as he’d intended.
The diamond Kratos had touched on the doorway began to glow. He stepped over his fallen adversary and pressed his callused hand to the now-illuminated, flame-hot diamond. He reached up and brushed his hand over the next jewel, still coldly inert.
He quickly found himself engaged with a Cyclops that materialized behind him. The fight was fierce, but Kratos dispatched the one-eyed horror with a feint to the leg that caused the Cyclops to bend low. The blade in Kratos’s left hand speared deep through the single orb, causing eye goo and brains to gush out.
The stone in the door now glowed a bright ruby red.
“So,” Kratos said, smiling grimly. “This is the key to your doorway, Architect. Blood!” He quickly touched the remaining two gems, producing two fighters. Knowing the secret of the portal allowed him to waste no effort sending the monsters to Hades where they belonged.
The two remaining gems-one peridot, gleaming greenish-yellow, and the other a blazing sapphire blue-sent lightning arcing around the circular portal. Slowly, the doorway into the Temple of Pandora opened to him.
Kratos entered a long, curving corridor lined with doors on both sides.
Here, too, wall-mounted braziers burned with cheery flame. They could be magical-apparently everything here was, to some degree or other-but they certainly wouldn’t have been the work of the Architect; there was absolutely no reason to illuminate the interior if one wanted to keep intruders out. Everything would be doubly challenging in the kind of inky blackness the stone-shrouded interior would otherwise be-and anyone attempting to reach Pandora’s Box would have to do it before his lamp oil ran out.
Then Kratos laughed harshly. The Architect undoubtedly thought the sight of the monsters awaiting anyone who had come into this maze would unnerve them, add to their fear, make their deaths all the more certain, as terror froze their arms and loosened their bowels. The Temple of Pandora was not only about keeping out those who sought the box. It would be designed to inspire gut-churning fear in those who dared come this far. More than once, Ares had told Kratos that the purpose of war was not to kill your enemy but to kill him after breaking his spirit.
He looked to either side, calculating the curve. If this corridor formed a ring, it would be very large. His first order of business was to investigate the lay of the land, because apparently any part of this structure could, without warning, become a battlefield. He trotted around the circle… and when he returned to his starting point, he discovered that the great circular door through which he had entered had closed, sealed to his best effort to open it again.
Kratos ignored this. Retreat was not in his fiber. Win or die. The way it always had been.
He found an open archway as he continued around the ring-one that hadn’t been open a moment ago, when he’d first passed. The view along the hallway open before him looked promising-every few yards, giant spiked walls slammed against one another with enough force to shake the stone floor on which he stood. Reasoning that the Architect had gone to so much trouble to discourage intruders along this particular path made it a likely place to start his quest.
Timing a succession of dashes took him through the corridor without so much as a scratch. Kratos stopped to look back. He had passed the first test within Pandora’s temple. How many more to come? Many.
He stepped into a wide area, the walls carved with the mysterious symbols he had seen outside. Kratos ignored them, because he faced a chamber full of monsters. Reaching back, he drew the Blades of Chaos and, with a toss, sent them to the limits of their chains. A quick spin sent the fierce-edged weapons in a sweeping circle of destruction around him, catching two of the undead legionnaires unaware. He cut off their legs and toppled them to the floor so they could not continue the fight. The others rushing forward were not as easily vanquished.
Kratos drew in his weapons and began the methodical destruction of his enemies. His skill, his experience, and the towering anger he felt toward Ares powered his thrusts, enhanced his slashes, and brought him to the far side of the chamber with only a few scrapes. He faced an archway that appeared harmless, but he approached warily, then stepped away, blades in hand, when a low-pitched humming filled the room.
He looked around the room and noticed a circular portal that had begun to glow with pure white light. The archway at the side of the chamber was now filled with the image, traced in living fire, of the face of a goddess-not as voluptuous as Aphrodite nor so severe as Athena, this goddess had a curious innocence to her, a sort of eternal golden adolescence.
