Metaworld Chronicles

Chapter 550 - Small Sacrifices

After a long deliberation with Slylth atop the World Tree of Shalkar, Gwen decided on her Teithuacán negotiation team.

She had herself, obviously, since she promised Quetzalcoatl she would be there.

Slylth, because she needed to tap mummy’s name where possible.

For their final member, she was surprised by her own logical deduction.

She would bring Lei-bup.

The decision was as strategic as it was official, because the normative choice was Lulan or Strun. Both of her commanders were well seasoned, but they had no knowledge of Neo Tenochtitlanians and were more than likely to respond to the Human and Demi-human sacrifices with hostility.

Richard and Petra were bogged down in preparing her Tower for operations and could not tear themselves away from its orbit; the same went for Hanmoul, who was expanding the Dyar Morkk and pacifying the Murk around Arica.

Golos? She already had Slylth, and Gogo was in China at the moment, hanging out with his siblings and playing with their new nephew. If she tuned the Lumen-casts to foreign Divi-signals, she could even catch snippets of the Thunder Dragon strutting his stuff. Walken was a London Magister, and so was Ollie, who was too busy and too bald.

Which meant the most suitable attendee was actually Lei-bup, her High Priest, who had somehow self-taught Faith Magic, understood sacrificial rites to a T, and was completely at ease within a monolithic, cult-of-personality theocracy of mixed species.

The Pale Priestess of Shalkar had also decided, after weighing the risks, to bring Aristotle down to Mexico with her. The distance was almost five thousand kilometres as the crow flew, but using the Elemental Plane of Water, Aristotle could displace itself into place in three days. That singular fact was the reason why her Mermen Navy remained the elephant in the room in Mycroft’s Foreign Ministry. Unlike a conventional naval force, hers could appear and reappear as it pleased on the Prime Material, and if it ever felt threatened, simply dive back down into the Elemental Plane of Water.

As a fox and a diplomat, Ravenport chose never to make her unofficial naval forces a point of contention. To admit that their Regent possessed the means to control the Mer would imply that she, a subject of the Empire, had subordinated a roving Shoal. If so, did the Mageocracy make use of such a resource? Did the citizens of the Shoal pay taxes? Were they subject to the Empire’s laws? Did the Commonwealth provide the Mer with public services?

Only the dimmest of Lords and Ministers would bring the matter to Buckingham Palace, and those who did were quickly dragged away for a stern finger-wagging session by Her Majesty’s Men at Arms.

And so it was, a few days after the dream-visit, the Pale Priestess herself, joined by Slylth the Magnificent and Lei-Bup, High Whip, rode on the crest of the HML Aristotle into the contested waters of Baja California.

“You seem to be in a sour mood,” Slylth remarked upon her countenance, even while admiring what lay below. For the occasion, Sanari had grown for her a living gown of shimmering teal that occasionally bloomed little white perfumed flowers. The dress represented Shalkar and the Shoal, while Deepholme was represented by an intricate adornment of Dwarven make, wrought of Mithril and Orichalcum, formed into a wreath of victory in the likeness of Julius Caesar. The laurel doubled as a protection device against Mind Magic and divination. “What’s the matter? Percy? Sobel? The Americans?”

“It’s called pattern recognition, Slylth,” she sighed, then stretched her body against the noonday sun. “You know how it is, things go well, too well, and then something always happens just before we hit the home stretch. That’s the feeling I am getting.”

“You think Quetzalcoatl will lay a trap?” The Red Dragon made a face. “After promising Uncle Tyfanevius? I mean… He’s not a part of the Council, I guess. But that also means he receives no protection against you… a sanctioned Guardian of the Prime Material.”

“It’s just a hunch,” Gwen consulted her Divination Sigil to no avail. It wasn’t like she was a trained Diviner. “Neo Tenochtitlan is basically a Black Zone. The ruler isn’t Human, the majority of the citizens are, but they’re like the Rat-kin. The major enforcers within the Kingdom were the Jaguars-men and the Cōātlīcue Serpent-women, not to mention the numberless Coatl that inhabit every nook and cranny. Humans ARE the only Faith Casters, though, that’s their source of power. I don’t know…”

As the Regent of a million people and about a billion fish, she figured that she understood folks fairly well. If I were subordinate to aristocratic Faith-Elites who sacrificed my children to fuel their Faith Powers… Wouldn’t my society be a powder keg?

