Blood & Fur

Chapter Thirty-Eight: The Rattling House

Chapter Thirty-Eight: The Rattling House

I had cursed the land and unleashed its fury.

Smoke Mountain’s anger rippled across the empire in a roar of fire. Its breath of smoke obscured the sky for leagues upon leagues, obscuring the dawn itself. Gray ashes rained down upon the world’s forests and set the grasslands ablaze. The blazing blood of the earth spilled from the mountain, burning the slaughtered villages and burying my sins under a tide of molten rock. The ground trembled until hills collapsed into piles of dust swept by the chaotic winds.

“Death,” they whispered into my ear. “Death to the young and the old. Death to the faithful and the faithless. Death to the rich and the poor. Death to all.”

Many would die in the coming cataclysm, but though it might sound callous I was too happy with my work to care. The entire empire shall bear witness to Smoke Mountain’s wrath, but its flames would not reach the capital. Already its magma was cooling inside Yohuachanca’s many rivers. The few people I cared about—Ingrid, Chikal, Nenetl, even Necahual—would survive the disaster.

I knew I had sentenced thousands to death and destruction, but earned a prize worthy of its ghastly cost: a Nightlord’s head.

Yoloxochitl was dead. I had killed her.

It wasn’t my hand that did the deed, but it was my will that brought it forth. I had laid the stage for the madwoman’s demise. She had loved me and I had killed her. I had shattered her hold over my soul, freed Eztli from her control, and taken the first step towards securing my own freedom. I had buried a ghost that lingered among the living for too many centuries and ruined her sisters’ chance at godhood.

I couldn’t put into words the sheer sense of jubilation that coursed through my veins.

The Nightlords had ruled Yohuachanca with a steady grip for centuries, conquering nations, slaughtering millions, and lording over all from their obsidian thrones. Hundreds of generations of emperors had failed to dent their power. I alone, guided by the vengeful grudges of the dead, had succeeded in this glorious task. I had wrestled a piece of our freedom from these undying abominations!

“You are avenged, my predecessors,” I whispered under my breath. “I shall free you all.”

Although I expected great difficulties, I was full of hope for the future. The Nightlords’ destruction no longer seemed like an impossibility, but an inevitability. I would destroy them all. I knew it.

Eztli carried me south of the capital into the countryside, landing near a cave that had withstood the quakes and tremors. We made love the moment we touched the ground. Eztli threw herself at me, wet and willing, her wings and talons turning into slim arms and thin legs. The ash on her skin warmed it to the touch. For a moment, Eztli felt alive in my embrace. I took her on a warm rock while Smoke Mountain raged before our eyes. We celebrated amidst the chaos and the pain, high on the fumes of freedom and victory.

“I love you,” Eztli whispered into my ear, sweetly and sincerely. Her Teyolia was gone, with naught but darkness in its place, and yet I felt warmth nonetheless. She meant every word. Not even the vampire curse could take her feelings away.

With Yoloxochitl’s shadow lifted from her mind, Eztli gave all of herself to me. She had no inner flame for mine to connect with, but still our union brought me more pleasure than any spell or Seidr ritual. I felt strong, and loved, and powerful.

I felt whole.

“I love you,” I replied, holding back the fire within my loins. My body fluids carried the power of a dead sun; poison to vampires. I doubted it would destroy Eztli, but it would be unpleasant to her. “This will hurt.”

“Pain is good, Iztac,” she replied fearlessly, her head resting on my shoulder. “Pain is life.”

I ceased to hold back and saw stars. Eztli grunted in pain and pleasure beneath me, faint smoke rising from between her thighs. I half-expected her to burn between my arms. Instead, she smiled and kissed me with lips warmer than Smoke Mountain.

“Are you well?” I asked her once my mind cleared.

“My insides are on fire,” Eztli confessed with a chuckle. “And I wouldn’t trade it for the world.”

I carried her into the darkness of the cave, away from the smoke clouds. The sunlight would pierce through them sooner or later. We lay among the stones and found comfort in each other’s arms, satisfied, and content.

“Thank you, Iztac,” Eztli said, her breasts softly resting on my chest. “You’ve freed me.”

