“You are aware we are equals?”

“On paper!” the Gamer shouted at the Horned Rat. “You expect me to believe that you don’t have any control over your fellow Triumvirate members, Suel?!”

The god on the other end of the line laughed in its two-toned voice, deep and squeaky simultaneously. “If Suel was one of my alter egos, you really think that would make me trip up?”

“I hate you,” John hissed into the phone. “Why are the Illuminati here?”

“Must I reiterate, reiterate?” Richard answered. “They’re my equals, they can go after their own projects.”

“Why now? Why Yucatan?”

“Oh, you two are in Yucatan, ho-“

“Cut the crap, rodent, the moment I whispered the words to Suel, whether you are him or not, you knew. Nothing going through any kind of information broker misses you.” The Gamer paused for a moment to regain a fragment of his composure. “Which brings me to the question of why you-“ He heard a click.

John saw his HP decrease by 10 as the rage caused several blood vessels to burst. He lowered the phone, then raised it up again when he realized the call was still going.

Next the sound of trumpets was blared into his ear.

“Connecting a soundboard to my phone must have been the greatest idea anyone has ever had, had,” the Horned Rat cackled and repeatedly pressed the button that simulated the sound of the call getting dropped. “Keep disrespecting me, however, and you will find me even less cooperative. I have no stake in this matter, which means I can afford to leave you hanging or disappointed.”

“You expect me to believe you have no stakes in a matter that has not only an entity capable of blocking future sight but also the Grim Reaper involved, in addition to your own Triumvirate member?”

“I said no stake, not no interest,” the Horned Rat answered, “but yes, the outcome of this is a moving part that I can cope with no matter what happens. Therefore, I shall remain neutral. Do you propose a deal to change this?”

“No,” John answered immediately. “The last thing I want is more factions in this conflict.” After a short pause, he continued, “Could you attempt to contact Norahnon so we can have a meeting? There’s no need for us to come to blows over this.”

“Finally, reasonable language!” the Horned Rat ridiculed. “Which is a language Norahnon hardly speaks, so you will find it will serve you little. Regardless, I shall do this. Would not do for two of my ‘equals’ to hurt each other.”

The Gamer heard the click of the phone again. He checked the display. This time, the Horned Rat had actually hung up. ‘Now to go through the cat and mouse game of finding his number again,’ John groaned in his head. Each time he called the Horned Rat, the god discarded that number and gave his spies within Fusion a new one.

It was doubly annoying. John had to locate those spies and have them shadowed in such a way that they did not realize that the number they used to contact the Horned Rat had been compromised. Additionally, because this was the only way John ever got a private number for the Horned Rat, he had to tolerate the existence of Illuminati spies even when he knew about them. The number was just worth more than leaked middle management secrets.

It was absurdly annoying.

“You’re in a foul mood,” Scarlett pointed out.

“Of course I am,” the Gamer snapped back. This body of his, the body that had stayed in the airplane, was pacing up and down the living room. Base instincts told him to call Inkaryl and start smashing things. He was better than that, but that barrier between sapience and base instinct was thinner at the moment than usual. “Say it!”

“…Well, it ain’t an ‘we told ya so’ yet…” Rave was diplomatic about it.

“The Grim Reaper, I can excuse as coincidence,” John said. “A prior engagement, coming about because whatever is in these lands is becoming active. Norahnon is a different beast. He has to have heard from Suel that something of interest is here and decided to look into it personally.”

“I still don’t know if this is necessarily bad for us?” Lee asked. “The Illuminati are Fusion’s oldest ally, right?”

“In the same way Gandhi is nice until you get to late game in Civ,” John answered. “Wouldn’t surprise me if this was a ploy to humble me a bit. The Illuminati are our allies, but they wouldn’t want to be the weaker party.”

Momo walked into the thick air of the room. The eye colour made clear that they were looking at one of her additional bodies. “Not sure if this is better than walking next to your brooding self.”

“Very funny,” John said to her and tried to ignore the slight mind irritation he got from talking to the same person in two different spaces, having two different conversations. It was like chatting with somebody in two different channels simultaneously, one conversation being a cordial exchange about games, the other being a passive-aggressive discussion about the history of the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire, but in person. It was a bit much even for his brain. Manageable, but he would rather not.

