The gods of death of countless pantheons sat in wait for the Lords of Night who had summoned them to bear witness to the turning of the wheel.
Dusk fell over Lake Pátzcuaro, the encroaching darkness impenetrable by what candles remained from the Día de Muertos celebrations. The reddish-gold and yellow colors of cempasúchil were becoming muted as the flowers wilted, the altars to the dead empty and the last echoes of the visiting spirits already dissipating as they returned to eternal rest. The island of Janitzio had bustled with celebrants and tourists mere days ago, its surface a pyre of joyous light, yet now it was reduced to the mundane glow of streetlights flickering over the murky waters of the lake. The dead had had their day amongst the living, and now the living must return to the toils of their everyday existences, not privy to the machinations happening beneath their very feet – an occasion that would define the fate of all humanity.
Cristina gazed at the ceiling – if it could be called that – and marveled at the underside of fishing boats and the ripples their occupants made when they cast their nets into the lake. She felt as if she were a salamander basking at the bottom of the water, camouflaged in mud and gazing as incomprehensible creatures of unfathomable size and power pierced the veil into her world and shaped it as they saw fit. Of course, Cristina had long crossed that Veil and seen the wonders and horrors it concealed from the rest of humanity, and indeed she was nothing but a powerless animal compared to the beings who held solemn assembly beneath the waters of Lake Pátzcuaro.
The gods of death of countless pantheons sat in wait for the Lords of Night who had summoned them to bear witness to the turning of the wheel. Cristina and her friends, although allowed to attend as honored guests of Mictlán, felt the crushing gaze of the divinities as they took their seats. Baruch, always fierce and defiant like the animal he embodied, deflated as if the prospect of meeting his patron god had siphoned all his bravado; Lorena, despite burning with the light of three solar deities, shifted uncomfortably and tried not to stare for too long at anyone; Guadalupe, who had no power but their fists and their will to fight, seemed entranced and discreetly listed the names of every deity they managed to identify; Cristina thought it best to follow their example.
A green-skinned god wrapped in silken bandages and his jackal-headed companion sat closest to Cristina, discussing an unknown topic in a long-dead tongue. A muscular, steel-eyed god in a robe made of shadow and sorrow absent-mindedly plucked petals from the flowers that grew on the cascading hair of his youthful wife. A half-corpse deity set both her eyes – one dry and shriveled, one sharp and smouldering – on the rotunda where the Lords of Night were set to appear.
There were many more of them occupying the entirety of the amphitheater, countless faces of death, a legion who collectively ruled over the many afterlives of mankind, assembled here tonight to discuss the fate of the world and the souls of the living. The gravity of the occasion was not to be understated: word of Valravn’s attack on Mictlán had spread through the many underworlds like a call to arms, and the gods of death were eager to punish the ungrateful humanity that had dared blaspheme against the sanctity of eternal rest. Cristina and her friends could only hope that they would be swayed by the Pale Lady’s words to give the people of the Fifth Sun another chance; she swallowed hard as the realization that the world might just end on that very night settled on her chest with the weight of an anvil.
“Oops, pardon me,” a voice came from her right as the Egyptian gods shifted awkwardly to allow the newcomer through. “Sorry, sorry. Just need to get to my seat right there.”
Cristina tried not to gawk as the grinning skeleton wearing a golden crown and carrying a scythe sat next to her, but she suddenly felt a bony tap on her shoulder. When she turned, a fleshless hand extended towards her in salutation.
“You must be Cristina,” the skeleton said in a cheery voice, although it had no tongue or vocal chords with which to speak. Cristina shook its hand; it was surprisingly warm for someone who was nothing but dry bones. “I’m San Pascualito. San Pascualito Rey, some call me, but I don’t much care for all that royalty stuff. I like to think of myself as a more down-to-earth kind of reaper.”
“I– yes, I know who you are,” Cristina responded. “The Pale Lady has told me a lot about you.”
“Oh, I’m sure she has,” San Pascualito said. “She and I go a long way back. Lovely goddess, always kind, always a great conversator. She and her husband were the first to welcome me when I ascended – or should I say descended? – to my current station, and I’m eternally thankful to them for it. Not many gods out there are willing to let a mere mortal join their club, you know.”
“Oh… yes, I figured,” Cristina shrank in her seat upon realizing another god – a horned creature with stony skin and a twisting purple tongue – was staring derisively at them.
