The men came to the village and brought us to where the ground burns. I was afraid. But my husband only smiled and took me by the hand. It is a gift, he told me. A gift that will make you happy. They led us beyond the lakes of fire. Into halls made of metal, halls that moved and spoke. We were terrified. We did not understand. But we trusted them.


Father placed my palm upon the device. I did not know what it was but I knew that no man could have forged it. They had built it. When it was over, thoughts were placed in my mind that had not been there before. I was no longer afraid of the machines, which had before seemed like monsters. I did not know how I could have ever feared them…or anything.


We tested our new minds. We had to discover a way to lave water from the underground river for all the thirsty mouths burdened with constructing the Altepetl. Convoys of water bearers between the worksites took able arms away from the build. So we set out to construct a new system. But we were left frustrated. Our troughs failed. A whole month was wasted.


Drought! I sat upon the silt and beat my tool against the dirt. There must be a better way, I thought. Our eyes were open but our minds were hungry. We built faster than our bodies could follow. I sat in solitude and conjured, peering into the cavity I had dug in the ground. A solution came to me! We built a conduit from clay and ceramic. Water flowed.

I see the children building new toys. Discs that take flight when spun. I see men boring holes in the hardest rock, harvesting powders from beneath the world, powders that ignite and reign destruction I only imagined Tlaloc capable. Metals make baste for our mortar. The Altepetl murmurs and steams. Water spouts in every home. We are no longer forest people.


For the women, our place has changed. Farms are endless. Fertile ground has become an empire. We train the slaves the men bring from conquered villages to labor as we once labored. We make offerings of them when their exhausted bodies prove no more use. The men rule and we keep. Our young ones are born wise. We cannot unlearn pleasure, and want not to.


They all see enlightenment where there is only growth. They all see Godliness where there is only invention. Their chieftain has declared himself a God among men, a son of Quetzalcoatl. Every day they learn something new and their lands expand onto ours. They take too much without giving back. We are slaves. Our backs shall be burdened for their will.


There has been discussion amongst my men of how best to solve the slave problem. The binding our metallurgists create allow fewer men to stand guard over many. But escapes still occur. Slaves learn to open their locks. We know not if they accomplish this on their own or if their proximity to the device grants them influence, as it did for us.


Work continues on the Teocalli. The ores needed for construction sit in the wilderness beyond where the ground burns. Many slaves were lost on the trail in the beginning. While the sheering of the blocks had its eases, the mechanism for their arrival had none. We harnessed the slow lightning, making metal and stone as light as owl’s feather.


Management of indentured lands has led to new laws. Every lesser tribe must pay a dowry to the Tepetl Nation, freeing their borders of occupation. All who stand under the banner of fire must pledge resources and spare young men for the war parties. Local militias will be collected every new moon. The hand that opposes will be swiftly cut down.

My people come from the wet veldt of the savage rock. Under the banner, I lead my men into neighboring villages to find slaves for our allegiance. I used to hunt mazatl. Now I hunt men. I have seen the weapons of the Tepetl Nation. They need not spears or bow. They can burn villages from great distances. Make men disappear in a terrible flash.


The twin Teocalli is complete. I have heard the stories of the Tepetl Nation reaching beyond the farthest glade. Of their machines, their wealth, and their power. I have seen chariots led by their own navigation and I have seen the very ground move by command of a switch. They can wield magic to make structures move without need of rowing hands.


My boy invented a net for fishing made of coils from fragile metal. I watched him use it in the underground river. He ran a current through the line, shocking many fish. Enough for a hundred to feast! My daughter placed nutrients in a bed of sediment one night. The next morning trees stood above our hut! We will trade the fruit at the Altepetl.


Last night I was seeing in my sleep. I saw the people of the Tepetl Nation. All of them carried light. It was their influence, I realized. And I could see it swimming in the halls of the sanctum, and beyond it a shape. A shape hidden in the forbidden place. So pure it blinded me. Brighter than the sun. I awoke shaking, cold with fever.

Many citizens have gone to the star gazer, speaking of ill omens and waking dreams. They speak of a secret in the forbidden place. A great, mysterious power. To trespass is a sin graver than a thousand deaths. They gave us the gift and They can take it away. Still, the people speak. Want and desire will decide. People will ask questions, and once asked…


The son of Quetzalcoatl, once a chieftain and now the ruler of all that lays under the banner of fire, has written a new law. The Gods speak through me, he proclaimed. My will is as theirs. No man, woman, or child shall step foot into the forbidden place. The gift was given, and so can it be taken. We will praise with blood letting on the next whole moon.


I am forbidden to scribe. For I am a slave. Yet I speak. The masters work us night and day in the mechanical labor palace. There is no sky for us. Only the fires from the world light our grievances. The air is dank with ash and poisonous to our bodies. The soil is hard and cuts at our flesh. Those who die are rolled down the fiery shores and replaced.


