by Vic Connor
“Should I record this conversation as your Alpha-tasting feedback?”
“No,” I said. “Not until we decide if we should boil Maneesh into biohazard stew. That creepy, manipulative maniac…” I took another sip. My shoulders shivered with delight.
She waited in silence for me to gather my thoughts.
“I was ready for an albino girl, I swear I was,” I said, looking at nowhere. “But that flashback, and her calling me big brother… Seriously, now: You guys are gonna get some of your players freaked out.”
“That’s what Engineering is trying to nail right here. Carefully calibrating Istoria for the masses.”
I raised my eyebrows, none too sure. “Any chance we can get ahold of Maneesh right now?”
“Don’t think so, boss. He has an enormous PR mess to sort out.”
“You mean PR as in…?”
“Public Relations, as it usually means.”
“But isn’t he in Engineering? What does PR have to do with anything?”
She typed some quick text messages into her screens and smiled. “All right. No harm sharing with you the news about the huge mess our friend is trying to fix, since it’s public knowledge. You know who Hoverisk is, I imagine?”
“I can’t stand that asshole, but yes, I do.”
“And it wouldn’t surprise you to know he’s part of this Beta, would it?”
“Not only not surprised, but I already knew. I don’t think there’s a top streamer you guys didn’t hook into this.”
“Well, you’ve got your weird setting with Aztecs in the Golden Age of Piracy. Hoverisk, on the other hand, got this rather accurate, realistic World War II scenario, on the Eastern front. That would be eastern as in Nazis versus Russians, not cowboys versus samurais, by the way. Nothing surprising here: Hoverisk is an amateur expert on that specific period in history, and his setting reflects that.”
“And where’s the huge mess that Maneesh needs to fix? I mean, I’d have thought you’d be all for kicking some Nazi butt?”
An angry smirk flashed across her lips. “Hoverisk is one of the Nazis.”
“Oh boy…”
“And you wouldn’t believe how deep into being a Nazi his single-player campaign is turning out to be. In front of his tens of millions of viewers who, until now, thought Hoverisk was a cool, stand-up dude, and nobody had the slightest clue he was a closet ubermensch. And, oh,” she added, with a Razor-esque grin, “did I mention how every gaming journalist and blogger wannabe seems to find this whole thing really, really interesting, and everybody right now is writing about how screwed up Istoria’s algorithms are? So, yeah, I don’t think our friend from Engineering will have time for Assam tea anytime soon, boss.”
I couldn’t help chuckling. Yeah, if this was the sort of PR quagmire they were up to their necks in, I could almost feel sorry for Maneesh and his crew.
Keyword being almost.
“Your pirate looks like something a whale just barfed, boss. If you don’t mind me saying.”
That he did. The Jaguar warriors had left Abe’s large body lying on the floor. He looked as pale as Uitzli did.
“Is he dead?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. I zoomed in the top-down view on his body, but couldn’t tell if he was breathing from the still frame. “This is bad. What the heck happened to them?”
“Shouldn’t you, you know, try to find it out, boss?”
Like a child’s ghost seeking warmth and love, Uitzli was extending her arms toward my avatar. Who looked beyond shocked, I have to confess.
Hendricks seemed to have decided there was no urgent danger and had pulled his guns away; Miyu kneeled close to the pirate, her Noh mask concealing her thoughts and intentions. Juanita, eyes glowing feverishly red, sat hunched near the door, while Axolotl gazed thoughtfully at her.
“I never bought into the argument that games ‘are just games,’ you know?” I said. “Not the good games, at least. ‘Just games,’ as if they had no consequences or carried no weight. On the other hand, though—yeah.” I took a deep breath. “This is just a digitally-enhanced roleplay, right? It’s just make-believe. Nothing can kill me for real in there.”
“And the pirate seems in need of help.”
“Right.” Another deep breath. “Right.”
I plunged downward into my avatar.
Here we go.
Uitzli comes forward, wrapping her arms around me and hugging me tight, her head against my neck and chest. Her skin feels warm, feverish. Dry.
