Chương 155: Chapter 152: Shadow

"Enough." The word passed through the roost, and everything obeyed. The bats along the walls went still, and even the copper veins dimmed until they were no brighter than embers. The constant sense of the chamber moving around us released its grip, and for the first time since entering the boss room, the sounds settled. I kept Spriggan's Will in my hand, but I did not draw.

Alice had her sword lowered at her side, both hands still around the hilt, and Cyrus stood with his staff angled forward, pale fire guttering weakly around its head. We didn't completely trust the silence. Camazotz watched us from across the cracked platform. Up close, even subdued, it was difficult to look at it as a defeated boss. A health bar still hung over its head, locked at ten percent, but the number felt almost meaningless when the creature behind it could have collapsed the roost with one wing.

Its fur was scorched and cut in a dozen places, the membrane of one wing torn by my Wild Hunt, its chest marked by Cyrus's darkfire and Alice's lightning, but the wounds did not make it seem smaller. If anything, they made it seem even more majestic.

"You will listen now." the bat said.

"What about our friends?" Cyrus asked. We still didn't know whether they were completely gone from the expedition.

"They are still here," Camazotz answered.

"Beyond the closed door."

"Let them back in here," Alice said. There was no hesitation in her voice. Camazotz looked at her for a long moment. The edge of one wing shifted across the platform, enough to remind us that we were still asking something from something south of a god inside its own domain.

"When the words are done," it said. Alice did not like that. I could tell from the way her fingers flexed around the hilt. Still, she nodded. Camazotz lowered its head until one eye was level with us, red and ancient, with a vertical pupil that reflected the three of us and the tiny golden shape of Lune on my shoulder.

"You came through Xibalba," it said.

"You walked its dead roads and saw its memory. Tell me what you saw."

"A people who misunderstood the thing protecting them." Cyrus answered. That was our consensus from before, and it seemed true. The great eye turned toward him.

"They thought you demanded blood," the mage continued.

"And when you turned away from it, they thought it meant they had not given enough."

"Yes." Alice spoke next.

"They were desperate. That doesn't excuse what they did, but they weren't trying to destroy themselves."

"No," Camazotz said.

"Few mortals are." I thought of the vision again. The living city, the market, the children. The old shaman-king climbing the altar because he believed the sacrifice of one life could buy back mercy for thousands.

"Ah Puch thought he was saving them," I said. Camazotz's gaze shifted to me, the name visibly unsettling the beast.

"He did." It opened both wings again, stirring the air in the cavern.

"Ah Puch was king when the last hunger came upon the city. But he was also shaman, and judge. Father to people already half-starved by their own terror. He had watched offerings fail for years, and because his priests had taught him the wrong lesson, he believed the fault lay in the size of the gift."

"The greatest sacrifice," Cyrus said quietly.

"Himself," Camazotz answered.

"The heart of the city. The blood every channel had been carved to carry. He climbed the altar willingly." Lune went very still. The copper veins along the walls brightened just enough to show impressions in the stone, about priests around an altar, and a masked goblin lying with his arms open. A city gathered below the temple steps, thousands of small faces lifted in hope and fear.

"They loved him," Alice said.

"Yes."

"Their love killed him."

"Yes." Camazotz's claws shifted against the stone, scraping through old cracks.

"Love is not purity. Fear is not evil. A knife can slice bread and take life, yet it is the same knife, all the same." The body-impression on the altar moved. It jerked upright with jagged motion, limbs too long, mask fused to the face. The hollow in its chest opened like a second mouth. The roost darkened around the image.

"The thing that woke up," I said.

"It was not him."

"No."

"What was it?" Cyrus asked. Camazotz did not answer quickly, but when it finally spoke, the entire roost seemed to pull the word from deep below the stone.

"A wound on the Deep Dark." The bat closed its wings again.

"The Deep Dark is not your enemy," Camazotz said, and its gaze fixed on me in particular.

"It is older than roads, older than crowns, older than every fire mortals have lit to prove they are not afraid. It is the silence beneath mountains, and the root of caves." The red eye narrowed.

"I am of it. I am not the wound. What you will find below is born from the Deep Dark's hunger," Camazotz said.

"It has no true body. No face of its own. It cannot command love, so it waits for fear to become worship. It cannot create blood, so it teaches mortals to spill it willingly. It cannot walk into the world unless a door is opened from this side."

"A door?" Cyrus asked.

