Author's Note: This story was told to me by an Amnish sailor returning from Maztica. The fellow had the marks of captivity, sporting only eight fingers. Sometime during his imprisonment, he had come upon a tale. He relayed it to me.
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The boy emerged from the viper's nest, a man.
His hands oozed red, shaking. In the chamber behind him, flies crawled over the body of his mother. He recalled her smiles, of course, and her tight and protective embrace. He recalled how she smiled upon him, her favorite, even as his older brother writhed on the ground, mouth frothing with poison.
How she shadowed over him, then! A white, sharp smile in looming silhouette. The boy's eyes did not dare leave her face, despite the sickly and choking sounds from the floor.
She terrified him. Now, no more.
The once-boy, now Prince, ascended the many steps of the temple of Zaltec. He carried with him a bowl of hearts, piled and slick. Each one once belonged to a courtier, a noble, or a priest. He recalled how these men of station whispered behind his back, how they plotted and met at night thinking themselves unseen. Whilst the sun still shone, they smiled at him with eyes full of daggers.
The Prince imagined how he had looked to them; he was a boy too young and thin for the feathered mantle of Nexal to sit easy. He could smell their ambition, a stomach-turning stench that made the very halls of the palace unbearable.
They terrified him. Now, no more.
The Prince laid out his offering before mighty Zaltec, Bringer of War and Eater of Hearts. He raised a dagger of red-speckled black and called together warriors, grim men wearing furs and scales and feathers. They came to him, filling plazas, overrunning bridges, and deafening the city with their clamor.
He knew the doubts infesting their thoughts, the rumors that spread with subtle susurration. He feared the idle warrior, the long empty hours of the barracks, and the chatter of the passing shift.
His own soldiers terrified the Prince. So he called them to battle.
The Prince's men fell upon the lands of Pezelac. Under the pale moon, hunched men dressed like jaguar, viper and peregrine clashed with sharpened obsidian. For six days and seven nights did fires burn over Pezelac, the canals clogged with the city's own dead.
The altars of Zaltec ran red with victory.
As was custom, a wife was taken from the defeated peoples. The Prince, now King, celebrated his conquest, his marriage, and the birth of an heir. But he was not at peace. For in the lands of Kultaka and Payit did new enemies stir, ancient nations aroused by the bloodletting of Pezelac.
The King met with their perfumed ambassadors. He heard not their words, silky things that lingered and left their sweet stench in the air. He saw only their smiles, expressions that never quite made it to the eyes.
The King remembered the smiles in his youth. The King remembered terror.
He marched, the golden standards of Nexal streaming above his host, now swelled with slaves from Pezelac. He campaigned upon plains and mountain; both swamp and desert were marred by the rot of piled cadaver. Never had hungry Zaltec feasted so luxuriously.
The King grew old on the battlefield. Rarely did he come home to see his wife and his heir. Indeed, the mother-son entity terrified him.
When the once-King, now Emperor, finally returned to Nexal, he rode at the vanguard of an army unmatched. Dread heroes surrounded him, their mantles of war bedecked with skulls. In his wake shuffled ten thousand captives, heads bowed to the man who had laid them low. In the feast that followed, the music of sacrifice still shrieking into the night air, the Emperor sat alone.
He drank, and he remembered, and he thought.
And when he noticed his son at the foot of the table, staring up at him with wide eyes, did the Emperor recall his youth. The boy was terrified. The Emperor saw in his heir a mirror of his earlier self, caught petrified in the looming shadow of the world.
It was only when the Emperor's mouth began frothing that he reached out for his child, for the first and the last time. It was only when the Emperor lay still did the son make his escape.
The boy emerged from the viper's nest, a man.
Thus ends the story of the Conquerer's Fear, as heard by Shäalira, the younger. This tale was committed to ink on 9th day of Eleint, 75 AR.