Chapter 12 Xolotl
Xolotl
One of my favorite things to do when I wake is to discover how much humans have improved their weapons. They always come up with better, faster, and messier ways to kill other humans. The muskets and cannons were a pretty big improvement in tech.
But now, they’ve really outdone themselves.
They don’t realize that I’m able to incorporate anything they develop almost immediately, so their gain is literally my gain as well. Anything that helps death draw near faster powers me up. The rain of bullets that shower down over us makes me turn and smile upward.
“Glorious,” I say.
“You’re insane.” Poor Whitney’s huddling below a fallen tree.
“Stand up.” I wave. “They may not know you’re with me unless they see it from the start.”
She doesn’t budge.
I sigh.
I’ll be able to tell them, I’m sure, but it’s always better for them to see my generals. For humans, seeing really is believing. That’s why the new things I saw on their television were so disturbing. How can they sort truth from lie when their visual lies are now so convincing?
As the bullets strike, my body stretches, absorbs the energy, and reforms almost immediately around them.
And my power rises. I feel it, like a phoenix unfurling its wings inside.
I shouldn’t have agreed to the strange hiatus.
I should’ve called them sooner. Embracing an attack’s a heady feeling.
Something larger, something more powerful whistles its way toward me.
I spin just in time to spread my arms wide, and throw my head back so that the humans’ gift can hit me dead-on.
It’s a projectile bomb of some kind, and it practically vibrates with power.
It doesn’t explode when it strikes me, of course.
It would be better if it did in some ways—I do wonder sometimes how I know all about the tech and how it works as soon as it enters my body, but my magic has always been strange.
I probably pull the information from the human minds that are launching the assault, but I’ve always simply embraced the knowledge as it comes, right along with the new carriers of violence.
And these new developments are the best yet.
The humans above think that first missile malfunctioned, and they queue up more powerful missiles and fire them all off. I use a touch of wind to rise up above the water, and I throw a little of it at the jets. They rock back and forth, but they admirably right themselves and fire off the missiles.
I use some strong wind to deflect one of the new-to-me projectiles, because I want to see what happens when it’s not absorbed.
I watch with a smile as it explodes on impact with the lake’s shore, sending tree shards, brush, sand, and water flying in all directions.
The other missiles I steal for later. I haven’t decided whether to use them or simply repurpose their energy.
Either way, it’s a boon.
“Thank you,” I shout, amplifying my voice so they can hear me. “Once you’re finished, I’d be happy to meet with your leader.”
Another round of missiles launches.
I tuck them all away, one by one. It’s a little boring now, and I’m questioning why they would simply use the same attack over and over when it’s clearly not working.
The next time, they aim for the areas around me.
At least they’re iterating a little.
I redirect the missiles so I can absorb them, but I can sense some of the pilots are planning to return to their leader. I need one to deliver the message, but the rest? I close my right hand, tightening my fingers into a fist, and the other four pilots’ hearts stop.
Watching their jets crash is actually pretty spectacular.
If I shift the trajectory a bit so they smash into a boat and an outbuilding, taking a few more lives with them, well, I didn’t directly violate Whitney’s deal.
They did attack me, after all. The influx of death magic floods my entire body, and I shiver a bit.
Going an entire day without any purposeful deaths was draining.
“You—you just ate those missiles.”
I laugh.
Whitney’s crawling out from under the log, covered with debris, her eyes wide and blinking. “You—how did you do that?”
I shrug. “It’s just a facet of who I am. Instruments of death only boost my strength.” I can’t help my smile, which I’m sure is a little smug. “But I didn’t have a choice. I had to defend us.”
I sense them, then.
My smile broadens. “Maybe duck back down.” I glance at my shoulder. “Or come over here. More are incoming.”
She swears under her breath.
I see it, then, the flash of dark energy I saw before. It’s very confusing. How can the same person harness both dark and pure light energies? A person should either be light in their power or dark with it. I’ve never seen one creature manifest both before. “Whitney.”
Her head snaps toward mine, our eyes locking. “What is it? Why should I duck?”
“You still doubt me?”
She shakes her head, but then she bites her lip. “Can you tell what’s coming?”
“Do you mean how many humans and with what weapons?”
