Mictlantecopl sat in the lowest levels of Hexcoatl’s temple to Tlazcotl. In his scaly hands was a seemingly plain shard of milky white crystal, around him swirled blurs of light. Gradually, the blurs formed into the recognisable shapes of galaxies and constellations. At the same time, Mictlantecopl felt his skin begin to glow with an inner light. Once, the shard had been used as a tool of battle, projecting images of light around Hexcoatl’s champions, making them immune to even the worst heat and almost impossible to hit at range. Now it was strictly a divinatory aid, deemed too precious to be allowed beyond the temples. It allowed skink diviners to remain in the undercroft of the temple, and still see the stars. He focused on the bones before him, as a calming ritual. Row on row of skulls from skink diviners of spawnings past, each coated in silver, each polished regularly, each retaining an echo of their former owners’ power. The ossuary was considered one of the best places to meditate in the whole temple, but it disturbed Mictlantecopl. He sensed an underlying conflict here; conflict between the power of the heavens and the power of death. He also could not help that his thoughts followed an uncomfortable association between the massed bones and a certain powerful Chaos entity, nor that they reminded him of his own inevitable mortality. Pushing aside possible conflicts within the winds of magic, Mictlantecopl began to work on a divination. Coils of power wound around his body, invisible to those without magesight, and he focused them into reading the patterns of stars and galaxies. Darkness. City. Last. Fire. Sacrifice. He linked them together the way he had been taught. First was the “likely” explanation: an attack, from Chaos on the city of Hexcoatl, the fires of war, followed by the sacrifice of the remaining attackers. But how did last fit into that? Last meant, in the language of divination, an end to something big. Maybe it would be the end of a powerful Chaos lord? He would need to ask if anyone had had the same visions, and compare ideas. There was another way of interpreting it, the one that always seemed to creep into a diviner’s minds, no matter how unlikely it was to play out. Chaos attacks Hexcoatl and the Lizardman empire as a whole, the last time Chaos is to attack the Lizardmen, because Chaos prevails. The sacred flames go out and the jungles burn and the Lizardmen are sacrificed to Chaos in pursuit of the world’s destruction. Still, that was the worst case scenario. Mictlantecopl stood up, reverently slipped the crystal back into its pouch, and left the ossuary (with perhaps a bit more enthusiasm than would be considered reverent) to discuss the omens with his fellow diviners. Behind him, in the freshly-settling darkness, a sliver-coated skull clattered to the ground. --- This is just a one-shot piece that I may end up tying into a larger story. Anyway, enjoy!
This is an incredible set up! I definitely want this to grow into something larger. Really well written and sets up any number of possibilities.