Pilares

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Cristina sipped her chocolate, briefly clenching her jaw as the scalding liquid scorched her tongue before disappearing down her throat, the sweetness of the drink lingering over the agony of her gums. She was almost too distracted to notice it, too enraptured by a worry that grew heavier with every passing day — or whatever the cycles of light and dark were called in Mictlán. Still, she let out a tiny moan as she put down the cup and sadly gazed towards the labyrinthine necropolis that served as the center of the underworld.
"Too hot?" the Pale Lady asked. She sat across from her, sipping from her own cup and taking small bites from the sugary //pan de muerto// that a xolotl server had brought them. "I apologize, dear. Huehueteotl[[footnote]] "Old, old god" or "Very old god," Huehueteotl is the ancient god of fire and of the family hearth, represented as an elderly deity wearing a stone brazier as a crown. [[/footnote]] sometimes gets a bit too excited when I ask to borrow fire from him."

"No, no," Cristina resurfaced from her sickened reverie. "It's fine, really. I'm only a bit... distracted."

"Still thinking of the battle to come?" la Santa Muerte smiled. Her expression was not one of joy. "I figured it would get to you eventually: the worst part is always the wait."

Cristina turned to the sprawling city of stone and shadow, feeling like it could collapse into rubble at any moment and entomb her under the weight of countless souls condemned to whatever monstrous fate Valravn had for them. In her mind she could already hear their screams, the lamentations of generations torn from eternal rest and enslaved under the heel of the ravens' endless greed. If the corporation had its way, if she could not stop their conquest of the underworld, then everything that she and her comrades had fought for would be in vain. It was the fate of all mortals to one day die — but with no afterlife to receive them, where would they go now? This fight was no longer a matter of life or death: it was so much more, so much worse. Iron talons had closed over her heart, slowly squeezing it and prolonging her agony.

"Pale Lady, I don't mean any disrespect, but how can you be so calm about this?" Cristina despaired. She scratched her arm to keep herself from pulling at her hair, leaving reddish streaks across her skin. "The fate of Mictlán, of all the souls here... it's all at stake and we're here drinking chocolate and enjoying the view!"

"Cristina," la Muerte called. "Do you not trust your friends? Do you not trust yourself?"

"Of course I do. We will fight to the very end!" Cristina said, her voice almost broken under the strain. "But every day that passes I grow more and more worried. What if it's not enough? Lorena, Baruch and Ramírez... we all took it unto ourselves to fight and die, if that's what it'll take to stop Valravn, but what about the others? What about your people — //our// people? If we fail, if we lose... what becomes of them?"

The Pale Lady did not answer. She gazed into her cup of chocolate, deep in thought. A strange light glimmered in her eyes, refracted like a constellation on her irises. In those stars, Cristina could divine sadness and worry, concern intermingling with hope, and something else that she had never thought a goddess of death could experience: longing.

"There is something I would like you to see... someone I would like you to meet. They are an old friend of mine," she said at last. Her voice was like a mournful lullaby, like a bittersweet poem whispered to no one. "You will find them in the deepest layer of Mictlán, where even I may not venture."

"Pale Lady..." Cristina started, but she was cut off when Death lifted one of her bony fingers.

"I want you to know the true height of our stakes, //mi niña//, not for you to worry more, but for you to //overcome// it. A leader cannot allow the thought of defeat to cloud their mind, and a god cannot forsake its children even when all is lost; I hope my friend can show you this truth. Now go — I'll have one of the //alebrijes// guide you. And Cristina... when you see them, please tell them that I still remember what the stars taste like."

------

Cristina followed the owl //alebrije// into the mouth of the cavern, chasing its iridescent plumage deeper into the dark. Shadows grew thick, almost solid, as she waded through that unknown layer of the underworld: far beneath the //cempasúchil// fields, deeper than the foundations of the stone necropolis. Down here, silence reigned absolute but for the sound of her footsteps and the faint echo of flapping wings. The air smelled of wet earth and hidden things, of cold ash and drowned light. She stopped for a moment and touched the ground: it was tender soil, black earth that crawled with tiny blind creatures — life at its most primal.

This was a sacred place, Death had told her, a place of stillness and perpetuity, of latent change: the very bottom of Creation. Far beyond her sight in the uninterrupted blackness, colossal Pillars supported an impossibly far-away ceiling, layers upon layers of reality, worlds entire. On their cold surfaces were carved the countless stories of those who had come before, of those whose bones rested forever in vaulted halls— the living and the dead and those yet to be born, their lives forever remembered and honored. Eternity started //here//, sprawling in every direction until dust became galaxies, until word became flesh, until it all collapsed back into primal matter to be reborn anew.