“Ah, don’t mind him,” San Pascualito waved it off. “Old Crom Cruach has been sore ever since he lost to Saint Patrick. I should know: the gods of Xibalbá are not exactly nice to me either since I dethroned them. It’s not easy giving up being the boss of a place, especially when so much power is involved. I’m glad to see they’re at least being civil to you and your friends.”
Only because we are under the Pale Lady’s protection, Cristina thought, but she said none of this to San Pascualito. The truth was that despite having helped save Mictlán and all the souls that inhabited it, the true magnitude of the divine conflict had not yet shown its fangs; she felt overwhelmed by it, diminute and defenseless amongst the rulers of the cosmos who would decide her fate and that of her entire species. What did it matter that she and other humans had been willing to give their lives and afterlives to protect the divine if the divine was willing to snuff them out for the sins of others?
“You are afraid,” San Pascualito saw through her. “Don’t be. Life and death… they are a cycle, eternal and unbreakable. Change is the only true constant of the universe; things that are will not always be, and things that are not yet may one day come to us. Change is scary – sometimes painful – but you can always trust for better things to follow even the direst times. All you can do, Cristina, is offer your hand for others to hold on your way there.”
“I had hoped it would be over by now,” Cristina said. “I had hoped that the cosmos would be at peace now that Mictlán is no longer under siege and the Ravens have gone to lick their wounds. But now… now they could truly end us all – the gods to whom we swore fealty – so what was all that blood for? Did our fight matter at all?”
“Of course it mattered!” San Pascualito reassured her. “Mictlantecuhtli did not shatter the Pillars of the Earth, did he? The world still exists, and so do you. What you did is proof not only of humanity’s willingness to fight on, but to fight on the right side. And the gods, before they make their decision, will have to hear of what you and your people did, of the sacrifices you made and the righteousness at the heart of your fight. You already have my vote, you know; I assure you it has nothing to do with the fact I was once human.”
If San Pascualito still had eyelids, Cristina could have sworn he’d just winked at her. She couldn’t help but match the skeleton’s perpetual smile, the weight in her chest becoming a little lighter as she did.
“Thank you, Rey San Pascual.”
“Pfff, what did I say about royalty?” The skeleton chuckled. “Call me Pascual.”
At that moment, the chamber fell into a sepulchral silence. All gazes turned to the center of the stone amphitheater, where the Lords of Night were making their arrival. One by one they stepped out of the shadows in all their magnificent and terrible might. Nine they totaled, and nine they should be, yet Cristina could count only seven – plus the Pale Lady, who walked hand in hand with her husband Mictlantecuhtli for the first time in ages – as they marched towards the center of the rotunda.
Coming after the rulers of Mictlán were long-nosed Tláloc and his bejeweled wife Chalchiuhtlicue, both blue-skinned like the waters over which they ruled and adorned with emerald feathers; the ground seemed to crackle where they stepped, brief sparks of lightning threatening to unleash a storm of proportions unheard of. Behind them was the revolting goddess Tlazolteotl, nude and smeared with unspeakable filth, her teeth black and rotten by ages of devouring the countless sins of humanity; at her side was Centeotl, her son and fellow Lord of Night – a handsome, gold-skinned man that literally oozed life as tender plants sprouted in his wake. Next came Piltzintecuhtli, Lord of the Rising Sun and father of Centeotl; he was a quiet deity, eternally youthful as befits a divine protector of children, his visage eerily similar to the son he had sired. And last in line walked the fire god Xiuhtēcuhtli, a raging inferno in the shape of a man, eternally hungry, as warm as he was all-consuming; he had chosen to appear in his full vigor and not in his friendlier elderly form of Huehueteotl, undoubtedly still furious by the death of his friend and brother-in-arms Huitzilopochtli.
Two gods were missing, however, and their absence spoke louder than words ever could. As the Lords of Night took their seats, Cristina turned to Baruch, who grit his teeth while looking at the empty thrones meant for the jaguar gods.
Mictecacihuatl, the Pale Lady, Queen of Mictlán, turned to the assembled gods of death. She had reverted to the form in which she was worshipped by the Mexica before the Spaniards came, all bone and flowers, beautiful and dreadful in her display of unabatable power.
“Welcome, brothers and sisters in death,” she addressed them. “We thank Lord Uhcumo, who has graciously allowed us to hold our assembly in his domain.”
