"God has come! He watches from the red sky, gazing upon the countless children of the earth!... Offer up your devotion, your hair and blood, drink the Blood Wine of conversion, carve the mark upon your foreheads, and give your souls to the Main God!..."
Blue Sacred Fire rose outside Shamu City, and the green smoke of burning hair drifted through the valley. A faint reek of blood spread through the air. More than forty thousand Tecos tribesmen converted one after another, swearing soul-and-blood oaths to believe in the Main God, while those unwilling to convert were offered up as sacrifices by their own kin. As for the Tecos God-descendants and nobles who had once ruled the city-state from on high, they were dragged one by one before countless watching eyes onto the altar and offered to the supreme Main God.
At this moment, Blue Fire, green smoke, red blood, and yellow corpses together formed the colors of mystery, terror, and death. And the scorching heat, the choking smell, the deafening scripture, and the aching foreheads were like bone-deep brands from the sacrificial rite, making every person who converted remember it for the rest of their lives.
"You must believe in Our God Huitzilopochtli! Those who defy Him will suffer eternal torment after death, their souls congealing into stone in the endless Abyss, burned by fire and hacked by axes day and night, hungry and parched! Those who obey Him will have their souls rise into the red Divine Kingdom, be reborn after death, know no hunger, cold, or toil, and forever enjoy peace and beauty!..."
The kingdom priests chanted the scriptures that invoked the god, and apprentices born from the Tecos tribes repeated them aloud. And that mysterious terror, which clenched at human hearts, sank deep along with the