Collide Gamer

They followed the gap in the trees. Dank air made skin glisten. The ground under his naked feet struck John as strangely soft. Thin roots wove into a carpet over loose soil. Even if no animal usually walked this path, rain and other pressure should have packed up the dirt over time.

‘Then again, what do I know?’ John thought.

One step to the other, the softness was gone. He almost stumbled, the sudden firmness of the ground messing with the walking pattern he had established over the past few minutes. Interested, he stopped and squatted down to inspect the ground. He expected something like the back of a massive bug or another such fantastical explanation.

Prodding fingers poked the hard surfaces beneath the roots. A familiar texture reached his brain through the tactile nerves of his digits. Eyebrows furrowed, he utilized his Free Casting to make precision cuts through the roots. He tossed the plant fibre aside to reveal something unexpected.

John pulled the stone brick out of the ground. Age and pressure had not been kind to it. One side was splintered off and its surface was covered in various blemishes, but it was a clearly manmade building block.

“Now that’s interesting,” John said and presented the stone to his companions. While they passed it between them, each of them inspecting it with the curiosity one had for something unexpected, the Gamer pulled a couple more rocks out of the ground. They were all just like it and assorted too orderly to be a fluke of nature.

“A civilization here?” Moira asked.

“A long lost one,” John suggested. “The path is entirely overgrown. Still, if we follow it, we should end up where it once led. Perhaps there’s more of that place left.”

John wondered what purpose this walkway had once had. Perhaps were there buildings buried under these trees or maybe the jungle had gradually overtaken other landmarks of interest. All manners of secrets could hide in this wooden labyrinth.

They reached the end of one path, then took a hard right onto another one. At its end, they took another hard right. It was a spiral, that much was clear. John was tempted to swerve into the jungle to take the direct path. The chance that he was wrong and that the only viable entrance may lie at the end of this route deterred him from it.

“Thirty minutes are up,” Nahoa declared.

“Well, you heard the Cihuatlatoanil.” John clapped his hands. “Jane, can you lift her up for me? Full Nelson style?”

“‘Course I can,” the feline Lightbearer purred.

“Remember: no penetration!” Nahoa insisted, even while she was lifted up. The twin spheres of her fat ass were suspended in midair, vapour wet skin stretched taut over them. Juicy thighs framed the third, much smaller and softer hill in-between, her puffy pussy rising prominently in both shape and colour. Excitement notably darkened her womanhood, making it pop from the background of her caramel, white-marked curves.

“No penetration,” John repeated sincerely, then placed two fingers on Nahoa’s cunt. To the sound of her whispered moans, he pushed them inside, swiftly beginning the glorious work of teasing her sensitive spots. “Be a good girl and cum for me,” he whispered, voice rough and dominant.

“Master wants me to cum,” Nahoa repeated the words to herself, high-pitched, driving the fantasy deeper into her brain. Mental stimulation was as if not more important for women. John had known that from fairly early on, but it took a while to really understand that. Though he was blessed with a set of loving nymphomaniacs that did not require much in terms of excitement there. “I’m… cumming!”

Nahoa’s head titled back, pressing into Rave’s bosom. Playfully, the feline Lightbearer nibbled on the demigoddess’ ear, while she sanctified another part of the forest with her gushing juices.

John licked them off his fingers and gestured for Rave to let the Aztec woman down. She wobbled a bit on her meaty legs, then let out a pleased sigh and stretched. “Thank the gods for tradition,” she said.

“Are you not going to deal with that as well?” Moira asked, pointing directly at John’s pulsing cock.

“It’s going to go away in a bit,” he answered, then swatted Rave’s hand. She laughingly pulled back, only to encroach again, playing a little game where she was totally trying to grab his manhood. “If you start jerking me off, the blue balls might actually kill me.”

“I wouldn’t stop at starting,” Rave said, but backed away all the same, “but you’re too curious to stop for a load.”

“Indeed I am. A hunt is one thing… an ancient civilization is something else entirely.” John ignored the insisting throbbing of his penis and began to walk again. Moira’s eyes followed the bounces until he had walked past her. Did he catch her rubbing her clit? Biting her lower lip?

Yes, yes, he did.

John walked off the erection, no one commented on Moira’s manifest interest in it, and soon they found what they had been walking around for. Follow current novᴇls on novｅlfire.net

It was a temple of moderate size, which was interesting. Abyssals had a tendency to build truly enormous structures, magic neutralizing the usual concerns of delivery distance and material shortages. Whoever had built this place, they either had not had access to the necessary magic or chose to deliberately build ‘small’.

Even more intriguing was the building style of the temple. Though covered much by trees that had half melded with the outer walls, the stepped slopes of the pyramid remained clearly visible. Highly decorated friezes displayed eagles, jaguars and serpents.

Nahoa stepped silently into the temple, built clearly by her people. The mirth of the mission had left her. Unmoving features hid her emotions. The barrier to her mind was lowered, yet John did not step inside. He did not wish to intrude upon the knot of emotions she must be feeling.

“How far my people are scattered… how great we could have been.” She placed her forehead against a massive stone and pressed her eyes shut. “Damn you, gorger, damn you, vulture, damn you… father. If any of what we once believed is true, let it be that you are now in hell with your brother sins.” A pained tear ran down her cheek. She wiped it away with the back of her hand, inhaled deeply, and tilted her head back. She blinked a couple of times.

Torment fought with dedication on her face. John was about to console her, when he noted a third emotion: confusion. The demigoddess took a step towards the group, then back towards the temple.

“The sky darkens.”

