Waverider Expedition - Itzalcoa
The jungle was quiet when they entered Itzalcoa. Too quiet, Gato thought, the kind of silence that meant everything was watching.
They moved through heat and shadow, the air thick as blood. Even the trees seemed alive, their trunks painted with old prayers, their roots littered with bones.
“Tracks,” Decimus murmured.
Gato crouched beside him. Footprints, deep and uneven. Bare feet, shackled. A trail of dragging iron.
They followed the path until the trees fell away, and the valley opened like a wound.
Below, a procession wound toward a city of gold and smoke. The captives shuffled in chains, flanked by warriors in jaguar skins. Sunlight struck their obsidian blades until it hurt to look.
Gato felt his throat tighten. “How many?”
“Hundreds,” said Decimus. “Maybe more.”
From that height, the city looked almost holy, a dozen ziggurats gleaming under the haze, rivers shining like molten metal. Only the smell betrayed it: incense, sweat, and the copper tang of blood.
They descended under cover of dusk. The closer they crept, the more the illusion crumbled. The golden walls were streaked with red. The air vibrated with drums that never stopped. Every street held shrines where hearts still steamed in the bowls, racks upon racks of impaled skulls.
By night, they reached the arena.
The crowd roared like a storm. Torches flickered over thousands of painted faces. In the pit below, bound men faced armored warriors who circled with slow delight. When one captive ran, the jaguar-man laughed and smashed his club into the man’s leg, breaking it like twigs. The crowd cheered.
Gato turned away. “They’re toying with them.”
Decimus’ face was shadowed. “I’ve seen men fight for life before. Slaves, thieves, soldiers. I've done things I'm ashamed of in the arena as a slave. But this... Nothing like this...” He shook his head. “This isn’t sport. It’s ritual.”
They moved on, deeper into the city’s heart, each street worse than the last. Slaves dragged bodies from the ziggurat steps, singing softly through cracked lips. Priests in crimson robes scattered ash from the volcano, tracing spirals in the air. Every wall seemed to whisper.
By dawn, the great festival began.
The drums changed, slower now, deeper, like the heartbeat of something buried beneath the earth. The captives were led up the ziggurat, their bodies painted white, their faces numb. Smoke coiled from censers of burning flesh.
A priest stepped forward, black obsidian knife raised high.
The chant grew faster. The sun turned red through the ash.
The knife cut. Slowly, leisurely, deliberately. Cuts meant to cause pain, but prolong the suffering before the final release of death.
The scream that followed didn’t sound human.
Then another. And another.
Gato’s stomach twisted. “We have to stop this.”
Decimus didn’t move. His eyes were hollow. “And then what? Kill them all? Burn their city? You can’t kill a faith, Gato.”
Gato’s voice cracked. “So we do nothing?”
“We live,” Decimus said quietly. “Long enough to remember what we saw.”
They left as the volcano rumbled, the sound blending with the chants. Smoke rose behind them like the breath of the gods.
Two days later, still walking through the jungle, they heard voices, a small caravan of captives, bound and stumbling under guard. A dozen men and women, their eyes already dead.
Gato looked to Decimus. The older man said nothing.
The ambush was silent. Arrows from the dark. Knives from behind. The guards fell before they could shout.
Gato cut the ropes. “Run,” he said. “North. Don’t stop until the trees thin.”
The freed captives fled without a word. The last looked back once, eyes wide with disbelief, then vanished into the green.
For a long time neither spoke.
Gato wiped blood from his blade. “That felt good.”
Decimus leaned on his spear. “It did. But it changed nothing. We saved a dozen. Thousands will still die.”
Gato looked toward the trail where the captives had vanished. “Maybe. But we saved a dozen.”
Decimus nodded once, weary. “Then that’s twelve the gods will starve of tonight.”
They moved on, the drums of Itzalcoa still echoing behind them, fading into the jungle’s heartbeat, but the memory was etched forever in their minds.