Chapter Fifty-Nine: The Old Dead Past

I sealed a pact with the winds of chaos to the triumphant tune of demonic applause.

Xibalba’s streets rejoiced over my counteroffer with the soft sound of clapping hands echoing in the distance. Whether this place of nightmares meant to congratulate or mock me didn’t matter. I let the sound wash over me like waves on the eternal shore, all of my attention focused on the negotiation at hand.

“A life never exists alone in the void,” I argued with the Yaotzin. “If I take a soul, I prevent the potential birth of hundreds that they could have sired. My mother’s life is precious to me, but I demand more for a price which only an emperor may satisfy. I want another benefit.”

The Yaotzin blew among the dead city’s towers, blanketing my feathers with its malice. “What do you seek?”

“Power,” I replied immediately. “I give you the death of hundreds and ask only for the death of the few in return. I want a spell to slay my foes with.”

“Your bargaining position is highly dubious,” the wind replied coldly. It knew I wouldn’t have called upon it had I any other alternative. “You sought our assistance beyond the bounds of the Augury spell, and we agreed to provide it for a price.”

“A price which only I may pay,” I retorted. I had dreamed of becoming a merchant, and I had haggled many times with gods and demons since I ascended to the obsidian throne. Resistance no longer frightened me. “Now that I know that you can provide the service I asked for, we can negotiate.”

“A fair price we asked. A price you will pay.”

“My mother’s life is not enough to satisfy my greed.” I was done begging for table scraps. “I demand more.”

I detected a hint of amusement in the wind’s answer. “It is in the nature of man to desire what they cannot have and be found wanting.”

“And it is in your nature to spread chaos and suffering, as is mine,” I replied. “You have goaded me on the dark path of the Tlacatecolotl, and now I walk it with purpose. I have cursed millions with fire, disease, and devastation. I have reminded the Nightlords what it is to fear death. Have I not fed you well?”

“We owe you nothing.”

“I call not upon your gratitude, for I know you feel none,” I replied. “I speak to you not as a supplicant, but as a business partner. You asked for much and I could yet offer you more in the future. Support me in my quest, and I might call upon you with more than scraps of secrets to offer.”

The Yaotzin coiled around me like a hurricane around its eye. I sensed its power, its hunger, and below both, its calculating and ancient intelligence. The wind of chaos possessed greater foresight than any man; it had tried to goad me down the path of destruction long before I became emperor. Though it was the enemy of all sides, it was in the Yaotzin’s nature to prosper in times of war; and for my conflict with the Nightlords to escalate, I had to grow stronger.

I sensed a shift in the pressure around me as the Yaotzin considered my proposal. When it spoke up again, it did not address me with cryptic words or taunts meant for children, but a tone full of solemnity.

“Then a bargain is struck,” the wind said grimly. “We grant you command over the last breaths of those whose lives you have taken, heavy with despair; and with them, you shall craft the sword of the Slice. Use it however you wish.”

The Yaotzin blew between my fingertips. I heard voices and whispers coiling inside my palms; a chorus of final curses and death wails. The souls whose hopes I’d silenced with Smoke Mountain’s flames and the sting of my murders spat at me, their condemnation fueling a wind beholden to their killer. I let this current guide me and waved my hand at the nearest wall. The cold wind formed a blade that sliced through the stone with the depth of an obsidian sword.

It was true what they said. Words could cut deeper than any blade.

“We shall forewarn your witch-mother of the enemy that threatens her, child of the wind, but we offer a warning,” the Yaotzin said. “Those who mistreat their slaves are bound to one day suffer their wrath. Chaos stings both ways.”

“I know,” I replied, though I didn’t care at all. I would bear any reproach sent my way. If others complained about the prices I’d paid, then they should have rebelled against the Nightlords in the first place and not made these bargains of mine unavoidable.

Though I remained worried for Mother and Astrid, my heart briefly swelled with pride. I’d bargained with otherworldly forces and for once earned more than what it had asked for. I was gaining true power inch by inch.

The winds of chaos swiftly reminded me of my tenuous position.

“Remember the price we asked, for we shall suffer no delay and answer betrayal with blood.” The Yaotzin’s final warning silenced Xibalba’s applause, the wind’s whispers now cold and threatening. “We shall meet again in the depths of faithlessness.”

I answered the threat with silence and waited until the winds of chaos no longer blew. I next turned to my predecessors’ skull medium. The past emperors offered neither reassurance nor condemnation.

I would have to live with the consequences of my own decision.

With little else to do in Xibalba and the city keeping its doors closed to me—a state of affairs that would likely last until my uncertainty over Mother’s fate ended—I forced myself awake and returned to the world above.

Ingrid rested in my arms, her eyes wide open. She didn’t find sleep.

I couldn’t blame her. Beneath her wits and confident exterior, Ingrid remained a young woman who had seen far too much for her young age. She didn’t wield magic that could offer her a measure of comfort, nor spirit her sister Astrid away from Iztacoatl’s grasp. She was a plaything dancing in the palm of greater forces.

“Everything will be fine, Ingrid,” I whispered in her ear. The wisest part of myself didn’t truly believe it—the Nightlords’ cruelties had cured me of this naivety—but part of me wanted to make it true nonetheless. “Your sister will enjoy a nice trip across the empire and return home safely.”

