Huehueteotl gazed at his foolish chosen.
The obsession he had with catching up, in some way, to the other chosen. He sighed, such needless worry. The old god felt exasperated watching the young man hammer away with a sense of desperation.
A blessed iron plate was strapped to Sol's wrist. It was some form of wrist guard he had created with the gift of the fire-chosen. A crude proof Jimena had given Sol to show she had achieved proficiency in the art of hammering iron.
Huehueteotl couldn't comprehend the need mortals had for the things they did. Still, he spent his time watching them, nurturing them with his fire, its light bringing warmth that kept darkness, fear, and cold away.
If only the young Sol could understand his intentions—to listen more closely to his whispers instead of shifting them to only what he wanted to hear.
Such a shame, Huehueteotl thought, to be driven to this state; to push a young man like Sol into a battle he had never asked for. He could, at least, understand the bitterness the man held in his heart: to possess flame, yet not burn as intensely in comparison.
The irony of it all. A village of smiths who once worshiped Chantico—the poor goddess of hearth and home—now standing beneath his watch in a different form, in a harsher age. Or at least a small part of her.
-
Sol glanced at the plate strapped to his wrist, comparing it to the piece he had just hammered. His was smoother, more evenly shaped by contrast—clear proof of his experience.
So why… why was his power not seeping into the iron like Jimena's? What was he missing in the process? He had tried all day, every day, since she had given him the iron plate. It had felt almost taunting when the girl handed it to him.
Then there was the issue of how hard it was to heat the piece Jimena had made. It couldn't—at least not with any fire Sol could light in his forge. The realization sparked an anxious response within him: to see something smithed that he could not replicate.
To have grown in this village. To be its chosen. Yet to lack the ability to temper iron. His fire, even at its hottest, could only ever be used to cook food.
He let out his silent rage on the iron piece he had worked over and over—bending it, denting it, and finally cracking it apart with uneven strikes. His fire was too cold.
Sol plunged his hand into the forge, feeling the flames lick directly against his skin. Trying, for the hundredth time, to understand the heat.
He could feel it then—the creeping darkness of night. The cold mockery of the crescent moon.
"Are you still doing that?" a voice came from the dark.
His grandfather entered, supported by another smith who stared at Sol in open shock.
The villagers usually did not come to his forge at this hour. They had never seen their chosen in such a state.
The normally calm chosen—whose golden, placid eyes reminded the villagers of a steady flame—now seemed filled with bitterness and hidden grief. His once brilliant, well-kept hair was streaked with soot from the forge. His shirt, and part of his pants, smoldered as they spoke.
"We received a message from Bahía Oscura. We need you to take some people and head to Tepe," his grandfather said, already turning away.
"Your fire is not one meant to burn," he whispered with lament—the last thing, Sol barely heard him say.
It took Sol some time to pull himself together. By the time he stood ready, men were already waiting for him at the village entrance to the Green Road—the path that led toward Bahía Oscura, not where they were headed.
The entrance served only as a gathering place the villagers used whenever they left the village. A strange practice, and one Sol was not fond of. He disliked how much influence the other chosen held over his home.
It would be a long night—one that perhaps only Sol could keep at bay.
-
Luciano gathered everyone he could as the night dragged on, the men nowhere in sight. How far had they climbed the mountain? Would they truly face the creature in the dead of night? His hands would not stop trembling whenever his gaze drifted toward the dark peak. Each glance pressed a horrible weight against his mind.
The women and children stood beneath torchlight before him, shadows carved deep beneath their eyes. The youngest slept fitfully on the backs or in the arms of older siblings. Thankfully, the few men who remained were either too young or too old to have been swept away by the miners' fury.
If only the mothers had known. Not one of their children would have been taken—not without a ferocious fight from them.
Those who had lost both husbands and children refused to leave the village with everyone gathered. They still believed. Still clung to the hope that their loved ones would return.
Luciano wished it were true. But the choking pressure in his chest, the terrible dread coiling in his gut, would not allow him to wait for whatever might descend from that mountain to feast upon his people.
Whenever a villager dragged their feet when spoke of leaving, heat flared beneath his skin, as if he might ignite on the spot—while the darkness dragged its cold fingers slowly down his back.
-
Luciano felt as though they had moved without pause through the night. The women had not even asked to stop, too frightened of what lay behind them to think of their bodies' needs. Were it not for the children and the elderly, they would have gone faster. The longer he thought on it, the more something in his mind seemed to twist.
His eyes caught shifting shadows between the trees—things he knew were not there, yet still they gnawed at the edges of his thoughts.
He urged everyone forward, ordering them to relieve themselves where they stood if they had to. It was mostly the children who did. Everyone else endured in silence.
Thankfully, words entered Luciano's mind before he could stop himself, spoken without thought. Hunger, thirst, and fatigue burned away what little reason he had left.
Then the sun rose before them.
Its warmth washed through their bodies, healing them from the inside out, even as its light touched skin first.
A small speck of light appeared upon every forehead as they embraced the heat.
The fear, Luciano thought, must have driven them into delusions—visions of bathing in the sun itself. He laughed softly, entranced by the golden flames that surrounded them, warm and radiant, yet never burned.
-
Sol watched the villagers of Tepe—the few dozen gathered before him—bathe in his flames under what he could only assume was some fanatic delusion. He had spread the golden fire outward after noticing numerous shifting shadows pursuing them. At once, they had dropped to their knees, chuckling or weeping to themselves.
He guessed some of those things had come close to snatching the children and the elderly lagging at the back of the procession. Perhaps that was why they reacted with such fervor at his appearance—more aware of their peril than he had first thought.
They had his grandfather to thank for their fortune, and for Sol's reluctance to argue when it came to the old man. His grandfather had raised him. He would listen, even when asked to save a group of strangers in the middle of the night.
This was what he did for his village. And yet, never had they looked at him the way these villagers did now—faces twisted with awe and delirium, as though he were something more than a man.