God of War--The Official Novelization

by J. M. Barlog

  “Yes,” Kratos agreed.

  The God of War halted at the door, cradling his limp child in his arms.

  “We’d better hope old Freya is home,” Mimir said.

  “Witch! Open the door! We need your help!” Kratos yelled. He refused to set Atreus down in order to break down the door.

  “Perhaps addressing her by her name, rather than ‘witch’, might achieve better results?”

  Kratos detected shuffling inside the house, despite no response to his call.

  “Woman, do you hear me? It is urgent!” he growled.

  “I am still a god! Go away and leave me alone,” she shouted.

  “Freya, it is the boy. He is ill!” Kratos said breathlessly. “I need your help.”

  The door flew open, banging the side wall. Freya rushed out, immediately laying the back of her hand on the boy’s forehead. Then she slid it down to his chest to evaluate his breathing.

  “He is ill,” Kratos repeated, with a helpless father’s desperation.

  Freya read the sadness on Kratos’ face.

  “Hurry inside. We have little time if we are to save your son.”

  Kratos followed her in, setting Atreus onto a braided thatch cot. Freya wasted no time or movement going to work on him.

  “We cannot let him die,” she muttered, before turning her gaze to the God of War. “This is no ordinary illness. The boy’s true nature, your true nature, fights within him.”

  “I did this to him…” Kratos paused as the truth sank in. “Will you help me?”

  “Of course. But I need to think. This illness is more virulent than I would have thought. What is the nature of this thing?”

  Freya observed the state of Atreus’ eyes, moved next to examine his neck with agile fingers, after which she listened closely to his heart beating in his chest. Her face turned grim, almost angry. What had Kratos done?

  She left the lad for a time to pace. Movement stimulated thought, thought led to focused analysis.

  Kratos’ worried gaze never left the woman, tracking her every move, anxious for her to speak or do something that would help his son.

  “Say something!” Kratos snarled.

  She had to help him. She had to…

  “There is a rare ingredient found only in Helheim. Máttugr Helson.”

  “What is Máttugr Helson?” Kratos asked.

  “Not what. Who. Máttugr Helson is known as Helheim’s son. He is the keeper that protects the Bridge of Death… I need his heart if I am to save the boy.”

  “Are you certain?”

  “As certain as I can be at this moment. Do exactly as I command, if you desire your boy to live.” Her face soured, as if she were somehow laying blame for Atreus’ condition on him.

  “Helheim?” Kratos said.

  “Yes, the Realm of the Dead. Do you know it?”

  “Not this one,” Kratos had to confess. Fear wormed its way into his soul.

  “It is a land of unyielding cold. Fire will not burn there, magic or otherwise. As for the dead… your frost axe will be useless. You will need something more powerful to achieve what I ask of you.”

  “Then I fear what I must do,” Kratos said, contemplating what was to come. He wished there might be another course of action, but searching Freya’s face, fraught with concern, he knew there was to be only one way to save what mattered most in his life right now.

  “I know what I must now do.”

  Freya snared his arm before Kratos could make a move toward the door.

  “Who you were does not matter. That boy is not your past. You are his father, and your son needs you now.”

  Kratos nodded his understanding while Freya took his palm and drew with her fingertip on it. The rune persisted, as if it had been written in blood.

  “This rune opens the bridge to Helheim. When you are there, do not under any circumstances cross the Bridge of Death. There is no road back. Understand?”

  Kratos nodded. Stirring on his cot, Atreus released a soft moan. Freya crossed to her Norse battle bell to ring it. As she spoke, the mythological creature outside stood up, which caused the house to shudder and rise around them.

  “Heimili! You must hurry. Through my garden, there’s a path leading to my boat. Take it. Do whatever you must. Just bring back Máttugr Helson’s heart, and your son may survive.”

  With a wave of her hand, Freya threw open the rear door, and then began preparing a poultice.

  Reaching the door, Kratos lingered, turning back to her.

  “When last we spoke… I was…” Kratos started, struggling with words he was unaccustomed to using. Apologies were never part of his vocabulary. Freya remained with her back to him as she busied herself with her preparations, refusing to allow him to finish.