I pat her head, unsure of what else to do.
“Tiachkautli.” She hugs me tighter. “Tiachkautli.”
A word appears from nowhere in my mind. “Teikautli,” I blurt out.
Little sister.
25
Bloodline
Hendricks has joined Miyu, and they crouch together by Abe’s side.
“He lives,” the Dutchman says. He puts his index and middle fingers on the pirate’s throat, checking Abe’s pulse. “Kom see this,” he tells me.
With Uitzli’s help, I drag myself closer. Although he’s pale as paper, Abe is still alive; his breath is shallow and barely noticeable, though. Hendricks shows me three wounds on the side of the pirate’s neck, right by the Carotid artery.
Teeth. Bite marks. And a scar from a knife slash.
Appraising Gaze
My jaws clench as with a will of their own. “He’s been bled out,” I explain. “That’s why he is so pale: loss of blood.”
The hiss behind the Noh mask is like a katana leaving its sheath. “Kyuketsuki,” Miyu says, and her onyx beads turn to Axolotl.
I stare at the Aztec, too. “Someone sucked him dry,” I clarify, “to an inch of his life.” From the corner of my eye, I can see Hendricks ready to reach for his guns, watching the Jaguar warriors by Axolotl’s side.
You better have a good explanation, my friend…
What demonic ritual did you subject him to!?
You will pay for this. Dearly.
In the back of my mind, I register that Uitzli is tugging on my sleeve, as if trying to calm me down.
“You better have a good explanation,” I say to Axolotl.
He raises his hands defensively. “We did what we had to: Meztli, the High Priest’s little girl, has been cured. You have the eternal gratitude of High Priest Tlaloc, who shall bestow on you the blessings of the God of Rain. Your good friend is merely weak, not dead. Upon resting, he shall be well.”
That’s reassuring to hear…
Somebody—or something—sucked him dry. Who? What?
Your God of Rain is my witness: If he dies, you die.
Uitzli is whispering in an unfamiliar language, but her tone conveys an anxious desire for us to stand down.
But I can’t let this go. “Somebody…” I say through gritted teeth. “Somebody or something…”
“Somebody,” Juanita finishes, and she sounds exhausted by the arduous voyage. Her voice is so dry, it seems to come from across deserts of rock and dust. “It was Meztli, the poisoned child.”
“But … why!?”
“Because I told her to,” Juanita says. “Because there was no other way to heal her.” Her blood-shot eyes glow hotter, brighter. “And I showed her how.”
“The gods of the sunrise lands agree with ours,” explains Juanita. “Blood is life, and life is magic.”
I suspect Abe would vehemently disagree, but he’s not here now to argue. Iku and Hendricks have dragged the unconscious pirate to the same room I spent the night in. Kokumo is now taking care of him, with healing brews that will let him regain his strength. “That’s assuming the loss of blood is his only ailment,” Kokumo warned, “and no demon or shadow has crept into him through his open wounds.”
The rest of us sit in the common room, listening to Juanita’s retelling of the previous night’s events.
“All that Axolotl had told us was true,” she said. “They brought us to the room where they kept Meztli, the little girl. For th
ose trained in the ways of the herbs and powders, her symptoms were clear: the poor child had been fed a noxious mixture of tehuaqui, ayahuasca, quehuetl, and other foul ingredients brewed into a concoction so vile and dreadful that I shudder to think what sort of dark soul could even conceive, let alone execute, such a plan. The highbloods around us whispered the names of those enemies of House Tlaloc considered nefarious enough to seek their ends through such means, but finding the culprit was none of our business.
“In any other situation, High Priest Tlaloc would have never lowered himself to speak to the likes of us, but desperation can make a man do what he never thought possible. He promised anything in his power if, come sunrise, his daughter was healed, while swearing such sunrise would be Uitzli’s last if the little girl was still sick by then. He was adamant there was truth in what the high priestess of She of the Jade Skirt had dreamt: Drinking from a bowl filled with bright red blood mixed with the whitest milk would cure his dear daughter.