"Ah Puch was the first door wide enough." That made my stomach tighten. Stolen story; please report.

"The first?" Alice asked, mirroring my thoughts.

"The first in my roost," Camazotz said.

"Not the first in the world." We needed a minute to find our voices.

"Then Ah Puch is just a vessel," I said.

"A mask. A mouth. A name the wound uses because the city remembers it. And the city gives it form. The city gives it power." I thought about the Hollowed, and about the resurrected goblin priests and templars. Were they controlled by this "wound", too?

"But the actual man is gone," I stated. Camazotz's eye remained on me.

"Yes." The answer was merciful and cruel at the same time. Ah Puch had died trying to save his people. Whatever waited below was not him, but his name had still become the one attached to every hollowed street, every broken mural, every abomination wandering in the dark. Cyrus looked toward the far side of the chamber, where the roost dropped away into deeper shadow.

"Why are there murals about all this up here?" Camazotz's head turned slowly.

"I wanted to remember, too." Alice stepped closer to the bat.

"Did you…have you met him?"

"I have," Camazotz said.

"But only after it was not "him" anymore. That is my burden."

"Why didn't you talk to them?" I asked, not understanding the situation. If the blood sacrifices were doing something wrong, if they were feeding the wound of the Deep Dark, why wouldn't Camazotz stop them?

"I am a Greater Spirit, boy," it turned toward me, and I instinctively raised my bow.

"But I am bound to the rules of my existence." It looked at Lune.

"I am not like the Great Wanderer," it continued.

"I am the manifested Deep Dark. My Aspect here is but a fraction of my power. But with that power, come restrictions." The copper light shifted again, showing impressions faster this time. Wings breaking temple roofs. Priests scattering. The altar smashed beneath a claw.

"If I left the roost, Xibalba would have been doomed." Camazotz then bowed its head slightly.

"I couldn't do anything while life thrived under my wings," it said.

"But when it all ended, I did try and stop the Dark's usurper and its followers once it was clear that Xibalba had no future." We were shown massive claws tearing through a skeletal king, and the king rising again. Again. And again.

"I fought as I was made to fight," Camazotz said.

"With wings and claws. Hunger and Wrath. I tore the dead king open, and the wound drank the blood. I broke the priests, and the wound drank the fear. I crushed the altar, and the wound rooted deeper into the channels beneath it. Every death in the heart of Xibalba fed what I sought to end."

"So you withdrew," Alice said.

"I sealed what I could. I left the lower dark to its tomb. I stayed above the channels, where my wings could keep the wound from climbing higher." Camazotz lifted its head.

"I am not a god," it said.

"The people of Xibalba named me one because mortals need their gods. Gods can be begged to and blamed. Bargained with." Cyrus's eyes narrowed slightly.

"Then what are Greater Spirits?" Camazotz's wings shifted, and the movement stirred the air without violence this time.

"Old laws," it said.

"Hunger. Growth. Storm. Root. Flame. Deep. Hunt. We are not above the world. We are the world remembering itself in shapes long forgotten." The words fit with everything I had seen of the Elder Stag. It was the will of the forest itself, just like Camazotz was calling itself the Deep Dark. The root of the cave.

"Then wouldn't you be able to rid this place of this wound?" Alice asked.

"Not an Aspect, but you in your full power and glory?"

"No mortal blade would reach the fullness of me," Camazotz replied.

"No mortal spell would bind it. This form is what may be faced. What may be tested. What may yield." Then it looked straight into her eyes.

"This form is what may challenge others." Then its gaze shifted onto me. Or rather, Lune. She climbed down from my shoulder, landing lightly on the cracked stone. She looked impossibly small in front of Camazotz, just a little fox with a golden light above her head, standing before a bat of legends. Camazotz lowered its head toward her.

"I was surprised to see you here, little one," it said.

"A brave soul from the overworld, bearing the will of the Antlered One." Here we go. Camazotz's attention on Lune felt different from its attention on us. When it had looked at Alice, Cyrus, or me, even after the fight ended, there had still been weight behind it. The reminder that we were mortals standing in a place older and larger than us. With Lune, it was still ancient, but not hostile. The fox did not back away.

Her golden Foxfire hovered above her head, bright enough that every eye in the chamber seemed drawn to it. She sat down in front of Camazotz with her tail wrapped around her paws, looking absurdly composed for someone that had darted into the jaws of death minutes ago.

