Did they consider her their equal? Lahkesis frowned as she wondered about this. Clotho’s skill at spinning fate was great, but Atropos? All she did was measure the longevity of the mortals. Anyone could do that. Let them think as they would. She was more than their equal, doing what they would not—the actual deliverance of souls to Hades.
Lahkesis stroked the thread still binding Kratos to his fate. When Atropos looked away, again engrossed in her work, Lahkesis plucked it impetuously and let the faint vibration disappear into the Underworld itself. With a contented sigh, she knew the result would be short-lived, but it gave her a measure of exhilaration to meddle with that which Clotho and Atropos said was pointless.
There could be no doubt as to Kratos’ fate. But there was no reason it could not also be amusing—even arousing—because it broke the tedium of controlling so many mundane dooms.
DARKNESS FILLED his universe. Kratos fought to move. Limbs refused him. A cry built within his throat, only to die in a bloody gurgle. Then he felt tingling across his legs. The feathery touches turned to stabbing pain that gave him hope that he still lived.
Then those touches worked to his thighs and his chest and across his face. He blinked open one eye and saw, just before blood blinded him, the dark Hands of Hades rising from the stone flooring beneath him, to engulf him and begin gouging into his inert flesh. Wisps of midnight fog touched his arms and legs, burned like fire, then tightened like chains on his appendages. More of the smoky tendrils rose from around him and beneath him, clutching his body. Where he lay, stone began to dissolve, allowing the Hands to pull him downward.
He screamed but no words came from his lips as the paving beneath him began to collapse. Even as he fell into the dark portal to Hades, the black tendrils gripped him more firmly and extracted an infinite amount of agony from him. Faster and faster the marble beneath his body crumbled and caved in and then he was falling downward at a speed that would have taken away a living mortal’s breath.
Darkness shrouded him. From below came anguished cries he remembered all too well from his escape from the Underworld before he had fought Ares. The stench of death filled his nostrils and made his tongue swell. Breath no longer filled his lungs. Fighting against the hands that clutched cruelly at his flesh, he looked down at his chest and saw … through his body. Zeus had reamed out his midsection, leaving behind a hole bigger than his doubled fist. Kratos knew he was no longer among the living. The black tendrils hardened and dug even farther into his body until he was completely enshrouded. And then he fell, sightless, unable to move, robbed of all senses, completely helpless.
But he raged. Oh, how he raged! His body might have been stolen from him, but his mind fought against the injustice. Giving in easily was not locked in any fiber of his being. Even as he fell he vowed vengeance on Zeus and the very pillars of Olympus.
His wrath spilled over and suddenly he was no longer encased in the blackness but dangling above a fiery pit. Heat seared him and caused sweat intermingled with blood to drip from his flesh. Groping hands, now flaming, held him, limbs outstretched in midair. Every move sent new lances of pain into his body, but still he fought against the restraints. Pain gave him focus for his rage.
And then the rage was replaced by hollowness. His wife stood before him, imploring him, only to fade and be replaced by his dear daughter. The physical torture meant nothing to him, but this! The nightmares Athena and Zeus had promised to eradicate remained even in death! Now he was transported back to the village where Ares had duped him into killing both Lysandra and little Calliope.
“No, no,” he gasped out. The scene turned again. This was hardly more to his liking because he lay flat on his back, the carnage of battle all about.
His valiant warriors were dying under the onslaught of the barbarians—and the Barbarian King towered above him, huge war hammer raised and ready to crush him.
Kratos tried to remain silent, but the words were still ripped from his lips.
“Ares, destroy my enemies and my life is yours!”
Those were the words that had placed him in thrall to the God of War for too many years, the pledge that had set his feet on a road of butchery and soulless killing of any who stood against him—against Ares.
Kratos wanted it to be different this time, for the Barbarian King to slay him, but the giant of a man stayed his blow and looked back over his shoulder at the sky as the leaden clouds parted and the God of War appeared and …
… Kratos screamed as the Blades of Chaos seared through his flesh and bonded with the bones of his forearms. No longer supine he swung the blades in vicious arcs, ending the Barbarian King’s life and slaughtering the invading army … and his wife. Lysandra sank down, mortally wounded from his mindless slash, and his daughter, his daughter fell, too …
… and Ares laughed. The God of War towered above the burning Athens, threw his head back, and mocked the gods of Olympus.
Fight, Spartan.
Kratos knew pain beyond the physical. That he had learned to endure, but now? Now he was plunged once more into the patterns that had blighted his life. He fought to change what he did, but the forces surrounded him like a sea wave to drown him. He knew what was going to happen, hated it, could not stop it …
The sharp command caused Ares to whirl about, his flaming beard sending out sparks, and his long golden hair whipping like a war pennant …
… allowing Kratos to reach out and seize a handful of the Barbarian King’s greasy hair with such force his neck cracked. The studded war hammer in the Barbarian King’s grip dripped blood. Kratos focused on that. It had to be his blood this time. This time! Knowing what would happen if he prevailed tore him apart inside more than Zeus’ thrust with the Blade of Olympus ever could.
