Just a little something I wrote today, set in the depths of the Kishahn Jungle. Enjoy!
The City of the Forgotten God
A dying moon and fading stars shone upon the empty streets of Tzetchilan.
The worn sandstone was shaded white with the light or stained dark by crazes of shadow. Some of these shadows were regular in shape and form, but many were random in their formation, cast by tumbled rubble or the growth of plants.
There were two shadows in the main thoroughfare of this lost metropolis that cast a shape that might be recognisable as humanoid. One of them was a statue of a long dead concubine-king of the city, face carved as a mask of the sun, a wide, flat tongue protruding from its lips and flowing down the chin in a violent grimace. One hand held a carved club, studded with chunks of jewellery and the other hand was held before him, palm up in a gesture that demanded supplication and obeisance from all who passed.
The silhouette cast by the other figure was humanoid from the waist down, but from above it two large protrusions marred it, throwing it off into something almost impossible to recognise.
The one who cast the shadow could never be mistaken for something approaching human. His shape was that of a man, but there was no flesh upon him; instead, rubbish, litter and pieces of detritus gave him body, a breastplate of battered and rusted metal shaped from hammered tin cans protecting his chest. At his belt was a mace, made from nails and shards of scrap driven into the end of discarded stick, and over his left hand was a shield of wood and leather, split down the middle from an axe blow. Mounted on his back were wings, the pinions made from patched rags and scraps of old paper, around a skeleton of old wood and rusted nails.
His name was Yuluman, Angel of Forgotten and Lost Things, and he was here in this ruined city to see an old friend.
He took a moment longer to contemplate the statue, and then continued on his way. Around him, on either side of the thoroughfare, ziggurats lounged, the once splendid palaces and temples now indolent in their decay, swaddled in vines and plant life like immense infants of stone. Yuluman passed a stone fresco depicting warriors in animal hides parading with clubs, slings and spears in hand, followed by a train of loot and slaves from some long-forgotten war.
His goal loomed before him, an immense ziggurat that was less a building and more a mountain wrought by human hands. The road he walked on now had, in times gone by, been walked by priests, worshippers and sacrifices alike, all flocking to the base of the temple. Yuluman passed through an archway in the wall surrounding the huge building, the wooden gates long ago rotted to nothing, and began to ascend the row of steps that ran up the pyramid's sides towards it peak. Even after centuries of abandonment, the stones were still stained crimson.
At the pyramid's top was another structure, a large house or mansion, its own impressive dimensions dwarfed by the monolithic edifice atop which it perched. At its threshold, Yuluman took a moment to look behind him, at the sweeping, plant-choked ruins Tzetchilan. Only the stone heart of the city remained, the palaces, temples and the houses of nobles, the wood and reed houses of the poor long since consumed by the patient encroachment of the rainforest. Weed-choked canals lay stagnant, or had broken free of their bounds to flow as streams, erosion slowly eating away at the buildings around them, and the paving stones of roads and pathways were cracked open by roots and plants. Places that the rich and holy had once made their homes were now dens for animals and nothing more.
He stepped through, into the dark confines of the manse. It had only one room, for a single occupant, and what had once been a luxurious place, decorated with silks, artwork and finery, was now bare stone. Now its only adornments were the crushed bones of animals.
Yuluman looked at the large window on the eastern side of the room, one that would admit the light of the dawn sun once it rose. Already, he could see the first rays feathering the horizon like the brush of a celestial artist, and nodded in satisfaction. Now would be the ideal time to greet his old acquaintance.
On a crumbling pedestal was a knife. It was a razor edge, carved from obsidian, still sharp despite the years, and Yuluman drew its blade across his palm. From the wound, pearlescent celestial blood dripped, falling into a channel on a floor and trickling down into a bowl set into the stone. In the old days, the jugular of a slave, a young man or woman in their prime, would have been slit and the viscera would have pulsed and poured free of the wound to fill the vessel to its brim, but all Yuluman offered was a mere trickle.
"Tzetchil," he said, voice soft. "An old friend is here."
In the darkness, something stirred. There was a shifting, a sniffing as nostrils scented the blood in the air, and a long, sinuous tongue reached out. In a few swift motions, it lapped at the insignificant offering, scraping the bowl clean of the iridescent vitae and slid back into the shadow. In the blackness, an eye the colour of polished emerald winked open.
"Yuluman," Tzetchil said, supporting herself on taloned feet to drag her form into the light. "It has been quite some time."
Tzetchil's serpentine muzzle leant forwards towards Yuluman, blunt-snouted head bowed low in greeting, displaying the frill of blue and turquoise feathers behind it. At her shoulder where her long neck terminated were two taloned feet and a pair of wings, and behind that stretched a long, serpentine body. Green feathers gleamed in the faint, pre-dawn light, and the thin lips that covered Tzetchil's teeth curled back in a smile that revealed long, yellowed fangs.
In reply to the gesture of greeting, Yuluman bowed, straightening up as Tzetchil coiled into a more comfortable position. Twisting her long body over herself, the feathered dragon rested her arms and wings on her tail and leaned towards her visitor.
"So, my old friend," she said. "What news is there of the outside world? Any empires risen? Any others fallen?"
