Machitis?? Gaia’s quizzical and unrushed mental tone prodded her Enforcer for a clue as to what she should be expecting.
Apologies Mother, House Aztec is apparently demanding an immediate audience with you. Huitzilopochtli and several heavily armed cuāuhtli declined the guards instructions to wait in line. After overwhelming the pair they started marching here.
Machitis stretched his neck to both sides and set his shoulders. His unique celestial Essence began flowing through the tip of his quad prong, lighting the area around him bright yellow/blue as the four razor sharp edges twinkled and then became so bright for Gaia had to look away. He spoke verbally for the sake of the fighters infront of him. “Be of no concern Mother, we will deal with him decisively.” Hearing this the three guards sounded off “?λαλ?!” Giving voice to House Olympia’s ancient battle cry.
Gaia openly sighed and let shoulders she hadn’t realized were tense, relax. I should have expected that this was all it was. After eons together, Machitis’ one short coming was his application of one-hundred kilotons of prevention to effect a gram of cure, at least when it came to her safety.
The shadow of a hulking muscular frame topped with a feline head loomed on the opposite side of the security ward. It raised a large fist and knocked forcefully at the static barrier. A thick, harsh, voice called through the ward in an almost singsong tone. “Mother, I’ve come to see you. From over here it seems your other supplicants…” Gaia saw the broad snouted head crowned with sharply pointed ears turn to either side as if looking for something in earnest. “… It seems that they have found somewhere else to be. I’m believe you now have the time to see me.”
Huitzilopochtli! House Aztec’s new head was by all accounts a beast. One that Gaia admitted she needed to face head on. Trusted sources had informed her several Earth millenia ago that the brute was responsible for not only killing Coatlicue, his former house leader and mother…but of consuming her body and Essence to gain her power. She tended to believe that it was true. It was certainly one way to obtain the strength a premature assumption of leadership would require to lead a Star Child House and keep your underlings in line.
Gaia internally cringed at not having dealt with him and these accusations before. She had no true excuse. But her self deluded reasons had always been that, since the Creaturix’s spontaneous, and very much unexpected, revival two thousand Earth years ago, she and all the Star Children had pulled back from their mortal involvements. It had been absolutely necessary to deal with the Creaturix’s reemergence. Looking back now, it was obvious, even to her, she had continually put Huitzilopochtli’s atrocities on the back burner. To be completely honest, part of her negligence had been due to the pure repugnance of it all.
A laxity that I intended to correct. And right now!
“Stand down.” Gaia ordered rising from her throne and shrugging her himation off. She strodeto the center of the room and made a wide wave of her left hand to take down all of the secruity wards separating the throne room. A fraction of a micro later there was nothing but open space and white marble columns tracing its perimeter at five meter spacing. Bird song from the outside came gently into the new and eery silence. The five cuāuhtli who formed a semicircle behind Huitzilopochtli seemed startled at the sudden openness and lack of anything between them and House Olimpia’s Warriors fearfully fronted by Machitis in a combat ready stance to Gaia’s left side.
At one hundred and sixty centimeters, unarmed, Gaia’s thin frame was less than intimidating. The thin silk straps of her simple ankle length gown standing out on the tan olive skin of her otherwise bare shoulders didn’t help any. But the glare of queenly repudiation she was blasting in full force froze Huitzuilopochtli’s five cauuhtli in place. The fumbling group quickly followed up with motley timed bowing, a lowering of their war clubs, and ultimately dropping to single knees before her. A murmuring mismatch of ‘forgive us mother’ was also heard.
Stolen novel; please report.
As if expecting nothing less from his pathetic servants, Huitzuilopochtli turned his wide leopard snout away as if dissociating himself from their weakness. Gaia also noted with distaste that he was absently reaching a clawed hand into a black skinned aspect focus thrown over his right shoulder. He proceeded to wetly tare a piece of meat from whatever uncooked animal was sitting in the dimensional space. Raw and bleeding, he popped the grizzly morsel into his heavy maw. Finger thick strands of saliva mixed gore dribbled down the spotted fur of his chin and chest as he spoke through a full mouth during his slow walk on densely muscled legs to meet Gaia in the middle of the room. “I’m glad you have the time to see me Mother—”
“Don’t you dare utter that word in my presence! I know what you’ve been accused of doing to your own mother. And I’m starting to believe it.” Gaia’s sharp interruption rang through the open spaces of her quarters. The five Aztec warriors already on her knees fell face-down at the obvious wrath that was on its way for all of them. Brief stints of groveling could also be heard against the hard stone cut tiles under them.
