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The boy has fallen ill once more, landed unconscious plastered with an intense pallor making him appear more as his father than a bright, jubilant child, body delicate and flimsy, unfit for battle nor daily activities. It all his fault, Kratos of Sparta’s fault alone truly. It always is.
Burdened with the unforgivable sins of his treacherous past, the blood of people, innocent or wretched staining his ashen hands; he had only pleaded for his son, youthful and pure as to not suffer a fate such as his for his cursed godhood; he had wished to spare Atreus such an undeserved punishment of agony and death forced upon him knowing his forsaken godhood. He did not suffer in the same way Atreus did so he prayed it wasn’t him.
Unfortunately it was.
Atreus’ mind and nature fights within himself at these dark moments, worse than ever, even worse then when he was little, a toddler to be exact; it’s his responsibility as to set this situation straight. Freya provided information, useful information as to locate the heart, the core of a being, birthed and raised within the freezing depths of Helheim itself watching with daunting eyes those who have left the confines of life. If it even just simply heals his son slightly then he shall carry out this duty.
Kratos could not bear murdering another one of his children, seeing their corpse, Her corpse… Calliope’s blood engulfing his hands whole as he sees her burning body, her ashes covering his once tanned skin.
if he did then he would spiral back into the cavern of insanity itself once more. He refuses to kill Atreus, his son.
Just like how he did last time.
Faye’s axe undoubtedly would not function in such frigid conditions, Kratos would have to find yet another alternative weapon. One that could endure such an extreme temperature.
Kratos knew one, one from far away. One dating back to his homeland of Greece, the weapon he had shunned heavily like the one who gifted him the accursed chains. The blades which had been coated with scarlet and grit. A weapon filled with unending pyro and unfathomable anguish upon those who are slashed by its boiling material.
…The Blades Of Chaos…
Kratos despises them almost as much as he despises himself, a monstrous symbol of his harrowing past, a symbol of the atrocities he has committed. An infamous symbol of the Ghost of Sparta. He had hidden them, five decades prior in hopes of never seeing them for time immoral. They always come back however, there is no escape for the wicked deeds for which he has done, he was a fool to believe he could just throw them down and ignore them as if they aren’t forever connected to him by his maimed soul.
The boat trip to their house was quiet, that accursed goddess Athena had been staring at him, poised on the opposite seat with arms on her lap, eyes taunting and malicious and her face appearing as if to tear him apart whole; she is succeeding in haunting him like she did even during her reign as the goddess of war.
“Athena.” Kratos uttered as thunder struck, darkness wallowing the lands up whole, the weather seeming almost perfect to how he is feeling at these dreadful moment. Kratos will not bother looking at Athena once more, he had witnessed enough of her haunting him for tiresome millennia without departure.
“You disappoint me, Spartan.”
The final words he can recall from that battle-torn night, feeling the blade of Olympus be brutally pulled out of his body with swift yet with a excruciatingly painful swipe, watching upon with dying breath as he felt crimson blood trickle out of him, coughing up red like a gushing fountain, sprawled on wet rock. His death however was never meant to be. The monster never dies, does he?
He’s so very exhausted of seeing that bleak moment in his head each time he sees Athena with her disappointed and petulant demeanour, did she expect herself to do good despite all she really ever truly yearned for was power?
“Get out of my head…” A hallucination? The one and true goddess of war? He does not care, he just wishes her departure.
The rest of the boat ride is in pure silence, silence he has grown accustomed to for the past thousand years. Silence he knew during his travels to be alone because of the treacherous monster he became or even to find even a glimpse of peace, he would do anything now for serenity at long last but he knows he will never earn that.
When he had reached his home, he knew it was under attack, unsafe. Almost as if Faye was the source of safety within the heaps of woods they call home. Kratos dealt with the invaders swiftly, yet thrown with more intensity as time passes on swiftly, powerful anger being directed towards all. Each and every flurry of punches being more enraged than the last.
It was a waste of precious time, time he should be using to save his boy.
Soon after he had walked to the inside, uncovered the hatch under the rug and bought out a fragment of a red skirt.
