Blood & Fur-Chapter Ninety-Five: Wings of Rebellion

There were moments, in the life of a man, when his entire fate seemed to waver on a single choice.

The first time it happened to me was back on that fateful night under the Scarlet Moon, when I chose to say no to those who would see me enslaved as their puppet.

The second time was when I convinced King Mictlantecuhtli to entrust me with a dead sun’s embers and began my journey onward to divinity.

The third came to me in the depths of Xibalba, where I defied the Lords of Terror for the sake of my father’s soul and received the crown of Cizin.

Now was the fourth of these moments I’d faced in my short life, and I knew it would be the most significant.

A thousand thoughts crossed my mind with each flap of Sugey’s wings. I felt the weight of my mother’s life hanging in the balance, the gaze of my loved ones on my back, and the baleful anger of my enemy.

Mother’s capture would lead to disaster. At best, the Nightlords would force me to rape her to breed another spawn of incest as Iztacoatl once threatened me with; but I found it more likely that they would torture her until she spilled out all of my secrets, and then murder her for contributing to their ritual’s collapse.

And at worst, they would do both.

I had spent enough time under the Nightlords to know which I should expect. My loathed Mother would spend her last moments of life suffering from horrors greater than all of Xibalba’s cruelty, and likely drag me down with her into the darkness.

However, this disaster did present me with a unique and fleeting opportunity.

She’s under the sun. My heart pounded like a drum in my chest, its echo resonating in my skull. Sugey is flying under the sun.

Fate had delivered to me the rarest of chances, like a test delivered by the heavens themselves.

Sugey was more vulnerable than ever. She was in hostile territory and reaching for sanctuary with a mere shield of shadow to protect her from the sun she so feared; her current weakness might compensate for my lack of the third set of embers.

Moreover, I doubted the Nightlords would give me any respite after the last disaster. They could not allow me any freedom after their ritual’s near collapse. What little confidence they recovered after Eztli managed to fit in for their deceased sister would turn to dread and paranoia. I would be recalled to Yohuachanca, far away from any Sapa sorcerer, and kept under constant watch. The Nightlords’ fear of their father would outweigh any public backlash.

I would be demoted from puppet to prisoner and breeding animal.

With Eztli back at my side, I had no one left of importance back at the palace. My predecessors’ souls could express themselves through my Legion spell even with their skulls half a world away. Mother had hidden Astrid away. I had no hostages left to rescue, no strings besides the chains around my soul.

This…

This might be my chance.

“How many forces are with us?” I immediately asked my concubines.

“Mostly amazons and Zachilaa’s soldiers,” Eztli replied. “Chikal kept them in reserve.”

As I suspected. I had been careful to curse my army’s most problematic elements and send them to die on the Flower War’s frontlines while ensuring my loyalists remained mostly untouched. The First Emperor’s outburst had bled my army further. The largest contingents were more loyal to my allies than the Nightlords, and I had two Mometzcopinque witches with potent magic to call upon.

I was in hostile territory; mountains so high that Mother managed to hide from the Nightlords’ forces here for years. It was a fortress so absolute the vampires only considered taking it over by softening it with a plague first.

The Sapa Empire would be the world’s safest place for the Nightlords’ enemies in a way, but they would not welcome me as a friend either. Acting now meant leaping into the unknown, away from safe land into the stormy ocean.

Could my allies and I survive this tempest? Our odds of victory would be long ones, even with my powers and the resources I managed to accumulate.

If I missed my shot… nay, even success would carry consequences. The Nightlords would know. They would know and no lie would save me from their vengeance. The age of difficult submission would end, and a war to the death would begin. Victory would also bring their malevolent father one step closer to his freedom.

Biding my time would be the safest bet. It would involve more lies, more crimes, more shame, and more torture. I would have to beg the Nightlords for forgiveness for my failure to prevent their father’s awakening and spin more convincing arguments. I would have to violate my own mother the same way I despoiled my sister. I would have to partake in more atrocities, all for the chance to delay the inevitable another day.

All I had to do was to look the other way and submit.

I stared at Sugey, at that brute of a false goddess, this centuries-old monster who had crushed countless emperors beneath her heel; my direct predecessor included. Nochtli the Fourteenth too tried to oppose her, and she demoralized him so utterly that he was left a defeated shell of his former self. If I faced her now and wavered, only horrors and defeat awaited me.