“And I agreed, because I knew the dream was true. Despite his power and wisdom, however, High Priest Tlaloc had not understood the real meaning of this dream. But that’s another matter.
“We were fortunate, too. The wise Priestess of Patecatl knew the foul mixture the poor girl had consumed, and she knew how to brew the purgative from the milky sap of the maguey plant. Had the poor Meztli received such purgative right after getting poisoned, and had poison and purgative met in the little girl’s belly, she may have been able to expel the foul brew and, perhaps, she would have healed by herself. But they called the Priestess to Meztli’s side too late. By then, the poison had spread through her veins and organs, and the purgative was of no help.”
Juanita pauses for a moment, then continues. “That was why Uitzli alone could not help the child. Uitzli’s magic allows her to heal bleeding wounds and mend broken bones, but there was nothing broken inside the little girl’s body—only a corrosive concoction leeching her spirit away.
“So, having the Priestess with her purgative with us was our good fortune. Together, we convinced the High Priest and his guards to leave us alone with his dear daughter. They left us there: the Priestess, Uitzli, and me. And the unconscious pirate, without whom our cure could not have succeeded.
“There is no way to extract such foul poison from the bloodstream. So, we extracted all the poisoned blood from the girl.”
My eyes grow wide with disbelief. “Wait … you did what!?”
She slowly bares her teeth in an entirely feral grimace, like a hungry predator about to feed.
“Y-you…” I stammer.
“I drank her blood, young Jake,” Juanita confirms plainly. “I drank her poisoned blood, and along with it, I drank the purgative the wise Priest had prepared. So the purgative and the Smoking Mirror would prevent the poison in her blood from killing me.”
Juanita is silent for a long while, as if reliving every moment of her ordeal. Her bloodshot eyes simmer with an unholy fire. “As I emptied her veins, Uitzli’s powers kept the little girl alive, although just barely,” she continues. “No little girl—no human—would survive for long with such a large loss of blood. After I drank as much as I dared to, I made the little girl thirsty. Thirsty for blood herself. And I then showed her how to drink from the pirate.
“The little girl did as I instructed her, to quench her thirst. I slashed Abe’s neck open with an obsidian blade, letting his blood flow freely, and she latched onto the pirate’s neck and drank, drank until her young body filled up again, while Uitzli and the wise Priestess made sure the pirate’s wound would heal quickly after the little girl was satiated.”
This is…
The Noh mask tilts to the left, burning onyxes fixed on the witch’s face. “Kyuketsuki,” she spits.
“I am what I am, sunset warrior,” Juanita tells her. “And our Uitzli is alive. That is all that matters.”
I study Juanita’s face. She does looks rejuvenated, as if younger by no less than two decades, her skin fresh and rosy under the brown tan of many suns. “You don’t look like a vampire,” I admit. “At least, not under the sun…”
“I do not know what such a thing is, my child.”
Of course she doesn’t. In this world, we live two centuries before Bram Stoker writes ‘Dracula.’
Hendricks’ face is unreadable. If he finds some grave fault in what Juanita has done, he’s hiding it well.
I turn to Axolotl. “You knew something like this would happen,” I say. “You knew Juanita could do something like this. How could you know?”
“Anybody with eyes would know,” he replies easily, “if they can read the glyphs on her skin. It’s written right there: Punished for drinking blood from children.”
“Not everything the Aztec priests write on the arms of a Tlaxcalan prisoner is true,” Juanita argues. “Any man can kill; not every man does. I received gifts I did not ask for. It is my choice to heal or harm with them.”
“Did … did Father know this?” I ask Juanita. “When we bought you…”
A sad smile appears on her lips. “He bought me because I could read these glyphs. I do not think he would have charged me with taking care of his firstborn as soon as I arrived at your house, young Jake, had he known what the Aztec priests have engraved on my shoulder.” The red glow slowly wanes in her eyes. “I could have, had I wanted to. Had I wanted to make true the crimes the Aztec priests had sold me for, or had I wanted to show my new sunrise Master that I shall never be owned.
