That Time I Got Transported to a Fantasy World With a Waifu Gacha System
- Thread starter Academia Nut
- Start date
- Original Mature Fantasy
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Wrong continent
While Mexico is part of Latin America, which includes South America, it is part of North America, while the various Indigenous Peoples featured in this story are from Mesoamerica, which excludes South America. There was some limited contact between the cultures of Mesoamerica and South America, but the jungles of Central America served as a significant barrier between the two. For the most part the primary culture groups for the first part of the story will be those associated with the Aztecs and the Maya.
- Location
- Brazil
Where does the voting happen?
Grey Rook
Genuine Nerd
- Location
- The Quantum Foam
I don't think this is intended to be a quest.
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
there is voting, just not on SV, see the page banner.
or:
Fiction.live
Read an interactive story as it's being written live. Vote on the direction of the story.
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2.2
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Adam woke to a strange popping noise, and when he flickered his eyes about the dark he saw Ce Calli over at the munitions crate, looking on in confusion as she held something that gave off a dim red glow. Confused but worried she might have found something dangerous within, Adam scrambled over to her, only to find that she appeared entirely alright, although the glow coming off the smooth rock. It looked like there was a symbol or something like that inside that was glowing with red light.
Before Adam could really ask what was going on, the stone was pulled near magnetically from Ce Calli's fingers to collide with his wrist, where it flashed away into a tiny charm on a phantom bracelet before fading away, leaving Adam utterly blind in the cave at night.
He just sort of sighed and muttered, "Fucking magic I guess" while Ce Calli went about getting them ready to leave. He would figure out what that was all about later. They'd already lost some time sleeping in.
The trek through the dark forest was a profoundly unpleasant experience, with Adam basically trailing just behind Ce Calli as she led the way, the travois carried between the two of them to minimize their trail and so Adam could just sort of hang on while they moved. There were a few times where Adam had to wait around while Ce Calli figured out how to navigate a particularly tricky bit before coming back to get him, and a few times where he took over hauling the travois while she scouted ahead, but for the most part he just stumbled through the dark behind her.
Eventually the sun started to come up and they decided to break for the day. Ce Calli vanished into the woods to scout and hunt while Adam set up a secluded shelter. It was a profoundly miserable experience for his battered and bruised body since he only vaguely knew what he was doing for a lot of things. By the time Ce Calli had returned with a pair of cottontails Adam had a firepit arranged and a lean-to set up. He'd also discovered while he was getting out water that a few more shotgun shells had appeared in the ivory bowl.
Ce Calli's reaction was interesting, in that while she rolled her eyes at an incompetent male and outsider, she seemed genuinely shocked at how carefully Adam watched as she hand drilled a small fire to life and then attempted to repeat the effort while she got to slicing the rabbits for cooking at smoking. He suspected that she figured that either he was too proud to do more or too proud to learn, not that he simply had never been taught the things that she assumed were common sense.
Soon enough they were eating roast rabbit with what Adam figured was a local hardtack equivalent, engaging with what conversation they could, which primarily involved giving each other language lessons. Ce Calli was learning significantly faster than Adam, but was still trying, and they were rapidly sorting out a pidgin of English and Nahuatl with a smattering of Spanish and what Adam was figuring was Mixtec when for whatever reason one of them found it easier to use a particular word.
At some point Adam got out the shotgun and the other things that had either appeared from the bowl or been helpfully packed away by Xitlalli and started to give the weapon a full disassembly and clean. Ce Calli actually turned away as he started, but the fact that he was still exchanging vocabulary with her drew her attention back to him. Eventually she managed to ask, "You no mind I see?"
Shaking his head, Adam said, "No, good see. Dangerous, good know more."
He gave her a quick primer in gun safety, and although the language between them made getting some of the more sophisticated ideas across difficult he at least managed to get across the idea to always treat the weapon like it could go off at any time and to thus never point it at something you didn't want dead. He could see the wheels in her head turning about that, and he had a feeling that on some level she was going to treat it as a sort of living thing that might bite even if it hadn't been fed like it was supposed to need to be to work. He sort of hoped that was close to her mental construct of it, simply because she would treat it with more care than some people who should know better.
Eventually though exhaustion and the increasing heat of the day caught up with both of them and they settled in beneath the shade of their lean-to. Adam ended up sleeping most of the day away, with Ce Calli only waking him on a few short occasions so she could take her own naps without leaving the camp unguarded, but she seemed to not need much sleep.
The next night was worse than the first of their travels, but that was mostly because it lasted significantly longer since they got going at twilight and only took short breaks to stop for food and water. Adam probably should have called for more rest breaks, but since the going was fairly slow due to his not being able to see in the dark, he never quite hit the point of realization he would have when hiking during the day. He basically just ended up collapsing in the morning and sleeping the entire day.
It took until the fourth night of travel for them to figure out a better system, and by then they had made it to less hilly terrain closer to the coast. They also ran into more signs of human habitation, although for the time being Ce Calli was keeping them away from any actual people, partly so that if they did have any Spanish pursuit they wouldn't lead them to massacre friendly people, and partly so that Adam could have more time learning Nahuatl and Mixtec so he could speak for himself in front of people who were probably going to be hostile or at least suspicious of his presence.
With his body and ability to communicate improving, Adam was finally able to ask an important question during the day. Every day there was a trickle of shells in the Giant Skull Mortar, and now that all of his energy wasn't going into healing and marching he felt he should work on something important to their long term survival. Setting aside a dozen shells, he practiced his shooting and reloading for a bit.
He actually grinned more than a bit when he got a good look at Ce Calli's face after he checked to see if he could slam fire the shotgun, which he in fact could. She had seen the effects in action and up close after the fact, but hearing him empty the last two rounds in under a second was clearly an incredible shock to her given that the first ten he had make sure to carefully place his shots to practice aiming with the damn thing, so she hadn't been able to fully appreciate how fast a pump action could fire, let alone one that was near semiautomatic.
On the one hand, once the ammo ran out or someone got close Adam was less adept at fighting than probably 95% of the adult population of the planet. On the other hand, he got warm and fuzzy feelings over the fact that he was certain Ce Calli would turn up her nose upon seeing an arquebus in action.
It was on the sixth night of travel that something changed. Ce Calli came back from a forward scouting trip, eyes gleaming in the moonlight, and she said, "Road ahead, I think know where are. About halfway. Maybe problem."
"Problem?" Adam asked.
Ce Calli's eyes bobbed in the dark in a nod. "Smell people, travelling on road. Sacred place near. Smell bad blood on people. Sacred place heal before Fire Snuffing."
Adam gulped in worry at the mention of disease. From what they had discussed and Adam had been able to understand, the Fire Snuffing was some event where magic and the connection to the divine had largely stopped working, resulting in widespread chaos. It sounded like it happened around the same time as the Fall of Tenochtitlan, although he had no idea how actual magic had impacted the timeline in comparison to his history.
Still, if the timeline was even remotely close to his own, that meant that smallpox had been unleashed in the Americas. No one was quite certain how early some of the other epidemic diseases would arrive and cause apocalyptic collapse of populations, but smallpox was definitely one of the first. Adam had a huge number of vaccinations against most of the worst diseases either from growing up in the modern world or from his preparations for the digs, but smallpox was not one of them. He would have to face it eventually, but there was definitely a part of him that wanted to put it off for as long as possible.
It took a moment for Adam to process what Ce Calli was saying and what she was not saying. She was asking for his thoughts, since if she wanted to avoid the place or go there she wouldn't need to ever know the other option existed. She was a healer, and she had a shard of divinity, so there was clearly a part of her that wanted to visit a sacred place where the sick congregated. Yet she also understood that there was danger. Tututepec had people who she knew or at least knew of her, while here there would probably be no-one at this place who she would feel fully confident making contact with. She also knew there was something nasty disease-wise here, where Tututepec was still unknown. And Adam was still incredibly rough at speaking the local languages.
Even playing up the obvious divinity that Ce Calli had access to might backfire, given that the deity in question was incredibly nasty out of her specific context, and that context didn't include dealing with diseases. Things could easily go very, very wrong.
But then again could he really turn away from people in front of him who were in need?
They would...
Before Adam could really ask what was going on, the stone was pulled near magnetically from Ce Calli's fingers to collide with his wrist, where it flashed away into a tiny charm on a phantom bracelet before fading away, leaving Adam utterly blind in the cave at night.
He just sort of sighed and muttered, "Fucking magic I guess" while Ce Calli went about getting them ready to leave. He would figure out what that was all about later. They'd already lost some time sleeping in.
The trek through the dark forest was a profoundly unpleasant experience, with Adam basically trailing just behind Ce Calli as she led the way, the travois carried between the two of them to minimize their trail and so Adam could just sort of hang on while they moved. There were a few times where Adam had to wait around while Ce Calli figured out how to navigate a particularly tricky bit before coming back to get him, and a few times where he took over hauling the travois while she scouted ahead, but for the most part he just stumbled through the dark behind her.