I’d promised a hundred souls for the mere hope of shielding my mother from incoming danger. At this point, I would likely slay ten times that number if it meant keeping Astrid safe.

When Ingrid turned to look at me, I could tell that my words had failed to reach her. “My lord is kind, but our true home lies far beyond the sea.”

Of course she didn’t consider that prison of a palace any more of a home than I did.

“Do you wish to see Winland one day?” I asked while stroking her hair. “See the snow?”

She stared back at her pillow, though I’d caught a flicker of hope in her eyes. “It is a foolish dream.”

“Not for an emperor,” I insisted. I couldn’t promise her to send her there—the Nightlords would never allow it—but I might be able to bring Winland to her. “I could build a new one for you.”

My bold proclamation caused Ingrid to stare at me in genuine confusion. “A new Winland, my lord?”

“Say the word, Ingrid, and I will have servants fetch enough snow from the mountaintops to cover the garden,” I declared. “I will have workers dig a lake in the courtyard, raise an island in its midst, and cover it in snow. I will create a second Winland for your eyes alone.”

Ingrid scoffed, then covered her mouth to suppress her laughter at my eccentric proposal. I took it as a good sign. “It would be quite the expensive and logistical ordeal,” she pointed out. “Snow melts, my lord.”

“Haven’t you heard?” I teased her. “There is no problem that enough manpower cannot solve. If my runners can send a message across the empire in a day’s time, then they can bring you snow before it melts.”

It would be a foolish and extravagant waste of resources, the kind of whim worthy of a mad emperor. To create a snow island that would melt at the first rays of dawn wouldn’t help me defeat the Nightlords.

But for a moment, such an island would allow Ingrid to dream of a better future: a tomorrow where she could see snow elsewhere than on palace tapestries, where she could visit lands beyond the reach of our jailers, and where her sister could grow without an executioner’s axe hanging above her head.

Ingrid shifted places in the bed and leaned against my chest, her hand caressing me in a way that sent jolts down my navel. “My lord is promising me much.”

“There is nothing beyond my power,” I replied. Not even your sister’s safety. “Especially not your happiness, Ingrid.”

“My lord is very kind, as always.” Ingrid hesitated an instant, then lightly kissed me on the lips. Her touch was clumsier than usual and rife with tension, but sincere nonetheless. “I count myself lucky to have been blessed with such a good man for a husband.”

My heart pounded in my chest as I held her. The same gentle warmth that I felt in Nenetl’s presence and that of Eztli coursed through my body. A deep and profound affection that let me forget my troubles for a brief instant.

Brief being the keyword here.

Tenoch soon entered the bedroom and bowed before my bed. “We have reached your hometown, Master,” she informed me. “I was told that the goddess Iztacoatl herself left a gift for you at the site.”

As usual, the Nightlords’ schemes never failed to find a way to spoil my mood. Funny how the mere promise of a gift from them made me fear the worst.

Tenoch dressed me and Ingrid just in time for our convoy to reach Acampa. I stood by the balcony alongside my consorts and concubines—save for Eztli, who still had to hide from the daylight—to witness a wasteland of ashes and debris under the midday sun.

Little more than blasted ruins remained of my hometown and its surrounding region. The eruption had ravaged the forests and fields near my home, snapping pines like twigs and burning everything until only ashes covered the land. A desert of dust blanketed the world, as it did in its beginning. I saw black soot everywhere I looked where grass used to be. The few houses that remained had their roofs blasted off, their crooked walls standing amidst the eerie silence. No one spoke; no one had survived. Even the river where Eztli and I used to play had dried up, its bed devoid of water.

How many souls used to live in Acampa’s region at its height? Three-hundred? How many of them had managed to escape the region before the flames and quakes consumed them?

“Behold the wasteland that you have created,” the wind taunted me. “A grave fit for burned men.”

“What a dreadful sight,” Nenetl commented with a horrified expression. She glanced at me in concern. “I am so sorry, Iztac.”

“I’m fine, Nenetl,” I replied with a shrug. Harsh as it sounded, the sight of this blasted village gave me a measure of peace amidst the melancholia. “I expected such desolation.”

My composure cracked when I finally caught sight of Iztacoatl’s ‘gift.’

In spite of this disaster’s magnitude, a single building appeared untouched by the chaos: the very house in which Necahual and Guatemoc once welcomed me. This was a mere illusion: familiar cracks in the dry mud walls were missing and the fence looked better than before Smoke Mountain’s rage came crashing down.

The very sight of this cursed place unsettled my mother-in-law and caused my lips to twist in annoyance. There was no way the house miraculously survived the eruption. Iztacoatl must have ordered it rebuilt to better taunt me.

“Was this your home, my lord?” Ingrid guessed, her arm coiled around mine to support me.

“It was my house, once,” I replied with a scowl. I’d lost my true home alongside my father.

“Our Lord Emperor lived in a shack,” Chikal commented. “Good. There is greater nobility in rising from nothing than being born into wealth.”

There was no nobility in being Yohuachanca’s emperor at all, but I knew Chikal was only playing along. Unwilling to let Iztacoatl rattle me so easily without retaliating, I ordered the longneck to stop near the village.