As for Huitzuilopochtli, their leader simply raised his feline brows and seemed to nod in agreed acceptance of Gaia’s words. He was clearly much more interested in separating the meat attached to a thick joint on the beast he was pulling apart in his aspect focus. With a sharp jerk of his arm a muffled ripping punctuated the quiet room as the joint came loose. The leopard again popped the shredded meat and thick bone into his wide mouth. Sharp fangs crunched through the hard tissue as he again spoke through his mastication.
“I see, I see. Well…” he raised an extended claw and picked at a bone splinter wedged in his back teeth, “…auwwahh…I just wanted to let you know that we don’t support your resumption of the Sol Throne.” His body tensed and a dark light shown in his black eyes as he seemed to take the next words he spoke very seriously emphasizing all in a guttural roaring from his reeking throat. “House Olympia will fall!”
Wiping sprayed detritus from her cheeks, Gaia had seen, heard and felt enough. This animal had killed and eater his mother as well as coming before her to utter treason in violation of his house’s Karmic Oath. Lastly, he really stank. She needed to put an end to this and get some fresh air. She settled on a plan to restrain him in the corona matrix of the neo zoi until a council of the remaining Star Child Houses could be assembled. They would determine his fate as well as the fate of the Aztecs as a whole—
A gritty chuckle erupted from his throat as he reached in and regurgitated two blood covered objects. Utterly coated in the congealed mess from his stomach, Gaia didn’t recognize them for what they were until he shook off ropy strands of the grume caking it. Dark blood and bodily fluids splattered in chaotic lines about him as the ambient light brought a low level glinting of gold and realization to Gaia. A pair of laurel leaf headbands.
“…I also wanted to return these to you. As you can see, I have no hope to digest them. It does however, seem that your Ligat team is going to be short a couple members…” He tossed the golden leaves at her feet, sending flecks of her titan children to lap over her feet. Seeing the mess laughter erupted from his throat.
It can’t be… Gaia pulsed her consciousness beyond the borders of the reforming, galaxy-sized Creaturix. After several micros there was no sign of her two youngest Titan children that were participating in the Ligat. Both Mnemosyne’s and Themis’s Aura were completely gone.
Expressions of incredulity and shock warred with fury on The Mother of All’s face. Without conscious thought Gaia braided coils of her Matron Authority shot to the core of the neo zoi and harnessing the strength of the fledgling star. Instantly increased potential flowed through her meridians, surging with the force of trillions of compressed nuclei, all on the verge of eruptive fusion. Shifting waves of alternating quantum states roiled through her avatar’s atomic particles as her own powers were amplified until she had taken on the protostar's own constantly shifting quantum signatures. Now vibrating in and out of physical reality, her avatar’s dimensions were almost impossible to limit or define. Boosted to the primacy of a star itself, celestial light radiating near the infrared spectrum bathed the previously white interior of the throne room with the hues of battles already fought.
Oblivious or uncaring to the short amount of time that he still had to enjoy on this side of the soul nexus, Huitzuilopochtli had continued to laugh. At least he did until Gaia’s fist smashed through his sternum and punched a whole through his heart. A mewling howl of agony, piercing as it was pathetic cried through the chamber. Gaia used her embedded fist to drag his towering figure down to his knees as she directed unrefined coronal matrix particles to boil up around the them and cement Huitzuilopochtli’s kneeling figure in place. With the expression of a stone Gaia’s eyes looked with a dead intent upon the writhing body before her. Thin hands wavering in and out of physicality grabbed either side of the Aztec’s wobbling head. She snapped it back until his cervical spine fractured and then used her thumbs to pry his clenched eyelids open. After a micro his pupils constricted in recognition of her and she knew he heard her as she spoke with a deadly calm tone. “For slaughtering my children I’m going to shatter your core. Then I will scour your brain as it boils so I can find out who the “we” you’ve already mentioned are. When I know their identity, I will do the same to your accomplices.
