Outside Mexico City

Skeletal fingers scrabbled in the dirt and gravel of the mountain side.

He focused on the eight digits. Four on each hand. Minus the pinkies.

How had he lost them?

The memories flitted away as they did whenever he tried to remember anything beyond what the master demanded.

The iron collar’s magic pulsed with warmth and comfort.

Somehow, a part of him knew that was a perversion.

His sun-browned skin was withered, like leather, after so long without proper clothing or shelter.

All he knew were the master’s fields.

Farming.

For necessity.

For pleasure.

The drug cartels of old had changed some after the spires had appeared.

How long?

Five years? Ten? Fifteen?

He wasn’t allowed to remember.

Just the tasks.

That was all.

No thoughts of escape. Not even into the better memories of the past.

It had been better once… hadn’t it?

He wasn’t allowed to remember.

Sometimes faces flashed in his thoughts.

Young, old and in between.

Parents? Wife? Children? Grandchildren?

He was old enough.

Wasn’t he?

The wrinkles on his body suggested it.

Then again, those could’ve been from the harsh life he lived.

He had lived.

Recent memories flooded his mind.

Howling.

Wolves.

Not wolves.

At least, not normal wolves.

Swarmed the ranch.

Killed the slaves.

The master and his men.

Even the cartel’s special force.

At least that was what he remembered.

It was hard to trust his thoughts.

For so long they hadn’t been his own.

Love the master.

Do what he was told.

Be happy in the doing.

He deserved the lash for being too slow.

Deserved poor rations for poor performance.

Live for the master.

The collar pulsed warmth.

It helped slightly with the chill of the mountain especially with the drizzle that had started a short while ago.

Wait?

When had that happened?

The sun had been beating down on his bare back. Half-healed wounds stinging with the pain of his own sweat and the exertions of climbing up.

Why had he been climbing?

He forg— he remembered.

The monstrous wolves.

Escape.

Blind, heedless flight.

The master was dead.

He wanted to cry.

Wanted to laugh and cheer.

No master to enforce the collar’s magic.

Free.

Not free.

The heavy weight dragged around his neck. The unforgiving metal chafed even his weathered and calloused skin.

Bloody fingers pulled him up.

Why?

Why keep moving?

Just rest. Close his eyes. Let the all of the pain end.

A quick bite or slash from any of the monsters and mutant animals would end his suffering.

He remembered more.

He saw a woman’s face. Smiling, toothless. Brown skin weathered and lined. The memory brought him warmth.

Was she a grandmother? His?

Tears blurred his vision.

That he didn’t know the answer to the question caused more pain than any of the hundreds of lashes that had graced his back.

She told him a story of this very mountain.

He thought and hoped that it was true. That the memory was real.

Her voice drove him onward and upward.

There was a proud people once in these lands before invaders, conquerors from across the ocean brought disease and death.

He was of both their blood.

They had many gods once until the invaders brought just the one.

The mountain itself was named for one of the old gods of a vanished people.

The god was one of protection. He brought rain and with it sustenance and life.

The god was one of fear. He brought hail, lightning and thunder. He shook the earth.

There was a place at the top of the mountain whose name he couldn’t remember.

It was a place of safety in the god’s name.

Even if it turned out otherwise then it would still be a good place to die.

He wanted to prove that the old woman in his memories was real as one last act before he found freedom at the teeth and claws of some terrible beast.

He climbed accompanied by the sounds of creatures in the darkness.

He thought he caught glimpses of them in the flashes of lightning.

The light drizzle had given way to a deluge.

The wind whipped wildly threatening to blow him off the mountain.

The torrent stung him like needles, yet he felt strength flowing into his old limbs.

He went from a desperate crawl to a determined walk.

The growls and snapping teeth kept their distance.

He paid them no heed.

Let them kill him.

He lost nothing that was worth keeping if they overcame whatever was holding them back.

Climb, the raging storm seemed to say. Climb or lay down and die.

A shrine waited for him at the top. Just like the old stories.

An old place, an ancient place.

Made out of stones.

A remnant of what looked like a small house. Perhaps for the keeper.

More stones piled on top of one another.

A raised platform.

The shrine itself to the god he couldn’t remember.

He staggered forward leaning into the wind.

Lighting flashed to reveal the creatures a dozen feet away from him. Circling, menacing, yet keeping their distance from the shrine.

Thunder shook the sky drowning out their hungry growls.

He had made it to the top.

He sank to his knees.

Mission accomplished.

The stories were real.

He could die now and be free.

Rise, the mountain exhorted.

He listened without conscious thought.

His body decided.

Up on two feet.

Forward.

One foot after the other.

Toward the shrine.

He noticed it then.

It wasn’t bare.

A black axe stood at the very center like a tree growing out of the stone.

It shined and shimmered in the flashes of lightning.

Black glass.

Obsidian.

He remember the word.

The entire weapon was obsidian even the haft.

It was almost as tall as he was.

The single-edged blade was enormous. Much larger than any proper axe had the right to be. It was the size of his torso.

It reminded him of— he forgot.

The surface of the weapon was comprised of irregular planes with sharp edges all over.

He reached out and touched the handle recoiling suddenly at the stinging pain in his palm.