Eventually the sun started to come up and they decided to break for the day. Ce Calli vanished into the woods to scout and hunt while Adam set up a secluded shelter. It was a profoundly miserable experience for his battered and bruised body since he only vaguely knew what he was doing for a lot of things. By the time Ce Calli had returned with a pair of cottontails Adam had a firepit arranged and a lean-to set up. He'd also discovered while he was getting out water that a few more shotgun shells had appeared in the ivory bowl.
Ce Calli's reaction was interesting, in that while she rolled her eyes at an incompetent male and outsider, she seemed genuinely shocked at how carefully Adam watched as she hand drilled a small fire to life and then attempted to repeat the effort while she got to slicing the rabbits for cooking at smoking. He suspected that she figured that either he was too proud to do more or too proud to learn, not that he simply had never been taught the things that she assumed were common sense.
Soon enough they were eating roast rabbit with what Adam figured was a local hardtack equivalent, engaging with what conversation they could, which primarily involved giving each other language lessons. Ce Calli was learning significantly faster than Adam, but was still trying, and they were rapidly sorting out a pidgin of English and Nahuatl with a smattering of Spanish and what Adam was figuring was Mixtec when for whatever reason one of them found it easier to use a particular word.
At some point Adam got out the shotgun and the other things that had either appeared from the bowl or been helpfully packed away by Xitlalli and started to give the weapon a full disassembly and clean. Ce Calli actually turned away as he started, but the fact that he was still exchanging vocabulary with her drew her attention back to him. Eventually she managed to ask, "You no mind I see?"
Shaking his head, Adam said, "No, good see. Dangerous, good know more."
He gave her a quick primer in gun safety, and although the language between them made getting some of the more sophisticated ideas across difficult he at least managed to get across the idea to always treat the weapon like it could go off at any time and to thus never point it at something you didn't want dead. He could see the wheels in her head turning about that, and he had a feeling that on some level she was going to treat it as a sort of living thing that might bite even if it hadn't been fed like it was supposed to need to be to work. He sort of hoped that was close to her mental construct of it, simply because she would treat it with more care than some people who should know better.
Eventually though exhaustion and the increasing heat of the day caught up with both of them and they settled in beneath the shade of their lean-to. Adam ended up sleeping most of the day away, with Ce Calli only waking him on a few short occasions so she could take her own naps without leaving the camp unguarded, but she seemed to not need much sleep.
The next night was worse than the first of their travels, but that was mostly because it lasted significantly longer since they got going at twilight and only took short breaks to stop for food and water. Adam probably should have called for more rest breaks, but since the going was fairly slow due to his not being able to see in the dark, he never quite hit the point of realization he would have when hiking during the day. He basically just ended up collapsing in the morning and sleeping the entire day.
It took until the fourth night of travel for them to figure out a better system, and by then they had made it to less hilly terrain closer to the coast. They also ran into more signs of human habitation, although for the time being Ce Calli was keeping them away from any actual people, partly so that if they did have any Spanish pursuit they wouldn't lead them to massacre friendly people, and partly so that Adam could have more time learning Nahuatl and Mixtec so he could speak for himself in front of people who were probably going to be hostile or at least suspicious of his presence.
With his body and ability to communicate improving, Adam was finally able to ask an important question during the day. Every day there was a trickle of shells in the Giant Skull Mortar, and now that all of his energy wasn't going into healing and marching he felt he should work on something important to their long term survival. Setting aside a dozen shells, he practiced his shooting and reloading for a bit.
He actually grinned more than a bit when he got a good look at Ce Calli's face after he checked to see if he could slam fire the shotgun, which he in fact could. She had seen the effects in action and up close after the fact, but hearing him empty the last two rounds in under a second was clearly an incredible shock to her given that the first ten he had make sure to carefully place his shots to practice aiming with the damn thing, so she hadn't been able to fully appreciate how fast a pump action could fire, let alone one that was near semiautomatic.
On the one hand, once the ammo ran out or someone got close Adam was less adept at fighting than probably 95% of the adult population of the planet. On the other hand, he got warm and fuzzy feelings over the fact that he was certain Ce Calli would turn up her nose upon seeing an arquebus in action.
It was on the sixth night of travel that something changed. Ce Calli came back from a forward scouting trip, eyes gleaming in the moonlight, and she said, "Road ahead, I think know where are. About halfway. Maybe problem."
"Problem?" Adam asked.
Ce Calli's eyes bobbed in the dark in a nod. "Smell people, travelling on road. Sacred place near. Smell bad blood on people. Sacred place heal before Fire Snuffing."
Adam gulped in worry at the mention of disease. From what they had discussed and Adam had been able to understand, the Fire Snuffing was some event where magic and the connection to the divine had largely stopped working, resulting in widespread chaos. It sounded like it happened around the same time as the Fall of Tenochtitlan, although he had no idea how actual magic had impacted the timeline in comparison to his history.
Still, if the timeline was even remotely close to his own, that meant that smallpox had been unleashed in the Americas. No one was quite certain how early some of the other epidemic diseases would arrive and cause apocalyptic collapse of populations, but smallpox was definitely one of the first. Adam had a huge number of vaccinations against most of the worst diseases either from growing up in the modern world or from his preparations for the digs, but smallpox was not one of them. He would have to face it eventually, but there was definitely a part of him that wanted to put it off for as long as possible.
It took a moment for Adam to process what Ce Calli was saying and what she was not saying. She was asking for his thoughts, since if she wanted to avoid the place or go there she wouldn't need to ever know the other option existed. She was a healer, and she had a shard of divinity, so there was clearly a part of her that wanted to visit a sacred place where the sick congregated. Yet she also understood that there was danger. Tututepec had people who she knew or at least knew of her, while here there would probably be no-one at this place who she would feel fully confident making contact with. She also knew there was something nasty disease-wise here, where Tututepec was still unknown. And Adam was still incredibly rough at speaking the local languages.
Even playing up the obvious divinity that Ce Calli had access to might backfire, given that the deity in question was incredibly nasty out of her specific context, and that context didn't include dealing with diseases. Things could easily go very, very wrong.
But then again could he really turn away from people in front of him who were in need?
They would...
Easter
Laziest lazier
- Location
- Bed
So from what I understand the goddess she is attuned to will basically want her to go around finding cheaters/bad guys to sleep with and then destroy while still allowing her the chance to be in a relationship, though one that would obviously be some level of open?
Though I do assume that means that romantic-wise she won't really give a hoot about most of the people she sleeps with due to who the goddess wants her to sleep with. Though I suppose even without the specifically targeting bad guys it would be a struggle to connect to people when they know you eat hearts and could murder them in a few seconds, especially in this day and age where guys would have an even worse reaction to a woman with that kinda power.
Though I do assume that means that romantic-wise she won't really give a hoot about most of the people she sleeps with due to who the goddess wants her to sleep with. Though I suppose even without the specifically targeting bad guys it would be a struggle to connect to people when they know you eat hearts and could murder them in a few seconds, especially in this day and age where guys would have an even worse reaction to a woman with that kinda power.
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bookwyrm
Doom of Public Libraries
- Location
- Wichita, Kansas
Well I mean this is a universe where A. magic is much more concrete than ours and B. currently undergoing much of the same apocalyptic mass enslavement, civil strife, burnings and massacres and general cruelty from Conquistador gangster-adventurers and their Mesoamerican collaborators/patrons, and overall total destruction of any and every natural and societal mechanism to respond to the plagues and allow Mesoamerican states to recover before getting genocidially pushed into demographic death-spirals.
As long as fear and awe of her and the hunting sin-eating jaguar goddess she is mantling outweighs fear of Malintzin's Outlanders and their new sixth sun-god as something that could possibly save them if properly guided and propitated, then I think there'll be a place for Ce Calli. A lonely place separated from everyone else with one foot in the realm of the sacral and profane, but a place nevertheless.
As long as fear and awe of her and the hunting sin-eating jaguar goddess she is mantling outweighs fear of Malintzin's Outlanders and their new sixth sun-god as something that could possibly save them if properly guided and propitated, then I think there'll be a place for Ce Calli. A lonely place separated from everyone else with one foot in the realm of the sacral and profane, but a place nevertheless.
Easter
Laziest lazier
- Location
- Bed
Oh for sure, there will always be a position of power within the local communities as long as the conquistadors are pushed back. My thinking was more on her inter-personal relationships and how it would work, since she obviously can't have a normal monogamous relationship with Adam or like what she would of had with her husband. But its doesn't seem likely to be an open relationship at the same time since she's very unlikely to find someone as romantically open and honest as Adam since most men of this period probably wouldn't be interested without being motivated by greed or power.
So I mostly was just confirming that I had the right understanding of the situation. That we can expect that she'll be interested in Adam as an actual relationship while on the side she goes out to unromantically fuck up(in both senses of the word
) cheaters and other bad-guys.Which I will admit I have mixed feelings on but that I'm willing to keep reading since the story is good so far and their relationship is developing to be both adorable and surprisingly romantic for one side being a literal murder-succubus.