She was freed, yes. I wasn’t. The other three Nightlords still lingered in this ruined land, their curse binding my heart to their will. They would pull my leash soon. Their anger would know no bounds, and though I had taken steps to divert suspicions away from myself, I understood all too well things would only grow more difficult from now on. I had shattered the sisters’ illusion of invincibility. Now that I reminded the Nightlords of their mortality, they would keep their guard up.

“You should flee while you still can,” I suggested. “With Yoloxochitl gone, her sisters should have no way of tracking you. They will be too distracted by the chaos to succeed even if they try.”

“I won’t run without you, nor Mother.” Eztli smiled in delight upon whispering that last word. She could finally speak her mind without Yoloxochitl’s vile grasp obscuring her thoughts. “I would like to free the other consorts too, if possible.”

“Me too.” I stroked her soot-tainted hair. So soft and silky… “They will find us within days, maybe even hours. They might even suspect us of foul play.”

“We will lie,” Eztli replied with a smile. “I will say that we hid from the eruption and I calmed you down while you were panicking.”

“You did.” I squeezed her closer to me. “I could stay here with you forever.”

“As could I,” Eztli replied before caressing my cheek. “But you should rest. You will need all your strength.”

Yes, I would. I hadn’t slept in over two nights, and my body grew weary from exhaustion. I rested my head on Eztli’s breasts as if they were a pillow, her hand gently moving up my skull to soothe me to sleep. It didn’t take long. I was too happy and satisfied to stay awake.

I closed my eyes to the tune of Smoke Mountain’s bellowing growls.

The dark walls of Xibalba encircled me from all sides.

I recalled that I last woke up from my sleep in the House of Gloom, the dark lair of the oldest Lords of Terror. Instead of a lake of intestines, I now found myself on a crossroad of chalky stones and misty doors. No ceiling stood above my head. A pale empty sky stretched far and wide above me instead. Xibalba’s pyramid stood alone and silent to the north, a black landmark in a sea of gray.

I was alone with my thoughts. The streets were as empty as the Nightlords’ future. Yet I still felt watched from all directions.

I glanced at my surroundings. Four stony archways encircled me, one for each cardinal direction; a dense purple miasma obscured anything beyond their thresholds. The sight of it reminded me of the cursed fog I’d encountered in Mictlan a while ago, but thicker and more sinister. These mists had all the sweetness of rotten corpses.

I immediately activated the Gaze spell to peer through them. My sun-powered sight detected the vile magic in the air, but failed to clear up the fog. My sorcery pierced through illusions, not matter. This meant that the miasma was a physical phenomenon.

When I entered this cursed city, Mother warned that most pathways would take me to another House of the Lords of Terror. One door alone would lead me to her sanctuary somewhere in the city. I examined the archways for any distinctive signs and found nothing. All of them showed the same smooth, featureless exterior, though one did point north and at Xibalba’s black pyramid.

Did I need to pick a door at all? When I looked up at the sky, I wondered what would prevent me from simply flying to the black pyramid or over to the next street. I expected some kind of barrier or attack if I tried, but I figured that it might also be a test of some kind; to see if I would pick a risky potential exit over the obvious options presented to me.

With my mind set on the task, I shapeshifted into my owl form and flew upward. The city’s walls immediately started to rise to match my ascent. Roofs always remained a few feet above my beak. It was especially infuriating: I was close enough to peek over them with another flap of my wings, but never managed to reach that point.

When I looked down at the ground, I realized that hardly a few feet separated me from it. I had flown high enough to reach Smoke Mountain’s summit and failed to advance at all. The fact my Gaze spell couldn’t see anything wrong meant that this was no illusion.

The city itself bent reality to keep me trapped within its confines.

“Very well,” I said upon landing back on the crossroad and transforming back into a man. “I shall play by your rules.”

After a moment’s consideration, I decided to walk through the northern doorway. None of the doors had any other feature that might indicate whether they would bring me to a sanctuary or a trap. At least this one pointed to a landmark.

I felt no fear when I walked into the mists. Yoloxochitl’s death had filled me with strength and hope. Now that I had tasted victory, now that I knew I could succeed in my quest to destroy the Nightlords, I would gladly meet all obstacles.

My victory now seemed inevitable.

