Rodrigo arrives with the certainty of a man who has never considered that what he wants might not be his to take. He commands the conquistadors who descend on Kahhori's village, and his stated mission is to claim the Fountain of Youth for Queen Isabella. He does not speak the language of the people he is terrorizing and does not appear to find this inconvenient. He takes prisoners, burns the village, and pushes further into the land with the same blunt confidence that the divine right of conquest provides to people who have built their entire worldview around it.

When Kahhori returns from Sky World and begins tearing through his forces, Rodrigo responds by ordering everything his ships have to bear down on her. Cannons, soldiers, the full weight of Spanish military power aimed at one woman. It nearly works, and then the Sky World tribe arrives and it stops working entirely. His fleet is destroyed and his army is routed. Kahhori buries him in the ground before the battle ends, leaving him pinned and powerless while the world he thought he was claiming collapses around him. He came looking for eternal youth and found a warrior who had just become something considerably more dangerous than anything he was prepared for.