrifice their kin on an industrial scale, all without their kin’s tacit knowledge. Imagine, Precious Feather, if two hundred million serfs surrender their lives to inhabit cubicles no larger than a prison cell, hammering at a datapad for half their waking moments to create value for their corporate liege. Imagine, if you will, the offer of health and body, where nearly every citizen consumes fast food optimised for addictive palatability. Food so thoroughly stripped of nutritional integrity that they wake tired and go to bed exhausted. Imagine, lord, a sacrifice of the soul, where citizens harken to stamp on the face of their fellows for a leg-up, where liberty is tied to salary. Imagine a nation where the future is itself sacrificed. Nature is a resource. People are capital. Faith is prosperity.”

She took a deep breath because Slylth did not need to. “And finally, imagine all this as an invisible, unknowable altar where no one is visibly sacrificed. Instead, every citizen, from the lowest vagabond in the Tenderloin to the highest corporate priest of Manhattan become a participant from the day they are born.”

“It is not Nextlahualli, the retrieval of the heart,” Gwen finished with a flourish. “It is a sacrifice performed in ten thousand cuts, done to every denizen. And this is why your paltry sacrifices will never meet the Americans by force of arms.”

The Dreamscape grew silent.

Tyfanevius made a face. The Elder Dragon was truly impressed. He had not known that, without Dragon Tongue, Gwen could distort reality and reshape the entirety of Quetzalcoatl’s position.

Quetzalcoatl’s forked tongue flickered in and out. In and out. Anxious. Gwen could see that it was thinking. Slylth had told the Precious Feather something it cannot refute. Now, it was time to offer a solution.

“The answer lies in Shalkar.” Gwen conjured images of her home, of Shalkar, of the Great Tree and its great many species of people. “Shalkar will barter everything your people need to prosper, and in turn, we will take your excesses.”

Quetzalcoatl appeared to think. Gwen wasn’t sure if it truly understood the essence of trade as not in things, but in the exchange of culture and ideas, but she dearly hoped it did.

“I have some influence among your neighbours. Give me your blessing, Precious Feather, and we can create a Path of cooperation. I cannot guarantee how long their great hunger may be placated, but I can safely say that there remains for the Americas to pursue both in and outside of their homes.”

“You do not believe that this Feathered One will triumph?” Quetzalcoatl’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “That I am willing to make the necessary sacrifices?”

Gwen decided she should be honest. If need be, she can show the Quetzalcoatl herself just how much “sacrifice” it needed to even scratch the hull of her Imperial Sta—of Shalkar Tower.

But she had more to say. “Understand this, great serpent. Your foes do not war to win. They wage war as a form of sacrifice; they sacrifice the products of their own labour. They sacrifice their people. They sacrifice their own potential so that very few people can have ten-thousand times more things. How do you triumph over that which multiplies through loss?”

She took a deep breath.

“The answer is beyond obvious. Cut off their sacrifice. Then those at the top will have no more to gain. When you no longer play their game, you win.”

Slylth did his best to translate.

The feathered serpent did its best to understand.

“I shall now speak,” Tyfanevius spoke when the silence between them grew too uncomfortable. “As the Guardian of this domaine, you had a responsibility, Feathered Whelp, which has gone remiss. There are Blasphemers in your domain, the Undead—I judged that your labour toward this end has raised concerns in the Council.”

The room rippled. Space distorted. Tyfanvious did not, and nor did his guests.

Gwen gulped. Quetzalcoatl was so much younger than Prideful Dhànthárian, but there was a distinct difference here.

Faith.

The Faith of three hundred million citizens, Human and demihuman, was driving the Neo Tenochtitlan forward through sheer psychic momentum. The Drought Queen had been on the path of ascension until she kicked in the door of the Eastern Dragons. The rest, be it the Yinglong, Ayxin, the Song Family, the missing Percy, was history.

“This one here, our Guardian,” Tyfanevius spoke to them all at once, his voice injecting itself into their heads. “Can help you with that.”

“I am the Prime Material’s premier exterminator of the Undead,” Gwen stepped forward. “Of the Prime Material. None has laid more Undead to rest than I.” She was confident that, after the South Pole, Auckland and Arica, her claim was without challenge.

Convinced, or perhaps cornered, the great winged serpent lowered its head. “Come, then, into my domain. Speak to my priests. They will take care of the matters of the lower world.”

Quetzalcoatl's voice grew inexplicably feminine. Gwen relaxed.

