Robert Vardeman - God of War

Kratos went on hacking into its neck close under its chin, where the creature couldn’t get at him. The remaining secondary head snaked over to strike like a viper at Kratos’s back-but getting one of the Blades of Chaos up its nose made it rethink that strategy. With the jagged blade firmly lodged in the sinus cavity, pulling back made the creature unleash a screech of pain entirely unlike anything Kratos had ever heard. At this, the master head, instead of trying to bite Kratos in half, slammed its neck against the mainmast, crushing Kratos between its scales and the enormous spar.

Kratos’s vision darkened. The master head held him there, leaning into him. The mainmast creaked alarmingly, as did Kratos’s spine-but the mast gave way first, snapping off with a splintering roar.

The master head reared up again, and the secondary head tried desperately to pull away, but the blade up its nose was lodged like a fishhook-pulling away only seated it all the deeper. The other blade was similarly set in the master head’s throat. Neither blade would rip free, and they could not be broken any more than the blade chains binding them to Kratos’s arms could be broken by any earthly force. So when the master head pulled one way and the secondary head pulled another, there was only one thing linking them that could be broken.

Kratos.

He screamed in agony as he hung suspended between the two heads trying to rip him in half. Muscles bunched in his massive shoulders, but even his preternatural strength was no match for the titanic power of the Hydra. On another day, Kratos would have died there-but the Hydra was a creature of Ares. And the prospect of being killed by a minion of his enemy fueled Kratos’s anger. More than anger. More than fury.

It filled him with the rage of a god.

And, just as when he’d entered the archway where he met Poseidon, he felt as if his bones were on fire, burning him from the inside out. Lightning blazed around him, causing the world to fade into a dim image of washed-out blue, and blasted along the chains to the blades. The flesh around the blade embedded in the master head’s neck exploded like a sealed pot left on the fire too long, scattering immense gobbets of smoking remains.

The blade lodged in the secondary head’s sinus cavity had an even more spectacular effect: When the inner membranes detonated, they blasted shards of bone out the Hydra’s eye sockets, which popped the creature’s sundered eyes from its face. Fragments penetrated whatever the secondary head used as a brain; the neck collapsed, and Kratos fell toward the deck far below.

As he fell, he reflected that the Rage of Poseidon had turned out to be more useful than he’d anticipated. He tumbled down beside the splintered wreck of the mainmast. The flick of one wrist sent a blade out to chop into the mast, catch, and let him reverse his direction in one long, smooth swing. The great beast saw him coming, and it arched its neck and opened wide a maw that could have bitten the ship in half.

Having determined to his own satisfaction that the giant master head was not filled with an equally giant brain, Kratos swiveled himself up to what was now the top of the mainmast-a porcupine slant of needle-sharp slivers-then swirled the blades around his head to capture the monster’s attention.

He waited until the master head struck downward like a falling moon, engulfing him and several yards of mast. Even before it had been damaged, the wood of the mainmast had been in no way as tough as the Hydra’s secondary necks. Kratos knew the Hydra could sever it in one swift chomp. So, once more inside the slime-dripping cave of the monster’s mouth, Kratos released again the furnace of fury that always burned within him.

The master head convulsed as Poseidon’s Rage blasted the rear of its mouth to bloody shreds. Kratos hurled a blade upward, toward the back of the Hydra’s sinus cavities, then hauled himself up through an incalculable volume of salty slime until he reached the underside of the Hydra’s brainpan. Before the creature even stopped thrashing about, Kratos had chopped his way inside its skull. Three or four deft strokes of the blades slashed the Hydra’s brain into foul-smelling mush.

He swung back down into the Hydra’s throat. It still twisted and spasmed a bit, as the rest of the Hydra’s vast body gradually got the message that its brain was dead. Kratos picked his way down over the ridges of cartilage until the light from the beast’s open mouth began to fade-and he heard a thin voice, sobbing faintly, “Please… please, someone… Poseidon, please…”

Kratos embedded one of the blades into a long, striated cord of muscle and used the chain to walk himself backward into the slippery gloom. There, just below the last of the light, Kratos made out a darker shape. He drew the other blade and spun it to ignite some of its fire, and in the light of the blade he saw the captain.

“Oh, bless you! Poseidon bless you and all your journeys,” the captain gasped. “May all the gods of Olympus smile on you forever…”

The captain clung desperately to one ring of cartilage. His feet dangled over what appeared to be a bottomless drop into the Hydra’s stomach. And a thin leather thong around his neck held a key of gleaming gold.

Kratos let out a little more chain, stretching down with one enormous hand. Tears streamed from the captain’s eyes. “Bless you,” he kept saying. “Bless you for coming back for me!”

Kratos’s hand closed on the leather thong. “I didn’t come back for you,” he said, and gave the thong a sharp yank that snapped it in two-and broke the captain’s grip on the cartilage. His screams as he fell ended abruptly when he splashed into the Hydra’s churning stomach.

When Kratos walked back out of the dead Hydra’s mouth with the key in his hand, he could still hear the captain being digested. Kratos paused by the base of the mast on which the master head was impaled; a few strokes of the Blades of Chaos snapped the mainmast off at the root, and the great beast slid back over the rail and sank forever from the sight of men.

Kratos weighed the key in his hand. This had been a lot of work just to open a door. The fight had better be worth the reward.

“YOU GAVE KRATOS a sliver of your own rage!” Ares’s fist clutched the hilt of his sword. The muscles corded on his forearm as he fought to control his towering rage. “To help a mortal-against your own family?”

“If ever again you think to befoul my realm with any of your Typhon-spawned monsters, they will be destroyed.” Poseidon’s voice was as cold and dark as his seas’ uttermost depths. “And you, nephew, are not immune from retribution. My brother forbids murder among the gods, yes-but do not tempt my anger, or you will wish I had killed you. Do you understand?”

Ares loosened his blade in his scabbard. “Words are no armor against the edge of a sword.”

“Remember this, God of War: I am sovereign over the seas. Any who enter my domain must do honor to me. Even gods.”

The two gods glowered at each other upon Egypt’s Mediterranean shore. Invisible to mortal eyes, they both stood tall enough that they could have leaned upon the Lighthouse of Pharos as if it were a walking stick.

Ares finally broke the silent battle of wills. “We need not feud in this fashion.”

“Your Hydra-”

“My Hydra, yes,” Ares said. “But troubling your seas? I did not set the Hydra upon your realm.”

Poseidon blinked. “Is this truth?”

“Tell me this, my lord uncle. Who brought you news of this Hydra? That scheming bitch Athena, I wager.”

“Why… yes,” Poseidon admitted. “But-”

“And did you know of its presence before she scuttled up to trick you into giving your power to her pet?”