Robert Vardeman - God of War

“Zora and Lora?” Kratos blinked. “The twins-they speak to you?”

“Not as often as they should,” the Goddess of Love purred. “But then, every parent has a similar complaint, I suppose.”

“You’re their mother?” This explained so many different things at once about the twins that Kratos found himself with no idea what to say next.

One slender finger from that slim hand traced the curve of his lips to silence any comment. “Athena asked me to contribute a gift of my own, to aid you in your quest.”

“The only gift I need is freedom to complete my task.”

Her laugh was like the chime of silver bells. “What you need, Spartan, is to be grateful for whatever a god chooses to bestow.” She caressed his cheek gently. The fingers turned cold as they stroked. “You will perform a task for me as well.”

“I am already engaged-”

“You will slay the Queen of the Gorgons.”

Kratos frowned. “But why her? Why now?”

“You are so adorable,” the goddess purred, “that I won’t have you eviscerated for daring to question me-this time. You must kill Medusa and bring me her head. The gift I will bestow on you is the power of the Gorgons: to turn men to stone!”

The goddess gestured and, with a wave, wiped away tranquil Olympus.

KRATOS TRIED TO SPEAK but had no breath, tried to see but had no light. He tried to move and did not know if the wild, whirling chaos he experienced was all around him or inside his head. Or both.

He crouched in a cold, dark place and heard the soft hissing of snakes.

He stood. The sooner he satisfied Aphrodite’s thirst for Gorgon blood, the sooner he could return to Athens and find the Oracle.

The gloom around him hid the slithering serpents. He took a few blind steps to one side, sloshing through ankle-deep water. His hand found a slimy rock wall. Pressing his ear against the wall, he waited through many slow, measured breaths in an attempt to detect any vibrations. Nothing.

He sighed. What had he expected? That Aphrodite would just point and make Medusa appear in front of him?

As his eyes adjusted to the murkiness, he began to make out his surroundings. The goddess had transported him to the juncture of three low-roofed tunnels hewn from living rock. No light shone down any of the tunnels; the light by which he now saw was the product of faintly luminescent moss clinging to crevices in the rock.

The tunnel straight ahead proved to be a dead end. Kratos shoved hard against the wall blocking his progress. His anger mounted. More wasted time.

The Oracle was in danger of death or worse if Ares captured her. Kratos didn’t care if the Oracle lived or died, so long as he learned her secret.

Kratos recalled campfire discussions among his officers before battle; some impious types had been speculating that the gods needed human worship the way a tree needs the sun. Could a god exist without worshippers? The way things were going in Athens, Kratos guessed he just might find out.

Would Athena’s power decline? Would she simply disappear? Zeus might prohibit one god from killing another, but Ares might have found a way to sneak around the ban.

In the past, Ares had always chosen brute force over subtlety, but perhaps he had learned his lesson. While the siege of Athens had the trappings of Ares’s old rage, he might have a different strategy in mind. Kill Athenians and Athena lost followers. Kill enough and her worshippers might abandon her for other gods-and who better to worship than the God of War, who had defeated their goddess?

Shows of strength in this uncertain world brought people to Ares’s temples. Kratos had, once upon a time, been the author of many of those shows and had himself been the earthly symbol of Ares’s might. Kratos’s officers had believed that a god without worshippers simply faded away like mist in the morning sun. If such a fate befell Athena, Kratos’s only chance for vengeance upon his former master would evaporate with her.

And the nightmares would continue unabated, rending sanity.

A few more blows upon the wall proved that it would withstand even his prodigious strength. Kratos turned and retraced his path. The water ahead began to ripple ominously before he reached the juncture where Aphrodite had deposited him. Kratos had to bend almost double to slide the Blades of Chaos off his back and bring them down in front of him. Barely in time.

Up from the dark waters struck a serpent whose head was larger than Kratos’s fist. Its fangs flashed as it struck. The venom dripping from their needle tips smoked in the gloom and caused the water where it fell to boil. Kratos blocked the strike with one blade while he struck back with the other. The snake’s head and a span of its neck flipped through the air. Its body thrashed wildly as it died, but the head continued to snap at him, its black eyes glaring with malice. Kratos pressed both blade tips into the head and waited for the viciousness to fade and die. Eventually, it did.

He looked up in time to see more ripples approaching: snakes swimming just under the murky surface, too many for him to avoid. One caught him, its fangs driving hard into his greaves, chewing as though it thought to drive its fangs through the heavy bronze. Kratos didn’t wait to find out if it was right. The pommel of a blade crushed a fragile skull. The fangs and jawbone remained clamped on his greave. The water ahead boiled as more snakes swarmed toward him, too many to count. Kratos slashed repeatedly down into the water in front of him, a blinding flourish that turned the blades into a shield of death. He drove grimly forward until he reached the juncture again. The water churned crimson with the snakes’ blood. And then the water calmed.

The dripping of moisture off the walls was all he could hear.

Kratos looked into the water and saw movement, but not of snakes. He lifted his foot and brought it down, thinking to crush any creature just below the surface. He felt his foot slide into the outline of a boot cut into the stone. Curious, he scooted his other sandaled foot about and found a corresponding indentation. For a moment he stood with both feet in the underwater impressions. As he started to step forward, he felt a tiny vibration that built and passed upward until it shook the chains embedded in his wrists.

Kratos saw the phosphorescent moss writhing on the walls. He lifted one foot from its indentation and the moss stopped glowing. Replacing his foot caused the moss to glow once more.

Curious, he reached out to touch the moss. Like a snake, it writhed sinuously away from his fingers. He growled deep in his throat. It was the only sound save the slow drip of moisture.

Stabbing out with his finger, he forced the animated moss to go around his digit. It spun about, encircling the spot on the stone wall where he pressed, as if the moss showed him an exit from an otherwise featureless tunnel. Leaning slightly, he applied pressure. Nothing happened.

He stepped from the outlines under his feet, and the moss ceased glowing. Kratos stomped to the end of the tunnel and found only another blank wall. Extensive investigation proved to him that there was no exit from the subterranean tunnels-none that he could find. He reached for both of the Blades of Chaos, then stopped.

“Two hands. There might be something in using two hands.” He returned to the indentations, slipped his feet into them, and moved his finger around on the right wall until the moss once more circled one specific spot. He pressed. Nothing.

Reaching to the other wall and repeating the movement produced another curlicue of green-glowing moss. This time, he moved his finger about and found a spot much higher on that wall before the moss stopped writhing and presented him with a specific spot.