“Fear not, Your Paleness,” the baritone voice of one Lei-bup, corpulently obese with living fragments of the Shoggoth, intoned solemnly from her left elbow, proudly displaying his most presentable tentacles with ceremonial coral. “Should there be treachery afoot, your numberless Shoal shall swarm through their sacred nation and convert them by the tentacle.”

“High Whip,” she had decided to get used to the self-adorned title. “We’re guests. So we shall behave like guests. Remember why we are here.” Gwen watched the coastline approach. “DO NOT convert anyone, especially not… not via tentacles.”

Gwen looked forward to the approaching port.

She just couldn’t shake the feeling…

Puerto Vallarta.

In her old world, Puerto Vallarta was a resort town.

In this world, it was the single largest export port for Neo Tenochtitlan’s agricultural goods, one of the only ports from which the nation could receive much-needed exchange of raw HDMs in Elements that its own mines did not produce.

The harbour itself was heavily defended, resembling a fort more than a port. Its exterior was adorned with an enormous sea wall, upon which coiled serpents with wings bathed in the sun. Gwen could see them from afar, these slender, sinuous things with crests of bird feathers, pacing their nests with the bored, dangerous patience of predators made to congregate by a will existentially greater than their own.

Slylth casually scanned the place with an Arcane Eye as they approached. “No Wards. There’s nothing that prevents us from using Teleportation or stifles the signal of your Contingency Ring. They do love their snakes, though. There’s a cavern system beneath the town. I think the older ones all live down there. The ones here are just offspring.”

“Well, the more the merrier, right? The Coatl worship the Quetzalcoatl, and the Quetzalcoatl dispenses Faith to the Human Priests, who feed and command the Coatl.”

She rose into the air, her living dress trailing dramatically.

Slylth followed, and Lei-bup took to the air via a device the Sea Witches had fashioned to make him more mobile.

Aristotle came to a stop before the momentum of its displacement crushed the seawall. Incalculable volumes of Mer flooded from its carapace to set up algae vats, krill farms and seagrass fields. With Aristotle bringing life itself via its expulsions, it would only take a few days before a thriving colony began to materialise around the island-sized Leviathan.

As they approached the city, the Coatls took to the skies, turning their welcome into a vortex of colours. Feathers of every shade and description surrounded the trio, guiding them toward the centre of the port.

Closer, Gwen finally saw the welcome party.

TUM—TUM—TUM—

The drummers below began their beat, led by a half-man, half-panther Demi-human, a full head taller than Gwen.

The Coatls seemed to react to the sound of the drums, for their feathers shifted with each beat, refracting the sun’s rays in impossible and dazzling displays. Closer, the drums came in waves, a tide of sound rolling up from the docks where what felt like the entire population of the city had gathered behind the stoic ranks of feather-crowned guards.

She saw the citizens as well, tens of thousands of them, turning out from homes and hovels, warehouses and factories, to gawk at the Pale Priestess.

At the fore of the procession was a man wearing a giant serpent’s head—the High Priest from her visions.

His hands moved, and young women in white and turquoise came running into the harbour’s frontage, barefoot, scattering fistfuls of marigold and frangipani, making a floral carpet across the processional stones.

Behind them, dancers in feathered headdresses taller than Gwen herself spun in patterns too ancient for her to understand, letting their feathered sleeves fan and fall, mimicking the Coatl's movements.

Attendants bearing braziers of smoking copals threw metallic dust onto the blue-green flames, sending up great, roaring gouts of colourful flames that steered her toward the landing zone.

“You can’t say they’re not trying,” Slylth snickered.

“Such supplication is a bare minimum for welcoming the Pale Priestess,” Lei-bup scoffed.

“Prophetess of the Living Tide! REGENT!” The High Priest’s magic was enough to reach them a kilometre away. He was speaking in a dialect that translated well, but carried a harsh accent—Náhuatl, perhaps, but a version recovered from the Spanish. “Blessed Guest of the Feathered Lord! We welcome you, on behalf of the Precious Feather, to the threshold of the Sun!”

The braziers were lit. The drums rose. Then a row of priests walked onto the risen dais.

“Here we go,” Slylth warned her. “Get ready…”

“Ready for—Oh…” Gwen was ready, but not really.

