Chapter Twenty

“No human sacrifices, slavery, or bodily mutilation, that’s unnegotiable. Those are my terms. Final offer. Accept them or spend whatever time we have left together getting the silent treatment.”

My, my. How… unflexible. Nobody respects the old ways anymore. Xōchiquetzal sighed before rallying a counterargument. You could be trapped here with me for a very long time, child. My power over this place–

“I won’t have innocent deaths on my conscience.” Bernie crossed her arms defiantly, staring out over the city of Tenochtitlan surrounded by the sparkling waters of Lake Texcoco. The view from the top of the central pyramid was spectacular. “Take it or leave it. I won’t budge on this point. No matter how many horrific scenes you show me.”

There was a scream behind her as a priest wearing a jaguar skull cut the beating heart from a burly warrior’s chest. His team had lost some sort of ball game and this was the consolation prize. Blood poured from the altar, trailing down the steep stone steps leading to the chanting crowd far below.

Well, that freaking sucked and only reinforced her position regarding ritual sacrifice.

You’re being unreasonable. My offer is exceptionally generous, and I’m not asking for much in return. Simply restore my priesthood and gather followers willing to die for–

“Not. Negotiable.” Bernie scowled as another bronze-skinned man was led up the blood-stained steps by acolytes dressed in animal skins. He staggered as if drunk, eyes rolling and broad shoulders hunched. “I can stand here all day. All week. I can probably hold out for a few decades, given none of this is real–just history playing on repeat. You’re in my head, right? You must realize the whole die-for-me schtick won’t mesh the contemporary moorings, and suicide cults chronically suffer from a lack of long-term prospects.”

I do not appreciate being bent over a barrel. I am Xōchiquetzal! The goddess’s surge of anger threatened to cause a brain hemorrhage before receding with another sigh, this one resigned. But I cannot deny the realities of the Information Age. Humanity achieved much after magic departed the mortal plane. Most resemble arcane workings but are not…

“We got by. Look, do we have a deal, or do I have to listen to another dozen men die before you’re ready to shake on it? Real or not, this is still nightmare fuel, and therapy’s expensive.”

Getting brusque, are we? I should **** you to endure the festival of Hueypachtli for taking that tone with me–an entire day of orgies and sacrifices… but fine. Be that way. The fragment of my divinity in the priestess’s mantle was already revitalized by spiritual magicks and… a strange power I do not recognize. Only the cold iron you bear–and yes, I’ve known about that from the start– prevents that same power from fully opening the connection. Relinquish the trinket and embrace your new position as my mortal avatar!

Xōchiquetzal made it sound like she'd personally engineered the grand rise in status, but Bernie could read between the lines.

“You’re saying I’ve had the means to travel home all along.” She shook her head in disappointment, letting the bracelet slip from her wrist to tinkle on the stone. “That’s some Wizard of Oz ruby slippers rubbish.”

Yes, you’re very clever, daughter. The goddess chuckled, Now, hold onto your tits–

Her gloating was drowned out when Bernie’s world erupted in a fiery inferno.

The universe stretched out before Bernie. Expanded and shrunk all at once. It was tinged with gold. Vast aureate lines curved through space, connecting the stars in complex constellations, forming shapes and concepts that boggled the mind.

She could finally see and feel them, the cosmic currents that were the pulsing veins of creation. On a whim, she could swim between those pinpricks of stellar light or surf the calm oceans of endless void.

Bernie was a being of fire. An unquenchable flame that burned in the fathomless darkness. Energy unleashed. The single constant the galaxy could not deny. Everything and nothing, coexisting in perfect harmony.

She wallowed in it, saturating her soul, condensing her essence, and then relaxing to extend over countless lightyears like oil slickening the surface of a pond.

The secrets of creation were laid bare, the history and future of everything whispered on solar winds, hers for the taking. Ready to pour into her naked mind… and break it.

She recoiled at that revelation. Flames compressed around her spiritual core protectively as Bernie reeled away from the event horizon of madness. The perfect singularity at the center of infinity beckoned to her. Cajoled her. Invited her to join the swirling maelstrom of order and chaos that governed all existence.

