POV: Haruki Yamashiro
Treat others as you wish to be treated, his father had always said. Haruki certainly could not remember ever treating anyone like a god, and although he had indeed become one, that revelation did little to ease the discomfort of watching an entire horde of youkai stumble over themselves whenever he shifted his gaze or moved so much as a finger.
"I apologize for my people's less than graceful manners, my Lord," Yasaka said as she set a steaming cup of tea before him. "Your presence has… overwhelmed them. They are delighted beyond words that one such as yourself has chosen to stand beside us."
"It's no issue," Haruki replied before lifting the cup for a quiet sip.
His attention scarcely lingered within the secluded pocket dimension. Near omniscience proved to be among the most difficult aspects of his newfound existence to master. His consciousness no longer occupied a single place, and every passing moment introduced another layer of reality demanding recognition. He remained seated before Yasaka while simultaneously watching Rias Gremory accept the King Piece in a distant corner of existence, and elsewhere he observed the once proud leader of the Hero Faction weeping in broken delirium as countless lives and centuries of suffering flooded relentlessly through his mind.
His awareness continued expanding without effort until entire nations unfolded before him in a single glance, revealing billions of ordinary people laughing, grieving, working, sleeping, falling in love, burying their dead, making promises they would never keep, and living peaceful little lives without realizing their world stood only a handful of heartbeats away from an age that would forever divide history into before and after. Distance had surrendered all meaning. Every horizon lay equally close, every conversation arrived together, and every living soul existed within reach of a single thought.
He heard their prayers as naturally as another man might hear the rain striking his roof. Reality itself seemed intent on introducing him to every abandoned plea cast into the heavens, as though the world had discovered a vacant throne and instinctively sought to fill it with the newest divinity. Faith wandered homeless through the world like an orphan knocking upon abandoned doors, and creation, unable to distinguish between one divinity and another, laid those petitions at his feet as though he were the natural heir to every vacant altar.
Haruki rejected that expectation without the slightest hesitation. He had no desire to gather worshippers, receive hymns, or build another religion destined to imprison future generations beneath sacred obligations. A man who surrendered his judgment merely because another possessed greater strength deserved neither salvation nor freedom. If mankind required a god in order to stand upright, then mankind had learned nothing from the death of every faith that had come before.
"This is rather an unprecedented state of affairs," Yasaka said suddenly, drawing him back from the countless places in which his awareness had wandered. "I am afraid, even I don't know the proper etiquette for such a situation."
"Unprecedented?" Haruki repeated, one brow rising.
"When someone of great power intervenes in another faction's affairs, there exists an expectation of reciprocity." Yasaka offered a faint smile. "Nothing within the supernatural is ever truly free. Every favor incurs a debt. We have become exceedingly efficient at maximizing our own interests, often at the expense of duty, compassion, or simple decency. Take the dragon, the mightiest race in existence for instance. They are so consumed by their own ambitions and desires that many do not even bother to raise their own offspring. Their hatchlings are simply abandoned to survive or perish on their own."
"A fascinating observation," Haruki replied. "Though I fail to see your point."
"You asked me earlier whether I had become so accustomed to attaching a price tag to basic decency that the notion of helping another without demanding compensation had become incomprehensible to me." Yasaka looked into her tea. "Your question has lingered in my thoughts ever since. I-I... wished to understand why your willingness to help me felt… so profoundly unnatural."
"And?" Haruki asked. "What conclusion did you reach?"
Yasaka remained silent for a moment before speaking.
"If I had to summarize the philosophy that underpins supernatural society in a single sentence, It would be this: Nobody owes you anything. If you desire something from another, you must offer something of equal value in return. Every relationship is transactional. To inconvenience yourself for the sake of another without receiving anything in return is often viewed as foolishness, even exploitation. Why should anyone sacrifice their time, their comfort, or expose themselves to danger for the benefit of someone whose suffering has no bearing upon their own life?"
"Why is that?" Haruki asked, genuinely intrigued. "You think humanity doesn't operate by the same principle?"
