Deja Vu
The obsidian tiles of the altar room shimmered with the last light of day, casting long shadows that reached like fingers toward the sacred pool at the chamber's heart. High above, the open sky burned with sunset hues, but, here, deep within the temple, the air remained humid and thick with incense and fate.
Lotlhuitl moves like a whisper through the space. Barefoot, tall and willowy, the feline featured woman scattered a mixture of flower petals and crushed maize in a precise spiral pattern around the obsidian altar. Her fingers tremble: not from exertion, but from the weight of knowledge. The pattern had come to her in a dream. Like all her dreams since she had turned 20, the dream began with warmth, with hands she had never known but had felt many times before. Intimate, strong hands. Then came the scent of smoke, the sting of salt, and the weight of something pressing her to stone. Always, she woke gasping and in a cold sweat.
Tonight, she wouldn't sleep.
The jaguar-blooded priestess stilled her hand and stood straight, her dusky skin glistening with a fine sheen of sweat. The polished obsidian beneath her feet radiated residual heat from the sun, and her feline ears twitched at the familiar buzz of jungle insects rising beyond the temple walls. Her tail curled low behind her, heavy with tension, tip twitching as she wiped sweat from her brow. She knew what this night would bring. How could she not? Perhaps that was why butterflies filled her stomach and she found herself with weak knees.
As if to flee from her own weakness, Lotlhuitl turns and inspects her work. The petals had fallen in the correct alignment. Good. The sigils etched into the floor by elder priestesses long since dead were filled now with sacred matter—rare blue petals, golden maize dust and crimson pigment derived from crushed cochineal insects. The room smells of jasmine and smoke. It was ready.
Lotlhuitl crossed to the altar and pressed her palms flat against its warm surface. The obsidian was smooth, perfectly black, and utterly unyielding. Smoothed and unblemished and used in countless rituals going back to the beginning of all things.
She can't help closing her eyes. In her mind's eye, he was already here.
A tall man, face masked in war paint the color of desert ash, eyes like molten gold. A barbarian. Foreign. His breath smelled of blood and leather. His long brown hair was braided and tied. His hands—so large, so rough—grasped her as if by right. She sometimes fought him in her dreams. But matter how much she might scream and bite and kick, eventually, she always yielded.
Her green eyes open, and she lifts her hands to her chest. Inhale. Exhale. Lotlhuitl could feel her heartbeat, heart beating fast and steady like a war drum. With fear? No, not merely fear. There was anticipation in her, too.
She could have sworn the temple shivered around her. But it was surely just the intense warmth from the braziers making the air shimmer. She was surely imagining the tension in the air, the feeling that something very important was about to happen.
Lotlhuitl's ear twitched as she turned toward the southern archway. The priestess felt them before she heard them: foreign men, heavily armed, climbing the steps of Tezcatlipoca’s house. Her temple. The stones groaned beneath their weight. Many men didn’t belong here. The magic of this place should punish them for their trespass. But there was once amongst them who did belong.
It was he she feared. The one who did belong.
Her heart racing in her chest, the feline featured woman moved quickly. She adjusted the belt of bells that cinched her waist, checked the twin anklets that chimed with each step. These were sacred instruments, meant to channel divine attention. Her obsidian dagger hung from a chain at her hip. Not for war—she had little talent in combat—but for ritual. It had tasted her blood. Soon, it would taste his.
Lotlhuitl reached into the bag at her side and retrieved a mirror, black as the altar and twice as ancient. A gift from her mother. A tool. A curse. She gazed into its surface, expecting—half-hoping—to see her reflection. Instead, she saw fire. Smoke. His face.
His eyes, brown like burning amber, stared through her, drawing a strange heat in the pit of her stomach forcing her tail to bristle.
She drew a breath through her teeth, looking to the archway that led into the room flanked with obsidian glass. Her ears went flat, pinning back against her head.
It was time.
The shadows beyond the archway thickened. She did not need to look to know that they had crossed into the temple proper. These men would fan out soon. They would surround her. She had seen it too many times. She stepped back from the altar, raising the mirror high. The bells on her wrists jingled as she whispered a prayer to Tezcatlipoca.
The first of the warriors appeared—a scout, dark-eyed and gaunt, his hand hovering above a curved blade. His armor was foreign: layered mail and stamped leather, dyed in muted sand tones. He paused upon seeing her, hesitating just long enough for her to see the fear in his eyes. Then he turned and shouted back to his commander.
Lotlhuitl didn’t hear the words. She didn’t need to. Her heart racing in her chest, the green-eyed priestess stared.
The shadow loomed in the archway, and then he stepped through—broad-shouldered, dusty-skinned, streaked in chalk-white war paint. He moved like he’d walked through flame. Like nothing could stop him.
Kasim.
Kasim Al-Saqr.
The name came unbidden to her mind. Her ears twitched. Her tail bristled. Her breath hitched.
She could feel the path unfurling beneath her feet—could see, in a dozen mirrored shards, what would come next. His hands. Her yielding. The altar, defiled. Her womb, claimed. She couldn't tell if she would become his slave, his lover, his queen, or something else completely unrecognisable. But worst of all, she wanted to be his.
And that? That terrified her.
Her tail curled low. Her lips parted.
She drew a breath.
"LEAVE!"
Lotlhuitl’s voice detonated like thunder, a single word that struck with divine weight. Not just in the trade tongue, but layered with her native speech, with the old language of the temple, with half a dozen dialects she herself had never learned. Her Voice was not merely heard—it echoes through the spirit, shaking the bones of gods and men alike.
A tremor ran through the walls. The obsidian flanking the walls cracked.
The mercenaries staggered. One screamed—"Forvalaka!"—shoving back, sword clattering as he turned to flee. Another fell to his knees, clutching his ears. All around Kasim, his men broke like frightened animals, a stampede of terrified flesh turned suddenly faithless.
Only Kasim remained.
His pendant burned hot beneath his armor, dampening the worst of the spell. He grimaced, skin smoking where the relic met flesh, but he did not move.
He looked at her then—really looked. Not with rage. Not with lust.
He did not speak.
He simply stepped forward—into the cracked silence, into her fate.
And the mirrors watched it all.