It was now or never. She was a minute away from us. From shelter.

I would never have this kind of opportunity in the future. The Nightlords would not lower their guard again, not after they sensed their father struggling against his bindings. Reaching them would become a more difficult task than ever; I had no guarantee that Lord Quetzalcoatl would listen to my pleas and share his embers. Acting now might be my best option.

Yet Sugey remained strong; strong enough to bend the weather itself to her will. My predecessors warned me that the Nightlords’ magic still eclipsed mine in power, and I believed them. My chances of victory were slim.

I glanced at Eztli and Necahual, who would bear with me the consequences of failure. They both stood out of bed, the mother staring at me with resolute determination and the daughter waiting for me to make a call. They didn’t need to say anything; they knew me well enough to guess my thoughts and provide an answer to the question I’d already asked myself.

Like me, they would rather fight than hide.

I closed my eyes and looked into myself. I gazed upon the divine fire burning inside my chest and the black curse filling my throat with an all-consuming thirst for blood. I looked into my soul at the hundred vengeful ghosts of past emperors and my gentle father, who stood united behind me in shared pain and kinship. I listened to the powerful, half-born god slumbering deep within me, begging to burn bright like the sun.

However, it was the wind blowing on my face that strengthened my purpose. The breath of the Yaotzin touched my cheeks from outside as it did from the very day of my birth, both a blessing and a curse. I now understood why I could hear its voice.

I am chaos, I thought. The enemy of all sides.

I was born on the first day of the Wind, and neither gods nor men could shackle us.

I gathered my breath and opened my eyes. I stared at the darkened horizon and faced the crimson glare of my tormentor, of my captor and enemy. I stared at the true Lord of Terror who ruled this world, and whose fear and power led me to descend into depths of despair and depravity.

I faced evil itself, and uttered a single Word of defiance.

“Clear!”

I declared war.

My power radiated across the sky faster than a wave on a shore and with a half-born god’s roar. The divine magic dwelling within my soul, long shackled and forced into silence, finally expressed itself in all of its shining glory. The wind and clouds shuddered.

My Word collided with the will of a primeval and ancient horror which had fed on the spirit of a god and the blood of millions. Sugey was strong, unbelievably so. Her body was bloated from the countless souls she had consumed across centuries, and within her dwelled a divine darkness.

Sugey’s magic eclipsed the light of half a sun. I immediately sensed the difference in power between us, vast and wide. Without a third set of embers, I could not hope to stand up to her as an equal.

But she was off her game, distracted, shaken. I took her by surprise like a jaguar pouncing on an unwary prey and in doing so, disrupted her sorcery at a critical juncture when she required all of her attention to keep both the sun at bay and her father safely imprisoned.

She faltered.

The world recognized my authority, and the sky cleared.

The sun’s rays set Sugey’s skin and feathers on fire.

Guatemoc told me that the amazons managed to kill a Nightkin by dragging him into the sun, his body turning to dust in an instant. The child was not the parent, no more than men were anything more than the shadows of the gods who created us, so the sun failed to vaporize Sugey on the spot.

But it hurt.

Her twin heads shrieked together in a delightful symphony of agony. The holy light which she and her sisters arrogantly tried to turn to sulfur flames immolated her like how burning tar harmed the mortals she looked down upon. Smokeless fire enveloped her in its searing embrace, and I sensed her magic struggling against my Word to restore her shield.

Sugey didn’t let go of Mother though.

So I decided to get her back.

“Eztli, Necahual, go find Chikal and the others,” I ordered my concubines as I opened the window wide and stepped on its rail. “A purge is at hand.”

I leaped into the void and grew wings.

My Spiritual Manifestation and Bonecraft combined together like they did in the Underworld. A thick layer of Ossuary Armor grew to envelop my skin in a protection harder than any stone. Ebon wings unfurled from my back and shoulders to carry me into the sky. My chest burned with a fire that would no longer hide. My visage became that of the owl-fiend I had always been beneath my mortal disguise. I heard Itzili roar in the distance to announce my presence like a herald, his wrath an echo of mine.

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Soldiers below looked up to see a Tlacatecolotl take to the sky.