“Necahual, come with me,” I ordered. “The goddess wishes us to say goodbye to our old lives, and we shall indulge her.”

“As Your Majesty wishes,” Necahual replied with an utter lack of enthusiasm.

“She does not mourn the old days,” the wind whispered in my ears. “Though the cold nights ahead are no better.”

I snorted. She only regretted these times because she had Eztli for herself and power over me. I didn’t miss them in the slightest.

I climbed down from my longneck alongside Necahual and Itzili the Younger, who growled at the house. I patted him on his feathered head and gave him free rein to hunt down any of Iztacoatl’s snakes, should he find any.

“Welcome to the ruins of your former life, Your Divine Majesty,” Tayatzin welcomed me on the ground below with a deep bow. He had seen my agitation and sought to reassure me. “Pay no mind to these embers of mortality. You are a god incarnate now, and the earth shudders in your presence.”

“Who ordered this place rebuilt?” I asked Tayatzin with a cold dead voice as we inspected the area.

“Lady Iztacoalt,” he replied, confirming my suspicions. I’d expected another one of her cruel jokes. “An emperor’s old house should stand on stronger foundations than those of peasants.”

“She is right, of course,” I said without meaning any of it. She will pay for this. “Were there any survivors?”

“I’m afraid your hometown of Acampa was entirely wiped out,” Tayatzin confirmed. “However, a few of your classmates at the region’s school managed to evacuate in time, alongside their families.”

Classmates?

The word only brought back troubled memories: the smell of trash down the sanitary pit, the sensation of my fingers clawing at walls of dung, the mocking, the shunning, and the beatings. A well of buried scorn swelled to the surface of my soul and overwhelmed it with filth. I thought I had left these memories in the dust, but the past always found a way to cling to me.

Nonetheless, this turn of events provided a grim opportunity for me to seize. Wicked souls shouldn’t survive cataclysms that slaughtered the innocent.

I briefly glanced at the longneck holding my roaming palace and consorts. Nenetl, Ingrid, and the others were luckily too far away to hear what I was about to say. I would at least spare them an awful truth today, at least until Iztacoatl inevitably revealed it to them.

“How is the school?” I questioned Tayatzin.

“Damaged, but the facilities can be repurposed.”

“Gather my former classmates at the school’s ruins.” I marked a short pause as a small part of me still hesitated, only to be swept away by the unrelenting tide of pragmatism. “And bring ropes.”

Necahual flinched at my side, her eyes wide open with horror. Tayatzin didn’t show half of her moral qualms, but he clearly guessed what I had in mind.

“All of them, Your Majesty?” he asked me.

“At least a hundred,” I replied off-handedly. “If you can’t make the count, grab refugees that would be a burden to the state. The old, the criminals, the useless ones who have no place in our empire of faith.”

“We shall gather them within the hour, Your Majesty.”

I deigned to dignify his answer with a nod, then stepped towards Guatemoc’s house and pushed open the small wooden door. Necahual meekly followed me closely without a word while Itzili began to patrol the area around the house to ensure no one would listen in on us.

The insides of her home hadn’t changed in the slightest; the maize-woven mattresses used by the family lay in a dark room right next to a small central room and its hearth. A near-perfect recreation of Necahual’s herb reserve stood along a wall. Either the red-eyed priests recorded the position of every object in the house when they came to capture the family on Yoloxochitl’s orders, or Iztacoatl used magic to obtain this information.

This place and its associated memories filled me with quiet fury. I should have been beyond this by now, but it was stronger than me. This house reminded me of my greatest fear.

Powerlessness.

Frustrating memories assaulted me the moment I glanced at Necahual. I recalled the kiss of the stones she threw at my face, the sensation of her hand on my cheek, the noise of Guatemoc drinking pulque as he had me work his fields. I wanted to burn this house like I did the beasts of Xibalba.

My eyes lingered on the herbs first. I immediately recognized some of the pots that Eztli switched around. Did Iztacoatl put them there as a joke of some kind?

“What are those for?” I asked Necahual. “I remember seeing them on your shelves.”

My concubine scowled and looked away. “Contraceptives.”

I thought I’d misheard for a second. The word hit me like a wave and left me shaken in disbelief. I blinked at Necahual as my mind struggled to accept what my ears had just heard.

Contraceptives?

Necahual’s contraceptives?

There has to be a mistake.She wouldn’t have dared, my heart insisted, though my head knew otherwise. The old Eztli wouldn’t have sunk so low, but the new one’s vampiric nature stripped her of shame and much of her human empathy. She can’t do this to me. To her own mother.

But then doubt began to gnaw at me. I recalled how Eztli once tried to dissuade me from practicing Seidr with Ingrid, and subtly encouraged me to get intimate with Necahual. I saw all the tiny hints that I’d blinded myself to behind a veil of nostalgia.

I knew Eztli was on our side. She supported me in our secret war and did her best to protect us both, but her deception filled me with a deep nausea and lurched my stomach. My oldest friend—or rather, her shadow—had betrayed me and her own mother in the most deplorable way possible.

Why would she even think this was a good idea? Bearing my children was Necahual’s worst fear, and the thought of my child becoming either a vampire or breeding stock sickened me to my core. Did she think in her undead madness that a child would bring us closer together?

