“You are close enough.”
“Very well. I petition you to spare Kratos. Restore him to his place as God of War. While I abhor the turmoil he has caused while a god, the lack of one sitting on that throne is far worse. For the good of Olympus, for the peace among all the gods and goddesses, restore him.”
Zeus reached down and grabbed the Blade of Olympus. He thrust it high in the air, as if stabbing the sky itself.
“He allowed his godly powers to be drained into the blade. He had his chance to serve me, to serve in Olympus, but he had only impudence, insults to offer when I extended my proposal.”
“He is a proud man—”
“Proud? Athena, you name him a proud man. He was an arrogant god! I could no longer tolerate this. He refused to bend his knee to me as King of Olympus!”
“So you killed him and set in motion designs of which we know nothing. He escaped the Underworld. How did he do that a second time? Kratos is a clever man and a warrior second to none, but he was aided in his escape from Hades.”
“What are you saying, Athena?” demanded Iris. “That Kratos is braver and more skilled than Zeus? Never!” Iris glanced at Zeus, who did not hear her praise. He focused on Athena alone.
“You mock me, daughter. You deride me and belittle me.”
“I think only of Olympus, Father,” Athena said. “Since Ares died, things have been unsettled. It is up to you to put them right.”
“And returning Kratos to the throne of the God of War will do that?”
“It will,” Athena said.
“I suppose you want Hermes’ banishment reversed, also,” said Iris.
“Be quiet,” Zeus growled.
“I meant no harm, mighty Zeus,” Iris said, cowering away. Although her tone was contrite, her eyes fixed on Athena, weighing every nuance of expression.
“Where is Kratos? I would destroy him—again!” Zeus jumped to his feet and cast a thunderbolt upward, where it exploded above Athena’s head.
Iris stepped back to his side and said, “There is no need for you to rely on her for information, Lord Zeus. Your loyal messenger can tell you all. Kratos sought refuge on the Island of Creation and foolishly perished.”
“What?” Athena took two steps up to the throne before checking herself. “Kratos cannot be dead!”
“What if it is my will, daughter? What if your king, the all-powerful thunderer, Zeus, King of Olympus, has decreed it? Would you go against my wishes?”
“No, Father, of course not. All that matters is Olympus.” Athena backed away, turned, and fled the audience chamber.
Zeus turned to Iris. “If you have lied to me, Hermes’ fate will seem mild.”
“Kratos is dead,” Iris said firmly.
Zeus sank back to his throne and smiled. “Good. Now Olympus is finally safe.”
KRATOS FELL HEADFIRST from the great height, swords drawn and flaming as he accelerated downward to his death. The thought of dying after all he had been through angered him. He roared in defiance. If he died now, Zeus would win. The gods of Olympus would continue to rule, and the deaths of so many brave Spartans in Rhodes would be for naught.
The wind ripped past his face and pulled his arms away from his body. He forced the swords together in front of his face and felt a lift that twisted him around so his feet aimed at the rushing ground. Kratos spun around and found he could maneuver just enough to carry him over the building constructed at the edge of the Island of Creation. Then he knew he was not going to die. Not here. Not now.
He clenched his fists and made the silent vow, “You will die by my hand, Zeus. I promise!”
The promise came easily, but denying Hades another resident in the Underworld proved more difficult. Kratos continued to slip toward the island and the palace balanced on the cliff’s edge. The terraces rushed up ever faster, and then Kratos swung out with his blades to leave deep cuts in the stone. Sparks trailed behind and dust exploded from the deep grooves he gouged. As he slowed, he ran out of wall. He fell freely again, but his reflexes were superb. Rather than continue his downward tumble, he stabbed upward and caught the overhang. His sword drove into stone and hooked into the bottom of the stone terrace. The momentum of his fall checked, his arm aching from the sudden stop, he stabbed upward with his other blade.
For a few seconds he gathered his strength, then worked his way along the stone slab above him until he reached the side once more. From there it took only seconds to climb to the terrace. Kratos swung out, then froze.
From a great distance he heard a whisper that grew louder by the instant. Then Gaia spoke.