The miasma enveloped me in its embrace as I waded through its thick haze. Soon even my Gaze failed to see a foot away from my face. The fog gently welcomed me like an old friend returning home. The same feeling of familiarity that struck me when I first laid eyes upon Xibalba returned. The totem within me guided my steps as if I were a chick returning to the roost.

The floor grew colder beneath my feet, and softer too. The stone changed into something freezing to the touch, yet more fragile than dust. I sensed the very fabric of the world shift around me beyond the reach of my eyes. I immediately realized I had taken a wrong turn. Something deep within me screamed at me to turn back, that I had stepped into the halls of a dangerous force and that I should flee with my tail between my legs.

It was far too late.

A strong gust of wind blew the mist away, and the bitter cold followed in its wake.

The change in temperature was so brutal that I thought I had caught fire. A wave of frost cold enough to freeze the heart struck my skin in an instant, flensing it with greater cruelty than any flame. Sharp ice—the kind I had only seen once in the cruelest winter of my youth—scarred my chest worse than any obsidian splinters ever could.

I grunted in pain, but my breath turned to mist within my mouth. My lips were sealed shut by the cold and my fingers turned so brittle I feared they would break if I tried to clench my fists. I instinctively turned into an owl and wrapped myself in a cloak of black feathers, but even my plumage offered me little protection against a cold that could shatter gold. The fire of my soul alone provided a meager measure of heat. I stared at the whiteness ahead of me and finally realized what lay beneath my talons.

Snow. Snow everywhere.

An immaculate landscape stretched before me under a pitch-black sky, devoid of life and stars; a dead desert larger than anything the city of Xibalba could contain in its nightmarish streets. Mountains of razor-sharp ice rose across the horizon like a great beast’s teeth. A dreadful and cruel wind swept these icy plains, its power so great I couldn’t even flap my wings before being pushed backward. And as I stumbled, I took a glimpse at the ground and saw what the snow buried under me.

People screamed beneath my feet.

Dozens, if not hundreds, of naked humans stared back at me from below the ice that held them trapped, their expressions forever frozen in a final wail of utter terror. The blizzard had entombed them, and I would soon join this grave if I couldn’t find shelter.

Damn it, I tried to mutter my breath, but my frozen beak wouldn’t open right. I need to find a cave! Warmth!

My first action was to move, to walk, to flap my wings before the ice could bury me alive. I shed layers of snow building up on my feathers. My talons hurt when they touched the snow, the appendages so frozen I couldn’t bend them.

Much had been written about fire’s ravenous hunger, but now I realized that the cold was ten times more cruel. I felt like a condemned man walking through a hallway of blades, the chilling frost delicately flaying my skin. Nothing could stop its deadly kiss. The cold reached all the way to my flesh and bones, turning them so brittle I heard cracks inside my own legs and shoulders.

The cold was merciless.

But where should I go? Everywhere around me I could only see ice and snow. My Gaze spell unveiled the cloak of darkness that covered these windswept plains, but I couldn’t see any cave nor house that would protect me. Already I felt the ice crawling up my talons.

I can’t stop, I told myself, pushing through the numbness and frostbite, shedding pieces of ice forming on my plumage. It didn’t matter where I went, so long as I moved. I haven’t outlived Yoloxochitl to die here!

The sky thundered. Lightning coursed through the darkness above and danced among thick black clouds. As if the blizzard wasn’t enough.

Still, the flashes of light let me see my surroundings more clearly. I crawled in a sea of snow and through forests of icy spikes. Frozen corpses were impaled on their tips, their blood blackened by the profane chill. The remains of decrepit huts and hovels littered the landscape. Were they mere props created by this domain’s Lords of Terror or the remnants of forgotten households dragged into the Underworld? The ice had preserved their ruins either way.

Shelter. Shelter at last.

I frantically rushed towards the closest hut. Snowfall had almost buried it under its weight, sealing the windows and freezing the wooden door with a layer of ice. I hit it with my shoulder in an attempt to break it open. I heard the cracks, the delightful sound of hope, of the promise of a fragile sanctuary.

The ground snatched it all away.

