Not waiting for the dying creature to fall from the cliff, Kratos threw a third stone, dislodging it. Now he faced only the one. This monster arched its back and showered stony splinters in all directions. Kratos protected his face against the calcified needles and futilely sought another rock. None was to be had. He looked up, charted his way to the top of the cliff, and started climbing, the scorpion directly under him and scuttling along faster than he could hope to scale such featureless rock.
Just feet from the top of the cliff, Kratos released his grip and fell. He crashed into the scorpion at a spot where all eight of the monster’s legs were occupied with simply hanging on. With a twist, Kratos came about and caught the stinger as it arched out and upward to slice and poison him. A tiny drop of yellowish venom dripped from the tail. His weight was being supported entirely by the huge scorpion, and his drop onto its head had stunned the creature so much that its legs came free one by one.
Kratos held on to the thrashing tail until he was certain the scorpion thing could not maintain its grip an instant longer. With a vicious twist, he wrenched at the tail and dislodged the monster. At the same instant, he kicked hard against the face of the cliff and sought a handhold.
The scorpion thing followed its companions to the distant ground-and Kratos hung by the fingertips of one hand on a small, dusty ledge. Bit by bit his fingers slid off. He looked down, not to see where he would fall but to find footholds. Unable to locate any, he kicked as powerfully as he could. Pain lanced up his leg, but his toes chipped away enough of a hold for him to support his weight. His fingers fell away from the ledge, but his feet supported him as he sagged down.
He stood in his hard-won footholds, then made his way across and upward to reach the top of the cliff. Once there, Kratos dropped to his knees and gave a silent prayer to the gods, though what aid he had received from them was a mystery. He had survived through his own effort and would continue to do so.
From ahead, through an open portal in the side of the mountain, came crashing sounds-machines running, a rumbling noise that he could not identify. Drawing the Blades of Chaos, he approached the portal and advanced down its tunnel. He stopped beside a conveyor belt that disappeared under a rocky ledge. Kratos swung his blades against the stone, but even the potent magic locked in their metal could not dislodge a pebble. He turned and looked against the direction of the rapidly running conveyor belt and saw what had produced the crashing noise. Huge blocks studded with long spikes collided repeatedly.
The only way to advance was to run against the direction of the conveyor belt and past the rhythmically opening and closing jaws. Kratos returned the blades to their resting spots on his back, gauged the action of the deadly jaws, and jumped onto the conveyor belt.
He misjudged the speed and was carried along with it to smash into the rock wall. He screamed in pain and recoiled. While the face of the wall appeared to be ordinary stone, the merest touch drove lances of white-hot pain into his body. Kratos began running, until he canceled the speed of the belt under him and remained in place. Then he exerted more effort and gained against the conveyor belt, coming to the first set of jaws smashing together. Beyond lay several more sets. Once committed to this venture, he had no choice but to plunge ahead, never faltering. The slightest mistake would bring him between those spiked panels, impaling him. If he sank back to the conveyor belt, he would be swept into the wall and receive torture that burned at the very core of his being.
With such incentive, he put on a burst of speed and successfully raced past the first set of jaws. The Scylla and Charybdis of his passage forced him to concentrate fully on avoiding the crushing jaws and sharp teeth. Only once as he raced forward, checked speed to run in place, and then burst ahead as the jaws opened did he receive any injury. The final gateway did not operate on a pattern but was inspired by Chaos.
Kratos turned as a slender knife drove through his biceps, holding him in place. Realizing the danger of being restrained, he jerked savagely and left behind a gobbet of bloody muscle so he could race along the conveyor belt toward a stone ledge where he could step off safely. Rather than diminished sounds of machinery, Kratos heard more ahead, along a tunnel opening into a room that convinced him the Architect had been driven mad by the gods.
Deep double grooves formed a field of squares. Rolling endlessly in those grooves were double-bladed wheels, their edges gleaming knives so sharp that Kratos had to squint as they raced by. To one side of the room, an iron gate blocked the way out, but he saw the key to opening it. A lever protruded from the center of one square. Throw it and the gate would rise. But to get to it would require even more timing and daring than avoiding the slamming jaws along the conveyor belt. The knife wheels never stopped, never rested, would slice him to ribbons if he committed a single misstep.
With a powerful jump, he vaulted over one wheel and landed safely in the middle of a square. He stood erect as knife wheels raced past him on one side and behind. Kratos judged the periodicity of the wheel in front of him and stepped out just as it passed, achieving a square closer to the lever. Only then did he notice that the frantic pace of the deadly wheels had increased. The closer he got to the lever, the faster they rolled.
He reached for the Blades of Chaos to destroy any of the wheels in his path, then stopped. Would the Architect guard against such mechanical intrusions? The metal of the wheels carried a silvery sheen unlike anything Kratos had ever seen before. Although the Blades of Chaos were magically forged, and Ares had never warned him how they might be broken, Kratos obeyed his gut instinct that the blades were the wrong weapon to use against the knife wheels. Other weapons were his to command, but he wanted to slay Ares with the Blades of Chaos. Since the God of War had fused them to Kratos’s forearms and he had used them for ten long years to murder in Ares’s name, it was only fitting that the Ghost of Sparta drive the tips through the god’s body and watch him die from his own gifted weapons.
Kratos abandoned the hilts of the blades and plunged forward, depending on coordination and innate skill to dodge the rolling death wheels.
He stumbled onto the square holding the lever, regained his balance, and pulled with all his might. The response was all he had hoped for. The metal gate on the far side of the room clattered and clanked open. Kratos took a few seconds to gather his wits and had started to jump past the knife wheels to exit this chamber when he saw the gate slowly descending.
“You are diabolical,” Kratos said, offering a half dozen inventive curses on the Architect’s head. The lever, once thrown, allowed the gate to remain open only a short while. Twice more Kratos threw the lever and counted off the time to determine how quickly he had to cover half the room crisscrossed by wheeling death scythes. It wasn’t long.
But it would be long enough.
Kratos braced himself, threw the lever, and then jumped to the adjoining square. Gathering speed, he hopped to the next and the next, then realized time was dwindling and he still had two more squares to traverse. He put on a burst of speed that allowed one knife wheel to rake along his chest, opening a shallow wound under his ribs. Spinning about and using the impact to add to his speed, he vaulted high over the last wheel denying him exit, somersaulted, and went under the falling gate with only inches-and seconds-to spare.
Kratos lay on his back, staring up at the low ceiling of the corridor as he regained his strength. With the clanking and clashing of metal against stone at his back, he wended his way through a tunnel until he came out in front of a huge circular doorway. Pressing his eye against the crack in the middle of the stone, he saw an altar outside in the bright desert sun. Even with his most powerful effort, he could not pry open the door from this small crack. He had been given the tantalizing look at where he had to go but not how to open the door.