“Kratos, behold the Island of Creation, home to the Sisters of Fate. Here, the path to your true destiny begins.”
Kratos heard the steady click-click of feet marching toward him. He shrugged and settled the hilts of his swords in his palms just as two sentries came around a corner on the walkway. Armed with two-edged battle-axes and clad in shining armor and crimson livery, they advanced on him with easy contempt. Kratos doubted they were required to face true warriors. Their helms sported bristled crests; their greaves were spotless and the sigils on their armor unsullied by anything as taxing as combat.
Kratos rushed them, swords flashing in the sunlight. He killed one soldier before the sentry realized he was under attack. The few seconds it took to dispatch him gave the other a chance to defend himself. Kratos squared his stance, took the measure of his enemy, and skewered him with a single thrust. With a snap of his wrist he flicked off the blood from the Blades of Athena.
“As you are discovering, the island is fraught with danger,” Gaia went on. “It was created to prevent all from reaching the three Sisters of Fate.”
“What must I do when I find them? How will this aid me in defeating Zeus?” he demanded.
“The power of the Sisters will allow you to return to that moment when Zeus betrayed and killed you, Kratos, thus changing your fate … and the fate of others.”
He started to ask, What others—but what difference did it make as long as his quest for vengeance against Zeus and the other gods of Olympus found completion? His path was clear. He had landed at this palace and now must find the way to the Sisters of Fate. With a sure stride and firm resolve, Kratos began exploring.
He went around the corner expecting more soldiers. Nothing. There seemed no way off this terrace other than to go up a ladder. Kratos wasted no time ascending. The higher he went, he knew, the closer he got to the tallest spire in the palace, where the Sisters of Fate likely made their lair. At the top of the ladder, he climbed over to a stone terrace broader than the one below where he had left the sentries dead. At the side of the chamber was a heavy stone door that he could not force open using only brute strength.
Frowning, he explored and found a trip plate near a lever that slid along a long rail. Stepping on the plate caused a grinding of stone against stone. Beyond the now open stone portal a steel grating blocked the way. He stepped off the plate and drew back the lever. The metal grate opened. He took a step toward the pair of opened doors, only to see that the stone door slammed before he could reach it.
Kratos frowned as he studied what lay before him. Brute force would not suffice. He tested a theory and saw that the plate rose when his weight was removed. Looking around, he hunted for something to hold down the pressure plate while he drew back the lever. The way ahead required something more than could be found at hand. Leaving the chamber, he went back down the ladder, caught up the corpse of a sentry, and climbed back to the chamber. Grunting, he dropped the body onto the pressure plate. With the deadweight holding the plate down, the heavy stone door opened. He drew back on the lever, sliding it the entire length of the rail.
The instant he released the lever, the steel grating began to slide shut. Kratos reacted with battle-hardened reflexes, running to the door after pulling the lever back as far as he could. The closing grating forced him to somersault through. The steel bars slammed shut behind, but he had passed through to a narrow corridor that led
to another door.
Unable to go back even if he had wanted, Kratos pressed forward. He braced himself, gripped the lower edge of the door, and exerted his full strength. Metal and stone creaked and broke, dropping the door down to reveal a bridge.
A bridge that ended only a bowshot away. Kratos strode out and stared down a thousand feet to the boiling sea. The water swirled around this island, the Island of Creation, to cascade over the edge of the world. Beyond, where the bridge ought to have led, he saw what had to be the Island of Fate where the Sisters of Fate resided. The cliffs around that island were unscalable from the ocean, sheer, rugged, and dotted with waterfalls that would sweep any man to his death should he venture too close.
The only way to the island was across a bridge that did not exist. Kratos paced back and forth as he examined possibilities for crossing the chasm. Then he began judging his chances of crossing the straits between the islands or finding the Pegasus and flying across. Where it had gone after his aerial battle with the Warrior of Destiny he could not say, but it had been increasingly feeble during that battle. He could not fly, then, and he could not cross in any other way. Retreat was impossible, as the way back was blocked. Frustration mounted because he knew reaching the Sisters of Fate was beyond his ability and he must ask for assistance. It had not proven to his benefit when he had implored Ares to help him on the battlefield, but he had little choice now except to reach out to the one who had brought him to this impasse.
