Robert Vardeman - God of War

He kicked twice and shot out of the pool, caught himself on the edge, and turned to the opening through which came the heat and intense light of lava dripping from stone spouts high above into troughs. Kratos went to the portal and quickly assessed everything in the immense room. The ceiling arched more than a hundred feet above, with the lava drains pouring out their heated, noxious molten rock to splatter twenty feet over his head. At his far left towered a statue honoring Lord Hades, but to the right he saw a more curious device: A ballista had been mounted under a catwalk. Kratos found a ladder, mounted, and walked to a firing lever. On impulse, he threw the lever, felt the catwalk quake beneath his feet, and then a huge fireball exploded outward to crash into the center of the statue.

Kratos grabbed for his weapons when he saw a brightly lit spinning circle appear on the floor at the base of the statue. The glyphs that had vexed him since entering Pandora’s temple pulsed with blue light-and moving out into the vast arena between the catwalk and the spinning circle came four Centaurs, each armed with a spear.

The Blades of Chaos were comfortable in his hands, but he instinctively knew a more potent weapon would be required. The Blade of Artemis whispered out and blazed in his grip. With a long jump, he landed in a crouch near the Centaurs. Kratos reacted instantly to their attack, swinging the Blade of Artemis and cutting the legs of the leading Centaur from under it. A swift circular motion lopped off the Centaur’s head-and caused a blazing blue flame to erupt at one of the cardinal points in the circular pattern on the floor.

He somersaulted, rolled to the side, and still barely managed to evade another of the Hades-spawned creatures. He came to his feet, swinging the weapon Artemis had granted him with powerful slashes that kept the remaining three Centaurs at bay. But this was not the way of the Ghost of Sparta. To defend was to die. He attacked. With a mad cry, Kratos rushed forth, every cut of the blade exact and dangerous. He brought down another man-horse, jumped atop its fallen body, and rammed the sword blade down its throat. A new, different speck of light blazed on the circular pattern, the second antipodal to the first.

The two remaining Centaurs proved warier-or less confident-than their now-dead companions, but this caution did not save them from Kratos’s swinging, thrusting, slashing blade of magical blue fire. When he had sent the two remaining Centaurs back to Hades and illuminated the final spots on the rotating ring on the floor, he heard a rumbling noise. Stone doors parted to reveal yet another corridor illuminated in the red-orange light of hell.

A sense of urgency drove him now. He ran to the doors and through them, not bothering to look behind as they crashed shut. The tunnel was narrow, and he quickly found yet more of the Architect’s devices: Trapdoors in the floor began opening to show pits of sulfurous lava before snapping closed again. He jumped these traps, only to find himself almost impaled by darts exploding from the walls.

Kratos laughed without humor. He had endured far worse to reach this point. He would not be denied Pandora’s Box. He would kill the God of War and forever have his nightmares erased by the gods.

He ran along the winding corridors, slaying wraiths and cursed legionnaires, hardly slowing in his headlong rush. In his gut he knew his mission was almost over. Only one more room, one more adversary to kill-and Pandora’s Box would be his prize.

The corridor opened onto a catwalk halfway up the distance to the vaulted ceiling, allowing him to peer back at where he had fired the ballista into the statue’s chest. But Kratos looked straight down and saw rising from the lava pit, a head-a horned head. Next came shoulders and crossed arms forged from a dull black metal. He held the Blades of Chaos in his grip, but Kratos released them as the new statue of Lord Hades rose until a walkway jutting from around its neck came level with where he stood. Kratos gathered his strength and jumped as hard as he could-and barely caught the edge of the statue’s shoulder. He kicked, then kicked harder and rocked up, rolling onto the walkway.

A handle protruded from the side of the neck. Like a sailor turning a windlass, Kratos put his back into it and pushed the spar about, turning the statue’s head slowly. As it rotated, its mouth opened and a beam of eye-dazzling yellow light stabbed forth. Kratos saw that the beam hit the side of the huge room without effect. He pushed harder on the handle, turning the head about until the beam shone fully on the burned statue at the far end of the chamber.

The burned spot began glowing until it was orange-hot. Then red-hot. Kratos raised his arm to protect his eyes as it turned white-hot. Even at this distance, the heat proved enough to cause sweat to bead on his bare chest. With a puff of molten metal, the chest of the statue opened. He knew where his path lay.

Descending the side of the new statue, Kratos returned to the floor and immediately faced another of the Architect’s diabolical traps. Rolling balls of molten rock spewed from the opening where he must go. The heat threatened to blister his bone-white skin, but Kratos never slowed. To do so would spell his death.

Feet pounding against the floor, he ran forward as hard as he could, dodging the spheres of death as they tumbled outward. Less than fifty feet into the tunnel, a door emblazoned with Lord Hades’s smirking face had been set into the wall. Rolling, diving, he crossed the pathway intermittently filled with molten death and grabbed the bottom of the door. From his right came another rock-thundering directly for him.

With a convulsive yank, Kratos lifted the door and rolled under it a split second before the rock would have crushed and burned him.

The tunnel stretched before him. Stride sure, he set off. He returned to the floor of the huge chamber, where molten rock poured down the walls and lit it with an eerie glow more suited to the underworld than a temple. This aspect was fearsome, but he saw at the far end of the chamber guarding the way forward what had to be the most deadly creature he had ever faced. Armored like a soldier, the Minotaur towered thirty feet above him. Every snort produced thick pillars of roiling black smoke from its nostrils, and as it opened its mouth Kratos reacted instantly, spinning away from a gout of hellfire that singed his back and arms in spite of his quick reaction.

He somersaulted forward, drew the Blades of Chaos, and attacked.

For all its size, the armored creature, which looked more like a machine than a living-or undead-beast, moved slowly and gave Kratos many opportunities to hammer at it. Bit by bit he chipped away its armor, but he eventually saw that this would never be enough. The creature was too large, too powerful, and withstood the most savage blows he could deliver with his weapons. After having used the Blade of Artemis, Kratos knew that even this potent sword would not be enough.

He rolled, barely avoiding a huge armored fist that crushed the floor and left only stony shards behind. He slashed with his swords but produced nothing but a nick. The immense Minotaur reared up, and dazzling light shot forth from the gorget around its neck. Wherever those beams touched the stone walls, huge holes appeared. The Minotaur swung its head about, roared, and drove both fists downward in an attempt to smash Kratos flat. He bounced one blade off an iron-clad wrist, then rolled forward and cast forth the Blades of Chaos as if they were climbing hooks. He fastened the curved tips into the Minotaur’s armor and yanked, hauling himself up onto the Minotaur’s metal-spined back. Swinging around, he tugged hard, feet pressed into the creature’s back in an attempt to weaken the powerful neck muscles and bring up the head to expose the throat.