Stray from the ghetto.
I bring a chemical imbalance.
Something like mythical strangulation.
While the world dances under the sun.
My dance is a whisper of prophecy under moonlight.
Dancing under the rain like Jorge.
My freedom is eternal like a moment caught on camera.
My last step.
Enjoy the silence.
The arc was quiet now.
Not from peace, but from expectation.
Five Ajtz'ité'ob' stood like twisted totems across from Kamelotl. Each was carved from the memory of what the gods abandoned—limbs like old wood, eyes burned hollow, voices echoing stolen ceremonies.
Huitzilapochtli took in the challengers on the arc, he glanced at Kamelotl and said "I will be the judge of this so called challenge."
The leader gave a mocking bow to him. "If your divine self could bless us with your judgment then. I know it will be an impartial judgment so I have no opposition towards it." A smile played on his lips somewhere between mischief and taunting.
Kamelotl also agreed, with a simple nod of his head.
Huitzilapochtli said "Make sure you bring yourself glory in front of these… creations."
The leader gave a slight grin and raised a finger.
And the first challenger stepped forward.
He began with a rhythm that once moved mountains.
Feet thudding in low, reverent stomps.
Arms mimicking the pull of sky into soil.
This was the Ñuu Savi Rain Calling Dance, a gift once danced barefoot by farmers in sacred groves, where water was not begged for—but spoken to, like kin.
But then—
The sacred fractured.
His movements twisted.
What was once a call for rain became a parody of thirst.
His knees bent too far.
His arms bent backward, elbows cracking like bone under drought.
His body twisted, and black liquid oozed from his joints—not water, but something bitter, foul, and still warm from forgotten graves.
He raised his hands to the sky—
But instead of petitioning, he laughed.
"Chaak does not hear you," he hissed.
"Only we remember how to dance without a heart."
Crows of bark and charcoal rose behind him, flapping in mock thunder.
Their wings beat in time with his stomps—each beat a rejection of rain, each movement a curse against growth.
The old ways, broken.
The earth beneath him grew dry.
The arc cracked—not from heat, but from absence.
And still—he danced.
Kamelotl said nothing.
He stepped forward.
And the arc shifted beneath his heel, as though recognizing someone it had not seen in a long, long time.
He began with a slow stomp—just one.
Not loud. Not angry.
But measured.
Remembered.
He took the sacred Ñuu Savi step again—the real one.
He planted his heel with intention, his toes curling into the arc as if speaking to it in a language only memory and root understand.
Each stomp a drumbeat of ancestral thunder.
His breath slow.
His tail steady.
He moved into the Kurhíkuaeri fire dance, spiraling around an invisible ember.
This was no show—it was ceremony.
Curicaueri, the Purépecha fire god, once watched over this pattern, lit in the night with copper and smoke.
Kamelotl's roots spread, glowing faintly.
Not black like the mocker's sludge—but amber, like tree sap, like blood passed down.
The crows dove.
But Kamelotl's roots rose with him—alive.
Thorns burst forth, impaling the charcoal birds mid-dive, shattering them into petals and ash.
He didn't stop.
He spun once.
Twice.
Then dropped to his knees.
He inhaled.
And rose—lifted by two massive roots, one on either side.
The light caught him.
The arc exhaled.
And he spread his arms—
Hail the sun
His chest rose.
His gills flared.
The Ayōxōchitl on his chest glowed white.
He wasn't imitating gods.
He was becoming a memory the gods had almost forgotten.
He was not just a dancer.
He was the present remembering the past,
so that the future would never forget.
The hummingbirds started to flit back and forth in excitement.
Huitzilapochtli looked at Kamelotl ready to gave his verdict.
Huitzilopochtli watched the final echo of root and wing settle.
His eyes smoldered, not with rage—
—but memory.
He spoke like a blade unsheathed:
"Kamelotl wins this round."
A pause.
"Because only he remembered to ask the earth for permission."
He proclaimed like thunder
A dance once offered in spirals of flame to honor the Sun's sacred duty, the divine light, and the cleansing of the spirit.
In truth, this dance was performed around a central fire. The fire priest would move in inward and outward spirals, with hands raised in prayer and smoke. The movement symbolized rebirth through heat, sacrifice without blood, and the journey of the sun through the underworld.
But the Ajtz'ité don't burn to purify.
They burn because they've forgotten what healing feels like.
