Dracula distrusts Cetzal

As Quetzal expounded on the ancient wisdom of his people, his amber eyes shifted toward Dracula, who remained shrouded in the deepest shadows of the room, a statue of night and restrained power. A faint smile, enigmatic and ancient, curved the Mayan leader's lips.

"I feel the frost of your soul, Nightwalker," Quetzal said, his voice calm but with an edge that pierced the vampire's defenses. "Your distrust is as old as your fangs. You believe that all who offer aid seek a hidden price, like the merchants of souls and power in your native Europe. And perhaps you are not wrong to distrust the unknown."

Dracula did not move, but the intensity of his red gaze sharpened.

"Nyx, Queen of Chaos-Woven Shadows," Quetzal continued, "has attempted to blind your children from the sun, has she not? She has woven a counter-magic, a dissonance, upon the ancient enchantments that protect them, taking advantage of cosmic instability."

Quetzal made a barely perceptible gesture with his hand. The tiny Aluxes, which until then had moved with a playful yet vigilant energy around the Mayan sorcerers, suddenly came into focus. A high-pitched, almost inaudible buzzing filled the air, and a golden-green light, like the heart of the jungle at dawn, emanated from them. They moved like a swarm of sentient fireflies, surrounding Dracula and the Punishers present.

The vampires tensed, ready to attack, but Dracula raised a hand to stop them, watching with cold curiosity. He felt a strange energy course through the solar rings he and his warriors wore. There was a tingling, a vibration, and then the oppressive, jamming sensation that had plagued the rings since Nyx's sabotage seemed to... fade. A very faint, almost forgotten, original protective aura shimmered fleetingly around the metals and gems.

"The Aluxes are guardians of the woven, protectors against corruption and malicious knots in the Grid of Life," Quetzal explained, as the small entities returned to his side. "They have... undone the knot the Dark Queen tied in your wards. The original magic of your rings, though still vulnerable to great cosmic fluctuations and the direct power of Cthulhu, is no longer being actively sabotaged by her specific magic."

The relief was an almost physical surge for Dracula, though he didn't show it. The immediate threat to his Punishers' daytime operations had been neutralized, at least partially. But his distrust, far from dissipating, sharpened. A demonstration of power, he thought. A gift with invisible threads. They can undo Nyx's magic... what else can they undo? Or weave?

Quetzal seemed to read his thoughts. A shadow of sadness crossed his face. "I see you still doubt, Prince of the Night. Perhaps the history of my people, as you know it, clouds your judgment. The sacrifices... the blood spilled on our pyramid altars under the sun..."

He paused, his gaze lost in the past. "It was not always the will of the Maya, nor of the Toltecs before us, to defile our sacred places with such a quantity of stolen K'uh. Our ancestors honored the cycles with offerings of flowers, incense, songs that harmonized with the stars, their own life energy offered in fasting and meditation to maintain balance."

His voice hardened. "But then came the Dzules," he said, using the ancient Mayan word for foreigners, but with venom clearly directed at the Spanish conquistadors. "Men of steel and fire, with a cross in one hand and an unquenchable thirst for gold in the other that rivaled yours for blood."

"And they were not alone," Quetzal continued, and the air in the room seemed to chill. "Behind their banners and their prayers to their jealous god, there were other whispers, other dark pacts. The Dzules, in their arrogance and their ignorance of the true forces of the cosmos, paid a terrible tribute... not to us, but to the Wandering Stars." Enki, present in the room, looked away for a moment, a rare display of discomfort. "In exchange for the power to dominate this 'New World,' in exchange for their inexplicable victories over empires, they offered the energy of fear, of pain, the vital essence snatched away in ever more bloody rituals, amplified by the terror of conquest."

"Our ancient priests, the Ah Kinob, the guardians of wisdom, were compelled," Quetzal's voice was now an echo of ancestral pain. "Under threat of the total annihilation of our people, the burning of our sacred codices, the destruction of our bloodlines, we were forced to perform these dark rites. To turn our stellar observatories and our temples of harmony into slaughterhouses to feed the stellar masters of the conquistadors and slake the invaders' thirst for spectacle. The blood that stained our pyramids, the one your chroniclers recorded with hypocritical horror, was the price of a precarious survival, a tribute paid in tears and souls to keep the alien gods of the white men and the white men themselves at bay."

The revelation came as a shock to everyone present. Merlin looked at Quetzal with a new and profound understanding. Aria felt a surge of empathy for the suffering of a people caught between two horrors. Even Dracula, the eternal cynic, felt a resonance with the story of a people forced into darkness by outside powers in order to survive; it was a melody his own existence knew well.

"We do not seek to dominate, Nightwalker," Quetzal concluded, his amber eyes fixed on Dracula. "We seek to preserve the balance of this land, our sacred home, the Yóok'olkab. And to do so, sometimes, even the children of the deepest night and the guardians of the midday sun must find common ground against the cosmic storm that threatens to devour us all and silence the song of life."

The display of power and the painful confession had altered the dynamic. Dracula was still distrustful by nature, but the Mayans had proven their worth in an undeniable way and offered a perspective that resonated with the complexity of the world he knew. The possibility of an alliance, however tense and unlikely, no longer seemed so far-fetched. Survival, after all, made the strangest companies.