Alvarado roared with destructive fury, the poison that had intruded into his blood purified as if it had never existed. His golden rings flared with divine brilliance, unmatched power steaming outward in prismatic arcs. Everything they touched—friend or foe—was annihilated outright. Nothing remained to prove existence.

  Alvarado swelled to an enormous size, his body bare save for what covered his nether region. A colossal, bloated infant appeared. His eyes were blindfolded, yet the red glow beneath felt naked to all who beheld him.

  It wailed, its shrieks swollen with boundless divinity. All ears that bore witness turned deaf. A meaty palm slammed downward, the air exploding along its passage, only to be met mid-strike by a pair of blessed macuahuitl. One large, one small—both daring to rend divine flesh.

  Sparks flew with the clash, metal screaming against metal. Glass shrieked against skin, neither giving way.

  Until a golden eagle swooped down.

  Its piercing cry lagged behind its speed as talons tore into the exposed flesh of the infant’s head. Blood scattered before the bird vanished into the vast forest surrounding them.

  Creaking echoed across the battlefield. Giant roots tunneled freely through the earth, dispersing what little remained of the ant-like observers—creatures who could only watch as bystanders to a divine struggle.

  Roots surged upward like living limbs, halting another meaty palm before it could descend. The infant screamed in outrage, its voice shrill with wounded rage.

  Alvarado had never been so humiliated.

  His power surged skyward. All attacks became meaningless as he ascended further—blessed jewelry hidden beneath sacred wards flashing, cracking, and bursting into motes of searing light.

  Alvarado became a miniature sun. A divine halo ignited above his head. He had paid dearly for the torrent of divinity now pouring from every pore. Necklaces and chains shattered as he sensed the looming threat closing in.

  “?Bichos! Todos ustedes,” Alvarado bellowed. “?Son insignificantes ante la luz de Dios!”

  His wealth crumbled across his body. Beneath the blindfold, his eyes burned with an almost demonic glow—greed so overwhelming it tainted all who dared glimpse it.

  Whispers of the divine lifted the battlefield from its stupor. At last, the armies reacted—what remained of them. The native tribes were the only true force still standing. Alvarado’s men lay in smoldering heaps or thrashed upon the ground in agony, much of it inflicted by Alvarado himself.

  His callous disregard became unmistakable as a world of monochrome enveloped their wretched forms—a divine domain that stripped life from their bodies to nourish the cruel infant. His colossal form harvested the last remaining value from their souls.

  “Dios es sordo,” Alvarado intoned from within the colorless world.

  Roots tightened around him relentlessly. His pudgy infant body bulged with hidden muscle as he forced the chant onward, drawing on every shred of strength. Covering his ears, he screamed with all his might:

  “?Dios! ?Es! ?Ciego!”

  A bell tone shattered the air.

  Its first note froze everything—roots, slashing macuahuitl, and the swooping eagle locked in perfect stasis. The second note knelled.

  They exploded into gore, bodies falling lifeless to the ground.

  Unfortunately for Alvarado, this was only the start of the assault.

  Chosen from dozens of tribes each in reincarnation form. Attacked simultaneously after the first three fell. The strongest had gone up to face and tested the threat in front of them. Remnants of an older time that had chosen to be martyrs. To make their grievance known upon the god that had profaned them.

  Shouts of hundreds of warriors rang out. They circled the massive domain, hurling charred torches into its colorless expanse. They drank deep of death’s succor, relinquishing their right to live. War cries tore from their throats, painted bodies bearing scenes of ancient carnage.

  They would not forgive.

  They would not forget.

  Expertly trained horses galloped in unison, mirroring their riders’ cries. Crazed neighs split the air, foam flecking muzzles as beasts and men alike drank from the smoke of death. Visions of the past flashed through the charge.

  Now and forever.

  “We are Caxcanes!”

  “We are Zacatecos!”

  “We are Tepecanos!”

  “We are Tecuexes!”

  “We are Guachichiles!”

  Divine tattoos ignited as the chosen were torn apart. Their borrowed divinity offered no refuge before the colossal infant. They fell like broken dolls, flung aside after a tantrum. The bell’s death knell continued without pause—each tone marking another bloody loss as doves fell burning from the sky.

  At the rear, supporting gods renewed their efforts. They fed the colossal forest, urging it higher, farther, ever closer to the heavens. Faith scattered to the wind was caught and dragged back to the earth, rippling into waves of stone and root that surged forward in one final, desperate assault.

  Feeling the pressure, the infant whined in shrill frustration. Its high-pitched voice began another sacred hymn.

  “Todo tiene valor ante la balanza de Dios.”