A loosely ripped quarter of the skirt, Atreus wears the latter of it. The garment of the vile god of war. Golden writing decorates it finely in line, crimson red just like the innocent blood he had spilled like ink for all those long, endless years. It’s tattered from light scrapes to gory crimson, aged one thousands years and yet it does not fall apart like the rest. One other thing that shall never die no matter his constant pleads.
He with his trembling hands unveils the blades that cost him so. The bolstering chains that scalded his skin into one with them, the blades that slaughtered many undeserving, the weapon that brutalised his wife and child without them holding as much as a mere chance, his beloved Lysandra and his songbird Calliope.
“My wife, my child… How? They were left in Sparta…”
He recalls the minute he saw his final victims from that horrible day, he spoke softly though more in pure horror and disgust aimed at himself, his wife who tried to reach out to him, Lysandra deceased in his arms, kind arms stretched onto burning floor, brunette hair blowing in the wind aflame; Calliope… He could not handle to see her deceased body, she was always close to death hence plagued at birth and then flashes of awful sickness for the eight years she lived, he just never expected for her to pass by his hands. He attempted to revoke his servitude to Ares immediately after but he knows what happened soon after, yoke around his neck and chains tying him taut in painful fashion. All for not yearning to assist the wicked god who bought him to slay his family.
He holds them in his calloused hands yet filled with distraught, the thing that tarnished his daughter could be the source of salvaging his son from illness.
Irony it is. Something he would believe impossible, yet something he never wished for to be his assistance ever again, not after what he has done.
”Ares, destroy my enemies and my life is yours!”
The words which he screamed his throat raw, the night his, her and his little girls fate was sealed. The night he had received the curse of only being chaos incarnate that would hold him until the ends of days. Bound to bone, bound to skin.
Kratos is hasty in wrapping them around his ash-covered wrists, every grunt making him hate this more and more situation by the second, he knows Athena watches him through the wooden doorway, as if a ghost haunting him again. He knows it’s all an illusion, it always is.
“Pretend to be everything you are not…” He hears Athena finally open her lips, yet he keeps his eyes averted onto the rusted chains, pained as he tugs them deeper into rough fabric and scarred skin.
“Teacher, husband, father.” The last word she says before pausing finally gets to him. Could he, this deadly force, god-killer, the forsaken ghost of Sparta himself truly be a proper father? No… he continues pulling harmful chains around his marred wrists near to finishing the process.
“But there is one truth you will never escape; you cannot change. You will always be a monster.” A single tear, an invisible droplet threatens to pour down brown hunter eyes, he knows he is irredeemable, he knows he is a monster, he knows he is the bringer of war, the cause of suffering and pain alone, bringer of the apocalypse in Greece, slaughterer of thousands, a cruel striker. “I know…”
He knows one thing however, he is his own monster… After years upon years of being a puppet of the gods of Olympus, willing servant to unwitting slave of Ares, tortured for refusal to carry forth Ares will again by the Furies, a pawn of Gaia; Kratos realises something, he is his own monster. No longer the slave of anyone, never, never again. He is his own monster, his own destruction, no longer being pulled by strings via thoughtless gods.
“But I am your monster no longer.” The blades of chaos are latched to him for the first time in decades, as he walks to the doorway Athena finally takes her leave just like the ghostly woman who had walked through him all those years ago; then as Kratos of Sparta runs into a battle, commencing it he remembers what he knows…
In the end, he can never change. The past will always haunt him for all of eternity yet for Atreus, he must hang on for a moment longer. No matter who he must mar the flesh of, if it protects his son then so be it. He is no one’s monster any longer but Atreus’.
“Alright brother… Let’s see what those blades can do.” He hears Mimir say from his position against his hip and as he produces scorching fire that scalds his enemies in powerful slashes, Kratos of Sparta knows there has not and never will be a return. They’re his burden to bear, he can no longer hide them under the house, under the cover of shadows or isolate them and hope for them to vanish. He has to save Atreus, his son no matter the price.
No matter if it costs him the final drops of his sanity.