The stars had grown teeth, sometime between yesterday's dawn and tonight's dusk. She couldn't believe she didn't see it before now. She couldn't believe she hadn't notice it until they had started to bite. She could almost see the marks they had scored into the inky darkness of the night sky. She wondered how long it would be before the stars began to fall and bite at the earth as well. She wondered how long it would take them to overwhelm her.

Her name was Teicnocahualiztli. At least, that was the name that they had given her, in all its tongue-twisted, consonant-burdened glory; she usually called herself, when she had reason to call herself, Noca. Noca, noca, noh-kah. It was a Russian goodbye, a shallow river in Botswana, a sharp rap on a Portuguese door, a brown crab from Galicia. She could fit in most places with a name like that. It didn't have to be anything at all, really. In practise, it rarely was.

So when someone called her Teicnocahualiztli, she knew to listen. She knew to answer. She knew to fear. She was that rare being – someone who had survived, someone who had learned, quite thoroughly, just how much there was to fear.

They had spared her. It had not been an act of mercy. It had been an act of pragmatism. They had not wanted for sacrifices, when they had taken her. The steps had run red with new-drawn blood quite regularly, and skulls had been stacked very high to greet each new dawn. She could only be thankful that they had not made her a priestess either, for then she would have drawn blood and stacked skulls and looked sacrificial offerings in the eye before she did what she had to do. They had not made her a priestess. They had made her… something else. Something wrong.

She hadn't looked anyone in the eye for many years now. She hadn't had reason to look anyone in the eye, or speak to them neither.

Not unless she heard them calling Teicnocahualiztli.

He Whose Slaves We Are was waiting for her, not in those Palenque ruins in which he preferred to pace away the grey hours between night and dawn, swathed in morning jungle mists and echoing to a dawn chorus of howler monkeys and parrots, but in on a terra cotta rooftop in Guanajuato. He had his back to her, overlooking the tangle of cobblestone streets punctuated intermittently by opulent colonial buildings, stunning tree-filled plazas and candy colored houses crammed together on the steep slope of a narrow ravine plunging into long dank subterranean tunnels, formerly rivers. She alighted onto the rooftop silently, but she knew better than to think he had not recognised her arrival. On that basis, she spoke.

"Tlahtli." She was the only one who called him that. In those earliest, fearful days, she had seen it as a token of security, some small indication of safety and sponsorship, maybe even the faintest trace of human affection in an entity so utterly inhuman, unhuman, dishuman – uncle, she called him, as though he was capable of understanding any kind of love or relationship, avuncular or otherwise. These days she knew better. And yet the term had stuck. It was her one small form of rebellion, avoiding calling him lord or king or father. It was a distancing, an alienation, an estrangement, as much as she could muster. "Nihuallacic. I am here."

"Nicmati. I acknowledge it." The Enemy of Both Sides turned to face her. He had chosen a mundane garb for their meeting – she wondered if any of the citizens milling about on the streets below might have mistaken him for a human, if they had not known better, or if something instinctual and visceral would have whispered to their very bones that what stood before them was ancient and awful. He was dressed like any of the street merchants below, in a dark t-shirt and worn trousers, his feet bare and a single bell-strewn chain wound about his left ankle. His skin was the colour of aged bone, his hair the brown of a rattlesnake's shed skin, his eyes as dark as obsidian. She wondered whether the priests had sated him. He seemed calm. "You have seen the stars, Teicnocahualiztli?"

She nodded, quite cautiously. "I have."

"The Four Hundred stir."

This was not, she could tell, a question.

"Coyolxauhqui has been slowly gaining ground. I need not tell you what will happen if my sister and her stars swallow up the sky."

She wasn't sure whether he sounded intrigued or concerned about the possibility. She had known – if you could ever claim to know an entity as eldritch and other as this one – but she had known the Lord of the Near and the Nigh for millenia by now. And still, she could rarely tell what he was thinking, if indeed something like him was capable of something as mundane and ordinary as thought. "No," she agreed. "You need not tell me."

He smiled. His teeth were as sharp as a jaguar's. He had painted a wide stripe of yellow and black across his eye with some thick pigment, the tiniest remnant of the wild thing he had once been, the feral power he had once wielded. He was still a god, but he was a weakened one, she thought, starved by the modern lack of sacrifices in his name. Weakened, she thought. Weakened, but not weak. "I must then," he said. "Ask of you a favour."

A favour, she thought. As though she were not bound to serve, bound to obey. She shrugged. She said, "Nahuatiamacoauhnitlacamati. Instruct me, and I shall obey."

"Oh, Teicnocahualiztli," the ancient god said softly, still half-smiling. "I know you will. I know you have to."

Her eyes darted. She said, "tlen? What do you want me to do?"

And He Whose Slaves We Are responded, "I want you to kill a god, of course."

The equilibrium of the entire natural order is in the balance. The Aztec gods have been neglected as of late; they have not received adequate sacrifices for hundreds of years. Thus, they have begun to lose their otherwise eternal battles with the ancient monster, Cipactli, and their banished sister, the moon goddess, Coyolxauhqui. Coyolxauhqui's brothers, the stars, stand ready to devour the sun, and when that happens, Coyolxauhqui shall slay her siblings, darkness shall eclipse the whole world, and reality shall be swallowed by Cipactli.

Though some gods argue for a return to sacrifices, which would see the deaths of hundreds of thousands of young men and women, they have been persuaded to first appeal to the few Aztec demigods which wander the earth, ignorant of their true godly heritage. Some of these demigods only know that they are different from their mortal peers; others have found their way to Camp Half Blood or Camp Jupiter and remain there, unclaimed; a select few have managed to find one of the modern temples devoted to the old gods, where they have learned a little bit about their parents and their mythology.

Now they will be asked to go on a desperate quest for their bloodthirsty, godly parents - to go in search of the missing Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent, the god of the morning star and light itself who went out east thousands of years ago and promised to return again when the world needed him. However, their mission may be complicated, as the mysterious servant Teicnocahualiztli, sent to guide them, has also been instructed that Quetzalcoatl is not to return alive...

Is she the only one operating under ulterior motives?

The Aztec Gods

Tezcatlipoca. The Smoking Mirror. The god of the night sky, temptation, earth and sorcery. His sacrifices were killed in combat.

Huitzilopochtli. The Left-Handed Hummingbird. The god of the sun, warfare, military conquest, sacrifice. His sacrifices had their hearts torn out.

Xipe Totec. Our Flayed Lord. The god of agriculture, disease, liberation and the seasons. His sacrifices were flayed.

Tlaloc. He Who Covers The Land. the god of rain, fertility, and lightning. His sacrifices were suffocated.

Chalchiuhtlicue. She Of The Jade Skirt. The goddess of love, youth, storms and water. Her sacrifices were drowned.

Xiuhtecuhtli. The Living Flame. The god of fire, light and volcanoes. His sacrifices were burned.

Mictlantecuhtli. Lord of the Underworld. The god of the underworld, lightning and bad luck. His sacrifices were cannibalised.

Toci. She Who Dwells Within. the goddess of healing and of the hearth. Her sacrifices were thrown from a cliff.

Xochipilli. The Prince of Flowers. The god of flowers, dancing, and beauty. His sacrifices were buried alive.

Others

Coyolxauhqui: the goddess of the moon, banished there for her attempt to murder her mother and her brother Huitzilopochtli.

Itzpapalotl: the skeletal and obsidian goddess of the stars, Coyolxauhqui's lieutenant.

Please PM this to me! Form is also on my bio.

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