She nods.
“A hundred? Maybe two hundred?” I drop my smile. She can’t know how delighted I am to have this many soldiers advancing. Their leader will surely come once they’ve failed, and who knows what extra goodies they’ll be sending my way?
“Xolotl.” She closes her eyes, sighs, and then opens them to trot to my side. “Okay.”
“Would you have hidden if it was less?”
“I’m surprised they’re sending ground forces now,” she says. “Is that what they usually do?”
“Air strikes are new for me,” I say. “I almost always face ‘ground’ forces. I shouldn’t have slept for so long. Too many things have changed.”
“Well, what should I do?”
“Don’t stab me,” I say. “I can handle the rest with a force this small.”
“But those missiles literally just slid inside you, and then. . .” She shakes her head. “Where did they go?”
As the troops round the thick underbrush and come into view, I toss my hand at them. A missile shoots outward, and blows at least a dozen of them to smithereens, a phrase I picked up from the pilot I released.
Whitney ducks and turns her head into me, her face pressing against my chest.
I like it.
I might like it too much. I shouldn’t be distracted right now.
Before I have time to overthink it, I shift into my horse form. I toss my head, and Whitney diligently climbs onto my back. I rear back and scream, hooves pawing at the air, eyes flaming.
And then I set the next wave of soldiers on fire.
As the others behind them begin firing on me with regular bullets—boring—I toss my head and stop all their hearts.
They drop like horseflies, and I scream my joy.
Whitney clings to my back pretty well, so she’s clearly ridden horses with regularity in the past. I charge forward, plowing through the burning troops to see what else they sent.
Row after row of troops are lined up, all of them firing on us. With Whitney on my back, it’s simple for me to absorb all the bullets headed for her. I should’ve made her come in close to me earlier.
But then something new appears.
Small, black firing machines that fly. There aren’t any humans in them, so my normal methods for destroying such things won’t work.
Without a pilot to simply kill, I’m forced to coordinate buffeting from wind, bullet strikes from what the humans have given me, and when I’m sufficiently annoyed, one of their own missiles to shatter two at once.
The one drone that remains circles wide.
Before it can re-engage, with a single snap, I kill the remaining soldiers.
It’s boring and uninspired, but I have a message to send.
I can’t rely on the humans to do it, but I expect the drone has some way of conveying things immediately.
Sadly, my snap-kill appears to have fried its circuits.
I forgot Whitney’s admonition about my death magic shorting out technology.
“Well, shoot,” I say. “How will I get a message through to them now?”
Whitney’s got her arms folded, and she’s scowling. “You didn’t even try not to kill them.”
I’m not going to argue with her about how I handle an attack from the human military of the area. She should be thanking me for keeping her safe.
We walk along the lake’s shore in silence a moment, before I hear it—the buzzing sound from the drones. Another one’s approaching, thankfully. I don’t even have to drag it toward us. It flies over itself, not firing, not attacking at all, just hovering in front of me.
Then the attack starts.
That’s more what I expected. Bullets first, which I ignore, followed by hellfire, which is much more interesting.
It can’t be the human minds that share the information about weapons with me, since I immediately know the names and usages of these things.
It must just be another unknowable facet of my power.
Violent methods of attack simply distill into my brain.
Once I sense its stores have been depleted, I yank it down close, and I shift, careful to ensure Whitney doesn’t fall to the ground.
She slides gracefully down my back, her hands grabbing at my waist. “You shift fully dressed?” She snorts. “That’s almost too bad.”
“Wait, do you know others who shift?”
The drone’s still hovering.
She shakes her head. “No, I’m just—it’s.” Her face is bright red. It’s surely because of the attack, but I like it. It makes me want to laugh.
It’s hard, but I shift my focus back to the drone, in the hope there’s some kind of communications feed linked to it. I tilt my head. “Hello, warlike humans. You may call me Xolotl.”
A light on the front of the drone flashes.
“I assume you can see and hear through this device. If not, well, hopefully your pilots conveyed my message before they died. I’d like to meet with someone.
My purpose is to bring death back to the human equation in this region, to balance the forces of your world again.
I think someone among the human leadership can likely help me, but if not, I’ll figure out the best path alone. ”