The Aztecs and I have an understanding. It is not a warm understanding. It is not the kind of understanding that leads to dinner invitations. But it is real, and it is mutual, and in the divine ecosystem, that counts for something.
They believe that everything costs something. Not as a moral position. As a physical law. The sun does not rise without blood. The rains do not fall without offering. The crops do not grow without payment. The gods themselves require sustenance — they are not self-sustaining, not removed from the world they inhabit, but embedded in a transaction that must be honoured continuously or the whole mechanism stops.
I understand this. Hell runs on the same principle, though we charge interest.
Huitzilopochtli is the sun, the war, the requirement. He does not negotiate with you about whether the sacrifice is necessary. It is necessary the way breathing is necessary — a fact about how reality is constructed, not a choice it is offering you. Quetzalcoatl descended to the underworld to retrieve the bones of humanity and bring them back. He paid for that too. Everything paid for. Everything.
The sacrifice engine is not a metaphor in their gameplay. They give up cards, resources, life — and in return they descend into power that grows beyond what was given. DESCENT. Going down to bring something back. The Aztecs have been practising this longer than any other theology on this board, and they are very good at it.
Tezcatlipoca watches. His smoking mirror reflects not what is, but what you don't want to know. I avoid mirrors as policy and that one more than most.