  His round, uncovered belly began to glow. Divine radiance swelled with every passing second, its circumference expanding grotesquely. The halo above his head flattened and widened into a burning sun, sustaining the monochrome world below as he prepared to unleash his judgment upon the three forces opposing him.

  A massive balance manifested behind him.

  Souls were weighed.

  The image of Plutus appeared above the scales—blind to Alvarado’s cruelty, deaf to suffering. Not a judge, but an instrument. Equal in measure, empty of mercy.

  Without hesitation, Alvarado offered the souls of his fallen army. The scales tipped violently in his favor as the galloping warriors tightened their encirclement. Divine tattoos anchored their souls, allowing them to intrude—briefly—into the infant’s divine domain.

  Blessed spears flew, glowing with sacred intent. Their searing tips pierced no more than an inch into divine flesh. But each strike opened space for another, and another—each faster, more reckless than the last. As if all restraint had been discarded before the end.

  The entangling roots surged again, bursting with final divinity. Tree-trunk-thick tendrils burned with an ominous red glow, corruption jetting from them in wicked thorns. Their deadly aura ignored the laws of the monochrome world entirely.

  They latched onto the charging infant, thorns sinking deep. He bled only droplets—but even that was enough to keep the vile roots alive, denying him swift movement.

  The chosen seized the moment.

  They unleashed their strongest abilities, pouring everything into a final attempt to break Alvarado before his charge completed. His swollen belly had already doubled in size, grotesque and taut, like a bloated toad asserting dominance. His throat expanded in tandem.

  A dreadful premonition rippled through the battlefield—one none of the warriors allowed themselves to face.

  They struck anyway.

  Hundreds of warriors. Dozens of chosen. Besieging him from every side.

  Then the infant moved.

  He met the combined onslaught head-on, stabilizing his stance within the monochrome world as the final phase of his power ignited. At the rear, the supporting priests—already dying—could do nothing but watch. Alvarado’s form hardened further, his divinity condensing into impossible density. The thorn roots withered as he denied them even the trace vitality they fed upon.

  Alvarado stepped forward.

  The monochrome world surged with him.

  And he belched.

  A torrent of flowing gold erupted from his mouth, its resplendent light sweeping outward in a vast, purifying arc. It pierced everything it touched, slicing divinity apart as it passed. Warriors, gods, beasts—caught mid-motion—

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  All were transformed into golden statues.

  -

  Jimena walked deeper into the golden garden, watching as the statues slowly broke apart—edges softening, forms dissolving—until they drifted away as motes of light. She felt nothing but a smoldering fury. Her steps scorched the ground as she moved toward the source of the massacre.

  She let her flames mirror her emotions.

  They lashed out helplessly at the drifting motes, burning brighter with every emotional surge. White fire writhed from her like living tendrils, alive with divine intent. Anything they touched was unmade, disintegrated utterly, as if denied the right to have ever existed.

  A prismatic glow coursed through each tendril, thick with faith. Within the light, the eight human emotions revealed themselves—cycling, clashing, intertwining.

  Xolo manifested behind her as a holy phantasm. His celestial eyes reflected two distinct currents of her soul. Above them, the moon wept while the sun erupted with unrestrained joy. Two twin rings solidified in the air—one gathering despair, the other hope.

  They became catalysts.

  Faith surged with every rotation. Wails of anguish and heroic war cries echoed from the rings, overlapping until sound itself trembled. Jimena’s Xolo helm split into three aspects, representing her three souls and the three minds now working in perfect harmony.

  Xolo snarled.

  He seized the celestial moon ring to the left, accepting grief, terror, loathing, and rage without hesitation. Abyssal emotions stained the wheel in red, orange, violet, and deep blue. Its flames burned hotter—hungrier—than those of the celestial sun.

  The sun ring remained to the right.

  Jimena relinquished control of her body to Mictecacihuatl, trusting the goddess without reservation. In return, she was submerged in euphoria. Pain vanished. Her mind drifted in an ocean of ecstatic clarity, filled with awe as the celestial sun revolved behind her.

  Anticipation bloomed.

  Pink, sky blue, vibrant green, and radiant yellow flooded the sun wheel, each color alive with exaltation and hope.

  Moon and sun—one rotating left, the other right—drank deeply of the faith saturating the battlefield. Near-limitless divinity poured into them as a hymn rose from the land itself. The voices of her people blessed each ring with sacred intent.

  Jimena carried the rancor upon her shoulders.

  The cloak trailing behind her grew heavier with every step, its killing intent swelling to terrifying heights. Skulls embossed along its length bled crimson smoke from hollow eye sockets, whispering of judgment yet to come.

  And she kept walking.