And under the eyes of gods and ghosts, the next dancer came forward…
The next dancer came forward with his body already ablaze.
But it wasn't divine fire.
It was grease fire—bone sap and cursed resin, feeding a flame that did not cleanse but coated everything in shadow-smoke.
He spun into the circle, dragging a scorched hand across the arc as he moved.
His path did not spiral—it jerked.
Every step skipped, like a reel of film stuttering.
Where the fire priest would move with grace—this Ajtz'ité shuddered, twitched, cackled.
He clutched something in his hands—once a staff. Now a charred femur, its tip blackened to ash. He slammed it down with each stomp, leaving scorched glyphs that spelled nonsense, or perhaps curses lost to the wind.
The air burned wrong.
Not hot.
But itching.
Like memory flaking from the skin.
He moved in jagged arcs—emulating the spiral—but stopping short.
Then bursting into flame.
Then pausing mid-movement to scream, only to pick up the rhythm again as if the scream was the beat.
He danced not around fire—
He danced as a thing abandoned by it.
The arc recoiled.
Even the cihuapipitlin recoiled from the grotesque blasphemy.
The flames kissed its surface and left burns shaped like hands.
Hands that didn't ask permission.
The hummingbirds scattered.
A Cihuapipiltin whispered:
"That is not fire. That is blame still burning."
Then he collapsed suddenly—
But didn't fall.
He melted.
And from his body, a hundred little flames crawled outward like spiders.
Each one lit with a different shade—hunger, sorrow, rage, jealousy, rot.
And at the center of it all—
He rose again, smiling,
arms out like a saint made of wax and charcoal.
He had not brought fire.
He had brought what was left after the gods stopped watching.
The second Ajtz'ité had left the arc scorched with spite.
The god of war did not smile.
But something like pride flickered beneath the obsidian in his gaze.
He gestured with one hand—a sign older than flame.
"Kamelotl wins again."
"Because he danced with fire as an offering, not as a threat."
His black fire still lingered in the air like old regret—sticky, thick, and muttering.
But Kamelotl didn't flinch.
He stepped into the ash.
And began to dance.
Not for himself.
Not even for the gods.
But for the ones who never got to finish their steps.
He started with a stomp—not into the arc, but into the blood of memory.
His right foot hit the ground, then his left—hard, then soft—
—then again, alternating like thunder clashing with wind.
This was Uarhukua, the old Purépecha dance of the firesticks, once performed by guardians of the flame, by dancers who knew that fire was both weapon and witness.
Traditionally, they would hold staffs, clashing them in time with the drum.
Kamelotl had no staff—he had his roots.
They burst from his palms, curling like branches, then straightened into glowing limbs of rhythm.
He slammed them against each other, each clash ringing like ancestral fire igniting once more.
Crack. Tap. Clash. Step.
He circled to the left, each pivot dragging heat in a slow crescent.
He circled to the right, now faster, stomping with growing intensity.
The arc beneath him glowed orange, not from flame—but from recognition.
Then he softened.
Just for a breath.
He added a spin. Then another.
His arms rose as if throwing flowers to the sun. His feet tapped lighter now—joy reborn from pain.
This was a whisper of Xochipilli's spiral—where dance was beauty, and movement was a thank you to breath itself.
He smiled once. Just once.
Then the rhythm shifted.
He dropped low.
His gills flared.
His breath slowed into a trance.
And suddenly—his body no longer moved like a man.
He moved like something becoming.
Like a nahual spirit surfacing through the coils of rhythm.
His roots spread again—this time crawling like vines across the arc.
They traced glyphs of fire and lineage as they moved.
And he began to spin.
First, it was a turn.
Then a faster one.
He dropped to his shoulder. His tail braced.
His legs kicked upward.
His body twisted mid-air—
And he spun on his head.
Once.
Twice.
Then six times—one for every firekeeper he had never met.
The arc hummed.
The roots pulsed in time.
And with each rotation, he shed flame—not destructive—but illuminating, like sparks lighting the dark corners of forgotten history.
When he finally stopped—
He knelt.
He placed one palm on the ground.
And whispered, not to the crowd, not to the Ajtz'ité—
—but to the roots.
"I carry your fire."
And the arc replied—
with a breath of light.
The arc had been following in his rhythm the entire time. Swaying to his beat. Thumping their feet on the arc when he would clash his roots together. The excitement was electric, and contagious.
The crowd cheered for more!