All of Onondaga burned in flames. The tipi huts were either engulfed in fire or reduced to ruins, while the earth itself split open with deep cracks.
At last, the gods beheld the enormous stone monsters assaulting the village. Each stood over five meters tall, with long white hair and bloodshot eyes devoid of pupils, their faces twisted into sadistic grins. Their bodies were covered in coarse fur, resembling grotesque gorillas, hunched as they advanced.
“So those are the so-called stone monsters? I expected golems or perhaps jotun,” the Punic goddess remarked.
Tania ignited her claw in flames and struck one of the giants, shattering it with ease. The creature, being stone, broke apart completely and ceased moving.
“They are not particularly strong—we can defeat them,” she said.
“The problem is that there are more than a thousand of them attacking the village,” a voice echoed from afar.
Hé-no turned and saw a man with a bow. Calmly, he spoke: “Sosondowah.”
The same hunter god who had once attacked the domain of Sedna now stood before them, his bow aimed.
“You foreign gods who have brought blood and war upon our people with your sorcery—you shall die here!” he declared.
“Wait, Sosondowah—did you not just see this girl destroy one of those giants?” Hé-no asked, confused.
“The law of our leader, the great Sawiskera, is absolute. If you oppose it, Hé-no, I will regard you as a threat as well,” the hunter replied coldly.
“We shall join the battle, and with all due haste,” Susanoo declared, yet Hé-no raised his palm to stop them.
“Go and defeat those giants and end this chaos brought by Sawiskera. I shall deal with this man,” the thunder god commanded.
“Very well, lord Hé-no. Pray do not perish,” Anpiel replied as the four gods departed.
“You made little effort to stop them,” Hé-no remarked.
“I heard they intend to face Sawiskera himself. That is worse than a death sentence,” Sosondowah laughed
Rodrigo and the others ran toward the great house where Sawiskera ruled. Yet along the way, they saw dozens of stone giants ravaging the village, while innocent people fled in terror.
“Anpiel, do you believe I can entrust the giants to you?” Tania asked.
Without hesitation, Anpiel rushed forward. With his flaming blade, he cleaved one giant in half, then reduced another to dust with a burst of fire.
“Yes. That would not be a problem,” he said.
“Then we three will continue,” Tania shouted, continuing forward with Rodrigo and Susanoo.
But halfway there, dozens of gods appeared, blocking their path.
“You are the ones who caused this to escape!” one shouted. Weapons were drawn—spears, bows, axes, and knives.
Tania unleashed her flaming claws, and Susanoo drew his katana. They clashed with the Iroquois gods, wounding them, yet unable to defeat them swiftly.
“Rodrigo! I entrust Sawiskera to you!” Tania shouted.
“Pray believe in thyself, Rodrigo-san,” Susanoo added, continuing to fight.
Rodrigo hesitated, wanting to stay—but he knew only by defeating Sawiskera could this chaos end. Swallowing his fear, he ran onward until he reached the great house, the only structure untouched by destruction.
Inside, it was empty and shrouded in darkness. Suddenly, Sawiskera appeared behind him and whispered:
“What a pity… they sent me the weakest one.”
With that, he thrust his hand through Rodrigo’s chest.
Rodrigo fell—but when he touched himself, there was no wound. Sawiskera was gone. Then, from the darkness, the god advanced once more. Rodrigo tried to strike—but he had no hands.
Sawiskera seized him by the neck and slammed him to the ground.
“You cannot defeat me, boy. I can alter reality at will. In this place, I am the god of gods,” he laughed.
Rodrigo suddenly had arms again—but now he was petrified, unable to move. Sawiskera’s hands transformed into grotesque claws of dark energy.
“Now, boy, I’ll teach you a lesson for daring to attack me,” he said, and with one of his claws, he shattered Rodrigo’s statue into hundreds of pieces. However, Rodrigo could still feel and see through his shattered eyes on the ground.
