This story is actually sort of a "concept draft" for an original story that I am writing (learn more on my tumblr dragonauthor if you want!), so I will be focusing on Getting It Written rather than meticulously editing everything. That's what the real drafts are for. As a result, I feel like some of the interactions in this chapter are a little stilted or brushed over, but again...this is just a fanfic version of a story I'm still working on plotting out.
Mecatl had indeed been captured.
The following night, the Inquisition, along with a number of soldiers, forced the Chrotopterus servants to assemble in the trees surrounding the cenote, Estrella among them. An outcropping of stone jutted out a few feet over the cenote. On a raised portion stood Camaxtli himself, beside him Prince Goth; closer to the tip stood Phoenix the Inquisitor General and her lackeys.
At their feet, Mecatl knelt bleeding. His wings had been slashed, and lacerations covered his body. One ear had been torn off and blood trickled down the side of his head and from his mouth. Even from a distance, Estrella could see that his every breath was a shuddering gasp.
Molten fury churned in her core at the sight of the Inquisitors' and royals' triumphant, satisfied expressions. How could they be proud to torture someone who only dared to hope for a better life? She fought to keep her face neutral. There were soldiers watching.
The spectacle had drawn a large crowd of Vampyrum as well. While the Chrotopterus waited in grim silence, the Vampyrum chattered excitedly. Nothing like a public execution to cheer up those barbaric cannibals.
Phoenix stepped forward and raised her voice to address the crowd. The jabbering quieted.
"This bat is a rebel and a spy, part of a Chrotopterus conspiracy to destroy the entire colony!" she announced. Gasps echoed over the cenote. "Two nights ago, they began to send assassins after Vampyrum. These dangerous insurgents have been plotting against the crown and colony, but through the king's wisdom, they have been discovered and will be hunted down and eliminated in defense of the colony. Every one of them is nothing but a bloodthirsty heretic who seeks the downfall of loyal Vampyrum, in defiance of not only the king but of Lord Zotz himself. The rebel you see before you, Mecatl, has confessed to treason and heresy. He will be put to death."
Phoenix stepped back, calm, composed, victorious. The bitter edge of sickness ate at Estrella's heart.
"This night marks the first in a time dedicated to establishing security in my kingdom," said Camaxtli. "Traitors will be located and executed, as will be unrepentant heretics. I have created an Inquisition, led by Inquisitor General Phoenix and Prince Goth, whose efforts will be dedicated to the task. The protection of the colony is paramount."
Cheers from the Vampyrum, a dread-filled silence among the Chrotopterus.
To the Inquisitors, the king said, "Kill the traitor."
The guards hauled Mecatl to his feet, eliciting a muffled grunt of pain. He tried to snap at them but was too weak, and most of his teeth were missing.
Phoenix dug her claws deep into Mecatl's shoulder, slicing into the ligaments in the joint. Mecatl let out a roar and thrashed, worsening the damage to his shoulder, and in a matter of seconds Phoenix had worked through the joint and remaining muscle. With a slash of her claws, she severed the patagium connecting his wing to his body, and the limb fell into the cenote. He stopped moving after that, even when Phoenix hacked off his other wing. Estrella couldn't tell if he was still alive when the guards tossed him into the water.
If he was, he drowned quietly. Red clouds billowed in the water around him.
Phoenix whirled on the Chrotopterus servants. "Let this be a warning to all of you!" she bellowed. "All traitors will share his fate! Come forth if you have information, and you will be spared the harshest penalties. Any bat found to have knowledge of the rebellion who does not come forward will be dealt with as if they are rebels themselves. This is the price of treachery!" She opened her wings to gesture to Mecatl's corpse. "Now is your chance to denounce the traitors among you. You have two nights before you are hunted down one by one."
She and her guards launched themselves into the air amid the cheers of who couldn't be anyone but the most fanatical of Vampyrum.
Estrella felt she might be sick, not from the sight of Mecatl's gruesome death, but from how pleased the Vampyrum were about it. That they gloried in the spilt blood of brave bats trying to change the world for the better….
Estrella would have gladly torn the lot of them to pieces as mercilessly as they tore apart her people.
She trembled with fury.
Some of them are on our side, she reminded herself. Some of them hate their king, their ways, nearly as much as I do. Once we join with that force, we're going to strike back.
We're going to strike soon.
It didn't take long to get answers. The spectacle that evening had frightened many of the Chrotopterus, One servant gave her brother-in-law's name, another his cousin's. Over the course of the night, the Inquisitors located eight bats in total, including two given up by a prisoner. Alejandra and Cerberus captured the accused and brought them to the cells in the bone room to be questioned. Eventually, Prince Goth took on the role of delegation, and Phoenix that of interrogation.