The impulse to dive in and lose herself was there. To become a stitch in the tapestry of reality and be a part (no matter how minuscule) of the unending cycle of galactic **** and rebirth forever was undeniably tempting. Immortality presented on a silver platter…

…at the bargain price of her sanity and individuality.

Bernie withdrew, soaring through the constellations on golden wings of fire, drinking in the starlight. She roared like a comet through iridescent nebulae and interminable asteroid fields, guided across the empty expanses by a tugging sensation in her middle, drawn by a metaphysical umbilical back to her home.

A feathered serpent of unimaginable scale swooped around her. A jaw large enough to swallow the moon whole split wide in a joyous smile.

Fly true, little sister! Quetzalcoatl laughed, spinning in looping coils. Shine bright and let our children know their ancestor’s gods have not forsaken them. Dawn rises on a new age!

Shining eyes appeared in the pitch darkness. A dozen sets of impossibly large spheres which dwarfed entire star systems and bludgeoned Bernie with their staggering presence.

Tláloc, the god of rain. Mictlāntēcutli, the god of the dead. Huītzilōpōchtli, the god of war and the sun, and many others broadcasted their approval. None more than Xōchiquetzal, the goddess of love, beauty, and fertility herself.

They proffered shards of their waning quintessence to empower her transcendence, which Bernie greedily accepted as she plummeted down to earth.

Slamming back into her corporeal form, there was a dizzying moment of cognitive dissonance. Her link to the broader universe was abruptly severed, but the profound sense of epiphany endured, and a wellspring of celestial magic bloomed in her gut.

Power rushed through her. A devastating flash flood of ancient energy that boiled out from her bones like molten magma. It ripped through her muscles and sinews with infernal heat before exploding from her skin, detonating in a fiery nova that banished the darkness.

Clothing incinerated, Bernie stood naked but unmarred by the flames. Only the ornamental headdress remained. Gold and jade beads glittered on her brow, and a tail of hawk feathers swept down her bare back. The fire infused the dumpy redhead, dreadfully hot yet exquisitely pure.

It burned away her imperfections—melting fat and tempering her flesh into freshly forged steel.

Gone were the muffin top hidden under baggy layers and the tummy paunch from too many late-night snacks. In their place was an actual waistline and ripped abs stacked atop muscular hips. An ass worn flat by years in uncomfortable library chairs rounded and lifted as though a century dedicated to squat lunges passed in an instant, consequently thickening her thighs into skull-crushing wonders of feminine strength.

Biceps bulged, Bernie’s pasty Irish complexion smoothed like polished alabaster, and the defined musculature of her back reorientated to support the burgeoning burden mounting on her chest. Surging breasts replaced the shapeless, flabby mounds that previously occupied that precious real estate. Supple teardrops of pneumatic tit-flesh plumped and ripened like melons on the vine, thrust out before her like a warship's prow.

She didn’t need a mirror to see what she had become. Bernie could feel it in her soul.

She was mighty!

She was ferocious!

She was motherfucking indomitable!!

Bernie was a carved pillar of womanly strength–dauntless and unstoppable with the power of the reawakened Aztec pantheon behind her.

…and she was horny as hell for some reason. A single dewdrop of arousal gathered on her engorged nether lips.

“Oh wow, friendo. You look amazing! Talk about a makeover. Master’s eyes will pop straight out of his skull when he spots that banging new bod of yours.”

Bernie wheeled around to find the pink-haired fox spirit staring at her with a lecherous leer—tufted ears, fanning tails, and sharp fangs on full display. With a kick that trailed smoke like a meteor, she punted the deceitful furball across the basement and through a rack of shelves.

Shining bright as a beacon, she spotted her quarry through the gap Konoha left in her crash course—the looming lothario still had Daphne tied in knots, ankles fastened above her head with his hand clamped around her throat and giant prick buried in the arrogant bitch’s asshole.

