God of War

TWENTY-ONE

“HE SACRIFICED to win your favor, my lord father,” Athena said. “Will you answer his prayer?”

“Kratos is impudent.” Zeus ran his fingers through his beard of clouds and turned from Athena to stare into the scrying pool. “He does not pay proper obeisance to me.”

Athena noted that this was not actually an answer. “Impudent he may be,” Athena said carefully, “but his impudence pleases you. I can tell.”

“Your impudence, Daughter, is not pleasing,” Zeus said gruffly.

Athena saw the way he stared into the pool. She tried not to cry out in joy. Kratos had surpassed her expectations, reaching this point in Pandora’s temple far sooner than she had anticipated. So much danger lay ahead, but he fought well. Better still, he was taming his bloodlust and thinking now. The Architect had designed his traps to swallow the bold and thoughtless, but Kratos won despite them, sometimes with great difficulty, and still he pressed on toward Pandora’s Box.

“I have considered this. The sacrifice is pleasing, after Ares has killed so many of my worshippers.” Zeus scowled as he pondered this. “Kratos is showing his true mettle.”

“So the caged man was an adherent of Ares?”

Zeus said nothing, but Athena read her father well. Ares had sent a mortal into the temple to claim Pandora’s Box. Her brother’s ambitions were far greater than she had ever considered. He wanted to destroy Athens, yes, but this was added proof of how his arrogance soared to the very edge of Olympus itself. The box gave great power to a god-but only Athena’s oracle had seen that it also contained the way to killing a god. Ares must not learn this secret until it would be too late for him to stop Kratos. Athena worried that, for all his speed and cunning, Kratos might be moving too slowly through the temple.

“Your mortal fights well. Look. See that?” Zeus beckoned her to his side. Together they watched as Kratos picked his way through a succession of fiendishly inventive death traps. “He does have talent,” Zeus mused. “It’s a pity about the madness, isn’t it? Those awful visions-it’s astonishing he’s borne them for so long.”

“He hopes for release, Father. We talked about this before, do you recall? You yourself have decreed that if he succeeds, his sins will be forgiven. And forgiveness will banish the nightmares, will it not?”

Zeus waved a hand vaguely, now caught up in watching Kratos slice through another company of undead, Gorgons, and Minotaurs, first with the huge Hades-forged blades and then with the sword given him by Artemis.

“This is the most diversion I’ve had in eons.”

“Father, Kratos’s nightmares. Will they-”

“Look, look there, Daughter.” Zeus pointed into the scrying pool again, and Athena knew she would get no answer for Kratos.

For her Kratos, as she now thought of him. She became as engrossed in the unfolding battle as was her father, and Athena fell silent.