Rodrigo felt immense dizziness as he endured Tezcatlipoca’s attack, now transformed into an anthropomorphic jaguar. The Toltec deity’s blow hurled Rodrigo through the air, while his stomach bled from the impact.
Tezcatlipoca leapt up, caught Rodrigo by the head in midair, and smashed him into the ground. Then he dragged the young man across the entire planet at astonishing speed.
After circling the gigantic planet several times, a world larger than Earth itself, Tezcatlipoca hurled Rodrigo at full speed toward the dimensional shield, causing an enormous explosion the moment he crashed against it.
Rodrigo fell to the ground like a meteor, causing a great explosion upon impact. The young man was almost unconscious and covered in blood.
“Now, foreigner. You will come with me to Quetzalcóatl’s chapel and give me his teotonli!” Tezcatlipoca shouted victoriously, extending his claw toward Rodrigo to help him stand.
But Rodrigo still refused to give up. He began to rise with great difficulty, furiously shaking his head.
“Why the hell should I help you?” the young man asked angrily. “You are nothing but a regime of addicts who sacrifice humans like cattle.”
That comment struck a sensitive nerve in Tezcatlipoca, who kicked Rodrigo’s badly wounded body with all his strength. Rodrigo ended up crashing against the dimensional shield and falling to the ground, leaving a pool of blood behind. All his organs had been destroyed, and with very little ichor remaining, he had no way to recover quickly.
The king of Tula approached Rodrigo, but Rodrigo fired one of his wind techniques at him, which Tezcatlipoca easily deflected. Then he wrapped Rodrigo with his tail and lifted him.
“Is that all you know how to do?” Tezcatlipoca asked furiously. “Make cheap imitations of Ehécatl’s abilities?”
Then the Toltec god struck Rodrigo’s face several times. The young man no longer had the strength to defend himself. After that, Tezcatlipoca violently released him, and Rodrigo fell to the ground, rolling.
But Rodrigo, despite being almost unable to move and nearly unconscious, began to laugh.
“What do you find so amusing?” the Toltec god asked. “Or are you finally thinking of surrendering?”
Rodrigo lifted his face and looked defiantly at Tezcatlipoca.
“I’m laughing because what I said is true,” the young man replied. “You and your whole shitty kingdom are just a den of addicts hooked on human blood, and you can all go to hell!” he shouted with a smile.
Tezcatlipoca’s eyes burned as if they were made of fire, and he almost lunged forward to crush Rodrigo’s head. But he stopped abruptly and began breathing deeply.
“You are right. We are addicts,” the Toltec god finally replied.
Then the god showed Rodrigo his claws. They were trembling, and he could not control them.
“This is part of the symptoms of addiction to human blood,” the Toltec god said. “Only a few weeks have passed since I lost the throne and stopped receiving human sacrifices, and my body is responding in a way I cannot control.”
Rodrigo then looked into the Toltec god’s eyes. He could tell that he was telling the truth. His face, despite its feline features, showed pain and desperation.
“Do you think we enjoy human sacrifices?” Tezcatlipoca asked angrily. “Do you think every human feels happy the moment they kill a deer or a turkey to eat it?”
“Then why do you do it?” Rodrigo asked.
“Because it gives me power to become stronger, so I can defend my people and my kin against invaders, against our enemies,” the Toltec god said with a sorrowful expression.
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Then Tezcatlipoca looked up at the sky, now gray and dark above the dying planet.
“If my sacrifice is to become an addict in order to protect my kingdom and destroy my life for it, then I will do it without hesitation,” he declared.
“How many lives will perish so that you and yours can be safe?” Rodrigo asked, trying to rise from the ground.
But at that moment, Tezcatlipoca kicked Rodrigo in the face and knocked him onto his back.
“Do you know how badly I want to kill you because of my thirst for blood?” Tezcatlipoca asked. “And yet, I am restraining my strength to keep you alive, because you are an important key to my people’s survival.”
Tezcatlipoca then breathed deeply.