“What do you think of reality control, boy? With this ability, I’ve been ruling these fools and making them believe I’ve always been their ruler, when it was only my stupid twin brother,” Sawiskera remarked.
Rodrigo, then, now saw with horror that his pieces were no longer stone but flesh, and his entire body was scattered in a sea of blood, while worms devoured every part of him. He could feel each bite from those insects as a sharp stab in his now nonexistent body.
“What does it feel like to be devoured by worms?” "If you wish, I can make your heart stop at any time so that you don't continue suffering like this," Sawiskera commented, laughing.
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Despite the agony, Rodrigo began to laugh.
“Is this your idea of eternal torment? If I lose consciousness, it will be from boredom,” he said defiantly.
“Do you think I cannot make you suffer more?” Sawiskera replied.
Rodrigo’s body reformed—now suspended above a bed of spikes.
“I shall crush you upon this bed. Let us see how long your bravado lasts,” Sawiskera sneered.
But Rodrigo transformed his body into tannin scales and shouted:
“I was waiting for thee to restore my body!
Open—Fourth Chakra!”
A radiant white light burst forth, shattering Sawiskera’s reality as though it were glass.
“So I can finally do it…” Rodrigo thought, recalling his previous failure due to the anti-divinity barrier.
He launched himself at the god, fists blazing with sacred energy, striking relentlessly and dragging Sawiskera out of the house, destroying the entrance.
The relentless blows, infused with sacred energy, continued to inflict tremendous damage on Sawiskera, but then the young god gazed at the deity's utterly deformed face. His headdress had fallen off in the exchange of blows, and now only a misshapen mass remained in place of Sawiskera's face. When he saw this, he couldn't help but pause, remembering the soldiers in Coimbra whom he himself had massacred.
“What is wrong, kid? Have you never killed?” Sawiskera mocked.
“No… you have killed before, and you live with that guilt,” he continued.
At that moment, Rodrigo’s power vanished—his manna drained completely.
“You nearly defeated me. But your weakness has doomed your companions,” Sawiskera said, driving his arm into Rodrigo’s chest.
“This time, you shall truly die.”
Rodrigo’s vision faded.
At that moment, Anpiel collapsed to the ground, completely exhausted, as hundreds of giants rushed toward him like a stampede.
"I've already killed more than fifty, but this is beyond my strength," the angel thought as he lay on the ground.
Then, Anpiel laboriously rose and raised his fiery sword as high as he could, inevitably seeing all the giants running toward him to try and crush him.
"Well, I won't die without giving you a good fight," Anpiel said, and shouted as he charged back toward the monsters.
"My name is Gaoh, and it is my duty to destroy you!" said one of the gods facing Tania, as he opened his right hand and shouted,
"Ya-o-gah!"
A freezing, icy wind blew behind the god, and the image of a bear appeared behind him. Tania began to feel his body freezing, and it was difficult for him to move against the attack.
The deity, a man with long hair dressed in a bear-skin robe, lunged at the frozen goddess and pierced her abdomen with his bare palm. Tania vomited blood as she remained frozen in a position resembling a cross.
"I overestimated my power. I thought I could fight dozens of gods at once, but beneath this anti-divinity barrier, my limits are very clear," Tania thought.
"Rodrigo, it's all in your hands now!" the Punic goddess shouted before completely losing consciousness.
Susanoo, on the other hand, was fighting a woman who danced incessantly, but each stomp she made on the ground created enormous stalagmites that tried to impale the Eastern god. He did his best to avoid them, but he failed to see that the goddess had leaped upon him, and upon landing, she crushed Susanoo, opening a gigantic crater in the earth. The Eastern god vomited blood, feeling all his bones shatter and his internal organs explode from the pressure.
The woman was very beautiful, with long, flowing black hair. She wore an elk-hide tunic with short sleeves and leather boots.
The Iroquois goddess leaped from the hole she had created and addressed Susanoo.