"No," Yasaka answered after a moment's thought. "I believe humans are fundamentally different."
"Why?"
"A human being can never become entirely self-sufficient." She folded her hands neatly in her lap before continuing. "A single human cannot overcome the power of many. No matter how gifted they are, there will come a day when they require another's assistance. A society can't function if every individual concerns himself only with his own welfare. It's considered proper for a young man to surrender his seat to an elderly woman, to help a frightened child find her parents, or to carry groceries for someone too frail to do so alone. Most people receive no reward for these acts beyond the quiet satisfaction of having done what they believed was right. Such customs exist because every human understands that, one day, he too may be the one who requires another's kindness.
"A dragon has no such necessity. It has little incentive to cultivate obligations beyond those it personally desires. Why would a dragon inconvenience himself for someone incapable of offering anything in return? The stronger a supernatural being becomes, the less dependent they are upon everyone around them. Independence gradually erodes obligation, and power eventually convinces its bearer that no one else's needs are worth sacrificing for."
"So your thesis amounts to saying that power breeds selfishness."
"Broadly speaking… yes." Yasaka laughed quietly. "That's why I sometimes envy humanity. 'Nobody owes you anything' is an empowering philosophy only when you imagine yourself as the one being asked for help. That's the perspective from which most supernatural beings view the world. They seldom stop to consider the opposite question: what if sacrificing a small measure of your comfort to ease another's burden creates a better world, even if you gain nothing personally? Humans understand this instinctively because their civilization would collapse without it. No human being possesses the strength to satisfy every need through his own efforts, and so they cultivate communities built upon countless quiet obligations that are never written into law."
"You have an optimistic view of humanity," Haruki said with a soft chuckle. "Following your reasoning, if humanity were suddenly to awaken the ability to wield magic, would human civilization inevitably descend into endless greed and selfishness as well?"
"In such a world…" Yasaka considered the thought carefully. "I believe it very well might. Humanity's helplessness is, in many respects, a blessing. It obliges them to remain considerate of one another in ways we rarely are. Their weakness compels virtues our strength has rendered optional…don't you agree?"
There was truth in what she said. Power had always possessed a peculiar gravity. It drew men inward until the horizon of the world ended at the edge of their own desires. The less one needed others, the easier it became to forget they existed except as obstacles, instruments, or spectators. Magic would undoubtedly change humanity. And yet he could not bring himself to believe that power alone dictated the shape of a soul.
Man had always been a creature divided against himself. Within every heart dwelt both the tyrant and the saint, forever contending for dominion. Hunger, fear, pride, greed. These were ancient companions, and yet beside them walked stranger things still. The hands of men and women who possessed every opportunity to place themselves above others, yet chose instead to kneel beside the wounded. Civilization endured because, generation after generation, enough people found within themselves the strength to rise above that selfishness, if only for fleeting moments. Love, duty, beauty, friendship, and conscience were fragile things, forever at war with greed and fear, yet the miracle was that they continued to triumph often enough for civilization to survive another dawn. Perhaps goodness had always been the weaker force. Perhaps that was precisely what made it beautiful.
"No," Haruki said at last, meeting Yasaka's gaze with a sincere smile. "I don't believe that. Nor do I believe supernatural beings are inherently selfish."
He had known too many exceptions to accept such a conclusion. Power was a tool, nothing more. It magnified what already resided within the heart of its bearer. He had watched men and women who could have ruled through fear instead spend their strength easing the burdens of others. Sirzechs, Serafall, Falbium…Even the Hero Faction, for all its flaws and contradictions, had willingly staked their lives upon ideals larger than themselves. If magic possessed the power to cultivate arrogance, then it possessed an equal capacity to enable extraordinary compassion. Great power merely afforded greater opportunities for either virtue or vice.
"How so, my lord?" Yasaka asked, genuinely surprised.
