I have flown many flags in my long life. Every land ruled, every host led, requires one. Heraldry is a source of pride, a rallying point in battle, a warning to enemies and a beacon to friends. In the early days, I did not put much thought into them as perhaps I should. It was only as my life progressed, as my legend built, that I adopted colors, symbols, and designs. Soon, they became as another name.

The most common symbol upon my banners has always been the feathered serpent. You will see her on my coat of arms that hangs in the feasting hall of Stormspoint. See her on the battle banner of Malthu's Marauders, reared up to strike. See her still, flapping in pennons over Ironmotte.

Any who know of me knows why the feathered serpent flies over my castles and hosts. What is not known is how this came to pass. As with anything related to my time in exile, there exists no authoritative chronicle. This chapter will rectify that. What follows is the tale of my meeting with my Quiyahui.

After the battle against Texomoc, I followed the Ocaital to the west, continuing to assist those who needed it. News of me had spread. The defense of Tlaican was already taking the flavor of a legend. Descriptions of Ur-Anu were extravagant, from stories of priceless jewels to the intricate haft to the power that pulsed through it. All focused on the blade that looked like obsidian but would not break.

I was not the only legend in the jungle. The Ocaital is a magical place, a place where stories take on their own life. I began to hear stories of a place in the highlands as the Mixtayhua, the Land of Clouds. The locals claimed this to be a land of the city of the gods. I could not resist such a summons, and made for it.

The highlands, called the Copatloc, rise roughly in the middle of the Ocaital, with many towns and villages set in the places where the rivers flowed from the peaks and plateaus. The land here is fertile but rugged, the people a hardy lot.

I found a pathway into the hills, and quickly regretted being so cavalier. The more I climbed, the colder the jungle. Clouds slithered down from the highlands in sticky tentacles, bearing with them a bone chilling cold. I was shivering miserably on my ascent when I wandered into a town called Montlís.

Montlís was nestled into rolling hills, where herders grazed flocks of the same birds I had first encountered in Pelesamatu. They looked to be shorter and stouter, with thicker feathers, and impressive head crests. I would learn they were the local strain, bred to survive in the highlands. Their feathers were thicker, their bodies laden with savory fat.

As I strode into town, the locals stared at me. I was quite obviously a northerner, sported long, unkempt hair and a wild beard. I was clad in a loincloth and boots, along with a wide and shallowly-conical hat I had taken from a dead man. It had kept the sun and rain off my head and shoulders, and I did not mind the bloodstain on the chin strap. Lastly, I carried the spear, the one that was already a legend.

The locals wore simple kilts with leggings beneath, along with vests, and often jackets, all topped off with feathered cloaks obviously made from their avian charges. They grew their black hair long and kept it in elaborate braids, with modest tattoos on their cheeks and the backs of their hands.

I was making my way up the road that cut through the town, shivering in the highland cold when a local man approached me. He had kind eyes and a few threads of gray in his black hair, but he was still young. "Traveler, you look cold," he said. His accent was strange, but his Huyu was quite understandable.

"I am," I said.

"Then you will come with me, traveler."

I was not taken aback. Hospitality is a sacred tradition through this part of the world. It is one of the reasons I hold the people in such high regard. He led me to his home, a stone and mortar building with a thatched roof. A stable with a fenced-in corral was home to a flock of the local birds.

Inside, the central room was about a hearth, where a woman tended a fragrant stew. Two children looked up from their games. The fire instantly put some warmth in my bones, and the delicious aroma made my stomach rumble. On all three faces I saw only welcoming curiosity.

"This is my wife, Pumaya," said the man. "My children, Kasha and Palca. I am Mamak."

"Ashuz," I said, removing my hat. "Thank you."

He waved me off. "It is my honor."

"Ashuz, what are you doing wandering the Copatloc dressed like that?" Pumaya demanded.

"I came up from the Ocaital. This is appropriate dress there."

"Not so here. Mamak, find this man some clothing."

"That's not necessary," I said, though I knew the argument was pointless. One was supposed to object and be overruled. It was part of the custom.

"Nonsense. Warm yourself by the fire, Ashuz. The stew will be ready soon."

I set Ur-Anu next to the fire, my hat next to it, and settled down in front of the flames. Warmth covered my body, banishing the deep cold that had taken root there. Mamak returned with leggings, a jacket, and a cloak. "These should do. That is quite a weapon, Ashuz. You are a warrior?"

"Sometimes." I wrapped the cloak about my shoulders and instantly felt better. It was made of feathers, layered from the soft down out to the stiff outer feathers. I would soon learn that it kept the rain off me and the warmth within. The jacket and leggings were of supple skin, laced with leather.

Palca, the boy, stared at me in wonder. "Really?"

I looked about, finding the expectant faces of my hosts. "Can I tell them a story?" I asked Mamak and Pumaya.

