Chapter Fifty-One: Mother's Nest

Chapter Fifty-One: Mother's Nest

I slowly descended into the darkness, the last of the Parliament’s skulls held between my talons as my only guide.Fôll0w current novÊls on n/o/(v)/3l/b((in).(co/m)

The Gaze spell illuminated the path below and revealed ancient words of power carved into the pit’s walls. I did not recognize these symbols and languages, but I could see the magic radiating from them. My winged feathers blew dust at them each time they flapped.

I couldn’t tell how long the descent lasted. The tunnel stretched so far down I wondered if it reached all the way to the Underworld’s third layer. My quest ended when I reached a layer of miasmic vapors rising from the pit’s bottom. I flew through it and saw light coming from the other side.

Crossing the layer led me into a vast, sunless antechamber with a floor made of white bones; a design that reminded me of Chamiaholom’s ghastly home. Mother was waiting for me there in front of a shadowy archway.

“You are late, my son,” she said. “Very late.”

I had accomplished much since I last saw Mother: I triumphed over three of Xibalba’s trials, I became a god’s prophet, and most important of all, I had foiled the Nightlords’ plan to reshape the cosmos in their image, destroying one of them in the process.

I had hoped for a warmer greeting.

“You should have made the puzzle’s solution more obvious then,” I replied harshly.

“It was,” Mother replied with a snort. “Haven’t you heard of burrowing owls?”

I narrowed my eyes upon landing on the ground and shifting back into my human form. “Owls can dig?”

My response caused Mother to scowl. “Have you never left your village, my son?”

“Hardly,” I replied, my voice brimming with annoyance. “I was forbidden to eat meat, so I couldn’t help Acampa’s hunters without supervision.”

“Small owls in the great northern plains and the Boiling Islands excavate burrows to hide inside,” the skull in my talons said. “Some say that they seek entrance into the Underworld. We doubt anyone near the capital’s region has ever heard of them.”

Mother glanced at the skull with sudden interest. “What did you accomplish, Iztac?” she asked, stroking her chin. “This skull can speak on its own, yet it's made of your bones.”

“This is a vessel for the Parliament of Skulls, born of my own body,” I explained. “My predecessors, let me introduce you to the runaway woman who gave birth to me, Ichtaca.”

Mother had at least the decency to clench her jaw at my acerbic comment.

“Your tales precede you in Mictlan, Lady Ichtaca,” the late emperors replied. “That of your ghastly crimes and dark deeds in particular.”

“What the ghosts above say does not matter to me.” Mother continued to study the skull, her eyes shining with blue light. I suspected that she was using a variant of the Gaze spell to study it. “Impressive, Iztac. You created a unique spell by using the very curse binding your soul. You show great talent.”

Unlike my predecessors, her praise meant nothing to me. I did note that she didn’t seem to know anything about the Legion spell. Her knowledge of sorcery was vast, but not perfect.

“I assume that Chamiaholom taught you Bonecraft?” Mother asked.

“She did,” I confirmed. “I’ve also learned how to cast the Tomb and Blaze spells.”

“Very powerful picks.” Mother scowled. “The Lords of Terror favor you more than me.”

I wouldn’t call losing a toe to the chilling cold, fighting rabid beasts for hours, and being attacked in the dark by demons a show of favor. “I earned them with my blood and sweat.”

“All sorcerers pay a price to learn their craft,” Mother replied, almost dismissively. I could tell that she didn’t consider the Xibalba trials worth discussing. “However, the Lords gave me far weaker spells on my first visit. It took me years of negotiations to learn the Tomb and Blaze spells.“

“Your son’s talent for sorcery is greater than yours,” the Parliament argued. “We suspect that the Nightlords chose him as this year’s emperor for this very reason. He alone could light their Sulfur Sun.”

“Mayhaps,” Mother conceded. I couldn’t tell whether she felt proud of me or threatened by my potential. Perhaps both. “A sun whose night you brought about.”

At least she didn’t try to take the credit. “I’m surprised,” I commented. “You did everything in your power to foil the Nightlords’ plan without risking yourself. I expected a stronger reaction at me succeeding in this task.”

“Why?” Mother’s eyes met mine. “I knew that you would succeed.”

I held her gaze without a word. She wasn’t lying. Her belief in my success had been unwavering, because I was her son; because the sun would have died otherwise; because failure could not be permitted.

In her mind, I had lived up to her great standards. Why should she praise an expected outcome?