The priests, each in their colourful garb and feathers, presented her with welcome gifts. A chicken, a calf, a sow, a tapir? HOLY SHIT that better be a regular jaguar and not a Were-kid…

They slit the throats of the sacrifices with practised ease, their Dragon-glass daggers parting skin and flesh as though polarised magnets. The harbour turned pink. Gwen looked, then made a point of not looking too closely. Thankfully, no humans, she noted with the exhausted relief of someone who knew with absolute certainty that Quetzalcoatl would cross that line sooner or later.

She had already made that petition to Tyfanevius. Still, the Emerald Dreamer had shaken his head and asked her if Shalkar could stop making money when Quetzalcoatl returned the visit.

Gwen had to take a break after that, to think of Elvia, perhaps, and other happier thoughts.

“A generous gesture,” Lei-bup murmured, with the air of a connoisseur grading a vintage. "Though the technique on the Priest was regrettably sloppy work. She didn’t even fully sever the trachea—”

“Lei-bup, stop,” she felt her temple throb.

“Of course, your Paleness, just taking notes, in case we need to show them how it’s properly done,” her High Whip waved its tentacles.

They were closer now. The darkened sky grew once more into light.

Then the snakes and the people parted— opening the way a sea might for the right prophet.

From the underground recess, a massive spiral uncoiled. A serpent the length of city blocks, scaled in jade and burnished gold, its crest of rainbow feathers catching the sun in colours that would make Golos lick his lips. From its smiling mouth, a forked tongue the size of a tram darted forth, tasting the air for her scent.

Any other Human Mage would be terrified, but Gwen felt only nostalgia. Long ago, so long ago, she had met a creature such as this, in a national park, while wearing nothing but a robe.

The giant snake lowered itself. It was hovering just above the ground, defying gravity.

“That’s a big limo…” she whistled. “Very cute.”

“Looks like you are a rare guest indeed,” Slylth grinned at her. “I mean, look at that thing. After we’re done riding it, how do you suppose they’re going to feed it?”

The man awaiting beside the snake limo was, as expected, the High Priest of Quetzalcoatl—the very same one from Tyfanevius’ visions.

Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl.

It was a confusing naming scheme.

Topiltzin meant "Our Precious Feather," or "Princeps," in Old Latin.

So was the Highest Priest the “Precious Thunder Serpent”, or “The precious one of the Thunder Serpent”? The duality, she suspected, was intentional.

Topiltzin was tall, taller than Gwen in her Elven sandals, much taller, if she included the headdress of serpent feathers. Even stranger, beneath the heavy Ta-Moko-style tattoos covering his exposed skin, he was clearly fair. He was also lanky, long-limbed and long-necked, with more sinew than muscle.

An albino? Or an exotic Demi-human? Gwen smiled and nodded as she landed. That could explain a lot.

Compared to the nation’s caramel-complexioned citizens, the jarring contrast of Topiltzin’s height and fairness was self-evident. But then again, Gwen reminded herself, they did believe that the Precious Feather had one such incarnation, where the Vessel was a fair-skinned bringer of light.

What she did not like was that the headdress was either magically alive or a permanent installation akin to a parasitic magic item.

When the High Priest performed a bow—just a tiny tipping of the neck, as she had done, for they were both representatives of their state—she could not tell where the mask began, and the man ended. Whatever facial expression Topiltzin showed was utterly alien to her, for they were expressed through the enormous, near comical head of the Coatl.

“Greetings, revered Priest,” Gwen chose Draconic, for her Ioun Stone was not attuned to the nation’s hybridised Náhuatl, and relaying the information in translated, psychic Spanish was just insulting to Neo Tenochtitlan’s history of self-liberation. “As promised, I have arrived to greet our winged sister, the Precious Feather. Here is my advisor and companion, Slylth of the ancient Clan of the Summer Queen, and this is my High Whip, Lei-bup of the Great Shoal Forward.

“We greet the Profitess, she who is the Devourer of Cities, the Pale Priestess of the Devouring Dark,” Topiltzin had evidently done his homework as he allowed each title to land. “Quetzalcoatl has long awaited a sister deity worthy of her golden blood. Fly with me. Let us greet you properly in Teithuacán, as the old custom demands.”

The old custom sent shivers up her spine, not that Gwen could refuse the man’s extended hand.

Assisted by the bony appendage, she was surprised by his vice-like grip, then thoroughly unnerved by the stain of iron worked into the man’s skin. The colour was not a tattoo. It was stained the way a butcher’s hands were stained with grease, only this one spoke of the nation’s old customs. The hand was dry and warm, and yet, Gwen could feel the texture of the blood, old and new, hot and congealing, accumulated daily until the psychic gore manifested as a phantom limb layered over the skin.