But the giant was only stunned. The scene played out once more in his mind—in this reality of death—and he was powerless to stop it. His hands shook with the effort to release the giant to finish his death stroke. But Kratos kept his grip and smashed the warrior’s head repeatedly into a boulder until the mica embedded in it glistened bright red with the fighter’s blood.
Kratos panted with effort and rose, hobbling about amid the carnage. Blood up to his ankles was not as fearsome or frightful as the blood that would be on his hands when he killed his wife and child—unless he forsook victory now. But what a choice! All his life he had conquered. Victory for Sparta had been paramount in his thoughts and deeds, but if he died here, now, Sparta would lose.
And he would win a personal victory. He would not be tricked into killing his own family. Kratos used the blades now welded to his bones as canes to stagger away, knowing his defection meant defeat for Sparta. His life meant nothing, but his honor! Abandoning his comrades-in-arms was the worst a warrior could do.
Almost the worst. Kratos had endured the one thing that was worse. His family. Dead at his feet, by his hand, because he had agreed to this reckless alliance with Ares to avoid defeat. He would be branded a coward, but his wife’s and daughter’s lives meant more to him. Now.
The Barbarian King stirred. He was not dead. Kratos knew what would happen in his future if he killed the giant. The king must live and triumph on the field of battle, but the Blades of Chaos lifted, as if by their own volition, and swung out in a fearsome arc. With a scissors action, Kratos lopped off the Barbarian King’s head. It rolled away in the gore and mud, a startled look forever etched on the face.
The sudden swirl, as if he had been caught in a waterspout, disoriented him.
Kratos wiped away blood from his eyes and cried out in despair at his failure to see his wife and child sprawled on the stone altar, partially dismembered by his fearsome hacks and slashes. The blood pooled away from their faces, and Kratos looked down and saw his own face reflected in their blood. He recognized it, and yet he did not. It was another Ghost of Sparta peering back. This one had not fully realized the depths of his failure and loss.
“No!” He cried out and …
“You must kil
l Ares,” Athena said urgently. “The existence of Olympus depends on it. Your very fate depends on his death at your hand.”
“Athena,” Kratos grated out, fury building anew. He reached for her, but she seemed to melt before his eyes, her flesh flowing, changing, becoming a lovely naked beauty with hair flowing like a golden river, beckoning to him to join her. Her lips parted and she spoke to him alone.
Kratos, you are not meant to die here.
Death, even under Hades’ horrific dominance, was preferable, but he couldn’t turn back now. He had lost once more. In his victory over the Barbarian King he had lost everything—and now his punishment was to know it and be unable to alter his past, his present, or his future suffering.
A hurricane blew past the beauteous woman’s nude body, and once more Kratos faced Ares.
The God of War raised his arm for the death stroke. Kratos was so close he could smell the god’s sweat and blood and excitement at the impending kill. His sword lashed out and …
… a blade drove upward into Ares’ throat. The God of War’s eyes went wide with shock. His streaming hair flapped about in the hurricane winds and he sank to the ground …
… and Zeus screeched in insane fury. Like a rabid dog his mouth was flecked with foam, and he snarled and snapped and leaned forward, driving the Blade of Olympus deeper into Kratos’ chest. The pain ripped a new scream of fury from Kratos and …
… Lysandra, eyeless and sockets dripping dark blood, stood behind Zeus. Calliope clung to her tattered, dirty skirts, and the child spoke …
This is not the end.
The torment all about him disappeared as if fog drifted in to hide it, but his pain remained to remind him he dangled over the Underworld, bait for Hades and his eternity of tortures. Kratos could never expect mercy from Zeus’ brother.
He wished for death, then realized the fiery fog, the intense darkness, the parade of visions of his family’s death, had faded from sight. A distant scent came to his nostrils that was not blood or death, but fresh earth.
Kratos muttered, “Who are you?” He hardly dared to think that Hades would be the god to relieve him of his suffering. Hades delighted in devising new tortures, not relieving old ones.
He caught his breath as a huge face moved from the fog without dimension or color and took shape before him. At first he thought it was another hallucination, his imagination giving a face to a huge plain of dried mud. Brown and cracked, the face developed eyes and a flat nose and a mouth so wide that it might swallow half the world. Back and forth the face moved as the features hardened.
“I am the Titan Gaia, ever-present mother of the earth. I have watched you become a powerful warrior, and I have been with you through all the events of your life. But I can no longer simply watch.”
Kratos gasped as he felt his lungs fill with air and his heart begin to beat once more, each throb an effort, a new agony, but also a hint that life had not been entirely sucked from him through his descent into Hades.
“We will help you defeat Zeus,” Gaia said.
He closed his eyes and was whirled about into the void. He sensed rather than saw Gaia—and other Titans. Gaia lacked substance, reduced only to spirit. Cronos crept through the Desert of Lost Souls with Pandora’s Temple still strapped to his back, and the others were similarly imprisoned. Hyperion and Rhea and Themis. Iapetus, forever doomed to Tartarus, and Mnemosyne beside her still pool of limpid water. Kratos reached out to her for the aid she could give. If he had to be dead, let him drink from Lethe to forget his past.
