Seeing that Menrva was about to kill Bellona, Rodrigo had an anxiety attack and tried to stop her.
“No, Menrva! You don’t have to kill her!” the young man shouted.
“I know she’s evil, but killing is wrong, and we won’t be any better than her if we do it,” he continued pleading.
“We already let her live once, and look at the situation we found you in,” Menrva replied furiously.
“And I still don’t know what happened to Susanoo and the others!” the goddess shouted angrily, turning to Rodrigo.
Rodrigo wanted to keep protesting, but Freyja forced him to be quiet.
“Do meow really think someone like that, with those sociopathic tendencies, is going to chaaange the way she thinks?” Freyja asked, just as annoyed.
“But wouldn’t we be doing the same thing she does?” Rodrigo asked.
“No,” Menrva replied. “She kills for pleasure, and I kill to solve a problem that concerns everyone. That is a very crucial difference.”
“That’s right, boy,” Bellona joined in. “If your friend doesn’t kill me here, I will never stop hunting you down until I kill you and bring your heads to Lel. No matter where you go or where you hide, I will not abandon my mission,” she warned.
Rodrigo then chose to remain silent. He hated the idea, but his hands were tied.
“Although...” Bellona continued. “I doubt this is where I die.”
At that moment, the goddess gave a violent whip crack and wrapped Menrva’s neck.
“How did it get past her mirror?!” Rodrigo asked in shock.
“My spit gave me the answer,” Bellona replied, at the same time that she shoved the Etruscan goddess with her leg and rose to her feet.
“Your mirror only deflects attacks that contain divine energy. But a weapon, if it isn’t using divine energy and is moving under the laws of human physics, is impossible to reflect. You didn’t notice that I extinguished the flames on my whip and attacked you normally; and thanks to the energy suppressors on this continent, an attack that slow could slip past your sight,” the Roman goddess explained.
Bellona then yanked Menrva by the whip, while spurts of blood flowed from her neck. She showed the goddess to Rodrigo and Freyja.
“Are you going to do something, or just stand there watching your friend die?” she asked.
Menrva tried once again to use electricity to free herself, but Bellona, who had already foreseen that, let go of the weapon and began moving it with telekinesis into the sky, choking Menrva in the process.
Freyja lowered her head, but just then she felt Rodrigo shove her aside and rise to his feet.
“A knight must always save the lady in danger!” he shouted furiously.
“But this is her purrsonal duwel, meow!” Freyja cried, but Rodrigo turned his back on her and began to walk forward.
“I don’t give a fuck about your personal duels, just like you don’t give a fuck about the lives of your enemies. If I must break my principles to save someone I care about, I will,” Rodrigo said.
Bellona laughed and tried to yank the chain at full speed to tear Menrva’s head off, when she realized her arm had been severed from her body.
Rodrigo was holding her arm in his hand, while an enormous amount of sacred energy poured through his body, and his hair rose in response to that power.
“I just managed to do something I hadn’t been able to before: awaken the fifth chakra,” the young tannin said.
“But when we arrived here, I couldn’t even activate the fourth. Though my battle with Sawiskera must have strengthened my power... or perhaps, unconsciously, I didn’t want to achieve it in front of the girls,” he confessed.
But he isn’t even wearing his totema! Bellona thought in alarm as she stared at the young man and his new power. Worst of all, her ichor was not healing the wound Rodrigo had inflicted on her.
“Who is that man?!” Freyja asked in amazement.
“I am just a human born in Spain, whose duty is to protect his companions whenever they are in danger,” Rodrigo said with a reassuring look.
Menrva pulled the whip from around her neck and looked at Rodrigo in astonishment at his tremendous increase in power. For the first time, the goddess felt like a tiny flea compared to the strength of that young warrior. Athena’s promise: a tannin able to wield sacred power.
Bellona screamed as she struck the ground.
“Claudi Umbra (Crippling Shadow)!”
The red spears rose again from the earth. But when they tried to pierce Rodrigo, they shattered.
“Quatuor Rubri Equi Mortis (The Four Red Horses of Death)!” Bellona shouted, raising her remaining hand, and a chariot drawn by four red horses, like magma, appeared before her. The chariot, too, was Roman in style, but its colors were entirely crimson.
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The goddess climbed aboard and tried to run Rodrigo down with it, but the young man struck the illusion and it exploded like a trick of light. Bellona was hurled into the air and landed on her back.
Bellona watched in horror as Rodrigo stood up in front of her.
“Forgive me, Rodrigo,” Bellona said in a choked, pleading voice. “Please, don’t kill me. I’ll leave this place and won’t report any of this to Lel!”
The Roman goddess looked up at Rodrigo with tearful eyes.
But just as Rodrigo stepped closer, the goddess used the wound Rodrigo had made when he tore off her arm to fling blood into the young tannin’s eyes.
“I told you not to trust me, idiot!” the goddess shouted.
Then Bellona used her blood to create a shield and a spear. Both looked like some mixture of blood and magma. The goddess’s expression turned furious as she aimed the spear at Rodrigo, who was still trying to wipe the blood from his face.
“Hasta Discordiae (Spear of Discord!)!” the Roman goddess screamed madly, and hurled her spear at Rodrigo.
In the air, the weapon took the form of a gigantic column of magma with a point at the end, and sped toward Rodrigo at tremendous speed.
But Bellona still was not satisfied, and while the attack was flying, the goddess threw her shield into the sky and from it formed a gigantic sphere of magma in her hand, which she hurled as well, shouting:
“Potestas odio (Power of Hatred)!”
