This historical romance is a telling of the fall of the Aztec Empire. The epic begins on the eve of the dedication ceremony of the monumental Aztec Sun Stone, on which occasion the heroic Tlaxcaltec warrior Tlahuicole fights his fatal gladitorial combat against insurmountable odds, imposed upon him for his defiance of the Aztec priests and their blood-thirsty gods, and ends with the fall of Tenochtitlan, the ancient capital of the Aztecs, at the hands of a coalition of Spanish and allied native forces led by Hernán Cortés.