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- Pronouns
- He/Him
I'm sure there is a better sociological analysis, but I sort of get the vibes that Itzpapalotl sort of serves the social purpose of putting all of the status quo disrupting elements into a singular entity that is then co-opted. The goddess is representative of feminine predation, both physical and sexual, and has elements of control fertility and fecundity of both nature and humans. She represents multiple existential threats to a patriarchal agrarian society, but her position is still on the side of the dominant deities, appeased through human sacrifice. She also serves the role of being one of those creatures that makes you go "That's fucking terrifying, I am so glad it's on our side", which also helps reinforce the necessity of the rituals needed to appease her and other gods.
All of that said, because I am going to be playing around a lot with the tropes of the male MC with a retinue of hot women with quirky personalities, Ce Calli has evolved into someone who is probably best described of as mono-romantic but incapable of being monogamous. I'm certainly aiming to make all the "waifus" fully fleshed and interesting characters with their own wants, needs, and motivations outside of being attached to the MC.
Easter
Laziest lazier
- Location
- Bed
Makes sense makes sense, I can definitely say that I get the feeling of this fearsome deity influencing her. Very much as much a woman as she is a divine beast. I can also say the aggressive/dominating part seems to be coming off strongly, since for all Ce Calli likes to think of the MC as soft and kinda incapable she also doesn't seem to doubt for a second that he'll be with her.
Of course it might just be me misunderstanding her, but I definitely get the vibe from her that its not if he'll be with her but how they'll make it work when they are together. Which, is so very godly of her to just go "Yep, this is how its gunna be and I just need to make it so". Which Adam is probably not helping by making her like him more every-time he's nice. Basically both hitting the goddess' "this is a good man" buttons while also helping Ce Calli herself heal.
Also, overall I am really enjoying the characterization for both and how they're interacting. I like seeing the divine treated genuinely and seeing how that interacts both in normal situations and in romantic scenarios.
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2.3
- Pronouns
- He/Him
It was really no question at all in Adam's mind, as he'd damn near devoted his life towards helping those who needed help. He'd actually come to the conclusion that the things he had done in pursuit of helping others had contributed to his ending up here. He honestly couldn't say if this was how he wanted to help undo the atrocities done by colonialism, but he would work with what he had.
"We help," he said simply, and he could feel Ce Calli smiling in the darkness.
Soon enough they were moving along the road – more of a well-trod dirt path really – and heading away from the coast. Soon enough the coastal forest had subtly but distinctly transformed, the terrain beneath their feet growing rockier, with the plants having a harder time finding a solid grip in the tough stone. Despite this the elevation didn't increase all that much, unlike what Adam would have expected as they moved away from the coast and towards the hills.
As the night started to give way to dawn, signs of human alteration if not habitation started to appear. Brush had been removed well back from the trail, and the path had been reworked with wooden planks and cuts into the bare stone to make it smoother to travel across. Once they hit that region they were able to practically fly down the road in comparison to the bushwhacking they had been doing for days before. They actually moved so fast that they had to take a break earlier than usual, pausing to drink and eat in the late twilight just before dawn.
As was common, when they opened up the crate they discovered something within the Giant Skull Mortar, although this time it wasn't more shells. Instead, among the phantasmal scraps of "cloth" that soon vanished, there was a knife. Actually, calling it a knife was somewhat inaccurate, since with its long, thin profile it felt more like a small sword than anything else. While having a steel blade would be incredibly useful, Adam looked over the hilt for a moment and realized something.
Getting out his shotgun and carefully unloading it first, he then checked to see if his intuition was correct, and he soon discovered that it was exactly what he had thought it was. It wasn't a knife, it was a fucking bayonet. While a more modern one might have been a little better, this one was able to be mounted on the weapon he currently had.
Adam was slightly disturbed by the look Ce Calli gave him when she beheld the bayonet when mounted, in that it combined together blood lust and lust-lust. As it was, Adam quickly removed the bayonet from its mounting and set it within a loop upon his bandoleers that seemed the best spot to put a knife. They were going to meet people they wanted to help, things would be scary enough as it was. For her part Ce Calli put on an exaggerated frown before brushing it off as the obvious silliness it was.
And then they were moving again.
It was maybe half an hour after the sun had fully crossed the horizon when they reached the actual sacred site, which was in many ways fortunate for Adam as he could properly see the place. The stone feature they were following abruptly opened up into an enormous sinkhole, with a small collection of tents on the other side from them where a few dozen people had set up camp. The rim of the cenote had been smoothed and enhanced with carvings, with ladders and ropes leading inside.
The place had also been murdered.
It was a difficult thing to describe, an inanimate place or thing being murdered, but it was related to the concept of 'the light left their eyes'. A living, breathing being had all sorts of tiny motions that were constantly there but that the brain filtered out and transformed into a general 'vibrancy'. Some things could also have a similar vibrancy, with a notable example being an exquisitely simple looking painting that Adam had seen once that was able to catch the light with all sorts of subsurface reflections that to view it in person was a transcendent experience. The motions of a living human being caused subtle pays of light and colour, essentially reflecting the vibrancy of life back at the viewer.
Someone had later decided to slash it up, disrupting all the tiny details that had made the piece pop. Try as they might, the restorers could only partially repair the damage. The painting had been murdered and the best they could do was make the corpse acceptable for an open casket.
And this cenote had the same air about it, the same sense of something missing, that there was a life and vibrancy that had obviously once been there but had since been stripped away. And not by time, neglect, or disease, but by human action with malice aforethought. There was no single thing that Adam could point to that could explain why he felt this, why he felt tears running down his face at the sight of it, but it was surely one of the most awful things he had ever seen.
Because even with the supernatural sort of magic so clearly robbed from this place, it was still a thing of sacred beauty. He wasn't sure he had ever heard of this place or if it made much geological sense to be here, but then again he had no idea how closely this world like Post-Classical Mesoamerica resembled the geography of modern Mexico, or how the presence of actual magic might change it. Then again, the people here had clearly seen it as something special, something worth preserving, so perhaps it being out of place was why it had received so much attention.
And all of this was just from afar, from where he could see the stone plunging down and make out a glimpse of inviting blue waters within. He could also hear the sounds of running water and he wondered what sights might be concealed within.
His curiosity would have to wait though, as Ce Calli gestured that he should remain by the tree-line while she went out to address those in the camp.
Adam was actually quite impressed by how she did it, in that she approached with her Predator cloak partially on while drawing attention to herself, before she abruptly swapped out her "mantle" once there were enough eyes on her, taking on her achingly beautiful form for all to see. From a distance it seemed that the reception was going well, and when people started grovelling at Ce Calli's feet in desperate supplication, Adam figured that it was going very well, all things considered.
Soon enough Ce Calli was gesturing for Adam to come over to the group, which he did so with some internal trepidation but with the bravest face he could put forward. While he was initially relieved that Ce Calli seemed to be smoothing out the effect of his being a foreigner was having, his panic soon began to rise when he saw the people among the camp.
Smallpox. Fucking smallpox. One of the greatest scourges of all of humanity, so bad bitter rivals who would incinerate each other in atomic fire were willing to work together to send the damned thing to hell where it belonged. There were perhaps three or four dozen men and women in the camp, and almost all of them showed some sign of the infection. Statistically speaking one in three were going to die, but that was when contracting the disease was staggered throughout the population such that there were healthy people to tend to the sick. Everyone getting it all at once was how a whole population could be wiped out, since people who might have recovered would be left unattended and suffer dehydration and undernourishment on top of the disease.
Adam had no immunity to this, because the world had cast the virus into the pit. Roll a standard die and get a one or a two and he would die a fucking awful death, and even if he survived he could still be scarred and disfigured by it all. Adam wasn't sure if he had ever faced anything quite so terrifying before. Still, he managed to go up to Ce Calli, who had let the supernatural beauty fade down to just remarkable beauty, and asked as best he could, "Any no sick? Any better? Any not bad? I might able help no sick people."
Ce Calli began to talk with the people, who were crowding around in a way that suggested that they might turn into a mob, and that had Adam somewhat freaked out by the proximity to people whose flesh was covered in pustules. He'd studied the epidemics and thus actually knew that smallpox was primarily an airborne disease and thus he should be most scared of people breathing too close to him, but there was a natural revulsion to the damage to the skin.
Fortunately Ce Calli was a healer – or at least a senior apprentice, their conversations were still ambiguous with the lack of language skills – and she knew when to tell people to back the hell off so she could work. The divine authority she had impressed upon them helped significantly, and soon enough she had managed to get across that crowding her and begging at her feet wasn't going to help them get better faster. She also managed to get across to the people that she wanted to know just how bad they all were and if anyone was getting better at all.
Adam just waited quietly while people looked at him with a mix of suspicion and hope, his gorge rising with every moment. Now that he was closer, he could see that there was a little underground stream that emptied into the cenote in such a way that it created a small waterfall on one side. He could also smell salt and feel a heat rising from within, and he was sure that the geologists associated with the digs would have found the place utterly fascinating. Even in a world without magic this would have been a place where people would flock to seek healing, to bathe in warm, salty waters. Without magic though the effects probably wouldn't be able to make a difference against the novel viral infection.