“We must nonetheless discuss the consequences of your success,” Mother said before focusing her attention back on the Parliament. “I would gladly welcome one of your skulls within my domain on a permanent basis. We could trade secrets.”

The Parliament wisely denied her. “We advise your son alone. We know that you are a thief of souls, Lady Ichtaca, and we can tell that you will seek to bind us if you find the opportunity. We have no wish to escape one prison only to enter another.”

“Do not be so hasty.” Mother turned her back on us and walked towards the archway. “You should see the nest I have created for myself first.”

Mother vanished into the shadows ahead, much to my surprise. My Gaze spell noticed the presence of a powerful Veil beyond the archway, alongside other sorceries I did not recognize.

“Do not trust her, our successor,” the Parliament warned me. Their first impression of my mother didn’t inspire confidence. “This woman cares only for herself. She will go back on her word whenever it suits her, whether to you or us.”

“I’ve noticed.” Mother wouldn’t even risk her life stopping the New Fire Ceremony, although the entire world had been at stake. “Don’t worry, I’m used to dealing with untrustworthy and dangerous people nowadays.”

“She is in a class of her own. Most scoundrels have lines they will not cross, whether from shame or decency.” The skull let out a sinister rattle. “We fear that this woman has none.”

Was I among those lines? I feared that I already knew the answer. “We need all the help we can get.”

“True,” the Parliament conceded. “But we ask that you do not leave us in her care. She craves our knowledge as much as the Nightlords sought our blood, since we have witnessed the rise of Yohuachanca from its inception. She will exploit us if given the opportunity.”

I agreed to the request with a nod and walked after Mother with the skull in my hands. I entered the darkness and stepped inside the strangest of places: a vast expanse of billowing vapors and miasma covering great alleys of paved bones and ivory shelves. They were filled with carved obsidian tablets the size of my hands and marked with words such as ‘history’ or ‘nature.’ They probably held information arranged in an organization schema of Mother’s devising.

I briefly canceled my Gaze spell and allowed the illusion ruling this place to shroud my sight. The world around me shifted into a very different place: a cozy, carpeted library filled with scrolls.

Mother’s dusky feathers and owl mask vanished. She appeared to me as any human of flesh and blood, with pale skin, long white hair, sapphire eyes, and fair features. She reminded me of an older Nenetl, albeit with none of the gentleness and a harsh gaze filled with bitterness.

My body transformed too. I appeared as I did on the surface, devoid of a Tlacatecolotl’s features or burning heart-fire, and the skull in my hand had transformed into a crystal version of itself.

I pinched the spot where my exposed rib cage should have been. I felt pain coursing through my illusory flesh.

The Veil worked by exploiting belief. The more someone distrusted the illusion, the weaker it became. The fact that I already knew of this place’s trickery meant that the Veil spell covering it should have instantly dispelled. Yet it did not. My Gaze spell alone peered through it.

“The Lords of Terror reshape reality at will within their houses,” Mother explained. “They can manifest almost anything there. Obtaining that power would mean binding myself to Xibalba for all of eternity, so I had to settle for a pale imitation.”

I used the Gaze to pierce through the illusion once again. I immediately identified the likely source of the spell’s permanency: the flow of mist coursing through the phantom library. It reminded me of the same haunted fog of memories that tempted me when I first journeyed to Mictlan.

“You use the fog to give your Veil texture,” I guessed.

“Very astute, Iztac,” Mother confirmed. “This fog is fueled by the last breaths of the living. Those breaths carry the last remains of their Ihiyotl and thus immense power.”

The crystal skull in my hands glowed and the Parliament spoke through it. “Whose lungs are those?”

I frowned in confusion until I paid closer attention to the mist. An invisible force caused the fog to flow across the shelves. A wheezing sound echoed further away from our position, so faint I could hardly hear it.

“Come and see them,” Mother beckoned us.

Them. I immediately understood the nature of her crime the moment I heard the word.

I followed her up a bone alley until we arrived at a large crossroads joining dozens of them together. I sensed a presence around me, but I didn’t notice anything wrong when I looked around with the Gaze.

“What is the meaning of this?” the skull in my hand whispered in astonishment.

“I do not see anything,” I said.

“You must disable your Gaze spell first,” Mother warned me. “Then they shall appear.”

Mother’s silence was an answer in itself.

Worse, I could wager as to what price the Lords of Terror exacted to let her build this place inside their cursed city. I saw tortured figures in the House of Gloom, their tongue ripped out and their eyes shut so that they would suffer in silence. I thought most of them were Tlacatecolotl who had failed the trials, but now I wondered how many of them simply happened to be souls Mother brought to Xibalba as a toll.

