The Celtic goddess then leapt toward the Toltec god and tried to attack him with one of her kicks, but the impact only caused her leg to burn horribly. Epona jumped backward, clutching her limb in terrible pain as a huge sore formed on it.
Xiuhtecuhtli, however, did not move. It was as if he knew there was nothing Epona could do, and that, moreover, the poison he had used against her would soon kill her.
“I was never good at long-distance fighting,” Epona thought as she stood again and invoked her two wings in the shape of blue horses.
Epona then raised her two wings, which she transformed into two spheres of bluish energy, and hurled them at the Toltec god while shouting:
“Ép sunarth (Horse Energy)!”
But the energy dissipated before Xiuhtecuhtli’s heat, as if it had been only a drop of water approaching a bonfire.
“Even if I transformed into my transformation, I’m sure it still wouldn’t be enough,” Epona thought as she fell to the ground.
Then the intense pain of the poison began making the goddess suffer. She was kneeling on the ground, clutching her chest where the Toltec god’s attack had pierced her.
“Am I gonna die here?” Epona asked herself as she felt her heart boil. The goddess’s body temperature began to spike, while her skin started turning redder and redder.
Immediately, Epona remembered Rodrigo and the moments she had spent with him. She also remembered Ana, Anpiel, Tania, and her new friends. She remembered the state she had been left in after facing Anat, and how Ana had sacrificed her own health so Epona could reach Chaco.
She also remembered when Rodrigo sacrificed his life to save her from Jormungandr. How, from that day onward, she had begun to see him differently, to see him as an inspiration for herself.
“My friends have sacrificed so damn much for me, and I still haven’t been able to repay their devotion to me,” Epona said as she stood once more, despite the fierce burning in her body.
Then she thought of her father, Atepomarus. Epona had never known her mother, and her father had raised her alone. Despite being very poor, she had never suffered hunger or loneliness, because her father had always been there to support her, until he died on a journey during the eternal war between the Celts and the Romans.
“My father always believed in me too,” Epona said.
“He believed I could become the magnificent goddess I am now. Even if I’m not a warrior goddess, I’m a goddess who overcomes adversity. At least, that’s what the people who believed in me used to say about me,” Epona continued, breathing deeply and drawing a broad smile on her face.
Epona then invoked her necrophagous transformation. She could perform this ability thanks to the union of her innate element, Earth, with the dark power that “thing” had granted her when she returned to life. The power was Necromancy, the ability to control death and even obtain its intangible properties. However, the Necromancy element was extremely weak against fire.
The Celtic goddess then began burning alive as she screamed in agony. She had held the faint hope that now, without the barrier, her increase in power under that transformation might withstand Xiuhtecuhtli’s fire.
But it did not.
Although she could feel that her divine power was slightly superior to the Toltec god’s, her severe weakness to fire remained a burden.
“Damn it!” Epona screamed. “All my blood is full of fire… I have to… stop my pulse.”
Stolen story; please report.
At that moment, Epona realized something very important. Something she had not considered until then. In that transformation, she was actually dead. She had no pulse, no heartbeat, nothing. The only organ still functioning was her brain, and it was what controlled her entire body. In her necrophagous ability, the goddess was only a living corpse.
Then Epona made her scythe appear and, as best she could, held it and drove it into her heart. With great effort and pain, Epona ripped out the organ and threw it to the ground. Her heart was no longer a living organ. It was only a boiling ball of magma.
The fire on Epona’s body went out, leaving her skin completely burned and charred. Her face and limbs now showed the goddess’s skeleton, giving her a far stronger appearance of a goddess of death. Even so, the goddess breathed deeply, having already recovered from the damage caused by the fire.
However, Epona realized that her body was not repairing itself, despite still having enough ichor reserves. The goddess understood that this was surely a side effect of her transformation.
“I didn’t really understand it back in Samalayucan,” Epona said. “But this is really the union of my healing ability with the Earth element and darkness. That’s why I can’t heal myself either until I remove this damn transformation.”
The goddess saw Xiuhtecuhtli attempt to attack her again with his poisonous sting, but Epona quickly avoided the attack and approached the god in flight, her scythe ready to strike.
But the closer she got, the more her weakness to fire affected her again. Epona understood that, at that moment, she had to overcome her weakness to fire, just as Ana had overcome her weakness to the sacred element.
Epona’s body became completely surrounded by flames, but even so, the goddess kept flying toward Xiuhtecuhtli.
When she came within range, the goddess attacked him with her scythe, an attack the Toltec god quickly avoided.
The god removed the petate from his head, revealing a circular brazier upon it, which immediately ignited. Epona quickly realized that the Toltec god intended to use that artifact to shoot her when she saw Xiuhtecuhtli tilt his head.
A red shot made of fire and magma emanated from the brazier on Xiuhtecuhtli’s head. Epona avoided the attack without difficulty, though the fire continued ravaging her body.
Epona tried to attack the god again with her scythe, but he made two fire whips appear from his brazier, stopping Epona’s attack. Immediately afterward, balls of magma erupted from his head as if it were a volcano, an attack the goddess avoided before trying once again to strike the Toltec god.
Epona and Xiuhtecuhtli attacked each other while flying over the surface of Teotlacuauhco. The impacts were so powerful that they made volcanoes and mountains vanish with their shockwaves.
However, Epona’s body was falling apart more and more because of the fire, until she felt her arms detach from her and become completely charred, while her body continued burning in flames.
“Resist the fire, resist the fucking fire!” Epona screamed, still twisted in pain before the Toltec god’s burning power.
Using her mental power, Epona made her scythe float beside her. Although she could no longer use her hands, her telekinetic powers, drastically enhanced by her control over dark power, allowed her to continue the fight.
But Xiuhtecuhtli had prepared a gigantic fireball, which floated above his brazier. The god flew very high so he could throw it at the equine goddess, who realized that if she avoided that attack, the planet would explode completely.
Epona placed her scythe in front of herself to try to stop the attack. Although the pain was too much, the goddess had to prevent the planet from exploding. A planetary explosion inside a dimensional shield would concentrate the damage in a small point, and she did not know whether she would be able to withstand it with her weakness to fire.
Then the goddess saw will-o’-the-wisps surrounding the edge of her scythe, and she realized she was doing everything wrong.
She did not have to fight the fire, but convert it, adapt it to her own element.
Concentrating, Epona began to feel the fire around her and cover it with her own ghostly energy. The fire on her body changed to a yellowish-green color, and at that moment, she no longer felt pain. In fact, that fire healed her and restored her body, beginning with her limbs and her heart.
Recovered, Epona saw the gigantic fireball approaching her and delivered a clean strike with her scythe while shouting:
“Menman selgheth (Soul Hunter)!”
The fire sphere split in half. But that was not all, for Xiuhtecuhtli had also been split apart by the Celtic goddess’s attack. The shockwave struck the dimensional shield and produced a horrifying screech.
Xiuhtecuhtli’s energy vanished as his body exploded into a beam of light, leaving only a tiny red sphere floating in the air, which Epona took.
“I passed the trial!” Epona shouted with great excitement as she jumped in the air, filled with joy.
The goddess felt vindicated after so long spent feeling like nothing but a burden to her friends.
At that moment, the sphere began to shine, and a light enveloped the equine goddess.