  Her power settled into a melodious hymn of destruction, each note echoing the goddess’s will now guiding Jimena’s body. The blasphemy of purification—of stealing what belonged to death—would not go unanswered.

  At the center of the devastation sat the source of it all.

  A grotesque mass. A colossal infant reduced to a sagging, shapeless thing—its flaccid flesh hanging like a deflated balloon. The divine brilliance that had once swollen it was gone, leached away, leaving greying skin that continued to shrink and collapse inward.

  It did not notice Jimena.

  Even with twin celestial rings blazing behind her, it remained oblivious—muttering to itself in broken whispers. Pleading. Begging forgiveness from a god that did not listen.

  “Es toda mi culpa… tengo toda la culpa… perdón… perdón… perdón…”

  Whether the rite was spoken correctly no longer mattered.

  Jimena advanced, intent on ending the creature’s misery. Its own cruelty had turned inward, corrupting it beyond recognition. The countless fallen demanded recompense, their stolen lives tearing at the remnants of the mortal soul that had once inhabited this husk.

  Mictecacihuatl raised Xolo’s celestial moon ring.

  Cold moonlight spilled forth, illuminating the grey mass—judgment made manifest. The intent was simple: erase it. Reduce it to nothing.

  A process that seemed too simple.

  As the weeping light touched its greying flesh, the husk shrieked—an inhuman sound that tore at the air. A needle-thin wail that scraped against the soul. Mictecacihuatl did not flinch. She intensified the radiance, flooding the ring with greater divinity.

  Seconds passed.

  The moonlight grew fierce enough to liquefy the ground beneath it, yet the creature’s skin barely scorched. Divinity slid across its surface, refusing to pierce deeper. At some point the shrieking stopped.

  Slowly, the malformed head twisted toward Jimena’s reincarnated form.

  Its gaze promised suffering.

  Fresh from battle, its mind fractured between delirium and lucidity, it still understood one thing clearly—someone had come to humiliate it again. And as before, it would punish the offense.

  The body convulsed.

  Flesh kneaded and twisted into a more recognizable human shape, though the greying taint remained, clinging like rot. What emerged was not a man, but corruption given form.

  A yellow, acrid secretion oozed from every pore of its bloated body. Each droplet hissed as it struck the ground, eating through stone and soil alike. The corruption spread outward, stubborn and invasive—refusing to perish even beneath the blazing iridescence of the celestial moon wheel, whose colors flared in defiant brilliance.

  And still, the thing endured.

  Seeing no change—and sensing the creature stirring from its mindless stupor—Mictecacihuatl turned to the celestial sun wheel Jimena controlled. She called upon joy not as mercy, but as correction. To force corruption back into the cycle. To restore order where blasphemy had taken root.

  If this failed, the battle would only worsen.

  A being so recently corrupted, swollen with both mortal and divine souls, was no simple thing to unmake. Even Mictecacihuatl had not fully accounted for such an abomination when she had sent Jimena forth.

  The divine tattoos were still too new. Their sacred language too vast for Jimena to fully grasp.

  So she chose motion.

  She burst forward as the putrid thing surged in answer, power swelling again within its deformed shell. Hesitation vanished. The twin celestial wheels spun faster, screaming with divinity as she forced more through them, demanding more as she closed the distance.

  Xolo snarled on her left shoulder.

  Jimena giggled on her right.

  Pauldrons shaped in the image of the Xoloitzcuintli helm until together they formed the visage of a three-headed death god—Jimena, Xolo, and Mictecacihuatl aflame in prismatic fire.

  The sun and moon shone together.

  Their combined brilliance seared the corrupt husk, burning it now at a visible pace. Grey flesh blackened and cracked, releasing a stench so vile it stirred nausea even within the goddess guiding Jimena’s body.

  What had once been Alvarado was no longer a man.

  The greying arm that had deflected Mictecacihuatl’s divine fist ruptured, bursting into a cloud of ichor—only to reform moments later. The fetid smoke released with it bled back into the limb as it wailed, the countless trapped souls within absorbing the damage in his stead.

  A balance flared crimson upon his forehead.

  Plutus weighed his soul.

  And found it wanting.

  The god of wealth rejected the corruption as payment. Petty souls and stolen divinity were mere change. Only one thing could balance Alvarado’s debt.

  Jimena’s soul.

  Alvarado’s bedeviled eyes spun wildly in their sockets, searching for himself within their depths—failing to comprehend his own ruin. His soul was too fragmented to recognize its doom.

  Only agony remained.

  And the instinct to end it.

  He lunged forward, mindless and desperate, seeking to clutch the goddess before him. To smother her within his suffocating holy embrace—believing, in his shattered delusion, that divinity could still save him.