Quetzalcoatl in the Underworld

Part Four: The throne room

This is Part Four of a creative experiment, exploring the current capacities of AI as a collaborator. Here you can find Part One, Part Two, and Part Three. For those who aren’t interested in this diversion, I intend to finish the series in the next few days and get back to more serious subjects. Please let me know what you think of this effort at “pulp mythology” in the comments. I hope you enjoy it!

They brought us to the throne room. Mictlantecuhtli and Mictlancihuatl, Lord and Lady of Death, sat upon their obsidian thrones, raised above the rest. Cadres of the dead and diabolic surrounded them reverently. I had to admit, as wicked as they were, the king and queen of Mictlan had style.

“Ah, Quetzalcoatl,” Mictlantecuhtli hissed, his voice a slither. “Savior of cycles. Gumshoe of time.”

Beside him, Mictlancihuatl tittered, a clatter of skeleton teeth banging together like castanets. “Here you are back again — at the end of another era, begging for the bones of your precious humanity.”

“Darling, why is Q always so eager to help those mammalian vermin? Mictlantecuhtli asked. “I mean, every time the Gods give them a world, they just muck it up again. Fouling their nest with all manner of toxic trash until they finally go down in flame, flood, and nuclear blitzkreig.”

“My dear, I couldn’t agree with you more,” Mictlantecuhtli replied. “Q is like the underpaid janitor for those old Gods. Called in to sweep up their mess. As a matter of fact, the human beings are so much better off as a heap of old bones in my treasure chest. I do look upon those gnarly fragments of femur and vertabrae with occasional fondness.”

I met Mictlantecuhtli’s gaze, stared directly into the vortices at the epicenter of his vacant eye sockets.