Ahead of them all walked the high priest, the h'men or visionary, he of the Sight. Festooned in spotted cat skins, his hair matted and stinking of blood from the birds sacrificed in the way of his people, he prepared for the ceremony to come, pulling his strength inward, blocking out his senses until he could hear only the heavy thrum of his own heartbeat, accentuated with every pace by the movement of the amber amulet he wore around his neck.

The amulet was a talisman, believed by the Olmec to bring on visions of the future that only the ordained high priests of their tribe could see. But the priest himself knew the stone to be worthless.

He had possessed the Sight since he was a child. The priests who had worn the amulet then, had known nothing of what was to come to their people, but even as a child he had known. In his visions, he knew that what was to come was no less than the curse of Puch himself.

Death. Death for all of them. Death for ages, forever. He had known it then, but no one had listened. Now the elder priests were dead, killed by their own people, and the young h'men had risen to wear the amulet of leadership. If he had failed, he, too, would have died.

But he did not fail, and what lay in the innermost chamber of the cave proved his victory. His vision had foreseen that the gods would come to rule the Olmec's enemies in the kingdom on the other side of the fire mountain Bocatan, and that those enemies would prevail. The visions were true; they were always true. The strange gods in their flying sky-chariot had come to aid the Olmec's enemies with weapons wrought from shafts of lightning, which they held in their bare hands. The Olmec had been driven away, forbidden to walk above ground.

But even the gods can be challenged. And if they are conquered, the future can be changed. The Olmec had both challenged and conquered the enemy gods, who lay now, captured, defeated, inside the inner chamber of the cave, their hands and legs bound like those of ordinary mortals, their throats parched, the taste of fear in their mouths. The gods waited to die.