The barking echoes through the labyrinthine stone corridors, not like the sound of dogs, but like the earth itself splitting open. It reverberates with a weight that Marcus feels in his chest, as though each bark chisels away a piece of his carefully constructed façade. His heart races to a rhythm it knows too well—the rhythm of escape. He has danced to it a hundred times before. But this is different. There's something ancient in the sound, something primal and wrong, as though the mountains themselves have learned to howl.
Beside him, Tamalito's armor clanks with each step, a discordant counterpoint to the building dread. The once-reassuring weight of steel now feels like chains. Each clank rings hollow, like a bell tolling for the truth he has long buried. They round a corner, the stables just ahead, the promise of wyverns and escape pulling them forward. And then—utter silence.
The air itself seems to freeze. Marcus stops dead, his thief's instincts screaming in a language older than thought: Danger. His breath catches as shadows ahead writhe and shift, pooling like spilled ink on the stone floor. From the darkness, something emerges—something that twists the very fabric of reality around it. Three pairs of eyes ignite, glowing with a light that isn't light at all, but the absence of everything else.
The creature strides forward, its heads moving in a dreadful harmony, each gaze cutting deeper than the last. Its presence is a weight that settles on Marcus' shoulders, pressing him down, stripping away every lie he has told himself. The thief, the rogue, the survivor—those masks dissolve under its gaze, leaving only raw, unprotected truth. He feels naked, not in body, but in spirit.
Beside him, Tamalito stumbles, the barking—if it could even be called that—penetrating his armor like a cold wind slicing through warm flesh. His academic mind scrambles to categorize the beast. Dante's Inferno? The hounds of hell? Myth and metaphor offer fleeting comforts, but they dissolve like frost under the rising sun. This isn't Europe's hell. This is older, more intimate. The beast carries the weight of ancestral memory, its presence a guardian of secrets his own blood once held sacred.
Three heads, six eyes, each seeing past flesh and steel, beyond stolen techniques and borrowed wisdom, into the very marrow of who they are. The beast doesn't attack—it doesn't need to. Its presence alone is a challenge, a question pressed into their souls. It tests not their strength or skill, but their truth. In its gaze, they see themselves reflected, not as they pretend to be, but as they truly are: two descendants running, not just from danger, but from their own legacy.
The corridor seems to stretch, the air thickening as though time itself hesitates, uncertain whether to move forward. Each breath carries the weight of centuries, the distant cries of ancestors who knew this creature not as myth, but as reality. The cerberus takes another step, its claws scraping the stone with a sound that tears at the edges of thought, and the shadows ripple like water disturbed by a predator's approach.
Marcus grips his daggers tightly, the hilts slick with sweat. His mind screams at him to flee, to vanish into the safety of darkness, but there is no safety here. The creature IS the darkness, the inevitability he has always run from. Tamalito, frozen beside him, feels the weight of his armor pressing down as if the very earth itself has joined the beast's judgment.
The cerberus growls, a low, resonant sound that carries the voices of forgotten gods. Its three heads move in unison, each one representing a truth they cannot escape. Past shame snarls from the first head, dragging Marcus back to every moment he chose the shadows over the light. Self-doubt whispers from the second, its voice a blade of ice carving into Tamalito's carefully constructed identity. The third head looms larger than the others, silent but relentless, the embodiment of their false selves, the lies they have worn as armor and now find shattered.
And then, the beast lunges.
The fight begins like a whispered secret, Marcus darting through shadows, his movements instinctive and quick. Tamalito plants himself firmly, each step intended, each swing planned. But the cerberus flows like liquid night, three heads weaving an intricate dance of malice. When it strikes, it's not with fury but with inevitability.
Marcus dodges a snapping jaw, the beast's breath hot against his cheek. His daggers lash out, striking only air, their edges pitifully dull against a creature that feels carved from the very essence of nightmares. Each evasion rings hollow, each strike a futile whisper. "Run, little shadow," the middle head's eyes seem to taunt, glowing with ancient amusement. "That's all you know."
Tamalito's sword arcs through the dim light, precise but trembling. Sparks shower as it clashes with teeth, but each impact costs him another piece of his borrowed armor. The left head surges low, testing his footing. The right head strikes high, pushing him back with raw force. He glances toward Nezahualcoyotl, expecting disapproval, but his ancestor's face remains calm, intent, as if witnessing not a fight but a symphony.
The cerberus circles them now, its movements predatory. "Your tricks cannot save you," growls the left head, its voice a guttural rumble that shakes the air. "Your foreign steel cannot shield you," taunts the right, snapping its jaws inches from Tamalito's face. The middle head grins, its eyes gleaming like coals. "Your lies cannot hide you."
