The rain began falling over Ibiza once again, while Heracles remained standing before the cavern where Tania had made her home. The powerful hero shook his head with a gesture of disappointment.
“What a dumbass,” Heracles said. “She preferred blowing herself to pieces and destroying her friends over being captured by me.”
The people, horrified, continued fleeing from where the Greek hero stood. He looked around and smiled.
“Well, I reckon there ain’t no need for this stupid town anymore,” Heracles said as he lifted his foot.
Menrva, who was with Ana and Susanoo, realized that the Irish goddess had been left speechless, while tears streamed down her face and blood came from her bitten lip. Ana’s gaze was wrathful, filled with hatred.
“Ana, that man… we will not be able to defeat him,” Menrva said nervously while seeing the goddess’s expression of rage.
“Mate, Ana-hime,” Susanoo tried to calm the Irish goddess. “I understand how thou feelest, yet it would be best to flee from here for the moment.”
But Ana did not listen. Furious, the goddess made Excalibur and her white-and-dark-colored totema appear, while wings of two colors appeared on her back.
“Ana, stop!” Menrva shouted furiously. “That is an order!”
But Ana ignored her and hurled herself toward Heracles with her sword drawn. The goddess launched a spark to create an alternate dimension around the entire island of Ibiza.
Heracles turned toward the goddess and smiled, just as he raised his arm to defend himself from the incoming attack.
“Bantiarna an Locha (Lady of the Lake)!” Ana shouted at the top of her lungs while tears flowed from her eyes.
An illusion of a blond woman appeared behind Ana, seemingly holding the edge of her sword with her white hands. Ana directed her powerful weapon toward Heracles’s arm and struck it, just as a great explosion of light erupted.
At that moment, all of Ibiza was erased from the face of the earth. Submerged in the depths of the Mediterranean Sea, it split in half, as if an enormous comet had collided with Earth.
Heracles’s arm flew from his body, just as the Irish goddess drove her weapon into the hero’s chest. But Heracles did not seem worried at all.
“Well now, this girl’s strong too,” the hero said in a mocking tone, just as his arm reattached itself to his body.
Before Ana could do anything, Heracles grabbed her by the head and began pulverizing her skull. Ana screamed, victim to the pain, and released her powerful weapon.
But at that moment, Excalibur released an emanation of sacred energy into Heracles’s chest. The hero howled in pain and hurled Ana to the ground, since the Mediterranean Sea had disappeared after being evaporated by the goddess’s attack.
The Greek hero tried to tear the sword from his chest, but he could not do it; it was completely stuck. So he applied force, breaking the sacred weapon. A piece of the blade’s tip remained inside his body, which made him furious.
“Because of your stupid sword, now I got a wound in my chest,” the powerful hero said rabidly while walking toward Ana, who tried to stand but could not. The goddess dripped blood from her entire body, since her internal organs had burst from the last attack.
At that moment, Susanoo appeared before Heracles with his sword drawn and tried to cut the hero while shouting:
“Ten to umi no kami no bunkatsu (Sacred Division of Heaven and the Oceans)!”
Heracles bent from the cut made in his chest, right where Ana had left part of her sword, causing the hero to bleed from his mouth. Before he could react, a golden spear pierced Heracles’s chest.
Menrva, using her golden totema, jumped close to where Ana had fallen and immediately carried her.
“Idiot! I’m not going to let us waste Tania’s sacrifice!” she shouted at her.
“She’s not dead!” Ana replied, crying.
“Regardless, you must flee from here,” Susanoo added, preparing his katana again to fight, while he watched Heracles destroy Menrva’s golden spear with his bare hand and rise to his feet once more.
“Forgive us, Susanoo,” Menrva said in frustration, just as the goddess stood, carrying Ana on her shoulder.
But Susanoo shook his head.
“Thanks to Rodrigo-san and all of you, I was able to defeat a Ryujin and find a purpose for which to fight and continue onward,” he replied. “I am certain we shall meet again.”
Menrva nodded and teleported. But Heracles’s face filled with hatred and resentment.