"They are children," Pumaya warned.

"Of course, yes. Let me tell you the story of Izhapoma and the City of the Dead." I wove that story, though it still had the power to cut me. I did not dwell on the horror of the rotkin nor of their monstrous god, but even so, little Palca hid his face during Mh'rohgg's rampage. Kasha, however, watched me raptly during those parts. I also omitted my dalliances, saying only that I intended to marry Ixem.

"That is quite a story, Ashuz," Pumaya said at its finish. "And you tell it so well."

"Oh, it is..." I watched her eyes widen, giving me her meaning. "Yes, I am a storyteller. It's a gift. A way to repay kind hospitality."

She spooned stew into bowls, giving the guest the first one. The meal was hearty, and between that, the cloak, and the fire, I was truly warm for the first time since leaving the lowlands. The spice was subtle and complex, every spoonful a dance of flavors.

After feeding me, my hosts retired to their rooms, giving me leave to sleep in front of their hearth. I slept well in a cocoon of warmth, grateful to these people.

The next day I went on my way, wearing the clothing Mamak had given me and carrying a sack of dried meat and berries they'd insisted I take. As I climbed, thunder echoed through the highlands more persistently. The air held a prickly charge. The clouds above went from white, to gray, with a deep black at their center. I felt as though I were walking into a storm.

It was a sensation I knew well, and one I thought lost in the past. When my familiar died, that connection had been severed. The connection to the skyfire was gone, a scar across my soul. I would no longer call the storm. And yet, the sensation I felt now, the bright scent in my nose, could be nothing else.

I came around a turn in the path and I beheld what had to be my destination. A peak in the middle rose high above the others. A ring of stormclouds darker than lead clung to it. Inside lightning flashed in the pregnant clouds, sending thunder rolling down into the lowlands. My breath caught. I saw not only beauty, but fury. This could only be the Mixtayhua. Inside, must be the city of the gods.

Paths thinned, became trails. I continued, and though finding food grew more difficult, I relied on the principles Chala taught me and survived. Nothing would keep me from that central peak.

The clouds slithered down the slopes on some days, enveloping me in a blinding, chilling fog. On others, they retreated to the peaks. As I left civilization behind, the highlands took on a feel of magic. The jungles were dense and mysterious, and the rolling peaks, clad only in soft grass, were breathtaking. The clouds about the highest peak were always dark and rageful, growing white as they shed down the slopes.

More of the mountain birds grazed in open areas. Four-legged creatures, feathered and beaked, hunted them in packs. I watched these predators warily and more than once I was obliged to convince them I was not worth their trouble. Their meat was stringy and sour, but it was edible enough.

My ascent was not direct. I was often forced to backtrack around valleys and cliffs. I would not allow myself to admit defeat and return to the lowlands. There was no purpose in my wandering and thus the purpose I gave it mattered more than any other. I had decided that I would make it to the Mixtayhua, and thus I would accept nothing else.

As I drew nearer to the clouds, they eclipsed the sky. Soon, I was walking through perpetual night. I shivered in my cloak, but I never stopped my journey. I started to see rivulets of rainwater finding their way to the rivers and streams. These grew, multiplied. Then, one day, I crossed a curtain, and I was in the rain itself.

It was colder than the warm rains of the jungle lowlands. Here, it carried with it a feeling of ice. I was grateful for my hat and the cloak. They kept the worst from me.

I saw massive, shaggy lumbering creatures that browsed low-hanging branches for food. They were not dangerous so long as I gave them their space, but once riled, they could be fearsome. One day I was watching one of these from beneath the shade of a branch while the rain came down all around. I was considering killing the beast for meat, wondering if I could find a place to smoke its flesh. I would not slay the creature and waste the dragon's share of it. I am sentimental in that way.

A bolt of lightning hit it. That was what I thought. It was yellow, shot through with blue, and struck faster than my eye could see. But it did not blind me the way a lightning strike would, and there was no pop of skyfire, no charge in the air.

The bolt coiled around the beast, now uttering mournful, frightened honks. It was no bolt, but a serpent, covered in bright feathers. It had struck out of the sky and now constricted this beast, working the creature's head into its mouth. I watched as the serpent, with reptilian inevitability, swallowed the terrified creature inch by inch.

When it was finished, it struck the air and took flight. The elegant feathered thing, though swollen with a fresh meal, slithered off into the sky and was gone in the clouds. I was amazed at the creature's beauty and the terrible efficiency of its strike. I would later learn that these creatures were known, if rare, through Uazica. The word for feathered serpent in Huyu is coatl.

The following day, I saw another one of these creatures, a brilliant green, in the clouds. I crouched in the protective embrace of a tree until it was out of sight. I saw two more the following day, and more the day after. The sky thickened with them the closer I drew to the peak. They came in every scintillating color, darting through the clouds like living lightning. They were beautiful but terrifying, hunting and killing whatever they wished.