His bow to Slylth was lower.

His handshake with Lei-bup was less enthusiastic.

They mounted the giant Coatl and rode on its head. With a fluttering of wings that seemed to cover the port from edge to edge, they took flight.

There was no wind-buffering magic, no seats, no First Class amenities. They simply glided across the landscape, scattering fauna as they went, communicating only through gestures, gazes and goodwill.

From the coast, the Coatl climbed, the Pacific falling away behind them in sheets of shimmering silver.

Their first spectacle was the Sierra Madre—an entire wall of mountains that rose from the coastal plain with the abruptness of a continental crinkle. Unlike the bleak mountains of Shalkar, these were dark with pines and cloud forests, slashed in artistic places by gorges with white and blue rivers that led to cascading waterfalls. Coatls nested on the high outcrops—not the great rainbow-crested specimens that had greeted them at the port, but larger, duller mountain variants that watched their passage with reverence, bowing their heads as Quetzalcoatl’s spiritual double passed.

In the second hour, the mountains gave way to the altiplano.

Gwen felt her heart soar.

She had only ever seen this in Australia: the sheer scale of it, the way the plateau stretched from horizon to horizon, brown and ochre and tawny gold, cut into vast grids of agricultural farmland that climbed the hills in terraces and steps. It was agriculture organised around a God of fertility. It was obsessively well-organised, every square kilometre parcelled and planted, the rising ziggurats so profusely dotted across the landscape that it looked less like farming and more like an ongoing offering.

Meso-America’s unique canal systems glittered between the field-squares, carrying water in thin bright lines from distant reservoirs. Villages clustered at the intersections, each one anchored by a stepped platform topped with brazier-smoke. Near mountain rises, enormous dams, dozens and dozens of them, fed the lower aquifers. The Coatls remained ever-present, smaller than the harbour varieties, bred for labour rather than ceremony, hauling loads between the settlements in lazy spirals, their feathers drab with dust.

Coatls as chickens?! Gwen felt her world shudder.

Coatls as sheep?!

By the Snake Gods! Coatls are shepherding Coatls?!

She was learning something already.

Maybe she should also encourage organic development in Shalkar, rather than homogenise its various races, as per her Singaporean Doctrine. It was an experiment worth considering.

From her vantage point, she saw the masses move without complaint. They were mostly Humans, of course. That was expected. But there were Cōātlīcue Serpent-women as well, working among the labourers, their serpentine bodies twisting this way and that as they went about the business of the harvest. Sadly, she did not see any representatives of the fabled Jaguar-men.

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Then, near noon, upon the horizon, they arrived at the valley.

Neo Tenochtitlan announced itself as a shimmer, a reflection of the midday sun. As they drew closer, she saw that it was a series of interconnected bodies of sky-lakes, in a valley ringed by mountains. Across the lakes, causeways and artificial islands formed suburbs and cities, institutions and agricultural lots.

In the largest of these island bodies sat Teithuacán. The Temple of the Feathered Serpent.

The magnificent temple was made more magnificent by tier upon tier of colourful bodies consisting of the most beautiful Coatls. Every kilometre closer, the temple exterior seemed to change with the refraction of light, making it glimmer and glisten like the scales of the very God it was named after.

“I am very glad to be here,” Slylth said, after a moment. “You sure as hell don’t see this kind of stuff staying cooped up with Mother…”

"Yeah," said Gwen after a moment more to take it all in. “It's a wonderful world.”

Gwen’s euphoria lasted exactly one hour.

They landed, dismounted. She fed the giant Coatl a glob of her Golden Mead; it wagged its tail, then flew away to be fed real food. Then Topiltzin got down to business.

Like a real estate agent showing her a new house, he brought her over to the central dais, with the best view of the city. He introduced her to the supplicants below, who had been waiting for hours, and they cheered for her arrival.

She gave a speech about unity and trade, which the people did not seem to comprehend, and then Topiltzin released a thousand rainbow Coatls in the way of peace doves.

Everything was going incredibly well, and she was even beginning to like the man, when he once more brought up the old customs.

There was a circle of smoke, burning bowls of gold, murmured invocations in old Náhuatl, then Topiltzin rubbed something like soot and ash across her forehead.