“And I would lie if I said that, drowned in bitterness as I was when money and chains exchanged hands, I did not consider such course of action. But your father’s kindness outwitted and outpaced me, young Jake. As soon as I set foot in your house, he told me I was free.
“I took time to understand. Your father spoke little of my tongue, and I knew no English, so we had to communicate in whatever Spanish we both knew. But it finally dawned on me that your father loathed chains as much as I do. He gave me the choice to live under your roof and help him with the Aztec writings he wanted to translate, or just be on my way. I stayed.”
Damn… “Will the little girl be well?” I ask. “The High Priest’s daughter, I mean.”
“She was already well when the sun rose,” Axolotl assures me. “Or else we would not be here.”
“But what now?” I insist. “What if the girl is still … thirsty?”
“Many men crave alcohol,” Juanita explains, “yet they can all live with water. This is no different. And if it is not… I have little doubt that somebody as powerful as the High Priest will have any trouble quenching his little daughter’s wicked thirst.”
“So… What now?”
Axolotl smiles. “It’s done, my friends,” he says. “You’re welcome to stay in Tepetlacotli as guests, if you wish to do so. Or you’re free to return to the European settlements as soon as your pirate friend gets back on his feet. As for your friend Uitzli, who the High Priest bought recently in Villarica…”
Quest Completed!
Rescue the Healer: +3VPs
Tepetlacotli Standing:
Well-received Foreigner.
“…she gained her freedom as a token of gratitude from High Priest Tlaloc. She, too, is free to leave or stay as she pleases.”
“This is getting weirder and weirder.”
“That would be my assessment, too, boss.” Sveta tapped some text on her screen. “All I could find about ‘Aztec vampires’ are some sketchy articles about ‘Cihuateteo,’ which are the evil spirits of women who died at childbirth… But they don’t look like your Juanita at all, if you ask me.”
“That’s a different myth,” I told her. “Related to La Llorona, the ghost of the weeping woman who lost her children and stalks crossroads and rivers, looking for them.”
“Then I’ve got nothing, boss,” she admitted. “There’s no way your Juanita is a classic vampire, able to withstand the tropical sun as she does.”
“That’s because you’re searching in the wrong nic
he, Svetty dear,” I said. I brought up the Characters Screen and flipped for Juanita’s description. “There you go. Her bio has been updated. She’s not just any witch, she’s a Tlaxcala witch.”
Svetlana widened her eyes, then bit her lip.
“This explains a lot, my dear Svetty. For starters, Tlaxcala and Tenochtitlán were rivals. The Aztecs built themselves the largest Empire in ancient Mexico—case in point, the Aztecs called themselves the Mexica—but Tlaxcala remained independent, even when they were surrounded by Aztec cities. That was, until the Spaniards came, and Tlaxcala allied themselves with the new white kids on the block.”
“Oh?” she said. “I thought the Spanish had just, you know…”
“Just killed everybody? In our world, they conquered America mostly by shooting everybody that stood in their way, and also by spreading germs and plagues that the natives had no natural defenses for. But some local tribes, Tlaxcala among them, saw the new arrivals as a better alternative to the Aztecs, which apparently weren’t very kind to those who didn’t bow before Tenochtitlán’s might. So, Tlaxcala joined forced with the Europeans and fought by their side to take Tenochtitlán down.
“All things considered, Tlaxcalans got an okay deal: Other than having to embrace the Christian faith, they remained relatively independent through the Conquista, and worked together with the Spaniards in pacifying the rest of Mexico during the following centuries. In our world, at least.”
Her polished fingernails tapped on the desk. “But not in here, boss, from what we’ve seen.”
I nodded. “Right. In Istoria, things have worked out differently, but it still explains a lot about Juanita: If Tlaxcala joined forces with the Spaniards, but then they got their butt kicked by Tenochtitlán’s warriors and magicks… What do you think happened to Tlaxcala afterward?”
“I’d say there was no shortage of hearts to be sacrificed at the Templo Mayor after the Aztecs won.”