Uhcumo, the shadowy ruler of the Purépecha underworld, saluted his fellow death deities with his mole-like claws before sitting back down.
“You are summoned here because a great crisis threatens the equilibrium of the cosmos itself: mortals have conspired to usurp us and take from us the places of eternal rest.”
Loud protests of indignation rose from the crowd of divinities, a discordant choir that demanded justice or vengeance for the crimes of the Ravens.
“My husband and I – together with the brave humans you see amongst you – have repealed the invaders and crippled their ambitions for the time being,” the Pale Lady continued. “However, our victory was not without a price. Huitzilopochtli, champion of the Fifth Sun, is dead. He chose to immolate himself with his own power rather than have it destroy Mictlán, and thus he is no more than divine essence slowly reforming itself in the orbit of Mercury. I fear he will not be reborn in time to stop what is yet to come.”
“Then let it come,” a voice like smoke, like smouldering ash, emerged from the shadows and burrowed itself into the hearts of all in attendance, “and let it be the reason why we cleanse this world anew.”
The man in the black charro suit strolled with the placidity of someone who knows himself the master of a place, his steps unwavering despite missing his left foot; in its place was a void that hurt to look at, a wound in the fabric of reality itself that had not healed even eons after it had been lost. Behind him was a god two heads taller than any of the assembled deities, coils upon coils of muscle wrapped in coppery skin and dressed in a jaguar pelt; the god’s eyes were sharp and feline, his vertical pupils glistening as he found himself amongst his own kind for the first time in ages simply to announce the end of the world. A potent stench of sulfur and incense filled Cristina’s nose as the man in black walked towards the rotunda and both he and his towering companion took their rightful places as Lords of Night.
“Tezcatlipoca…” Baruch whispered, and he almost fell to his knees to pray for mercy from the god who had granted him his nagual form.
“And Tepeyollotl,” San Pascualito said, looking at the muscle-bound giant. His smile had waned despite his lack of lips. “Now things will get ugly for sure.”
Brimming with arrogance, Tezcatlipoca shifted into a nightmarish form of smoke and shadow, his black and yellow face the only semblance of humanity among his divine darkness. His missing foot reappeared, but it was nothing but blood-soaked bone held together by thin shreds of godly substance.
You two have some nerve showing your faces here, Tláloc growled with a voice like thunder. After what you did in Ciudad de México, do you think you are welcome?
“Please, you should know by now that was not me,” Tezcatlipoca said. “I would never steal Tepeyollotl’s credit for such fine destruction.”
“And you all should be thankful for it,” the jaguar god agreed. “It will serve the humans well as a first taste of punishment for daring to invade Mictlán.”
Do not pretend to care for the fate of our realm and the souls that call it home, Tepeyollot! Mictlantecuhtli intervened, his words sharp like obsidian knives. You both could have helped defend it from the Ravens, yet you chose to ignore our calls for aid. Now you claim to commit this atrocity in our name? Mictlán has no need for gods as treacherous as you, and neither does mankind.
“Indeed,” Tezcatlipoca sneered. “Mictlán needs heroes, brave gods who would fight to the bitter end to defend it, who would burn brightly and perish in a blaze of glory if it meant saving everyone. That is what happened to my brother, is it not? That is why Huitzilopochtli can no longer stop us.”
How dare you speak ill of your brother! Xiuhtēcuhtli roared, his flames glowing white-hot. The Left-Handed Hummingbird knew the risks and still went into battle for the sake of both mortals and gods. What do you know of sacrifice, Smoking Mirror, when you have spent the last four ages conspiring to enthrone yourself again?
Tezcatlipoca’s face twisted into a primal rage, his teeth sharpening into those of a predator as his bulk morphed uncontrollably, barely able to contain the dark power that was his essence. He seemed to grow larger, his shadow engulfing the entirety of the room, threatening to smother all the gods in an embrace of doom.
What do I know of sacrifice? Tezcatlipoca spoke with a voice that had lost all pretense of humanity. Now, only the jaguar remained. Look at me! Look at what I gave for mankind to live! I gave my flesh, my blood, my very essence to bait Cipactli and butcher her to make a world they could live in. Even after all these eons, I do not heal lest the great earth monster revive and undo the universe itself. I carry the wounds of sacrifice, the pain from which all existence emanates. This is why I was the First Sun, why I was the rightful ruler of all that lives! And yet I was dethroned, cast down by my own brother Quetzalcoatl and denied my place at the pinnacle of creation! What do I know about sacrifice? I EMBODY IT!