The thunder was deafening now, and it no longer sounded exactly like a storm. An impact came, and the ground shook with each strike. The rain was not entirely constant either. Sometimes it would be thick and driving. At other times barely more than a cloying mist.

There is a sensation that I had come to know well during my time in exile. I first felt it most strongly in Storm's Rest, when Old Heacharus tried to make a meal of me. This is the sense of knowing that you are prey. It is a physical sensation, a weight on the back of the neck that never truly goes away. The blood thunders with its own storm, the heart beating a deadly tattoo.

I began to see one coatl specifically, shadowing me from high above. This one's feathers were snowy white like the clouds at the base of the highlands. I caught sight of her out of the corners of my eyes, darting through the leaden clouds. I began to look upon her as death, dogging my every step. A beautiful, elegant death, something I no longer feared.

The peak was not distant. The thunder had grown impossibly loud. The feathered serpents were everywhere and of every size. The smallest, like the white who hunted me, was still twice as long as I was tall. Others were far larger. Prey had thinned too, the walking birds, the shaggy browsers, even the four-legged predators. I soon became aware that I was the biggest landbound creature in the area.

I was deep in the cloud now. The rain was a solid thing. I felt as though I were swimming rather than walking. Were it not for the hat keeping the water from my eyes, I would be blind. The ground fell away in front of me and I stopped, the sight before me pulling the breath from my lungs.

The peak was not a peak. It was a bowl, a crater where a peak had once been. Inside was a truly mammoth feathered serpent. Its sheer impossible size would have driven anyone else mad. I had the enviable position of encountering such monsters in the past. I had seen such a gigantic creature in the recent past. Mh'rohgg, the god of the rotkin was as vast, though where that beast was hideous, this was one of indescribable beauty.

It was in pain, thrashing about in place. Chains of rusted metal bound it to the mountaintop. A bed of volcanic glass covered the floor, the pieces slicing into the magnificent beast. Swirling above it was a cloud of feathered serpents, all of different sizes and colors. They danced in the stormy sky like ribbons on the wind. Lightning spidered over the clouds while thunder crashed like an avalanche. My hair stood on end, the scent of this creature bright and burning. Its feathers were of every color, intricate patterns all over its body.

The great serpent turned, its obsidian eyes finding mine. For a single moment, its thrashing abated. Its scaly mouth opened, its gargantuan teeth bared. Its tongue, longer than a ship, flickered out, tasting me on the air. Its hiss was a typhoon. A hood of feathers frilled out behind its incomprehensibly massive head. Above, the serpents wheeled in the sky. The creature's attention was a weight upon me, wringing the breath from my lungs as surely as the coils of one of the serpents.

Ur-Anu struck out with too many threads to react to. I saw myself killed more times than I could understand, the only real difference the color of the feathers and size of the serpent. I hurled myself backwards, tumbling down the hill. I felt the strikes of the coatl as the sizzle of lightning.

I slammed into a tree, bringing me to a stop. The coatl were thick in the air, ready to strike. I dove beneath the protective canopy of the trees. They slithered about the trunks, lighter than air, trying to find a place to coil and strike.

Fate sent a thread to me, and I whirled, thrusting the tip of my spear. The coatl struck, its serpentine mouth wide. The obsidian blade sliced through the beast's skull easily. I pulled the weapon back, leaving the beast to its death throes on the jungle floor.

Three more of the creatures had kept up their pursuit. One was the white, and I saw hunger in the beast's white-blue eyes. One was twice the size of the white, its black and crimson feathers dark in the shade of the trees. The last was the biggest of the three, with feathers like fire.

Ur-Anu showed me ten different futures, all with one of the creatures wrapped about me, my head disappearing down a serpent's gullet. I put my back to a trunk while the fire-colored one reared up to strike. A hood of feathers frilled out form the base of the head as its mouth opened with a terrifying hiss.

I bloodied the beast with a thrust, whirling on the black to give it a taste. The white was more cautious. I battled the three serpents. The graceful beasts were too wily to catch, no matter how many threads Ur-Anu showed me. Eventually, the three retreated, leaving me for easier prey. All three had been given something to remember me by. I was tired and bruised but they had never laid a fang on me. Lucky that, when a coatl strikes, they seldom need a second try.

The white lingering the longest, slithering through the trees, hunting for another opening. Without support, though, it was lost, and it too left, the feathers at the tip of the tail flattened and frilled.

Finally safe, I rested, eating from my meager stores. My thoughts turned to the leviathan imprisoned at the peak. It was not merely that I could hear the beast thundering about. Chaining such a creature was a crime. I longed to free it. I tried to think of a way that would not immediately result in my death. I had come searching for a city of the gods, and I had found a god.