"You're allowing your bitterness to cloud your judgment, My fair Lady" Haruki replied gently. "Understandably so. Every ally you believed you could rely upon abandoned you the moment the Jaguar's Jaw closed around your neck, leaving you and your people to fend for yourselves. Anyone would become cynical after such betrayal." He smiled faintly. "And yet… are you not living proof against your own argument?"
An hour later Haruki stood before the hidden heart of Kyoto and watched the city dream in gold. The leyline flowed beneath the youkai capital like a river remembered by the earth from some first and purer age. A vast migration of luminous threads braided through one another until their number deceived the eye and became a single current of molten radiance, though when he looked closely he could distinguish every strand and the burden it carried.
The beauty of the leyline made its corruption more grievous. Disease moved within the gold in blackened skeins that clung to the shining threads like rot beneath the skin of fruit. The spiritual river shuddered whenever it passed through those lesions.
A smell like wet stone, burnt maize, opened bodies, and rain upon extinguished fires lingered over the river. Haruki regarded the corruption with quiet disgust. It had the deliberate character of a parasite that had learned the shape of its host and grown patient within it, feeding slowly enough to avoid killing the thing from which it drank. Tezcatlipoca had fastened himself to Kyoto through Yasaka's own sacred charge and turned every prayer offered to the city into nourishment for an alien god.
"Are you ready?" Haruki asked. He held his chin between thumb and forefinger while his gaze followed the collision of the clean current and the diseased tributaries. "We'll be making an odyssey through the leyline, and once we enter, distance will have very little to do with geography."
Yasaka's fluttering tails betrayed her nervousness. "Are you certain there is nothing we ought to bring with us, my lord?"
"Such as?"
"A gift would be customary, or an offering appropriate to his station." She looked toward the black growths spreading through her river, and the effort required to speak calmly hardened the line of her jaw. "Diplomacy among gods is a game of flattery, no offense intended. Tezcatlipoca is proud and inclined to find insults where none was intended. Arriving before him empty-handed may be received as contempt, particularly when we enter his domain without invitation."
"We're not going there for a social call," Haruki said. "We're going to evict an unlawful tenant from your property."
Yasaka drew a quiet breath. "He may object to that description."
"He may present his objection after he removes his teeth from your leyline."
Haruki extended his awareness through the radiant river once again and found a narrow region where the corruption had wrapped itself around an unbroken filament of pure spiritual power.
"There," he said. "I have found an entrance. Take my hand."
Yasaka placed her fingers in his and held with more firmness than her earlier anxiety had suggested. Haruki closed his hand around hers and stepped into the chosen strand. The world folded with the sound of silk torn underwater. He saw the city burning under ancient wars, rebuilt under spring rain, then watched by generations of foxes whose stone mouths had weathered smooth. The spiral contracted until light and darkness became a single needle driven through his sight, and when the pressure broke they stood beneath a sky that had forgotten its proper place.
Tezcatlipoca's domain extended around them with cruel magnificence. The earth beneath Haruki's feet had the texture of ancient hide, fissured into broad scales from which dark seawater seeped like blood. Mountains curved across the horizon like the ribs of some buried beast, while forests of black maize grew between them.
Haruki understood that the land had been fashioned from Cipactli and remained alive beneath all the cities, temples, and roads forced upon her mutilated body. The sun overhead burned black around its edges, an obsidian circle whose center glowed like a coal held in a dead man's mouth. At times the disk assumed the shape of a severed foot suspended in the heavens, the ankle trailing smoke. At other times it opened into a jaguar's eye and followed them across the plain.
The dead of four ruined ages wandered through that country. Men with faces scarred by claws crawled from ruined forests while immense jaguars moved through their ranks and devoured them without haste. Birds with feathers charred to white ash circled beneath clouds that rained sparks, and their wings ignited anew whenever they descended toward the earth. Beyond them lay a flooded city visible beneath a clear sheet of water standing upright like a wall, its avenues filled with fish bearing human eyes and mouths.