Cristina could not see the Pillars. She could not drag her fingers along the names and lives that they guarded, nor could she fathom their true nature, but she could //feel// them. They stood at the edge of the abyss, silently chanting the names of things and peoples, reaching for their hearts so they would not forget the place all life came from and to where it would all one day return. This place was forever, like the gods who moistened the earth with their blood to give it shape and life. The Pillars were the bones that upheld the living craft of the divine, the metaphysical embodiment of godly law, the universal constant whose name Cristina knew to be Nahui Ollin— eternal movement, perpetual cycle.

The owl hooted, beckoning her to keep walking. She stood and saw cold, blue light. A soft sound of running water reached her ears, and a gust of wind caressed her skin, dancing its way through her hair. She could feel it calling: an exit cut into the darkness, an entrance to the place that stood beyond the reach of even Death herself. Her destination stood straight ahead.

It took her a long moment to notice the shadow, the great mound of darkness that watched her with empty eye sockets full of stars. The crackling air came and went through its nostrils, out of its toothy jaws whose bite was lightning. Slowly, it stood upright, and Cristina choked a scream as her mind finally understood what she was seeing, as the god reared its monstrous head.

The hairless dog, chief psychopomp and herald of Mictlán, stood ten meters tall and towered over her with an inscrutable expression. His vacant sockets seemed to stare all the way into her soul, and Cristina could tell that it would take but a thought for him to strip her down to ashes and bone.

"[[[https://wanderers-library.wikidot.com/cempasuchil | Xolotl...]]]" Cristina gasped, for she knew the god's name and nature. Cautiously, she bowed her head— it is unwise not to show respect when meeting yet another face of death.

##009999|Yes##, a voice said from beyond the light. ##009999|Not just a xolotl, but //the// Xolotl: he whose gifts are plague and thunder, lord of monsters, twin brother of the Feathered Serpent. Don't worry, he only bites uninvited guests— and you, Cristina Cisneros, have been long awaited here.##

Startled, Cristina turned towards the place the words had come from, then back to Xolotl, whose gaze now betrayed nothing but mild curiosity.

##006699|Go##, he yawned with a mouth full of stone-like teeth. ##006699|I'm only here to keep him company. I promise I won't snoop... well, maybe a little.##

Cristina hesitatingly bowed again, not knowing how else to say goodbye to the dog god. Then she walked towards the cavern's end — the place beyond the Pillars — and stepped into the light.

------

Cristina found herself at the entrance of a grove shaped like a half-moon and carved into a mountainside, soaked in blue moonlight. Far above her head, the night aster shone so brightly that its luminescence threatened to swallow the stars spread around it like silvery fish in an ocean of ink. Gentle streams of crystalline water rippled their way down the stone walls, their path lined by moss and small greenery in full bloom: all throughout the grove, countless flowers grew with colors that the human eye had never known, so beautiful and strange that it hurt to look at them for more than a few seconds, an alien bouquet that seemed to overtake it all. Cristina swore she could almost hear faint whispers emanating from them, their buds and petals fluttering ever so slightly in the gentle wind that blew from a direction she could not pinpoint.

Encircled by water and flora, a gigantic and vaguely humanoid statue in the shape of a strange, cadaverous god presided over the valley. It sat on a throne made of what Cristina identified as weathered bone, its skeletal features overgrown by gnarled vines and roots, golden //cempasúchil// flowers flourishing all over its petrified form. Around it hovered a swarm of butterflies, their wings gently flapping as they landed on the flowers and took flight anew, gently caressing the statue as though paying tribute to it. There were hundreds of them: monarch butterflies with fiery wings, swallowtails in gallant yellow and black, blue morphos who matched the moon in beauty — even [[[https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-553 |crystal-like butterflies]]] and [[[https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-2332 | strange black ones]]] who Cristina swore she had only seen in dreams.

Upon closer inspection, Cristina realized that it was not a statue at all: beneath the rock and the overgrowth, unmoving and unblinking, a set of crimson eyes watched the grove and its visitor. Living flesh breathed in silence, pulsing with divine power as its blood fed the flowers that grew upon its great form and through its ancient bones. In absolute stillness, the god stood vigilant over the sacred garden — over its tomb.

##009999|Beautiful, isn't she? Even diminished as she is now, nothing can eclipse her.##

Cristina turned around and saw a tall, olive-skinned woman with waist-long black hair, her regal dress cut and fashioned from the substance of night itself. A necklace of pearls adorned her neck, her lips painted with the most sanguine tone of red. Perched on her shoulder, the owl //alebrije// — the //tecolote// — cooed softly.