A strong tremor threw me off my feet and into the snow. It rocked the landscape with a roar, shattering the frame of wood that held the shack in place. The building collapsed in front of my eyes with a quiet whimper, its roof falling into a pile of ice and broken wood. The other huts followed suit. Their walls crumbled to splinters until nothing remained but flattened ruins.

No, no, no. I frantically attempt to salvage the wood with my talons, vainly hoping I could somehow put the shack back together. No, no, no!

Should I set the wood on fire for warmth? With what? I searched for a stone or some flint to warm up the wood. I found only ice.

The lightning mocked my efforts with a thundering boom.

I jumped in place when the heavens’ wrath struck the earth below; or rather, one of the corpses impaled on the icy spikes nearby. The flesh caught fire in a burst of light, the flensed skin burning like a candle.

I immediately rushed towards the warmth like a moth into the fire, only to collapse under my weight. A sharp yet strangely numbed pain coursed through my left foot. One of my talons no longer responded to my will.

When I dared to look at it, I found it lying in the snow a few feet behind me.

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It didn’t bleed, nor leave a trace back to the talon from which it came. The cold had turned my flesh so brittle, my blood so solid, that the wrong step had cost me a toe.

With no time to waste, I stumbled my way to the corpse candle. To my horror, the spike’s tip had begun to melt under the heat and drip freezing waters onto the flame. I barely had time to feel the fire’s warmth before it went out.

Leaving me alone in the cold once more.

I collapsed to my knees, unable to sense blood flowing in my legs. The thunder raged above my head and the winds battered against my feathers. By then, I struggled to move my own head. I still forced myself, my neck hurt so much I worried it might break off like my finger, until I gazed defiantly at the sky above.

The dark thunderclouds had gathered in the shape of a skull looking down on me. Its eyes vomited lightning and its mouth breathed icy winds.

“Man does not fight the world,” the storm bellowed with the strength of a thousand cataclysms. “Man survives it. Dams break. Houses collapse. The waves swallow cities. It takes mortals centuries to build armors of lies… and a second for nature to take it all away.”

I glared defiantly at the storm of vengeance above my head. I was frozen and half-buried in snow, a terrible chill threatening to extinguish the flame of my heart. I had survived the Nightlords’ ritual, their sire’s brief escape, and Smoke Mountain’s eruption, and here I threatened to perish from the cold’s kiss?

Was that my lesson? That for all my pride and cunning in plotting a Nightlord’s death, I was powerless to fight nature’s wrath? I supposed I should find a measure of humility in it. I had let the thrill of victory go to my head. The cold winds reminded me starkly that while I had set the stage for Yoloxochitl’s demise, it was her divine father who did the deed. I still had a long way to go to kill a Nightlord by myself.

But in the face of nature’s wrath, I could only say one thing.

“Do…” I struggled against the ice holding my beak shut, until I finally broke it through with spite’s strength alone. “Do… your… worst…”

I hadn’t bent the knee before a god, so why should I surrender to a storm?

The clouds laughed sinisterly at me. A strong gust of wind cleared the sky and unveiled a light on the horizon. With no other choice and my bravery intact, I crawled towards it. I used the Doll spell to force my own icy flesh to move, puppeteering my weakened legs and frozen wings.

A single house appeared before me.

From the outside, it appeared as a cozy little cottage with a strong, old wood façade. A ceiling of beastly furs—those of jaguars, llamas, and wolves—insulated it from the terrible cold. Its obsidian windows alone showed light coming from inside its confines.

My Gaze saw the place for what it was though.

Beneath the glamor and the cloak of powerful illusions, the cottage was a gruesome house with walls of twisted bones and pillars of skulls supporting their weight; a sight not so different from my predecessors’ remains. The decrepit roof was still made of tanned skin, but furless, pinkish… human.

Nothing about this place screamed shelter to me. But the warmth… I felt the smooth, inviting warmth of a cookfire from inside its confines, so strong the cold wind recoiled from it.

“Come in, dear, come in,” a female voice called out from behind a door of calcified flesh with a frame of weathered bones. It sounded old, almost kind. “You’re just in time for dinner.”

I stood before a trap’s jaw. Whatever dwelt within this house used the promise of warmth as a lure to tempt the unwary. Out of the frying pan, into the fire; or in this case, the bitter cold.

