Chapter Seventy-Six: Family Matters

Chapter Seventy-Six: Family Matters

I left Xibalba a conqueror, holding my father’s skull in my hand and with Mother following in my wake.

I didn’t look back.

The city opened its gates through the mist and let us walk through its dark doors. The desert surrounding the House of Fright stretched across the horizon, the statues of destroyed totems standing still under the pale gray sky. I’d buried my carrying frame and its contents there.

“Are you well, Father?” I asked him out of concern. He hadn’t said a word since we left the ballcourt behind us.

“I...” The fire in his eyes slightly wavered. “I think so.”

“You do not sound well,” I replied while glaring at Mother. She didn’t even have the decency to look at the husband she sacrificed.

“I’m... merely shaken,” Father replied. He sounded tired, like someone waking from an exhausting nightmare. “It... it could have been worse, Iztac. I wasn’t in there for long, so I... I just need a second to gather my thoughts.”

We ought to consider ourselves lucky then. Very lucky indeed. Father was a strong soul with great willpower, but being absorbed into an embodiment of primordial fear would have probably driven him mad from prolonged exposure. As it was, he was only spooked.

I let Father rest for now as I I moved closer to the statues and used the Doll to unearth the carrying frame from underneath the owl totem. Mother observed us without a word, too guilty to speak up or apologize.

That ship had sailed long ago.

I examined the frame to check on its contents. To my astonishment, the urn I was meant to deliver to Tlaloc and the First Emperor’s Codex inside it remained untouched. I would have expected Mother to steal one or the other while I ventured into Xibalba, but I supposed the city enforced certain rules against thieves. That or the totem indeed protected my belongings.

With Xibalba’s trials completed, I would now ascend to Tlalocan and confront its godly master for his embers; after settling another matter first, of course.

I put the carrying frame on my back and broke the silence. “Where is the way to Mictlan, Ichtaca?”

The fact I called her by her name rather than ‘Mother’ ought to get the point across. It certainly woke her up from her guilty torpor. “The... way?”

“The door I used to enter this layer is one-way only, and I need to return Father to his proper afterlife.” Far away from you, I left unsaid. “Why do you think I spared you back there?”

Father’s eyes glowed in his eye sockets. “I... I have no wish to return to Mictlan, my son.”n/ô/vel/b//jn dot c//om

That took me aback. “Father, I will descend into the Underworld’s third layer soon enough. It will be a dangerous journey and I may not be able to protect you.” My grip on his skull tightened, my eyes glaring at the pitiful woman who once gave birth to me. “You cannot hope to stay with this... this traitor.”

“There was... no treachery,” Father replied, his voice a little firmer. Speaking seemed to help him put his thoughts in order. “I... I knew my fate from the start, my son.”

Mother flinched as if she had been slapped. “From...” Her voice was weak, hardly a whisper. “From the start?”

“When you took me to this city... you said I should not take anything that I was willing to lose with me,” Father reminded her with a small, ghostly sigh. How he managed to do so without a body escaped me. “I... Well, I assumed I was one of those things, my love. You left us once already.”

Mother stood still for a brief instant, then collapsed to her knees, sobbing.

I looked with disgust at this weakling witch who only learned the true value of people after she had discarded them. I felt cautious respect for her once, even harboring the hope that we might mend the bridge separating us, but now only loathing remained. I glanced at Father, expecting to see a similar feeling in his ghostfire eyes, or at least disappointment.

Instead, he looked at her with compassion.

“Are you pitying her, Father?” His wasted kindness boggled my mind. This selfish wench, who had cast away everyone who ever cared for her, did not deserve his mercy. “After everything she did to you, to us? Why won’t you spit on her?”

“That’s... that’s the thing about unconditional love, my son. It comes without reservations.” Father marked a short pause. “However...”

It was strange how a simple word could carry such weight. Mother looked up at him with genuine fear and worry, her flayed heart faltering at the mere hint of her husband condemning her.

“I have seen things... things on which I cannot close my eyes anymore, Ichtaca,” Father said, his voice heavier than stones. “When that... that evil thing made me a part of it, I became one with the terrors of the living... yours included. I became one with fear itself and learned of so many evil deeds...” Another short silence followed as Father mustered the courage to broach a most cruel matter. “Including our daughter.”

Mother stared down at the ground in guilt and shame. She did not deny it. I would have felt a pang of familial sympathy if she wasn’t the reason Nenetl had found herself caught in the Nightlords’ grasp.

“Did you think I would think less of you if you admitted it?” Father asked softly. This time, I did detect a hint of disappointment in his words. “Oh, Ichtaca... I forgave you for abandoning us. I would have done the same if only you had reached out to her the same way you did with Iztac. It is your unwillingness to right your past wrongs that I... that I cannot accept anymore.”

