Gordon Doherty - Assassin's Creed Odyssey - The Official Novelization

Kassandra peered at the Oracle, hatred building in her heart. Perhaps there would be no answers here, but there could be resolution of some sort: for the guards had been foolish enough to let her enter with her weapons. Now the snake-woman would pay for the cursed words that had shattered her life and… Her spiraling thoughts ground to a halt when the woman’s head rolled back. She was young—years younger than Kassandra—not an old hag as tradition dictated. She actually reminded her of an adolescent Phoibe. The hatred ebbed quickly. The Oracle who had dictated the bleak demands all those years ago was now long dead, it seemed.

“Enter into the light of Apollo, the light that illuminates shadow.” The girl sighed throatily, gesturing to the gentle glow of the burning pots. “What do you wish to know, traveler?”

“I… I seek the truth about my past. Perhaps my future too. I want to know of my parents, their whereabouts.”

The Oracle’s swaying head slowed a little. “Who asks Apollo for such wisdom?” she boomed, belying her small frame.

Kassandra stared at the seeress, knowing how foolish this was, sickened that she would have no answers nor even the satisfaction of revenge now. “I was born in the land of Sparta. My brother was cast from the mountains and so was I. Now, I have nobody, nothing.”

The Oracle stopped swaying altogether. Her eyes rolled up to meet Kassandra’s. She seemed different now, as if wakened. But when her eyes flicked toward the nearest guard, she lapsed back into that trancelike state, head swaying again. “You will find your parents… on the other side of the river.”

Kassandra’s senses sharpened. Her mind spun with what little knowledge she had of this region. The River Pleistos ran near here. Her parents were there?

“When your days draw to an end and you pay Charon the Ferryman to cross the Styx, you will be reunited with them on the far banks.”

Kassandra’s heart plunged as hope crumbled away. A silence passed. The guards shuffled impatiently. “Your time is up,” one grunted.

“I bid you farewell,” she said to the Oracle.

Just as she turned to leave, a shout echoed through the temple from outside, and the sound of a smashing vase.

“Trouble!” a guard’s voice grunted from out there. The two in here looked at one another, then rushed outside.

Kassandra made to follow them, when a voice stopped her.

“Wait,” the Oracle whispered.

For a moment Kassandra did not recognize her voice—weak, frightened, shorn of the affected and theatrical tones of a moment ago.

“They hunt the child who fell from the mountain…” the Oracle whispered.

Kassandra’s flesh crept. She stepped back toward the Oracle. “What did you say?”

“The Cult hunt the she-child who fell.”

Kassandra’s mind reeled. She grabbed the Oracle by the shoulders and shook her. “Who, where are they?” She saw the tears in the girl’s eyes now, and realized all was very much not well here. She let go of the girl’s shoulders. “I can help you if you help me.”

“I cannot be helped,” the Oracle croaked. Her eyes grew moon-wide as the clatter of footsteps sounded behind Kassandra. “They’re coming back. You must go.”

“You, get back,” one of the guards snarled.

“The Cult plan to meet tonight, in the Cave of Gaia,” the Oracle started as Kassandra backed away a half step. “There, you may find the answers you seek.”

“I said get back !” One guard grabbed Kassandra’s shoulders and hauled her away toward the entrance. She did not struggle. Another seized the Oracle and dragged her into the shadows at the rear of the temple.

Kassandra winced as the stark light of day fell upon her again. “The Oracle is finished for today,” the guard boomed over her head as he shoved her outside. A great groan arose from the queue. As the noise settled, Kassandra heard a rhythmic yelp, and spotted the tall, horn-voiced man who had mocked Barnabas in the queue. He was now pinned to the ground by one temple guard while a second tirelessly volleyed him in the groin over and over. The poor fellow’s eyes and tongue were bulging from his face.

“Burst the other one and then we’re done.” The guard pinning the man chuckled evilly.

“Seems the clumsy oaf smashed a votive amphora,” Herodotos said, sidling up next to Kassandra and guiding her away. “Tsk!” he added with a mischievous glint in his eye.

She looked from Herodotos to the pinned man to the smashed amphora and back to Herodotos again. “He… no, you —”

“Yes, yes, keep your voice down. I am allowed the occasional lie—I am no Persian, after all. I smashed that vase because I thought it might give you a chance to talk plainly with the Oracle.”

She noticed how he glanced at her spear again, and once again she covered it up with her cloak.

“The priests and protectors in there have a reputation for interfering and chanting and generally getting in the way,” Herodotos continued.

Kassandra’s brow furrowed. “Priests, protectors? There were none. Just those beetle-black temple guards.”

Herodotos’s face drained of color. “Go on.”

“The Oracle spoke mindless, trite platitudes and vague possibilities until the guards left to deal with the commotion, and then she began to tell me things that seemed significant.”

“Began?”

“Before she was finished, the guards came back in and hauled her from her stool, dragged her like a slave into the temple’s recesses.”

Herodotos’s face sagged until he looked more like a man of seventy summers. “Then the rumors are true. They do have the Oracle under their control.”

“They?” she asked.

“I told you I came here in search of truth,” he said. “Well, I have found it, and it is a black truth. Do you not understand? All Hellas pivots around the word of the Oracle. Sparta and its hundreds of allies in the Peloponnesian League. Athens and its many supporters in the Delian League. Every single neutral city-state. All do as the Oracle advises. War might rage between the two great powers, but if they are in control of the Oracle, then they will be the victors. Imagine what power they will have if they control the words that come from her mouth.”

“Herodotos, for the favor of all the Gods, please tell me who they are?”

His eyes darted to check nobody was too close. “The Cult of Kosmos,” he said, his voice little more than a whisper.

A shiver shot up her spine as if stroked by cold, dead hands. “The Cult.”

“They are like shadows. Nobody knows who the members are, for they meet in secret and wear masks to protect their identities. I have only seen a Cultist once, and on a dark night. In his mask he looked like a fiend and—” His face fell agape when he saw Kassandra pulling from her leather bag Elpenor’s wicked-looking wooden theater mask, the nose hooked and sharp, the eyebrows bent in a scowl, the mouth locked in a sinister grin. “Apollo walks!” he hissed, shoving the mask back into her bag and glancing around once again. “Where did you get that?”

“I think I have already met a Cultist,” Kassandra said. “And I need to meet the others. The Oracle told me only fragments of information.” Her mind spun, then she clicked her fingers. “She said the Cult are to meet tonight, in the Cave of Gaia. Where in all Hellas is that?”

Herodotos looped an arm through hers and steered her away from the temple, down the steps and along the long, winding path leading from the plateau. “The Cave of Gaia lies somewhere underneath this very temple mount—which is riddled with a honeycomb of natural caverns, vast and mazelike.”