Alas, I had no other recourse to protect myself from the elements. No doubt another test awaited me past the threshold. I shifted back into the form of a man and raised a frozen hand at the bone doorknob. It unlocked on its own and invited me to enter. I stepped inside, the door closing behind me.

The house appeared quite rustic from the inside, if gruesome. It reminded me of my old home in Acampa, if everything inside had been built from carved bones and cartilage rather than stone and wood. The place’s warmth at least was no illusion. A sturdy hearth sat in the middle of the room, its frame overshadowed by fossilized bone pillars. A bronze cauldron stewed among the flames.

An old woman awaited me behind a cartilage table set up for dinner. She looked ancient and wizened, with frail hands, wrinkles, and tangled gray hair bound into a bun by a bone needle. A kind smile stretched under her milky white eyes. She dressed plainly, her leather robes showcasing her lithe and gaunt frame.

All in all, she looked human.

That itself was cause for alarm, for I was staring at her with the Gaze spell. My magic successfully pierced through a true goddess’ illusions, yet failed to pick up anything odd about this crone. She radiated a sorceress’ magic, but hid no horns nor claws beneath her robes. Her plain, ordinary form was no trickery.

“Welcome, dear,” she greeted me with a gentle grandmother’s expression. She briefly gestured at a chair to her left. “Please make yourself at home.”

I checked the table with my Gaze. A series of dishes were set under the pale light of a candle set. I noticed strange balls of flesh, a sausage, stuffed livers, and roasted ribs. No fruit nor vegetable sat among them. The chair didn’t appear trapped either. I couldn’t see any trap door beneath it, or needle hidden in the wood frame. A stitched leather blanket rested on the seat.

“Dear, what is wrong? Does the blanket bother you?” the woman asked with a curious look.

“My poor little bird, I brought it to warm you up. You’re shivering, nay, shaking like an old tree.”

“Is it cursed?” I rasped, the house’s warmth freeing frozen lips. “Poisoned?”

“Why would it be? It is a blanket, nothing more.” She shook her head in amusement. “My poor child, do I frighten you so much?”

“You are a Lord of Terror.” I was convinced of it now. “I’ve come straight from the House of Gloom, so forgive me if I expect a painful test of some sort.”

The old woman’s smile widened, unveiling her pristine white teeth.

“Oh sweetie,” she said with a sly cackle. “You passed my test a looooong time ago.”

Somehow, that sentence sounded more ominous than all of Smoke Mountain’s roars and tremors.

“As for my brother, Chamiabac, you braved his ordeal by entering my house,” she continued. “He usually puts supplicants through a harsher gauntlet of blizzards and hailstorms, but you have earned his favor the way no other human did before you. Even your mother struggled quite a bit with that one.”

“Is that… is that so?” I rasped. Favor? I did not believe her. A glance at my foot and the missing toe in its midst more than attested to the Lord of Terror’s cruelty. “It didn’t feel that way…”

“Oh believe me, he could have taken far more than just a toe.” The old crone winked at me. “Chamiabac was born from the fear of nature, of crumbling earth, storms and falling hail. He is the fear of the world itself… of forces outside of man’s control. You have fed him well today with that eruption of yours, dear. I suppose he has decided to cut you some slack.”

Somehow, the fact that an ancient demon would look well enough on my work to show me leniency felt almost shameful. Almost. I wouldn’t spit on anything that would make my task easier.

Still, I did not lower my guard. I’d be a fool to take the old hag at her word. For all I knew, she was lulling me into a false sense of security before striking. I sat on the chair and put the blanket over me. The crone had been correct about one thing: I was shivering. My own fingers had grown so numb I could hardly feel their presence anymore.

“Who are you?” I inquired. If I could learn what terror the crone represented, I would have an easier time dealing with her. From her appearance and the old bones, I assumed she embodied the fear of time or something close.

“Oh dear, you know me. I have been with you since the moment your mother first laid her blue eyes upon you. I’m the third oldest in the family, Chamiaholom.” The crone let out a small chuckle. “If you insist on a test, how about you find out what fear I represent? You are a clever child. You will figure it out.”