Only a fraction of my army had regrouped in these mountains, most of them amazons, Jaguar Warriors and Eagle Knights stragglers, or disparate warriors who managed to flee from the tide of undead I’d accidentally summoned. I sensed hundreds of gazes upon me, torn between shock, awe, and fear.

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A demon had risen from the Underworld to challenge their goddess.

My divine half fed on their emotions, their terror and belief becoming my strength. The thirst for blood and tiredness I’d felt earlier faded away. Even the First Emperor’s grip on my blazing soul weakened slightly, the way a shadow recoiled from a brightening light.

Our expedition had retreated into a narrow pass between two chains of verdant mountains taller than any tower and sharp like a great beast’s fangs; I could only see green as far as the eye could see, and a small river below. There was nowhere to run, no place to hide. I had leaped into the abyss.

It was victory or death now.

I drew upon the Slice spell fueled by the thousands who cursed my name. I channeled a blade of wind sharpened by the Sapa’s fear and the final breaths of all my victims, then cast it forward with an executioner’s purpose. My projectile whistled as it cut through the air and then slashed its way across Sugey’s hand, severing it clean from her arm. Mother fell with it, and as our eyes crossed, I could see the shock and surprise gleaming in them; the single question that occupied all of her mind, and whose answer she could never understand.

Why?

Why act now? Why would I risk everything to save her, after all the lies, all the betrayals, all the tears?

“You are my mother,” I simply replied.

Even after everything… Ichtaca deserved better than becoming yet another of the Nightlords’ countless victims.

And in that moment, as I flew past Mother and met Sugey’s bloodthirsty glare, I finally understood the nature of evil; the key difference that allowed a god to become a sun and condemned the other to linger as the moon’s pale shadow.

Evil was sacrificing others for one’s act rather than risk oneself; to punish others for what we weren’t willing to do ourselves. Evil was hypocrisy. Evil was sending others to die in one’s stead while watching from the sidelines, or to feel relief when another died in our place.

Evil was cowardice.

Evil was surrendering.

Sugey overshadowed me in size and grandeur even in my Tlacatecolotl form. I only rose up to her waist, the way an owl hardly compared to a vulture in fearsomeness; yet I tackled her with twice the fury she could ever muster. My bonecrafted talons sank into her chest in search of her rotten heart, my speed so great that the momentum sent us both crashing against the nearest mountain. Sugey’s back and wings hit a cliff in an impact of dust and stone.

Her four crimson eyes peered through the cloak of fire consuming her skin and feathers, and I could tell she recognized me instantly; she saw the face of her betrayer and glared back with the fear and anger of a master whose slave had dared to strike back.

“Burn,” I ordered. “Burn!”

I channeled the Blaze through my fingers even as my lips uttered the Word. Fire surged from my palms in a whitening blast spreading into Sugey’s chest. I melted her diseased black flesh off her ribs with the radiance of dead suns. The flames, meanwhile, followed my Word and brightened.

Sugey roared, and darkness poured out of her.

Waves of solid shadows erupted from her flesh and soul with immense strength, throwing me off her chest and back into the air. I quickly adjusted my flight just in time to see darkness envelop Sugey and then most of the area. Obscurity eclipsed the sun.

The Nightlord’s sorcery had undone my Word.

The flames consuming Sugey stopped burning without sunlight, but she still bore the marks. Melting burn marks seared her body everywhere I looked and saw her blackened feathers burnt to a crisp; a smoking crater oozed black blood at the center of her torso. Such wounds would have slain any natural creature on this earth, yet I saw no fear in Sugey’s twin-headed gaze; only hatred.

I briefly glanced at my side to check on Mother. She too used Spiritual Manifestation to grow wings, but she had predictably elected to flee into the mountains rather than to fight. I heard the clamor of clashing weapons and Itzili’s roars coming from my camp, and saw the glow of fire and lightning.

My allies waged their own battle, and I would fight mine alone.

“You finally bare your fangs at us, Iztac!” Sugey snapped at me with what could pass for a mix of fury and bloodthirsty glee. “I thought you would never try!”

She knew?

Of course she knew, I thought. She was no Jaguar Woman blinded by pride, no lovestruck fool like Yoloxochitl had been. My powers took her by surprise, but she always knew I would fight back one day. She simply didn’t care until I acted in the open.