This was what she wanted. Whatever Quetzalcoatl felt, the Humans who worshipped her or him or it were still humans, with human needs and human sensibilities. She hoped.

“She will see you soon,” Tyfanevius turned his back to the giant winged snake. He looked amused. The sheer fact that the Elder Dragon could ignore a Land God without a sliver of doubt or danger informed Gwen that she should probably be more polite in their future interactions.

Without addressing Quetzalcoatl, Tyfanevius once more pulled open the curtain of reality, and they were once more in Tryfan, in the rootstems, in the belly of the beast.

“Where will you go now?” the Dragon asked. “To Neo Tenocititlan forthwith?”

“I shall,” Gwen affirmed her destination. “I’ll take the Dyar Morkk to their trading port, the one the Americans are trying to block off. We need to work out a trade route with the relevant West Coast authorities. I’ll also pay the Quetzalcoatl a visit in person. We need to work out the logistics of this Undead business, and I have no idea how their theocratic government works on a civil level.”

“Yet, you seem to know enough about their theology,” Tyfanevius remarked. “Yet another one of your serendipitous spots of wisdom?”

“I read a lot.” Gwen felt her cheeks glow.

“One wonders where you find the time,” the Dragon laughed, then moved to dismiss her. “Go then, Guardian of Shalkar, Enforcer of the Council. Go and set right the wayward ways of the disobedient children.”

Ignoring the analogy of asking a two-month-old to go and discipline a four-year-old, Gwen did not refute Tryfanevius’ claim because that was her self-imposed job.

Her next obstacle, she guessed, would not be a Draconic one but one pertaining to the human heart.

Teithuacán.

The Temple of Quetzalcoatl.

On an ontological level, the Priesthood of Quetzalcoatl was a High Priest.

This was because the High Priest was Quetzalcoatl himself. The precious feather was himself the God, the administrator, and the nation. It was a principle the old Gods called Teixiptla—simultaneous duality.

Quetzalcoatl was the serpent and the master, the vessel and the content, the sky and the earth.

A High Priest was, therefore, no longer a man. His psyche was dissolved into God. He became the myth so completely that, as a “Vessel”, he was a part of the myth. A man who dissolved into God so completely that, centuries later, scholars from the Union still argued about whether Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl, the founder of Neo Tenochtitlan, was Quetzalcoatl himself or the High Priest of a mythic.

Ironically, both the Tenochtitlan and the Union historians were wrong.

None who presently inhabited Techchititlan, “The Land of Enchantment”, knew that originally, before the cataclysms that tore the continent in two, before the Dragons retreated toward the land of the far north and south, there was another Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl.

This was the original Quetzalcoatl. Not the youthful creature that ruled the nation now, hatched from an egg barely four centuries ago, but a True Coatl in the sense that Sythinthimryr and Vynssarion were True Dragons. In his human form, the Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl had skin the texture of scales in tlilli, the black of death, which was one of the Feathered Serpent’s domains, and where he walked, it left behind a fertile darkness, loam from which life would spring. Across his lower face, he wore the ehecacozcatl, a cut conch shell that housed the breath itself, containing the elemental matters that made up the Prime Material. He had a beard, which made him different from the other priests, the whiskered Jaguar men, and the scaled Serpent women.

And because this knowledge was lost to the aeons, either by the fault of the stars or by human hands, none in Neo Tenochtitlan had doubted the present Vessel of their four-century-old High Priest—Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl.

After all, it was he who took the disease-ravaged, hunger-shackled slaves of the Spaniard fleets to find shelter in the ruins of Tenochtitlan. It was he who awakened slumbering Quetzalcoatl while it was still in its egg, and melded his mind and soul with the Mythic. It was his Elemental magics of thunder, wind and rain that drove away the invaders, united the scattered tribes, fed Quetzalcoatl the hearts of the faithful, and brought into being a nation capable of resisting the Union. It was Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl, blessed be he, who tamed the Ocēlōmeh, the Were-Jaguars Teixiptla of the Night God, and the Cōātlīcue, were-serpent Teixiptla of the Snake God.

The Topiltzin of the present was not the Topiltzin of the old codices, long lost to the flames of war. He was tall, far taller than even a Jaguar Warrior, standing well over two meters, with long limbs that were elegant and sexless, all in a population where height was not the norm. He was also fair-skinned, a fact that was plainly visible beneath the heavy tattoos in a language that no Priest could read. This was because, as the new codices say, his skin represented iztac, the rise of the morning star as the sky's light. He wore a mask, an enormous serpent skull taxidermy preserved to such perfection that one wasn’t sure where the man ended, and the serpent began. The Quetzalcoatl mask moved with an enchanted life, its feathers clearly vibrant and alive.