"The Antlered One?" Cyrus asked carefully. Camazotz's red eye shifted toward him for a moment.

"That is one name."

"The Elder Stag," I said. The bat's gaze returned to Lune.

"That is another." Lune's ears twitched.

"You bear his ember," Camazotz said to her.

"A spark he allowed to remain where it should not have been able to take root." Camazotz lowered its head further, until its breath stirred the fur along Lune's neck. She lifted her chin in response, and her Foxfire rose with it, steady and gold. There was no pressure between them. No challenge, no demand. If anything, it felt like two old languages passing near each other without needing translation. Forest and cave. Hunt and hunger. Light that grew between trees, and darkness that had never needed the sun.

"You know him," I said. Camazotz turned one eye toward me.

"I know of him. I know the sound of roots splitting stone. I know the hunt that runs through old woods when mortals sleep behind walls and think themselves separate from the world. I know the crown of antlers beneath moonlight, and the watch that transcends time."

"And he knows you?" I asked. A low vibration moved through the roost. Was that…laughter?

"The forest knows the cave. The cave knows the forest. Roots seek darkness, and darkness covers the roots. Neither asks permission." Cyrus looked like he was trying very hard to store every word for later. Alice looked like she was listening, but also still keeping one eye on the massive claws resting against the platform.

"And Lune?" I asked. The fox glanced back at me as if I had finally remembered the important part of the conversation. Camazotz regarded her for another long moment.

"She is not his servant." Lune's tail flicked once.

"She would agree with that," I said.

"She is not a weapon he placed in your hand, either." I thought of the fight. Lune warning me, the distrust of Ah Puch's symbols, her running toward Camazotz as if she understood something incomprehensible for me. It felt like she was placed here on purpose, like she was needed for the story to be unlocked, but that couldn't have been the case. Camazotz must have seen the thought in my expression, because its eye narrowed slightly.

"You survived my wrath by skill, restraint, and the choices of those who fell before you. Your fox did not win the trial for you. The Antlered One did not bend my roost. Had another raid come here with no golden flame, the path would still have stood before them." We were back to mind-reading. I knew, logically, that the expedition had to be clearable without my personal quest. Godsrealm wouldn't build a thing like Xibalba so that only the guy with a weird fox and an Elder Stag connection could progress.

Lune and I had brought something extra. Camazotz lowered its head toward her again.

"Little flame born from broken shadow." Lune went still. Her tail lowered until it brushed the floor, and the golden light above her head shrank. I took half a step forward without thinking. Camazotz noticed, of course.

"She is unharmed," the bat said, and the words stopped me as if they had a hidden Root effect.

"What do you mean by broken shadow?" I asked.

"The wound below does not only take blood. It is just the easiest, its favourite. But not the only one. It takes anything and everything. Names. Memories. Things mortals lose and convince themselves were never part of them." Foxfire grew into full again.

"Something was taken from her?" I asked.

"Yes." My companion lowered her head a little, ears angled backward, and I suddenly understood that this wasn't new to her. Something had finally given words to her feelings, and she closed her eyes for a couple of seconds before opening them again.

"What?" I asked. Camazotz waited with the answer for a while.

"A shadow."

"She has a shadow," Cyrus pointed it out quietly, although we all knew it was probably not meant to be taken in the literal sense. The bat gave no sign that it appreciated the comment.

"A shadow is not only darkness cast by light. It is what follows. What remembers the shape of a thing when the thing itself moves on. Some creatures leave little behind when they are changed. Others leave too much." Lune sat down, and I crouched beside her, not taking my eyes off Camazotz.

"Are you saying part of her is down there?"

"Part of what she was," Camazotz replied.

"Part of what she lost before the Antlered One's ember took root." Lune looked up at me. Her eyes were bright, and not just from Foxfire. The way she had reacted to the city, the sudden bursts of fear and curiosity. How she had rushed toward Camazotz, not because the bat was the answer, but because it belonged to the same deep current as the thing calling from below. The roost had been close enough for her to feel the outline of what was missing, but not close enough to show her where it had gone.

The answer was down there.

"What is it exactly?" I asked.

"That," the bat said, "I cannot tell you."

"Ah Puch has it?" I asked. Camazotz's claws flexed against the stone.

"The wound has many things." Not really helpful.

"Can we get it back?" I asked. Camazotz looked at me for a long moment.

"You can not," it said.

"She can."