“Death is an escape, Kratos. You are a warrior of Sparta, not a coward. Only a coward accepts death.”
Kratos kept his eyes screwed tightly shut, and still he saw the other Titans, all banished by Zeus after losing the Titanomachy, the lot of them staring at him as if he were still God of War.
“I am no coward,” he said. “But I have suffered loss too great to bear.”
“Reflect on your strengths, not your weakness. All have that within them they deny or do not wish to confront directly. Through constant victory, you ignored those parts of you that truly made you a man.”
“I have lost them, by my own hand I lost them!”
“Do you allow the gods to use you like a slave? Is that the Kratos who became God of War? Is that the Kratos who vanquished those who opposed him?”
Kratos felt the desolation even more acutely.
“I alone cannot win against Zeus.” The revelation struck him as powerfully as the Barbarian King’s hammer.
“You do not have to fight alone any longer, Kratos,” the Titan said in a low voice that still rang like a bell and filled him with a touch of renewed confidence. “You will have more than an army of mortals striving with you. The Titans will aid you as you aid us.”
Kratos felt the undercurrent of power and promise in Gaia’s words, but also there was a touch of desperation that he shared.
“You must fight. I will show you the way to the Sisters of Fate. Only with their power will you defeat Zeus.”
Kratos screamed in pain and opened his eyes, looking down at the hole that Zeus had cut completely through his belly with the Blade of Olympus. As he watched, the wound healed and the pain receded—but the memory of what he had endured after falling into Hades remained and formed a steel core in his soul.
He struggled in the grip of the Hands but felt their hold weakening as he healed. A sudden spasm seized him, causing him to arch his back and thrash about as he became aware of his heartbeat and his lungs struggling like a bellows and blood pounding through his temples again. His hands ached and his arms and legs quivered with life.
“Ahhh!” The exultation escaped his lips as he knew that he lived once more.
Then he was falling, tumbling head-over-heels, the fiery mist all around filled with hands reaching for him. Fingernails raked at his flesh and clutched at his ankles but, no longer dead, he fought back. His meaty fists struck out and hit the thin arms trying to grab him. Twisting and kicking, he freed himself and fell but this time in such a way that he could draw the Blades of Athena and use them as grappling hooks against the side of a cliff formed of ocher rock.
Kratos grunted as the shock of his descent ceased suddenly when the blades cut into the rock. Belly-first, he slammed hard into the face of the cliff, but instead of feeling pain he took heart in the fact that the gaping hole in his midriff cut by Zeus was no longer there. He kicked against the cliff until his toes found purchase, and he began climbing.
Slowly at first and then with greater speed as he built the rhythm, he pulled free one blade and swung it high above his head to penetrate the rock. His mighty shoulders took the strain of lifting his weight upward until he could free the other sword and then cast it above the first.
The flow of muscle and the smell of the world around him invigorated Kratos. His despair at being cast again into the Underworld vanished as determination replaced the memory of the ugly visions he had endured. His heart beat rhythmically and sent blood pounding through his veins. Seldom had he felt this way. Victory after a difficult battle approached the feeling, but what he experienced now was life, not dealing out death.
Purpose firmed within his breast as he considered how Gaia now aided him against Zeus.
High above he saw a faint hole opening to the sky. Smoke drifted across the opening, and he knew this way would lead him back to Rhodes. As hope flared that he would quickly be free of the Underworld and Hades’ deathly grasp once more, the hands that had clawed at him before sprang from the rocks and again attempted to hold him, to pull him down, to fling him into the abyss toward the River Styx at the bottom of the impossibly deep chasm.
Kratos let out a cry that tightened his belly and coordinated his struggles to go higher. He alternated climbing, using the swords, with hacking at the hands, severing them at the wrists and elbows. He kicked at some trying to clutch his ankles, then cut faster at ones sprouting above him to block his exit. All that he had seen and endured in his fall towar
d the realm of Hades fueled his ascent now. He sliced with more power, climbed with greater speed, and then, using a hand gripping his ankle as a stepping-stone, propelled himself upward. The hand trailed behind, feebly drawing him backward. Crossing his blades, he drew back hard. The hand was scissored cleanly from its arm, and he erupted upward to fall onto the lip of the hole. It was the work of a moment to pry loose the severed hand still clinging to his ankle.
As he stood, a wind whirled about him, driving him to his knees. Faster the tornado spun as the bits of rock and paving stone sailed past his head to fall into the hole. He looked down as the debris fit itself together perfectly and sealed the opening. As suddenly as the wind had begun, it died.
Kratos stood and looked around Rhodes. Everywhere buildings burned, but his eyes were not for the destruction of an enemy city but for the bodies of brave Spartan warriors slain by Zeus using the Blade of Olympus. He moved to a nearby soldier and saw that the man had been blasted by the powerful weapon.
Another soldier had been killed in a similar fashion. And another and another.
Then Kratos stopped beside a battered soldier who stirred. The man’s eyes flickered open and fixed on him. A smile came to his lips as he looked up and saw Kratos.
The young soldier said, “My lord! I knew you could not be killed. I never lost faith.”
Kratos gripped him by the front of his armor and pulled him upright.
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