And so it was that Topiltzin now made his way from the exterior of the temple to the interior, parting the snakes like a renowned prophet parting the Red Sea.

If an observer were careful, they would notice that something was amiss.

Topiltzin was Quetzalcoatl, but there was nothing here to suggest that the baby Coatls underfoot and on the walls were showing the High Priest love or deference.

Instead, they fled in abject, existential terror.

This man, this Topiltzin, this presumed Quetzalcoatl, was far older, far more terrifying, and far more malevolent than their progenitor.

With the uncaring casualness of a gardener, he strode into the Sanctum of Quetzalcoatl, scattering snakes as he went. Above, ten thousand serpents coiled in the crevices, making the walls sparkle and shimmer with their scales.

When he finally arrived at the dais where two Dragons and a Regent had stood via a dream made real, a great whirling swirl of wings fluttered from every nook. Ten thousand Winged Serpents sought the open air, fleeing the chamber lest their fragile minds be arrested by the Topiltzin’s allure.

“Father,” a low, hissing, sultry voice slithered forth from an ornate recess made to house a God. “Did I do well?”

“You did very well,” The High Priest replied, one hand reaching out to stroke the snout of a God whose domain had cut the continent in twain. “It is no easy feat to fool the Emerald Dreamer.”

“The Vessel of the Elder One is wily and cunning indeed,” Quetzalcoatl’s giant tongue darted out to taste the man’s robe, like a child’s wandering limb yearning for a stern parent’s approval.

“That is because she is cunning,” the High Priest replied with a laugh both cold and distant. “She also speaks the truth. She is a dangerous and alluring creature, my child. Many of your companions have already perished by the Pale Goddess’s hand.”

“Companions?” the God Serpent tilted its head quizzically. This information was new. “Pale Goddess?”

“Yes, there had been many victims indeed, all gone, subverted or slain,” the High Priest allowed the snake to lean closer, so that its snout nuzzled his body. Incredibly, not even the God Serpent could push his anchored feet back. “Many keen aides, unknowing allies, both living and dead, deities both young and old—our Regent has quite the list of trophies.”

The Precious Feather considered this, then it shrank in size.

Its scales unfurled, feathers withdrew into bone, and its morphic field collapsed, then rebuilt itself into the form of a Cihuacoatl, a Snake Woman.

Her nubile figure clung to the body of the High Priest, her feathered head ornament just reaching the man’s chin. There was a dark opalescence to her flawless, hairless skin that made the viewer’s own hair stand on end. She moved like water, formless, sensuous, yet alien and sinuous. Her eyes were burning orbs of cold coal, slitted in textured gold, her hair flowed long, alive and luxurious, punctuated by cascading feathers.

It was a she, for there was no denying the hipbone, the serpentine waist, the shape of her limbs, but like all her ilk, sex was without meaning. She was fertility, and she was death. Her garb, consisting of nought but a grass skirt, was a living construct of serpents, moving with the same rhythm of her swaying hair.

The serpents trembled in the presence of their mother. The mother trembled against her High Priest.

“Father, I am afraid.”

“And you should be,” the being known as Topiltzin gave her a curt nod with its living mask. “Our Regent isn’t just the Vessel of an Old One. Like an old student of mine, she holds companionship with the Sho'vothar Whedab. Over the last decade, she has fed her patron very, very well, almost as well as my student had. Where she goes, upheaval, death and destruction follow. She is a true marvel.”

His student? The Precious Feather grew confused. Or the Regent?

The last part, the Devouring Dark, spoken in High Draconic, was enough to make the inexperienced Mythic knock-kneed. Draconic did not just transmute meaning. It spoke of reality, and the reality that her father spoke was enough to shake Quetzalcoatl to its half-dozen Cores.

“What should I do, Father?” the girl asked, her voice quivering like the lakes on a windy morning.

“Do nothing but obey, as you already have.” The High Priest’s voice was benevolent, fatherly, reassuring. But one could only wonder if the same truth was reflected in his eyes. “Father will take care of everything, as I had, and always will, since the day you were returned to this Prison Plane.”

The girl buried her face in her High Priest’s waist.

She had to trust her Vessel, her Teixiptla, her soulmate.

After all, she was he, and he was she, and for four hundred human years, her High Priest had never been wrong.