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

Her neck arched and white light flashed through her mind. It was not like those moments when the spear conjured memories of the past. This was real. She could taste the autumnal air, smell the damp bracken, hear the chirruping of birds in the Eurotas Forest.

She was in the lands of Sparta.

I crept through the ferns under a bruised afternoon sky, watching the plump boar ahead, thinking of the delicious meal it would make—and of how strong they would think me, only seven summers old—were I to fell it myself. I knelt, drew back my spear, holding it on an outbreath, lining up the tip with the boar’s flank. But then doubt crept into my thoughts: should I wait, should I loose, or should I…

With a flash of silver, another lance flew over my head and speared down into the dirt, startling the boar. The beast squealed and bolted. I leapt up and around to face the mystery thrower. “Who’s there?” I yelled. “Come out.”

Mother emerged from the trees, cradling baby Alexios.

“Hesitation only hastens…” Mother began.

“… the grave,” I groaned, realizing I had failed her lesson. “I know,” I replied. “Father will be disappointed when he hears I am still not ready.”

“Your form is improving, and you are tenacious. But the greatest skill is knowing when to act.” She paced around, setting Alexios down on a fallen tree, then plucking the lance she had thrown from the earth. “Perhaps it is time for you to have this.”

I took the spear. It caught the gray light and dazzled me. Such a fine weapon. The haft was broken, but it was a perfect length for me.

When I touched the leaf-shaped blade, I felt an odd shiver, a fluttering inside. “I… I felt something.”

“Oh?” said Mother, smiling.

I touched it again and again it sent a strange sensation through me. “This is no ordinary spear.”

“No it isn’t. It carries with it a long line of power. A bloodline of heroes—the same blood that runs in you and me, in our family. And once, long ago, in King Leonidas.”

“This is… was… King Leonidas’s spear?” I croaked.

She smiled, stroking my face. “Leonidas had great courage, and he made a great sacrifice at Thermopylae. You share in his blood, and the strength he possessed. We are able to feel certain things happening around us. We are quick as lions to react to danger. That is our family’s gift. But not everyone understands that. Some recognize the power we bear and want it only for themselves. They will try to take it from us.”

“I won’t let them,” I said then with the carefree courage of a child.

“I know,” Mother said. “You’re a warrior.”

I carefully wrapped the spear in a leather roll, sensing that I should treat it with great care. I placed it in my quiver. When I heard the sky growl, I looked up.

“A storm’s coming,” Mother said, lifting Alexios.

It was a strange thing, for it had felt that way to me ever since Mother and Father had returned from their visit to the Oracle in autumn. Mother sensed my unease and placed baby Alexios in my arms. I felt instantly calm, kissing his forehead and gazing into his gleaming tawny-gold eyes…

Her hand shot up from the pyramid and she gasped. As the memory faded, she stared at Deimos. He was staring back at her, the tawny-gold eyes now wide as moons. There was no mistaking it…

Alexios? she mouthed, stupefied.

His head shook in disbelief, his lips barely moving: Kassandra?

She took a step backward, her legs numb.

“Well?” screeched one Cultist. “What did you see Deimos? Can we trust this one?”

Silence.

“Answer the question, Deimos,” another one pleaded.

Nothing.

A heartbeat later and another Cultist bustled forward, sighing. “Then let me take my turn. I have nothing to hide.”

This seemed to snap Deimos from his trance. With a roar, he grabbed the back of the Cultist’s head and rammed the masked face onto the point of the pyramid. With a thick clunk , the mask snapped. Blood puffed, the body jerked then slumped. The pyramid was pristine and golden, completely undamaged, but the Cultist’s face was a crumpled mess. Some of the other Cultists backed away, wailing, but a handful surged forward. “What are you doing, Deimos?” they screeched, clustering around him.

Kassandra backed away, stumbling all the way to the chamber entrance, then turned… and sped like a deer, stunned, shaken. She felt nothing as she hurtled back to the secret tunnel and scrambled through it in a blur.

She barely even noticed Herodotos’s words when she emerged into the night and onto the rocky shelf outside, gasping, doubling over and slumping back against the bluff face.

“My dear, what happened?”

She gazed up at the historian, eyes wide. “He’s in there. He’s their champion.”

“Who, my dear?”

“My brother. Alexios.”

In the blackness of night, the Adrestia sailed from Kirrha. Reza and the few other crew members manned the sails and the steering oar. Barnabas stood on the prow, one foot on the rail, eyeing the dark as if it were an old foe. Every so often he looked back toward the rear of the boat, seeking a decision from Kassandra, but still she was lost in thought.

She sat by the small cabin, clutching the hand that had touched the pyramid, staring into space. What she had thought of as reality had been cast down and shattered into a thousand pieces.

Herodotos, sitting beside her, carefully cut slices from an apple, lifting each into his mouth slowly and methodically. He again offered her a piece which she again refused and so he tossed it to Ikaros instead, who poked and prodded at it with mild disdain.

“There were many of them, all masked,” she said quietly. “The Oracle is theirs, and the Gods speak to the people through her, and the pyramid is at the root of it all. They have an army of spies and warriors. They control nearly all of Hellas. Everything.”

“Then it is worse than I thought,” Herodotos mused. He stared off into the night for a time. “If Perikles is in danger as you claim, we must make for Athens.”

She slid her eyes toward him. “Of all the things I saw and heard in there, why should I care about him? My brother lives, yet the Cult has turned him into something… horrible . They are out to kill my mother. This is my boat and Perikles is nothing to me—just another greedy and bloodthirsty general.”

“Bloodthirsty? You do not know the man,” Herodotos chided. “This war was thrust upon him.”

Kassandra eyed Herodotos sourly. “A general who doesn’t relish war? Unlikely.” She thought of the hearsay and rumors she had heard in the filthy taverns near Sami. “Some say he engineered this conflict under a guise of peace, so he could muster and flaunt Athens’s invincible navy and bask in its glory. Those boats go unchallenged by the pathetic Spartan navy, yet the Spartan hoplites rule the land, peerless and unafraid of the feeble Athenian infantry. But as long as Perikles receives adulation for what happens at sea, who cares about the interminable war?”

“Perhaps. Or maybe he saw that war was inevitable and guided affairs to make the best of them.” Herodotos shrugged.

“You are not convincing me. Why should I care for this distant King of Athens?”

Herodotos laughed, loud and long. “Athens has no king. Perikles serves the people. And his position is hardly splendid: there are plenty who lurk in Athens’s shadows, eager to take his place. If the Cult are colluding against him, it could turn what has been a fraught but noble war into a chaotic and bloody disaster for all.”