"I'm sorry, 'she'?" Cristina was startled.

##009999|Yes, she. My beloved Mictēcacihuātl, Our Lady of Bones##, the woman replied. ##009999|Though I believe you know her as La Santa Muerte.##

"Wait, this is the Pale Lady?" Confusion grew as she again gazed at the deity who sat immobile at the center of the grove. "But how? It was she who sent me down here..."

##009999|Gods are strange creatures with many aspects.## The woman took a handful of black soil and lifted it to the //alebrije//, who happily probed it for worms. ##009999|We trade faces, we change shapes, yet we remain true at the core of our being. We are the constants of the universe, yet the only constant for us is the role we play for eternity. This is who she once was — who she still is. Did the Pale Lady not tell you this?##

"She said she had a friend down here," Cristina mused. Hadn't Xolotl said he was keeping //him// company? Who was "him"? Suddenly, a strange realization came over her, and she asked: "Are you her?"

##009999|Her?## The creature in guise of a mortal woman laughed, caressing the //alebrije// one last time before it took flight. ##009999|Oh, I am many things. Him, her, they... I am whatever the situation calls for. I am the one who watches over my beloved's core while she rules above. I am the guardian of eternal rest. I am the Scatterer of Ashes.[[footnote]] //Nextepehua.// [[/footnote]] I am the one with the Broken Face.[[footnote]] //Ixpuztec.// [[/footnote]] But mostly, I am Death.##

"By the gods!" Cristina blurted out. "You are Mictlāntēcuhtli!"

##009999|In the flesh##, he responded. ##009999|Well, so to speak. I have never really had much flesh to begin with.##

The woman's form stretched and twisted. Her flesh turned and melted, evaporating to reveal nothing underneath but elder bones dressed with an ornate loincloth and an elaborate headdress of obsidian feathers. Mictlāntēcuhtli's skeletal form was adorned with a necklace made of human eyeballs where the pearls had once been, her (or his) crimson gaze piercing into Cristina. She could feel the god's real form pulsing somewhere behind the avatars he had fashioned, the truth of his nature a mind-shattering thing that few mortals could fathom. He opened his arms as if showing off his power — his morbid beauty — before shifting back into the woman's visage.

##009999|Something tells me I'm not what you expected##, the god slyly pointed out.

"No, no, it's just..." Cristina tripped over her words. "I did not expect you to be... well, to show up like—"

##009999|Like a woman?## Mictlāntēcuhtli laughed. ##009999|Oh, dear. You humans have such a limited understanding of divinity... well, a limited understanding of most anything, really. What will it take for you to realize that we are not bound by duality? We //are// duality, and we are also beyond it. And so are you, sometimes. Your friend Guadalupe sure knows that.##

"Sorry, you know Guadalupe?"

##009999|Child, I know everyone who has ever been born and will ever die. I'm the god of death, remember? I also know why you're here, why my wife sent you. Walk with me, will you?##

She and Mictlāntēcuhtli walked side by side through the lowest layer of Mictlán, the god occasionally turning to tend to one of the strange flowers that covered every inch of the grove. Meanwhile, Cristina opened her arms and allowed the butterflies to land on her, giggling like a little child as they tickled her skin with their delicate legs and wings.

"What is this place?" she asked in wonder.

##009999|This is the Garden of Eternity. It is the first place that came to be after the gods dismembered Cipactli and made the world from her flesh. It is the place all life stems from: every flower you see is a soul about to be born, and it's my job to make sure that they all bloom. Nothing can exist without this grove, without my care. That is why I remain here, to upkeep both the beginning and the end.##

"And the butterflies?" Cristina asked.

##009999|The //papalotl// — the butterflies and moths — are the souls who have chosen to be reborn and help me with my task. Such is the cycle of life, death, and rebirth. This, Cristina, is what you and I and everyone in Mictlán are fighting for.##

Cristina said nothing, merely assenting with solemnity. She knew the god could see the restlessness of her soul, the weight under which she struggled. She did not want to admit it, but the truth kept pushing its way up her throat, fighting against her fear of being labeled a coward, entangled with her dread for what would happen if she failed.

##009999|You are afraid##, Mictlāntēcuhtli noticed. Her voice betrayed no judgement or blame, or sympathy for that matter. ##009999|Good. Now you see what is truly at stake: the very existence of life.##

"I don't know if I can do this, my Lord," Cristina said with a voice that was beginning to fray. The butterflies left her body and fluttered back towards the flowers. "I don't know if I'll be able to stop them. What if Valravn wins? What if they take over this place?"

