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

“Then I will come back here tonight,” Kassandra said, seeing the dozen or more small, dark openings in the mountainside. “All I ask is that you keep watch for me while I’m in there.”

Herodotos sighed deeply. “Very well. But you must promise me one thing: that you will come out of there alive. I like you, Child of Nowhere. Do not make me regret this.”

Crickets sang in the cool night air. Somewhere in the wooded parts of the high valley, bears grumbled and boars foraged. The valley floor was nearly deserted. The many thousands of pilgrims had dispersed and just a few remained, camped and singing gently around fires. Up on the temple mount, slaves and attendants shuffled around quietly, cleaning, sweeping and tidying in the torchlight. Dozens of black-armored guards strode to and fro watchfully.

Kassandra levered herself up onto a small shelf of rock, and then threw a rope down to Herodotos. The man belied earlier complaints about having a bad back to pick his way up onto the shelf beside her. They turned to the low cave opening in the rock face. Inside was just pure blackness. “This has to be a way in,” she mused, then twisted to Herodotos. “Don’t you think?”

The historian shrugged. “It is a honeycomb in there, Misthios, that is all I know.”

She weighed the leather bag holding robe and mask. If this tunnel did lead to the Cave of Gaia then she would have to wear them in there if she was to remain anonymous. Her bow, spear and bracers would be too conspicuous, she realized. Grudgingly, she peeled off her bracers and belt and slid her bow and quiver from her back, feeling naked without the equipment. Herodotos took her bow without fuss, but when she gave him her spear, he gulped, refused to touch it—holding out a leather bag of his own instead and having her drop it in.

She said nothing of it. “If I’m not back by dawn, you leave, yes? And tell Barnabas to leave too, and to forget about me.”

Herodotos nodded and Kassandra ducked to scuttle inside the tunnel. It was a cramped space and so she bent double, but even then, hanging stalactites scraped her back. It became warren-like after a while, forcing her to worm along on her belly. No way of turning back. Very little air. For a moment, she imagined Herodotos gaily strolling back down to Kirrha to sell her spear while she wriggled into a dark grave. Then, without warning, the floor fell away and she slid down a pile of scree. She found herself at the edges of a bubble of orange light, and heard the guttural echoes of many strong and confident voices. Shadows moved, somewhere beyond a natural column of stone. She hurriedly threw Elpenor’s embroidered cloak around her shoulders and slid the mask on, just as a pair of figures walked past. It looked as if they were floating, thanks to their trailing robes.

“Do not tarry over there,” said one, his mask—exactly like Elpenor’s—staring foully at her. “The artifact has been brought out. Hurry, or you will miss your chance to hold it.”

“I would not miss this chance for anything,” she replied, her voice muffled behind the identical mask’s mouth slit.

The pair glided on past her, chattering about hiring regiments and placing mercenaries for the work that lay ahead. She let them walk on for a while, before following them through a stony corridor. Torches crackled and spat and every so often she passed chambers that had been hewn from the bedrock. Some bore beds or furniture, but all were empty. Until, from the doorway of one just ahead, a puff of steam spat out, along with a scream that twisted her stomach into a tight knot. She slowed, certain she did not want to see what had caused the scream, but as she edged past she could not help but look. A brute of a Cultist was in there, his breathing heavy behind his mask, his shoulders bulging from his sleeveless robe and his arms thick with black, curly hairs. In one meaty hand, he held a poker over a crackling brazier until it glowed white at the tip. Before him was a withered, broken wretch tied to a vertical frame, head hanging forward, a patter of fluid dripping from his hidden face. “We hired you to kill Phidias of Athens,” drawled the masked brute. “We paid you well. You botched your work and nearly ended up in the stinking Athenian jail for it. Well you would have been better off in there, you fool,” he said, grabbing the tied man’s hair and yanking his head back to reveal a face half-ruined: the right side a mess of bloody runnels, the eye socket a gaping black hole. The brute lifted the poker and moved the white tip toward the man’s remaining eye. The man’s eye bulged and darted as if trying to escape his head, but there was no escape. With a sizzle and a stink of charring flesh and then a pop , the eye burst in a splash of white liquid and blood that sprayed across the room and showered Kassandra in the doorway. It took everything she had not to flinch or retch. The masked brute turned to see her and shouted over the tortured man’s screams: “Apologies. I will saw off this bastard’s head and then I will have one of my slaves clean your robes.”

“Very good,” she said, “but be quick—the artifact is on show.”

Pleased with her composure, she shuffled on down the rocky corridor until it opened up into a wide chamber, the stone floor polished and etched with symbols. A few Cultists stood here, all with those identical and wicked-looking theater masks, deep in discussion. She dared not break up a group of them. But there, kneeling alone before a stone altar at one end of the room, was one with long black hair and a distinctive white streak.

Approaching and watching, she nearly leapt from her skin when a voice spoke behind her shoulder. “Do not be shy: pray with Chrysis,” said the beanpole masked man. “She does not mind company.”

Kassandra nodded her thanks then mimicked the gestures of the one called Chrysis, kneeling and bowing at the altar beside her, hands clasped across her chest.

“Ah, yes, you feel it too?” the female Cultist said huskily from behind the mask. “All we have achieved pleases the Gods. We have won so much control. Prayer is tradition. Tradition is control. The masses bow their heads in prayer to a higher power… and we are that higher power. Does it not make you feel proud?”

As Chrysis spoke, the rasping of a saw and a final wet scream sounded from the brute’s torture chamber, some way behind, followed by the dull thud of an object landing on the ground.

“My pride flows over,” Kassandra purred, finding that the only way she could hope to be believed was to act as they did, to pretend the horrors going on in the torture chamber were not real.

“The Oracle is our key to greatness,” Chrysis continued. “For generations now, her voice has been ours.”

The words pealed through Kassandra’s mind like the song of a bell struck with a hammer. The order to throw my baby brother from the mountain came not from the seeress… but from these bastards.

“Through her we have gained so much,” Chrysis continued. “Soon, we will control all Hellas. Let the two sides have their war, while we rule them both. Yet the Oracle is nothing compared to”—she paused, shuddering as if touched by the hand of an invisible lover—“the artifact.”

“The sacred artifact,” said three masked passersby who had overheard.

“The sacred artifact,” chanted Kassandra dutifully.

“And our champion will be here soon,” said another, “the one who can unlock its power—to see past, present, future.”

“It will be a fine moment,” Kassandra said, then rose and walked slowly across the room, trying to discern some sense from the seven or eight chattering voices. Two were bickering passionately, a man and a woman. She picked up their names quickly: Silanos and Diona.