This could be only one goddess. Kratos inclined his head out of true respect. “Lady Artemis.”
“Kratos, the gods demand more of you!”
Kratos just nodded. The gods always demanded more.
“Much depends on your skill,” said the Huntress of Olympus. “ You have learned to use the Blades of Chaos well, but they alone will not carry you to the end of your task. I offer you the very blade I used to slay a Titan. Take this gift and use it to complete your quest.”
Kratos reached out and the sword appeared in his hands. It was a huge, unwieldy weapon, longer than Kratos was tall, and not shaped like any honest Spartan sword. Its broadly curved blade was wider than the span of his hand, jutting out beyond the haft, more like the khopesh favored by the heathen Egyptians.
“Thank you, Lady Artemis.”
“Go with the gods, Kratos,” the image of Artemis said. “ Go forth in the name of Olympus! ” With that, the huntress vanished, leaving only the open archway leading deeper into the temple.
Artemis’s blade cool in his hand, he approached the archway. Some glyphs were letters he could read, but most were strange, alien, and beyond his ability to decipher. If only he could read them, he might get some hint as to the challenges he faced before reaching them! He peered into the room beyond the arch and saw no one. It was nothing more than a foyer, such as he had seen leading to many a king’s audience chamber. The trappings were richly appointed, but he had claimed more-elegant furniture, statues, and tapestries as the spoils of war for the glory of Sparta.
A staircase provided the only way forward. As Kratos climbed, he noticed that the walls narrowed until, at the top of the stairs, his broad shoulders brushed the rough stone. The narrowing continued down a corridor until he came out on a platform, high above a room filled with rotating gears and distant screams of agony. The dim light afforded him a good look only at the gigantic creature blocking his way to a catwalk across the room.
The giant roared its wordless challenge and charged. A heavy sledge that replaced its left hand smashed down hard, shaking the catwalk and threatening its structure. The Blades of Chaos came easily to Kratos’s hands, but he found that his opponent was as wily as it was strong. His usual attacks-weaken the creature, then ram his blade down its throat-were not going to work. The giant agilely avoided even his quickest thrust and slash and forced Kratos to dance back to avoid the heavy hammer blows. Any hit with that crashing hammer would mean death, but, worse, the creature seemed inclined to destroy the catwalk and prevent Kratos’s crossing.
“By the gods, you are different,” Kratos said. He thought a spark of intelligence showed in the eyes buried under bony brows. Great intelligence. Then it attacked, using its right hand to strike at Kratos’s eyes as diversion for the sweeping attack from the hammer. A simple move to the side allowed the fist to pass by harmlessly, but this was not the creature’s intent-it delivered a more subtle attack. The haft of the hammer blocked Kratos’s weapons, allowing it to step closer still.
It tried to grapple with Kratos but succeeded only in a potent head butt. A fraction of an inch closer and it would have caught his eye. Responding the only way he could, Kratos hammered at the monster’s powerful sloping shoulders with both pommels of his blades. The creature danced away more lightly than any spawn of Hades Kratos had ever faced.
They circled, each studying the other for weaknesses and how best to attack. The blood trickled down Kratos’s cheek as a reminder that this monster considered its assault carefully and was a skilled opponent. But it had never faced the Ghost of Sparta before.
Kratos roared and rushed forward, pressing the giant back a step, then changed the direction of his attack, dropping flat to the platform and kicking out. One bronze greave smashed into the creature’s knee, unbalancing it. Kratos worked his other foot behind the leg and swept around hard, further staggering it. Not content with this, Kratos spun about so his feet tangled his foe’s legs-and then it was time to end the battle.
Off-balance and facing away from Kratos, the creature tottered on the edge of the platform. Swinging a blade out on the end of its chain, Kratos felt the Hades-forged weapon crash into the exposed back and send the giant forward-into space. It roared all the way to the distant floor, where its cries ended suddenly with a huge crash.
