Kratos began working hand over hand toward the far side of the chamber. He kept his goal in sight to avoid looking downward at the gears clacking and clashing underneath. A slip and he would be ground up and sent to Hades in tiny pieces. Working swiftly, he’d reached the midpoint along the cable when he felt it sag more than it had only seconds before. Like some arboreal creature in its element, he reversed his direction and looked behind along the length of cable he had already traversed.
One hand left the cable as he reached for the Blades of Chaos. Following him along the aerial pathway were two grasping, chittering monsters with saliva-dripping fangs and an ability to swing and move that he could never match. Kratos considered severing the cable, which would send the far half crashing into the distant wall while the half he clung to would swing forward so he could climb to the portal when he hit the wall.
Such was not to be. The monsters swarmed forward, climbing over each other in their haste to kill him. Taloned fingers swiped at him, forcing him to recoil. Bringing up his feet to kick out held them at bay for only an instant. As he swung back down, they came at him. His grip on the cable firm, he dared to swing his blade. It struck at an awkward angle and did little damage to the first creature-long, deep scratches appeared on his sword arm as talons raked him. Worse than the pain that threatened to cause him to abandon the use of his sword was the second creature’s attack, swarming over the first along the cable.
It went not for his sword arm but for the hand holding the cable. It snapped savage fangs and caught a finger, almost severing the digit from his hand. Kratos roared in anger and let the bloodlust he had known for ten full years rise to take control. He caught the second creature between his thighs, twisted, and pulled it away from its hold on the cable. He swung away and simply released his vise grip, sending the creature plunging to the distant floor. But it never struck. Its body was tossed high on a spinning gearwheel, then caught and minced in the ponderous mechanism that seemed to have no purpose other than to grind out death.
The creature’s companion made the fatal mistake of watching the death below. With one hand on the cable, Kratos released his hold on his blade and grabbed. His fingers closed around an exposed neck. Tendons stood out on his forearms as he squeezed the life from the creature, but he did not stop when all movement ceased. His blood from the deep scratches ran down his hand and onto the flesh of the dead monster, tainting it. Only when Kratos was satisfied that he had marked the creature forever in Hades with his blood did he send it tumbling after the other to be dismembered in the gears below.
Kratos swung back and gripped the cable, only to have his fingers slip and almost cause him to crash to his death. The blood from the cuts and scratches had turned his fingers slippery. His strength remained, but the cable might as well have been oiled for all the traction he now had on it. His right hand came free, leaving him dangling precariously. Even as he wiped off his hand, he knew this would not work; more blood oozed from his wounds to again slicken it.
Kratos doubled up and swung his heels over the top of the cable, locking them to give more support. He had no way of stanching the blood leaking out of his bone-white flesh, but keeping his ankles locked above the cable prevented him from following his enemies to the floor beneath. Dangling upside down, he pulled himself along the cable as quickly as he could, finally reaching the end of the line. A quick twist allowed him to clutch an outcropping under the portal.
He wiped his hands, one at a time, to clean them of blood, and then pulled himself up to the ledge. Standing, he faced a short corridor. Stride long, Kratos went to see if he had finally reached Pandora’s Box. In only a few minutes he realized that he hadn’t.
EIGHTEEN
“I KNOW THAT SWORD,” Zeus murmured as he looked into the scrying pool. “That blade is one of the most powerful weapons in all creation. How did you trick Artemis into giving it to Kratos?”
“Trick her, Father? I?” Athena shook her head. “She and Ares have reached a kind of truce-but she has seen his vicious rampage of insanity firsthand. She did not relinquish the sword lightly. I believe that she wishes to show her support by helping Kratos through the temple.”
“I’ve seen my son’s bloodlust as well,” Zeus muttered darkly. “He has burned most of Athens to the ground. Only a few buildings remain around the main square, and only the temples atop the Acropolis stand. Even your Parthenon has been blackened with soot from the fires and is falling into disrepair.”
“Most of your shrines are gone. He kills your worshippers just as he singles out mine for his brutal murders.”
“War is always messy,” Zeus said. “Ares has again refused to attend me and explain why he attacks my followers so aggressively, though. It is one thing to burn Athens to the ground, another to flaunt it in such a fashion that it offends me. Unless,” Zeus said, turning thoughtful, “his passion for war has turned into a cancer burning away at his brain.”
“He wants it for his own.” With her usual focus and determination, Athena steered the conversation back onto her course. “And Kratos, Father? Will he receive your favor?”
Zeus was uncharacteristically slow in responding. He did not look at her directly but studied her reflection in the scrying pool. “I am curious, beloved daughter. I have watched you go to considerable lengths to support and protect your pet Spartan.”
“He is the last hope of Athens.”
“Really? And yet, when you intercede with me-with the other gods as well-you never seek help for your worshippers. Or your city, only your priests. You say that Kratos is their hope-as you seem to be his-but wouldn’t your powers of persuasion and manipulation be better spent entreating direct aid? Hephaestus, for example, might have extinguished all those fires with a single wave of his hand. Apollo might have healed your wounded. I myself-”
“Yes, Father, I know. You have the right of it. As always, you see more deeply than any other.”
Athena took a deep breath and decided-in this extremity-that her cause would now, finally, be best served by the straight truth. “My Lord Father, Ares’s true target is not me, nor is it my city.”
Zeus looked at her, his thoughts veiled behind an expressionless face.
“Father, his target is your throne!”
“So your goal all along-the final truth of your endgame-has been solely to protect me?”
“Forgive my presumption,” Athena said. “I only feared that you might allow your well-known fondness for your children to cloud your judgment of Ares.”
“Or, perhaps, that my well-known fondness for my children might also cloud my judgment of you.” Zeus still showed no emotion, but Athena had heard just a hint of concern at the way Ares destroyed the shrines to Zeus throughout Athens. “You seeks only to save me from myself? Because I have forgotten the lessons of my own life?”
“All Olympus would welcome Ares’s death.”
“Would they? Or do they huddle to one side, hoping to gather whatever scraps of power remain after an Olympian patricide?”
“You condemned your own father to crawl on hands and knees through the Desert of Lost Souls for all time, rather than kill him, after you won the Titanomachy,” Athena said. “Because you know too well the consequences of family slaying family, you have decreed such will never come to pass between Olympians. But Ares may have in mind a fate similar to that of Cronos for you, Father. An eternity of torment, bound by unbreakable chains-and that is only if he can overcome his own madness enough to show self-restraint.”
“And how long have you known Ares’s ambition? How long have you been planning your brother’s death using Kratos as your instrument of destruction?”
Again, Athena told the simple truth. “Since the day that my brother tricked Kratos and drove him into my village temple in his blood frenzy. It was then I knew that Ares’s insanity had no limits, that his overweening ambition knew no bounds. What do you think he was planning for Kratos? Why give his mortal subject near-Olympian strength and toughness? Why would he affix the Blades of Chaos to Kratos’s wrists? Chaos -the primordial realm, conquered and brought to order by your grandfather Ouranos?”