The bat who had been given up by his sister-in-law stood in a cell, untouched but clearly shaken by the suddenness and brutality of his arrest. Phoenix faced him, Cerberus a few steps behind her. The accused, Tecoyo, kept his head bowed and his eyes lowered to the ground.
"You have been exposed as a traitor," Phoenix said. "Confess now and give up all you know of the rebel force."
"I'm not a traitor," whispered Tecoyo, an edge of panic slipping into his voice. "I've done nothing wrong, I swear to you."
Phoenix circled around him and traced a claw over the scars on his back. "It seems to me that you have," she said. "Two marks. What are they for?"
"The first because I misunderstood an order." He swallowed. "The second for...being hesitant."
"To obey."
Tecoyo's voice was hoarse. "Yes, milady."
"So you've shown disrespect for our laws."
"No! I was simply...startled. I—I was asked to kill a bat, as a meal for an older Vampyrum who had difficulty hunting."
Phoenix narrowed her eyes, not seeing why that would have caused a servant to refuse an order. "And that was a problem for you?"
Tecoyo was silent, eyes skittering frantically across the gouged stone floor as if searching for a way out.
A shallow warning cut on his shoulder. "Answer me."
"I'm not a cannibal," he hissed. "I wouldn't kill another bat just because he was smaller and weaker. They're not birds or beasts, they're my own kind."
"Then you flout both our laws and our customs. This kingdom is built on Vampyrum strength. If you can't match it, you are either a servant or a meal." She cleaned a streak of blood from her claw. "Now. I know you are a rebel spy. I only want a confession and any information you have."
"I'm not a spy. I know nothing about the rebellion." Slowly, Tecoyo sank to his knees. "I've never acted against the kingdom, on my life. Who told you this? Marisela? It's a lie, I swear to you, I swear by Lord Zotz, I'm not a rebel." His voice was growing faint. "Milady—"
She interrupted his pleading with a long slash of a claw across his back—a third mark, for lying to a Vampyrum. Lying under Zotz's name would have earned him another, but this third already gave him a death sentence.
He flinched back with a cry of pain, then for the first time raised his head to look at Phoenix. He drew back his lips to bare his teeth and hissed.
"You've sentenced me to death!"
"I have," Phoenix said calmly. "You lied to me. Confess."
Tecoyo stood, evidently accepting that cowering would get him nowhere. "So you can tear me limb from limb?" he snarled. "That's no grounds to force a bat to give you anything. I'm going to die anyway! Kill me now, why not!"
"It's not a pleasant way to go, certainly, but perhaps better than me handing you over to the torturer for however long he can keep you alive."
Tecoyo froze and stared. His gaze darted to Cerberus, as if hoping for some mercy from the other Vampyrum.
"It's all in order," Cerberus told him. "Give up the information and earn a traitor's death; refuse and earn a liar's."
A moment of silence.
Tecoyo lunged at Phoenix.
Phoenix lurched backwards and reflexively struck at him with a claw. Blood welled up in a gash on his forehead, and he snarled and again threw himself at Phoenix. Tecoyo was evidently untrained in fighting, however, his every move desperate, sloppy, predictable. In moments Phoenix had her claws sunken into a wrist and a shoulder. Tecoyo writhed and Phoenix crushed his forearm in her jaws; he screamed and crumpled to the floor, clutching his mangled wing. Without breaking eye contact, she dug her rear claws into the open wound and pressed it to the ground. She crouched down to hold his head in place to keep his snapping jaws away from her.
A moment passed as he fought back a whimper of pain. Eventually, Tecoyo hissed, "You want a confession? Then let it be known that I would give everything I have to kill you. And I'm acting alone, but that's all it took for you to give Temotli a traitor's death."
Phoenix bared her teeth in a triumphant grin. Her forearm stung; she registered a shallow scrape. If she recalled correctly, it should heal quickly. All the pain did was remind her that she was alive. It was still so new and exhilarating.
"Is he the last of them?" she asked Cerberus.
"So far, milady." He called to the guards to open the prison. The stone door rolled aside and Phoenix and Cerberus left, leaving the traitor bleeding on the floor as the guards moved the stone back into place.
Phoenix roosted on the ceiling of the bone room as the others ascended to open air. She cleaned blood from her claws and scratched forearm. A wave of…something…washed through her. One of those sensations that live bats felt and that she couldn't quite recall. As invigorating as the interrogations had been, she wanted to rest and not deal with the rest of the living world at the moment. It was so unfamiliar, even overwhelming. She shut her eyes.