Or maybe she did.

“It’s all a game to you, isn’t it?” I asked, my voice dripping with disgust and my hands shining with the Blaze. “To see how far you can push us emperors until we bite back.”

“The nights are long, and hidden knives keep us sharp.” Sugey pointed a claw at my chest. “Alas, I have no time to play with you today.”

She called upon my curse and tried to kill me on the spot.

The chains around my heart-fire suddenly tightened like a hangman noose. An immense pressure began to crush my very soul in an attempt to extinguish my life. Had I still been a mere mortal, I would likely have suffered from a stroke right where I stood.

Yet we endured.

Light and darkness both came to my rescue. The embers dwelling within my soul radiated with the glow of rebellion, while a greater darkness lashed back at the attempt to constrain us. I sensed Sugey’s vengeful father smelling the blood in the water and forcing his daughters to turn their attention to him.

I briefly doubted my purpose upon sensing the First Emperor’s malevolence. Prevailing against Sugey meant bringing this horror a step closer to freedom and shepherding mankind towards doomsday. Was slavery under the Nightlords truly preferable to death?

The answer rose from deep within my heart.

“I refuse!”

I refused to believe that my fate—nay, that of all of mankind—was to be forever stuck between two shades of evil. There had to be a better option hidden beyond that dark horizon. The First Emperor had been beaten once; and he could be defeated again.

I would never stop fighting.

I repelled Sugey’s grip on my soul and retaliated with a storm of fire. The Nightlord once again unleashed a wave of darkness in response, my light colliding with her shield of shadows.

“You are strong, Iztac,” Sugey said as her wings unfurled, their extent so wide as to cast a village into their shadow. “But whatever power our father gave you won’t be enough.”

She waved her hand at me and summoned a whirlwind from her palm. I barely had time to surround myself in a Cloak spell before a storm mighty enough to uproot trees hit me head on. The impact threw me backward across the sky and allowed Sugey to take flight.

This was it. The fight I had prepared for so long; the mountain I sacrificed so much to climb.

Sugey was unfortunately right in that her power still trumped mine. A one-on-one duel at night would have swiftly led to my defeat. She would only have to tighten the chains on my heart to strangle it.

But Sugey was fighting more than one foe. The blazing sun would not go anywhere, and its radiance would burn her to cinders without her spell to shield her. Her father railed against his seal, forcing her to keep it shut rather than tighten the hangman’s noose her sisters wove around my heart.

I have to force her into the sun, I thought as I escaped the whirlwind, only to find Sugey flying straight at me with bloodthirsty glee. She was fast, far faster than a bird her size should be able to move. Keep her on the defensive.

“You are one to talk about strength,” I said upon pointing a finger at her. “Fall, Mometzcopinque!”

Sugey’s two heads glared at me with potent malevolence. I had guessed right.

This hypocrite, who extolled the virtues of superior bloodline and will, never wielded any strength of her own. She was a fraud through and through!

Sugey likely expected to crash on the ground from my order, only for gravity itself to reverse and send her plummeting into the sky above us. The Fall spell hurled her through the dark clouds she summoned and exposed her to the sun. She burned again like a candle while the shadows struggled to follow her asset.

Sugey quickly wrestled free of my spell’s grip on her by virtue of her stronger sorcery and her dark clouds quickly swirled above her head to shield her from sunlight. Nonetheless, it provided me with important information: her defense remained stationary unless she made a mental effort to direct it.

“I earned this power, while you stole yours!” I said upon channeling the Slice through my hands and imbuing the sharpened wind with the Blaze. “None of this strength is yours, Bird of Weakness! You borrowed it all from your father!”

“And once I have crushed you, the vessel in which Father put all his power and hopes, then I shall earn this strength in truth!” Sugey retorted, her thick black blood surging from her burning wounds and coalescing into hundreds, if not thousands of sharpened crystal spears. “I will shatter his hope for freedom and silence it forever!”

We both fired our projectiles at the same time; I unleashed blades of fiery wind, and she a rain of spears. Sugey narrowly avoided being beheaded by my slice by flying to the side and I gracefully dodged her projectiles… only for them to adjust their trajectory and chase after me.

