Robert Vardeman - God of War

But his laughter faded as the black treacle smoked and burned through the stone beneath. An instant later, the entire wall tipped and slammed to the stone with killing force-and the floor next to it, where a nimble man could have leaped to escape the falling wall, sank away into great pools of the burning black substance. A substance that destroyed stone in seconds-what would it have done to mere mortal flesh?

Kratos decided he could live with not knowing.

And now smoke or gas of some kind, released by the liquid as it burned through the stone, curled up from the bubbling black surface. A stray wisp trailed upward over his hand-and where the gas touched, his skin blackened, and blistered, and began to burn, and Kratos decided he could also live without knowing what this stuff would do to him if he breathed it. The section of floor on which he stood shifted and began to sink, as black oil boiled up through its joints.

Three or four yards to the side of the door in the new room stood another buttress, this one also supporting one of those ever-burning braziers. Kratos hurled one of the Blades of Chaos out to the full length of its chain and yanked back on it to make the blade chain wrap the brazier. Then he leaped through the door with all his force, using his anchored chain as a pivot point to whip his body out and over the black liquid in a tight arc that would have sent him safely to the stone beyond-except that the convenient brazier proved to be just a little bit too convenient. When his full weight hit the brazier, the device pulled out from the buttress on about a foot of rod, which ran back into the wall and triggered another dozen yards of floor to sink into the deadly fluid.

A desperate cast of his other blade slammed the edge deep into the stone of the ceiling, at a sharp-enough angle to support him for an instant or two. A superhuman yank on the chain of the other blade ripped the whole brazier right off the wall and allowed Kratos to swing himself away from the viscous death below-right into the vast fire pit that dominated the center of the room.

Every Spartan boy underwent a ritual of fire-walking at the age of ten, to be certain that the future warrior could master his fear instead of allowing fear to master him. Another man’s instinct would have been to spring back out the way he had come-but that way held only black slimy death and skin-charring gas. Kratos took a step for momentum, then sprang straight upward for the hanging cage. Its iron was hot enough to blister his fingers, but his impact set the thing swinging enough that he could launch himself beyond the fire pit.

He paused for a moment while he tried to catch his breath, just barely in the clear, and looked back from where he had come. His lungs burned from the deadly vapors. He jerked around when the withered man inside the cage rose from the floor where he had been curled and gripped the bars to stare at Kratos.

“There’s more, you know. The wall, the oil-that’s only the start.” The voice was cracked with age and raspy enough that Kratos could believe the ancient man who now approached might have breathed some of that gas from time to time. “You’d be well advised to retreat. You would have been the one in this cage if I hadn’t been caught here first.”

Kratos grabbed the bars and drew himself up to his full height, towering over the frail ancient inside the cage. “I wouldn’t have been trapped like a rat.”

“No? Then maybe you should charge right on. There must be more traps to catch the impulsive.” The man’s hair was singed, and his clothing was as black as the soot from cremated corpses. He nodded at the flames in the pit below them. “You’ll be back soon enough, in any case.”

“You’ve studied this trap. Tell me of it.” Kratos looked down into the fire and at strange spiral tubes that disappeared into the pit walls. They performed some service, but what he could not tell-and lacking that knowledge could be deadly.

“Since I’ve been here so long, I’ve had time to study and think. The heat boils water, and the Architect uses the steam to power great engines, like those Hero of Alexandria built.”

“An aeolipile? What does it power?” Kratos asked.

“The Antikythera that controls the entire Temple of Pandora.”

“I have heard of the steam device but not this Antikythera. If the fires died, would it stop functioning?”

“There must be many fire pits like this,” the parbroiled remnant of a human being said. Kratos knew he lied. “Ceasing steam generation here would mean nothing once you reached the guts of the temple.”

“Where do I go in?”

“There, if you’re brave enough!” The man pointed to a huge locked door embossed with the sigil of Zeus. Kratos thought the man told the truth, but there had to be more. “Now that I’ve aided you, free me from this cage.”

After only brief consideration, Kratos knew what had to be done. He began swinging the cage in ever broader arcs so he could reach the edge of the pit.

“Thank the gods! I will be forever grateful to you.”

“Be content knowing your sacrifice serves the gods’ purpose,” Kratos said. His toes found purchase at the side of the pit, and he was again on firm footing, next to a lever controlling the position of the cage. He pushed the long wooden arm on the device around so the cage dangled over the middle of the fiery pit once more.

“No, you can’t do this. All I want’s to live.”

“The gods require a living sacrifice,” Kratos said. From what he could discern, only this tribute to the gods would open the way to the next portion of the temple for him.

“Please, no! Please!”

Kratos pulled the lever. Below, burners ignited and sent up waves of rippling heat. The man screamed as Kratos lowered the cage into the consuming fire.

“Accept my sacrifice, Lord Zeus,” Kratos intoned, “and watch over me as I go on.”

He ignored the screams of agony from the pit and went to the doorway leading away from this abattoir. Pandora’s Box was nearly in his grasp.

He tasted Ares’s blood already.

“HE SACRIFICED to win your favor, my lord father,” Athena said. “Will you answer his prayer?”

“Kratos is impudent.” Zeus ran his fingers through his beard of clouds and turned from Athena to stare into the scrying pool. “He does not pay proper obeisance to me.”

Athena noted that this was not actually an answer. “Impudent he may be,” Athena said carefully, “but his impudence pleases you. I can tell.”

“Your impudence, Daughter, is not pleasing,” Zeus said gruffly.

Athena saw the way he stared into the pool. She tried not to cry out in joy. Kratos had surpassed her expectations, reaching this point in Pandora’s temple far sooner than she had anticipated. So much danger lay ahead, but he fought well. Better still, he was taming his bloodlust and thinking now. The Architect had designed his traps to swallow the bold and thoughtless, but Kratos won despite them, sometimes with great difficulty, and still he pressed on toward Pandora’s Box.

“I have considered this. The sacrifice is pleasing, after Ares has killed so many of my worshippers.” Zeus scowled as he pondered this. “Kratos is showing his true mettle.”

“So the caged man was an adherent of Ares?”

Zeus said nothing, but Athena read her father well. Ares had sent a mortal into the temple to claim Pandora’s Box. Her brother’s ambitions were far greater than she had ever considered. He wanted to destroy Athens, yes, but this was added proof of how his arrogance soared to the very edge of Olympus itself. The box gave great power to a god-but only Athena’s oracle had seen that it also contained the way to killing a god. Ares must not learn this secret until it would be too late for him to stop Kratos. Athena worried that, for all his speed and cunning, Kratos might be moving too slowly through the temple.