Haruki felt the laws of the place shifting around his presence, seeking a form of reality in which he could be made vulnerable, and found the effort tiresome. A pair of dark sunglasses materialized over his eyes, their lenses reflecting the impossible country without permitting its symbols to enter his mind uninvited.
"Now that I have brought us here," he said, "you'll guide us the rest of the way."
Yasaka looked from him to the dead fish scattered across the scaled ground. "How am I to guide us through a place I have never entered, my lord? You understand far more of it than I do."
"This is a journey of the spirit. Tezcatlipoca has been feeding upon you through the leyline, and appetite creates a connection between the devourer and what he seeks to consume. I merely followed that strand to its source. You're still the object of his hunger, which makes you better attuned to his path than I could be." Haruki gestured toward the shifting horizon. "You should feel his call more clearly here. Close your eyes, listen for it, and lead us toward whatever wishes to devour you."
Yasaka's expression tightened at those words, though she closed her eyes and gathered her tails around herself. Golden light moved through her fur in slow waves as she searched inward, and Haruki observed the domain respond. Yasaka took one cautious step, then another, and the landscape rearranged itself around her chosen direction. A road of white skulls rose from the mud and stretched ahead until it disappeared beneath a procession of burning clouds.
The sea appeared above them.
It hung across the whole sky with its surface facing downward, an inverted ocean filled with drowned temples, corpses drifting among green reeds, and pale fish moving through the hair of dead women. Haruki watched it descend and felt only the mild irritation of a man encountering rain without an umbrella.
The water fell upon them without impact and swallowed earth. Yasaka's hand tightened around his. Her robes billowed as she attempted to swim, though every motion drew her back to the same point while drowned figures passed nearby, their mouths open and their fingers reaching for her ankles.
"My lord," she said, silver bubbles escaping her lips. "My Youjutsu has become sluggish. I can't feel the current, and I fear we shall drown if we stay here."
"Try breathing," Haruki replied. "It usually helps you avoid drowning."
Yasaka stared at him through the wavering dark. "That's normally the action one avoids beneath water."
"The water is symbolic," he continued. "Our bodies are not actually submerged in an ocean. Your fear gives it the authority to behave as one. Breathe, accept that the flood has already happened, and continue walking."
She breathed. Water entered her mouth and emerged as tiny flowers. The pressure weakened. The drowned hands released her, and the sea divided before them, leaving them upon a path between two vertical walls of dark water where fish with human faces watched in solemn silence.
Beyond the sea rose Tezcatlipoca's seat of power, a city-palace whose boundaries escaped the eye. Terraces climbed from the plain in successive mountains of black stone, linked by ceremonial stairways stained dark with centuries of sacrifice. Obsidian serpents coiled along the balustrades while jaguar heads breathed slow columns of smoke that became mirrors in the air. Temples, skull racks, and gardens of crimson flowers spread outward until distance swallowed them into a wavering black horizon.
The dead crowded every stair and courtyard. They wore feathered mantles, jaguar skins, and brilliant gold ornaments, while priests painted black from head to heel danced among warriors bearing shields marked with suns and serpents. Their celebration possessed the rhythm of a carnival conducted at the edge of a grave, each dancer smiling with teeth filed sharp, each masked figure turning in circles until the soles of his feet wore away and exposed bone.
They sang as one body while Haruki and Yasaka passed through them.
"O master, O our lord, O lord of the near and the night, O night, O wind, poor am I. In what manner shall I act for thy city, and in what manner shall I act for the governed and the vassals? I am blind, I am deaf, I am an imbecile, and in excrement and filth has my lifetime been spent. Perhaps thou seekest another in my stead. Perhaps another soul was desired, and I have been summoned through error."
The prayer rolled across the terraces and returned from the walls in deepening echoes until the words became an admission spoken by the city itself. Yasaka watched the dancers with unease, though Haruki gave them no attention beyond what was required to avoid stepping through one of the dead. Worshippers of cruel gods often imagined their abasement proved divine grandeur. He had heard the same sentiment in churches and courts, adorned with different languages and costumes while preserving the same exhausted desire to place responsibility for suffering in the hands of someone stronger.