Obsidian could be razor sharp.

He remembered that.

Take it or lay down and die, the storm roared.

He leaned toward the latter.

He was so very tired.

The iron collar weighed down on his soul.

Take it and be free.

He wavered.

Take it and have vengeance.

His eyes widened snapping to the axe. He grabbed it without hesitation.

Pain and power surged through him.

The rain crashed down in a torrent of stinging needles.

The winds became a hurricane.

The thunder deafened.

The lighting blinded.

He watched skeletal arms suddenly swell with muscle. A back bent by years of unjust toil straightened. His sunken chest became barrel-like.

Much of his past was like seeing through shattered glass repaired with tape and spit but he was certain that he had never been a physical specimen even in his prime.

He looked down at his bare torso and the rags that barely covered chiseled thighs the size of small tree trunks.

Power flowed.

It felt completely different.

He wasn’t a mere man any longer.

He was godlike

He flexed his bare toes digging them into the ground.

Stones cracked.

Thick, corded muscles in his arms hardened as he gripped the obsidian haft.

The sharp edges no longer cut him.

Energy flowed through his body. The aches and pains of years in slavery washed away by the cool, soothing rain that washed over him.

The collar choked his now much bigger neck.

Free yourself.

The voice that always reminded him to love and serve the master had vanished. He hadn’t noticed. Its absence illuminated its perversity.

He reached up and hesitantly grabbed the collar.

Free yourself.

“I— I can’t. It’ll explode.”

Free yourself.

What did it matter if it blew his head off? Alive or dead, he would be free.

Fingers sank into the iron as if it was made out of butter.

He took a breath and tore it from his neck.

The iron collar. Fetters of enslavement. Magical. Impossible to remove by any other than the master. The iron collar… crumbled like paper.

The explosion echoed the thunder in the sky.

He flinched and coughed as smoke briefly filled the space around his head until the rain washed it away.

Like a grenade.

He remembered that was what he was told when it had been first affixed around his neck.

And yet, he felt no pain.

He touched his neck, his face. Unmarred aside from smudges of black soot.

He let the crumpled remnants fall to the ground.

Freedom.

Fight.

Whatever had kept the monsters away on his trek up the mountain faded away like smoke in the wind.

They charged in a howling, snarling mass.

So many different kinds.

Later he would wonder what had kept them from attacking each other.

For now, he would fight.

To his surprise he knew exactly how.

Unfamiliar knowledge sang in his head.

He had never been a fighter. That much he remembered.

The first monster to reach him was a twisted puma. Swollen and oozing with pus from where the muscles had grown too large to be contained by the skin and fur.

He struck with the gigantic obsidian axe nearly as quick as the blink of an eye.

The two halves of the puma slipped past on each side of his body covering him in blood and gore.

A once proud jaguar roared as it leapt on his back.

A thousand pounds of weight and he wore it like a light cloak.

Teeth clamped around the back of his neck with a feathery touch.

Claws scratched at his chest and legs.

He reached back and dug his fingers into the mutant jaguar’s skull.

Surprisingly easy.

The mutant jaguar jerked and went slack a moment after his fingers reached its brain.

The next to reach him was a great black bear the size of a small car.

This time his axe only managed to cleave through the head and partway into the neck.

A flock of monstrous crows swarmed around him. Their black feathers impossible to see in the dark, cloudy night.

Knowledge filled his mind.

He called on the power that was now his.

Lightning erupted down from above and cascaded all around him.

Not the blue-white in the natural storm but red for the rage of all that he had lost— no, all that he had been forced to forget.

The crows barely had time for an aggrieved squawk before they became cinders.

Not all of those that sought to kill him were once natural inhabitants of the land. Others were different. Once thought to be the stuff of myths and legends or crazed conspiracies.

He remembered the pack of chittering things charging at him from the old woman’s stories.

Loping like twisted dogs. Gruesome faces filled with jagged teeth. Mostly fur-less, aside from stray patches of ugly, rough fur. A ridge of curved, thin spines protruding from their back.

Chupacabra.

Over a dozen.

Once again the course of action came to him unbidden.

He hurled his axe.

It spun and cleaved through the lead chupacabra before planting in the ground like a flag.

He reached a hand toward the haft and willed it.

The axe didn’t fly to him.

He flew to it.

His godlike body broke the chupacabras that were in his way. He barely felt the impacts. Like raindrops.

As soon as he reached the axe he took it and spun it in a wide circle.

Blood, gore and monster parts splashed around him staining the puddles red.

There was more he could do. More in his memories.

The rain gave him strength and healed him just as it weakened his enemies. Where he was buoyed they were slowed.

It was a good thing for he saw more shapes climbing toward him.

The demons from the old woman’s stories.

He remembered.

He raised his obsidian axe to the heavens and the storm answered.

There was no more fear in him as he leapt to meet the demons.

Once he was done with the mountain there was more work to be done.

He wasn’t truly free.

Not yet.

“So long as one person in this world is in chains then so am I. None are free… unless all are.”

He remembered one last thing.

A name.

The mountain. The shrine. The god.

They all shared the same name.

His name was no more. Gone along with everyone he had ever cared about.

The storm answered his call.

Tlaloc’s call.