The shadow grew unbearably heavy, so crushing that Cristina felt as if her lungs were about to collapse. Even the gods seemed to struggle under Tezcatlipoca’s rage, their faces wincing with discomfort as the Lord of Darkness voiced his grievances. At last, he simmered down, and the shadow dissipated back into its master.
“Apologies, Lord Xiuhtēcuhtli,” Tezcatlipoca said, regaining his composure. “I know you and my brother were closer than he and I could ever be. Yet that is even more of a reason to support my position, for he was slain by none other than the ungrateful humans who claimed to be his loyal followers. Why would you not want to avenge your greatest friend? Why would you not want to see the ones who brought him low grovel for mercy before your fire turns them to ash?”
The Lords of Night looked to each other, shaken by Tezcatlipoca’s display of raw power but still unsure if they would join him in his quest to destroy the world. Doubt was starting to seep into their divine hearts, and of the assembled rulers of darkness only the Lords of Mictlán and Tlalocán remained steadfast in their opposition to the Smoking Mirror.
The Smoking Mirror speaks truth, Tlazolteotl suddenly interjected. Mankind has overstayed its welcome in this world. What their invasion of Mictlán has proven is that their ingratitude knows no limits.
Centeotl turned to her, his mouth agape with surprise.
“Mother, you cannot seriously be considering–”
Quiet, child! Tlazolteotl scolded him. Gaze upon me, Lords of Night, Lords of Death. I am Tlazolteotl, lowest of the gods, eater of filth, of shit, of the sin that fills human hearts to the brim! I have toiled at my labor for eons, since the first iteration of humanity. I have cleansed them again and again, purified their souls at the expense of myself. And for what? For them to find new ways to commit atrocities, to destroy each other and the world we gave them! No more! I will join you, Tezcatlipoca. I will serve ingrates no longer.
I will join you as well, Smoking Mirror, grumbled Xiuhtēcuhtli. Not because I care for your ambitions of power, but because those who have betrayed Huitzilopochtli deserve no mercy. I will not see them use our own power against us ever again.
“Your support is most appreciated,” Tezcatlipoca grinned and turned to the remaining Lords of Night. “What say you, Lord Tláloc? And you, Lady Chalchiuhtlicue? You each once destroyed the world to cleanse it of evil. Will you not stand with us in cleansing this one?”
We would rather take Tlazolteotl’s job as eaters of shit than join you, Chalchiuhtlicue hissed.
“Very well,” Tezcatlipoca shrugged. “I don’t suppose I can convince you either, young Centeotl.”
“Mankind has committed many errors, Smoking Mirror, but I will not help you destroy them,” Centeotl replied. “You would use my powers to starve them to death, and I will not be part of such cruelty.”
“You do not take after your mother, do you?” Tezcatlipoca sneered and turned to the last Lord of Night, the silent Piltzintecuhtli. “Your son's refusal means we now stand four against four, and one remains to break the tie. It falls upon you, Lord Piltzintecuhtli, to decide what shall be done. You, who can see the future. You, who rule at the end of our nocturnal domain. You, who possess sight beyond sight. Will you not show them? Will you not show them what awaits should humanity prevail?”
Piltzintecuhtli, Lord of Visions, rose from his throne and outstretched his hand towards the audience. On his palm rested a mound of greenish dust – a sacred hallucinogenic. He blew on it and the dust spread to every corner of the amphitheatre, giving both gods and humans a glimpse of what was to come. Piltzintecuhtli’s voice was but a whisper, yet all heard him as he spoke a single word: Behold.
At first it was a glint in the darkness, a few blinking numbers flashing so fast they blurred together into a single amorphous cypher. The noise they made was a shrill hum, a mechanical whirr that grew louder and louder until it became a cry not unlike that of a newborn child. Then the glow became a blazing light, swallowing the darkness as countless lines of code exploded into sight, strands of DNA for the thing that took form at breakneck pace and filled all conceivable space with its monstrous bulk. Cristina could barely understand what she was seeing, her mind struggling to piece together the discordant form of evil, so large and absolute that she felt like an ant looking up at a mountain. Still, the fragments she managed to comprehend sank her heart deeper than the lowest layer of Hell, and her eyes welled up with tears of despair as the great atrocity clawed its way upon the Earth and began feeding.
