I landed in a dark, starlit field. I had the wits to drop flat, thankfully, and my stained clothing was already dark enough to match the short grass. What was it with the spirit-levels and their love of fields? For the night sky, I supposed it made sense—if I was the sun or moon goddess, I wouldn't want to scramble across rocks or over mountains to cross the sky every day either. But still.

The only grass I ever wanted to see again was the patchy desert clearnings where rabbits liked to graze. It had never occurred to me how much more suited I was to hunting rabbits than celestial-level warfare. When had I made such a poor life decision that I ended up here?

Fuego. Right.

Gods, to think this had all started with a burned village and a white-eyed turkey.

Realizing I should probably focus on the task at hand, I scanned the field for any sign of anything I might want to see a sign of. The thought that I might have landed an insurmountable distance from where I wanted to go almost made me laugh. Was the stress of this getting to me? Or was it all so ludicrous by now that my own mind could no longer take me seriously? I was invading the realm of the most powerful goddess alive, armed with fire magic gifted to me by a white-eyed turkey and sealed with tattoos. My best friend had plant magic, and my other best friend was a goddess. I could burn a semi-deity to death with the flick of a finger. Was I sure this wasn't all just some long, nasty fever dream?

If I got out of this alive, I was asking Jem out. Properly: not the kind-of, sort-of thing we'd had going for three years, knowing neither of us wanted to spend our lives with anyone else, or had anyone else to pick from even if we did. I would ask him out, and then one of us would propose because dammit, I wanted a family and kids and a tent in the village to furnish with all the cozy things that made a place a home.

An arrow lodged with a thunk in the ground beside me before I could entertain the thought further. My hand shot out, and the Centzonhuītznāhua dropped like a sack of burnt tinder. This time I didn't look until I was sure even the bones were gone. I told myself that Coyol's four hundred brothers were just Tzitzimime in another body: devoid of personality, and arguably even of a soul at all. Just mindless, obedient weapons.

That helped stem my nausea as I ignored once again that I had just ended the existence of something undeniably human-shaped. I had to move. Already I could see earthbound stars in the distance, headed towards me. Quiet as a coywolf, I scooted off to the side. They would converge on their dead brother, then fan out to search for me. I had to be gone by then.

The field was easy to move across, at least. I soon figured out that it sloped slightly, a curve greater than that of the earth below. It did not take me long to lose the encroaching stars behind the horizon. Lesson one: no fire unless I was desperate. On the expansive field, it was as good as a beacon.

I still had no idea where I was going, so I scuttled onwards until I was sure I hadn't been followed. Then I lay down again, and immediately doubted myself. Was I sure no one was following? The horizon might hide me, but it hid the Centzon Huītznāuhtin, too. Could they sense my magic, even if they couldn't see me?

And even if they couldn't... could Coyol?

She lived here. She was more than likely somewhere on this field right now.

Moonrise, echoed the soul-woman's voice in my head. I took a breath, held it, and let it out again. If moonrise was like sunrise, that meant Coyol too had to make a nightly trek across the sky. The souls had said moonrise came not long before sunset at this point in the calendar. Coyol had left for the night before I reached the tree.

Of course, that did not tell me where I was and whether she was coming towards me or moving away, but it ensured she was otherwise occupied, at least. I put my head down, realized that was probably a bad idea, and lifted it again. How long had it been since I'd slept? I had not felt the need to since landing in Mictlan, but I wasn't in Mictlan anymore, and even the gods slept. Even when they were at full power.

I ground my knuckles into my eyes. Gods, Adriana. Focus.

Where would Coyol's prison be? I cupped one hand around the other and lit the flame in my palm. "Tlaloc?"

The flame didn't move.

"Coyol's prison?"

That was an inanimate object in a way even matzin wasn't, though, and I was fairly sure my range for those was much smaller. I got no response. I gritted my teeth. "Centzon Huītznāuhtin?"