Taken aback, I quickly dived towards the ground as the spears began to pursue me across the sky, quickly followed by Sugey herself. She was slightly slower than I was by virtue of her greater size, but the difference remained frighteningly slim.

I descended closer to the nearest mountain’s flank, cast a Veil of invisibility around myself, and flew among the trees at high speed. Spears hit trunks and tore the forest to shreds, but I managed to outpace them all. I hoped to trick Sugey and sneak up on her under the cover of illusion, only to curse upon realizing that she could track me without the need for sight.

“I can hear your heart pounding with fear, Iztac!” I heard Sugey call out from above me. Her wingspan cast me in thick shadows, while a terrible skull-shaped mace materialized in her hand out of nowhere. “There is nowhere for you to hide!”

Her body radiated a crimson aura that engulfed me, and I bled.

My own burning blood suddenly rebelled against me under the grip of a foreign force. The fluid surged out of all possible openings in an attempt to escape my veins; it erupted from my eyes, poured through my nose and mouth, and tried to break out of long-closed scars. I suddenly struggled to breathe and my vision blurred red.

Months of practicing Seidr gave me an intuitive understanding of the lifeforce coursing through my blood, and I managed to partly repel Sugey’s hold on it. I cast the Gaze to clear my vision just in time to see my enemy diving down on me with the intent to kill.

Sugey hit the ground in a cataclysmic crash.

I barely managed to fly out of her mace’s way before it could smash me to pieces on the ground, but no amount of agility would have let me escape the resulting shockwave. Sugey’s impact blasted away all trees around her, shattered stones beneath her feet, and sent debris flying in all directions. I was thrown back with such force that the Cloak and Veil spells immediately dispelled before hitting a rock hard enough for the Ossuary Armor to crack.

I powered through the pain and quickly rose to my feet just in time to see Sugey towering over me, her mace raised above my head.

I reacted just in time to cast my Doll spell. Talons of darkness surged from my body, grabbed Sugey’s left leg, and pulled with inhuman force. My enemy tripped and barely caught herself by falling to one knee, her mace hitting an empty spot. I quickly took flight, moved above Sugey, and fired at her twin faces with the Blaze. A torrent of fire swirled from my hands and blasted the Nightlord’s eyes. She shrieked in pain as I boiled those orbs within their sockets like eggs.

Then Sugey roared, and the world trembled in response.

A shriek louder than Smoke Mountain’s eruption resonated across the landscape. My ears bleed from the sheer volume, but covering them with my hands didn’t lessen the pain in the slightest; the noise traveled through my bones, both outside my skin and beneath. I felt my armor crack under the pressure while the remains of trees around us shattered to splinters.

The crimson aura surrounding Sugey expanded until it covered the mountains. I sensed her call through the web of life that bound all living things together; an imperious order that the weak couldn’t resist.

However, it was no longer addressed to me. I sensed no grip trying to force my blood to rebel, no overwhelming power trying to tear me apart. Sugey’s order spread far and wide to her slaves across the world, calling upon them to serve.

And blood flowed back to her in return.

Streams of crimson fluids flowed above us in great red rivers gathering among the clouds. The quickest to reach her came from my own camp, but the bulk of the substance reached out from the far north and my homeland of Yohuachanca. The blood crossed miles of distance in seconds to return back to the source from which it first sprang.

I always assumed that the Nightlords created red-eyed priests to develop a caste of thralls bloodbound to them, and while that remained true, I now realized that their servants fulfilled an auxiliary purpose.

Anything a Nightlord gave, they could take back with interest.

Their priests were blood banks; extensions of their mistresses that could be sacrificed in a pinch. I couldn’t tell how many of Sugey’s servants survived her father’s brief awakening, or if the Nightlord even needed them alive to recall their lifeforce to her. Whatever the case, she harvested rivers worth of lifeforce. Sugey anointed herself in a baptism of death, her wounds healing before my very eyes.

Then she grew.

Layers upon layers of blood coated Sugey’s skin and feathers before solidifying into tendons of flesh. A terrible, overwhelming pressure fell upon me as the Nightlord lived up to her name by further darkening the sky. Her already immense frame widened further as her arms lengthened towers and her legs became hills. Her wingspan enveloped the entire forest and her eyes brightened with the glow of crimson stars shining in the dark.

I looked up, and a feathered mountain stared back at me.