It was a great lamprey, a tick, a leech, a behemoth parasite that burrowed into the world with a thousand feeders, its mass enveloping the planet as it ate, crushing people and plants and animals in its insatiable gluttony, grinding them into foul paste so thin that soon there was nothing for it to excrete but the screams of the dead and dying. Perverse gears and servos roared under the strain of its triumph, the very soil bleeding into its thousand mouths as a sacrifice to a god of unending hunger, the fallen deities of ages past chained to it and forced to give themselves in service to the faceless beast whose breath stank of blood and coin. Above it hovered a crown, a ring of fiery numbers and eyeless cadavers that proclaimed profit unparalleled and unabated, greed victorious and unchallenged.
Cristina retched and had to grab on to her seat as the vision ended to avoid falling, her head spinning as she took deep breaths and tried to hold down the acridness rising from her esophagus. Somewhere in the back of her mind, the phantasms of her malign dreams laughed uproariously. Around her, the gods of death murmured amongst themselves in horrified voices, the shadow of dread heavy upon their brows.
“It cannot be…” Cristina said. “I thought– I thought we had stopped it! I thought we had prevented this future when we protected Mictlán!”
“You stopped the Ravens, yes,” San Pascualito responded, his unwellness evident despite him lacking eyes or lips with which to emote. “But things born of greed and malice are not bound to one group of people. Greed is universal, and the hearts of mankind as a whole are potential incubators for it to take shape and gestate.”
Tezcatlipoca certainly believed so. He stood again from his throne and addressed the divine audience.
“Do you see now? Do you see what is to come, what awaits us all should humanity prevail? They will destroy themselves and the world through their greed incarnate, and we shall be slaves to its unending hunger. That is their new god, a master and destroyer of their own making! To it they will sacrifice their blood, their flesh, their own children, until there is no more left to feed it! They came for Mictlán and were foiled, yes, but they will never stop; they will return with their strength redoubled, ready to usurp us. Which one of us will be next? Hades? Irkalla? Duat? Will we sit here and debate endlessly about the fate of a species that has proven unworthy of living, or will we deliver to them the destruction they so deeply crave?”
“Enough!” The Pale Lady stood, her eyes cold and steely, and faced the dark deity. “You have made known your grievances against mankind, Tezcatlipoca. Now you will hear why they must live.”
“You would deny the rot in the souls of mankind, Pale Lady?” Tezcatlipoca sneered.
“No. I cannot deny that there is truth in your words. Greed is the poison that nests in the hearts of many humans, the true purpose that has driven them into attacking us and defiling even the sanctity of death; Mictlán knows this better than anyone. Yet you fail to mention the humans that fought side by side with us, willing to sacrifice their very souls to stop the Ravens. Are you so embittered, Smoking Mirror, that you will not recognize this truth? Are you so full of hatred that you will slay the just and the wicked without distinction? How can we presume to be different from the humans who have invaded us if we allow our primal, visceral emotions to cloud our judgement?”
She turned to the gods of death – to Cristina, who sat among them – and said:
“Let one of the mortal champions of Mictlán speak her truth and show you the worth of humanity! Cristina Cisneros, step forward!”
Cristina knew she should have expected this, yet her stomach protested and tightened into a knot at the Pale Lady’s summoning. Her eyes darted towards her friends, who simply looked at her with what was equal parts encouragement and dread, then to the Pale Lady and then to the grinning face of San Pascualito. No. She could not falter here, not when she had already shed so much blood and tears. She breathed in deeply, holding tightly the bravery that had inflamed her chest in the battlefield, her unyielding determination, and the words the skeletal saint had spoken to her: The gods will hear what you and your people did, the sacrifices you made and the righteousness at the heart of your fight.
“I should gut you where you stand,” Tepeyollotl growled as Cristina made her way to the stage. His feline eyes glistened with hatred. “A human who thinks she can speak in the presence of gods! You would foster such insolence, Mictecacihuatl?”
The gods will hear you, Cristina wordlessly repeated to herself with the fervor of a prayer.
“I would, Heart of the Mountain,” the Pale Lady answered. “Cristina has earned the right to be here, so you will listen to what she has to say.”
The gods will hear you, she defiantly met the Lord of Earthquakes’ gaze to avoid being swallowed by the terror tugging at her heart.
“Then I will make sure to remember every word she speaks today and every scream I tear from her throat when I kill her,” the jaguar god said. “I will–”
ENOUGH.