My fists clenched at the betrayal. Eztli was sick. Evil had infected her since the night I saw her kill her own father, but it was only now that I fully fathomed how deep the vampiric curse corrupted her. Yoloxochitl sucked out her soul alongside her blood.

I sensed the weight of Necahual’s gaze on me. I opened my mouth to gasp for air, suppressing the sickness overtaking me. Though I couldn’t hold my tongue, I retained the presence of mind to stay vague in case Iztacoatl could somehow listen in on us. I opened the bottles and pretended to check their contents.

“Someone sabotaged yours,” I said without explaining how I reached this conclusion. I hoped that Necahual could fill in the blanks on her own, and I didn’t have the heart to mention Eztli.

As it turned out, I didn’t need to.

“My daughter,” Necahual replied with a grim look. “She switches them while I sleep.”

My eyes widened in shock and horror. “You knew?”

Necahual sneered at me. “You thought it would change anything if I didn’t?” she asked me. “After all they’ve done to us, you think they would let me have control of my own body? That they would let me keep those herbs if they did anything?”

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

I froze in place. “What are you saying?”

“The cooks put enough fertility herbs in our food to quicken any barren womb,” Necahual replied in disgust at my ignorance. “Eztli hasn’t noticed because she doesn’t eat with us, but I recognized the taste instantly.”

“Then your contraceptives–”

“Gave me hope.” Necahual crossed her arms and stared down at the ground in defeat. “Little else.”

Her words sank in my mind, and for a brief instant I felt compassion for her. Neither of us had any choice in the matter. Necahual’s guess was likely correct, as much as it disgusted me. The Nightlords would never allow concubines access to effective contraceptives when their only purpose was to give birth to new generations of vampires.

They never gave us a choice.

But though it might not have changed anything, I still couldn’t come to terms with Eztli’s actions. They clashed so much with the memory of the sweet girl she used to be that I simply couldn’t reconcile the two.

Necahual looked away in shame and regret. “All my daughter wanted was a simple life,” she whispered. “Find a husband, run her own household, and raise a family of her own. First with Chimalli, then you. I denied her that gift.”

“You did not,” I replied, though Necahual silenced me with a glare. We both knew that Yoloxochitl wouldn’t have given her a thought had she not spent my childhood throwing stones at me.

“My daughter can’t have any of that anymore, so she hopes to experience it through me,” Necahual muttered under her breath. “Use me as a surrogate for the child she wanted to have herself.”

I struggled against nausea. “That is sick.”

“My daughter is sick.” Necahual squinted at me. “You haven’t noticed.”

“Noticed what?”

“My daughter’s flowers.” Necahual clenched her jaw. “I’ve seen her water them with her blood.”

My heart skipped a beat as I recalled Yoloxochitl’s garden. Pieces fell into place and recontextualized past events to form a horrifying picture.

The signs became clear to me. Eztli’s sudden obsession with forcing a child on Necahual; the way she treated her handmaiden Atziri; and her decreasing humanity.

Taking on the role of the First Emperor allowed him to speak through my mouth. So great was the occult weight of the Nightlords’ rituals that it allowed Eztli to stand in her vampiric sire’s place. To embody her.

To become her.

Eztli, my oldest friend and the love of my life, was slowly transforming into the very thing that robbed her of her life. Taking on traits from the late Yoloxochitl and growing to fit her role.

And for now, I was powerless to stop her change.

My hands began to shake on their own. I stared at my trembling fingers in disbelief and tried to clench my fists to stop them, to no avail. My breath grew short and weak.

How long has this been going on?Since the moment Yoloxochitl perished? After the First Emperor’s proclamation? Before? I tried to recall every little hint that could inform me when Eztli began to change, every comment that could enlighten me, but I failed to pinpoint an exact start. How long until she becomes Yoloxochitl reborn?

Eztli was slipping into darkness before my eyes. I hadn’t even noticed, and even after doing so I still couldn’t protect her from herself.

My pact with the Yaotzin didn’t fully reassure me either. Warning Mother of incoming danger wasn’t a promise of ensuring her safety. I couldn’t rule out the possibility that Iztacoatl prepared countermeasures to capture her; and even if she failed to catch Mother, she would likely interrogate me tonight.

Not to mention whatever she had planned for Astrid. My gut told me it would end in tears.

This is too much. I hit the nearest wall so hard it scratched my knuckles. I can’t deal with this right now.

“She knew,” I whispered under my breath, my heart seized with horror. “She knew.”

“Whom?” Necahual asked with a frown.

“Iztacoatl, who else?” I snapped at her, my teeth grinding against each other. “She knew about Eztli. She had to.”

Was she truly blind to my spy network, or did she expect Ezti to spill the beans when she was gone far enough? Was that part of her plan? Did Eztli know something about what the Nightlord had planned for Astrid? Did she already betray us? Would she betray us?

The more I thought about it, the more anxious I became. I held my head with my hand as I furiously tried to figure out how to handle Eztli. She already knew too much, and if she said the wrong thing to Iztacoatl...

“Can’t trust her anymore,” I mumbled under my breath, my mind a storm through which I couldn’t see any ray of light. “Can’t. Too risky, too dangerous…”

“Iztac,” Necahual whispered in concern. “Iztac?”