I would have to approach undetected both by it and the swarm of serpents that I now took to be this creature's offspring. I would have to creep across a field of broken obsidian, the shards ready to slice me to ribbons while crunching loudly under my tread. Ur-Anu would be able to handle the chains. If not, there was nothing to be done, so I had to assume. Then I would have to make my way out. It was a daunting task, but I never thought of abandoning it. This was my purpose.

I settled into the boughs of a tree, folding myself into the cloak of feathers. It was a miserable night, but far from the only one I had spent in the rain since the beginning of my exile. I drifted off to sleep with the sound of the rain drumming on my hat.

Over the next several days, I crept up to the rim of the leviathan's prison. Time was hard to reckon in this land of perpetual twilight, but I did my best to make the journey at different points in the day. The storms that raged about blotted out the sun, the only light coming from flashes of lightning and a strange glow that clung to the clouds like a moss. I was not certain if that was magic from the serpents, or if it was merely the final wisps of sunlight that managed to batter their way through.

Each time I made it to the lip I was only there for moments before I was spotted. Most often it was the imprisoned monster. Then the pursuit started, and I would be forced to drive the serpents off. The white was always part of the pursuit, but after the second day, it did not attack. It merely watched as I drove the others off into the sky.

No plan crystallized in my mind. I do not know how long I would have continued in futility. Fortunately for me, I received unexpected help.

By this time, I had managed a shelter of sorts. Woven from branches and layered with leaves, it took the form of an egg open on one side. It mostly kept the rain from me at night, and my hat and cloak did the rest. Ur-Anu leaned against the trunk nearby, ready to be taken up in the event one of the coatl decided to make a meal of me.

My meat had run out, and if I wanted more, I would have to journey farther down the slopes to where the prey animals still gathered in numbers. Fortunately, Chala had taught me enough, and I was able to make meals of berries and roots. Far from the most satisfying repast, but in my time in the wilderness, I had grown used to it.

This absence of creatures was why, when I heard the sound of passage through the foliage below, I was initially nonplussed. I peered out into the darkness, wondering if luck had brought me one of the shaggy foragers whose meat would sustain me and whose hide might give me another warm layer. That night the rain was thick, falling in opaque sheets. I could see nothing until the flash of lightning.

A woman moved through the jungle. She was small, shorter even than my Ixem, with a lithe, slender body. She appeared nude, her body slick and shiny with rain. I looked up, where the canopy thrashed in the wind. I saw no coatl hunting her, but that did not mean there were none.

"Here!" I called to her in Huyu.

Then she was a shadow again. The next time the lightning gave me light, she was moving closer. I saw her in the stutter of the storm, each moment closer until she was climbing into my shelter with me.

It was cramped in this place, and we looked across at one another. The lightning flashed again. Her hair was short about her head, white against her glistening blue-white skin. Her eyes caught me. Hypnotic and white-blue, they were the eyes of the serpent. The white who had been hunting me.

I felt Ur-Anu next to me. I thought of reaching for it right then. No threads touched her, and the weapons she had as a serpent were not apparent. Perhaps she could swallow me in this form, perhaps not.

Between the rolls of thunder, with the rain rattling through the leaves, I touched my chest. "Ashuz." My real name nearly fell from my lips, but it still did not feel like mine. That name was still tied with power, lost on the beaches of Storm's Rest.

She touched her chest between her pert, apple-sized breasts, then reached out of the shelter to put her hand out into the rain. She washed her hand in the water. Lightning flashed and I watched the stops breaking against her palm.

Rain. Huyu is not Rhandic and has different words for different rains. This was a chill mountain rain that brought with it sweet water and a good harvest. It was the name for a rain that happened at the end of hard times and heralded the coming of the good. "Quiyahui," I said. The name felt like hope to me in a way that felt strange upon me.

She brought her hand back in and touched my chest, covered in rainwater. She moved closer. The lightning flashed again and she was closer to me. Her features were those of the locals of this place. Wide, slanted eyes, high cheekbones on an oval face. Her lips were thin, her nose small, like echoes of her reptilian features intruding upon her human.

Her inhuman features were just as obvious. First, the icy hues of her skin and her eyes, but also her hair. I saw now that it was not hair but feathers, growing short about her skull. Her beauty was undeniable, and more unusual the longer I gazed at her.

I put my hand on the curve of her narrow waist, running over the swell of her hip. In the flash, her sex was before my eyes. I glimpsed a modest slit, hidden behind a triangle of downy feathers.

I brushed my hand over her this plumage and when the lightning struck again, colors ran over the filaments of the feathers, every hue of the rainbow visible for an instant. Her hand ran down her slick belly, into her feathers. She spread her lips, her fingers delving between them. Then she brought them out, dripping with thick nectar, running them over my face. I turned my head, trying to take her fingers in my mouth. She gripped my chin, fixing me with her lightning-colored eyes, smearing her juices over me.