“Nobody’s leaving here!” the hero shouted furiously, just as he placed both hands on the ground.
“Ipeiriké diaíresi (Continental Division)!” Heracles shouted, just as all the land within the alternate dimension was destroyed in pieces. The walls of that dimension cracked apart.
The impact was so terrible that it made Menrva appear while holding Ana, still inside the alternate dimension, nullifying her teleportation. The three gods then suffered the consequences of the attack as their totemas were shattered to pieces and their bodies exploded in gouts of blood.
The dimension Ana had invoked was destroyed, and the three gods fell like meteorites over the city of Ibiza, causing great damage to the town’s infrastructure. They had been left unconscious.
This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
The rain fell again while Heracles stared furiously at the three gods. Then his eyes filled with rage, and foam came from his mouth.
“I’ll kill them! I’ll kill every damn one of them!” the hero shouted furiously as he began raising his power and the island began to tremble.
The energy emanating from Heracles was so powerful that people felt an instinctive need to kneel before the hero and worship him. They were terrified, but they could do nothing against the emanation of his divine powers.
But then, the people froze in time. A new alternate dimension rose over the city at that moment.
“Enough, Heracles! Do not exceed your privileges!” a very strong voice was heard in the distance.
Heracles turned toward the sky and saw a man with long orange hair and an orange beard. Two antelope horns emerged from his head, and he was dressed in a green tunic. Beside him, an army of men wearing deer masks stood guard, ready to draw their swords.
“I am Aernus, the new grigori of Iberia, and furthermore, a Lusitanian deity from Thule,” the man said.
Then the man pointed at Heracles with his staff.
“I will not permit you to destroy this city and cause terror in the human world because of your whims,” the Lusitanian god continued ordering.
Heracles, now calmer, began to smile at those words.
“Why the hell would I listen to you, stupid old man?” Heracles answered while looking defiantly at the god, who, upon realizing his situation, began trembling with fear.
Heracles leapt toward the man to kill him in a single blow, but a magnetic force prevented him from moving forward, leaving him floating in the sky.
“My, Heracles, how can you not control yourself?” a woman’s voice was heard in the distance.
The woman who had appeared before Epona, together with her two companions, was also floating over Ibiza. It had been the woman in front who had stopped the hero with her magical powers.
“Hecate…” Heracles said, annoyed, upon seeing the woman in the center.
Hecate, the woman in the center, was very pale, but her hair was dark as the night and had purple eyes. She had a pointed crown called a polos. She wore a gloomy dark-colored armor adorned with astral and magical symbols. This protection ended in a skirt, accompanied by a long black dress. Both of the goddess’s arms, which were covered by serpentine spirals, emanated fire.
Beside her, Hecate’s two guardians, the sorceress Circe and the witch Medea, floated with her. Both carried the unconscious bodies of Epona and Anpiel with telekinesis.
Circe, who carried Anpiel, was a blond woman with red eyes. Her features were very beautiful, but her face had a certain touch of sadism. She had a golden diadem and red-and-white armor, which ended in a skirt with an opening along her right leg. Her armor looked like a leotard that showed off the sorceress’s beautiful figure very well. She looked quite sensual. In her right hand, she carried a small magic wand adorned with emeralds and jewels.
Medea, on the other hand, had dark reddish hair, quite long and messy. Her face was completely made up with dark colors. Her armor was similar to Circe’s, but red and gold. She carried a scepter with the face of a demon.
Behind the three witch goddesses, a group of Amazon women were also floating. One of them was carrying a pig.
“Fortunately, I was able to calculate that girl Menrva’s teleportation and arrive here,” Hecate said, disappointed. “You know our lord Zeus is not going to tolerate you making your damn messes, you fucking asshole!”
Heracles spat on the ground and looked away.
Hecate then flew before Aernus and pulled a knife from her skirt.
“What do you intend to do, Lady Hecate?” the Lusitanian god asked, frightened.
But Hecate drove the knife into her own arm. The goddess grimaced in pain at this.
