“A bird of tal?” Nahua asked when she saw the airplane. “What a particular shape for a conjured ho.”
“Actually, it’s on wheels,” John told her, but did not stop to explain that to her in detail. She humd at the suggestion. Even if the Aztec civilization on the Abyssal side had the benefits of magic, matter of fact was that Nahua was even more technologically delayed than most long-lived entities they ran into. Between the isolation and this neck of the world having been far behind the Europeans of the sa age, she probably only had the early beginnings of understanding of the scientific thod.
Nahua humd sothing disbelieving. Further comnts were kept to herself as she squeaked and laughed in awe first at the unfolding staircase and then at the inside of the plane itself with its many screens and lights. “What interesting usage of magic!”
“It’s… we’ll go over it later.” John really did not have the ti to explain electricity. “This way.”
The room that they had kept Fianna in for a short ti had been made their little sick colony. In it were Lee and Hailey, the latter sitting with an arm around the forr. Just the ti between John summoning Undine to where he was and them walking back to the plane had been enough for the young Fateweaver to be reduced to a coughing state. Washable pieces of cloth all around the floor were stained with purple mucus and the nailbeds of the youngest mber of the harem were similarly tinging. Dark bags under her eyes betrayed a rapid decline in energy.
Hailey, while infected, was faring much better. She was looking a little feverish, but that was about it. ‘Aclysia, Gno, ready the plane for lift-off,’ he instructed. They would have to pull a stunt if they wanted to get back to the sick camp in the minimum amount of ti.
“Aren’t you two cute?” Nahua asked, as if addressing children. “Let take this off you… Relax.”
The last word was an order delivered in a sharp tone. Nahua suddenly put a hand on Lee’s shoulder, attempting to press her down. “She’s telling you to lay down. Do as she asks,” John translated and requested. There was nothing else he could do.
“Okay?” Lee answered, her voice hoarse from the coughing. Once she and Hailey were on their backs, the demigoddess made tal extended a hand towards John. He had a feeling what she needed, but was hesitant to give it to her until he knew it was certain.
“Knife.” The single word made certain that this would be a grueso scene. The depiction on the floor had been explicit on how this went. Swiftly fetching Salver, Aclysia’s dagger, John handed it over to Nahua and stoically braced himself for what ca next.
For all the terrible things John had seen and for all the context he had to know this was necessary, he still hated following the procedure. The daggers sliced deep into Lee’s stomach, parting her midriff between the muscles, and plunged into her stomach. Clenching her teeth, the dark-haired woman did not make more noises than a few pained growls. John and Rave were there to hold her hands.
Dagger still in the other hand, Nahua put a palm over Lee’s opened midriff. The purple puss soaked into the towels rose. Veins under Lee’s barely tanned skin popped, pulsing abominably. Sothing in the disease’s barebones sentience was urging it to crawl away from the pull of the demigoddess.
The inevitable victor was Nahua. The disease gushed out via the opening in the stomach, clumping up into a peach-like thing under her palm. When the last drop of it flew upwards, the demigoddess turned to Hailey, repeating the ritual. Drawing the sickness out of her was a much quicker process.
Undine was there to patch both of them up afterwards. Nahua proceeded to walk away from them, her proud strut taking her through every corner of the plane. She did not even care that she was carrying a blood-dripping dagger the entire ti. The fruit in her hand swelled slightly, as the various pathogens over the walls were sucked into it in misty streams.
Once she was satisfied, she bit into the fruit. The serious mood on her face evaporated in a mont of delighted gluttony. Bite for bite, she gulped down the apparently delicious disease. John could not relate, but better it was inside her than inside his won.
“This is our cure?” Scarlett asked.
The question caused Nahua to turn towards the redhead and muster her with a deeply interested gaze. “She is indeed,” John answered. They were conversing in English, leaving the demigoddess in the dark about what they were saying. He could feel annoyance pulse through the ntal connection. He switched to Nahuatl. “We’ll be taking you to the main sick camp next. After that, we can talk about your future.”
“Sounds great!” she answered, just a little too sweetly.
___________________________________________________________________________
Nahua stood over Fianna. The forr rcenary was barely present. The extra day that it had taken them to get back to the sick camp had transford her arms down from the shoulder into a slouching mass, barely attached to gelatinous bone. The sweet stench of rot in the air was disgusting.
Bright green eyes glided over the feverishly panting form of Fianna. “Her arms will not be saved. Cut them off at the shoulder joint.”
As much had been feared. ‘It doesn’t matter how much I wish it was otherwise,’ the Gar reined in his anger at the situation. Nothing could be done. ‘At least she will live.’
John was not present for the procedures. Not for the removal of her arms and not for the extraction of the Giant’s Puss. Nahua went on to cure the rest of the camp afterwards. He then stayed by the spy/scout’s bedside. He was moderately useful there, at least.
“Master, you should sleep,” Aclysia told him. It had now been over five days since he had last laid down.