He said these words with a strange kind of finality, firm yet gentle. They carried no anger, but no mercy either. Father was the kindest man I had ever met, and I’d rarely heard him set his foot down in the past.

Mother gulped. “Itzili...”

Father did not let her finish. “I cannot enable you anymore, my love. I thought that with time... I thought that with time, your better nature would come through... that you would put our son ahead of your selfish desires. I still want to believe there is good buried deep within you, but...” He marked a short pause as he searched for the right words. “It cannot stay buried anymore. This... this has to change. You have to change, do you understand?”

“I’m...” Mother clenched her fists in her weakness. “I’m not sure I can.”

I snorted in disdain. “You certainly won’t if you refuse to take a single step.”

“I have faith in you, Ichtaca... even if you do not believe in yourself,” Father replied kindly. “Are you happy as you are... driving everyone who cares for you away? Hiding and losing everything again and... over again?”

“I only meant well,” Mother protested. “Once we became gods, I would have made everything right. I would have saved you, saved our daughter. The end would forgive the means.”

“You are mistaken,” Father replied sadly. “An end... an end is shaped by the means used to reach it... and what we meant matters less than what we did.”

My jaw tightened slightly. While Father spoke to Mother first and foremost, I sensed a hint of reproach directed at me. Knowing him, he hadn’t appreciated my speech to the Lords of Terror.

“Moreover, I... I know what deal you have made with the lords of this place to create your sanctuary,” Father said, his wife flinching at his words. “The souls within it are only safe for a time. They will experience the illusion of life, but... once you have obtained and recorded all of their knowledge... their protection will be stripped away and the Lords will feed on their fear of their paradise coming to an end.”

I would have loved to say Mother’s deceit surprised me, but I only expected the worst from her by now.

“You will return those souls to their proper afterlife in Mictlan above, one way or another,” Father insisted. “They... they all deserve better than a fleeting false hope and an eternity of torment.”

“But their knowledge...” Mother protested. “They know so much...”

“Nothing that you hope to glean is worth the sacrifice of so many souls, my love. I will not abandon my children to eternal suffering in a vampire’s belly either. You will help us get them out of the Nightlords’ grasp, or...” Father’s bone jaw tightened. “Or this is farewell, my love.”

Mother remained silent for a moment, but then nodded weakly. After nearly losing her husband—the only person in the entire cosmos who still loved her—she was unwilling to risk him again.

This served me well. While I detested Mother and distrusted any help she could provide, I still required Astrid to destroy Iztacoatl for good. If she had any sense, she would behave herself from now on. I would not be so merciful as Father.

Nonetheless, a detail caught my ear.

After all the horrors they had sowed, after they put his children through, how could Father not see that their demise was worth almost any price?

But if I fail, it would have been all for nothing, I thought grimly, my heart-fire wavering. History will remember me as just another monster, a mad emperor in a long line of puppet-tyrants.

The thought gnawed at me after I escaped Xibalba’s territory and returned to the rest of the Second Layer. Volcanic fumes choked the air and the heat suddenly increased. I whipped up a Cloak spell to protect myself by promising I would shower the city of Zachilaa with favor on my way out of the city. A protective wind swirled around me, shielding me from the flames and ashes raining down from the clouds above.

I looked up at Tlaloc’s blue sun. Its radiance shone upon the world which he had once devastated with fire and brimstone. I knew that his promised land awaited me above the clouds; his paradise untouched by the burning and the suffering of his countless victims.

Perhaps it would make a good afterlife for Father, if Tlaloc allowed him to stay there. It would be better than Mictlan, and certainly better than Mother’s false refuge.

A great shadow passed over me.

I barely had time to dodge to the side to avoid a pair of house-sized talons closing on me. A monstrous bird passed by me with a malevolent shriek of pain and fury, its feathers burned by Tlalocan’s flames and revealing only a skeleton coated in flayed burning flesh. It was huge, many times bigger than myself, with pitch-black eyes glaring at me with seething hatred.

Azcatlapalli.

I had completely forgotten about the mad spirit who had hounded Mother and me all the way to Xibalba’s frontier. Had he been waiting outside its borders until I finally escaped its grip, all for the grim pleasure of killing me?

Whatever the case, Azcatlapalli began to chase after me across the clouds with relentless aggression. I was smaller and quicker, but it pursued me with dogged malice and determination. The spirit had nothing to gain from killing me besides the satisfaction of sharing his pain with the living, and that was reason enough to hunt me down. Considering the agony from which he suffered since the Third Sun’s final twilight, I could almost sympathize with him.

Almost.

Mother suggested that we avoid a fight with this monster when it first began to stalk us. It would have made a powerful foe once, but I had conquered too many trials to be intimidated and I was too angry for mercy.

