[Sodium_noir] Fw: a snapshot in the Night

[SN Storyteller]

Just beyond the veil, in the Shadowlands of Gotham were the dead dwell, the storm of recent nights had died down. In the early hours of morning the ruins of that place were now safe to traverse for all the Wraiths within the city, local or not. 

Juatna, former priest to war chief Threpatna the glorious, high official of the Xochimilca, had sent out a foray party while those he had managed to bring under his domain were waiting out the winds in a small house. Though most of the newly arrived Wraith were still gripped by fear of the strange new world they had been thrown into when the Obsidian Chanes was smashed, Juatna was made of sterner stuff. He had found this house of the dead, with strange metal rooms in the cellar full of frozen corpses, and had led as many as he could find into its quiet bowels. Here the Storms seemed less fierce and the odd Wraiths of the white and Black men stayed away. 

And so the Xochimilca Wraiths and those from lesser tribes looked to Juatna and he made speeches about their place of glory to come. About how those who were sacrificed to the Gods would be taken, soon, to a place of wonder and perpetual glory. He told them that this was simply the outer precincts of Xibalba where the unrighteous dead are taken to be punished but that once the storm had passed they would be conducted into the presence of the king of Mictlan and the lords of the glorious dead for their reward. He calmed them and told them to wait on the foray party for news of their guides, and all would be well.

On a certain level Juatna may even have believed what he said, it was the story he had been told as a child. But Juatna had grown up to become a Priest and that role allowed him to see many of the stories for the lies they were. He really had expected to be taken to a glorious afterlife when the Xochimilca tribe were captured by the Aztec and slaughtered on the steps of the great half finished Temple. But now he was dimly aware that rather than a reward they had all been locked, in fitful slumber, within a vast relic that was now broken. That many counts had come and gone and that the Aztec's might even be dead as well. For all he knew the  Fifth sun was about to end and they had been released to witness the final destruction of the world.

One of the strangers he had set to watch the door called out. The foray party were back. He had sent out five Xochimilca warriors. Brave and worthy men who he had known in life. Who had been sacrificed without a cry or complaint after the Xochimilca were defeated. Five warriors who went willingly into death for the good of the new Empire and their new Aztec King. Five men he himself had killed with an obsidian blade as a mark of devotion to their captors before he himself was slain in sacrifice to the new God, Huitzilopochtli. 

Only one returned.

"We crossed ten rivers of metal my lord!" The surviving Warrior informed him from his knees. "And we were met by the Dead of the white man. They had hounds and bows without strings and strange devices. We have no Clubs, no blow guns, no weapons at all. They took us with ease and bound us in chains that made us sleep. When I awoke we were fighting some of the dead of the Acolhua tribe and the white men released us and told us to fight or die. I killed the ghost of one white man and ran away."

He looked crestfallen and ashamed.

"This is not the Kingdom of Mictlan, not even Xibalba. This is the afterlife of the white man and it is a thousand times worse than the lords of Xibalba could ever devise. Neither Quetzalcoatl or Tezcatlipoca rule here, only some emperor of Iron named Stiig- e-YAR! Our reward is far away across a sunless sea in the land of our forefathers and this is the hell of the white man in another kingdom. We will never see  the fruits of Mictlan now, or lay in the arms of the sacred Xochimilca virgins. We will be clapped in iron chains and our spirits hammered into plates and coins for the White mans dead empire!"

The warrior fell to the floor in tears and Juatna turned away in disgust. He pondered the new information, most of which he had already surmised himself. He knew that a great deal of time had passed since his death and this was the world of tomorrow but it was a comfort to know they had been transported to the white mans land rather than awakening to a Conquered Teotihuacá. 

"Get up!" he snarled. "Our reward still waits for us but we have yet to prove ourselves worthy of it. We must find more of the Nahua tribes and bring them to this tomb of white tiles. We must build a war band to defeat the Dead white men. We will steal their boats and cross the great sunless sea to our own heaven. But first, first we need weapons."
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