“Not quite yet,” John mumbled.
Fianna opened her eyes roughly thirty minutes later. She took imdiate stock of the situation. With the sickness removed and exhaustion slept off, not to ntion Undine’s healing touch, she had the awareness to realize what had happened. “Botherso,” was all she could say once she had analysed the whole situation.
“This is the best we could do,” he apologized.
“I knew the risk.”
The conversation was awkward, not least of all because John felt like he was thinking through tar. With the underlying pressure removed, the sleep deprivation was seriously getting to him. “I can offer you two ways to compensate,” he told her. “With the right amount of money and strings pulled, we could reconstruct your limbs, I am quite sure.”
“Fusion has no upstart biomancers,” Fianna observed plainly.
The Gar lethargically nodded. “Indeed we do not. It would enlist help from the Portuguese and Protheus, most likely. The alternative is quicker and inhouse…”
“Thorne prosthetics,” Fianna stated. “That is my choice.”
John rubbed his eyes, just to get a few more seconds away from the burning sensation. He failed. “Alright. Can you stand?” She could, and before John knew it, they were back in the plane. “Nahua…” he mumbled, rembering he had told her they were going to address her situation next.
“Bed,” Aclysia insisted, already shoving him in the sa. He was still dirty and dusty and there was a part of him that wanted to struggle against the maid that was disrobing him. That part was smothered by the all-consuming drop he felt. His whole consciousness was sinking into the mattress. He glanced at Rave, who was curled up a few tres away on the massive bed.
Then his vision went dark.
_________________________________________________________________________
John woke up exactly ten hours later. ‘Hurray for ga chanics,’ he thought, while stretching all three of his bodies across locations. He had known better than to keep his mind active when his body had collapsed like that.
For the first ti in over a week, John felt a semblance of calm. There was still plenty to worry about, but between Nahua taking care of the disease for the ti being and Lorelei’s regular status updates, he at least did not have any more fires to put out.
He stumbled out of the empty bedroom and into the living space. Aclysia was already drumming everyone together, having felt his awakening. A few things had changed while he was unconscious. For one, Fianna had been equipped with a pair of base model artificial limbs. John loathed that she had lost them, but at least Abyssal dical technology made the loss a bearable one.
The second bit of change was that Nahua had stripped out of the provided clothes. Evidently, she preferred to be naked over wearing what was provided by a foreigner or maybe she just pulled along with the local etiquette. For once, John did not consider this an obvious sign that this newly t woman was ready to mingle. Nahua’s Observe Sheet had made it clear that she had a Libido of 0. In other words: she was as asexual as was humanly possible.
A loss to mankind, one that John could fix in theory, but he did not want to at this ti. Even his instincts knew better than to add a harette in this situation and he had to give Momo the opportunity to talk sense into him before he dispensed with it.
Also, he had made Nahua a promise. A promise he was under no obligation to keep and perhaps wouldn’t depending how this next talk went.
“Soooo, finally got your beauty sleep done?” Nahua reclined in her chair (funnily enough she had picked the Blowjob Throne, but that was neither here nor there) and kicked the air. She was smiling oh so sweetly and all around behaved like the world’s most adorable princess type. It still confused John and that was likely the point. He knew he was talking to soone exceptionally powerful putting on a convincing veneer of cuteness.
Calmingly, they were more powerful than her, even. Worryingly, nothing was stopping her from spewing the undissolved disease back out. They both had their bargaining chips.
“Yes, sorry for the delay,” the Gar answered and sat down in the chair closest to her. He put his elbow on the chessboard. That he was naked did not bother her at all. True to her Stats, her gaze remained entirely focused on his face. Any interest she had in his body was purely inquisitive about his way of life. “Have you been filled in about the current age?”
“I told her everything she wanted to know, which was a fucking lot,” Scarlett weighed in. She was one of the harettes that had bothered to learn Nahuatl for this expedition. The others were slowly picking it up by osmosis, courtesy of the superhuman ntal Stats of everyone around. Even the dumbest of the harem could accidentally learn a language at this point. The difference on an individual basis was between hours and weeks of exposure.
“My ho gone, the foreigners in charge of the land, but my father and his trusted aides remain at large,” Nahua summarized the situation, still smiling. She very slowly moved one foot up, putting her hairless cunt on complete display in the process. John was distracted for a mont and she giggled. She may not have had urges herself, but she knew what her body did to n (and a lot of won). “The disease has returned because so fools conjured it, or so I have been told.”
“You do not believe us?”
“The Giant’s Puss cos from the giant’s corpse, it is known,” Nahua answered and crossed her legs. “Our lord of sacrifice, my honoured father Huitzilopochtli told us this. Even the most doubtful were forced to accept his words when he ca to accept my sacrifice.”
“Avatars of his were there to prevent from getting you out.”
“You have no right to , so you can’t bla him. He stopped once you broke the seal, right?”
“Yes, why do you think that was?”