They entered through a gate shaped like the mouth of a jaguar. Inside, corridors stretched beneath ceilings painted with the five suns, each age ending in claws, wind, fire, water, or darkness. Mosaic serpents ran along the floors in turquoise and jade. Obsidian mirrors occupied alcoves guarded by kneeling stone warriors, and within every mirror Haruki saw a different possibility of himself, crowned, worshipped, kneeling, laughing over a dead world, or seated alone at the end of time. He ignored them.
The walls showed Tezcatlipoca with his smoking mirror, whispering into the ears of kings, and gifting wealth with one hand while preparing ruin with the other. Jaguars prowled between pillars plated in gold leaf, their bodies passing through stone and smoke. Flutes played somewhere beyond sight, gentle and mournful, the melody of a beautiful youth fattened for a year before being led up temple steps to die as the god's image.
At the end of the palace they entered a hall large enough to contain the heavens. Pillars rose like black mountains and disappeared into clouds trapped beneath the ceiling. A causeway of polished obsidian crossed the darkness toward a throne whose seat could have supported a skyscraper. Steps climbed toward it in endless tiers, each carved with eyes that opened as Haruki approached.
Upon that throne sat Tezcatlipoca.
No single form could contain him for the length of a breath. He appeared first as a jaguar vast enough to consume cities, its coat filled with stars and its open jaws revealing the ruins of the first sun. Then the beast became a young man of faultless proportion, slender as a reed, smooth-skinned, clean-limbed, and beautiful with the severe perfection of an idol chosen for sacrifice. Black paint crossed his face in bands. Quetzal feathers crowned his head. Golden ornaments hung from his ears and nose, and in one hand he held a flute carved from human bone.
The youth aged as Haruki watched, becoming a warrior wrapped in jaguar hide, then a skeletal priest with flint teeth, then a woman whose long hair poured rain upon drowned cities, then a shadow carrying a mirror in which every treachery ever conceived flickered like candlelight. At moments his body expanded until the palace seemed built within his ribs. At others he dwindled into a black hummingbird perched upon the throne's arm, its tiny breast beating with the sound of war drums.
Two eyes remained constant through every transformation. They were black, reflective, and depthless, mirrors fashioned to show an observer the secret weakness he had hidden even from himself.
Those eyes settled upon Yasaka first. Hunger passed through the hall, and Yasaka trembled. Then Tezcatlipoca looked at Haruki, and the black sun burning above his realm seemed to lean closer.
"We meet at last, Haruki Yamashiro," Tezcatlipoca said, and the voice issued from every mirror in the hall before reaching them from the throne. "I have been waiting for this moment since the mirrors first showed me that you would come."
"Have you now?" Haruki asked. "Then I assume they also spared you the suspense of wondering why I came. Excellent. We may spare ourselves the tedious explanations and whatever dramatic prophecy you prepared for the occasion." He turned his attention back toward the throne and inclined his head with exaggerated civility. "Would you be so kind as to stop poisoning Kyoto's leyline, return the children you have taken, and leave the Western Youkai Faction in peace? I understand that abandoning a profitable infestation may wound your pride, but I am prepared to endure your disappointment."
The jaguar's ears twitched. Its jaws parted in what might have been amusement, revealing fangs shaped like curved sacrificial blades.
"Why such haste?" Tezcatlipoca asked. "Meetings between beings of our stature are seldom ordained. Why not take the opportunity to talk? Let each acknowledge each. You and I have a lot in common, after all."
"Are you sure your masters would approve of that?" Haruki asked. "I would imagine creatures as deranged as they are would keep a shorter leash upon their pets."
The jaguar vanished into a pillar of smoke. From within it emerged an old warrior clad in a mantle of black feathers, his skin painted with ash and blood.
