Coyol or Cihua must have cast the spell protecting my village before the real fight began. The bucking ground stilled as I stumbled within a stone's throw of Grillo Negro's tents, straight into Jem's arms.

"You're exhausted," he said. I could hardly hear his voice over the deafening rumble of the ground.

I pushed past him. "Bring everyone to the fire pits!"

He nodded wordlessly and ran off. I thrust my hands groundwards. A ring of fire roared to life around my village, singeing the dust from the air and cutting off all view of the world falling apart around us. Oh, gods, I had forgotten how taxing fire-walls were. It was going to take all my strength just to hold this one.

Jem had gathered everyone at the village center by the time I joined them. My parents caught me up in such a tight embrace, I thought they would never let go. I didn't want them to let go. I hugged them back. Even that momentary lapse sent dust creeping over my fire-walls. I released my parents and forced more energy into the flames, though my hands trembled from the effort. Jem's arms circled me from behind and held me tight. His closeness warmed me. Steadied me. I reached out and found the mental space between us. Don't let go.

I won't. You can do this.

A hand touched my shoulder. My mother squeezed it gently and smiled at me, then closed her eyes, her lips whispering through a prayer. Another hand found my other shoulder. My father.

You can do this.

Abraham's hand landed on Jem's back, his mother's on his shoulder, Elías's on hers. Like the links of magic, the web formed from the crowd. Some eyes were open, others closed. They were afraid, but they were here for me. For all of us. This was my village, and I would protect them until the day I died. Even if that day was today.

The shaking had spread up my arms now, but the fire-wall grew in spite of it. I couldn't hold on forever, but I could hold on for now.

Don't let go.

I won't.

He kissed the back of my head, his breath warm in my hair. You can do this. I believe in you.

Two more stars fell. The sky was a roiling mass of grey now, the normally flat clouds thick and stormy. Incessant flashes streaked them, but the only thunder was the thunder in the earth.

Another star. Were they fleeing to the ground? Or were they dying? At the next star, a collective breath caught in my family's throats.

Something moved in the clouds.

The world swam between dream and reality as a swamp-green snake as long as a mountain was tall dipped from the clouds, encased in silver lightning. Was that Cihua? I knew some of the gods had spirit forms, but I had only once seen a god with the strength to fight in one. This snake outstripped Quet's by miles. It swam like it looped through water, not air, then writhed as though bitten. The lightning shot down its body and plunged at the glow at its tail. If Coyol was backing Cihua now, the Centzon Huītznāuhtin must have dwindled too far to be of any use. Coyol was losing her armor.

The green snake writhed again. The glow had not relented, and as Cihua twisted, the clouds broke around a second snake, its teeth sunk in the first one's tail. For a heartbeat I could have believed it was Coyol. But the gleam of its ice-white body was colder than the moon, and the lightning that wreathed it was not silver. Emma's spirit form—or Cōātlīcue's, perhaps—wrapped around the green snake's lower half. Where it struck, frost made a rash of Cihua's scales.

I was standing in Xochi's vision. In the painting she had once made, curled on the couch in Tlalocan as we talked late into the night. Lightning lit the sky again, and firelight painted the ground. Even the flames were not enough to cover a rain of falling stars.

The rumble in the earth was growing still, endless and unstoppable, but now another sound rose. It was a scream, or a shriek, or something in between. A long, high, unearthly sound, building and building until I could tell that it came from the sky. Snakes' coils thrashed the clouds. They chased each other in a loop, faster and tighter until the clouds spun. The wind picked up, and panic tore through me. The earthquake may not destroy Grillo Negro, but a hurricane would. I couldn't counter it. I wasn't a wind god.

But before the disk of the clouds even dropped into a funnel, the white one lunged. It got its teeth in the green one's neck this time, and surged out of sight, up into the clouds.

Emma had broken Coyol's last defense.

Visions of the gods' past haunted me as a brilliant flash marked the meeting of the two spellcasters. Please, let the gods be protected from this. Coyol had shattered their childhood home when she was just fifteen, and centuries had passed since then. Her mother had fallen, and she had beaten her siblings down to become the most powerful goddess of all. Did even the vengeance of Emma's magic stand a chance against her?

Dust was rearing over my fire-walls again. I couldn't keep them high enough to block the red tide. How long would this protection last? Coyol had spared Grillo Negro on the condition that Jem, Emma and I stay out of her war, but we had shattered our side of the bargain. I couldn't stop earthquakes, either. The moment the spell keeping the ground intact here broke, the whole village was in danger.

Jem tightened his hug as I lifted my arms, heedless of the ache that gripped them in an ever-deepening burn. More than dust hit my barrier now. Great gusts of wind pitched tumbleweeds and other debris at the fire-wall, and chunks of dirt flung up by the ground fell apart like comets with fiery tails when they hit the flames. The dust was constant. If I dropped this now, we would be under assault from the desert, able to neither see nor breathe.

Spider's nests of lightning crisscrossed the sky, spreading like runaway wildfire. One side was silver, the other gold. In the middle, they blended, their colours flashing back and forth as each fought to overwhelm the other's web. I could imagine the pair face to face just as they had been the first time, on the day Coyol swore to do everything she had accomplished since, and might yet accomplish if Emma's magic lost. I couldn't tell who was winning. My vision was blurred, and it was all I could do to just keep my fire burning. This wasn't over yet. I couldn't give up yet. I couldn't fall.

You can do it, said Jem. I believe in you.

Belief. Love. Grounding. It was all so simple now.

Emma's winning, he said.