The flame shattered into dozens and ringed my palm. It was fair to assume, then, that Coyol's star brothers were everywhere. The spark of an idea popped into my head. "Coyolxāuhqui?"

The direction this time was single and definite. I resisted the urge to run from it. I didn't know yet what direction she was walking, and attracting unnecessary attention wasn't in the plan. I counted to one hundred, then opened my palm again. "Coyolxāuhqui?"

The flame's angle had shifted. It wasn't terribly accurate, but it told me she wasn't moving towards me. I got up against my better judgement and snuck towards the direction the goddess was moving away from. In a few hundred meters, I lay down and repeated the exercise. Check, count to a hundred, check again. This time the change in angle was smaller. I was closer to being directly behind her.

Now I moved in fifty-meter bursts until the flame only ever pointed one way when I called it on Coyol. I got up and crept in the opposite direction.

What if she came from somewhere that wasn't the prison?

I added the thought to my growing mental box. I would figure it out from there, then. Right now this was the only lead I had.

I backtracked along Coyol's trail for what must have been over an hour, checking her location periodically to make sure I was still going the other way. I could still see no sign of anything resembling a prison. Fear began finding the cracks in my plan again. I dropped to my stomach as a star appeared on the distant field. It did not move with purpose, but I was not taking chances. Only when it moved out of sight did I open my hand. "Tlaloc?"

Still nothing.

"Quetzalcoatl?" If this was the right way, I had to be close. Coyol hadn't left much more than an hour or two ago; her trail couldn't be that long. "Tezcatlipoca? Chalchiuhtlicue? Xipe Totec? Xolotl?"

Nothing, nothing, nothing. Were they just that drained, or was I too far to even hope to find them? Had I overshot? Started out closer to the prison and moved away? I needed a better plan. My hand got halfway to my pocket before I pulled it back again. I couldn't waste my last charm until I'd finished trying this. Even if I teleported to Coyol's prison, gods knew what awaited me there. I lit the flame again with the last names I could think of.

"Itztia? Jeremías?"

It flickered. Which one of them was that?

"Itztia?"

Nothing.

"Jeremías?"

I could have cried in relief. He was alive, and he was somewhere ahead. He was close enough for me to detect even his small magical bubble. Jem might have magic, but he was human—certainly more so than Emma or I. When the gods shared the cursed Matzin around, he would not have partaken.

"Jeremías?" I said again, just to convince myself I hadn't imagined it. The flame in my palm bent towards my fingertips. I shut my fist and had to rein myself in to keep from running. Jem was alive, and the prison was ahead. The strength I had felt back in Mictlantecuhtli's storage room surged back through my body, setting my limbs alight. I wanted to burn things again. I wanted to burn the whole prison.

The fact that Jem was in that prison held me back. My suddenly wild ego wanted to get up and walk the rest of the distance clothed in fire, maybe even leaving a trail of fire behind me. They would see me coming, and it would scare them. My logical brain squashed the thought as a star on the horizon made me flatten myself again on reflex. Coyol would be back at dawn. I had to get in and get out as quickly as possible, and declaring war was not the way to accomplish that.

The star did not move this time. As I watched, a second one joined it, then a third. I lay with bated breath as all my cocky confidence fizzled away. The Centzon Huītznāuhtin would not hesitate to kill me if they got their hands on me, or if they spotted me at all.

The three stars conferred for a while, then moved back below the horizon. My brow pinched. Was that the horizon? They had disappeared too abruptly for that. I moved like a lizard now, low and in quick bursts punctuated by lengthy periods of watching. On one of these, the star appeared again. I could see its outline now. The Centzonhuītznāhua glowed, from its armour to its normally terra-cotta skin. The fact that I could see it meant that definitely wasn't the horizon it had just stepped over. I had found something that wasn't the field.

I didn't dare call my seeking-flame again, but I didn't need it now. Jem was just over that rise. I hoped dearly that if he was, the others were, too.