Both attacks struck the young tannin, and an atomic explosion occurred, throwing the three goddesses far away. On the ground, only a crater remained, with magma still boiling inside it.
“What do you think of that?! It looks like not even a single atom of your disgusting presence remains, faggot!” Bellona screamed like a madwoman, making an obscene gesture with her finger.
“Did she kill him, meow?” Freyja asked nervously.
“No... it didn’t even scratch him,” Menrva replied, still stunned.
Then Rodrigo appeared intact before Bellona, and before she could do anything, the young man shoved her with his open palm against her chest. Bellona vomited blood and fell unconscious to the ground.
When I met Tania, she tore off my arm, and Ana nearly knocked me out with one finger. I suppose that, right now, the difference between Bellona and me is the same as the one between Ana and Tania when they faced my power, Rodrigo thought.
The young man then turned around.
“Menrva, I respect your decision, but I will not stain my hands with her blood. If you wish to kill her, do it yourself,” Rodrigo said, then sat on the ground with his back to Bellona’s unconscious body.
To attack a woman, to allow her to be killed, and on top of that to feel guilty for having humiliated Menrva with his power... the whole emotional burden weighed heavily on Rodrigo.
Menrva then rose with her spear and raised her power to its utmost, piercing Bellona’s heart with a thrust of her spear that seemed to summon a tremendous lightning bolt.
The Roman goddess’s body then began to dissolve into a light of energy, leaving only a red-and-black spear driven into the ground.
The spear looked more like a Roman pilum, the type used to throw at enemies, similar to a javelin. At its tip was engraved the image of a flame, and it gave off an enormous amount of heat.
“She’s turned into an idol, meow” Freyja said.
“So, do you want me to use your power, Bellona?” Menrva asked, taking up the spear. At that moment, the goddess felt all of Bellona’s memories.
The Etruscan goddess then began to experience every emotion of the Roman goddess, who had always been a misunderstood child, isolated from society.
Being left alone without speaking to anyone, without friends, had led her to develop sociopathic and cynical thoughts about life.
While still a child, she had been given in an arranged marriage to Mars, her own brother. She hated it when he touched her intimately, but had no power to oppose it. Human sacrifices were also made in her honor, which caused her to develop an addiction to human blood.
Menrva also witnessed the enormous envy Bellona felt toward Lel and its nobility. While Bellona had lived a horrible life in Saturnia, and an even worse one once she was exiled, all she could do was watch the princesses, daughters of El, being feared and respected across the universe, while she saw herself as nothing more than a stray dog, without love or affection.
I only want to die, Bellona had always thought.
She never fought for anyone or anything. She had only sought a place to die and pass her power on to whoever defeated her. Bellona had always been a deeply unhappy and misunderstood being.
“What a pitiful life. Yet not so different from many of us who were born into the world of the gods. You simply had terrible luck, Bellona, never finding anyone to support you. If only you had trusted Athena, I’m certain she would have helped you. But I can understand the pain you lived through, and I will carry on your legacy as though you had once had a friend,” Menrva said to the spear Bellona had left behind, gazing at it with nostalgia.
“Rodrigo,” Menrva said, turning to look at the young man.
But Rodrigo did not look back. He was devastated.
“...Thank you for saving my life,” the Etruscan goddess said, swallowing her pride and knowing that the young man had become far stronger than she was.
“I only fulfilled my duty, Menrva,” Rodrigo replied.
Menrva also noticed something in the young man she had never seen before: ego. He always doubted, always feared expressing himself. But for the first time, Rodrigo showed courage and determination. It did not matter that a girl as beautiful as Freyja had tried to stop him. He had stood like a true man and done what his heart commanded.
“So... shall we leave?” Menrva asked Rodrigo nervously.
It was unbelievable. No one, absolutely no one, intimidated the goddess. Not Tinia, her annunaki; not Ares, whom she had once served; even Athena, whom she admired, she could still see as an equal. But in front of Rodrigo she felt fear and admiration at the same time. She could scarcely believe it. She dreaded his answer.
“To Tula? Yes. But I’m not going there without my friends. I want you to take me to where Epona and Ana are,” Rodrigo said, getting to his feet.
Menrva was afraid to tell him that Epona was ill and being treated in a ritual. She was afraid of angering him.
“Rodrigo, right?” Freyja said somewhat nervously. The Norse goddess was more accustomed to pressure, so she remained calmer.
“I didn’t tewll meow that... Epona nearly died and was left traumatized because of it, and meow she is resting in a village where they are treating her. Also, Loki and Ana are taking care of her,” the Norse goddess explained.
If I had reached this power sooner, this never would have happened, Rodrigo thought with remorse, grinding his teeth.
“I’m sowrry, I didn’t mean to give meow such bad news... I’m sorry,” Freyja said, trying to apologize nervously.
“Don’t worry, it’s not your fault. It’s mine,” Rodrigo replied.
At that moment, they all felt an enormous force flying toward them.
“That energy—” Menrva said.
Rodrigo and Freyja turned northward and saw, far in the distance, a shooting star moving horizontally across the sky.
“There’s no doubt, it’s Tania!” Menrva shouted.
“Wait a meowment, she’s flying?” Freyja asked in surprise.
Then, to the astonishment of both goddesses, Rodrigo flew as well. The young tannin sped off to meet the Punic goddess.
“Freyja, I think... for the first time in my life, I feel like dead weight,” Menrva said, storing Bellona’s spear away in her small pocket dimension.
Thor... was this what meow saw in these children? Freyja asked herself silently as she watched Rodrigo and Tania reunite in the sky.