##009999|Then the cycle is broken. Then the place of eternal rest is no more. And the Fifth Sun ends.##

"No... you cannot mean..."

##009999|Yes##, Mictlāntēcuhtli calmly responded like a parent warning their child about the consequences of disobedience. ##009999|If Mictlán falls — if the Garden is despoiled — then the world must be sundered. There cannot be life without an afterlife, and thus I will shatter the foundations of Creation and tear down the Pillars of the Earth. Mankind will end with a mighty quake, and the void will swallow it all. Only then will the world be reborn, so that the cycle may start anew.##

"But I... but we—"

##009999|You have a chance, Cristina, to save everything you love, everyone who matters in your life, and countless more. That is the mission you volunteered for, the true calling of your struggle. Do you think you are the first to face impossible odds? Do you believe yours is the only blood that has been called forth to sacrifice? We gods gave our flesh, our lives, our very essence — all so you could breathe, so you could live your lives under a sun.##

She raised her arms to the blue moon with reverence, her crimson eyes glowing purple as they drank its light.

##009999|Even she, our lady Coyolxāuhqui, was sacrificed at the altar of her brother so that the Sun would have someone to light the darkness of night. Here she comes at every dawn — dead and dismembered, yet beating with life — to await Tōnatiuh,[[footnote]] The Fifth Sun. [[/footnote]] for he too dies every twilight to make way for her in the heavens. That is their sacrifice, as has been ours every time we've remade the world. And it is also the sacrifice that the Pale Lady and I have made every day for the last two centuries.##

"Is that why you are not with her?" Cristina ventured. "Is that why you do not stay up there with her?"

Mictlāntēcuhtli shifted into a pale man drenched in shadow and blood, then into a flaming skeleton, and back into a woman. Every shape had the same sadness in its eyes, the same longing Cristina had perceived when talking to la Santa Muerte.

##009999|Mictēcacihuātl and I agreed that the world needed her more and more every day##, he said solemnly. ##009999|We watched in horror during the Conquest, bound by our fellow gods not to interfere even as our halls swelled with souls cut down in the slaughter. Our children begged us for help, but even Xolotl was not allowed to travel upstairs to protect them. When it was all done, my beloved was a sea of tears and anguish, tormented by the cries of generations ravaged and enslaved under the conquistadors' scourge.##

The woman paused and gazed back at the unmoving core of her wife, the piece of her she had left behind for Mictlāntēcuhtli to cherish and protect, to love and remember. Cristina had never seen a god in mourning.

##009999|One day, those who still remembered her — the few who had not had our names stamped out of their faith — decided to worship her in secret. She was like a mother to them, and thus they honored her even though they were forced to dress her in the robes of a foreign virgin, even though they had to give her a new name: //la Santa Muerte//. It was then that she decided to go upstairs, to again interfere with the affairs of mankind.##

"But part of her stayed here," Cristina gasped, realizing the truth of the goddess' sacrifice. "Her core, her true name and nature... she's still here with you."

##009999|In a way##, the god agreed. ##009999|Her essence and true power remain here to watch over the bones that make the Pillars, to keep me company. But her words, her voice... those must remain in the fields of //cempasúchil//. They need her there. She changed and adapted and created a new disguise for herself so that she would be allowed beyond the Veil, so that she could touch the hearts of people who do not remember who she really is. I cannot follow — there is no new name for me — but I will always stand watch over her while she dreams of being with you.##

"Mictlāntēcuhtli, my Lord... I don't know what to say—"

##009999|Then say nothing. //Act//, Cristina. Sacrifice, even if it kills you for the rest of your life. At least this place will remain for your soul to be cleansed and given rest. At least you will not suffer in vain. This is the way of the gods, and it is also the way of humans who desire peace and justice.##

"They have gods on their side too," Cristina lamented. "Valravn is coming at us with weapons forged with divine knowledge."

The god scoffed, her laughter a corrosive sound that betrayed nothing but contempt.

##009999|Do you really think Odin is happy with them? Do you think Huītzilōpōchtli is pleased that his power is being used against his siblings? There is no honor in any of this, only avarice, only mindless profiteering. Gods abhor the sin of greed, but we are bound by the rules of faith and worship; we cannot deny our power to those who follow our rituals. We can, however, give them but crumbs of our true strength — we can conspire amongst ourselves to ensure that they fail.##

"They still have guns and ammo, and troops — hundreds of them! They will come with their full strength and won't stop until they've conquered the afterlife."