"The stars bespoke the end," the God of Strife said to Haruki. "These are the last days, when the old world shall be broken upon the anvil of fate and forged anew. From graves and charnel pits shall a new god arise, crowned by the bones of the fallen. The age now dying has no future to offer you. Stand with us, and behold the birth of eternity. Stand against us, and perish with all those who struggle against the inevitable."
"Never," Haruki replied with easy finality. "I have little desire to become a slave to a horde of gibbering degenerates, no matter how powerful they claim to be."
"Who spoke of slavery?" Tezcatlipoca leaned forward, and the palace shuddered beneath the movement. "Look again, Prince of Ruin. Raise your eyes and see where I am seated. Then tell me whether you still see a collar around my neck."
The obsidian throne dissolved into drifting smoke, and darkness surged outward until the palace and the endless hall vanished into a silent abyss. When the shadows receded, Tezcatlipoca upon a mountain raised from skulls. Human skulls formed its foundation in their countless millions, mingled with the remains of dragons, devils, angels, giants. Their empty sockets glowed with cold blue fire, illuminating a forest of colossal swords planted around the throne, each blade broader than a city wall and tall enough to disappear into the heavens, their steel blackened by divine blood. A vision of the far future.
Upon those impossible weapons hung the bodies of gods, displayed with the solemn grandeur of a conqueror who had arranged his victories into a monument. Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, and Indra were suspended nearest the throne. Beyond them hung the Olympians, Zeus transfixed upon a lightning-shaped blade, Athena impaled in shattered armor. Beyond them stood the fallen gods of Asgard, Odin pierced upon a spear that reached the clouds, Thor broken beside him with the fragments of Mjölnir buried in his chest, while the dead World Tree loomed behind them with its split trunk packed full of corpses.
A vast congregation of broken heavens surrounding Tezcatlipoca's throne as rivers of divine ichor flowed down the mountain of skulls and gathered at the feet of the Obsidian God.
"Look at them," Tezcatlipoca said, spreading his arms over the slaughtered heavens. "These are the great powers before whom whole nations lowered their heads. These are the guardians of law, the keepers of sun and storm, the fathers of kings, the mothers of harvest, and the warriors whose names once made armies tremble. Their temples have become their tombs. I sit above their ruin with my crown intact and my purpose unchanged. So tell me where you see a chain. Show me the master whose lash has ever forced me to kneel."
"A very enticing vision," Haruki said. "The impalements are somewhat excessive, but I suppose subtlety would be wasted on your clientele. But I am afraid I must decline."
"Why?" The God of Strife asked bewildered. "What binds your heart so tightly to a world already condemned? Why choose to be buried beneath its ruins when you could instead rise from its ashes and stand among those who shall inherit the world to come?"
"A creature such as you would never understand."
Tezcatlipoca regarded him without offense. "A true god ought to rid himself of all claims laid upon him."
Haruki tilted his head. "Claims?"
"The countless voices that say: You belong to me."
Haruki's expression barely changed. "I belong to nobody."
"You believe so because no man owns your saddle," Tezcatlipoca replied. "Yet your fear owns you. Your hunger for understanding owns you. Your pity owns you. A man imagines himself free because he sees no hand upon the reins and never thinks to look beneath the harness. There are tyrannies whose governments are so ancient that they no longer require the spectacle of chains. Conscience and hope are chains of mortals, not gods."
Haruki's expression tightened by a degree. "A man can't help but seek to be understood."
"Can he not?" Tezcatlipoca asked. "The desire to be understood is no different from any other appetite. It whispers that recognition is necessary, that another soul must witness yours before your existence is complete. Many spend their entire lives pleading their case before indifferent judges, forever hoping someone will finally say, I know you. The longing to be understood declares its demands with great conviction but it has no authority beyond that which a man concedes it. The will alone decides."
Haruki folded his arms. "And what of us gods?" he asked. "Are we simply another claimant upon the soul?"
A faint smile crossed Tezcatlipoca's face. "If We are then We have entered the contest like every other sovereign. Men have long imagined authority to be sanctified by age. They suppose that because a throne has stood since the world's beginning it therefore requires no justification. But all dominions seek the same tribute. It asks of a man that he surrender judgment in exchange for certainty and liberty in exchange for peace. The names by which these kingdoms are called alter nothing of their appetite."