I was too far gone to listen. “Is this all part of her plan?” I muttered to myself as I attempted to figure out how far the snake’s reach extended. “Mother might have been a smokescreen, a trick…”

Necahual studied my clenched fists for a moment, pondered how to proceed, and then said the one thing I never wanted to hear.

“Brings back memories, cursed child?”

My blood ran cold. She might as well have slapped me out of my confused state.

“What did you say?” I asked with a venomous glare, my panic replaced with rising anger.

“I asked if this place refreshed your memories, cursed child,” she replied while stressing the last two words. “You are still the same weakling as you were back then, cowering at the first sign of trouble.” Then she spat on the ground. “My daughter deserves better than you.”

I slapped her before I realized it. She didn’t flinch, though my hand left a scarlet mark on her cheek.

“Do you like this caress of mine?” I replied with anger, my hand grabbing her hair and pulling her closer. “Do you want to feel it again?”

Necahual sneered at me. “As if you could make me feel anything.”

I briefly thought that the sight of this cursed house awakened Necahual’s worst instincts, until I saw the steely resolve in her eyes. The truth suddenly dawned on me.

My mother-in-law was smart. She had seen my agitation today and she knew that Astrid’s presence meant nothing good for this expedition. She was trying to break me out of my dark mood the same way she managed to after Lady Sigrun’s death: through anger and control.

She offered herself to me so I could regain a measure of power. She gave me a visceral way to exorcize my troubled memories in the very place that birthed them, to give me back my confidence by offering herself as a sacrifice.

And as sick as it sounded, I needed it. She soothed my wounded pride and reminded me that I held the power of life and death over others. That I could hurt her as much as I wished.

“Something has been bothering me for a while,” I retorted with a malicious smirk. “Guatemoc needed a son to help him take care of the farm, but you never gave him one.”

Necahual’s eyes widened in genuine, unbridled anger.

“Yet you fear bearing my child, so it can’t have been infertility.” My hand brushed against the shelves of medicinal plants. “Though he raised a daughter that he knew might not have been his own, you used these herbs whenever he took you to bed, didn’t you?”

I guessed correctly. Her guilt was written all over her face.

“You say you loved Guatemoc, but your actions say otherwise,” I taunted her. “He was just a placeholder. A consolation prize meant to take care of you until my father finally set my mother aside and took you for a bride.” I studied Necahual head to toe, my gaze lingering on her slim waist. “You couldn’t bear the thought of raising a drunk’s son.”

Necahual slapped me on my left cheek with all of her strength, the noise of her hand hitting my skin echoed through the house like the sound of a whip. I didn’t flinch.

“The funny part is, my father didn’t dislike you,” I chuckled in dark satisfaction. “He never held a secret grudge that caused him to deny your affections. He simply never noticed them. You never registered as a partner in the book of his mind.”

She tried to slap me on the other cheek. I caught her arm in midair, the same way I did when she tried that in the gardens weeks ago. I pulled her close to me, my other arm wrapping around her waist.

“But don’t worry,” I said as my lips closed on her own. “You’ll forget both men by the time you’re done screaming my name.”

I planted a ferocious kiss on her, my tongue forcing its way past her teeth. Necahual hit me on the chest to push me back, but I held her by the waist and slammed her against the nearest wall with such force that the medicinal herbs nearby fell to the ground. She moaned in pleasure as I began to kiss my way down her neck. My hands fondled her thighs and worked their way under her dress…

“No,” she suddenly whispered in my ear.

I abruptly stopped. Had I gone too far? “No?”

Necahual met my gaze, then glanced at the cotton bed in the other room.

The one she used to share with Guatemoc.

A thrill of pleasure and arousal coursed through me, barely held back by my sheer disbelief at her boldness. “Are you sure?”

“Are you so craven?” Necahual pushed me back and then began to undo her sash. “You were right about one thing. I deserved better.”

— NSFW Scene starts —

Her robes dropped to the floor with a soft thump, her lustrous body wearing only a necklace and a sheet of sweat. My clothes soon followed. Necahual soon lay on the marital bed with her back pressed against the cotton, her legs spread apart and inviting me to claim her.

“You dreamed of this, didn’t you?” she taunted me as her hand went to knead at her breast.

I blushed. The truth was, she was right. Dark dreams often visited me in the nights after she abused me during my adolescence where I would rape and beat her as revenge for past humiliations. I never expected that they would come true one day.

Satisfied with my awkward response, Necahual dared me to go further. She turned to crawl on her knees and hands, her back turned on me.

“Come, coward,” she said as she beckoned me. “Make me forget my husband, if you can.”

A rush of arousal took me over and I soon crawled over her. My cock was so hard I didn’t even need preliminaries.

A memory of Guatemoc briefly crossed my mind when my hands gripped Necahual’s hips. Making love to his widow in his own bed felt like the ultimate insult, but I felt no guilt. Quite the contrary. The transgressive nature of this play filled me with overwhelming desire. The thought of pulling back never even crossed my mind.

Necahual moaned my name as I filled her and pried her open. Each inch of progress sent jolts through me, and a pulse thrummed between my legs. An overwhelming feeling of conquest erased my lingering doubts. One stroke caused our hips to finally meet. She was wetter than a swamp and softer than cotton.

