Amotla was a labyrinth.

Narrow streets twisted between buildings that rose up like canyon walls, eventually spilling into empty plazas drenched in darkness. Zogrusz felt eyes watching him hungrily from the shadows, but none dared confront him as he pushed deeper and deeper into the city. The number of lit torches dwindled, with some areas black as pitch because of the heavy blanket of clouds obscuring the moon and stars.

He was drawing closer.

Finally, Zogrusz found himself before a crumbling archway sunk slightly below street level, at the base of an abandoned building that once must have been impressive in a much earlier era. The taste of fear was strongest here, flowing out of this entrance like a river, and he paused for a few long moments to greedily gulp down what was welling up from below. He could sense many consciousnesses nearby, minds clustered together in joined purpose, and slightly unsteadied by this rush of worshipful dread Zogrusz passed through the arch and started on the passage sloping down.

He heard them first. A low droning, reminding him of an insect-choked jungle. The sound strengthened as he descended, and his pulse quickened, thrumming in his veins. This was the source. This was why he still existed, even after the town of Xochintl had vanished.

The corridor opened up into a larger space. Once it might have been a catacomb, as the vague outlines of bones were visible set in niches along the walls, but now it had been repurposed for something else. A dozen ragged humans knelt in the chamber, their foreheads pressed to the floor, all facing where a dark slab of stone had been pushed against the far wall. And set atop this roughhewn altar . . .

Zogrusz almost cried out in joy. His own visage stared back at him from across the room, though it looked far older than when he had seen it last. The passage of time had not been kind – several of the mouth-tendrils ended in stumps, and some of his features had been lost to erosion. But Zogrusz had no doubt that this was the same statue that had once been displayed by the People in a place of great honor in their shrine.

A tug on his sleeve drew his attention, and he found an older woman in dark robes had appeared beside him. One of her eyes was missing, and scarring that almost looked ritualistic covered her face. She studied him with pursed lips, then motioned for him to follow her back outside the chamber. With a last, lingering look at the stone carving, Zogrusz joined her in the corridor.

“Who are you?” the woman hissed as something sharp and cold pressed against his stomach. Zogrusz glanced down in surprise and found that the point of a curving dagger had parted his jerkin and was poised to disembowel him . . . if he actually had bowels that could be removed in such a way.

“I am Napuatl,” Zogrusz said calmly. “I am one of the People.”

A tremor of surprise passed across the woman’s face, and the certainty behind the dagger wavered, the feel of the metal pricking his flesh vanishing. Zogrusz sensed the confusion churning within her, and he took this moment to slip into her thoughts and learn what was happening here.

She was a priestess of the old ways, the last in a long line stretching back to when the remnants of the People had been brought in chains into Amotla to serve in the houses of their conquerors. For five hundred years they had kept their ancient traditions alive despite their dread lord failing to protect them from the armies of the sea people (Zogrusz felt a pang of guilt about this), though their numbers had dwindled and now just a few remained who still believed. Peering deeper into this woman’s mind, Zogrusz saw cracks in the foundation of her faith, that even she had come to doubt their dread god would someday return.

All this Zogrusz gleaned in those moments of uncertainty after he had introduced himself, but then her one eye narrowed suspiciously, the sharpness poking him returning.

“Impossible. I do not know you.”

“My ancestors escaped the destruction of Xochintl. Long have I searched for others.” This explanation he plucked directly from her mind, for Zogrusz could see it was what she fervently wanted to hear – that the People still survived somewhere else, and when they finally faded away here in Amotla it would not mark their end.

The dagger slipped from his midsection. “Welcome, then, my brother,” she said, her expression softening. “As you can see, we still hold dread Zogrusz in our hearts. Though for how much longer I do not know, for our children have turned away from the Nightbringer to embrace the fire bird of the subjugators.”

“Fire bird,” Zogrusz murmured, his thoughts returning to the performance in the market square. “When I entered the city I saw a puppet show where a bird, uh, defecated on me – I mean, on our dread lord.”

The old woman’s lips twisted. “Anecoya. It is she who has laid our People low, why we are forced to hide down here. If her priest-king Cozotl discovered the sacred statue our entrails would adorn the city walls.”

“Cozotl? Does this human king dwell in the greatest stone building of Amotla?”

She nodded, though she looked confused by his choice of words. He had to remember what the cat Rhas had told him about humans not actually referring to themselves as humans.

“Yes, he does. And his ten-thousand bright spears.”

“Excellent. I believe I shall go pay him a visit.”