Her body instantly rejected the invasive wave of Faith. Nonetheless, Gwen understood it to possess the effect of refreshment, energisation, and something like a ward against evil, though the last part was largely superstition.

“I see our guest is not impressed,” Topiltzin’s serpent tongue flickered.

God, that is so weird… Gwen could only smile.

“Alas,” Topiltzin assured her. “This is only the first of the Precious Feather’s gifts.”

Topiltzin straightened as he rose to his full height.

Then, with the confidence of a circus master showing off his greatest performers, he gestured toward the Temple’s threshold, the one that looked like a giant serpent’s maw, and marched out the children.

Gwen gripped Lei-bup so tight that the Mer-man feared for his tentacles.

There were seven children in all, each no older than ten, arranged in two rows, led by the prettiest one. They were garlanded in marigolds and what looked like actual silver, Mithril and gold beaten to resemble native plants. They were looking at Topiltzin, at her, with happy, fervent eyes.

“The offering,” Topiltzin promised something terrible. “These nextlāhualli are the richest of our devotees, untouched by doubt, by sin, by the world's corruptions. They have prayed their whole short lives for the honour of serving a true goddess in whatever way she requires. Take your pick, Profitess. Or take them all. Quetzalcoatl never begrudged a sister god. We ask only that, in the trade deal to follow, you may offer fair terms and conditions.”

She had been prepared.

Yet Gwen simply could not get her mouth to produce the words.

TERMS AND CONDITIONS?

“Master Topiltzin,” she said, her lips so dry she had to wet them. Her psyche had to perform a supernatural act of self-repression to keep her cool. Not even when Shalkar burned between two Russian Towers had she felt so… upset. “I thank you for this bounty. But please humour me and send them home to their families. Now.”

“Mistress,” Lei-bup nudged her, with the genuinely baffled air of a tentacle trying to be helpful, “We cannot insult our host.”

“Lei-bup, not now.” She hissed in Mer.

“You do eat the caviar with gusto…”

“UNFERTILISED CAV—” Gwen stopped herself. “This is completely different, Lei-bup.”

"Is it? They are merely fry. Look at them—it's what they want.”

“They are children,” Gwen growled. “You’re overstepping, High Whip.”

Lei-bup looked at her with the expression of a whipped dog merely trying to be loyal. The High Whip sighed with genuine reflection. “...I shall amend my understanding of the Mistress's dietary preferences accordingly.”

Slylth, for his part, had been watching the show like a National Geographic anthropologist. In the end, he decided that, perhaps, it was best to intervene.

“Honoured Quetzalcoatl,” he spoke to a higher power than the Priest. “Our Mistress prefers children gifting flowers. Not children cut down as flowers.”

“Truly?” Topiltzin, whether serious or insulted, gave her a look of pity. “The Devourer of Cities does not…”

“No,” Gwen said. “Never.”

“There were no children in those cities?”

“It was one…two cities…” Gwen protested with her being. “It was mostly Undead.”

Topiltzin looked at the row of children. “We can arrange Undead children if—”

“THANK YOU,” Gwen bowed. “Please take us downstairs for the negotiation.”

“As the Profitess wishes," he said at last, and made a small gesture. The children were led away. Not roughly, not even readily on their part, several of them threw wounded, longing glances back over their shoulders as though they were the ones being denied something precious. Topiltzin shook his head at them, like a conductor denying the children’s choir the chance of a lifetime.

How do I change this? Gwen thought arrogantly to herself. How do I stop the sacrifices?

But she had no answers, not unless she was willing to Pax Britannia her colonies.

Topiltzin led them inside.

She had been here before, but now that she was here, she realised it really was fashioned for maximum awe, like Christian cathedrals. The jaw consisted of a vast, fanged maw of black stone and gold inlay, wide enough to swallow Golos whole, its upper and lower edges studded with teeth the size of war-canoes, its throat sloping away into cool, incense-thick darkness.

“Quetzalcoatl's body houses his temple,” Topiltzin said, with the simple, unshakeable pride of a High Priest describing his God’s gullet. "We do not build upon a god. We build within one. Come. The Precious Feather awaits.”

Gwen took a slow breath, glanced once at Slylth, who looked like a studious tourist, and Lei-bup, who was probably thinking about the escaped children, then stepped into the ruby sanctum of the Coatl God.

The throat passages opened after winding through the intestines of the temple, into a space that Gwen hoped wasn’t the stomach. Within this cavernous space, the walls seemed alive, for the blackstone was carved in long, ribbed arches, making the temple interior more anatomy than architecture.