“The wisdom of my father exceeds my silly little bounds, I’m just a silly little demigoddess, princess to an empty throne.” Nahua batted her eyelashes with all of the fake innocence of a lure.
John was convinced that the actual reason was that the inert Xipe-Totec was the battery for the avatars. Similarly, he was unconvinced that Huitzilopochtli had told them the truth about the disease. Neither were points he brought up with Nahua. She did not know him, so why would she take his word over that of her father and entire civilization? He had the advantage that her unrestricted ntal connection displayed her sincerity. Whether it was true or not, she believed it.
“Why do you think he is not pulling you out now?” the Gar asked. How exactly the portals worked, he did not know, but if he had been able to open one for Xipe-Totec, he could have opened one for his daughter, especially while she had been ‘out of sight’ as she shaped up. Of course, John had never actually let her out of his senses, he just had not looked at her directly.
Nahua shrugged. “He probably has better things to do. Sounds like the ants woke up as well and slew the latest incarnation of Quetzalcoatl.”
“Do you know what those ants are?”
“Once they were their own creatures, but they pledged themselves to the spirit of Gluttonous Vulture.”
“Macuilcozcacuauhtli,” John said.
Nahua clapped her hands with convincing appreciation. “You really are good at my people’s tongue! I love to hear it. Yes, they serve the ideals of that evil spirit. A question of mine, now.” Her smile instantly dropped, replaced by a dark and thunderous visage. “How long do you plan to dwell, invader?”
“Until I have answers,” John answered, unimpressed. “I want to talk to your father.”
“And then?” Nahua demanded to know.
“Then I will know what to do next.”
“The Spaniards said the sa thing and look where that brought my people.”
“Technological progress, a writing system, an end to human sacrifices?” the Gar pushed back, causing the demigoddess across the little divide to raise an eyebrow. “The Aztecs won the soarican struggle through bloodshed and the Spaniards then won you over. You don’t have the moral high ground to topple them. By all historical texts I read, they treated you no worse than you treated those you conquered. Which is not an endorsent of the oppression your people did face, just a reminder that you aren’t a saint.”
Nahua studied him with so renewed interest, then a smile spread on her features. Even if it was not ant to be malicious, it took on that form. She looked hungry and evil, like a voodoo curse shaped into a gorgeous, elf-esque being. “At least you have a spine,” she said. “To reveal to you what you most wish to know: I have very little answers for you. When the first white n landed on our shores, I took my sacrifice, to assure the Purple was never carried to the outside world.”
‘So they do use both the Purple and Giant’s Puss for the disease,’ John made a ntal note. “That ans you missed the actual fall of your father’s realm?”
“When he locked away Xipe-Totec and I, he sacrificed two of his realm’s greatest assets so you would never suffer the consequence of stepping into our tortured lands,” Nahua said. All of a sudden, she switched back to that sweet mask. “You should, like, maybe appreciate that just a little bit, mhm?”
“I do,” John assured her. “At least I appreciate your sacrifice and I can certainly appreciate his priorities, if I know that this is what truly happened. eting Xipe-Totec does not make think your father is a saint. That entity is a cruel weapon made of flesh.”
Nahua’s smile twisted into a sour frown. “You keep so sharp knives in the house just in case, you know?” she defended her father.
“I do know,” John agreed, even if there was a vast gulf between the Flayer Lord and tra. “In any case, a eting between and your father will be the quickest way to sort all of this out.”
Nahua girlishly humd and tapped her lower lip. “Yeah, I guess that’d be the quickest way to go about this,” she agreed in a ditzy tone. “I have three conditions though.”
“Na them,” John offered.
“One, we go east before I show you to where my father should stand.” Nahua put her hands together next to her left cheek, giving him a pleading, apologetic smile. “You’re such a big, tough guy, you won’t mind smashing a few ants for this weak little girl, right?”
‘Weak little girl my ass,’ John thought, but nodded. “Heading east fits with .”
“Secondly, I want to know exactly what this is between us right now.” She plucked at the magical connection between them, invisible to the naked eye, but plainly visible to the two of them. “I do not know this magic and I can sense that you can peek into my mind and that’s totally rude.”
“I was planning on doing that anyway,” John assured her. “You have helped with what I needed, you’ll know exactly what this contract is.”
“Cool, cool, thirdly: once I manage to get a bit of control over this…” Nahua’s smile returned to that honest, hungry state, “…you’ll let look at your thoughts in all the details I desire. I won’t guide a liar to my father.”
John stared at her for a few seconds. “I do not like having my brain searched through,” he told her. “I will agree, but understand that how much I let you look around is tied to the respect you show my mind at that ti.”
“That works for ,” Nahua cooed.
“Alright. Aclysia, we set out east. Nahua… do you want the long or the short version?”
“Oh, I always enjoyed the long versions,” the sweet-spicy woman answered enthusiastically.
“Alright then… so, Artificial Spirits are…” John began the long version.
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