The story begins with the Aztec God of death and lightning, the Xolotl. As legends have it, he was a monstrous dog that guarded the sun god and ushered souls to the underworld every night. One day, as Gods began sacrificing each other for the newly created sun, Xolotl, a master transformer, managed to escape death by turning himself into a salamander. And that creature came to be known as the axolotl.