He turned his face upward and cried, “Why did you aid me before, Gaia? Will you help me across to the Sisters?”
“I aided you because Zeus must be stopped, Kratos. This story of revenge has been told before.”
Kratos stared across at the Island of Fate and felt a smoldering rage that would never be extinguished until the Sky Father truly died.
“There are many stories of revenge, Gaia,” he said. “I have my own. Help me!”
“You know of the mighty Titan Cronos,” Gaia went on, as if she had not heard.
Kratos stiffened as his mind was hurled away from the sundered edge of the bridge to a time and place beyond his reckoning. It was as if he had returned to Olympus and looked down on the mortals, but the woman holding the baby in swaddling was something more than a mortal. She stood on a plain dotted with ruined temples. Three columns with a lintel remained intact to one side, near a stone altar, but all else lay in rubble. She bent and gently kissed the baby on the forehead, and beams of light drove through leaden clouds to illuminate it.
“So fearful was Cronos of the oracle’s prediction that his own children would rise against him, he decided to imprison them all in his belly.”
Kratos grated his teeth when he saw an eagle flapping toward the desolate plain, an eagle so similar to the one Zeus had sent in Rhodes that he reached for his swords. But he could not move. He was an observer in this drama, not a participant.
“Rhea stood by and watched as her children were devoured one by one. But when the time came for the last of her children to be eaten, she was unable to bear another such loss and devised a trick to save the baby Zeus.”
“Zeus.” The name came out of Kratos’ lips as a snake might hiss.
The eagle swooped down and caught the baby in its claws. Rhea stepped away, her arms falling limply at her sides. She bit her lower lip to keep from crying out, for in the distance came Cronos. The immense Titan lumbered toward her on that barren mountaintop, coming for the baby now hidden among a flock of golden eagles high above. Those powerful birds would take the baby to an island far beyond the spying eyes of Cronos.
“It was I,” Gaia continued, “who cared for him. It was I who kept him safe.”
Rhea dropped to her knees and grabbed a large stone about the size of her infant son and quickly wrapped it in swaddling. A quick look warned her that Cronos was almost to the plains. The Titan blotted out half the sky as he rose hundreds of feet above, thick-fingered hands reaching toward her.
Rhea hastily laid the swaddled stone on the bloodstained altar and backed away. Then she watched as Cronos knelt. His immense hand closed over the altar and took away the stone hidden by cloth. He held it up, as if contemplating a delicate morsel of the finest food, then opened his gigantic mouth and popped in the treat.
Rhea fought to keep from laughing hysterically, from crying, from doing anything save staring at the immense Titan towering above her.
“Zeus should have died then!” Kratos called out, but neither Rhea nor Cronos heard. The vision of that lonely mountaintop faded, replaced by a beach and the warm sea beyond. Gentle waves lapped on the sand, and childish laughter came from within the darkness of a cave opening onto the beach.
Zeus, young, fit, the source of the laughter, emerged from the cave.
“I nurtured his desire to free his brothers and sisters from Cronos, but my foolish act of compassion would haunt the Titans forever.”
Kratos could only watch as Zeus rode on Gaia’s back. The cave was thrust upward away from the sea, a mountain formed beneath Gaia—a mountain formed from Gaia. Zeus, long white hair blowing in the stiff breeze, stared down at the creation of a towering mountain, waterfalls tumbling down its sides, trees and grass growing amid the rock. Kratos wanted to kill him anew as a sneer curled Zeus’ lips.
“For in sparing Zeus, we allowed him to return to us with vengeance in his heart. He betrayed all the Titans for the sins of just one—the sins of his father, Cronos.”
The scene faded and Kratos slumped, once more faced with the impossible task of crossing to the distant island. How Gaia’s tale was supposed to provide a way across he did not know. He turned and went back to study the steel grate but found no way to open it to retreat the way he had come. Returning to the bridge, he saw a walkway circling the spire. He stepped onto the stone walkway and tested it. Bits crumbled beneath his weight. Kratos stepped back, judged what had to be done, and ran forward as hard as he could.
