A drunken poem courtesy of yours truly, Hue "hic" heucoyotl
*Boisterous laughter ensues*
"Two monsters entwined through sin"
"No fornication for the one with a fin"
"Maybe if he plays dead he won't be a victim"
"Otherwise his bugs eyes will grow dim"
*Laughter fades out*
He followed the road of cempoalxōchitl, half-blind in a trance. The petals shimmered with a ghostly fire—bright orange curling into sickly green at the edges, flickering like something both blooming and rotting. In this light, the path wasn't a trail but an invitation. A living hallucination.
The caverns grew vast around him, echoing and breathing as if alive. Sometimes he walked, sometimes waded. The boundary between air and water blurred until it no longer mattered. He moved without thinking. The rock walls were velvet with moss, dripping in shades he'd never seen before. Silver spiders clung to webs like suspended stars. Strange bugs skittered along the edges of the path. Lost souls wandered too—some just shapes, others nearly human, but all hollow. All fading.
Something followed him. A presence, feathered and watchful, its vibration always pulsing just behind him—never close enough to see, never far enough to ignore.
He didn't dare look back.
His body moved with eerie grace now. He no longer stepped, he glided—his long tail shifting behind him in slow, side-to-side waves. He hardly noticed when the last patch of stone vanished beneath him, and he was fully submerged, drifting through the mouth of an underwater tunnel.
He should have panicked. But instead, he was laughing—softly, bubbles escaping from his gills like a lazy exhale.
*Look at me… I'm swimming.*
*And not like a man.*
*Like something else.*
His arms and legs tucked instinctively close, letting his tail do all the work. His gills pulsed gently with every stroke, brushing the currents like tendrils feeling for truth. His senses stretched—sight became a memory, replaced by vibration, pressure, warmth, and motion. He could hear the water through his skin. He could taste the stone walls without opening his mouth. Every movement painted the world for him.
The marigold path still danced below, curling deeper into the cenote like a ribbon of flame. He followed without question, lulled by the motion.
But then—clarity. A flicker of thought. *Wait… how am I even—*
Reflex took over. Human instinct fired in his muscles. He reached forward, kicked with both legs, tried to paddle like a man drowning—
Crash.
His shoulder slammed into the jagged tunnel wall, and a cloud of silt exploded around him. He flailed awkwardly, tail thrashing, gills writhing in distress. A jolt of pain sang through his side.
*Smooth, tlālli nōlli (pendejo).*
*Good thing no one was around to see that…*
But then… he heard it.
Laughter.
He felt the mocking laughter like an echo in his exoskeleton. Then another sensation from what felt behind him.
Not loud, not mocking—more like bubbles of mirth, echoing through the water. Feminine. Playful.
Not just a voice in his imagination.
He froze. The marigolds flickered ahead. The gills on his head twitched involuntarily.
*Who's there?*
No answer. Just the fading ripple of laughter carried by the current.
He pressed himself close to the tunnel wall, waiting. Listening. Feeling. Every inch of his body alert. The trance had broken. The game had changed.
The tunnel narrowed. He followed the marigold glow as it thinned into threads, weaving into the dark like the last breath of a dying ember. The water grew warmer. Shallower. His tail beat gently behind him. Gills pulsed. The current shifted.
He broke the surface.
Light.
Blinding. Violent. Unlike the subtle shades and murmurs of the cenote's inner world, this was raw flame—piercing and cruel. It cut across his vision like a blade, searing into his retinas, he tried to blink. This was the moment he realized, he had no pupils. Only huge eyeballs.
He gasped, instincts panicking, gills flaring in pain.
*Too much… too dry—*
The air bit at his skin. His mucus began to crackle under the heat, the tender film that protected him evaporating by the second.
*That's fire—real fire. It has to be. Or something worse.*
He dove backward into the pool with a splash and a hiss, twisting like a shadow into the depths.
The water cooled his body instantly. He clung to the silence, pulsing his gills slowly until they stopped writhing. His skin sighed. He tried blinking repeatedly, all he managed to do was scrunch his face and look even sillier.
Then—laughter.
Again. But closer now. Familiar. Mocking.
He floated just below the surface, heart racing, vision adapting. Slowly, carefully, he lifted one hand to cover his eyes. Then the other. And then, with his fingers spread just slightly, he peeked out from beneath the water's skin.
At first, shapes. Then light and form. The cave was cavernous, lit by torches embedded in the surrounding stone, fire dancing over mineral-rich walls like spirits caught mid-wail.
And there it was.
The ahuizotl.
Its tail—a hand where no hand should be—rested lazily near the edge of the water. Its body stretched with impossible patience, feline and reptilian, covered in wet fur that clung to its twisted muscles. Its eyes gleamed like submerged obsidian, cruel and knowing. It looked as if it had been waiting a long time.
Watching.
*So that's who's been laughing.*
Cenotlatlacatl stilled beneath the surface, hands still shielding his eyes.
*Not good. Not like this.*
*Too bright. Too dry.*
*Too exposed.*
The only thing he could feel was exasperation.
It flicked its ear toward the water.
Then it grinned.
Cenotlatlacatl's hands tightened over his face.
*I need to distract it... maybe if I—*
He puckered his lips underwater, took in a deep breath through his gills, and blew out with all the force he could muster—
Blub.
A sad little swirl of bubbles. Worst of all with his mouth wide open and his bulbous head he looked like a baby drooling.
*...Really? That's all I got?*
*Tlālli nōlli (pendejo).*
Above, the ahuizotl tilted its head, as if it had just witnessed the dumbest fish impression in the history of the underworld.
And then… it laughed.
That's when the patterns on Cenotlatlacatl's body began to glow.
It started at the edges of his vision—sickly green, pulsing like cold fire. The same ash that Mictecacihuatl had gifted him now blazed across his face, coiling down his neck and arms. The water shimmered faintly around him.
He didn't know what it meant. But instinct told him the same thing it always had.
*There's only one path.*
*Forward.*
He rose.
The moment his skin broke the surface, **ashlight bloomed**—a silence that brought with it a flurry of ashes from his markings on his face. Like a strong wind blowing, without the sound, without even a slight breeze. Every torch in the cavern started to flicker, as the ashes landed on the flames, a diminishing of light in unison. Darkness fell not like a curtain, but like a command.
The cave shivered. Silence ruled.
Only two figures glowed within it.
The ahuizotl rose with deliberate grace, bones stretching, muscles winding. Its grin was gone now, replaced with purpose. A orange golden glow emitted from markings on the fur of its face. Identical to the ones on Cenotlatlacatl's face.
"You step willingly to your grave." It rasped, "into a fate brought upon by your sins."
Cenotlatlacatl said nothing.
"I was bound," it continued, "the moment **you** defiled the sacred pool. The only way I can leave this place is if I drag **you** to a watery grave."
"Tlalocan awaits ME, what is out of your reach is a tail length away for me."
Its voice echoed through the stone—not from its mouth, but from the cenote itself.
"We are the same wound," it hissed. "But only one of us can close it."
The sickly green light danced brighter across Cenotlatlacatl's face. He took one step forward.
*Then let's see which one of us drowns.*