This would be a good opportunity to test my newfound strength.

“Fall,” I said, activating the namesake's spell.

The course of gravity changed instantly, from down to sideways. My current version of the Fall could only affect one target, but it proved capable of affecting even something as big as Azcatlapalli. The monstrous bird let out a screech as an invisible force pulled him to the left and caused him to lose control of his flight.

I ascended upward to better look down on the wayward spirit.

“I am the fear of the gods,” I boasted, knowing he had been a lesser deity himself before Tlaloc stripped him of everything. “I am with you every time you look at the sun that burns your wings.”

I had hoped to break Azcatlapalli’s spirit and convince him to let me go without a fight; but the flames and the pain had long stripped him of his reason. His agony had burned away everything until only hatred remained.

The monster let out a soul-rending screech and blew his wings at me. A mighty gust capable of upturning trees and casting down houses hit me in the face. I was flung backward into the clouds, my Cloak spell lessening the impact enough to spare my carrying frame from destruction. The thought of losing my father to this creature incensed me.

“Fool,” I snarled as Azcatlapalli flew upward towards me. “Return to dust!”

I waved a talon and channeled the power of the Slice. A wind born of my victims’ last breaths cut through the sky in the form of a sharp blade of air. If Azcatlapalli had any remaining sanity left, he would have been wise to dodge it; instead, he was so mad that he took it head-on in his desperation to grab me with his beak.

My Slice cut off his left wing at the shoulder, causing the spirit to lose control of his flight. I avoided his last-ditch attempt to eat me alive with his beak and watched him fall onto the ashen ground below. His bones cracked at the impact, his shrieks echoing across the burned landscape.

“Now burn,” I said.

I opened my mouth and unleashed a flood of fire from my mouth. The Blaze of my soul erupted from the depths of my being to incinerate the fallen god. A purple inferno rained down from the sky to punish my enemy like Tlaloc’s wrath once did.

Azcatlapalli screamed.

If I had lips in my owl form, I would have smiled in cruel joy. My flames seared the last of his flayed flesh to reveal the bones underneath. I put the spirit through the same agony he suffered at Tlaloc’s hands in the fading days of the Third Sun. I roasted the turkey until only a feeble skeleton remained.

I burned him until he lost the strength to scream and could only whimper. Only then did I stop with a cackle of satisfaction.

“You were a fool to defy me,” I warned him. “I am your prey no longer.”

The monster answered with a pitiful cry of agony; one that brought me no satisfaction.

I stopped, my heart-fire wavering. The monster below me had been reduced to a one-winged, charred skeleton unable to fly. Azcatlapalli limped on the ground with moans of agony and sorrow, the noise echoing from his skeletal gullet akin to sobs.

Beneath the malice, there was only pain.

As I looked down on the miserable creature, I found myself suddenly overcome with pity. Yes, he had tried to kill me out of malice; but men once worshiped the creature as a god of beauty if my mother was to be believed. It used to be great and kind until Tlaloc’s wrath reduced him to this sorry state. Centuries of torment had robbed him of his mind. Azcatlapalli should only inspire compassion.

Yet his suffering had filled me with cruel joy.

“This...” I struggled to find my words, the seed of guilt overcoming me. “This... this is wrong.”

After experiencing weakness for so many years, I’d begun to revel in my hard-won power. I’d laughed at killing priests and the Nightlords’ soldiers, although most were mere fools led astray by lying vampires, taken women as slaves for my pleasure, and delighted in sowing chaos.

I’d committed so many of these sins out of necessity, telling myself that they were mere chores in the name of a greater cause, but now I realized I was starting to take a perverse kind of joy in them.

I relished in cruelty.

Just like the Nightlords and the Lords of Terror.

My sunlit blood turned to ice in my veins. It was an awful thing to learn about oneself, to find happiness in the pain of others. I told myself that Azcatlapalli deserved this punishment for attacking me, but it sounded like empty justification even to me. Agony had stripped away all his rational thought. He wasn’t even aware of right and wrong anymore, no more than a rabid dog could be blamed for biting a man’s hand.

I’d enjoyed tormenting this animal because it helped make me feel strong. Nothing more.

This is wrong, I realized. I was starting to see what bothered my father so much. I’ve grown numb to the pain of others... and sometimes, I’ve grown to appreciate it.

But what else could I do? Should I put Azcatlapalli out of his misery? He was already dead. What would it take to reduce his spirit to merciful nothingness? Would grinding his bones to dust free him from his horrifying existence? Or would his consciousness endure even in this form?

I gazed upon that land of death and fire that stretched across the horizon. These ashes of a lost world, filled with Burned Men and tormented souls.

I could only think of one option to alleviate their suffering.

I flew upward, leaving Azcatlapalli on the ground for now.

Tlaloc awaited me.