The fact that magic was real but had somehow been stripped from this place made it all the more cruel to the people who had fled here seeking salvation. Worse yet, friends and family who had accompanied them had surely been sickened by the concentration of infected people. Even if this place did exist in Adam's world, it had probably become forgotten, a place of healing turned into one cursed by death.
Finally though Ce Calli had managed to sort the people out, finding a young man who seemed to have only contracted a mild case and was starting to recover even though he was still covered in blisters. Adam wasn't sure if they would get so lucky, but having such a patient would give those not yet infected their best possible chance. Of course, what came next was going to be tricky.
Putting a hand on his recently acquired bayonet, Adam considered what he needed before he said, "Need fire, hot water." He then glanced at the tents and said, "Not in camp." Minimizing the live viral load was going to be key to maybe making it through this.
Ce Calli seemed to agree with him and barked out a few orders, and soon enough those who were able had set up a small fire and were boiling some water. Ce Calli for her part had busted out her healers tools and was attending to the worst off who she deemed to have a hope of survival, leaving Adam with the young man who stared at him with wide eyes as Adam got his tools ready. While he would have preferred to set his shotgun down he didn't trust it out of his control, if only because someone might get curious and hurt themselves with it.
Finally Adam managed to get his blade as sterilized as he figured he was going to get it by letting it sit in boiling water for a solid five minutes. Once it had cooled and dried, he then picked it up and tried to figure out how to best explain that he wanted to cut open the pustules on the young man to harvest the contents. While they had been waiting the man had introduced himself as Chicuei Miquiztli, but the young man spoke very little Nahuatl, which made anything other than basic introductions difficult. However, when Adam began to take up the blade, Chicuei braced himself.
It suddenly occurred to Adam that within the cultural context of these people, one person being singled out by a strange but magical person who got a knife prepared meant that there was a high likelihood of getting their heart cut out. The fact that Chicuei was fully accepting of that fact was both incredibly brave and selfless on his part, and more than a little fucked up from Adam's perspective. Fortunately, it made cutting into the pustules on the young man's arms significantly easier, especially as Chicuei did not flinch when Adam did it.
Smearing the discharge upon a tortilla stone someone had in the camp, Adam really wished he knew more about the whole process. The objective was to kill the virus, but also to leave the surface antigens intact for the immune system to find. He would probably at best be able to kill enough that the live specimens would not be able to establish a foothold before his immune system had been trained on how to deal with the virus. Getting an even distribution would be tricky since under the bright, hot sun the pus was already drying out, but...
It occurred to Adam that to most people he was performing magic, and from a certain point of view he was, he just also was desperate to explain what and why he was doing what he was doing. Ce Calli was also working her own medicine and magic among the sick, applying what herbal remedies and incantations she could. And while he basically had no idea how the actual magic of this world worked, he also knew enough about human psychology and sociology to know a ritual when he saw one.
"Need water," Adam stated, and when Chicuei raised an eyebrow in confusion at him, Adam realized he would need to be more specific. Adam then pointed to the cenote and said, "That water."
Chicuei frowned a bit at that, which told Adam something about the sort of sacred this place was. Taking the magic healing water was definitely a big no-no, even with this level of disaster. Adam needed to consider how to approach this, before he suddenly realized that he could probably make this somewhat right. Picking up his tools so that they wouldn't be unattended, he went over to the crate and pulled out one of the glass bottles of water they had, specifically one that had been filled with rainwater.
Holding it up to catch the sunlight, he let the bottle blaze with light and refracted rainbows, a remarkable display for people who had never seen clear glass before. Uncorking it, he went over to the edge of the cenote and began to pour it out into the dark, mineral rich waters below, and he said in English his best booming voice, "Tlaloc, I figure you are involved here somehow, so you're a good name to invoke. To you and any other spirit who might be here, I offer this gift of pure water collected from Tlaloc's bounty, in exchange for taking an equal amount from this sacred place, so that I might use it in the healing of others." Adam then paused a bit while he considered that someone might actually be listening before he said, "Uh, if anyone objects to this, could I get like a warning thunderhead or earthquake or something before I transgress? I really do wish to help here."
There was just silence while everyone watched Adam perform his little ritual. Thankfully Ce Calli looked mostly interested and wasn't making any warding gestures at him. Between that and no heavenly smiting, Adam then proceeded to tie a length of cord they had made from plant fibres in their journey and carefully lowered the bottle into the cenote.
When he got the bottle back and no one had jumped him for his transgression, he found that just the feel of the water on the outside was super salty. It was probably saltier than seawater in there, which might actually be antibacterial for most things living on the skin. He then began to carefully dribble the salt water on the pus flakes, using the glass bottle to cast brilliant rainbows over the mixture so he could say, "Huitzilopotchli and Quetzalcoatl, I could use your help on this one too."
Adam wasn't exactly sure how long he worked, but eventually he had expended all of the water and had a dry, salty paste. That had probably given enough time under the sun and enough mixing that the viruses were all thoroughly dead, but hopefully he hadn't denatured the proteins. He also hoped that invoking the local gods would do some good, if only to help get buy in from the people he was about to cut and stuff pus into.
Of course, the first person he was going to get to work on was himself. Taking a small cut of the dry paste on his bayonet, he stood up before everyone and said as confidently as he could in a language they couldn't understand, "Fuck, here goes nothing."
He then cut across his left deltoid to get the paste in there. He managed not to scream, but he couldn't prevent his face from screwing up and tears welling up in his eyes. He had forgotten to account for what getting that much salt in the wound was going to feel like. Holding it together as best he could, he set his bayonet down and then very deliberately wiped the tears away with his left thumb, before flicking them into the cenote.
Yeah, the tears were totally intended as a final balancing of the water taken from the cenote.
While he was still getting his expression under control, Ce Calli strode up to him and took up the bayonet, and before he could tell her to wash and sterilize it first she repeated the ritual, offering up a quick prayer to the gods before taking a scoop of the hopefully-a-vaccine and then cutting across her upper arm to introduce the material beneath the surface of her skin.
In that moment, once what Adam did was replicated by someone bearing pieces of divinity in front of a believing crowd, his actions went from flailing improv to magic. And something responded.
The phantasmal bracelet about his right wrist flashed into existence, along with the one upon Ce Calli's wrist. A tiny charm of smooth yellow stone flared like the sun for a moment before it also appeared upon Ce Calli's bracelet. A new tattered mantle settled upon her shoulders with a gust of cold wind, and her hair went from a shiny black to a riotous red and her eyes flashed the same colour as the waters in the sacred cenote behind them.
She said something and the universe heard, and spoke back without sound. She heard and then took a running dive into the cenote.
"We help," he said simply, and he could feel Ce Calli smiling in the darkness.
Soon enough they were moving along the road – more of a well-trod dirt path really – and heading away from the coast. Soon enough the coastal forest had subtly but distinctly transformed, the terrain beneath their feet growing rockier, with the plants having a harder time finding a solid grip in the tough stone. Despite this the elevation didn't increase all that much, unlike what Adam would have expected as they moved away from the coast and towards the hills.
As the night started to give way to dawn, signs of human alteration if not habitation started to appear. Brush had been removed well back from the trail, and the path had been reworked with wooden planks and cuts into the bare stone to make it smoother to travel across. Once they hit that region they were able to practically fly down the road in comparison to the bushwhacking they had been doing for days before. They actually moved so fast that they had to take a break earlier than usual, pausing to drink and eat in the late twilight just before dawn.
As was common, when they opened up the crate they discovered something within the Giant Skull Mortar, although this time it wasn't more shells. Instead, among the phantasmal scraps of "cloth" that soon vanished, there was a knife. Actually, calling it a knife was somewhat inaccurate, since with its long, thin profile it felt more like a small sword than anything else. While having a steel blade would be incredibly useful, Adam looked over the hilt for a moment and realized something.
Getting out his shotgun and carefully unloading it first, he then checked to see if his intuition was correct, and he soon discovered that it was exactly what he had thought it was. It wasn't a knife, it was a fucking bayonet. While a more modern one might have been a little better, this one was able to be mounted on the weapon he currently had.
Adam was slightly disturbed by the look Ce Calli gave him when she beheld the bayonet when mounted, in that it combined together blood lust and lust-lust. As it was, Adam quickly removed the bayonet from its mounting and set it within a loop upon his bandoleers that seemed the best spot to put a knife. They were going to meet people they wanted to help, things would be scary enough as it was. For her part Ce Calli put on an exaggerated frown before brushing it off as the obvious silliness it was.
And then they were moving again.
It was maybe half an hour after the sun had fully crossed the horizon when they reached the actual sacred site, which was in many ways fortunate for Adam as he could properly see the place. The stone feature they were following abruptly opened up into an enormous sinkhole, with a small collection of tents on the other side from them where a few dozen people had set up camp. The rim of the cenote had been smoothed and enhanced with carvings, with ladders and ropes leading inside.
The place had also been murdered.
It was a difficult thing to describe, an inanimate place or thing being murdered, but it was related to the concept of 'the light left their eyes'. A living, breathing being had all sorts of tiny motions that were constantly there but that the brain filtered out and transformed into a general 'vibrancy'. Some things could also have a similar vibrancy, with a notable example being an exquisitely simple looking painting that Adam had seen once that was able to catch the light with all sorts of subsurface reflections that to view it in person was a transcendent experience. The motions of a living human being caused subtle pays of light and colour, essentially reflecting the vibrancy of life back at the viewer.