"The usual," Yuluman said. "Wars are declared by nobles and the common people die in them, the rich grow richer and the poor grow poorer. There's rumoured to be a civil war brewing in Connlaoth, and a necromancer tried to take over Serendipity, but he was defeated. Aside from that, however, little news of major note."
"Then it leaves me wondering why you bothered to pay a visit," Tzetchil said. "You know I like news."
"I feared you would be getting lonely," Yuluman said. At this Tzetchil nodded.
"I do lack for company," she admitted. "Jungle creatures generally make for poor conversation, and the last person to wander into this city did so more than fifty years ago. I think I would go mad if it weren't for your visits."
"There is a world beyond this jungle, you know," Yuluman pointed out. There was a hint of admonishment to his voice.
Tzetchil sighed and slid towards the window, where the sun was beginning to rise over the ruins of the city where she had once ruled as a living goddess, fed by the blood of daily sacrifices. The orange light turned the stone of its buildings a deep umber, the greens of the plants growing vibrant. Here and there, she could see splashes of colour where flowers bloomed.
"There is indeed," she said, turning back to Yuluman. "But it is not my world. Do the people beyond it even know of Tzetchilan?"
"There are a few old legends and half-forgotten myths of the people who live nearby, but nothing else," Yuluman said.
"A pity," Tzetchil said. "But you say there are people who live nearby?"
"Perhaps a hundred miles to the south of here is a group of small villages, by the name of Matlal," Yuluman said. "They're ruled over by a snake-man who calls himself a king, who made his palace in an old temple."
"They call it Matlal now?" Tzetchil asked. "I remember when those buildings were first built; Kazuitli was so proud of how successful his little outpost turned out to be. Perhaps I'll pay that upstart town a visit someday soon."
She saw Yuluman's head was tilted in a expression of puzzlement, and added; "Kazuitl was one of my concubine-kings. He always dreamed of expanding the bounds of our little queendom, and I indulged him a little. Conquests brought me sacrifices, after all."
Turning away from the window, Tzetchil slithered back to her place.
"Did you ever see Tzetchilan in its prime, Yuluman?" she asked.
"I had business there, on occasion," he said. "I don't think I have ever seen a city more obsessed with killing in all of my days."
Tzetchil's lips slithered back in a toothy smile.
"Well, that's what you get when you have a vampiric dragon as the head of your pantheon," she said. "Ah, I remember when I had the blood of a slave as both breakfast and dinner, and all I had to do was a little weather manipulation to make sure the rain fell on time. Those were the days."
"What happened to them?" Yuluman asked.
"We grew too large for our own good," Tzetchil said. She gestured to the wall of greenery beyond the remnants of Tzetchilan. "All of that jungle out there soaked up most of the rainfall in the wet season, but once we cut too much of it away the water had nowhere to go but into the city. Nobody wanted to live in a city that flooded as badly as Tzetchilan did. So one by one, they left. After a few generations there was nobody here but me."
"I thought you said you controlled the weather," Yuluman said.
Tzetchil chuckled at that.
"It's far easier to make it rain in a monsoon season than it is to stop it from raining," she said. "None of my people ever really realised that, though I wasn't going to disillusion them any time soon, and I kept the knowledge of weather magic to myself so I would always be needed. In many ways, I suppose I've got nobody to blame for my downfall but myself."
She glanced over at Yuluman.
"So, Angel of Lost and Forgotten Things," she said. "What does the future hold for you?"
"Much of the same," Yuluman said. "Making sure things that should be lost stay lost, hiding that which need to be hidden."
"Of course," Tzetchil said. "How is Mad Hettie, by the way?"
"She is well," Yuluman answered. "Still quite deranged, though."
"As I thought. Still, be sure to give her my regards the next time you see her, one forgotten god to another, that sort of thing."
"Of course I shall," Yuluman said. "You know, you do possess wings of your own. I can't help but think it would be good for you to leave this place for a while. Brush off some of memory's dust. You're powerful enough to look after yourself, after all."
The joints of Tzetchil's wings brushed the ceiling as she shrugged.
"Perhaps you're right," she said. "I just enjoy the good memories, that's all."
"If you say so," Yuluman conceded. He bowed low. "I must be gone, Tzetchil. Until we meet again."
Tzetchil nodded her great feathered head in farewell, and Yuluman stepped out of door of her home. With a beat of his patchwork wings, the angel was gone, a single scrap of paper all that marked his presence.
For a few minutes, Tzetchil reclined in her chamber, one eye half-open as she watched the sun trek upwards into the sky. She mulled over her conversation for a while, and she had to concede that she missed talking to people. She missed feeding on them, too; wild animals may have been nutritious enough to sustain her, but sentient beings had a much richer taste to them. Something about self-awareness gave blood a flavour that mere animals could not match.
Tucking her wings in close, Tzetchil half-crawled, half-slithered out of the doorway of her home. Rearing up on her tail, she spread her wings wide, feeling the wind ruffle her feathers. She twisted, facing towards the south, and with a beat that send a small gale blasting across the top of the ziggurat, she powered herself up into the air.
She would go south, she decided, and see what had become of Matlal and the civilised world beyond her dead and empty city.