My host presented me with a drink and a plate. I immediately recognized the thick, viscous red liquid in the cup. As for the food, a set of roasted ribs, it appeared both appetizing and strangely disgusting. A dark part of my mind had a nagging suspicion about its origin.

“What kind of meat is this?” I dared to ask.

“Don’t you know?” The old crone took a mouthful of flesh balls and sipped her own drink. “You brought it yourself.”

A chill traveled down my spine. “I… I don’t understand.”

“Of course you do, sweetie, you just don’t want to accept it yet.” Chamiaholom grinned kindly at me, a piece of flesh stuck between her teeth. “It’s fine, dear. Don’t force yourself to eat if you aren’t hungry. There’s always more where he came from.”

He. Not it. I glanced at the sausage and suppressed a wave of nausea. I now understood where the fleshy balls came from. My host noticed my disgust and attempted to ‘reassure’ me.

“He would thank you if he could,” Chamiaholom said as she moved on to the sausage. She did not blink when she bit into its soft, silky flesh. “Most won’t admit it, but there’s a submissive pleasure about being eaten by another. Death is always a solitary experience, but one struggles to devour oneself alone. The act of cannibalism is the truest expression of community. A man and a woman can make love a thousand times, but they can only devour the other once.”

“I…” I cleared my throat, my hands gripping the blanket. “I see.”

“Of course you do. Death is too often purposeless and devoid of sense. Death by consumption gives meaning to pointless lives.” After finishing her current meal, Chamiaholom moved on to what I assume used to be fileted lungs. “I let nothing go to waste.”

My eyes lingered on the walls of bones, on the roof of skin, and on the burning candles. Now that I examined them closely, they reminded me more of soap than beeswax. Of fat.

“Who…” My skin itched beneath my blanket. Its comforting warmth suddenly felt unbearable. “Who did this blanket come from?”

“I sewed it with the skins of flayed virgins,” the old crone replied with a mischievous wink. “They never offered their warmth to a man in life, but better late than never I always say.”

I shrank into my seat. My first thought was to throw the ghastly blanket away into the cookfire, but I felt so cold and it gave me such warmth…

They are already dead, I told myself, hiding my unease behind a mask of stone. Don’t show weakness. Don’t let her unsettle you.

“Make yourself at home, dear,” Chamiaholom said. “Your mother is the daughter I never had but always wanted. I consider you a cherished grandson.”

I snorted. “I killed the last person who tried to adopt me.”

“I know,” the crone replied with a chuckle. “I long for the day when you murder Ichtaca too. Any child should endeavor to kill their parents once they outlive their usefulness. How else are they supposed to escape their shadows?”

The most frightening part of that woman’s words was the utter conviction with which she uttered them; as if the prospect of matricide wasn’t possible, but inevitable. While I wouldn’t deny that I felt little to no love for Mother, the thought of killing her had never crossed my mind.

However, I could read between the lines. I knew which horrible shadow she referenced: the terrible force I had unleashed on Smoke Mountain.

“You speak of the Nightlords,” I guessed. “They exist in the shadow of their sire.”

“Exactly, sweetie. They betrayed their father, drove him mad, and then spent centuries alternating between leeching off his power or fearing his wrath. When they imprisoned him, they also tightened the chains around their own necks.” Chamiaholom sipped her bloody drink. “Take Yoloxochitl for example. She wasted her existence obsessing over what her father’s kiss had denied her instead of creating her own future. She let her past define her until it stunted her growth.”

“Could they kill him at all?” I pondered. I had only seen a brief glimpse of the First Emperor’s malice last night. His presence had felt about as unfathomably powerful as King Mictlantecuhtli’s, who had witnessed the world’s first dawn and would observe its last. “Is it possible to slay a god at all?”

“Of course, sweetie. Everything can die. If the sisters had used their time researching a way to kill their father instead of raising their Sulfur Sun, he would have faded away by now.” Chamiaholom wiped a drop of blood off her wrinkled lips. “All of this to say, you should kill your mother when the time comes. It will make her proud.”

“I don’t care for my mother’s approval.” I appreciated her support, but she had burned that bridge long ago. “Nor do I intend to kill her.”

“But how else will you know that you have surpassed her?” Chamiaholom let out a sigh of amusement. “Don’t worry, sweetie, I know you can do it. I believe in you.”