The last interrogation hadn't been as successful as she'd hoped. A lone dissenter, uninvolved with the main force. At least three of the others had been outright rebels.
They'd said nothing, though. One had named the two others, but of those two one had pled innocence and the other maintained that he would endure any pain for his cause. The torturer, Moros, was putting that to the test.
He must have stopped for now. The bone room was quiet.
The quiet and the darkness were calming, familiar, reminiscent of the Underworld. She was sure that she would soon be more at ease in the world of the living, but not quite yet. After all, this was only her fourth night alive. The sensations of being out of breath, of pain lingering longer than a second, of hunger—all were strange. They weren't entirely unpleasant, as they reminded her of her life and reality, but that didn't negate their oddness.
Or their annoyance. The scratch on her arm throbbed. Getting used to pain again would be aggravating.
It might have been ten minutes or an hour when Phoenix heard wingbeats as someone else descended into the bone room. She kept her eyes closed. Whoever it was hovered for a moment, then flew closer and, to her surprise, roosted beside her.
She opened her eyes and looked up to see Goth.
He tilted his head at her. "The prisoners have been dealt with. What are you doing down here?" His tone wasn't accusatory, simply curious.
"It's…a lot." She took a deep breath. It still felt odd to do so. "Up here. It's so…alive. This room is somewhere in between. It's easier to deal with. I suppose I'm still getting used to living."
Goth didn't reply immediately. Eventually, he said, "I came to ask about the last of the accused. Have you discovered anything new?"
Phoenix shook her head with a scowl. "Nothing. The last was another...solitary dissident." She flicked a claw in the air irritably. "He claimed to know nothing about his people's movement but admitted to supporting seditious ideas."
The prince nodded slowly. Another moment of silence passed.
Phoenix, to put it bluntly, had no idea what to say. She was unpracticed at idle conversation, never before having deemed it worth her time. She'd spoken only when she saw the immediate need to: when there was information to convey or ask for. In her previous life, the habit had allowed her plenty of time for and dedication to her work but hadn't earned her any friends. And there hadn't been much occasion for conversation in the Underworld.
Despite all of that, she felt that it was important to make a good impression on Goth. She couldn't pinpoint a solitary reason—because he was the crown prince, because he was handsome, because he struck her as being charismatic and powerful. Not to mention that, in addition, she should probably make up for however vaguely insolent she might have been a few nights before.
"Would you care to hunt with me?" Phoenix finally asked. Then, remembering herself, she added, "Your Highness?"
Prince Goth dropped from his roost, and Phoenix thought she saw a small smile on his face. "I would."
Estrella returned to the roost about an hour before dawn and Ichtaca shuddered in relief. He embraced her a second after she landed and whispered in her ear, "You're alive, thank Zotz!"
"I'm being careful," she whispered back, then turned to Iktal and opened her wings. "¡Mijo! I'm so glad you're awake; I don't see you nearly enough anymore!"
"Hi, Mom," said Iktal, hugging her. "I caught a parakeet tonight!"
Iktal rambled on about the bird to Estrella. Ichtaca had been hearing about this accomplishment for the past hour. Still, it gave him comfort to know his son was living as happily as a bat his age should, worrying about catching the biggest prey rather than the Vampyrum inquisitors discovering his mother as a rebel spy.
"Hey, are you okay?" Iktal eventually asked, apparently noting Estrella's haggard expression.
She gave him a tired smile and nodded. "Of course, mijo. I just had a stressful night. I'm fine now."
"That's good." He continued on about his parakeet.
A few minutes later, the sky began to lighten. "You can tell me everything tomorrow night," Estrella said gently to Iktal, "but you need to go to sleep now. Your father and I have to go deal with something. We'll be back soon."
"I have to go to sleep right now? The sun isn't even out yet!"
Ichtaca nodded. "The dawn hunters are coming out. Stay in the roost. It'll be a few hours before we get back, so you might as well sleep. All right?"
"Yeah. But I'm not tired," he said as he yawned.
Estrella smiled and ruffled his hair. "See you in the evening."
As she and Ichtaca flew, she told him about how far the Inquisition had already gone. "There were half a dozen taken. Some of them rebels, some completely uninvolved. None of them are dead yet, as far as I can tell, but I doubt any of them will survive. The only question now is if they'll sell us out, and how many more of us are going to die."
Ichtaca was quiet. Estrella and Kratos were right: this demanded immediate action. "The Vampyrum faction you told me about last night," he said. "Any word?"