“…Time to employ the oldest trick in the book, then,” Momo commented on his continued grumpiness. “Maids, get him!”

Aclysia, Beatrice, Claire and Delicia all looked at their fairy member. Momo stood there, finger extended, and adorably puffed up her cheeks. The pout only grew more pronounced the longer she was stared at. Eventually, the latter three turned their eyes to the founding first.

Clapping her hands, Aclysia announced, “As Momo suggests, let us do our duty.”

John knew what was going to happen next and he would have been an ascetic to deny it. Beatrice and Claire led the way, taking John by his arms and pulling him towards the couch. Once he had been made to sit down between them, they rubbed their naked bodies on his equally exposed skin. Hands were grabbed and guided to the squishiest bits of their thick thighs.

All the while, Delicia sashayed up to him. The shortstack grinned, a skilled display of bratty and submissive, and dropped to the floor. Large breasts were wrapped around his cock. The soft pressure of her pliable flesh brought him to full erection within moments. Stress and annoyance were exorcised from his body, taking the shape of groans. Each bounce of her breasts was smoother than the last, lubricating oils spreading from her pores.

“Aren’t you the most convenient sex toy?” John groaned.

“My body is a machine that turns erect cocks into flaccid cocks and shortstacks covered in cum,” Delicia joked in return. Her voice turned soft, so soft that it made John shiver wantonly. “Just relax and let me please you, Master.”

That he did. John tilted his head back, closed his eyes, and let the two other maids besides him whisper sweet nothings in his ear. “You’re the perfect Master.” “Beloved.” “Our chosen man.” “Who else could be more deserving?” The back and forth of delighted compliments were a stark contrast between obsessive love and matter of fact, passive statements in their tone. Both were wonderful, in their own way, and underlined by the moans of the shortstack whose sensitive breasts made her enjoy giving the service as much as John enjoyed receiving it – perhaps even more than that.

The pitch of her voice betrayed four orgasms before his cock tensed up. He opened his eyes just a crack to witness the scene of Delicia’s adorable face getting plastered with sticky white cum. The bratty shortstack was a delightful mess even before the first spurt started to soak into her hair. Drooling and panting, she made for the perfect canvas. Strings of white settled on pale, flushed skin.

Aclysia leaned in for a kiss. “We love you, Master,” she whispered, just before their lips met. Beatrice and Claire pressed their own mouths on his cheeks. Head to toe, John felt heat tingle through his body.

“Feeling calm now?” Momo asked once the entanglement had slightly calmed. Effectively, that meant that Delicia had gone to clean herself up and Claire took her place on the floor, while Aclysia took the place at his side.

“Calmer,” the Gamer answered in the affirmative. “Still worried though. You’re about to add to that, aren’t you?”

“Probably,” Momo confessed and pulled the notebook out of her inventory. Since all of her bodies shared the same space, she could move items around between bodies with the same level of effortlessness as John could between himself and the Ambassador Double, times 50. “Are you familiar with Huitzilopochtli?”

“Should we?” Rave asked. “Aren’t we kinda in this area to uncover the gods of the Aztecs?”

“This one is notable. Ever heard of the belief the Aztecs had that you had to sacrifice humans to make sure the sun kept rising?” John asked and Rave nodded. Of all the things that could be picked up about the Mesoamericans by cultural osmosis, this was one that most people heard about. “Huitzilpdod- Huitzi… what a name. Huitzilopochtli was the main god of the Aztec empire. Like most chief deities, he was originally the god of the city and tribe that ended up unifying the entirety of the area in mundane space. Seems like this mirrored Abyssal history in this case. Whenever the Aztecs sacrificed humans to keep the sun burning, it was in the name of this god.”

“In the mundane, Huitzilopochtli was the god of war, the sun, and sacrifice,” Momo added. “We know the goddess of the sun and the god of war, which logically suggests that the Abyssal entity Huitzilopochtli was or is the god of sacrifice.”

“Which, in turn, would fit with the Aztecs successfully making ‘god warriors’,” Lee chimed in. “Who would be more likely to have the abilities to make sacrifices mean something than the god of sacrifices?”