Somehow, her approval filled me with shame. “You said I’d passed your test a long time ago,” I recalled. “When?”

“When you set the stage for that foreign war of yours, of course. It was then that I knew you would go far.”

I shifted in my seat. “I passed your test by proving that I could make harsh decisions?”

“Oh no, sweetie, no, no, no.” She playfully waved a finger at me. “You passed when you showcased your capacity for evil.”

My blood boiled in my veins. My fingers had warmed up enough that I could clench my fists in cold anger.

“It was a necessary evil,” I conceded. I wouldn’t deny that crime, but I stood by my decision. “Committed in the service of the greater good.”

“Whose greater good? The world? Or yours?” Chamiaholom’s pale eyes studied me carefully. “Dear, do you believe in right and wrong?”

“Yes,” I replied without hesitation. I doubt anyone with a shred of sense would consider the Nightlords’ actions as righteous.

“You are correct, my clever bird. In fact, it is because humans can tell the difference between the two that they can commit evil.” Chamiaholom stroked her chin. “Animals do not understand the consequences of their actions. Whether they kill to feed or to play, they simply follow their instincts. The jaguar does not stop to consider whether that delicious child had parents to mourn him. Man does.”

I glared at her. “What is your point?”

“That evil doesn’t come from doing wrong, sweetie,” she said wisely. “Evil is knowing that you’re doing wrong, and doing it anyway.”

Her words were spoken kindly, yet felt like a slap to the face. “I had my reasons.”

“Everyone does, sweetheart. But whether you kill an innocent to save the world or to save yourself, you still killed an innocent, did you not?” When I failed to answer, she gestured at the cauldron on the cookfire. “Would you be so kind as to bring me my dessert?”

After a short moment’s hesitation, I rose up from my seat and moved toward the hearth. Now that I looked at it more closely, the cauldron’s shape reminded me of a calcified heart. Had it belonged to a giant once? Or was it woven from the remains of countless victims?

I removed the lid with grim resignation. I could already imagine which dessert would top this gruesome dinner: the one body part I had yet to see among the dishes. I was not disappointed.

A man’s severed head floated in a stew of blood and bile. His empty eyes stared at me with a final look of utter terror.

But it wasn’t any man, no. I recognized him immediately. After all, he could have been my brother-in-law in another life.

“Chimalli,” I whispered.

I had gone to school with him, long before the Nightlords selected me as their sacrificial emperor. He had been a strong and promising young warrior who had asked Necahual to grant him her daughter’s hand; and she had leaned on accepting until Yoloxochitl arrived to seize them both. From what Eztli told me, he had meekly stood by while the Nightkin dragged her away screaming into the night.

Was that a crime that warranted death? I wondered how he’d even perished, before recalling Chamiaholom’s earlier words: that I had brought her dinner.

The flame in my heart wavered as my eyes saw everything in a new light. The roasted food, like it was cooked with fire. The fact I had fed the Lords of Terror well tonight. My hometown’s location, so close to Smoke Mountain. Only then did the magnitude of my crime become evident to me.

“I’ve destroyed Acampa,” I realized, the blood in my veins turning to ice. “I’ve destroyed my home.”

Chamiaholom laughed behind me and put salt on my wounds. “Oh, sweetie,” she said, “You’ve destroyed dozens of Acampas. The flames and toxic smoke will ravage countless more for many, many days.”

“I…” My words died in my throat. I didn’t know? I never wanted this? Those would be lies.

I did know and I did want that outcome. I had simply become so drunk on victory that I had forgotten the consequences of my actions.

I knew countless innocents would pay the cost for my victory. Everyone warned me that my Haunt would have devastating consequences for the world, and Acampa’s relative proximity to the mountain made it likely that it would suffer should the Nightlords’ ritual go wrong. I simply hadn’t considered the possibility because I didn’t like anyone still living there.

It was so much easier to sacrifice strangers than people I knew by face and name.

My hand wadded through the gruesome stew and grabbed the head by the hair. It felt heavy between my fingers, though not as much as my guilt. Chamiaholom clapped as I reluctantly presented her with the head. She swiftly put it on her plate, then plucked out the left eye.