The stone beneath his feet crumbled as he ran, coming closer to sending him tumbling to his death far below with every instant. When he felt the stone walkway vanish beneath his left heel, he gave a mighty jump and sailed through the air, barely catching the still-solid stone of the walkway ahead of him. The sound of hundreds of pounds of stone and cement crashing to the ground far below warned him he could not linger. Shoulders straining and back muscles protesting, he heaved himself upward and landed on more solid footing some feet away from the deadly brink.
Kratos vaulted over a low wall and found himself in the middle of a circular chamber. His nose wrinkled when he caught a smell that revolted him.
Cerberus hounds, three-headed monsters with teeth so sharp they could rend a man’s arm off in a single snap.
Before he could whip out his blades, two Cerberus pups attacked. These were smaller monsters, single-headed with matted manes, but no less dangerous to him. They moved faster than the hound they would grow up to be and seemed to compete with each other to be the most vicious. Kratos spun, kicked one high into the air, and caught the other by its corded, muscled neck as it leaped for his throat. It thrashed about, and his grip began to slip because of the gore matting its mane and the fur under its throat—so great was the blood, the pup must have recently feasted. But it was clear the cur was still hungry from the way its sharp teeth snapped at Kratos, not knowing that whatever it had recently devoured was to be its last meal. Holding it at arm’s length, he made a single pitiless jerk and tore off its head. He cast it aside to go after the whimpering pup he had kicked, only to find himself circled by three more of the deadly little monsters. Spines rose along their backs as they circled him, coordinating their efforts so all could share in his flesh.
Kratos let out a battle cry, spun his swords in a complete circle around him, and dispatched them. Intent on killing the one he had kicked, he neglected to look behind. Fierce jaws clamped on his shoulder and lifted him from his feet. Dangling from the thrashing jaws so all he could see was the dome above the chamber, he began anticipating
which way the jaws would toss him in an attempt to rip out his shoulder blades.
When he found the proper rhythm, he jerked hard, forced his shoulder deeper into the middle mouth of the full-grown Cerberus, and felt a weakening. This was all he needed to smash his fist onto the top of the dog’s head and gain his release. He was thrown to the floor. Looking up at the Cerberus towering above him, all three heads snarling and snapping, he did nothing. He remained in a crouch, frozen. Its heads weaved about on independent necks. The dorsal spines on the pups were only a few inches long; on this creature they were fully eighteen inches. Any one of them could impale a careless man. Kratos kept his gorge down as the creature roared and sent a gust of fetid breath into his face. The yellowed, broken fangs in each mouth dripped with saliva. The Cerberus reared and dropped hard to the floor, voicing a guttural cry intended to cow him.
As Kratos had hoped, the Cerberus thought its prey to be paralyzed with fear. It was careless in its attack, allowing Kratos to duck under the central head and thereby block the head on the right as he seized the bottom of the left head’s jaw in one hand and drove the fingers of the other into exposed eyes. With a sturdy grip, he wrenched back and away and tore off the head. Warm blood sprayed onto him and caused him to slip. If the Cerberus had not been so sorely wounded, Kratos would have perished.
But the pain of losing a head deterred it. The Cerberus realized its opponent was not as vulnerable as it had thought. Snarling, it advanced. Even wounded and wary, it moved with startling speed and head-butted him. Kratos threw himself backward at the last possible instant and only endured a hard blow to the chest, hardly more than a soldier’s fist wrapped in chain might give.
He recovered and saw a new attack. The Cerberus reared back on its hind legs and spat forth a fireball. Kratos turned aside, and the deadly fire passed by him. He spun in the other direction to avoid a second fireball, but this one came closer and raked his back, burning the bite wounds the hound had inflicted in his shoulder.
They circled warily, each looking for the other’s weakness. Kratos had the advantage. He had faced other Cerberus hounds before. And this one had never fought him. Nor would it have a second chance.
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