"You can be proud that you were killed by me, the great goddess Doendzowes." And she withdrew.
"So this, then, was the limit of my abilities," Susanoo thought. "At the very least, I shall perish fighting as a warrior, and not as one captured or cruelly sacrificed."
Susanoo then closed his eyes and began to lose consciousness.
Meanwhile, a barrage of electric arrows collided with another barrage of arrows, creating air currents. Both Hé-no and Sosondowah continued their exchange of arrows, each collision resulting in a massive explosion and a deafening roar. Each deity unleashed about a hundred arrows per turn, so approaching their combat was a death sentence.
"We have to stop fighting, Sosondowah, and help people evacuate from this catastrophe!" shouted Hé-no, but received no response from the hunter god, as their exchange of arrows continued.
"Tania, Anpiel, Susanoo," Rodrigo thought as he felt his friends' energies fading.
"That's right, I mustn't give up because the only way to stop this is by defeating this evil god who controls their minds,"
Rodrigo affirmed.
Sawiskera then tried to pull her hand away from Rodrigo's body, but he couldn't. The young man's expression had changed again. Now there was determination in his eyes, though this didn't bother the evil god in the slightest.
"So you've got your fearful look back, huh? But it won't matter much when I alter reality again..." the god said, but he was interrupted when he felt Rodrigo's body heat rise, and his body began to glow once more. Sawiskera's arm was pulverized, while the god screamed in agony.
Rodrigo then began to transform into a tannin above Sawiskera, and in his left hand, which he held raised to the sky, he charged an enormous sphere of sacred light and struck the god with it with all his might.
At that moment, the entire camp trembled, and a gigantic, sacred luminous phenomenon blazed across the landscape. Some of the giants nearby were caught in this phenomenon and vanished like ash.
The light faded, and Sawiskera lay unconscious beneath Rodrigo, her body covered in burns. At that moment, all those who had been fighting froze, wondering what they were doing.
"Hé-no," Sosondowah asked, "Why, exactly, are we fighting each other?""I have a vague idea, but it's as if we've been mentally manipulated by someone I can't remember," Hé-no commented. "But my memory tells me it was the one who sat on the throne of this kingdom."
Tania opened her eyes and saw the group of gods fighting against her, confused.
"Who are you, girl, and why were you fighting against us?" asked the man who had frozen her.
Just then, another god shouted, "There are hundreds of wounded among the humans, and stone monsters are destroying the village!"They all nodded and went to help the people.
Susanoo, with what little strength he had left, crawled out of the hole he had been in, while Tania gathered her strength to destroy the ice cross in which she was trapped. Both gods were badly wounded, and because of the anti-divinity barrier, their wounds could not heal as quickly as they would outside of it.
"It seems Rodrigo succeeded,"
Tania said with a tired smile.
Meanwhile, Anpiel, who was already on the ground completely defeated, drained of energy, and about to be crushed to death by the giants pursuing him, watched in surprise as they exploded into pieces.
Hé-no, along with Sosondowah and the gods with whom Tania and Susanoo had been fighting, finished off the last of the giants almost instantly.
"Young warrior, Anpiel," said Hé-no, "you are safe now," as he shook his hand.
Anpiel accepted the courtesy and got up with the help of the Iroquois god.
The sun was beginning to rise, erasing the terrible night that had overwhelmed the village; however, everyone was surprised when they heard Rodrigo start screaming like a madman.
"We have to give Rodrigo ambrosia," said Tania while she remained wounded and sitting on the ground, but then, both gods saw villagers approaching them with water and medicinal herbs to begin treating them.
Rodrigo was almost losing consciousness when he heard Epona's voice in his mind:
"Goodbye, Rodrigo."
At that moment, the young man regained consciousness and his tannin state returned to normal without needing to drink ambrosia.
"Was that Epona's voice?" he wondered as he got up from the unconscious evil god Sawiskera.