“It does fit… it also means that we could expect this god to be of extreme power. The amount of people sacrificed to him will be enough to create yet another level 900 to 1000 entity.” John rubbed his forehead. “The city of Huitzi was Tenochtitlan, correct? Would it be worthwhile to fly on over there?”

“Wait, we know where that is?” Rave asked. John and Momo raised an eyebrow at the first of the harem. Rave glanced at everyone else in the room. Since confusion was shared among most of the present women, the feline Lightbearer felt confident in declaring, “Don’t ya two nerds look at me like I should know where some ancient Aztec cities are.”

“Tenochtitlan is not some ancient Aztec city… it was the capital and its ruins are still located in Mexico City.”

“Which also answers your question, John,” Momo turned her ridicule to him. “You really think that if there was something of worth still there, the Spaniards wouldn’t have found it over the past 500 years?”

“Fair point.” John rubbed his chin. “The fact that Huitzi is in charge of that ancient realm not being widespread knowledge means that the god kept himself on the downlow or we are overlooking something. Both seem equally likely. Do we have any Spanish records of the time?”

“You think I didn’t check those?” Momo asked. “First place I looked after checking on Mengele’s notes was the old colonial records that the Golden March gave me access to. There was a lot but nothing outright useful. They definitely didn’t outright state that the Abyssal Aztecs outright referred to their realm as that of Huitzilopochtli. They called it the ‘Second Sky’. What is recorded is that many of the Abyssal Aztecs believed in many of the same gods that the mundane ones did, because they shared the pantheon Remus had left them until the Abyss-mundane split happened, but regarded them all as dead.”

“Could be a translation error from our crone contact then?” John suggested. “They call it the realm of Huitzi because-“

“You are so lazy not speaking the whole name.”

“-Yes, anyway, because they kept sacrificing and that kept working?” The Gamer rolled his shoulders. “There are several hundred years even between that old crone and the collapse of the empire, we cannot treat her as a reliable source.”

“I’m not, I’m just going with what we have at the moment,” Momo assured. “We’ll revisit the assumptions once we have more intel. Ah, this is so exciting!” The fairy maid jumped from one foot to the other. “Isn’t it? Isn’t it just exciting? A puzzle on a continental scale!”

Siena chuckled. “You are adorable when you geek out about old and dusty things.”

“S-shut up!” Momo stammered, made self-aware.

“Why did they call it ‘Second Sky’ by the way?” Metra asked.

“The idea was that the first sky is where the new gods await to be born through sacrifice and the second sky is the plane where the Illusion Barriers are located. Earth was only the mundane,” Momo explained. “Then we have the thirteen hells, the mirror to the thirteen heavens of the mundane Aztecs. Basically, the Abyssal Aztecs believed that their gods were varying degrees of dead. The Omeyocan, the highest deity of the Aztec pantheon, was believed to linger in the lowest of all hells, from which their influence could never reach the mortal realms again. The five sins, by comparison, were the highest gods.”

“I can’t help but notice you aren’t naming any of them,” John pointed out, something he only did because he had heard the names of those sin gods from the crone earlier. “Come on, share with the class what they are called, since you are so thorough in pronouncing stuff.”

Momo shot him a glare, then took a deep breath. “The Ahuiyateteoh consisted of Macuilxochitl, the god of gambling and music; Macuiltochtli, the god of alcohol; Macuilmalinalli and Mauilicuetzpalin, both of which are just general gods of excess and pleasure apparently and…”

“Come one,” John kept goading her.

“Macuilcozcactus… Fuck!” Momo stomped while everyone around laughed. "Macuilcozcacuuuuuu… I almost had it! Urgh. Macuilcozcacuauhtli! God of gluttony! There!”

“That’s a name and a half,” Salamander joked.

At that moment, the door to the airplane opened. John shifted the main attention of his facetted mind to his real body as he walked into the mobile hotel. The Momo in the room reverted to a small Firefae as she, John, and Ehtra entered the room proper. “Thirty minute break,” John announced and sat down on another part of his couch, giving three more of his haremettes the space to cuddle with him, while the double in the room kept getting serviced by the maids. “Then we resume our search for Tathnuachan. It’s the best we can do at the moment.”