Holy shit… her mind took a second to register the texture. Is that… all Dragon Glass? A cavern of pure Macuahuitl?

“Did you make all of this?” Gwen asked as they stepped into the chamber. Her eyes were on the Coatls. Hundreds of them. Thousands. Coiled around pillars, swallowing their own tails along the lintels, slithering, so that when she let her eyes unfocused, they kept forming slow, looping patterns, like a kinetic magic-eye puzzle.

“No,” Topiltzin smiled as he walked, or his mask did. “This section was here long before we arrived. Teotihuacan, we call it. Our ancestors built this. We know that it is tied to the ancient line of the Quetzalcoatl.”

Oh yeah… Gwen reminded herself. Old as the Quetzalcoatl was, it was still only four centuries old. In Draconic terms, it was barely older than Slylth, and because Quetzalcoatl hailed from a lesser line of Draconids, it was a far simpler creature. This meant that, in her negotiations, it really was Topiltzin who spoke for the Quetzalcoatl, rather than the Winged Thunder God having its own schemes and wishes.

Still, that Teotihuacan had existed long before the present Quetzalcoatl was interesting indeed. As someone who had literally dream-walked Almudj’s incarnations, she could absolutely imagine a past Topiltzin shepherding a large Thunder God. Or an Elven maiden like Kalinda in her dreams. Macuahuitl was forged from Dragon Fire, or something that could similarly reshape elemental composition, meaning this place could literally be the result of an ancient Almudj having a temper tantrum.

Was the Precious Feather also like Almudj then? And did that make Topiltzin a Vessel like her? Was Quetzalcoatl, like Almudj, life, death, drought and rain, growth and rot and the long, slow turning of seasons, a land-god tied to a ley-node?

They walked onto the dais at the centre of the chamber, and from the maw within a maw, a figure emerged.

Another child.

Her heart sank until she realised that the sexless child who approached was no sacrifice.

It was Quetzalcoatl itself.

Slight. Barefoot. Robed in something that shimmered between turquoise and rose-gold depending on how the light caught it, with a face that was smooth and symmetrical and utterly exotic. A waterfall of feathers, not hair, fell in a soft cascade past narrow shoulders, shifting slowly through the spectrum like oil on still water. Her eyes—because Gwen could not associate that serpentine way of walking with the masculine—were deeply layered gold, the kind that would make a Dwarf turn to stare.

Huh, Gwen thought, faintly betrayed by her own assumptions. From the old tour guide back home... I was expecting more of a Maoi persona.

"Precious Feather," High Priest Topiltzin folded himself, without hesitation or self-consciousness, flat onto the mandala floor. It was a gesture of such total, unguarded devotion, one that—

“Great Devourer,” Lei-bup prostrated, lying as flat as Topiltzin in a body that seemed to have no more bones left.

Gwen kicked her fish.

“Sister,” said a voice like wind through a rye field, warm and androgynous and entirely without malice. “Do not stand on formalities, there is no great Tyfanevius here to judge us on ceremony and age.”

The serpentine God reached out with her fingers.

Gwen took them and waited.

The two stood awkwardly facing one another.

Okay, Gwen thought, feeling the tight coil in her chest loosen by one careful notch. This is... actually kind of sweet. But now what?

Topiltzin intervened between the two Draconic amateurs by guiding them toward the lower half of the chamber, where an oval table had been set. It was laden with food in the old style of the Cōātlīcue people. Gwen’s eyes, trained by one too many ill-advised Mer banquets, went straight to the obvious problem with it.

Everything was raw.

Most things were fresh and flesh-like.

There wasn’t a single salad in sight.

“Mistress,” Lei-bup nodded wisely. “It would seem our hosts are wise and generous both.”

She looked at Slylth.

The Red Dragon indicated that he did not know, nor mind.

They sat.

Gwen and Quetzalcoatl sat at the head of the table, flanked by their aides. Slylth sat on the far side, at the other end of the table, flanked by two Cōātlīcue maidens who had been summoned from thin air.

“Please partake while we speak,” Topiltzin advised her, his serpent-eyes golden and slitted.

Gwen took the wine instead, a thick, faintly sour, honey-pale liquid that the attendant called pulque, the old drink of the maguey, sacred long before any conquest had bent it toward new Gods, and noted, with some surprise, how full it made her feel and how much she liked it.