Adversity is a patient trait. Honing our influence is much like gouging the ayotl from its shell. We learned that beasts are changed by the gift as well as man. First, the worms in the soil beneath the Teocalli doubled in length. Then monkeys wielded spears and turned on each other. The apes swam to their deaths. We must have the patience beasts cannot.

Night has been beaten. Never again shall the dread of darkness be a bane to those who live in the Tepetl Nation. Our walls shine with perpetual flame. For as long as the ground burns there will always be light. The power of the day has been conquered and harnessed, just as everything else. There is no feat we are incapable of. May the Gods shudder!


The offerings have ceased. Thank the Gods! They say that the wind has been tamed in the golden city. That cool air flows in the Altepetl as it does in the highlands. People are changing. Growing pale in the fatigue. They say it is from living underground, away from the sun. A consequence of false light. They look more like Gods now than people.


There is talk of the forbidden place. The people mumble in huddled masses at the ends of every street. It is the device they speak of. All along the Tepetl Nation, from the great Teocalli through the jungle beneath the sky to the edge of the smoldering gates, whispers deafen the air with talk of dreams. We all feel what is coming.


A man wandered into the forbidden place and was found by the God King’s guards. His dreams poisoned his mind, they say. Made him break the most important of our laws. The execution was swift. A screaming head rises above the palace gates from the spade of a golden spear. I fear this shall only be the first. More heads will stand by the full of the next moon.

When I woke from my slumber I found myself standing at the edge of where the water falls. I was walking in my dreams. Searching for the voice that lulls my soul. When I hear it call me I can see the world with three eyes…unravel the very mystery of nature with a glance and solve the riddle of heaven with a thought. But when I wake it leaves me incomplete.


How long can they expect to hold us out? The God King is no more the son of Quetzalcoatl than any of us! There is no heaven. No Owl Man leers at us from the shadows as if we were bad children. Our minds are open, and we see clearly. The gift belongs to all the people under the banner of fire! The God King’s immortality will be tested!


The revolt began in the early morning the day after the twelfth execution. The golden gates were swarmed and the God King’s guards overwhelmed. Eager hands pried open the locks to the sanctum and nervous feet stormed the forbidden place. A thousand palms touched the device and brought it away from where the ground burns.


War! Lawlessness! The city is divided into two fronts. There are those loyal to the God King and those who worship the Ball. Many die every day. Those who stand loyal find ourselves at a loss. The others are stronger. Wiser. Beyond all, there is talk of a plague. What will happen to the Tepetl Nation? The ground shakes. The air burns. The crops shrivel.


And the God King declared, I shall curse all who oppose me! The sin of the blasphemers will not be tolerated. For any man that harbors the coloti, his skin will be torn from his back and he shall be cast as he is, naked with sinew, into a salt grave. The woman who lies with the coloti man will become pregnant with demon and give birth through her armpit.


The Tepetl Nation is tearing itself in two. Tradition grapples with Invention. Faith grapples with Science. The coloti create obscene mechanisms of war while the God King’s loyal followers kidnap and brutalize. There is no one left to cure the plague. The sickness flows from the forbidden place, I am certain! They punish us as we destroy ourselves.

Calamity has befallen us! There was an explosion in the caves. The war slows as the sickness grieves every family under the banner, even that of the God King. The prince has died, as many of our young sons have also died. Children kill their parents in their sleep. Mothers eat their babies. The beasts drag the dying into the jungle. We cannot get out…


I gazed into the crystal waters of the underground river and met a gray face. My skin is coarse and dry. It is already too late. I am beginning to forget my wisdoms. The intricacies of slow lightning, of static mobilization and heat alchemy. All if it lost like tears in the river. Soon I will lose the meaning of the scribe. I will forget my own name.


They walk the halls like soft golems. To think, they were once inventors and shamans. All that knowledge…wasted. For what? It was a righteous war, the coloti once said. They may keep their piety for the ages, and time might wear it into diamonds for them like so much worthless slate. No such end will befall me. A funeral bed of molten calls for its mate.


The King who declares himself a false God seeks the Ball even as the plague fills the streets with living death. He will not claim it! It is ours now, and it will enable us beyond this place. We will find a way to dig ourselves out and see the sky again. To do this, we must hide the Ball. We must devise a way to keep it from the King’s armies.

I am the son of Quetzalcoatl. What lies here is the ruin of my empire. Let it be known that we were once great and favored amongst all others in the eyes of the Gods. Let it be known that They gave us a gift that made us mighty…made us sovereign. That we walked this world and made all we touched a kingdom of gold. May all who find us remember and beware.


The Ball hums as the smog from the last flame of war lingers and dies. From the moment it was taken our fate was sealed. The blasphemers sought to make it so that the Ball could never be recovered by the God King’s armies, amassing their wisest inventors to seal the kingdom from within. These walls are a mechanical tomb and the Ball is its cipher.


We took the ball from Them, the source of Their mysterious power. From the sanctum of the forbidden place we removed the giver of gifts and stole it for ourselves. We were arrogant, and we were wrong. It must be brought back to Them. We must make right what has been done, for the sake of our souls and the souls of our children.