My heart skipped a double beat.

Jem could see better than I could. She's taking over the edges of Coyol's magic. I don't think Coyol's noticed yet.

A trap. Cōātlīcue had not been so clever, and Emma had always been the stealthiest of all of us. Maybe this was her in control after all. I tipped my head back. Lightning smeared like child's paint across the sky, but the outer rim of the silver half was definitely tinged with gold. I dropped my head again as the strain grew too much.

Just breathe, said Jem. Focus on the fire. You don't need to do anything else.

I was still flagging too hard to last. Dust rolled over into the camp, and my already shaky footing would give out if the ground shook any harder. I couldn't hear anything but the earthquake anymore. It didn't end. Please, Emma. Hurry.

Right when I thought I would lose my hold and fall for the last time, the sky split. Gold surged through the lightning's web, and a lightning bolt large enough to cut clouds seared from the sky to the closest, tallest mountaintop. This time, there was thunder: a sweeping, deafening roll that started at the silver end of the sky and roared all the way to the gold one. When it tapered out, the ground's thunder quieted with it.

My barrier fell, bringing darkness with it. Jem caught me as I slumped, and I turned to let him hug me properly. I was no longer sure I could stand on my own, let alone fight Centzon Huītznāuhtin if they arrived. If Coyol had escaped that, the battle would resume. If she was gone, Emma would send a signal. The fate of the world hung in the balance of those long, excruciating heartbeats.

Then something small and wet made a spark of cold on my forehead. I lit the flame in my hand and lifted it. A gentle snow had begun to fall.

Adrenaline drained from my body. The fat flakes drifted earthwards like feather down, settling on tents and clothing, or melting on the smouldering ring left behind by my fire. Coyol didn't have ice magic. She couldn't make snow.

We won? said Jem in my mind.

We won.

"We won!" he called over the murmuring village. "It's over."

The network collapsed into hugs. I found myself pulled from Jem's chest and wrapped up by my parents again.

"When you're ready," murmured my mother, "we're sitting down to hear the full story."

I just nodded. They deserved that.

"Where are your friends?" She looked around. "The ones who came to visit us. Are they safe?"

My tears returned at the vivid memory. Tezcat at least might be, but the others... even if Emma had caught them after Coyol's strikes, I wasn't sure Xolotl was strong enough to make it through. Emma could revive plants from the brink of death, but people—gods—were a completely different level. "I don't know."

Jem's hand rubbed my back. I don't think Emma's going to leave them. Should we try to get back to her?

If you have ideas. I can teleport, but I'm not going anywhere else with that today.

You can teleport?!

Don't ask.

"What are you two up to?" said my mother with a frown. "Did they teach you that mind-talking thing, too?"

We both chuckled. I tried to reach out to her, too, but apparently telepathy took more magic the less the recipient had. Or maybe I had burned my year's quota of magic already today. "Maybe..."

She gave a mock huff. "Robbing me of the joy of my kids' communications." Jem was roped into the hug; my mother had always considered him one of her "kids". "Well, I suppose it can't be helped when they all run away on me to hang out with the gods. Shall we go find your friends?"

"Mom..."

"What? We don't know until we've tried." She peered at the sky. "How do we get up?"

"We don't know."

"There's an edge somewhere," said Jem, "but we don't know where."

"Well, let's go find it, then. That, or—" she twirled a finger at us. "Neither of you can fly, can you?"

"No."

"Thank the Lord."

"Mom!"

She was teasing me. "Let a woman have her small victories. You're hard enough to keep a hold on as it is; it's hard to see my Adriana all grown up. We missed you."

I buried my face in her shoulder. "I missed you, too."

Someone managed to light a torch from the coals of the fire-ring, bringing light back to the village center. Just moments later, there was a shriek from the crowd's edge. My head whipped up to find the village already converging on a figure I would recognize anywhere. Emma's winter clothing was tattered like she'd been through an attack by a wild animal. Her hair was matted, and great slashes ran up and down her arms. She dropped her jacket and flung herself into Rodolfo and Elías's waiting embrace.

She didn't stay long, though, and before I could reach her, she had marched up to Jem and I and seized us both by the sleeves. "I left a snake to guard them, but I don't want her to wake up and find them," she said, dragging us towards the camp's edge. "Come help."

I had to dig in my heels against her surprisingly strong grip. I wasn't just weak; Jem struggled, too. "Emma! We can't do it alone. Can other people come, too?"

She frowned at me. "They're not supposed to come to the spirit levels."

"You realize Jem and I are still technically human, right?"

I got a spectacular eye-roll for that. "Fine. Get people together, then. I'm going back."

"Show us where to go and we'll come find you."

She pointed to my hand. "Just do your fire-thingie."

"What's the level called?"

"Ilhuicatl-Tetlaliloc."

She snapped her fingers and disappeared. If I was the second-strongest among the gods before Mictēcacihuātl cursed them, I knew now who the strongest had been. I lit my seeking-flame, vowing to kill Emma personally if it pointed upwards when I called on the sky-level. It tilted, though, aimed for the mountains. Marginally better.

A hand like stone rested on my shoulder as I shut my fist.

"They are welcome here," said Abraham quietly. "Just so you know."

Only Grillo Negro could find my smile beneath exhaustion's heavy blanket and the crawling weight of my worry about the gods.

Abraham smiled back and patted my shoulder before retreating. "Everyone who is able, gather what you need," he called, his resonant voice needing no volume to carry over the village. "We have been protected by the gods of our ancestors for our lives and longer. It's high time we returned the favour."