“Before we continue, sister.” Quetzalcoatl produced what looked like a tiny obsidian blade from somewhere in her shifting robes. She drew it, without hesitation or flinch, across one smooth palm. “May we allow our Essence to speak?”

The blood that welled up wasn’t blood, but liquid gold, or a substance like it.

It was Essence, the very same that Gwen produced.

It was Golden Mead.

Gwen glanced at Slylth. The Dragon-kin nodded.

She allowed her own Essence to well up in her palm.

“Let us be known to one another properly,” Quetzalcoatl dipped a tiny finger into Gwen’s Essence pool, then imprinted it in the space between her brows.

Gwen observed the same. She dipped her finger into Quetzalcoatl’s golden liquid and placed the drop in the same space between her eyes.

The strange tension dissolved.

There was no spell, nor did Almudj reject the Essence of its lesser relative. She seemed to see Quetzalcoatl more clearly, if such a thought were plausible. She saw that her contemporary was indeed young. She felt her insecurities and fears. She felt deeply that Quetzalcoatl did not fully understand the war her nation was fighting against the Itztlacueyanians of the north.

She couldn’t know what her Essence taught Quetzalcoatl. What she saw, however, was the Winged Serpent’s eyes glaze over, then, when consciousness returned, she saw awe, wonder, and trepidation. Was it Almudj that the Quetzalcoatl saw? Gwen wondered. Or was it something far more terrible, such as the tens of thousands of Essences that Caliban had pooled somewhere in her Astral Soul?

As only Lei-bup and Slylth seemed interested in the luncheon, Gwen decided to take their new rapport for a spin by speaking sincerely about a most distressing subject.

“Tariffs,” she said, profoundly channelling the understanding to the Precious Feather. “I’ll take care of the US side. First, we can try to wedge the issue with Congress. We’re requesting a single Free Trade Agreement to exchange materials for simple Magitech goods related to agriculture. Barring that, you can simply trade with me through the Shalkar Trade Consortium. We’ll deliver grain, Dwarven Steel, Rat-kin operators. You give us your unique cultivar methods, like chinampas. I have a feeling that before long, Shalkar will need them.”

Quetzalcoatl stared at her prettily.

Gwen despaired.

"The Profitess does not waste time on pleasantries," Topiltzin smiled patiently.

“She’s a busy gal,” Slylth said, enjoying the exotic mortal morsels as a tourist should. “Our Gwen runs the largest inter-Planar trade network on the Prime Material, after all.”

Gwen again explained the notion of the trade deal to Quetzalcoatl, then dumbed down her jargon by several degrees, then looked at Topiltzin with imploring eyes. Every time Gwen reached a punchline, Quetzalcoatl would laugh, beautifully, innocently, childishly, but she would neither agree nor disagree with Gwen’s proposals.

Topiltzin slapped his knees, then left his side of the table until he stood behind his God.

To Gwen’s immense surprise, he placed both hands on Quetzalcoatl’s shoulders, and Quetzalcoatl did not seem to mind at all.

I guess they really are a duality… Gwen kept her poise regal and dignified. If she did this to Almudj, or Elvia to the Yinglong, or Percy to that Black Dragon that gave him her blessing…

She shuddered.

“I fear that your realpolitik is beyond the usual concerns of the Precious Feather,” the High Priest apologised. “I should have spoken in our Quetzalcoatl’s stead. May I ask a question? As an old man who has watched this valley breathe in and out for four centuries?"

“You may.”

Four centuries? Gwen inhaled.

She suddenly saw herself, four centuries later, still beating the Americans about the head, trying to get them to stop attacking their neighbours. Maybe by then they can field inter-Planar expeditions, and the Prime Material would finally fulfil its promise of Eden. After all, fighting true Elementals was closer to fighting natural disasters than fighting beings like the Mer.

“What are you, Regent? Really?” The High Priest massaged the shoulders of his young deity. “You are the Guardian sent by the Council of Ancients. This, I know. But what do you wish of us? Truly? What are you to us?”

Gwen felt slightly disarmed by the man’s forwardness. “How do you mean? Is mutual prosperity not enough for our nations?”

Topiltzin looked at her strangely, which was absolutely unnerving, given that he wore the serpent's head.

“My dearest does not know because she is young, but I know. I know that the nation we have built will not stand forever against the greed of our neighbours. Not those in the north, or the Black Dragon in the south.”