“Anat showed us animals they have on the other side of the world called horses. She showed us a material they call steel. None of that exists on this continent, nor anything similar,” the former Toltec king said with melancholic sadness.
Rodrigo then remembered the weapons of the men he had seen since arriving in Vinland. It was true. Here there were no steel swords, no complex armor, no riders. Nothing.
“I saw the military ships they use over there, while here we use only rafts,” the Toltec god continued explaining. “And worse, she told us about diseases such as measles and smallpox, which do not exist in this region, and my people have no natural defenses against them.”
“What are you trying to say?” Rodrigo asked.
“Anat threatened to invade us. She threatened us using the desire for Christian evangelization and Muslim religious intolerance as a pretext. With those practices, she blackmailed us by threatening to destroy our culture and wipe out our people,” the Toltec god said, almost with tears in his eyes.
Then Tezcatlipoca looked at Rodrigo furiously.
“You say we are savages. What have you done on your continent to stop those people from destroying the cultures and religions of thousands of innocents?” he shouted in anger.
Rodrigo lowered his face and felt sadness. Then he remembered his childhood. How, despite being rejected by most, he could always count on his mother.
But now she was dead. And no matter how many divine powers he awakened, that reality would never change. His rage had caused the deaths of hundreds of soldiers who, although they were not innocent, were not lives he had the right to take.
“I lost my mother in those stupid intolerant skirmishes you mentioned,” Rodrigo said, ashamed.
“A war?” Tezcatlipoca asked.
“Some Muslims razed the village where I lived. They massacred many people, including my mother, and tried to enslave the survivors,” Rodrigo replied with a gaze full of pain.
“Then why do you want to deprive us of defending our people?” Tezcatlipoca asked.
The Toltec god looked down and stared at his own knees.
“Do you know how humiliating it is to kneel before a foreign power that demanded my brother’s death?” he asked.
Rodrigo said nothing.
“However, if bending my knees before Lel saves the lives of my people and allows us to prepare for the day they betray us, then I will do it without hesitation in order to protect my own,” the Toltec god said.
But when Rodrigo heard those words, he felt indignation. The kingdom of Tula was the same as those Muslims who had invaded his country. They were the same as those Danes who had fought in Jutland. In the end, it was always war and conquest. Whatever absurd reasons were used, a leader would always lie to his people to justify a conflict, and the people would blindly support him because they could not feel empathy for those who did not belong to their group.
“No!” Rodrigo shouted. “You are the same as Almanzor, the man who invaded my village!”
Finally, Rodrigo was able to stand. He still had a minimal reserve of ichor, so the conversation had given him time to recover a little. The young man looked defiantly at Tezcatlipoca with his green eyes.
“Since the moment we set foot on this continent, all we have heard are stories about Toltec expansionism,” Rodrigo continued furiously. “About oppression over other peoples, about your sacrifices.”
Rodrigo then made a gesture of rejection and spat blood onto the ground.
“Protecting them? You only want to control everyone while justifying yourself with your sense of protecting your own!” he shouted furiously.
“The one who throws the first spear at the beginning is usually the winner!” Tezcatlipoca shouted. “If I allow myself to appear weak before my neighbors, I will be the one invaded, just as happened with those Chichimecas.”
Rodrigo then launched himself at Tezcatlipoca, his fists radiating sacred light, but no blow proved effective against the Toltec god.
“Now I will give you a true display of power, foreign boy,” the Toltec god said, as his body began to shine with extreme intensity and his divine power grew enormous.
The entire planet began to tremble and fragment into pieces. Magma emanated from the center of the world while the sky darkened.
"Tlaispololistlalolin (Destructive earthquake)!"
Tezcatlipoca shouted, and at that moment a very intense light emanated from beneath the earth.
An invisible force propelled everything on the surface toward the sky; at the same moment, Rodrigo was likewise hurled toward the heavens, his bones and organs shattered. This attack had drained all the young man's life force as he collapsed, almost delirious, onto what remained of the ground.