"Yes, that's why we both have to go to the meeting this time. Phantom made contact with them. They're going to meet us tonight."
Ichtaca was startled—the rebellion had found them so soon?—but didn't falter. "And they won't sell us out? You're sure of that?"
"We can't be sure of anything except that they are set against Camaxtli," Estrella answered. "And if they are Kalán's bats...when he was alive he did nothing but talk. Maybe his heart was in the right place but I'm concerned none of them will be willing to fight, not their own colony."
Again, she was right. Ichtaca had the same concerns. Vampyrum were so often content to stand by and watch when it was only Chrotopterus who were suffering.
The meeting that morning was large. Mecatl's barbaric execution had, apparently, galvanized the rebels rather than cowed them as the Vampyrum had intended. Good.
A servant that Ichtaca hadn't met gave a report of the night's events to Kratos and the other rebels who hadn't been at the pyramid. Murmurs of outrage followed, but it didn't sound like anyone was surprised.
A few minutes after the assembled Chrotopterus had been informed of everything, an unfamiliar Vampyrum appeared and landed a few feet before Kratos on a branch. Every bat in the vicinity eyed him with suspicion, some beginning to unfurl their wings in preparation to flee if necessary. Kratos shifted his attention to the Vampyrum.
"I am here on behalf of Lady Harpy," said the Vampyrum. "She wishes to enter into an alliance with your faction in opposition of Camaxtli's reign. She awaits permission to attend your gathering in the company of seven other bats, myself included."
Muttering raced through the crowd—suspicious, excited, curious, hopeful.
"A Vampyrum lady?" Ichtaca said to Estrella under his breath. "This is nothing more than a power grab by greedy nobles! We'll be no better off under them than Camaxtli."
But Estrella was shaking her head. "I don't recognize the name," she whispered. "I don't think this Harpy lives at the pyramid. Perhaps it's a title she gave herself, but I doubt she's a proper lady. She can't be one of the pyramid's nobility."
Still Ichtaca had his suspicions. It was a habit so long as Vampyrum were concerned—a habit so often necessary to survival.
After a moment of consideration, Kratos nodded. "Only the eight of you," he said. "I hope that we can forge a successful alliance."
The Chrotopterus would vastly outnumber eight. They could defend against any aggression they might face from only eight Vampyrum.
"Thank you," said the Vampyrum messenger. "I will relay your response to Lady Harpy."
Ichtaca couldn't suppress the growing apprehension he felt as the messenger flapped away and returned several minutes later with the seven other Vampyrum he had mentioned.
One by one, they landed on the thick branch that Kratos stood on, fanning out to stand in a circle around one of their party, evidently Harpy. She was pale gray, with deep purple wings and short hair in a severe style. He noticed her eyes only because they were a pale, striking blue, which he'd not thought Vampyrum could have. She was also smaller than the average Vampyrum, smaller than the others in her company.
"Kratos," she began with a smile on the border between polite and razor, her voice a drawl. "It's so wonderful to meet you at last. I've heard tell that you and your bats oppose Camaxtli, as I do. I believe the both of us would have better chances against him if we join forces."
"I agree," said Kratos, though his wary demeanor didn't shift. "But tell me...Harpy...what is it that has led you to oppose your colony?"
"I oppose not my colony but the murderer who calls himself their king." Harpy's eyes flashed. "With him and his son gone, I can change every law that holds Chrotopterus as lesser. Abolish servitude and marks. Let the kingdom see Chrotopterus and Vampyrum as equal."
A voice from the crowd finally spoke up. "A lofty ideal, but how would you bring that about? The Vampyrum won't stand by and let an usurper pass those kinds of laws."
The rebel was right. From what Ichtaca knew, most Vampyrum likely wouldn't listen to a leader who wasn't allegedly ordained by Zotz—that is to say, of royal blood—even if defeated by force. Ichtaca had long held the belief that only a complete revolution could change the Vampyrum's harsh rule.
Harpy was silent for a moment, considering, before she again raised her voice. "My father was Lord Kalán."
Astounded and intrigued whispers burst out. Ichtaca drew in a sharp breath. Kalán, the Vampyrum lord who had sympathized with Chrotopterus and drawn a surprising amount of followers among the Vampyrum before his death three years ago.
He had a child. Given the Vampyrum's obsession with bloodlines, that had to mean very much to Kalán's old followers.
"And while it's not my favorite way to introduce myself," said Harpy as a smirk crawled across her face, "as Kalán's daughter, I'm also Camaxtli's niece—the second heir to the Vampyrum throne."
This is lowkey a mess but that's ok for now