“These people used to be humans once,” I protested. “Same as us.”

“The people are not Nahualli,” Mother replied, her voice colder than winter’s winds. “They are not our kin.”

There lay the source of the problem. Mother didn’t see non-Tlacatecolotl souls as people, but as resources to exploit. A lifetime of rejection caused her to turn her back on humanity itself.

She wasn’t so different from the Nightlords at the end of the day; the fact she independently came up with a Reliquary proved that they thought along the same line. She simply traded their rampant cruelty and worldshaking arrogance for cold indifference and detached curiosity.

Mother would have disappointed me, if I hadn’t already been expecting the worst coming from her. I had moved beyond wrath and into simple sorrow.

The person I was truly angry at was myself. For all of the disgust her creation inspired in my heart, I needed Mother’s help too much to shatter it where it stood. For all of my newfound power, I couldn’t afford freeing these souls now. My salvation, nay, the world’s, required Mother’s assistance.

I bit my tongue to stop more barbed comments from pouring out of my mouth. I would have to swallow my resentment until the day I could succeed on my own.

“We must deny your previous offer, Lady Ichtaca,” the Parliament of Skulls suddenly said. Although I could sense their fears, my predecessors answered Ichtaca’s proposal with diplomacy. They too understood that we needed her assistance. “A golden cage remains a cage, and we have grown weary of ours. We might carry our regrets to Mictlan, but those thoughts shall be ours alone.”

Mother shrugged. “You will come to regret your choice, but have it your way. I shall not insist on it further.”

Her response surprised me, but then I realized that the Veil spell required its victims to buy into the illusion. The Parliament’s souls might resist its pull and disturb the collective dream; a risk Mother might wish to avoid. I suspected she created a pleasant prison because, unlike the Nightlords, she knew vengeful spirits could plot behind her back.

She knows neither mercy nor compassion, I thought grimly. All her decisions are guided by pragmatism and practicality. Nothing else.

“Would you do anything for knowledge, Mother?” I asked her, more out of disappointment than fury.

She held my gaze. “Would you do anything to survive, my son?”

It was my turn to fall silent. I had chosen death over complicity once, but that was when I thought I had no other option available. Now that I have hope, however faint, I’ve committed many sins in order to defeat the Nightlords and escape their grasp.

Was I capable of anything, as Chamiaholom thought?

I hoped to never find the answer.

“You are free to peruse my library as you wish,” Mother told me. “I keep spell-related information to myself, but my books contain a wealth of information about the world, its legends, and its lost treasures.”

“Including the First Emperor’s codices?” I asked, suppressing my anger to focus on more immediate matters.

“Maybe,” Mother confirmed, much to my joy. “I have been trying to locate them myself to little avail, but I lack the resources of an emperor.”

“The information that you gathered should complete ours,” the Parliament noted.

“Bada and Kele can counsel you in your search.” Mother squinted at me. “I’ve heard that you channeled the First Emperor.”

So she did keep track of events in the world above. “I have. The Nightlords convinced their population of their lie so thoroughly that it became true.”

“Beware, my son,” she warned me. “If you wear a mask for too long, then your face will change to fit it. Borrowed power is never truly yours.”

“Then teach me more spells,” I replied. “So that I may rely on my own strength.”

“I shall,” Mother promised. “However, you must continue to complete the Lords of Terror’s trials. They will teach you sorcery that I do not know, and you will need to reach the pyramid to escape Xibalba.”

She didn’t ask for a trade in return for her sorcery. Perhaps she did have some decency left in her.

“What do you know of the First Emperor, Lady Ichtaca?” the Parliament inquired. “Understanding the source of the vampiric curse would help us find a cure.”

“He used to be an ancient bat Nahualli who descended into the Underworld’s depths and completed the pilgrimage towards its bottom,” Mother replied, a small smirk at the edge of her lips. She seemed to find the idea of a cure for vampirism quite amusing. “I cannot say what he found beyond the gates of this layer, for I have yet to descend any deeper. My son’s next trial, the House of Bats, holds a clue.”

“What kind?” I asked.

“I suggest you check it for yourself first, Iztac. You might reach a different conclusion than I did.” Mother shook her head. “I didn’t anticipate his influence to grow since Yoloxochitl’s demise. His power radiates outwards from the Blood Pyramid, polluting the land and sky.”