Gwen winced. The man was right, but…

“Alas, I have seen prosperity, and I have seen stagnation,” Topiltzin allowed his God to touch a hand to his, a gesture so tender that Lei-bup looked at her in a way that made her skin crawl. “And I fear that, even if we are enriched and empowered, as you suggest, we would fare no better.”

Topiltzin met her eyes.

“The world that was here before, the ancients who made this temple, they were far more powerful, prosperous, and wise than our young nation. Yet, even so, they no longer exist. In their perfect contentment, their Empire grew corpulent. Theirs was a benevolent God who did not demand sacrifice. Their civilisations so comfortable, so well-fed, so perfectly arranged in their grids and their causeways and their centuries of unbroken peace, that they have forgotten the only thing that ever kept them alive in the first place.”

The High Priest’s shoulders sagged. “I am an old and bitter being, Regent. I have seen too many empires rise and fall. I wish to know what you will do that is different.”

Gwen wished she could see the head behind the mask, because the Regent of Shalkar had no answers beyond a ten-year economic expansion plan. At her heart, she was still human; she could not see the world in the scale that her trade partner perceived.

Nor did she feel like she should bedazzle her Central American ally with empty promises.

“Fret not, our Goddess is the only true saviour,” Lei-bup announced, with the booming, wounded indignation of a High Whip who has just heard his faith questioned. "There is no question of could. The Pale Priestess of the Shoggoth has already—”

“Lei-bup,” Gwen placed a pale hand on the fish’s writhing tentacles. “Not now.”

“She has delivered the Tasmüyiz from bondage, tamed the Sand Wyrm Afaa al-Halak, opened the Fifth Vel to honest commerce, saved the Dwarven people from exile—"

"Lei-bup,” her voice grew stern.

Gwen pressed a hand onto Lei-bup’s lips.

Her hand came away with silence and mucus.

Topiltzin only smiled. The High Priest was amused, warm, entirely unoffended. It was such a strange contrast. The youthful Quetzalcoatl and the old Priest.

“A long time ago,” Topiltzin’s hand remained on his God. “I thought of myself as a Saviour. Not a Guardian, not a shepherd. Just someone who couldn’t let the injustices of the world rest. I thought that, with my gifts, my knowledge, I could do what so many others could not. With each century, I felt that, maybe, if I kept it up, I could outlast the ennui of this world. Yet here we are—”

Gwen felt the weight of the man’s despair fall on her shoulders and knew that if she wanted this alliance, then she would need to bear its load.

“Tell me honestly, Pale Priestess—saviour to saviour—Vessel to Vessel—before our mutual Gods. Could you be what I could not?"

Yes. Gwen mimed the word first. She needed a minute still to digest her commitment.

“You have to mean it,” the High Priest said, very softly, yet his voice was audible as thunder. "Not as a Regent signing a treaty. Not as a politician. Say it as the truth underneath all your titles. Have faith. Do you want this temple, its people, and its God?”

“Yes,” Gwen said, and she meant it, because she had seen burning Towers in Sydney and in Auckland. She had seen Shalkar on fire. She had seen the refugees and the Dwarven corpse-sculptures, the cruelty of the Svartálfar and the insanity of the Zealots running amok in the USA. She had seen the South Pole, covered from horizon to horizon with Undead Mer. She could do better for the Neo Tenochtitlanians. This, she could guarantee.

She met the High Priest’s eyes defiantly.

She gazed deep into the glimmering eyes of the bright child-God watching her through serpentine slits. A Goddess out of time, a being of the old world who hatched into a world that was far more complex than predator and prey.

She would make a world for them all.

She had already done so for so many of them.

She would, because the alternative was so much crueller.

“Yes,” she repeated, with more conviction. Perhaps, this is what it means to be a Guardian of the Prime Material. “I’ll make the world a better place, no matter how long it takes.”

Topiltzin paused. He nodded. Then placed both hands against his head to remove his mask.

It came off as a gory glove.

The Regent of Shalkar, her High Whip, and her Red Dragon stared with their jaws unhinged at the likeness that emerged.

The impossibly high cheekbones.

The thin, pale lips.

The long nose bridge.

The eyes of metallic gold, like a scarab beetle’s shell.

The long, distended, spear–tip ears.

Topiltzin’s thin fingers cupped the guileless face of his young God.

Then the Ljósálfar, with one smooth, unhurried motion, slit his own God's throat.