God of War

EPILOGUE

At the brink of nameless cliffs he stands: a statue in travertine, pale as the clouds above. He can see no colors of life, not the scarlet slashes of his own tattoos, not the putrefying tatters of his wrists where chains were ripped from his flesh. His eyes are as black as the storm-churned Aegean below, set in a face white as the foam that boils among the jagged rocks.

Ashes, only ashes, despair, and the lash of winter rain: These are his wages for ten years’ service to the gods. Ashes and rot and decay, a cold and lonely death.

His only dream now is of oblivion.

He has been called the Ghost of Sparta. He has been called the Fist of Ares and the Champion of Athena. He has been called a warrior. A murderer. A monster.

He is all of these things. And none of them.

His name is Kratos, and he knows who the real monsters are.

His arms hang, their vast cords of knotted muscle limp and useless now. His hands bear the hardened callus not only of sword and Spartan javelin but of the Blades of Chaos, the Trident of Poseidon, and even the legendary Thunderbolt of Zeus. These hands have taken more lives than Kratos has taken breaths, but they have no weapon now to hold. These hands will not even flex and curl into fists. All they can feel is the slow trickle of blood and pus that drips from his torn wrists.

His wrists and forearms are the true symbol of his service to the gods. The ragged strips of flesh flutter in the cruel wind, blackening with rot; even the bone itself bears the scars of the chains that once were fused there: the chains of the Blades of Chaos. Those chains are gone now, ripped from him by the very god who inflicted them upon him. Those chains not only joined him to the blades and the blades to him; those chains were the bonds shackling him to the service of the gods.

But that service is done. The chains are gone and the blades with them.

Now he has nothing. Is nothing. Whatever has not abandoned him, he has thrown away.

No friends-he is feared and hated throughout the known world, and no living creature looks upon him with love or even affection. No enemies-he has none left to kill. No family And that, even now, is a place in his heart where he dare not look.

And, finally, the last refuge of the lost and alone, the gods…

The gods have made a mockery of his life. They took him, molded him, transformed him into a man he can no longer bear to be. Now, at the end, he can no longer even rage.

“The gods of Olympus have abandoned me.”

He steps to the final inches of the cliff, his sandals scraping gravel over the crumbling brink. A thousand feet below, dirty rags of cloud twist and braid a net of mist between him and the jagged rocks where the Aegean crashes upon them. A net? He shakes his head.

A net? Rather, a shroud.

He has done more than any mortal could. He has accomplished feats the gods themselves could not match. But nothing has erased his pain. The past he cannot flee brings him the agony and madness that are his only companions.

“Now there is no hope.”

No hope in this world-but in the next, within the bounds of the mighty Styx that marks the borders of Hades, runs the river Lethe. A draft of that dark water, it is said, erases the memory of the existence a shade has left behind, leaving the spirit to wander forever, without name, without home…

Without past.

This dream drives him forward in one final, fatal step, which topples him into clouds that shred around him as he falls. The sea-chewed rocks below materialize, gaining solidity along with size, racing upward to crush his life.

The impact swallows all he is, all he was, all he has done, and all that’s been done to him, in one shattering burst of night.

But even in this, he is doomed to disappointment.

He does not see the figure at his side in the Aegean’s dark waves; he does not feel the hands that lift him from the sea. He does not know that he is being carried far beyond anywhere mortals can ever go.

When next his eyes open, he stands before a mighty gate of gold and pearl set in a rampart built of cloud. And with him stands a woman of supernal loveliness, clad in glittering armor and bearing a shield on which is set the head of Medusa.

He has never seen her before. But he has known her for years, and she cannot be mistaken for any other.

“Athena.”

Her flawless face turns toward him, and the serene majesty of her gaze takes his breath away. “You will not die this day, my Spartan,” she says, and her voice is martial music of pipe and drums. “The gods cannot- I cannot-allow one who has performed such service to perish by his own hand.”

He can only stare, struck dumb both by bitter injustice and incomprehensible grace.

“There is more at work here than you may ever know.” She lifts a hand and the immense gate swings open before him, revealing stairs ascending into cloud. “But you have saved more than your own life today and worked a greater deed than taking your own revenge. Zeus has declared you worthy, and you will not deny him. There is now an empty throne in Olympus, my Kratos, and I have one last service to require of you. Take these stairs. They lead to that empty throne. To your throne.”

“I don’t understand…” Words fall thickly from his numb lips.

“It’s possible you never will. I will tell you only this: You should not die by your own hand and stain Olympus with your blood. And so you are here. With us. Forever. It is Zeus’s wish.”

Kratos mounts the long, long stair. Now he can see at the top a throne of glistening jet: deadly gleaming black, befitting the god he is to become.

With each step, the sights and sounds of battle rush in upon him, from all across the world and throughout all eternity, for time and place are different for the gods. He fears for an instant-or for a millennium-that his nightmares return to rape his mind, but he does not recognize the soldiers he sees. They wear metal armor and march in phalanx; cavalry and chariots support their swordsmen, pike men, and archers. “Cross the Rubicon,” a general bellows in a strange and foreign tongue, but Kratos understands.

At the next step, again he gasps. Curious armor here replaces the more-familiar design. Rushing past him are men with Asiatic eyes, shouting in a language he does not recognize, though again he understands-Sekigahara. “For the shogun!” The names spring up unbidden and mean nothing to him, but as foreign as their aspects and armor are, the carnage they wreak is all too familiar. Thousands lie dead on all sides, although he is still on the stairs to his throne.

At the next step he finds himself almost flinching, as a huge bird with stiff metal wings and a spinning wheel in front dives down on him. Sudetenland. Huge explosions rock him as the machine-not a bird but a flying machine, a Stuka, another unfamiliar word that he somehow understands-pulls out of a dive and roars away into the dirty gray sky. And just above, a brilliant glare has him squinting and shading his eyes, but he knows somehow that this light cannot harm him. Nothing can harm him. The light comes from a vast cloud curling upward from a burning city, burgeoning as it lifts into an astonishing shape, like a blazing white mushroom larger than Athens itself.

He looks in another direction, and there before him unfold wooded hills where the rivers run red with blood. Antietam? What language might this be?

These people, these places, come to him with every step. Waterloo. Agincourt. Khyber Pass. Gallipoli. Xilang-fu. Roncesvalles. Stalingrad and the Bulge and Normandy. The chaos of war rages around him, an endless looping chain of stunning victories and horrific defeats.

When he reaches the throne, he pauses for a moment and looks back down from whence he came. Spread before him is all of Greece, all the Mediterranean, Africa, Europe, Asia, and the strange lands on the far side of the world. Anywhere that battles rage-anywhere war will ever be fought-this is his kingdom. But among it all, his kingdom, the quarter that means most to him, will be the scene of battles that will tear the world asunder.

For Olympus, too, is of his kingdom, whenever he might choose to make it so.

Kratos, once of Sparta, lowers himself upon his throne, and dark designs unfurl behind his brows. They want a God of War? He will show them war the likes of which they’ve never conjured in their worst nightmares.

Kratos of Olympus, God of War, gazes down upon his realm, and his fury burns.