Someone had later decided to slash it up, disrupting all the tiny details that had made the piece pop. Try as they might, the restorers could only partially repair the damage. The painting had been murdered and the best they could do was make the corpse acceptable for an open casket.
And this cenote had the same air about it, the same sense of something missing, that there was a life and vibrancy that had obviously once been there but had since been stripped away. And not by time, neglect, or disease, but by human action with malice aforethought. There was no single thing that Adam could point to that could explain why he felt this, why he felt tears running down his face at the sight of it, but it was surely one of the most awful things he had ever seen.
Because even with the supernatural sort of magic so clearly robbed from this place, it was still a thing of sacred beauty. He wasn't sure he had ever heard of this place or if it made much geological sense to be here, but then again he had no idea how closely this world like Post-Classical Mesoamerica resembled the geography of modern Mexico, or how the presence of actual magic might change it. Then again, the people here had clearly seen it as something special, something worth preserving, so perhaps it being out of place was why it had received so much attention.
And all of this was just from afar, from where he could see the stone plunging down and make out a glimpse of inviting blue waters within. He could also hear the sounds of running water and he wondered what sights might be concealed within.
His curiosity would have to wait though, as Ce Calli gestured that he should remain by the tree-line while she went out to address those in the camp.
Adam was actually quite impressed by how she did it, in that she approached with her Predator cloak partially on while drawing attention to herself, before she abruptly swapped out her "mantle" once there were enough eyes on her, taking on her achingly beautiful form for all to see. From a distance it seemed that the reception was going well, and when people started grovelling at Ce Calli's feet in desperate supplication, Adam figured that it was going very well, all things considered.
Soon enough Ce Calli was gesturing for Adam to come over to the group, which he did so with some internal trepidation but with the bravest face he could put forward. While he was initially relieved that Ce Calli seemed to be smoothing out the effect of his being a foreigner was having, his panic soon began to rise when he saw the people among the camp.
Smallpox. Fucking smallpox. One of the greatest scourges of all of humanity, so bad bitter rivals who would incinerate each other in atomic fire were willing to work together to send the damned thing to hell where it belonged. There were perhaps three or four dozen men and women in the camp, and almost all of them showed some sign of the infection. Statistically speaking one in three were going to die, but that was when contracting the disease was staggered throughout the population such that there were healthy people to tend to the sick. Everyone getting it all at once was how a whole population could be wiped out, since people who might have recovered would be left unattended and suffer dehydration and undernourishment on top of the disease.
Adam had no immunity to this, because the world had cast the virus into the pit. Roll a standard die and get a one or a two and he would die a fucking awful death, and even if he survived he could still be scarred and disfigured by it all. Adam wasn't sure if he had ever faced anything quite so terrifying before. Still, he managed to go up to Ce Calli, who had let the supernatural beauty fade down to just remarkable beauty, and asked as best he could, "Any no sick? Any better? Any not bad? I might able help no sick people."
Ce Calli began to talk with the people, who were crowding around in a way that suggested that they might turn into a mob, and that had Adam somewhat freaked out by the proximity to people whose flesh was covered in pustules. He'd studied the epidemics and thus actually knew that smallpox was primarily an airborne disease and thus he should be most scared of people breathing too close to him, but there was a natural revulsion to the damage to the skin.
Fortunately Ce Calli was a healer – or at least a senior apprentice, their conversations were still ambiguous with the lack of language skills – and she knew when to tell people to back the hell off so she could work. The divine authority she had impressed upon them helped significantly, and soon enough she had managed to get across that crowding her and begging at her feet wasn't going to help them get better faster. She also managed to get across to the people that she wanted to know just how bad they all were and if anyone was getting better at all.
Adam just waited quietly while people looked at him with a mix of suspicion and hope, his gorge rising with every moment. Now that he was closer, he could see that there was a little underground stream that emptied into the cenote in such a way that it created a small waterfall on one side. He could also smell salt and feel a heat rising from within, and he was sure that the geologists associated with the digs would have found the place utterly fascinating. Even in a world without magic this would have been a place where people would flock to seek healing, to bathe in warm, salty waters. Without magic though the effects probably wouldn't be able to make a difference against the novel viral infection.
The fact that magic was real but had somehow been stripped from this place made it all the more cruel to the people who had fled here seeking salvation. Worse yet, friends and family who had accompanied them had surely been sickened by the concentration of infected people. Even if this place did exist in Adam's world, it had probably become forgotten, a place of healing turned into one cursed by death.
Finally though Ce Calli had managed to sort the people out, finding a young man who seemed to have only contracted a mild case and was starting to recover even though he was still covered in blisters. Adam wasn't sure if they would get so lucky, but having such a patient would give those not yet infected their best possible chance. Of course, what came next was going to be tricky.
Putting a hand on his recently acquired bayonet, Adam considered what he needed before he said, "Need fire, hot water." He then glanced at the tents and said, "Not in camp." Minimizing the live viral load was going to be key to maybe making it through this.
Ce Calli seemed to agree with him and barked out a few orders, and soon enough those who were able had set up a small fire and were boiling some water. Ce Calli for her part had busted out her healers tools and was attending to the worst off who she deemed to have a hope of survival, leaving Adam with the young man who stared at him with wide eyes as Adam got his tools ready. While he would have preferred to set his shotgun down he didn't trust it out of his control, if only because someone might get curious and hurt themselves with it.
Finally Adam managed to get his blade as sterilized as he figured he was going to get it by letting it sit in boiling water for a solid five minutes. Once it had cooled and dried, he then picked it up and tried to figure out how to best explain that he wanted to cut open the pustules on the young man to harvest the contents. While they had been waiting the man had introduced himself as Chicuei Miquiztli, but the young man spoke very little Nahuatl, which made anything other than basic introductions difficult. However, when Adam began to take up the blade, Chicuei braced himself.
It suddenly occurred to Adam that within the cultural context of these people, one person being singled out by a strange but magical person who got a knife prepared meant that there was a high likelihood of getting their heart cut out. The fact that Chicuei was fully accepting of that fact was both incredibly brave and selfless on his part, and more than a little fucked up from Adam's perspective. Fortunately, it made cutting into the pustules on the young man's arms significantly easier, especially as Chicuei did not flinch when Adam did it.
Smearing the discharge upon a tortilla stone someone had in the camp, Adam really wished he knew more about the whole process. The objective was to kill the virus, but also to leave the surface antigens intact for the immune system to find. He would probably at best be able to kill enough that the live specimens would not be able to establish a foothold before his immune system had been trained on how to deal with the virus. Getting an even distribution would be tricky since under the bright, hot sun the pus was already drying out, but...
It occurred to Adam that to most people he was performing magic, and from a certain point of view he was, he just also was desperate to explain what and why he was doing what he was doing. Ce Calli was also working her own medicine and magic among the sick, applying what herbal remedies and incantations she could. And while he basically had no idea how the actual magic of this world worked, he also knew enough about human psychology and sociology to know a ritual when he saw one.
"Need water," Adam stated, and when Chicuei raised an eyebrow in confusion at him, Adam realized he would need to be more specific. Adam then pointed to the cenote and said, "That water."
Chicuei frowned a bit at that, which told Adam something about the sort of sacred this place was. Taking the magic healing water was definitely a big no-no, even with this level of disaster. Adam needed to consider how to approach this, before he suddenly realized that he could probably make this somewhat right. Picking up his tools so that they wouldn't be unattended, he went over to the crate and pulled out one of the glass bottles of water they had, specifically one that had been filled with rainwater.
Holding it up to catch the sunlight, he let the bottle blaze with light and refracted rainbows, a remarkable display for people who had never seen clear glass before. Uncorking it, he went over to the edge of the cenote and began to pour it out into the dark, mineral rich waters below, and he said in English his best booming voice, "Tlaloc, I figure you are involved here somehow, so you're a good name to invoke. To you and any other spirit who might be here, I offer this gift of pure water collected from Tlaloc's bounty, in exchange for taking an equal amount from this sacred place, so that I might use it in the healing of others." Adam then paused a bit while he considered that someone might actually be listening before he said, "Uh, if anyone objects to this, could I get like a warning thunderhead or earthquake or something before I transgress? I really do wish to help here."
There was just silence while everyone watched Adam perform his little ritual. Thankfully Ce Calli looked mostly interested and wasn't making any warding gestures at him. Between that and no heavenly smiting, Adam then proceeded to tie a length of cord they had made from plant fibres in their journey and carefully lowered the bottle into the cenote.
When he got the bottle back and no one had jumped him for his transgression, he found that just the feel of the water on the outside was super salty. It was probably saltier than seawater in there, which might actually be antibacterial for most things living on the skin. He then began to carefully dribble the salt water on the pus flakes, using the glass bottle to cast brilliant rainbows over the mixture so he could say, "Huitzilopotchli and Quetzalcoatl, I could use your help on this one too."
