Iktome Plains And when the crimson moon comes up, he drinks the blood of slaves

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No matter how much noise he’d made, freedom hadn’t been acquired. The stranger continued to lick the very same wound that he’d inflicted, leaving the boy feeling conflicted. Harm had been brought to his body—he could smell his blood and feel it flowing out of him—yet the pain had been followed by something far less sinister; it was a terrible thing, what the man was doing, but it’d been painless. His mind fought against itself, one side telling him to flee whilst the other insisted that he remain there until the service had been completed. Every time an attempt was made at imagining what the Cihuāpilli would have him do if she’d been there right then he’d come up with nothing. The way in which her mind had worked was something that he’d never been able to figure out, which proved to be a pity as he stood there having the blood lapped from his thigh. Always had she known what to say, what to do—always had she been in control. Mazatl was nothing like her, nor had he ever been, despite having suckled from her teat and been brought up under her word. She had not been his mother, no, but she’d been something close to it, and he’d been foolish enough to have at some point in his life believed that he could be like her. As he closed his eyes and drew in a ragged breath, the yearling came to realize that he’d never be like her, that he never could be—and, oddly enough, it was in that moment that her voice had echoed through his head.

The man had harmed him. He’d torn the Tētlauhtilli’s flesh without having so much as blinked. Every action had proved to be vile, but it was not that realization that had pushed the boy to act. It was the reminder of how rules had been broken, spoken in a voice that he loved, that had encouraged the normally timid youth to act rashly. Just as his other thigh had been cut into, Mazatl spun around as swiftly as his body had allowed for him to move—and then regretted it immediately after. The combination of blood loss and sudden movements never spelled out a happy ending, and that was a painful reality that he’d been slapped with as storm clouds started to fill his vision. A mist rolled in behind his eyes, blurring his perception at first, then stealing it away entirely as an abyss opened up and swallowed his sight. Stumbling forward, he’d managed to hold himself up for no longer than a second before his body had fallen over. Splayed across the ground, he could do nothing as he waited for his vision to return and the dizziness and throbbing in his head to go away.

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