She continued the process, her movements exploratory. She touched herself as though this was an unfamiliar process, finding new places in her body that made her shiver. I had the impression that she had intended to do this, but was not aware of the pleasure that such an act would bring. I found myself inflamed by the lewd innocence of her manner. With a growl, I pulled her forward, gripping the small hemispheres of her buttocks, and bringing her sex to my lips.

A hiss echoed through my small shelter as I teased her apart. I thought of the lessons I had learned, from the first with Mira through my years of performing the knight's kiss on my various paramours. Mira had told me it was a chivalric custom, a way for a knight to lay with his lady that would not offend her lord. And yet, every time I drank deeply between the thighs of a woman, it was intimate in a way other acts could not touch.

Her taste was the snap of lightning and the kiss of cloud. Her body was colder than I had ever experienced. Yet it was not the cold of death. No, she was alive in a way I could not truly grasp.

I found more beauty between her legs. Her folds were a deeper blue, the color of the Azure Ocean. I pushed my tongue deep inside her and it was like eating a raincloud. She clutched my hair, driving her hips to my face. Her buttocks were like two pillowy stones. My finger crept between them, finding her rosebud. Inspiration seized me and I drove the first knuckle inside. Her hiss rose. I looked up, finding her head thrown back in shocked bliss.

I eased into her deeper, even as I turned my attention to her pearl, now hard as a jewel. I sucked hard, sheathing my finger in her. Her hiss was loud and sudden. A flood of liquid came from her, like a rainfall. It coated my face, running into my beard.

She dropped to her knees, straddling me, her hands coming to my face. I grabbed the back of her head, pulling her into a kiss. Her mouth was still against mine. She must not have understood what I wanted. I showed her, and as my tongue entered her mouth, I felt sharp teeth and a forked tongue behind her lips.

We parted, and she cocked her head, regarding me curiously as she continued to take her nectar from between her legs and smear it over me. I felt like she was marking me, but the strangeness of the act did nothing to stem my ardor. I wanted more. I pulled my loincloth aside, my staff turgid.

I lifted her up by her slender waist, and she gave me a surprised look. I eased her down until I was poking at her orchid. She hissed softly, and I pulled her over me, thrusting up. The coolness of her sex sent a shiver through my body. Her hiss grew louder as I pushed into her.

I felt myself hit the back wall of her sex, and still, a few inches of me stuck from her. A look of concentration came over her, and she shifted, and suddenly, her sex swallowed the last of me. Now I was in her to the hilt. I felt her moving over me, in cool waves, constricting me in the most delicious coils.

I kissed her again, and this time she was more eager. Her forked tongue tickled my mouth. She dipped her hand between us, rubbing our sweat, our juices, over my face and then hers. She moved against me now, up and down, taking me deep inside. I matched her, thrusting, expecting to hit the maximum depth of her, but I never did. She was game in a way I did not expect, her body quivering each time I buried myself in her.

I held her hips, grinding hard against her. A thrust, a swirl, then pushing her up. I was used to a heat building, but with Quiyahui, that was not what happened. She was still cool giving this feeling of being embraced, of being loved by a cloud. The embrace was one that reached into my past, sparking what I thought was the embers of my magic.

In my mind, the storm roiled, lightning stalking over the earth. Each shuddering thrust into Quiyahui brought me closer to those clouds. They enfolded my mind. I did not know what they meant in that moment. I was not even thinking. I could only be enfolded in those swirling vapors, my body alive with crackling lightning. I felt it play over my skin, drawing delicious fingers up my spine. The storm itself wrapped its loving arms about me as I drove myself into this lovely nymph.

Her head was back, her mouth open to the sky. The thought of smearing me with her juices had been forgotten in the face of this impossible pleasure. Thunder rolled between us, lightning crackled over our skin, rain covered us. I did not even feel the shelter or what clothing wore. I felt as though we were in the clouds together, both perfectly nude, frantically coupling as a storm roiled around us.

We took each other in great, shuddering thrusts. She arched her back. I kissed her chest, licking the misty sweat that pooled on her cool skin. Each thrust brought with it a flash of lightning and a roll of thunder but I could not tell if this was in my mind or happening all about me.

When the bliss took me, it was with a crash of thunder that shook the world. I held Quiyahui, filling her, my seed impossibly hot against her cool flesh. She slumped over me, wrapping her arms about my neck. I could only breathe against her, pressing kisses into her cool skin.

Finally, she sat up, taking my face in her hands, fixing me with her hypnotic eyes. I felt myself softening within her cool folds. She reached where we were joined, bringing the fruits of our coupling on her fingers. She rubbed these juices over my chest, then over hers, a kind of baptism that I did not yet understand.

It felt like a bird preening its mate. She was quite intent on it. I finally lifted her off me, then resettled her in the crook of my arm. I leaned back in my cloak, letting the sound of the rain wash over me as her soft, cool hands petted me.