“Servants informed me that the blood rain devastating our hinterlands spread from that place too,” I said.

“Because the First Emperor’s corpse is buried in the Blood Pyramid’s depths, our successor,” the skull said. “The occasion to confirm it to you never came up, but the Nightlords raised their temple over their father’s tomb.”

The information only half-surprised me. I learned that the official imperial propaganda—which pretended that the First Emperor rose to become the sun—was rubbish, so I assumed that the First Emperor was hidden away somewhere. It made quite a deal of sense for the monster to be sealed underneath the Blood Pyramid.

“Is that why emperors are sacrificed there?” I wondered out loud. It would explain why I managed to channel the First Emperor while standing in that spot.

“The yearly ritual kills the soul and shackles his totem,” Mother said, her stare settling on the Parliament’s vessel. “Slaying the body requires a different method, though I had yet to figure it out. Perhaps you know, ancient ghosts of an age past?”

The ghostly flames in the Parliament’s eyes flickered with fear. “We do.”

Mother waited for them to tell her more, but the old emperors refused to elaborate any further. I couldn’t blame them. Whatever atrocities took place in the Blood Pyramid were so great and terrible that they preferred not to give me details; their sons had been brought there and never seen again.

“It would do us little good if destroying the Nightlords unleashed another calamity on us,” Mother said. “Understanding the ritual–”

“Would not help you learn it for yourself,” the Parliament interrupted her with a hint of hostility. “The Blood Pyramid contains horrors the likes of which even your Lords of Terror would recoil from. Moreover, understand this: all of the Nightlords’ rituals feed into each other and require their presence. The sisters’ demise will disrupt them beyond hope of recovery.”

Mother scowled. “You advised my son on how to destroy the Nightlords without thinking of what would come next?”

“Until our current successor, the mere thought of slaying a Nightlord remained nothing more than a dream,” the Parliament replied. “You have seen for yourself the horrors that they inflict on the world, Lady Ichtaca; enough that you would rather let your son fight them alone rather than risk their wrath. We will always choose the hope of a better future over the certainty of an intolerable present.”

So did I. Besides, the Jaguar Woman hadn’t given up on raising her Sulfur Sun. The sisters would never give up on their mad dream to conquer the sunlight and reshape the world in their image.

“Another solution might appear to us once we collect the codices,” I said. “The Nightlords’ ritual might not be the only one available to us. We can design another.”

“True,” Mother conceded. She clearly wished to question the Parliament more, but she was wise enough to notice the old emperors’ hostility directed towards her. “One Nightlord’s death has only shaken the prison. We have time before my son shatters it.”

Her trust in me would have warmed my heart, if she had any intention of helping me fight the Nightlords directly. Both the Parliament of Skulls and Mother would stick to lessons and advice, but only the first did so because they couldn’t wage war themselves. My own flesh and blood wouldn’t risk her life for me.

Mother decided to complete her tour of her house afterward. She touched one of her Reliquary’s skulls with her hand. The pillar of bone and flesh let out a faint rattle, a stairway opening up at its feet. Mother walked down it first and bid me to follow her. I swiftly noticed that the fog didn’t enter this area; the House’s Veil and its prisoners couldn’t reach it.

This passage quickly opened into a private study of leather-covered chairs, shelves filled with parchment, and tables covered in quills shaped from owl feathers. In stark contrast with the library upstairs, this place appeared truly cozy. My Gaze didn’t detect any illusion.

“These are our private quarters,” Mother said. “Make yourself at home.”

Our. My eyes wandered around the study until I noticed a small chimney in a corner. A skeleton in purple cotton robes sat there, watching a ghostly flame burning in the hearth. It turned its skull at me, its empty eyes suddenly alight with magical light the moment he caught sight of me.

He all but leaped out of the sofa and nearly stumbled into the chimney in his haste to greet me.

Unlike the ghosts above, this specter was whole and untainted by Mother’s lies. Though nothing about his body separated him from all of Mictlan’s shambling corpses, I immediately recognized him. The endearing way he rose from his seat, shifting his weight on his right hand—a habit he developed since he broke his left a few years before the famine—his posture of absolute joy and relief, the warmth radiating from his gaze, and last but not least, the tight hug in which he held me before I could even open my mouth...

How could I forget them?

“It’s really you...” the ghost whispered with a familiar voice, his weak arms squeezing me with all their feeble strength. “After so many years... I can hold you again...”

My father, Itzili, stood before me.

And I returned his hug in full.