Kratos turned and stared down the length of an immense room.
He ran into the chamber and looked up, knowing he had seen this before. High above he saw the ledges and walkways where he espied a statue of Atlas holding the world balanced on his mighty shoulders. All his travails had brought Kratos to the floor of what could only be described as a shrine to the Titan. Running forward to a point under a walkway hardly twenty feet over his head, Kratos took in the details and what had to be done.
Atlas was crushed by the weight of the world. The burden had to be relieved. Kratos went to a crank mounted before the mighty statue and hesitantly pushed against it. The crank moved only a small distance before resistance increased to the point where Kratos had to either stop or commit greater effort. Looking away from the statue to the walkway he had passed under revealed a second lever. Mind racing with possibilities, Kratos came to a swift decision and applied himself to turning the crank.
Bit by bit it moved. With more effort, he swung it around in a complete circle. With still more exertion, muscles straining and sweat pouring from him as the resistance increased, he brought the crank around a second time. The statue now half-stood with the world on its shoulders. Knowing that he had successfully figured out what had to be done next, Kratos bent his back, got his powerful legs under him, and began moving the crank at a steady rate around and around. With every circuit the world lifted a little higher on Atlas’s shoulders, until the statue was no longer bent double.
In spite of Kratos’s best effort to turn the crank more, he now met total resistance. He stepped away, looked back at the bridge across the vast shrine and the lever there. Legs pumping, this time speeding him up steps and around to come out onto the walkway, Kratos was on a level with Atlas’s eyes. Though the orbs were chiseled from cold stone, he thought the son of Iapetus and brother of Prometheus and Epimetheus stared at him with relief.
He applied pressure to the lever on the walkway. This required little effort compared with hoisting the world above Atlas. Kratos recoiled when he saw the statue stand a little taller, then heave the huge globe toward him. With nowhere to run, Kratos awaited death.
Instead, the globe of the world bounced twice, then rolled under the walkway. He whirled about and watched as the stone smashed into the portal he had been unable to open. The size of the globe matched the perimeter of the doorway exactly.
Kratos stared out at the altar, where a sarcophagus of beaten gold shone brightly in the hot sun. He jumped down from the walkway and went to see what new trap the Architect had placed in his path.
TWENTY
HEAT BLASTED KRATOS as he stepped out into the desert sun. Slowly, he turned his face upward and basked in the light, relishing it after being trapped inside the darkened maze. He sucked in a deep breath and felt the air sear his lungs. The wounds in his side were almost healed, and he swung his arms about, feeling the power flow once more through his muscles. Along with this, the poison that had threatened his vision was purged from his system. The blinding was a memory he cared not to revisit-but it was one of the few memories he could be free of.
He had no time to linger, because memory of what Ares was doing to Athens goaded him as much as his hatred for the God of War. Athena had warned that time was critical, and lazing about like a lizard on a hot rock accomplished nothing.
He ran along a paved pathway to the base of the altar where the large sarcophagus gleamed in the sunlight. Kratos squinted against the brilliant reflection as he stepped to the edge of the bier, then pulled himself up so he could look down at the lid. Someone of great importance had been interred within such a gaudy coffin. His fingers curled around the edge, and he applied his prodigious power to rip away the covering, exposing a desiccated body within.
“This is all?” He looked upward to the heavens, arms outstretched. “This is all you have sent me?” Kratos bent, grabbed the head of the skeleton, and jerked hard. The head came away easily, leaving behind a cloud of dust from its ruined spinal cord. He cocked his arm back and flung the skull high, as if he could assail Olympus itself with this relic to show his disdain.
The skull arrowed upward, then came back down, retracing the trajectory to land in Kratos’s outstretched hands. Again he threw it, this time outward. It tumbled whitely in the sun and then described a circular path to return. Kratos started to heave it aloft once more, then common sense took over and replaced his blood rage. If the skull proved this difficult to get rid of, perhaps he ought to keep it.
He dropped down beside the bier and ran his fingers over the glyphs etched into the golden sides. Little by little, the words became clear. Kratos rocked back and stared at the skull he held in the palm of his hand.
“The son of the Architect? Your father placed your miserable body inside this fine coffin? To what-” He spun at the grating sound as stone dragged over stone and a huge cavity opened at the base of the altar.
Kratos threw back his head and roared in defiance, then jumped. He cleared the edge of the pit and fell for what seemed an eternity. But he didn’t fall all the way to Hades, impacting hard on the bottom of the pit. In a crouch, he looked around and saw only one possible corridor to follow. Lifting the skull, he stared into the empty eye sockets.
“Have you seen this before? Did your father betray you as Ares did me?” Kratos expected no answer and got none. He ran down the decrepit corridor, alert for an enemy attack. When he reached the end, a huge door emblazoned with a skull insignia blocked his way, and Kratos pressed against the door, trying to force it.
When it didn’t budge, he got his fingers under the edge and tried to lift, until his back felt as if it would snap. Panting harshly, Kratos knew force would not triumph. But how could he defeat this door?
He stepped back two paces to get a better look at the pattern on the door. After several minutes of study, he let the anger always smoldering within him come rushing out. Two quick motions drew the Blades of Chaos so he could charge forward and bring the swords to bear against the heavy door. Striking repeatedly produced no results, though the air filled with the acrid stench of burned metal after a dozen hard strikes. Kratos growled, redoubled his effort, and finally stepped away, the rage not fading but a semblance of rationality sneaking in.
“The skull,” he said. “The door has a skull pattern etched into it.” He lifted the skull of the Architect’s son and positioned it so the design matched the outline on the door. Walking forward, he saw that a small depression in the center of the pattern matched the skull in his hand perfectly. He shoved it forward. For a moment he thought nothing happened; then he felt the skull being pulled from his grasp and dragged into the door itself, until only an outline remained.
Kratos reached down and unleashed his rage once more. This time the door lifted, slowly, one inch at a time. When he got the bottom even with his chest, he ducked, somersaulted, and came to his feet on the other side. As the heavy door crashed back into place, Kratos cried out in mindless fury. Keeping the darkness of his visions at bay had been easy enough as he dealt with the minions of Hades he had bested in the temple, but now the nightmarish reality swirled about him like a shroud swaddling the dead.