Adam wasn't exactly sure how long he worked, but eventually he had expended all of the water and had a dry, salty paste. That had probably given enough time under the sun and enough mixing that the viruses were all thoroughly dead, but hopefully he hadn't denatured the proteins. He also hoped that invoking the local gods would do some good, if only to help get buy in from the people he was about to cut and stuff pus into.
Of course, the first person he was going to get to work on was himself. Taking a small cut of the dry paste on his bayonet, he stood up before everyone and said as confidently as he could in a language they couldn't understand, "Fuck, here goes nothing."
He then cut across his left deltoid to get the paste in there. He managed not to scream, but he couldn't prevent his face from screwing up and tears welling up in his eyes. He had forgotten to account for what getting that much salt in the wound was going to feel like. Holding it together as best he could, he set his bayonet down and then very deliberately wiped the tears away with his left thumb, before flicking them into the cenote.
Yeah, the tears were totally intended as a final balancing of the water taken from the cenote.
While he was still getting his expression under control, Ce Calli strode up to him and took up the bayonet, and before he could tell her to wash and sterilize it first she repeated the ritual, offering up a quick prayer to the gods before taking a scoop of the hopefully-a-vaccine and then cutting across her upper arm to introduce the material beneath the surface of her skin.
In that moment, once what Adam did was replicated by someone bearing pieces of divinity in front of a believing crowd, his actions went from flailing improv to magic. And something responded.
The phantasmal bracelet about his right wrist flashed into existence, along with the one upon Ce Calli's wrist. A tiny charm of smooth yellow stone flared like the sun for a moment before it also appeared upon Ce Calli's bracelet. A new tattered mantle settled upon her shoulders with a gust of cold wind, and her hair went from a shiny black to a riotous red and her eyes flashed the same colour as the waters in the sacred cenote behind them.
She said something and the universe heard, and spoke back without sound. She heard and then took a running dive into the cenote.
- Location
- Third planet from the star named Sol
- Pronouns
- He/They
I'm guessing the place is/was dedicated to Tlaloc specifically, and since Adam invoked him while Ce Calli finished the sacrifice, he gave her a mantle. Still, nice to see him focusing on helping, and even using ritual as best he can.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Dang, unless the harem shares the mantles at this rate Ce Calli gunna have all the godly mantles and there won't be any left for the other women
Also she was apparently one big fan of seeing Adam with an upgraded shotgun, I wonder what that was ablut.
It's sort of spoilers, but not really, since the next waifu is in Tututepec (or otherwise the nearest significant settlement if the questers wander off).
Easter
Laziest lazier
- Location
- Bed
Ahh the teleporting quest reward. The best way to counter wandering players and their weird pathing
2.4
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Ce Calli had no idea what the newest mantle was, she just knew that it was so powerful she could only truly wear it for a few heartbeats a day before it utterly exhausted her. It was a spinner of magic in its rawest form, able to work miracles directly. Adam's ritual was potent in its own right, but with this strange mantle of divinity Ce Calli was able to make it something more, something greater. She had already exhausted herself for the day – next several days likely – but the spell being woven wouldn't let her off so easily.
She hadn't had enough time with the mantle to fully comprehend the intricacies of the ritual Adam had created, but its foundation was a remarkably clever restructuring of fate. The curse of the disease would only ever get a single chance to strike a person down, so by deliberately taking on a weaker form a person would have the greatest chance to fight it off, not just once but forever. It was a remarkably clever solution, and when combined with his clumsy but earnest invocation of the gods it had served as a base for Ce Calli to do so much more.
Adam had made it his fate to fight the pestilence on his terms, ones that he would most likely win. He was also going to apply the spell to as many as he could, although many were already afflicted and thus it would not work for them. Some would die, some would live. But with this new mantle, Ce Calli could tie all of their fates together. If at least one of them could fight it off, they all would, although the more of them who would survive the better off they would all be. Of course, there were ways to improve the odds.
Hitting the water, Ce Calli felt the mantle slip from her fingers, but the residual magic of the spring was more than enough to not only complete the connection of fate, but to tilt it in a way that would be incredibly favourable to them. With a fading scrap of instinct she tugged upon the threads of destiny and drew in a tremendous amount of the fated suffering upon her own body. Her skin blistered and bubbled, eventually separating entirely as her body was covered in a single pox mark filled with rotten blood and pus.
Having donned another mantle right as she did this, all this resulted in was the complete shedding of her rubber false flesh, leaving behind only translucent black bone. The largest chunk of the consequences of the pestilence had landed upon Ce Calli, and she had rid herself of it like a snake sliding out of its old skin.
There were three costs associated with doing this. The first was that Ce Calli almost immediately maxed out her ability to use that mantle for the day, which was a bit of a problem since she could feel that it would take a few heartbeats before the mantle would let itself be removed. Her head felt like it was being crushed from the pressure of the contradiction, and it was all she could do to scramble out of the waters before she passed out.
The second cost was that the Sacred Well was now expended, the last scraps of its magic used to fuel the ritual. However, if Ce Calli's instincts were correct then this wasn't a grand tragedy since on some level the snuffing of its magic was less an execution and more extinguishing a fire that was already guttering because its fuel was wet. She could feel that there was a way to dry that fuel and reignite it, and once it was so the effects of the Fire Snuffing would be completely shaken off.
The third cost was that Adam beheld Ce Calli stripped bare in a way that she had hoped he would never see her as: an animate skeleton of obsidian with burning stars for eyes. It was something she knew but refused to vocalize, and something that she suspected that Adam suspected. Having dove in after her, he saw her outside the waters and terror gripped his eyes even as he clearly struggled to shove that instinctive fear aside.
Then he whispered, "Itzpapalotl."
A warm wind descended upon Ce Calli, stripping away her current mantle as it was replaced with one that was similar but not entirely so. Her flesh renewed itself over her bones, not rubber but still vaguely malleable in her mind. She felt her body warp and stretch, growing slightly taller along with her hips widening. As the last touches were occurring, she noted that her breasts and butt were also larger. Finally even her clothing was transformed, becoming weirdly stretchy cording that held flaps of fabric over her nipples and groin while leaving the rest of her body exposed.
Adam just stared at her a few times before he exclaimed in his own language, "Bikini?!"
What an odd thing to say.
Adam then somewhat belatedly realized that he had jumped into the briny water of the cenote with all of his gear still on, at which point he began cursing up a storm as he made his way out of the water. Ce Calli had no idea what exactly he was saying, but the extended rant in his oddly melodic language seemed to keep coming back to the same few sounds over and over again. She found herself giggling at his distress a bit before she pointed out the fresh water stream that trickled into the cavern higher up and directed him to start washing there.
The look he gave her was fascinating in what it said about him. He had leapt in without much thought when he had believed she was in distress, but now he seemed concerned for his presence in this place. While she couldn't exactly explain that she had detected that the divine had now fully retreated from this place, or that even when it became whole again she was probably going to be the chief divinity of this place, she still managed to get across that there was no chance of insult.
"Others?" Adam asked, gesturing up to the people peering curiously down at them.
Ce Calli just snorted at that. They wouldn't be an issue, between the two of them they were in far too much awe and debt to cause issue. Adam seemed perplexed by her dismissal, but he decided that getting his weapon cleaned up took priority.
Letting her latest mantle drop, Ce Calli felt the pressure upon her skull return, although not as bad as before. Her clothing also reset itself, although she noticed that she remained a bit taller and with more pronounced features than before. The ways of the divine were strange indeed.
The resumption of the headache from overuse of her mantles and Adam's concerns about the petitioners who had come here seeking aid did cause Ce Calli to consider them and what would happen next. As a healer she was glad to have saved as many of them as possible, but the divinity within her considered what else to do.
The ravenous sexual appetite that came with bearing pieces of Itzpapalotl was still gnawing at the back of her mind, but it found no real targets. Adam was faithful in his own weird way, while there were no proper targets among the men of the pilgrims. Not because they wouldn't be unfaithful, but because they now owed her so profoundly that if she slept with them they would happily tell the women of their lives that they had been chosen to satisfy her. These men could not satisfy her predatory yearnings, which was a peculiar thing to instinctively know.
However, of the survivors it wouldn't be inappropriate to select one as a worthy sacrifice to commemorate the miracle wrought. Although what would be the appropriate method? Removal of the heart was rarely wrong, but then again for a place like this cenote drowning might be better. Or, since it was to commemorate the healing of a hideous affliction of the skin, the flaying of the sacrifice might be best. Then of course there was the selection of the age and gender of the sacrifice, although there would be no shortage of volunteers. None at the rim of the cenote above them would hesitate to pass the gift of life forward while being guaranteed an honoured afterlife.
As her mind worked over the questions, Ce Calli internally griped that she was a healer, not a priest! There was overlap of course, but these were questions outside of her area of expertise, especially since she was only technically a senior apprentice. Of course, now as a bearer of divinity she also outranked most priests, but that didn't confer any of the wisdom or experience they had. The mantle of magic could probably help guide her, but that would take a few days at least before it was ready to go, and she couldn't use it for long so it could take multiple days to work out an appropriate answer.