I had never taken Necahual from behind. Not like this, with my hands gripping her quivering hips so firmly that they would leave marks. Her own fingers grabbed the cotton bed while I began to pound into her with animalistic fury. She convulsed with each movement, her inner walls sucking me deeper after each thrust.

“This is better, isn’t it?” I grunted, pinning her down. “Better than with Guatemoc.”

“Whom?” Necahual groaned in my ear in between moans of pleasure. Somehow, that sounded even better than yes.

Coupling with Necahual never failed to provide me pleasure, but something was different this time. I could tell in the way my hands roamed over her body and how our conjoined bodies quickly settled into a perfect rhythm. Her knees shuddered when she came for the first time, but it hardly stopped anything. I continued to plunge into her.

She moaned about how good I made her feel, how Guatemoc never compared to me, how I was a real man worthy to take her. I couldn’t tell how much of it was lies or words she truly believed in, but it only heightened my passion. My fingers ran through her hair and my lips nipped at her ears.

“You are home, Iztac,” she whispered. “Everything here is yours.”

My heart swelled with confidence with each of my concubine’s whispers. But it wasn’t enough to take her like this.

I wanted to see her.

She gasped when I pulled out just long enough to turn her over and pin her on her back. The mere look of the sweat dripping between her strands of hair. She smiled at me, and for a brief instant, she became the most beautiful woman in the world.

I finally understood Necahual’s deviousness. This house of sorrow had now turned into a victory site. I felt like a warrior returning home after earning glory and wealth. This place no longer inspired memories of shame and defeat; the present triumph washed away the past.

It is one way to bury bad memories, I pondered as I spread her legs apart with my hands, under new ones.

Sinking inside her came easy to me by now, but it was her kiss that drove me wild. Necahual was giving me back the confidence Iztacoatl tried to rob me of and I rewarded her with pleasure. I kissed her, squeezed her breasts, sucked her neck, and kneaded her navel until her eyes and teeth clenched. Her moans grew louder the longer our tryst went on. Her chest bounced against mine.

My heart threatened to burst in my chest. I was close, and so was she. The last vestige of my reasons brought me back from the brink. We didn’t need to practice Seidr today—and doing it now might alert Iztacoatl—so an exchange of body fluids was unnecessary.

“I’m…” I groaned as I sensed the pressure building up. “I’m gonna pull back.”

Her eyes met mine. Countless emotions crossed them in an instant. Fear, most of all. Desire as deep as the sea. Doubt laced with excitement. And finally, that strange determination she had shown in her darkest moments.

“No,” Necahual decided.

I thought my ears had deceived me for a moment, but her legs soon tightened around my waist. They held me weakly at first, her knees shaking, and then tightened further. My pulse pounded in my head as my lust-addled mind struggled to make sense out of her demand.

Was she asking me… I slowed down in surprise

“Do it,” she confirmed.

Had she lost her mind? Was that a trick meant to further bolster my confidence? She didn’t need to go that far, and the risk of impregnating her was real. My mind told me it was mere roleplay, but I found no deceit when I studied her face.

My gods, she is serious.

“Why?” I could only whisper in disbelief.

“Because if it is to happen either way… I wish to be my choice.” Necahual snorted with pride. “Not hers… not yours.”

I couldn’t tell whether she referred to Eztli or Iztacoatl. It didn’t matter. I could easily break out of her embrace if I pushed hard enough. Spill my seed on her belly and be done with it.

But I didn’t.

It was stupid. I knew it all too well. But the rush of euphoria proved too strong. This woman, who had loathed me with all of her heart for years and whose greatest fear quivered between her legs, dared me to cross the final line of our twisted relationship; to knowingly violate our final taboo.

I came.

My vision went white as I unloaded my seed inside Necahual. Gasps and convulsions coursed through our bodies while they joined in a deep union of flesh and soul. I avoided using Seidr, but I had visions of our Teyolias nonetheless. Our heart-fires had joined together so often that our connection had grown intimately close.

I saw my flame dance with her own in the inferno of our lust and hatred; mine a sun and her a growing fire whose meager strength I had fed one Seidr ritual at a time. They joined together in a bond as old as the Fifth Sun, melding together and separating.

— NSFW Scene Ends —

I couldn’t tell when I returned to reality. When I did, I found myself panting and sweating over Necahual. Her eyes widened in shock and surprise. The enormity of what we had just done slowly dawned on us once the waves of pleasures receded.

Necahual had asked me to impregnate her in her late husband’s bed.

And I’d obliged. For all I knew, I’d even succeeded.

My mind was still addled with surprise when I pulled out of her. I gathered my breath as I tried to regain my composure,

“It’s not inevitable,” I finally said.

“It is,” Necahual replied softly.

“It doesn’t have to be.”

She looked at me as if I were a naïve child, which I probably was. I’d made this inevitable the moment I chose her as my favorite and Seidr partner. Necahual needed to play both roles in order to secure her daughter’s freedom and obtain the magical power she craved.

She was indeed willing to bear any price for both. I admired her resolve.

“Did you do it for Eztli?” I asked her. “To stabilize her?”

“For me,” Necahual insisted. “I did it for me. At least this will be on my terms.”

“But–”

Necahual silenced me with a glare. “I’m not afraid of you,” she snapped at me. “I know what I signed up for the first time.”