Marcus hurls a smoke bomb to the floor, the shattering glass releasing a dense gray cloud. His faithful companion, the tool that has saved him countless times. But the cerberus doesn't pause. It inhales deeply, the smoke curling into its nostrils like incense, its six eyes unblinking, unbothered. The middle head tilts slightly, and Marcus swears it's smiling.
Tamalito raises his shield in a perfect defensive stance, the kind drilled into him by European knights in countless WeTube sessions. The left head dives low, its fangs scraping the edge of the shield, sending vibrations up his arm. The right head strikes over the top, forcing a desperate parry. Sparks fly. He staggers. The techniques he trusted so deeply crumble under the weight of the beast's primal ferocity.
"Watch the eyes," Marcus whispers, his voice tight. But which eyes? Each pair moves with separate intent—one tracking, one threatening, one waiting for the kill. When they move together, they form a perfect trinity of terror: one feints, one strikes, one herds. It's like battling the night itself, an enemy as vast and unrelenting as the void.
Inside Marcus, the jaguar paces, its claws scraping the walls of its cage. It roars not in fear, but in frustration, a sound that reverberates through his very bones. He feels it now, the animal within—restless, hungry. This isn't cowardice, he realizes with a jolt. It's survival, the same fierce instinct that has kept him alive through every scrape and guild battle. The jaguar doesn't fear the dark. It hunts it.
Tamalito risks another glance at Nezahualcoyotl, expecting judgment, but his ancestor watches in serene silence, his eyes alive with understanding. Each strike Tamalito makes feels like a stanza unfinished, each block a line left incomplete. He remembers his ancestor's words: "Poetry and combat are one and the same." But here, amid snapping jaws and tearing claws, his sword swings feel clumsy, discordant. He needs rhythm, needs song, his own melody.
Above them, hidden in the shadows of the dungeon's vaulted ceiling, their ancestors share a quiet conversation, their voices low but tinged with amusement.
"Five minutes," Tupac says, arms crossed. "That's how long I give Marcus before he figures it out."
Nezahualcoyotl smiles faintly. "Seven. He's stubborn, but his instincts are sound. Your descendant is more jaguar than he realizes."
"And Tamalito?" Tupac raises an eyebrow.
The poet-king chuckles softly. "Ten minutes. He is bound by armor and convention, but once he lets go..." He trails off, eyes glinting with pride. "He'll write his victories in verses the world will remember."
The laughter of the ancestors hums faintly in the air, unheard by their descendants but felt nonetheless, like the warmth of unseen sunlight.
Back on the ground, Marcus and Tamalito press their backs together, retreating against cold stone. Blood drips from shallow cuts, their breaths coming in sharp, ragged gasps. The cerberus slows, savoring the moment. It doesn't rush. There's no need. Each of its heads moves with a deadly purpose, and its eyes burn with an eternal patience.
"Do you hear that?" Marcus asks, his voice hoarse.
Tamalito glances at him. "What?"
"The bars," Marcus says, his gaze distant. "The jaguar... it's breaking free."
Tamalito frowns, but before he can respond, the cerberus lunges.
The air grows heavier with each passing second, damp and cold, clinging to their skin like a shroud. The flickering torchlight casts long, shivering shadows that seem to recoil from the beast, as if even light itself fears its presence. The stones beneath their feet are slick with condensation, each drop of moisture catching the glow of the cerberus' eyes like tears frozen in time.
The left head strikes Tamalito with surgical precision, teeth finding every chink in his armor.
CRACK.
A pauldron splinters, shards of steel scattering across the stone floor.
CLANG.
A cuisse shatters, falling with the finality of a guillotine's blade. Each piece lands with a sound that reverberates through the chamber, echoing like accusations in Tamalito's mind.
You thought this armor made you strong. You thought knowledge was protection. You thought wrong.
Each crash of metal against stone sends shivers through him, not from the cold but from the weight of realization. With every fragment that falls, he feels his carefully constructed facade being stripped away, leaving only the vulnerable truth beneath. He is not a knight. He is not a warrior. He is a child playing roles that were never truly his.
Marcus fares no better. The middle head herds him with cruel efficiency, its movements defying reason. Each snap of its jaws pushes him closer to the stone wall, closer to defeat. He tries to retreat, to find safety in the shadows that have always been his ally, but they betray him now, offering no refuge. His remaining dagger feels like a child's toy, its trembling tip painting frantic patterns on the walls that lead nowhere.
The right head simply watches. Its eyes hold the weight of ages, the unblinking patience of something that has seen countless lives reduced to nothing. In its gaze, Marcus sees himself multiplied infinitely - each reflection another failure, another coward's escape. The jagged shards of his self-image cut deeper than any fang.