Watching Adam as he worked to clean and dry his gear on a wooden platform near the stream of freshwater that fed into the salty pool below, Ce Calli also got the distinct impression he would have objections. She had no exact reasoning for this feeling, but she had a gut feeling that he had a different relationship with the cycles of life, death, sacrifice, and rebirth. Perhaps he could be talked around to making offerings of the hearts of enemies? That odd crystallized heart would certainly have been an excellent sacrifice, and she had a feeling she would be seeing its kind again.
Actually, revitalizing this sacred spring would help tremendously with fighting back against the Outsiders, so getting the right sacrifices was necessary. Showing proper gratitude for life with a single heart from a pilgrim was one thing, but not even if they offered up everyone here to the cenote could they get any but the barest embers of its power working again. Items of power were needed.
Something of Tlaloc to be sure, but Mount Tlaloc and the temple there was firmly in Outsider control, and most of the other sacred springs were to the north and in territory either in Outsider control or being actively contested. But unless they gathered up the water from multiple springs and offerings from multiple shrines even that wouldn't be enough.
This sacred spring was also a place where the fires of the Underworld intruded, as evidenced by the carvings in the walls dedicating aspects of it to other divinities. Items of power from them could also supplement the restoration. Or…
It was a topic Ce Calli had deliberately let her mind slip across due to her complicated relationship with the Flayed God, but not only would Xipe Totec's aspect as a healer – especially of skin conditions – be intensely applicable, but so would his nature as a god of rebirth and renewal. And she knew exactly where to find an incredibly potent element, she just really didn't want to for personal reasons. Then again last she knew it was in Tututepec where they had been headed anyway…
Discussing with Adam, they decided…
She hadn't had enough time with the mantle to fully comprehend the intricacies of the ritual Adam had created, but its foundation was a remarkably clever restructuring of fate. The curse of the disease would only ever get a single chance to strike a person down, so by deliberately taking on a weaker form a person would have the greatest chance to fight it off, not just once but forever. It was a remarkably clever solution, and when combined with his clumsy but earnest invocation of the gods it had served as a base for Ce Calli to do so much more.
Adam had made it his fate to fight the pestilence on his terms, ones that he would most likely win. He was also going to apply the spell to as many as he could, although many were already afflicted and thus it would not work for them. Some would die, some would live. But with this new mantle, Ce Calli could tie all of their fates together. If at least one of them could fight it off, they all would, although the more of them who would survive the better off they would all be. Of course, there were ways to improve the odds.
Hitting the water, Ce Calli felt the mantle slip from her fingers, but the residual magic of the spring was more than enough to not only complete the connection of fate, but to tilt it in a way that would be incredibly favourable to them. With a fading scrap of instinct she tugged upon the threads of destiny and drew in a tremendous amount of the fated suffering upon her own body. Her skin blistered and bubbled, eventually separating entirely as her body was covered in a single pox mark filled with rotten blood and pus.
Having donned another mantle right as she did this, all this resulted in was the complete shedding of her rubber false flesh, leaving behind only translucent black bone. The largest chunk of the consequences of the pestilence had landed upon Ce Calli, and she had rid herself of it like a snake sliding out of its old skin.
There were three costs associated with doing this. The first was that Ce Calli almost immediately maxed out her ability to use that mantle for the day, which was a bit of a problem since she could feel that it would take a few heartbeats before the mantle would let itself be removed. Her head felt like it was being crushed from the pressure of the contradiction, and it was all she could do to scramble out of the waters before she passed out.
The second cost was that the Sacred Well was now expended, the last scraps of its magic used to fuel the ritual. However, if Ce Calli's instincts were correct then this wasn't a grand tragedy since on some level the snuffing of its magic was less an execution and more extinguishing a fire that was already guttering because its fuel was wet. She could feel that there was a way to dry that fuel and reignite it, and once it was so the effects of the Fire Snuffing would be completely shaken off.
The third cost was that Adam beheld Ce Calli stripped bare in a way that she had hoped he would never see her as: an animate skeleton of obsidian with burning stars for eyes. It was something she knew but refused to vocalize, and something that she suspected that Adam suspected. Having dove in after her, he saw her outside the waters and terror gripped his eyes even as he clearly struggled to shove that instinctive fear aside.
Then he whispered, "Itzpapalotl."
A warm wind descended upon Ce Calli, stripping away her current mantle as it was replaced with one that was similar but not entirely so. Her flesh renewed itself over her bones, not rubber but still vaguely malleable in her mind. She felt her body warp and stretch, growing slightly taller along with her hips widening. As the last touches were occurring, she noted that her breasts and butt were also larger. Finally even her clothing was transformed, becoming weirdly stretchy cording that held flaps of fabric over her nipples and groin while leaving the rest of her body exposed.
Adam just stared at her a few times before he exclaimed in his own language, "Bikini?!"
What an odd thing to say.
Adam then somewhat belatedly realized that he had jumped into the briny water of the cenote with all of his gear still on, at which point he began cursing up a storm as he made his way out of the water. Ce Calli had no idea what exactly he was saying, but the extended rant in his oddly melodic language seemed to keep coming back to the same few sounds over and over again. She found herself giggling at his distress a bit before she pointed out the fresh water stream that trickled into the cavern higher up and directed him to start washing there.
The look he gave her was fascinating in what it said about him. He had leapt in without much thought when he had believed she was in distress, but now he seemed concerned for his presence in this place. While she couldn't exactly explain that she had detected that the divine had now fully retreated from this place, or that even when it became whole again she was probably going to be the chief divinity of this place, she still managed to get across that there was no chance of insult.
"Others?" Adam asked, gesturing up to the people peering curiously down at them.
Ce Calli just snorted at that. They wouldn't be an issue, between the two of them they were in far too much awe and debt to cause issue. Adam seemed perplexed by her dismissal, but he decided that getting his weapon cleaned up took priority.
Letting her latest mantle drop, Ce Calli felt the pressure upon her skull return, although not as bad as before. Her clothing also reset itself, although she noticed that she remained a bit taller and with more pronounced features than before. The ways of the divine were strange indeed.
The resumption of the headache from overuse of her mantles and Adam's concerns about the petitioners who had come here seeking aid did cause Ce Calli to consider them and what would happen next. As a healer she was glad to have saved as many of them as possible, but the divinity within her considered what else to do.
The ravenous sexual appetite that came with bearing pieces of Itzpapalotl was still gnawing at the back of her mind, but it found no real targets. Adam was faithful in his own weird way, while there were no proper targets among the men of the pilgrims. Not because they wouldn't be unfaithful, but because they now owed her so profoundly that if she slept with them they would happily tell the women of their lives that they had been chosen to satisfy her. These men could not satisfy her predatory yearnings, which was a peculiar thing to instinctively know.
However, of the survivors it wouldn't be inappropriate to select one as a worthy sacrifice to commemorate the miracle wrought. Although what would be the appropriate method? Removal of the heart was rarely wrong, but then again for a place like this cenote drowning might be better. Or, since it was to commemorate the healing of a hideous affliction of the skin, the flaying of the sacrifice might be best. Then of course there was the selection of the age and gender of the sacrifice, although there would be no shortage of volunteers. None at the rim of the cenote above them would hesitate to pass the gift of life forward while being guaranteed an honoured afterlife.
As her mind worked over the questions, Ce Calli internally griped that she was a healer, not a priest! There was overlap of course, but these were questions outside of her area of expertise, especially since she was only technically a senior apprentice. Of course, now as a bearer of divinity she also outranked most priests, but that didn't confer any of the wisdom or experience they had. The mantle of magic could probably help guide her, but that would take a few days at least before it was ready to go, and she couldn't use it for long so it could take multiple days to work out an appropriate answer.
Watching Adam as he worked to clean and dry his gear on a wooden platform near the stream of freshwater that fed into the salty pool below, Ce Calli also got the distinct impression he would have objections. She had no exact reasoning for this feeling, but she had a gut feeling that he had a different relationship with the cycles of life, death, sacrifice, and rebirth. Perhaps he could be talked around to making offerings of the hearts of enemies? That odd crystallized heart would certainly have been an excellent sacrifice, and she had a feeling she would be seeing its kind again.
Actually, revitalizing this sacred spring would help tremendously with fighting back against the Outsiders, so getting the right sacrifices was necessary. Showing proper gratitude for life with a single heart from a pilgrim was one thing, but not even if they offered up everyone here to the cenote could they get any but the barest embers of its power working again. Items of power were needed.
Something of Tlaloc to be sure, but Mount Tlaloc and the temple there was firmly in Outsider control, and most of the other sacred springs were to the north and in territory either in Outsider control or being actively contested. But unless they gathered up the water from multiple springs and offerings from multiple shrines even that wouldn't be enough.
This sacred spring was also a place where the fires of the Underworld intruded, as evidenced by the carvings in the walls dedicating aspects of it to other divinities. Items of power from them could also supplement the restoration. Or…
It was a topic Ce Calli had deliberately let her mind slip across due to her complicated relationship with the Flayed God, but not only would Xipe Totec's aspect as a healer – especially of skin conditions – be intensely applicable, but so would his nature as a god of rebirth and renewal. And she knew exactly where to find an incredibly potent element, she just really didn't want to for personal reasons. Then again last she knew it was in Tututepec where they had been headed anyway…
Discussing with Adam, they decided…
- Location
- Probably at sea
Ah, healing/support characters. Very important.