Her mind was set.

My hands suddenly found themselves roaming Necahual’s belly. My touch startled her, but her fingers didn’t push mine back. An idea wouldn’t leave my mind.

My own mother-in-law. My favorite. Pregnant with my child.

The thought sounded as absurd as it was terrifying. Any scion of mine was bound to grow into a horrible fate, and siring one on this woman of all people… I waited for a surge of nausea that never came.

I’m not against it, I realized much to my own surprise. I should have been afraid, but somehow I wasn’t. What’s happening to me?

“You were right.”

Necahual’s words woke me up from my trance. Her eyes were filled with tears.

“You were right,” she repeated, her eyes darting at the room around us. “I wanted more than this. This…” She bit her lower lip. “I loathed this life.”

And like me, she tried to forget it today.

“I didn’t love my husband,” Necahual confessed. “I had… affection for him after years of marriage, and he didn’t deserve to die, but…”

“But you would have cast him aside for another in a heartbeat,” I guessed.

Necahual nodded slowly. “He didn’t love me either, or else he wouldn’t have forced you on me, or would have stopped drinking when I asked him to.” She avoided my gaze. “By the end of our marriage, it sickened me to feel the pulque on his lips. I put draught in his drink so he wouldn’t have the strength to crawl into my bed, and I cleansed myself the one time his seed took hold.”

The confession of her treachery should have sickened me as yet another proof of her rotten heart. Somehow though, I didn’t care all that much. I had come to accept her for what she was.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because I thought I deserved better than him.” Necahual let out a deep, sorrowful sigh. “I wanted to be your mother. I wanted her man and those powers she had. The things I would have done with them…”

“Of my mother and you, you were the better person.” Not by much, but still enough to be commended.

Necahual snorted in disdain. “What good did it do?”

“More than you think.” I stroked her hair. “More than you think.”

Necahual was an awful person. A bitter hag who had betrayed her own husband, abused a child who had the misfortune to look like a woman she envied, and brought much of her own misfortune on herself.

But though it wounded me to admit it, she had shown a few admirable qualities since. She was brave, far more than my own mother, though she had none of her supernatural powers. She possessed a deep sense of loyalty for the handful of people she loved, and a willful ambition great enough to defy the Nightlords themselves. She was willing to bear the child of a man she hated for the sake of saving a daughter who had betrayed her.

I loathed her as much as I loved her.

“My daughter is all I want to keep from those times,” Necahual said, her hands brushing against my chest. “I want to start anew everywhere else. Forget these years.”

“So do I,” I replied. “You gave me everything as I’d asked once, so I will grant your wish. I will give you a new and better life.”

Our relationship had changed so much, from enemies to difficult lovers; our union was built on loving and hurting one another, but it had grown like an old oak and had become something far more intense than an alliance of convenience. She had become my mistress, confidant and most trusted accomplice, for better or worse.

I kissed her on the lips and sensed her resolve. We’d both decided to move on from our past and begin anew. Our relationship was far from healthy, but it gave us both strength.

“I hate you,” Necahual whispered once I broke the kiss. “I want you. I hate that I want you.”

“Me too.”

“I will never be your slave,” she warned me. “Never.”

“I know,” I replied softly. “But you will be my favorite.”

Somewhere along the way, the lie had become the truth.

Necahual studied my expression for a moment, then nodded slowly. We both rose up afterward and put on our clothes in a somewhat awkward silence. When I looked at the house around us, I felt none of the rage and frustration from earlier, nor even a hint of nostalgia; just a distant feeling of closure.

Necahual had freed me from those days in her own way. I’d fully avenged my past humiliations and I was now ready to move on towards the future.

“Will you truly do it?” she asked with some concern in her voice. “The school?”

“I must,” I replied firmly. “For my own sake."

These feelings carried on from my old life—hatred, nostalgia, powerlessness—were weaknesses. Open wounds that allowed the likes of Iztacoatl to gain an advantage over me and that blinded me to the future. They made me close my eyes on Eztli’s behavior and enslaved me to my anger.

I had to expel this frailty from my heart like gangrene. Burn the shackles of my childhood so I could truly fly free, the way Necahual and I exorcized our past demons today.

Iztacoatl meant for this place to weaken me with past burdens, but she had given me an opportunity to claim my freedom instead.

“I see,” Necahual whispered. She pondered what to do next before holding onto my shoulders. “I wish to witness it, if you will let me.”

“You don’t have to.”

“No,” she conceded, “but I want to.”

I agreed to her demand with a slow nod. Of all the women inhabiting my harem, Necahual was the only one who saw the true me. I didn’t have to hide anything from her.

We were both equally ugly on the inside.

We exited the house to find Tayatzin and Itzili waiting for us alongside a trihorn. If my priestly advisor hadn’t guessed what happened between us with a glance, the way Necahual adjusted her messy hair likely confirmed his suspicions.

“We are ready to proceed, Your Majesty,” he informed me while glancing at my concubine. “Shall I have Lady Necahual return to her quarters?”

“She will come too,” I replied before climbing onto the trihorn and inviting Necahual to join me. She moved to sit behind my back without sparing Tayatzin a glance. “She knows the way.”

So did I.