##009999|And still, they will fail. They are empty creatures, Cristina. They claim to serve the gods, but they only worship the dark greed whose blood is running cash. They bow down to a demon of electricity and banks, to the insatiable stream of consumption. Theirs is a cannibal dynamo that would burn down all of creation just to make imaginary numbers dance. Their faith is money, and money has no power here.##

"How many will we lose?" Cristina asked the god of death. She could already hear the marching boots of Valravn soldiers, see the glint of their guns before they unloaded consecrated bullets upon the defenders of the underworld. The words choked her, the crushing weight of responsibility and duty growing unbearable. "How many will be sacrificed to save this place?"

##009999|However many we need to save countless others##, she responded. ##009999|And we must live with those sacrifices, with the knowledge that they were necessary. For them.##

The god turned to the flowers, Cristina following him with her eyes. The vibrant colors shifted and pulsed, teeming with souls yet to be delivered upon the world of the living, awaiting their promised lives in the sun. They were beautiful, pure and innocent— and Valravn would have it all burn for a fistful of dollars. A feeling made of thorns and shrapnel grew in her stomach, crawling its way up and down her body like the roots of an unnatural tree. What the ravens would do to this place, to the souls gone and yet to come, was beyond monstrous. She could not allow it. She //would not// allow it.

Even as fear of failure writhed in her heart, the beast that was righteous anger clawed its way up to ensnare and dominate it, to drown the fear with its steel tendrils. The great tree of wrath that was within Cristina grew and grew, its canopy a shield against the doubt she had experienced ever since she realized the true scope of her mission: too much was at stake, and too much had been sacrificed already. She could await Valravn in fear, cowering as they marched over the fields of golden flowers — or she could go down taking as many of them with her as her strength and the blessing of her gods would allow.

Cristina had seen the origin of Creation, ground zero of the miracle that was life. Here, in the Land of the Dead, the living and the unborn would make their final stand against the modern conquistadores, against the evil of greed. She would be at the forefront, her friends and the gods beside her, her faith giving her the strength to overcome. //Aquí se respira lucha.//

"Lord of Mictlán!" she called to the god of death. "I will stand with you and your lady at the gates of paradise. I will fight!"

Mictlāntēcuhtli's gaze met hers, crimson eyes peeling every layer of her to gaze at the naked truth, at the strength that would uphold her even as everything else fell down. The god smiled.

##009999|So be it, Cristina Cisneros, child of Abya Yala. I will be with you, in victory or defeat, until the Pillars crumble in my grasp.##

Cristina wished to reply, to thank the god for their wisdom, for showing her the reason why she fought, but she felt weightless, untethered as if awakening from a dream, her mind reaching out to grasp what those few precious instants before her eyes opened to greet daylight. Moments later, she realized that her feet no longer touched the floor: she was hovering amidst a cloud of butterflies, their wings creating a living kaleidoscope that took her up towards the impossibly distant world above the Garden. She tried to protest, to resist the colorful whirlwind of joyous souls, but Mictlāntēcuhtli simply smiled and waved her goodbye – their time together was at an end.

"She wanted me to tell you!" Cristina exclaimed as she swam away into the darkness, the butterflies guiding her path back to the Pale Lady. "She wanted you to know that she still remembers what the stars taste like!"

##009999|Of course she does!## Mictlāntēcuhtli laughed joyfully. ##009999|They were my gift for her on our wedding!##

Cristina smiled. Her heart felt light within her chest even though the stakes remained the same – she knew that the path ahead could only be walked in the shadow of loss and pain, and that any victory would come at the cost of spilled blood and bitter tears. Still, hope was a strong thing, its power as mighty as the Pillars that upheld the world, as eternal as the gods who stood alongside her. When the time came, she and her friends would stand firm, fighting to their very last breath for Mictlán, for Abya Yala, for all of humanity. Such was their mission, the destiny they had chosen, the faith they had made their own.

As the moon grew closer, larger, Cristina looked back one more time towards the Garden— and she almost fell back down in shock. There, bathed in moonlight, cross-legged in the nothingness, a titanic turquoise skeleton gazed back at her with eyes as deep as //cenotes//, as alien and beautiful as souls yet to be born. Covered head to toe in armor fashioned out of ash and shadow, he radiated with a power greater than any king or warrior, deadlier than the looming onslaught of the Ravens, warmer than a hand held out in kindness. His bony palms held the Garden of Eternity — and the core of his beloved wife — in a perpetual embrace of love and protection, standing guard below so that she could rule above. Within his open maw, behind teeth the size of mountains, glowed every star in the night sky: a whole galaxy in a single kiss.

Mictlāntēcuhtli, Lord of the Dead, keeper of eternal life, silently bid Cristina goodbye.

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