Swimsuit skins, probably less so, but gotta fleece the whales somehow.
Swimsuit skins, probably less so, but gotta fleece the whales somehow.
2.5
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Names have power over the mind.
Adam was seated upon a beach, staring out at the waters of a tropical lagoon in the early morning with a look of intense sadness. Ce Calli was standing nearby, staring in wonder at the heavenly place and confusion as to where she was. The tzitzimimeh were cowering behind her, chattering in terror.
Who is the dreamer and who the dream?
"Goddess of the Fifth Sun, turn away from the Child of the Seventh Sun!"
"Where are we?"
"Sometimes there are bad people who need to be stopped."
Who said what, and why?
The sands began to rattle and shake, each grain becoming a white skull that began to grow to full size, transforming the landscape into a great labyrinth of bleached bone mountains. A man was suspended from a pair of logs, his side pierced and bleeding out.
Are the logs an X or a t? Was it iron or obsidian that pierced the man's flesh?
"Make this comparison and some people would get mad, and others would nod in understanding, depending on which version they grew up with."
A cavalcade of people went by, torn apart by inventive execution methods. People were strapped to wheels and spun over spikes that tore them apart a little bit with each rotation. A man had his intestines unspooled from his body before being ripped into four by beasts racing off in a different cardinal direction each. Women screamed as they were burned alive while crowds looked on.
"Do this to protect the state or to maintain orthodoxy and its 'barbaric, but of its time'. March to your horrible, agonizing dismemberment with dignity and you're a martyr, guaranteed a pleasant afterlife for your faith. Do all of this to keep the sun spinning across the sky and you're 'monstrous' and 'demonic' and the victims are 'deluded'."
Some of the skulls had flesh grow across them, but only barely, such that they were skeletons in skin looking up in abject horror, crowded together.
"Or you can kill people for no fucking reason at all."
They were back on the beach, the canyons of the dead gone in a single thought. Somewhere in the distance, perhaps another island across the lagoon, hidden by the horizon, a great siren began to wail. Waves lapped ashore, cutting zigzagging trenches as they receded. Tiny armies swarmed between them, killing each other in numbers Ce Calli and her sister-vassals had no appreciation for and that Adam could only vaguely wrap his head around.
In seeking to prevent the worst thing they had ever experienced, they created the worst thing ever.
"Where are we?"
Ce Calli was wearing the revealing clothing she had on when Adam had uttered Itzpapzlotl. He looked at her with a sad smile as suddenly she was one among thousands dressed so, all crowded upon a beach just lounging in the sun or splashing in the waves.
"A name given for a new era."
"A name given for an egregious sin."
"A name for an age of a poisonous sun."
A man was walking down a line of bound captives, pausing at each one long enough to cut their heads off with his blade. A man has a long line of captives brought to him, cutting out their hearts and tossing them into a great bowl.
They needed to be stopped, but at what cost?
A voice was added to the sirens in the distance, steadily counting backwards from ten.
The man with the hearts had his flesh rot off his bones, the man with the sword disintegrated. Both had their fates applied to weeping women and children and men with no blood on their hands.
"Nine."
"Where are we?"
"Eight."
The tzitzimimeh chattered their obsidian teeth in fear, for only Adam knew what was coming but they knew enough to be terrified.
"Seven."
Adam was not there, he was a hole in the world.
"Six."
Adam was offering a gift, a braid of grass made more precious the more hands it passed through.
" "
A man who had given his life for the sake of others was sitting next to Ce Calli, openly weeping over what his sacrifice had wrought.
"Four."
Ce Calli's hair was red like arterial blood and flesh paler than Adam's, and she felt a stab of empathetic fury for the weeping man who was no longer there.
"Three."
Itzpapalotl's skeletal arms wrapped seductively around Ce Calli's body from behind, and the Queen of Tamoanchan whispered in her ear, "They can't break us by calling us demons."
"Two."
Adam's smile was sad.
This would be painless anywhere but in a dream.
"One."
"Bikini."
A new sun was born. Adam's flesh evaporated, leaving behind a charred skeleton. The sea became indistinguishable from the air, and the sand turned to liquid everywhere Adam's shadow did not touch. For a brief moment he was kin to the star demons, child of a toxic metal sun.
Adam was seated upon a beach, staring out at the waters of a tropical lagoon in the early morning with a look of intense sadness. Ce Calli was standing nearby, staring in wonder at the heavenly place and confusion as to where she was. The tzitzimimeh were cowering behind her, chattering in terror.
Who is the dreamer and who the dream?
"Goddess of the Fifth Sun, turn away from the Child of the Seventh Sun!"
"Where are we?"
"Sometimes there are bad people who need to be stopped."
Who said what, and why?
The sands began to rattle and shake, each grain becoming a white skull that began to grow to full size, transforming the landscape into a great labyrinth of bleached bone mountains. A man was suspended from a pair of logs, his side pierced and bleeding out.
Are the logs an X or a t? Was it iron or obsidian that pierced the man's flesh?
"Make this comparison and some people would get mad, and others would nod in understanding, depending on which version they grew up with."
A cavalcade of people went by, torn apart by inventive execution methods. People were strapped to wheels and spun over spikes that tore them apart a little bit with each rotation. A man had his intestines unspooled from his body before being ripped into four by beasts racing off in a different cardinal direction each. Women screamed as they were burned alive while crowds looked on.
"Do this to protect the state or to maintain orthodoxy and its 'barbaric, but of its time'. March to your horrible, agonizing dismemberment with dignity and you're a martyr, guaranteed a pleasant afterlife for your faith. Do all of this to keep the sun spinning across the sky and you're 'monstrous' and 'demonic' and the victims are 'deluded'."
Some of the skulls had flesh grow across them, but only barely, such that they were skeletons in skin looking up in abject horror, crowded together.
"Or you can kill people for no fucking reason at all."
They were back on the beach, the canyons of the dead gone in a single thought. Somewhere in the distance, perhaps another island across the lagoon, hidden by the horizon, a great siren began to wail. Waves lapped ashore, cutting zigzagging trenches as they receded. Tiny armies swarmed between them, killing each other in numbers Ce Calli and her sister-vassals had no appreciation for and that Adam could only vaguely wrap his head around.
In seeking to prevent the worst thing they had ever experienced, they created the worst thing ever.
"Where are we?"
Ce Calli was wearing the revealing clothing she had on when Adam had uttered Itzpapzlotl. He looked at her with a sad smile as suddenly she was one among thousands dressed so, all crowded upon a beach just lounging in the sun or splashing in the waves.
"A name given for a new era."
"A name given for an egregious sin."
"A name for an age of a poisonous sun."
A man was walking down a line of bound captives, pausing at each one long enough to cut their heads off with his blade. A man has a long line of captives brought to him, cutting out their hearts and tossing them into a great bowl.
They needed to be stopped, but at what cost?
A voice was added to the sirens in the distance, steadily counting backwards from ten.
The man with the hearts had his flesh rot off his bones, the man with the sword disintegrated. Both had their fates applied to weeping women and children and men with no blood on their hands.
"Nine."
"Where are we?"
"Eight."
The tzitzimimeh chattered their obsidian teeth in fear, for only Adam knew what was coming but they knew enough to be terrified.
"Seven."
Adam was not there, he was a hole in the world.
"Six."
Adam was offering a gift, a braid of grass made more precious the more hands it passed through.
" "
A man who had given his life for the sake of others was sitting next to Ce Calli, openly weeping over what his sacrifice had wrought.
"Four."
Ce Calli's hair was red like arterial blood and flesh paler than Adam's, and she felt a stab of empathetic fury for the weeping man who was no longer there.
"Three."
Itzpapalotl's skeletal arms wrapped seductively around Ce Calli's body from behind, and the Queen of Tamoanchan whispered in her ear, "They can't break us by calling us demons."
"Two."
Adam's smile was sad.
This would be painless anywhere but in a dream.
"One."
"Bikini."
A new sun was born. Adam's flesh evaporated, leaving behind a charred skeleton. The sea became indistinguishable from the air, and the sand turned to liquid everywhere Adam's shadow did not touch. For a brief moment he was kin to the star demons, child of a toxic metal sun.
Grey Rook
Genuine Nerd
- Location
- The Quantum Foam
Well, I mean, they're not wrong. The Christians committed (and are committing) gross cruelties everywhere they took power. Not sure what's going on in the later half of the chapter, and I'm not entirely comfortable with speculating. We'll see where it goes.
Is the empty quote in the middle supposed to say 'five'?
- Pronouns
- He/Him
In military count downs they will often skip 'five' because it sounds too much like 'fire'.
As for what is going on in the latter half of the dream, they are on Bikini island.
Grey Rook
Genuine Nerd
- Location
- The Quantum Foam
Okay, sounds reasonable.
During the nuclear test? That explains part of it, at least.