“Are you planning to escape?” the Greek hero asked sarcastically as he approached Tania and Nabu with a wicked smile.
Tania stared at the powerful hero drawing closer and bit her lip.
“Look, I learned this stew in Carthage! It is grilled fish, and it is very tasty.”
Tania began remembering her childhood in Qart-Lel, when she went to Carthage to learn how to cook and watch the ships depart from the port. Those had been the happiest days of her life.
Inside an enormous kitchen full of clay utensils and ovens, the goddess had brought fish she bought at the market in Carthage. She had skewered them on a spear and was rotating them before a huge oven. The malak women angrily went to scold her because she was not supposed to do that sort of work.
Tania would then end up being reprimanded by the chief of the malakim in Qart-Lel. Little Tania, dressed in her purple dress, had her cheeks puffed out as she tried to ignore the woman with dark hair and pink wings. Tania did not care about obeying orders, since cooking was something she enjoyed very much.
Then the Punic goddess remembered when she lived as a homeless on the streets of a corner beside a tavern in Barcino, present-day Barcelona. It was the same place where the gods ate when they visited the city.
A woman in a beautiful green dress came out of the tavern. Tania began calling her so she would give her some coins.
“Girl, girl. I need some coins to eat,” she told her in Old Catalan. “Wanna buy me a booze?” she asked.
The woman in green dress turned, annoyed by those words. That elegant woman’s face was Ana’s. The Irish goddess looked carefully at the ruined deity.
“You’re a goddess, aren’t you? What are you doing here, looking all pitiful?” she asked her in the divine language.
Tania, dressed in rags, with a terrible smell of urine and liquor, and with messy hair, began to laugh. She was drunk and had vomit on her lips.
“Goddess? What nonsense!” Tania replied in the divine language, amused. “I’m just a local beggar who will do anything for a drink.”
Ana, disgusted, grabbed Tania by the hair.
“Don’t say those things!” she shouted.
“What things?” Tania asked. “Do you think you’re better than me because you don’t live on the street?”
Ana, enraged, dragged Tania out of that corner.
“I’m not gonna let someone like you end up in such a yucky, awful way,” she said.
But Tania slapped Ana’s hand away, making her release her.
“It is better for me to stay here, drinking, than to return to my position,” she said. “Alcohol is the only thing that makes the voices shut up.”
“Voices?” Ana asked.
Then Tania fell silent for a moment, before she began screaming like a madwoman.
“Shut up already! I already told you I didn’t know!”
The passersby looked at the scene nervously, while Tania screamed like a lunatic and waved her hands as if shooing away flies.
At that moment, Ana, despite the smell of vomit and urine emanating from Tania, leaned down and embraced her.
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“You won’t have to suffer anymore. I’ll take care of you,” the Irish goddess said.
Tania, who had not received an embrace in centuries, froze at that fact and then began to cry.
“Ana, you were the one who pulled me out of the streets of Barcelona and gave me a future,” Tania thought, as the goddess laboriously stood before Heracles while covering the wound the hero had inflicted on her with her hand.
Memories of Epona, Athena, and the friends she had made in Orniskem came to her. Also of the people of Ibiza she was protecting. And, of course, also of the time she decided to let Tul accompany her.
“Forgive me, little one,” Tania said with a melancholic look as she stared at her friend’s unconscious body, completely poisoned, in Nabu’s arms. “I couldn’t show you the world like I promised.”
The Punic goddess then remembered Rodrigo and smiled.
“I am certain you will guide Orniskem to victory, Rodrigo. I know I am leaving my hopes in good hands.”
Tania then stared fixedly at Heracles, made an obscene gesture at him, and smiled.
“All right, muscle-brain. Why don’t you show me those moves from when you dressed like a woman? What happened to being so manly? Cross-dresser!” Tania shouted mockingly, though the goddess was suffering greatly from the curse and the poison.
Heracles, furious, struck Tania’s face. Her face filled with blood just as she fell onto the ground on her back. Three of the goddess’s teeth flew out from the impact.
“Did you enjoy killing your family just like this little rage attack?” Tania shouted triumphantly while panting with great effort.
“I was going to take you wounded to Lel, but I’ve decided to kill you instead,” Heracles said with a grim look.
“Why?” Tania asked. “Because that’s the only thing you know how to do, you shitty caveman? Kill and rape?”
Seeing that Heracles was paying him no attention, Nabu left Tul on the ground and made his tablet appear again. Then he began writing something on it.
“Tul, I shall take you away from here… I beg you, please live in order to honor Tania’s memory,” he said with tears in his only remaining eye.
In a fit of rage, Heracles struck Tania in a brutal and savage way. The goddess looked more like a bloodied piece of raw meat than a person. Then he lifted her by grabbing her hair. Even without ichor and while suffering, the goddess kept laughing.
“Power? Bah!” Tania said. “You’re just a… shitty genocidal bastard, addicted to blood and violence. That isn’t power. It’s cowardice… the cowardice of not being able to function as a being in our society.”
Heracles then raised his fist toward Tania.
“With this fist you call cowardice, I’m gonna smash your skull and you ain’t ever gonna breathe again,” the powerful Greek hero said.
But Tania laughed again.
“Every word you say only makes you look more and more like the coward you are!” Tania shouted.
Then the goddess began raising her power, and heat began to be felt throughout the entire dimension created by Nabu. Thunderbolts of fire fell from the sky, and the ground began to emanate magma. Tania began releasing an enormous amount of steam from her body, as if she were a blazing chimney.
Heracles released Tania when he felt his hand burning, but the goddess continued floating in the air. Despite looking disfigured, the goddess still wore an expression of victory.
“A power like that can never defeat me,” Heracles protested.
“No,” Tania replied. “But I’ve decided to take all my friends with me to stop them from ending up in your dirty, cowardly claws.”
Heracles began laughing cynically.
“Then you’re making my job easier,” the Greek hero said confidently.
“Of course!” Tania replied. “This will only make me a martyr who will inspire my friends… They’ll blow you to pieces.”
At that moment, Tania’s body glowed red-hot, and her skin began to bubble. The goddess smiled and said goodbye to her friends, while an enormous light emanated from her body. The steam accumulated inside her body shot out in every direction, destroying everything it touched because of the pressure with which it was expelled.
A muffled explosion completely erased the world trapped inside the alternate dimension. Heracles raised his arm to protect himself from the impact, while Nabu, who was still there, smiled and lowered his head. In an instant, everything was destroyed as Tania’s body was pulverized.
The alternate dimension disappeared just as the energy fled from the earth like a geyser of steam and was lost in the infinite universe. The attack did not harm planet Earth, but when the phenomenon ended, Tania and Nabu had vanished without leaving any trace of their existence.
Only a withered world covered in mist remained, along with a Heracles completely charred by the attack, though his ichor healed him immediately. The Greek hero stood in the city of Ibiza as if nothing had happened. When the people saw what had happened to the hero’s body, they ran in terror.
Ana and Susanoo, who were traveling at full speed toward Ibiza, suddenly stopped when they saw the strange phenomenon in the sky. Menrva, who had teleported, also arrived nearby. The gods realized what had happened… Tania’s energy had gone out forever.