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

“You have witnessed in full what this artifact and the others like it can do to men,” Pythagoras said.

“Father?” I croaked.

“The voice you heard beckoning you was not your mother. But this is me, of that you can be sure. I told you we would speak again.”

“How, how can it be? I set your body on the pyre.”

“Charon the Ferryman is waiting for me to cross the Styx. My bond with the artifact is the only thing holding my soul on the banks of the living, but that bond is coming to an end. And so I must tell you the truth about the pyramid, before it is too late. It was created by the ones who came before in order to see through the webs of time. Past, present and things yet to come…”

“That is why the Cult revered the pyramid so much,” I said, suddenly realizing. “It is a key to control and order.”

“They never understood.” Pythagoras sighed. “Many decades ago, a group of people gathered together to uphold a theory which they believed could bring stability to the world. That everything functioned in equal parts, order and disorder. Discipline and freedom. Control and liberty. Like a set of scales in perfect harmony.”

The soft light around me warped to form a hazy image of a gathering. Among them, she saw a younger Pythagoras, guiding, teaching. Many heads nodded and some debated. Then she saw some, to the rear, whispering among themselves.

“But some of this group could not resist the temptations of boundless power. They fell into the arms of chaos… and the Cult of Kosmos was born.”

Images flashed across the soft light: of the masked villains gathering, chanting, of the tendrils of their wicked schemes—armies dying needlessly, citizens butchered, innocent men executed… and a child being tossed from a mountain.

“They abused their power, casting the Greek world into eternal war.” The images ceased abruptly. “A war you were destined to stop.”

I felt my heart thud. “Me? And… Alexios?”

“Aye, but the Cult took your brother and made him one of their own. Mortal blood runs in your veins, Kassandra, but so too does the crimson elixir of the ancient ones. Leonidas was of their line. So was I, and so too your mother. That was why she and I came together. In doing so she might have betrayed the Spartan, Nikolaos, but…”

“But better that than betraying the world to the Cult,” I finished for him.

“Aye. They hunted you, me, your mother and your brother because we were the keys to truly harnessing these artifacts. The pyramid only speaks to those who carry the blood of its creators. That’s why the Cult needed Deimos, even when they realized they could not control his chaotic nature.”

“But now the Cult is gone. I destroyed them. I succeeded,” I said.

His face sagged. “I wish I could tell you it was so, Kassandra. But in destroying the Cult, you have swung the scales too far. The world can only know harmony if there is balance. Don’t you see? It is the one lesson I should have imparted before I passed: by obliterating the Cult, you have merely cleared the earth for a darker, stronger weed to rise. Balance must be restored.”

A chill struck through me. “How can I restore balance? Where… where do I begin?”

“The staff is the key. It will grant you the gift of time. Time is everything. With it you can…” He fell silent.

“Father?”

“No… it is too late,” he said, his voice tight. “The dark weed has taken root already.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You must go, Kassandra, now!”

“Father?” I cried.

But with a whoosh , the visions were gone. I found myself in the quiet, deserted Cave of Gaia once more. The pyramid was cold and silent now. I heard my rapid breaths slow and felt my heart fall into a steady rhythm again.

“You saw it too?” a voice echoed through the cavern. “It was beautiful, wasn’t it?”

I now saw the pale hand resting on the other side of the pyramid, the arm reaching out from a well of shadow. Dead fingers crept over my skin. “Who’s there?”

She stepped forward from the shadows like a creature crawling from a dream. “Aspasia?”

“You’re surprised to see me?” she said.

I did not reply—my demeanor surely was answer enough. I beheld her: beautiful, elegant, draped in a white stola. And then my eyes came to a rest upon the shape underneath the garment. A hideous, hook-nosed, wickedly grinning theater mask. Aspasia took a step toward me and lifted the mask out. I stared at her. “How? Why?” I stammered.

“The Cult is gone, Kassandra,” she said, dropping the mask on the floor. She stepped upon it with her sandaled foot, cracking it in two. “I played my part as one of them, but only to aid my own designs.”

“Which are?”

“You heard the legend speak, did you not? Of the need to bring a new order to the world.”

“I don’t know what you heard or saw, Aspasia, but that is not what my father said. He showed me that extremes of order or chaos are not the answer, that balance is crucial.”

“Pythagoras was not strong enough to bring true order to the world,” Aspasia continued as if Kassandra had not spoken, “nor was the Cult. You were a useful ally in sweeping them from the board of this great game.”

“But… you let them kill Perikles.”

“I would have stopped it if I could have,” she said, her face impassive. “But you were there that day. You saw what happened. Deimos and his men would have slain us all had I tried to intervene. In any case, Perikles would have gladly died to bring about the Cult’s end.”

Silence.

“And now?” I asked, dreading the answer.

“Now, the dream.” Aspasia said.

I could not tear my gaze from her eyes—glinting like ice crystals.

“The dream of all Hellas as a republic—no more squabbling city-states. An end to the competing ideologies of democracy and oligarchy. No more blue and red. No more fractious leagues. One realm, controlled—utterly—by a true leader: a philosopher-king to guide us all—a helmsman who will bring order to the world. It will be a lengthy process, like the growth of a new forest, and one best seeded in a bed of ashes… after the fires have raged.”

“Ashes, fire? Aspasia… Hellas is at peace,” I said.

“This sham of an accord? I will see that it does not last,” she purred. “In what forge but that of war can we otherwise hope to craft the dream?” Her face quirked with emotion: the traces of a cold smile. She shrunk back into the shadows, and her next words came from the darkness.

Instinctively, I stepped after her, but found nothing in those shadows.

“The dream of true, complete, unspoiled order…” she whispered from somewhere, the sibilant words fading with an echo. Then I heard the distant patter of departing feet. Gone.

Alone, my mind rocked like a boat in a squall, my hand itching to tear the Leonidas spear from my belt. To chase and challenge Aspasia? And then what—strike her down and fire the vengeance of her well-placed minions? After all that had happened, all I had been through, I realized that it was not over.

It had only just begun.

Alexios:Kassandra’s younger brother who was cast off Mount Taygetos as a baby, following a damning prophecy by the Oracle of Delphi.