“FRANKLIN!!” She boomed, her voice cacophonous. “You treacherous swine! How dare you?!”

She bolted forward with inhuman speed, powdering the cement under every footfall, armoring herself in the gifted power. As though conjured, boiled leather sheathed Bernie’s formidable new frame, tight-fitting and dyed green to match the jade in her headpiece.

A corset hugged her magnificent rack, gold-trimmed bracers cinched her forearms and shins, while a short leopard skin skirt swept the very tops of her pumping thighs. The old Bernie would have been mortified if she had not been consumed by godly fire and betrayal.

Her coppery hair and feathered mantle streamed like a cape behind the warrior priestess as she chambered a burning fist to deliver the entire fury of a dead civilization in a single blow.

The bastard didn’t even turn to face his impending doom, completely zeroed in on his base animal urges. He was speaking, lips moving, but the rush of blood in Bernie’s ears drowned out everything but her screaming warcry.

“Not today, sister.” A flurry of lilac appeared before her. Hands and tails weaved an intricate spell pattern, summoning an ethereal blue shield that caught the punch like a stone bastion…

…then shattered with a deafening crack.

“Whaaaaaaaa~!” Konoha was bowled over the resulting shockwave. Her magenta fur stuck out as though charged with static electricity. “Whoa, you pack quite the wallop. Didn’t know you had it in you, bestie. How delightful!”

The foxed-eared lunatic giggled hysterically, beaming at Bernie. A quick glance at Franklin confirmed he wasn’t taking heed of their scuffle; the magically-enhanced knucklehead was preoccupied with filling Daphne’s back passage and… orating?

“With this holy seed, I baptize your tight ass.” He declaimed, excess spunk spritzing from her overstuffed pucker to splash his cut abs. “Washing it clean of wrongdoing and sin. Take this sticky load and give thanks for heaven’s mercy. The path to salvation is rocky and fraught with peril. Receive this admonishment and submit with humility, lest you fall from grace again!”

“What do… gah~... you think… I’m doing, big boy?” The huge-chested sadist croaked, spittle flying and pussy squirting as she climaxed in time with his butt-stuffing release. “Slap me around… nrrrgh~! C’mon, you know I-I deserve it.”

Bernie watched, poleaxed by the casual brutality Franklin employed in punishing the evil cunt. A negligent swipe of his upraised palm snapped her head to the side like a whiplash. Daphne let out a wanton moan, reddening cheek pressed into the rough grain of the wooden crate, her erotically trussed body tremoring with blissful agony.

Konoha reappeared, sliding up his heavily muscled back, her feline gaze locked on Bernie, gently tracing the rugged lines of his herculean physique with clawed fingertips.

“You’re absolutely right, master.” She crooned lovingly into Franklin’s ear, caressing his chiseled chest but not breaking eye contact. “Show that indolent slut how wrong she was to hurt you.”

Rage rekindled the conflagration on Bernie’s skin even as moisture gathered between her legs upon seeing his imposing frame. Memories that weren’t her own flashed unbidden through her mind. Elite jaguar warriors; burly, battle-scarred and naked, entwined with her priestesses like a writhing carpet on the temple’s mosaic floor.

Sweaty and heaving, grunting and moaning. Celebrating the bounty that the patreon of mothers and childbirth had bestowed on their people. Their grunts and wails of carnality raised in a hymn of gratitude to the Goddess. Bernie was amongst them–dressed only in her feathered mantle–licking and sucking any flesh her mouth could find while a veteran commander plowed her from behind.

Days-long orgies, riots of hedonistic rapture, fueled by rich agave wine and animal lust, culminating in the maiden’s sacrifice on the fourth day.

No, not that. Bernie shook her head to clear away the visions.

Are you sure, daughter, not even one itsy-bitsy human sacrifice for old time's sake? What about group sex?

“No more ****! Never again.” She cracked her knuckles. “However, a thorough pummeling isn’t out of the question.”

That’s not a hard ‘no’ to the orgies. But you seem busy. We’ll commune more later.

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