The cerberus pauses, sensing their despair. It lounges before them with the confidence of inevitability, each head exuding a different flavor of malice. The air grows colder still, the oppressive humidity pressing against their lungs like the weight of the ocean. The smell of damp stone and ancient decay fills their nostrils, mingling with the copper tang of their own blood. Time seems to stretch, the chamber caught in the moment before a storm breaks.
Tamalito, stripped of his armor, stands exposed. The sound of the final piece falling to the floor rings out like a death knell, the echo reverberating not just through the chamber but through his very soul. He shivers, not from the chill but from the stark reality of his own inadequacy. His borrowed steel, his studied techniques—useless. A false knight in a false shell.
Marcus, cornered and trembling, feels his chest tighten, his breath coming in shallow gasps. His instincts scream at him to run, but there is nowhere left to go. The roar building in his blood grows louder, more insistent. It is not fear—it is something deeper, primitive. A sound that belongs to neither thief nor coward but to something far older.
The cerberus senses the shift, its heads pulling back slightly. The air hums with tension, the beast's confidence wavering for the first time. It has torn them apart, broken their defenses, laid them bare—but in doing so, it has forced them to confront what lies beneath.
Their ancestors' voices whisper like wind through the humid air, threading through the oppressive silence that follows the clang of Tamalito's last defense. The words are not kind. They do not soothe. They cut, sharp and unyielding, forcing their descendants to face the truth:
You will fail here, or you will become.
The cold grows colder. The dark grows darker. And in the silence, something begins to stir. The jaguar paces, its growl resonating deep in Marcus' chest. The rhythm of poetry rises, unbidden, in Tamalito's heart. The beast waits, its six eyes watching with ancient patience. It has seen countless lives falter at this precipice, countless souls broken under the weight of their own fear. But this moment feels different.
This time, the air does not bow to inevitability. It hums with something new, something unbroken. The beast shifts its weight, sensing the change. It tilts its heads, curiosity flickering through its malevolent gaze.
The final moment hangs in the air, a fragile balance between despair and transformation. The beast waits. The ancestors watch. And in the oppressive cold, two hearts beat faster, their rhythms aligning with something far greater than fear. Something ancient. Something unstoppable.
The change comes like lightning—not from the heavens, but from within. Marcus doesn't think. Thinking has never saved him. His body moves with a force older than memory, older than fear. He launches himself at the nearest head, his dagger striking not with precision but with the desperate inevitability of survival. The blade sinks deep into scaled flesh, and the beast roars—a sound that shakes centuries of dust from the walls and carries the weight of its disbelief.
The spray of blood, hot and metallic, awakens something buried in his marrow. Each drop seems to carry whispers of jaguar claws raking against stone, of ancestors who watched the stars through jungle canopies. He doesn't retreat. His muscles coil, and his next move isn't a thief's dodge but a predator's pounce. Dagger and teeth, shadow and instinct, blur together until Marcus can no longer tell where one ends and the other begins. The jaguar is awake, and it does not run from the night—it stalks it.
Tamalito watches this transformation and feels the last vestiges of his borrowed identity crumble away. The final clatter of his armor still echoes through the chamber, the sound more liberation than loss. He grips his sword, and for the first time, it feels alive in his hands—not a tool, but a partner in a rhythm as ancient as his blood. He steps forward, not as a knight bound by European formality, but as a warrior-poet whose strikes flow like verses of Nahua song. His blade moves with the cadence of his ancestors' prayers, each swing a stanza, each parry a refrain.
The beast falters, its heads weaving in disarray. It strikes with the fury of something desperate to maintain its dominion, but its movements are no longer unassailable. Marcus and Tamalito move together now, not as two individuals but as parts of a greater whole—a jaguar's claws and a poet's song, shadow and lightning intertwined. Where Marcus leads with feral precision, Tamalito follows with the fluid grace of ancient verse. Each movement feeds the other, their battle becoming a deadly symphony.
The cerberus lashes out, jaws snapping inches from Tamalito's throat. He doesn't flinch. His blade arcs, not in a perfect curve, but drawing ancient glyphs in the air that seem to hum with their own power. The left head reels, blood spraying like ink across stone.
Marcus, sensing the moment, dives beneath the middle head's lunge, his daggers cutting through muscle and sinew with the primal precision of a predator reclaiming its hunt. For the first time, the beast recoils—not from pain, but from recognition. It has met its match—not in strength or skill, but in truth.
The final blow is not one, but many—a flurry of movement so perfectly aligned it feels preordained. Marcus lunges for the beast's throat, his daggers carving through the veil of inevitability. At the same time, Tamalito's blade descends, its path a seamless continuation of his ancestor's poetry. The glyphs he traced in the air flare briefly, illuminating the chamber as if the walls themselves are bearing witness.
The cerberus collapses, its heads falling one by one, its body slumping to the ground like a mountain finally laid to rest. Its final breath is not a growl, but a sigh—resignation, perhaps even relief. In its dying eyes, there is understanding. It was never their enemy; it was their crucible.