Like a gentle wind, I was lulled into sleep.

I opened my eyes. The rain had fallen away until it was little more than a persistent mist. The light was dim, but I could see. I was alone. Quiyahui had vanished sometime during the night. I sat, and winced in pain. Opening my jacket, I found bruises across my chest. Purple wounds wrapped all about my body.

I spent that day resting, recovering my strength. The day after, I foraged, then rested. On the third day I tried once again to get close to the leviathan at the top of the mountain. I made it to the lip of the caldera. The pathetic majesty of the colossus in its helpless struggles once again stabbed me.

I looked up to the swirling coatl as they danced through the clouds. My eyes sought out the white, and I found her, high above me. Something in the way she fluttered ribbon-like in the wind made me think she knew I was there. The others did not react. I thought one of them, or else the great monster, would recognize me, and I would flee down the mountain once again, regretting everything.

But they did not. I crouched there in my cloak of feathers, clutching my spear, and was not identified. Experimentally, I went forward, and still, the beast did nothing but thrash.

My foot fell on the first of the broken obsidian. As they always did, the boots made for me by Iura protected my feet from the wicked blades. The sound of the volcanic glass, though, was deafening. I froze, bracing myself for a sudden charge. There was none. Perhaps it had been my imagination, fearful fancy that convinced me such things could be heard by the thrashing of the leviathan.

I looked below, to the chain that held the great beast. It was partly buried in the broken obsidian, but I believed the base to be bolted somewhere to the living rock of the mountain itself. The chains were old and rusted, but I felt that unmistakable hum of magic, that always came to me like a storm ready to shed its fury. Any mundane metal would have buckled long ago against the beast's titanic strength.

Her thrashing, and now I understood her to be a she, mother to the feathered serpents all around, sliced her flesh. She could not stop herself. She needed her freedom the way the wind needed it, and the chain was a crime. I gripped Ur-Anu, ready to test the magic of a spear forged to slay gods against an enchantment made to hold them.

That was when one of the threads snaked out, and I saw a coatl striking. I danced back, and the poor beast slammed into the obsidian, slicing itself to ribbons. I could not mourn it, for now the leviathan saw me. The rush of air heralded the monster trying to bring its bulk to bear to crush this buzzing insect. It was not the only one. Its attention called to its children, and more threads warned me of my death. I sprinted up the hill, dodging this way and that as more swooped down to slay me.

I barely made it to the cover of the trees when a thread showed me my death. I whirled, but I knew I was a second too slow. The hurts on my chest and the fatigue from my run pulled me down. A beast of brilliant jungle green struck. I braced myself for my end.

Quiyahui hit him. Clad in her serpent form, she barreled into the side of the other coatl's head. She was far smaller than he, but the force of her attack was enough to ruin his strike.

I struck once to drive him back. I put only a shallow wound on him and no more. I would not slay another of the feathered serpents if it was in my power to avoid it. That was the promise I offered to Quiyahui, though such words never were exchanged between us.

When the last of the pursuers retreated, Quiyahui lingered at the trees. Our eyes met, and something passed between us that I could not name. Then she too returned to her place by the great mother.

The next day, the serpents detected me at the lip of the caldera. The day after even sooner. I cursed, understanding that some opportunity I did not truly understand had passed me by. Every night I hoped I would see Quiyahui. Yes, I wanted to once again empty myself inside her, but I knew that she was the author of my near victory. Until I saw her again, I would be unable to make another attempt at freeing the mother.

It was perhaps a week later when I ranged lower on the peaks, looking for a decent-sized kill to feed me for a few days. I thought to smoke the meat and live off of that, along with a local sweet root that I had come to crave. I could not draw closer to the leviathan, and I thought that I might as well make my stay in the Mixtayua more pleasant.

The rain was light but cold that day. More than once I found myself wishing for a nice, hot mug of chocolatl, but such things were beyond my reach. For now, one of the grazing birds would do nicely. I stalked through the trees until I found a place where the trees thinned enough to grow the low leaves that the birds favored for their foraging. A small flock of the birds grazed here.

I approached gradually. The entire flock would be feeding except for one or two members, their heads snapping back and forth as they watched for predators. Then those would eat, while others would take their turn. There was seemingly no pattern and no communication involved in this. They did it instinctively. The fascinating thing was that they did not react to the thundering crashing of the leviathan at the peak. Such things were normal here, and the local creatures understood.

I picked my prey. One of the birds wasn't quite as fleet as the others. I chose it when I watched it stumble on a fallen log and noted that its stride held a limp. Even with weakened prey, I would need to stand and hurl Ur-Anu in a single motion, for as soon as I broke cover, the watchers would squawk their warning and the entire flock would scatter into the trees. I gauged the distance, trying to determine how close I could draw before I was spotted.