"A chain is forced upon a man by another will," Haruki said. "A principle is a burden he accepts after judgment of his own accord and carries because he has deemed it worthy. The freedom to discard every duty, betray every bond, and answer every claim with indifference proves only that one is incapable of loyalty. Even beasts have that liberty."
"Because it allows you to imagine yourself kind?" Tezcatlipoca mocked. "Kindness is no measure of sovereignty. A collar of velvet restrains the hound no less securely than one forged of iron. The prisoner who comes to love his gaoler remains a prisoner all the same. You have not escaped mastery. You have merely rendered your obedience willingly. Do you understand at last? There is no man who does not answer to something."
Haruki grew speculative. For the first time since entering the palace, Tezcatlipoca's words had found something within him that refused immediate dismissal. They were not convincing, but neither were they easily discarded. If no law possessed authority over him, if no god could compel him, if neither fear, love, nor duty held any rightful dominion unless he himself consented to it, then what remained? He had grown so powerful that no external force could meaningfully constrain him.
Did freedom, carried to such an extreme, simply become permission? Was he entitled to do whatever pleased him merely because no one remained capable of stopping him? If the answer was no, as every instinct within him insisted, then upon what foundation did that answer stand? Why should he restrain himself when restraint was no longer demanded of him? What did morality mean to one who stood beyond punishment?
His thoughts turned inward with unusual seriousness.
Then what is my ethical system? What do I actually believe? What principle have I accepted because I judged it true, rather than because I inherited it from human experience? If my will is truly sovereign, does that make whatever I desire in any given moment good simply because I desire it? Today I happen to feel merciful. Tomorrow I may not. Is my present benevolence nothing more than a preference of temperament? If that changes, does justice change with it? Does right become whatever mood happens to govern me?
The thought left him quietly dissatisfied. A will unconstrained by anything is indistinguishable from whim. Yet a will governed entirely by another ceases to be its own. Somewhere between those extremes lies the answer… but where? What are my principles? Which of them have I truly chosen? And by what measure did I choose them?
"Everything that lays claim upon a man must first present itself before the tribunal of his own reason and there answer for the authority it presumes to wield," Haruki said at last. "Fear, Love, Duty, Faith…none are exempt from judgment. Let each claimant produce its warrant and suffer examination, for whatever cannot endure inquiry is fit only to command slaves. Most men pass through the world inhabited by voices not their own, carrying burdens chosen by strangers long dead.
"A free man proceeds otherwise. He summons everything that lay claim to his will to account and asks by what right it would govern the kingdom of his soul. Whatever survives that reckoning he may embrace willingly and without shame, for obedience freely chosen is no servitude. But whatever fails, though it speaks with the tongue of prophets or wears a crown of stars, must be cast aside. For no authority is sacred merely because it declares itself so. The final sovereignty belongs always to the mind that dares to judge. A self must establish laws for itself and remain faithful to them when appetites revolt."
AN: Well, someone had to eventually ask Haruki whether handing out magic to humanity is actually a good idea. Not that it's going to change his mind at this point.
I originally wanted to include the fight in this chapter, but I decided against it. Mostly because I have about five different ideas for how battles between gods should look, and I'm dissatisfied with every single one of them. Clearly, the solution is to procrastinate until inspiration strikes. A flawless writing strategy with absolutely no downsides.
As for the Aztec mythology, I'm using the Myth of the Five Suns as the basis for the setting, so a lot of the motifs and imagery for Tezcatlipoca's divine realm are drawn from that. It's a fascinating myth even with my surface level research, the fact that Tezcatlipoca can literally turn into a big ass Jaguar is just ridiculously cool.
Advanced chapters are available on my Patreon. If you want to read ahead, vote on which story gets updated each week, or simply support my writing so I can focus more on it, you can check it out here: /abeltargaryen?