“Ah, an innocent’s life. My second favorite dish after children's hearts.” Chamiaholom winked at me while she chewed the eye. “Those never get old.”

The gruesome joke did not earn a raise out of me. Whether this head was a prop conjured to taunt me or the actual corpse brought to the Underworld, I could only pray that Chimalli’s soul—and the thousands I had slain—would now find a peaceful rest in Mictlan.

My silence only encouraged Chamiaholom to taunt me further.

“You know, dear,” she said, “if you hadn’t tried to take your own life on your first day of being emperor and earned her undivided attention, Yoloxochitl wouldn’t have taken so much interest in your past and thus found Eztli. That poor girl would have lived a peaceful life, married that boy, and bore him children. You ruined both of their lives when you chose to spite the sisters.”

My jaw tightened in anger. “You don't know that. Nobody can.”

“I do, sweetie. I eat more than flesh: I eat hope.” Chamiaholom took Chimalli’s skull into her hands and gluttonously licked the empty eye socket. “When you slew this boy, you extinguished countless lives. The children he would have had, and their children’s children. When you kill a born man, you kill a thousand unborn ones.”

“Is that your test?” I sneered. “Do you seek to kill me with guilt?”

Chamiaholom raised an eyebrow at me. “Do you feel any, dear?”

I glanced at Chimalli’s head. In less than a month’s time, I had taken his future wife, his home, and finally, his life. If the Lords of Terror used the remains of my victims to raise more houses of bones and sinews, it would probably fill a city’s worth of them. I pondered this truth, then accepted it.

“I do,” I conceded, “But not enough to stop.”

Thousands upon thousands of innocents had perished by my actions. In return, I had killed a Nightlord, weakened her sisterhood’s grip on the world, foiled their ritual, destabilized their empire of oppression, and paved the way for its potential collapse. If killing a man meant slaying a thousand of his potential descendants, then surely sparing a life from sacrifice meant saving a thousand more.

No matter how much I reconsidered, the price I’d paid seemed cheap to me. I would spare future generations the horrors of vampiric oppression. In time, no other emperor would have to choose which woman would live and which one would die a gruesome death.

As horrible as it sounded… if I had to, I would awaken Smoke Mountain all over again.

“I have indeed committed an evil act, and I shall commit many more,” I said. “I will bear that burden.”

“And this is why you will become a fearsome demon, sweetheart,” Chamiaholom replied with enthusiasm. “Let your whims guide you. Love, rape, kill, bless, eat, spit, take, give… do as you wish. Pursue your freedom and happiness regardless of the cost. To live as a demon means to do as you will.”

I locked eyes with that horrible creature, this incarnation of remorseless evil hiding beneath a human face… before realizing that I was wrong. She wasn’t hiding anything. Her true nature had been obvious since the moment I used the Gaze on her.

She had called cannibalism an act of community, but a demon feeding on humans couldn’t commit that crime. Only kin could.

She was the third oldest of the Lords of Terror, younger than death and the unknown, but older than the fear of nature itself. She was a fear that all humans shared at birth when they saw their own reflection in their mother’s eyes.

The fear of each other.

“You are the fear of humans,” I guessed.

Chamiaholom smiled warmly at me with all the kindness of the abuser and the cruelty of the depraved.

“I am the father who rapes his daughters,” she said with a thousand voices and one. Male, female, old, young… All the myriad visages of human evil spoke through her in a single chorus. “I am the mother who drowns her child, the starved warrior who eats his comrades, the priest who tortures innocents in the name of gods true and false. I am the cheater, the swindler, the kinslayer. I am the friend, the stranger, the other.”

She put Chimalli’s cleaned off skull on the table and caressed it like a prized trophy.

“I am you, sweetheart,” she whispered with my voice.

I held her gaze and stared at my reflection in her eyes; at my own capacity for cruelty made flesh. An evil that would exist so long as a single man drew breath.

“Anyway, dear, I am full. Thank you for the pleasant conversation.” Chamiaholom pulled at the bone needle binding her hair. “Are you ready to learn sorcery?”

I straightened up and set aside my cloak of human skin. “What do you offer?”

“The same spell I used to build my house, sweetheart.” The needle twisted into a ring between her sharp nails. “Bonecrafting.”