By law, all Yohuachancan schools were located less than an hour’s walk from any population center. Outside large cities like the capital, these facilities were built to house the children of multiple nearby villages.

The House of Youth which I attended was no exception and welcomed hundreds of students at its height. The blasted ruins that remained were a ghostly silhouette facing an ashen wasteland. The place once echoed with the shouts of young men training to become scholars, merchants, and warriors; but now only an eerie silence ruled its crumbling walls. The great stone buildings bore deep cracks and sections of the roof had caved in after the quakes, leaving gaping and ash-filled holes where classrooms used to be. The air was choked with dust and the lingering smell of sulfur.

Necahual and I triumphantly rode into the central courtyard with Itzili rushing on foot after us. Red-eyed priests and masked guards had gathered a hundred souls on the broken pavement near the sanitary pits amidst volcanic debris. All of them were men; young students my own age or older warriors who gave us lessons, alongside strangers grabbed from nearby villages. Their hands and feet were bound with ropes, forcing them to kneel in ordered lines.

They reminded me of a flock of turkeys bound for the slaughter.

I climbed down from my trihorn alongside Necahual and then surveyed the sacrifices. I remembered a few faces well. Students who had thrown me into a sanitary pit in my first weeks in this very school until I clawed my way out, beaten me during training, or scorned me. Now they trembled with fear at my feet. A few opened their mouths to plead for my mercy, only for my guards to silence them with punches to the face. Others cowered at the sight of Itzili stalking them with hunger in his eyes.

I would be lying if I said I didn’t feel a slight sense of malicious glee at their despair, but I mostly struggled to care at all. Their old schoolyard bullying was a pale shadow of the Nightlords’ cruelty and the trials I underwent in Xibalba. I’d gone through far grander ordeals.

Their lives weighed frighteningly little in my mind.

“They shall spend their last moments cursing your name,” the wind whispered in my ear. “Your cruelty shall be renowned among the living and the dead.”

I could live with that. In this harsh world, I would rather be seen as cruel than weak.

“Kiss the ground before His Imperial Majesty Iztac Ce Ehecatl!” one of the red-eyed priests shouted to the crowd. “Emperor of Yohuachanca, Godspeaker, and master of all he sees!”

My men forced the doomed thralls to hit the ground with their foreheads in supplication. I heard cowers, whispers, and quiet prayers. For each man who faced his incoming demise with stoicism, ten more shivered and trembled.

Priests could teach us men the arts of war, but not bravery in the face of death.

I let the tense silence hang in the air for a moment, with Necahual standing beside me without a word. The sun shone behind me and cast my dark shadow on those closest to me.

“Thou have once shown me scorn because the gods marked me as special,” I said. “You thought me cursed and weak, but here I stand as the savior of the Fifth Sun.”

I extended my hands, hoping that word of my declaration would reach Iztacoatl’s ears and inspire fear in her heart.

“Your faithlessness invited the First Emperor’s wrath upon us,” I lied through my teeth. “Though my words spared this world from utter destruction, the heavens will not give us a third chance. My rule shall be one where weakness won’t be tolerated. It is by my hand that your sorry lot, who has dared to disappoint the gods, shall find redemption.”

I snapped my fingers, and a masked guard bound a rope into a hangman’s noose. He moved behind the closest of my former classmates. I didn’t remember his name, though I recalled his mocking laughter when he pushed me into the dung pit well enough. He whimpered at my feet like a coward.

Did his childish prank warrant execution? Clearly not, but I did not waver. I’d killed better people for far less than my mother’s life.

That was what it meant to live in my world: growing numb to death, one tragedy at a time.

“The Gods-in-the-Flesh demand blood, but the Gods-in-Spirit crave a higher commodity.” I raised my chin, my eyes looking down on the first condemned. “Silence.”

The masked guard coiled the noose around the student’s neck and pulled. His inhuman strength let him lift the victim with one hand until his feet dangled above the ground.

I watched the scene without a word, listening to the man’s final struggle with cold composure. Necahual seemed quite disturbed, but to her credit she didn’t try to look away. Itzili squealed with animalistic hunger and anticipation.

The gods made us resilient. It took seconds for the man to pass out from the lack of air, but minutes for his body to grow stiff and cold. The masked guard let the corpse hit the ground with a thump, the victim’s final breath escaping his lungs soon after. Though I let Itzili eat his fill of human flesh, the man’s life belonged to the wind.

The scene repeated time and time again. My soldiers were strong and experienced; they had done this before on behalf of Nightlords and past emperors. They carried out the mass sacrifice in hardly half an hour with ruthless efficiency.

It wasn’t this quiet massacre that disturbed me the most, or the fact that I ordered it, but the fact that it left me devoid of guilt. My mind was clearer than a cloudless sky. Even the sight of Itzili dining on a corpse failed to affect it.

If anything, murdering my past brought me a measure of peace. Of detachment.

“The debt is settled for us both,” the wind whispered in my ear once I delivered the last sacrifice’s breath. “The man is dead and the demon remains.”

The wind was wrong for once. The man I used to be died when I plunged that knife into my heart. Everything afterward had been an overdrawn death rattle.

“Burn them all,” I ordered the priests. “Then throw the ashes to the wind.”

I would carve many names on my bones tonight.