He leaped for the other side, sprinting to outrace the sizzling flame, but before he could reach the safety of the rocky outcropping, he felt the structure shift under his weight, shudder-then collapse. Kratos scrambled up the burning planks as though they were a ladder, barely reaching the rocky path before the bridge came apart and tumbled into the chasm.
Kratos stared back across the rocky gap for one brief moment. At least the bridgekeeper should be smiling up from Hades. No monster would cross that chasm unless it could fly. He turned and moved on.
The steep path became stairs that led straight to the top of the mountain. At the summit towered a vast many-tiered structure, three or four times the size of the Parthenon below and ten times its height, all of elegantly constructed marble leafed in the purest gold.
As he climbed the stairs, sounds of battle came from above. He straightened and drew his blades. Slow passage through the air caused the Blades of Chaos to hiss and trail sparks. Kratos took the steps into the temple swiftly and silently, moving as stealthily as he could until he found the source of the clank of sword on sword.
A large devotional area in the center of the temple was spattered with fresh blood. Two soldiers staggered from behind the statue of Athena that towered over the far side of the chamber, trying desperately to hold off the attacks of five or six undead heavy infantry.
Kratos nodded to himself. Of course-as soon as the God of War had located the temple, his foul Hades spawn had begun to appear. Even here, within the holiest sanctum of the goddess.
He cat-footed across the open area and cut the legs of four undead from under them before the creatures knew he was there. A few quick slices settled the others. One soldier was down, bleeding out the last of his life on the goddess’s pristine floor. The other Athenian cast one grim nod of thanks toward Kratos, then let out a war cry and charged back behind Athena’s statue.
His head rolled out an instant later.
Kratos-reluctantly-admitted to himself that maybe not all Athenians were cowards.
The monster that had just sent the valiant soldier to Hades rounded the statue and came at him. Another undead legionnaire, but this one towered taller than a Minotaur, was clad in impenetrable armor, and both its arms terminated in death scythes instead of hands.
The banefires within its empty eye sockets fixed on Kratos as if issuing a silent challenge to combat. The hideous monster attacked with a speed that caught Kratos by surprise.
Barely turning aside the wickedly sharp blade, Kratos gave ground and got to the center of the temple where he could fight unhindered. The legionnaire rushed him and lost a leg. As it fell past, Kratos delivered a second cut that took off both the legionnaire’s hands. The death scythes clattered across the floor. Kratos looked at the struggling monster, then swung his sword a final time. The head rolled after the scythes.
For all its fierce aspect, the legionnaire had proven to be no great opponent.
“Aid me!” came a new shout from behind the statue. “To my side, if you love Athena!”
A third Athenian soldier fought a pair of legionnaires by himself, fighting on though weakened from a dozen cuts, some deep and at least one likely mortal.
Kratos added his strong arm to the fight. Brave Athenians were rare enough that he felt he should contribute to this one’s survival. He pressed the legionnaires back and saw why the Athenian soldiers had been engaged behind the statue: There a hidden door had been broken to shards, opening a narrow corridor that led, Kratos surmised, to the Oracle’s quarters.
These legionnaires were no more challenge than had been their larger brother. Kratos wove a curtain of death about them, pressing in for the kill-and the world exploded around him.
A fireball burst on the temple roof and burned through, laying it open to the sky above. A great gobbet of the Greek fire fell fully upon the Athenian and killed him instantly. The undead this brave spirit had dueled also returned to Hades in a flash of eye-searing combustion. Even the legionnaire Kratos fought perished, as a fist-sized glob of fire splashed upon his helm and burned down until nothing remained above the bony shoulders but a puddle of molten bronze.
The armor Kratos had looted from his victims also blazed with dozens of droplets of fire. A quick flourish of the Blades of Chaos sliced away his improvised bindings, and the armor dropped to the floor, where it was swiftly consumed.
Kratos never even looked back.
He stepped over the Athenian’s smoldering corpse and entered the narrow corridor.
“I am Kratos of Sparta,” he called. “The goddess commands me to speak with her oracle.”
The ghostly woman who had come to him in Athens now appeared in the flesh, and her beauty stole away his voice. The translucent strips of green silk she wore as a skirt beguiled, moving to hide and then reveal her legs and thighs and hips. Wrapped around her bodice, the diaphanous cloth clung with static fierceness to every delicate curve.
“You came,” the Oracle breathed. Her voice soothed and aroused simultaneously. “I had begun to doubt you ever would.”
“The temple is not safe,” he said. “Ares’s dark spawn hunt within.”
The Oracle closed her eyes, then her heavy breasts lifted and fell with a deep, melancholy sigh. “My other defenders have perished. May their souls find nothing but joy as they join their beloveds upon the Elysian Fields.”
The Spartan thought this unlikely but held his tongue.
“Only you remain, Kratos.” Her eyes, like pools of moonlight, opened and fixed upon Kratos, and for a moment the Spartan could not remember even the battle around him. “You are all I have left.”
He shook himself back to the present. “And I am all you need. Hurry.”
He looked around the small room where the Oracle lived: only a bed and a few personal items. She led an unsophisticated, innocent existence, free of vanity or guile.
But the chamber itself was a tactical nightmare. If Ares’s minions came upon them in this room, the low ceiling and closed-in walls would hinder the use of the Blades of Chaos, and to unleash any of the gods’ powerful magic in such an area might well be suicidal. Worse, the corridor leading to the temple was the only exit from the room. Sufficient force at the entry would catch them like flies in a bottle.
“We must speak together, you and I,” the Oracle said, indicating a three-legged stool beside her bed. “Sit and I will tell you what you need to know.”
“Why did not Athena tell me everything I need to know to kill Ares?”
The Oracle made a dismissive motion to silence him and said, “I will reveal what I have seen. Sometimes my vision is precise. Other times, it is as if I am looking through a veil. Or perhaps it is better described as a shroud.” A distant expression changed her from anxious to ethereal. Kratos saw the power of her talent-or was it a curse?
“Revealed to me are secrets hidden to the gods,” the Oracle said. “For as far reaching as their wisdom is, there are some things to which even they are not privy.”
Kratos felt exposed under her unwavering gaze, which focused not upon him but seemingly on something beyond-something through him.
“The visions fill my every waking moment, my every dreaming instant, telling me what you must do.” Her voice dropped to hardly more than a whisper. “I know how to kill a god.”
ALL-TOO-FAMILIAR SCREECHING that echoed among the temple’s columns brought Kratos around, his blades ready for action. “This room is a trap. Ares wants you dead. Move and I’ll keep you alive.”
He raced back to the temple and skidded around Athena’s statue. Other than the corpses and blood splattered on the floor, the room stretched empty and quiet. He looked up to the sundered ceiling and found a reeking swarm of harpies.
He headed out to more-open ground, where he could meet them with all his force. A harpy screeched and hurtled down at him like an attacking eagle. He stabbed upward and drove the point of his sword into the hideous monster’s breast. Blood exploded and blasted into his eyes, but he still dismembered the monster with but a flick of his wrist. He slashed at the air as he blinked hard to clear his eyes.