John fixed his eyes on the sky above and walked towards Nahoa. It was barely noticeable through the dense canopy, yet she was correct. As they stepped onto the temple grounds, the daylight faded. When they stepped away again, it returned to the previous brightness. “Moira, what do you make of this?” the Gamer asked.

Clutching her pendant, the Warden of the Golden Rose muttered a prayer to herself before she responded, “We are entering a rotten corruption in the Lady’s design.”

They advanced cautiously. Though they considered themselves strong enough to retain their nude state, they were not foolish enough to take no precautions whatsoever. After ascending a steep staircase, they entered the temple through an open gate. The roots of a grey tree spilled around the rectangular frame like rivers of hardened wax.

Pitch blackness greeted them. The remainders of the day were snuffed out. With Night Vision, John retained an overview of the room. New lights soon flooded the space, conjured by Rave and Moira. The feline Lightbearer held a shifting, hovering ball of technicolour lights, while the Warden’s sphere was a stable, intensely golden orb.

“Do not step on that plate.” Nahoa pointed at an inconspicuous part of the tiling. “Not that the poisoned darts would harm you.”

“How do you know it would do something?” John wondered.

“It’s always the third tile in the second row from the entrance. You can test it if you want to.” Nahoa took a long step over the tile. The rest of them mimicked her example. As four, they stepped up to a deep pit in the middle of it all. Human bones were piled at the distant bottom. Overhead was a depiction of a diamond-eyed warrior. “That seals it then,” she muttered. “This truly was made by my people.”

John let her behold the image of her father for a bit before asking, “Any known incidents of your people getting pulled into other Kingdoms?”

“Many,” Nahoa responded. “Though I had considered many of them to be the same lie as the attacks of the ants was…”

Macuil had made use of ants he’d created with his powers to distract the population of the empire and cull the numbers – or to just kill his boredom. The god of gluttony had not been the smartest individual, just competent enough to use the powerful tools at his disposal with an efficient ruthlessness.

“We had many legends regarding the second skies…”

“What exactly does that mean?” Moira interrupted softly. “Second sky?”

“The Earth is the Earth,” Nahoa explained. “Above it is the first sky, where the gods await rebirth. Above that is the second sky, where the Illusion Barriers are located. The first sky was a lie by the vulture. The second sky is what you call the Conceptual Realm or the space between Illusion Barriers and the Illusion Barriers therein.”

“The Lady’s Pathways.” Moira gave an understanding nod.

“We sacrificed our people to give Huitzilopochtli the power to keep the sun alive… that was the original purpose of it all…” The demigoddess stepped along the walls, studying the carved glyphs. “…when the sun died… they would come from eternal night and devour us, drag us away into other realms…” She stopped before the largest mural in the room. “…the Tzitzimimeh.”

Long faded colours left only shadows and grooves to tell the story. Women descended on skeletal wings from a starless sky, their forms distorted, often snake-like. Some had a strange grace. Most were abominations from beyond the black firmament. Once landed, they all crawled, leaving chaos and broken homes in their wake.

“What is the meaning of this?” Nahoa whispered. “Why show me this, creator, when my faith is proven false?”

John gently put a hand on her shoulder. “Come with me. We have to check something.”

Together, they left the temple. They walked far enough away that they were once again under a bright sky.

Pointing upwards, he said, “I want to get to the canopies.”

Climbing the trees was no issue whatsoever. They could leap from branch to branch with their superhuman abilities, moving upwards in just a few seconds. Monkeys and parrots the size of monkeys screamed at them as they moved through the highest layers. They were all ignored. The quartet broke through to the open sky.

There was bright blue in every direction. It would have been gorgeous if it hadn’t been for one alien detail.

No sun lent this sky its rays. There was no incandescent sphere in the sky, not even some magical replacement for it. There was just blue, everywhere, uniform, artificial, and it stretched above them like a foreboding dome.

They returned to the bottom of the trees in silence. Once they had their feet back on the firm ground, John spoke, “We do not need to take Macuil’s words on faith.” His mind was turning, considering the consequences of all of this. “Huitzilopochtli… the pantheon that he was a part of… it must have had a purpose from the beginning. Remus is not the type of person that places things for just one reason.”

“Are you saying that the Aztec’s sacrifices were… correct?” Moira asked, not hiding her disdain for the idea.

John shook his head. Even if it turned out to be true, he refused to have that be the first idea he entertained. “There are other explanations that work with how legends drift. We can assume from what we have just seen and the fact that we just stumbled across an Aztec ruin in another Kingdom that the Tzitzimimeh are real… We can also assume that they operated in the area the Aztec empire occupied, stretching from the Mexico desert to the very tip of South America… And we can assume that they were defeated.”

“Ya sure about that?” Rave asked.

“If they hadn’t been, we would know of them.” John gestured at the world around them. “A village can disappear and people scratch their heads, but you can’t have villages disappear for thousands of years and not assign it to anything – especially for something that has a name.” He locked eyes with Nahoa. “The Tzitzimimeh were real. Your people sacrificed to your father, including their very life. He defeated them – drove them back to a point where they no longer appeared. Even after Macuil executed his schemes and disappeared, no one in the Americas went missing like this.”

“So, what were they then?” Moira asked.

“I have no clue,” John answered, “but we might be able to see for ourselves.”

“What do you mean?” Rave asked.

“The legend is that they appeared when the sun died,” Nahoa muttered, her voice growing more confident as the realization dawned on her. “What if it was their coming that blocked out the sun instead? Their presence brought the black sky with them!” Her eyes snapped back to the temple. “If that is true, then…”

“Let’s see if we can verify this,” John said and stepped back into the temple’s unnatural night.