SACRIFICE

The scowling-faced Feathered Serpent is angered with the Azteca and their Tlatoani. He has cursed them. Sent foul winds across the Eastern Seas that carried strange boats and even stranger men to their once gold lined shores. He has sent these devils as punishment, covered in gleaming armor made of a light impenetrable to our dark glass blades. They carry even more fearsome weapons.

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What few of the Aztec Nobility that remain gather around the chalice, with the Tlatoani leading the way. So much blood has been spilled. The consumption has taken the city. All of the cities. The sick lay in the streets. Even the Cuāuhmeh, the proud Holy Eagle-Warriors, have found themselves cursed by Quetzalcoatl. He hisses at them, his godly fangs causing them only more misery as they die from the pox. His people have neither the numbers, the weapons, the strength or the infrastructure to resist this invasion.

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But the ritual continues. A man is thrown onto the floor, bound in the chains he himself brought to this land. The Tlatoani sighs. And yet, he thinks as the nobles bring the pale man in gleaming armor to the sacrificial altar, is this all they can do?

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He sacrifices the man without a second thought, leaving his detestable armor on his detestable corpse. The attendants remove the body from the altar and toss it into the festering pile. There is so  much blood. The priests begin to use their glass mops to pile it into the center of the room, thoroughly cleaning each inch of the temple floor. In the heart of the room, a flower of the invader's blood coagulates into the chalice of sacrifice.

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The Tlatoani wonders how many more it will take before they earn Quetzalcoatl's mercy.