“Why did you do that?” the Celtiberian god asked, frightened and confused.
“Because it is my way of expressing my most sincere apologies to you, since because of this barbarian, you and all the people of this city nearly lost your lives,” Hecate replied.
“I… thank you for saving my life,” Aernus replied, still worried, especially after seeing that Hecate’s wound was not healing.
The goddess then bowed before the grigori of Iberia.
“I have another request to make of you,” the Greek goddess said. “The three fallen gods here… we shall take them to Olympus to cast them into Tartarus.”
Aernus became nervous at those words.
“But Lady Hecate, I have orders from Lel to kill them,” the grigori of Iberia replied.
Medea then nodded her head.
“Though of course, if you wish to take them, I will have no issue with it,” Aernus replied, completely blushing while imitating the same reactions Medea had made.
Medea nodded with a smile.
“I thank you very much!” Hecate replied to Aernus’s words.
Then the goddess, moving her hand, lifted Heracles with telekinesis together with Susanoo, Menrva, and Ana; those three remained unconscious.
“Very well, then we shall withdraw,” Hecate said while continuing to smile.
At that moment, the three goddesses and their warriors, together with their prisoners, disappeared.
Aernus then remained thoughtful for a moment.
“Why the hell did I agree to hand over the prisoners?” he wondered.
Meanwhile, inside one of the hundreds of rooms of the royal castle of Constantinople, there was a very particular room, covered with red and purple curtains and rugs, and filled with marble statues representing Apollo. In this enormous room, there was a great royal bed where the young Vidar lay. The god was naked and chained with dimensional threads, while on one of his sides, a tube extracted his ichor to keep him constantly weak.
The young man, although he looked thin and sickly, continued to have an emotionless expression.
Then Apollo, still dressed as a Byzantine monk, entered the room with a lustful gaze. He sat beside the young Norse god’s body and began caressing his head.
“I do not understand why you play so hard to get,” Apollo said in a seductive voice. “If you were mine, you could live here or in Olympus with every comfort you wished.”
With his finger, the Greek god began touching Vidar’s naked body, but he showed no expression.
When Apollo saw that Vidar did not respond, he furiously struck him in the stomach. The Norse god bled from the mouth, but did not react.
“How dare you reject me?” Apollo asked angrily. “Do you know who you are dealing with, you damned brat?”
But Vidar did not answer.
Apollo was furious and was about to strike Vidar again, but at that moment, someone knocked on his door.
Annoyed, Apollo left the room while uttering curses, but when he saw his four dolphins prostrated before the visitor, he realized it was someone from Lel who had come to see him.
“L-Lady Baalat,” the Greek god said, frightened. “Those words… were not for you.”
The person who had arrived, who was indeed Baalat, was dressed in a singular purple Phoenician dress and wore a golden diadem on her head. The goddess had her arms crossed and wore an annoyed expression.
“Accursed pederast,” the goddess said angrily. “When are you going to learn to stop doing your filthy little obscenities with every ephebe you see?” she asked, annoyed.
“I do not know what you are talking about, Lady Baalat!” Apollo replied nervously.
“Everyone in Lel already knows you keep a young god of Asgard here,” Baalat replied. “You are almost the same as your father when he was younger.”
Apollo made an annoyed expression.
“And what do you care what I do with my free time?” he asked. “If I answer to you with my work, judge me by that alone.”
Baalat sighed then.
“That is not why I have come, in any case,” the Phoenician goddess replied.
Apollo looked at the Phoenician goddess with intrigue.
“You see, we know Asgard is cooperating with Orniskem, but those bastards changed the location of their planet so we cannot find them,” the Phoenician goddess replied.
Apollo smiled then.
“If it is information you need, I can extract it myself,” he said.
Baalat then began to laugh.
“Bah, the only things you want to extract from that boy are his fluids or his filth,” Baalat said, walking toward Apollo and moving him away with a gesture of her hand.
“I shall be the one to interrogate him,” the goddess added with a serious expression, just as she walked toward the door where Vidar was being held captive.