I approached gradually, moving like the rustling leaves. I held the haft of Ur-Anu, ready to shift the grip to throw. I stopped, not ten yards away. Any closer, and the creature would bolt. Their bobbing heads were moving more quickly, as though they could sense the attack of a predator.

I braced myself to stand and throw. Then a bolt speared down through the canopy. It was a coatl, its feathers a brilliant purple. The bird I had been hunting was slammed into the ground with terrific force, the crack of its neck echoing in the clearing. The serpent wrapped it in coils in the blink of an eye.

The flock disappeared into the jungle. I silently cursed, my chance at smoked meat was gone. I never considered killing the coatl. I thought that whatever trust I had gained with Quiyahui might be destroyed if she found me eating one of her siblings.

I watched the coatl swallow the bird. My gaze went to the canopy. Though this area was more open than some of the denser jungle, the leaves were still woven together in an impenetrable roof. The coatl should not have been able to see its prey.

It hadn't.

Then I truly understood.

Quiyahui returned to me some four weeks after our first night. I would learn later she took her human form only on nights of the full moon, and then only when her skin was touched by rain. It has made subsequent dalliances a challenge, but the two of us make the most of her infrequent nights in human form.

I heard her creeping through the underbrush, this time making directly for my shelter. She climbed in, her blue-white flesh glistening in the rain. Without preamble, she knelt over me, her eyes meeting mine in the flashes of lighting. Now I caught what I thought was a faint annoyance, a sense of Now do you understand?

I did. I kissed her, and found her more eager, the forked tongue caressing two separate points in my mouth. She pulled my loincloth off and took me in hand, running me over her feathery lips. She moved me to her center. I found her slick with arousal, as though she had been thinking of this moment often in the past month. She sank over me. Once again, I reached her depth, and once again, she adjusted herself, allowing me to reach those last few inches into her cool depths.

I clutched her waist, thrusting into her, trying to get her juices flowing. She seemed to have the same goal, adopting a sinuous roll of her hips that pushed me off every part of her. As it was before, laying with her was like being swallowed by a cloud, but this time it was one that understood what I needed. A cloud grown skilled in the arts of love.

My hand fell to her small buttocks, and I remembered how she had reacted to my earlier explorations. I moved between the hemispheres of her, my finger finding the puckered opening. I teased about it, and she uttered a deep hiss, pushing back. I felt her begin to flow between us, the moisture coating me.

I was gripped with an impulse. I pulled her off of me. Her sex gripped mine, but she let me go with a confused hiss, the air only scarcely cooler than her body. I turned her around, putting her on her knees. I spread her open, guiding my staff to her rosebud.

She hissed again, and pushed. She wanted this as much as I. Then I was inside her, but only my head. Her hiss echoed through the shelter, as she clenched over me. My vision was gone for a moment. All I saw was roiling clouds, though I could not tell if these were the moments before they shed rain or after they had been exhausted and would start giving way before a sky blue enough to break the heart.

Then I was in the shelter again, the rattle of rain through the trees. The strange woman, with her white-blue skin and the white feathers growing from her head was on her knees before me, her back arched. I looked between us, to the dimples of her lower back, I had just begun to take her rosebud.

She reached between her legs, bringing her hand up, now shining wither her juices. She rubbed it over my thigh, then went back for more. Her movements turned into something different. She wasn't collecting what she found, but pleasuring herself to produce more. This made her move, her hips grinding against my delicious intrusion.

I pushed into her, and once again, my vision transported me into the clouds. They were moving faster now, in time with the pounding of my heart. They swirled and dissipated and reformed, a full storm in the space of a heartbeat.

I held her, my hands, running from her hips up her ribs to her small breasts. Her nipples were hard against my palm. I felt her hand close around my wrist and tug me down. Her fingers twined with mine as she put me against her sex. I followed her lead, pushing into her while she teased her pearl. I could only kiss the place where her shoulder arched into her graceful neck, tasting the rainwater against her skin. She hissed again, and this, I judged was a happy one.

I sank more deeply into her. A bolt into the clouds. They were all around us. Dancing with the playful wind. Was I the cloud itself, in them? Was she with me? Was there a difference between the two of us? We were erasing that distinction, I understood that, though I did not understand what this presaged, the true magnitude of what this act meant. I could not, for in that direction lay hope and I had yet to relearn that. I thought such things had died on the Turquoise, but that wasn't true. I'd felt it again in Pelesamatu. I felt it again now, as I lay with this incredible creature. This was the cold rain that brought the harvest, the one at the beginning of spring.

I felt her hand against my cheek, slick with her nectar. It permeated my flesh, running into my beard. Her hiss merged with the buzzing in my mind. Each stroke of her body put the storm on me, the kiss of cloud, the scratch of lightning, the caress of wind. She opened up and I was buried in her.