In the heavy silence that follows, Marcus and Tamalito stand, bloodied and transformed. Marcus' eyes burn with a feral light, his movements now a little more fluid and maybe less cautious. He wipes his blade on his torn cloak, feeling a little less fear, but focus. The jaguar within him is no longer caged—it walks beside him, a guide and a guardian.
Tamalito looks down at his sword, its crimson edge reflecting the flickering torchlight. He doesn't see a weapon. He sees a quill, each strike a verse in a song he's only just begun to write. The rhythm of his movements no longer mimics the rigid patterns of European combat. They flow with the unbridled grace of his ancestors' dance, each step a line in a living poem.
Their eyes meet, and for a moment, no words are needed. The thief-turned-hunter and the knight-turned-warrior-poet see each other clearly for the first time. They are not pretenders. They are not imitations. They are not playing at greatness. They are descendants carrying the fire of their ancestors, not as a burden, but as a pharos.
In the distance, a faint sound reaches them—the slow, deliberate clap of their ancestors. Nezahualcóyotl and Túpac Amaru II step forward from the shadows, their smiles carrying pride not for victory, but for the transformations they have witnessed. Marcus and Tamalito turn, their breaths heavy, their bodies aching—but their spirits uplifted.
Blood and sweat mingle on the ancient stones as Marcus and Tamalito catch their breath, their laughter raw and untamed. It isn't relief—it's the wild, trembling sound of masks breaking and truths burning their way to the surface. Their bodies ache with the price of discovery, muscles alive with memories too vast to hold, hearts pounding with the echoes of ancestors' voices.
Marcus' hands won't stop trembling, his bloodied dagger still clenched tight. The jaguar in his veins paces restlessly, unchained but not yet at peace. Túpac Amaru II places a hand on his shoulder, solid and grounding, as though he could hold up the very Andes with his touch. "You fought well," he says, and in those three words, Marcus hears the pride of a thousand generations.
Nearby, Nezahualcóyotl adjusts Tamalito's torn clothes with the delicate care of a sculptor polishing his masterpiece. The scattered remnants of European armor lie abandoned at their feet, each piece a symbol of a shell shed. The poet-king's smile is quiet, knowing, as though he's seeing his own reflection across centuries. "Now," he murmurs, "you carry your own strength." Tamalito stands straighter, the weight of shame gone, his sword light as poetry in his hand.
Then, the air shifts.
The sound of marching boots echoes through the corridor, sharp and precise, their rhythm growing louder. Marcus and Tamalito freeze, instincts sharpened by battle flaring to life. The torchlight flickers, casting shadows that twist like living things. The guards are coming—gleaming steel, drilled formation, their numbers a tide of power meant to crush resistance.
But something is wrong.
The ancestors turn to face the approaching forces, and the world itself seems to hold its breath. The stones underfoot hum with recognition, ancient power waking in their cracks. Túpac Amaru II's presence expands, a storm gathering at the edge of reason. Beside him, Nezahualcóyotl stands like a mountain reflected in a still lake—serene but unyielding. Neither draws a weapon.
The guards round the corner, their polished armor gleaming like a false sunrise, their spears sharp as discipline. For a moment, their precision is perfect, a display of strength meant to intimidate. Then, they see.
They falter.
The polished steel of their armor feels suddenly cold, their weapons clumsy and insignificant. The air is too thick, pressing against their lungs. Their steps falter, rhythm breaking into hesitation. The legends before them don't move, don't speak, yet their presence fills every corner of the space, bending it to their will.
Túpac Amaru II's gaze meets the guards', and something primal flashes in his eyes—a promise of rebellion that could topple mountains. Nezahualcóyotl doesn't glance their way; his focus is distant, his mind already composing the verses that will immortalize this moment.
Marcus and Tamalito stand in the shadow of their ancestors, still trembling from their own awakening. They see the guards hesitate, see their weapons lower ever so slightly, and realize: these men, these players, are not prepared to face the weight of history made flesh. After all, what are mere weapons against men who shaped history? What is steel against the power that built cities? What is armor against blood that freed nations?
A single drop of sweat rolls down the lead guard's temple. His knuckles whiten on the haft of his spear. The silence stretches, taut as a drawn bowstring, until even the torch flames seem to freeze.
And then, in a voice as calm as a summer breeze, Túpac Amaru II speaks:
"You were wise to hesitate. But wisdom does not forgive trespass."
The words linger, echoing off the stones like a spell. The guards shuffle, their formation breaking just slightly. In their eyes is the dawning terror that this is not a fight they can win. This is not a fight they can survive, even in a game.
The torchlight dims, the shadows grow longer, and the tension snaps like a breaking dam as the ancestors take a single step forward.