Uhcumo had risen from his seat, his form towering over the gods as a reminder that they were mere guests in his domain. The Purépecha Lord of Death snapped his claws and a muzzle made of shadows formed around Tepeyollotl’s fangs, silencing the god as the other deities laughed in approval.
Be silent, Tepeyollotl. Do not forget you have no power in my house. And you, Tezcatlipoca, rein in your tongue or your restraints will be harsher than the ones I have set upon your pet.
The Smoking Mirror seethed in his throne, but said nothing.
Cristina Cisneros, Uhcumo looked at her with his small, beady eyes. Cristina could tell he was almost blind, his sight accustomed to the absolute darkness of the underground where he reigned, yet his gaze pierced her deep as if he could see the words waiting to pour out of her. Your time to speak is now. Use it well.
Cristina smiled and nodded.
The gods will hear me, as they have always done even in the darkest moments.
And they did. Cristina spoke the truth of her innards, the pains and joys she and the others had experienced, the visceral reality of a war the gods had chosen to ignore until it had come knocking at their door. She told of triumphs whose price was paid with blood and sorrow, of defeats that cost more than just the lives extinguished in their wake. She honored Huitzilopochtli as the hero he had been, her voice growing bolder as she saw the gods shift uncomfortably under the shame of their own inaction. She eulogized the fallen, the broken, those she had been unable to save, almost cracking under the weight of their memories. She spoke of the people who lived thanks to the sacrifices she and her friends had made, of the hope in their eyes as they realized the world had not ended and that the Earth still kept some kindness for them in her bosom.
She spoke of each of her friends. She told of Baruch, who fought to avenge his family and all those who had been wronged by a world indifferent to their suffering. She told of Lorena, blessed by three gods who held unshakable faith in her. She told of Guadalupe, who in joining the fight against their former masters had found redemption.
She spoke until her throat felt raw, until her mouth held no more words and the only sound amidst the silence of the chamber was the beating of her heart. She turned to the Pale Lady, who brimmed with pride. Uhcumo again stood and addressed his fellow death deities.
You have seen. You have heard. Now you must answer: will you spare humanity, or will you deliver its doom?
“Well, that certainly could have gone a lot worse,” Tepeyollotl said. His snout still felt sore owing to Uhcumo muzzling him, and all he could think about was how lucky he was that mankind no longer made legends about him; the world could do without the story of how the mighty jaguar had been humiliated by a mole, and all for naught. In the end, with the gods evenly divided, it had been Piltzintecuhtli who had cast the tiebreaking vote. The future is not set in stone, he had said, and if anyone can change it for the better, it’s the champions of Mictlán. Of course now of all times he decided to stop being neutral.
The issue of Piltzintecuhtli's vision had not gone unaddressed either. Even those gods who had sided with humanity agreed that its threat was too large to ignore. However, open war was not an option: the world was too fragile nowadays, too stiff and rigid to withstand such powerful magic without breaking into a million pieces. The gods had thus chosen an alternative solution; Tepeyollotl could only gag in disgust at the concept of proxy war.
“So, do you have a plan b, or are we just going to sit here and lick our wounds until Huitzilopochtli resurrects himself and knocks out our teeth?” The Lord of Earthquakes asked the Smoking Mirror.
Tezcatlipoca stood against the rising sun, his figure a cutout of night itself, a remnant of absolute darkness that refused to give out even as the shadows retreated.
“I always plan ahead, my friend, and this is not the exception. The gods of death have proven to be more foolish than I expected, but that is alright. Death is not the only force capable of bringing down the Fifth Sun.”
“Please tell me you are not being serious,” the jaguar god groaned. “She may be your sister, but even I know not to get involved with things like her.”
“We share a goal with her, Tepeyollotl, and no doubt she knows Huitzilopochtli can no longer stop us. I can hear her voice even now, the void beckoning to us.”
“And what if she decides that we are also in her way? What if she decides she should rule?”
“The Black Moon howls always,” Tezcatlipoca responded. “But until we choose to act, hers shall remain an unanswered call. Do not worry; all we need to do is play our cards wisely. We will go to my sister, yes, but there is another who would claim his time on the throne, and I would never dare to stand in his way.”
Tezcatlipoca grinned, and his teeth were the bones of slaughtered generations, the sun-bleached gravestones of entire planets.
“I think it is time we pay a visit to my elder brother. I just know he is itching to rule the world under that flayed skin of his.”