“Ch’úupal, who is that Heracles guy Loki mentioned?” Tul asked.
At that moment, the Maya goddess remembered the conversation she had had with Tania in Chaco, after Menrva said that Rodrigo had to defeat the mysterious guardian of Olympus, whom they mentioned as the strongest being in the universe, or at least one of the most powerful.
The two goddesses were lying down in one of the rooms of the guest house in Chaco where they were staying. Both goddesses lay on two adjacent mats.
“He is a kind of hero,” Tania replied. “When he lived in the human world, he performed feats beyond people’s imagination.”
“Was he… a god?” Tul asked in surprise.
“He was the son of a god and a mortal woman,” Tania replied. “But his powers, even while he was mortal, exceeded those of any known god up to that point.”
“So was he invincible?” Tul asked, intrigued.
“Well, no,” Tania replied again. “He died poisoned by the blood of a tannin when it was smeared onto his cloak.”
“I see. Even though he was as powerful as a god, he was weak against the venom of a serpent deity,” Tul said thoughtfully.
“Venom… I can only trust venom,” Tul thought at that moment, while seeing Tania fighting the Greek hero in the distance.
Taking her tunic, the Maya goddess covered her nakedness and quickly ran toward where her bag had fallen. Tul desperately searched through its contents until she pulled out a fang that emanated dark, poisonous energy.
“This was one of the fangs I extracted from the beast Cipactli,” Tul thought at that moment. “If I stab that monster with this fang, we’ll kill him again.”
Meanwhile, Heracles was showing his totema to a completely worried and nervous Tania. She knew that if the god wore his totema, everything would be lost. But Heracles only laughed, completely certain that victory would be his.
At that moment, Tul leapt behind the powerful hero and held onto Heracles’s neck with her left arm, while, holding the poisonous fang in her right hand, she stabbed it into his eye.
“Tul! What the hell are you doing?!” Tania shouted in surprise when she saw her companion jump away from Heracles with a gesture of victory.
Then the Greek hero held the eye where he had been wounded in great pain, while blood poured from the injury.
“Ch’úupal, you told me he died with poison, so we can beat him the same way now!” Tul shouted while continuing to move away from the afflicted Greek hero. The Maya goddess had victory in her eyes.
Heracles’s skin began turning purple, while the hero knelt on the ground, screaming in pain. Poisonous gases emanated from his wound, with the fang still embedded in it.
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After realizing that Heracles could not defend himself, Tania raised her power to its maximum, while steam emanated from all over her body like a scarf, and she hurled herself forward to decapitate the Greek hero.
“Die, you damn bastard!” Tania shouted furiously as she charged at the enemy with her two smoking claws.
But before her claw could strike, Heracles tore the fang from his eye and stabbed it into Tania’s chest. At that moment, the Greek hero turned to look at her with a huge smile.
“Fooled ya,” he said.
Heracles held the poisonous fang and tore away part of the left side of the goddess’s body. Tania screamed in agony at that fact, even more so when she felt her blood being poisoned by Cipactli’s venom.
Tul could not believe it. That man was completely immune to the venom of a tannin.
“I made myself immune to poison when I died and came back to life,” Heracles replied as he stood and threw the fang to the ground. His skin, which had turned purple, returned to its natural state.
Tania fell to her knees before Heracles, filled with pain. Then the goddess saw her body begin to turn purple, while a kind of magical seal appeared on the wound the Greek hero had inflicted on her.
“I also forgot to say that my blood ain’t only poisonous, it’s cursed. It causes a damnation that destroys and eats away at the body right away,” Heracles said while walking slowly toward Tania as the wounds on his face healed.
Heracles lifted Tania by her hair while watching the goddess scream in agony.
“Thanks to your friend, I didn’t need to use my totema,” the Greek hero said. “Shame, really. It’s been centuries since I last put it on.”
Tul, enraged, tried to attack Heracles again, this time using two poisonous fangs, but the Greek hero prevented the attack and, using his palm bathed in his blood, tore through the Maya goddess’s body.
“This is over,” Heracles replied without turning to look at the Maya goddess, who fell face down at the feet of the powerful hero.
A magical seal also appeared on Tul’s stomach, which Heracles had torn open. The goddess screamed in pain while purple saliva came out of her mouth.
Heracles then lifted his foot to crush Tul’s head.
“Shame I gotta kill a thing as pretty as you,” the hero said. “But in that state, your body don’t interest me no more.”
But at that moment, the Greek hero’s foot stopped. Heracles tried to press harder, but he could not do it.
In the distance, Nabu had stood up. His face was still injured, as the left side of it was missing. Tul had not had time to heal him completely. Even so, he held a stylus in his right hand and a clay tablet in his left.
“With my power, you cannot act against the will of my written words,” Nabu said while slowly advancing toward where the two goddesses had fallen on the ground.
Heracles laughed sarcastically.
“What a curious little ability! But my strength ain’t got limits, sadly enough,” he said with a smile.
The Greek hero then increased his strength, and golden chains could be seen breaking from his body, chains that emanated from Nabu’s tablet. The tablet broke just as the Greek hero crushed Tul with a powerful stomp that split what remained of Spain in half.
But when the smoke dissipated, Tul was no longer there. Tania, in her Manticore transformation, had rescued her companion and placed herself beside Nabu. The goddess, despite her wounds and the enormous pain her body was suffering, could still stand against Heracles.
“That’s what I like! Clinging to victory even when ya know you got no chance of winning!” the Greek hero shouted excitedly.
Nabu then held a brief conversation with Tania. The Punic goddess looked surprised and then lowered her head.
“I understand,” she said. “If that lets Tul escape, I’ll do it,” she said nervously, with a gloomy look.
“Forgive me for asking such a thing of you, Tania,” Nabu replied.
Tania shook her head.
“I was already ready to die,” she replied. “You saved me from death when I tried to murder Rodrigo, but this time, I know I will do it to save her.”
“Even so,” Nabu replied, “I can do nothing against the curse… If only Asclepius were here, he could heal her.”
Tania fell silent as they both watched Heracles approach, smiling.