The bright, swirling sky was all around. Her hiss was the sizzle of lighting through the clouds. I felt her as a coiling about me, ineffable but everywhere. The storm was us, was in us, was everything. The cool air kissed our skin even as the thunder built within me.

The feel of her cool body around me sparked lightning that played over our bodies. When the pleasure broke within me, it was a flood. I felt her thrashing, spilling an impossible flow of juices into our waiting hands. She pulled herself from me, turning around, covering me with her nectar.

Kneeling in front me, she reached between her legs again and again, covering me with her scent. She touched my chest, and I understood the look she gave me then. I nodded to her. Her reptilian tongue flicked from her mouth, brushing my chest. Then, she collected more nectar and stroked.

Once again, I awoke alone. The bruises were fresh, though not as bad as the previous time we had lain together. Regardless, I would not let mere pain stop me. I would trust in her plan. I climbed down from my shelter, confident that one way or another, I had spent my last night there.

I crept to the lip of the caldera. That day, the rain was falling heavily. I could only glimpse shapes through the blinding sheets. Flashes of scintillating color slithered through the clouds. Rivers of rain ran through the broken obsidian. The thrashing god-serpent rattled the teeth in my head. I stood in the face of this awesome sight, my heart pounding in my ears.

Most importantly, though, nothing noted me. They were not looking. They were smelling, and I was covered in Quiyahui's scent. I had approached undetected, though I could not know how long my cloak would last.

I did not hesitate this time. I made my way down the treacherous slope, silently thanking Iura for the boots again. The slick glass kept trying to hurl me to the ground, but I stayed low, balancing my weight on the butt of Ur-Anu.

I drew close to the colossus. Her agonized thrashing could easily kill me. She slammed into the obsidian, her blood mingling with the rainwater collected at the base of the caldera. Every movement of her body brewed cruel gusts of wind that conspired with my footing. The creature was as terrible and beautiful as a stormy sea.

Just ahead was the first of its chains, bolted to the mountain. This was by her tail, the feathers at the tip frilled outward, each one the size of a ship. The tail slapped the glass, tearing the scales open. The gust of wind nearly hurled me to my back, but I kept my feet. I darted forward swinging Fate at the iron.

Magic met magic. The scent was like the powdering of my bones. The obsidian blade of the weapon broke through the chain. The great beast's tail came free with a sudden gust, and this time I was hurled onto my back. The obsidian sliced into my feathered cloak.

Had I not spent my time in the jungle, I likely would have been killed in that moment, but the tigerish reflexes that I had honed pushed me to my feet, and I was sprinting across the field of glass for the second chain.

I felt the turn then. The weight of attention grew near. They were not attacking yet, the scent had held, but it would not be for long. They had sensed something, and would soon realize prey moved among them. I ran over the wet surface, my attention consumed by the chain ahead of me.

The tail swept over me, and I barely managed to duck in time. Threads reached me. Three different feathered serpents, all descending from the heavens in slightly different paths, each one striking and killing me. I sprang forward, swinging Ur-Anu in a great arc, shattering the base of the second chain.

With a great rush of air, I was once again hurled onto my back. The god-serpent rose into the sky, her offspring parting before her like a school of fish. I clambered to my feet, watching in wonder as she joined the clouds overhead.

The rain stopped in that moment. The clouds lightened, from lead to steel to pearl. A shaft of sunlight wrestled through, haloing me. I stood, unable to hide, before the mass of coatl.

The great serpent descended. I could not run. She was free. If she wished it, I would be food for her, for her children. She faced me, her attention a physical weight upon me. I felt her breath, cold like wind from the mountain, brushing over me. I refused to quail before her. I had faced gods before, in battle. I held no hatred for her. Her power and beauty held me in the grips of awe. Her eyes, blazing with every color, bored into me. I saw a flower blooming, known in Huyu as the ocoxochi. Every layer of petals is a different color, beautiful enough to rob a killer of his breath.

"Ocoxochi," I said. I thought of Quiyahui's hand in the rain.

She made a sound in her throat that was at the edge of my hearing, but vibrated through me. Her mouth came open, and a gargantuan forked tongue licked out, the edges far on either side of me.

Quiyahui descended from the clouds, joining me in the sunlight. Where the light touched her feathers, every color emerged in brilliant shades. She gently coiled about me, her head facing mine. We had been bonded and this was an affirmation.

The great mother serpent regarded us. Did I see approval in her depthless eyes? Gratitude? A wise man does not attempt to divine the motives of gods. Then Ocoxochi swept into the sky. Her offspring followed, all except for Quiyahui.

The clouds were vanishing, and for the first time since ascending the mountain, rain was no longer falling upon me. I looked at Quiyahui. She uncoiled, as I walked to the edge, she stayed with me. All the way down the mountain, she was my constant companion.

Now she adorns my flags. She is my symbol. She is my harbinger. Perhaps most importantly, she is my friend.