  “No. You are wise to distrust the word of a god. No need to explain. Not to me. Not for that,” she said. Only then did she face him. “I will keep him safe. I will do everything in my power to keep your son alive. That is a mother’s promise.”

  Kratos needed one last look at his son, wishing he could say something that would make everything right again. Atreus’ skin had become ashen, the color of the dying, his face slack, his eyelids barely open. Voiceless, Kratos left the cottage, determined to return with the crucial heart.

  * * *

  Freya’s boat awaited him at the riverbank behind her garden, just as she had said. A primitive but adequate creation, it looked more like a mud slurry in the shape of a boat that had hardened into glass.

  “Helheim, of all places,” Mimir muttered. “You all right, brother?” he responded to the silence.

  “I will do what I must. Leave me be.”

  “As you wish.”

  Kratos climbed in and pushed off, steering the small craft into the fast-moving current that would carry the God of War along a shortcut back to his home. He could arrive there in a matter of hours if the current remained strong. Rowing with a grim determination, he cast his gaze to the horizon, where crimson clouds were forming. Their sweeping formation indicated difficulty had positioned itself across his path. A red storm was gathering strength to oppose him. The gods of this land sought to do whatever they could to keep him from saving his son.

  Biting rain began to pelt him as the river carried him along. Angry winds whipped the small craft left and right, forcing Kratos to struggle with the oars to keep the boat near the river’s center and clear of the dangerous rocky shores.

  Kratos refused to allow the elements to sabotage his mission. When he turned back to check his way ahead, the goddess Athena stood behind him in the boat. She appeared more statue than flesh and blood creature, with her sandstone skin emitting a netherworld glow. Her face showed gloating confidence.

  The two gods stared at each other in silence. Did she come at this moment to boast? To tell him he would fail? He would not fail!

  The fierce wind forced Kratos to turn around to steady his meager vessel through sloshing waves. After the next wave passed, he turned back. Athena was gone. Kratos shook the rain from his face, believing the goddess was nothing more than a phantom of his tortured mind.

  Within another hour, Kratos reached the riverbank near his house, just as the red storm intensified. He leapt from the craft to the shore. The glass boat melted, dissipating into the water as soon as he stepped on land. As if refusing to accept defeat against the God of War, the winds and rain battered him with driving force and angry thunderclaps, while inside him, anger and guilt battered his mind.

  “You will not succeed!” the God of War snarled, shaking an angry fist at the gods guilty of this treachery.

  He pounded through the mud to reach the door to his home. Throwing it open, he escaped the barrage outside. Quiet and calm enveloped him. Wasting no steps, he dropped to his knees before the bearskin rug. Burying his axe tip into the floor with a quick flick of his wrist, he threw the rug back, tore open the rune-painted trapdoor, and reached in to extract an unblemished oaken box the length of his arms.

  The
Blades of Chaos.

  Kratos stared at them, a whirlwind of terrible memories flooding into his mind.

  Locked deep inside of you, Kratos, is hope, a soft feminine voice whispered inside his head, from a life he had buried away so long ago. Hope is what makes us strong. It is why we are here.

  Jarring memories of his tortured past flashed across his mind: splayed on a stone floor, motionless and bleeding from a self-inflicted wound, Kratos came to realize the gods would never allow him death by his own hand. So, to spite them, he collected up his blades, determined to find a way to free himself of their terrible curse. He watched a veritable menagerie of creatures fall to his indestructible weapons. His existence of relentless killing accumulated a mountain of men who perished needlessly at his hands. Their screams clawed at his imprisoned soul. At first, the God of War tossed the blades from the highest cliff. But a vicious wind swirled the steel upward to deposit them at his feet. The gods, it seemed, had delivered their edict, yet Kratos refused to succumb. Another image played across his mind: he cast the blades into a calm sea. His action induced such rage from the gods that a shipwreck ensued, washing him up upon a black sand beach amid the flotsam. He lifted his head to find his blades leaning against craggy rocks, awaiting his arrival. Despite countless more failed attempts that drove him to the very brink of madness, the gods unfalteringly rejected every desire to be free.

  In his final desperate act, Kratos had concealed the blades beneath the floor of his house five decades ago, vowing never to take them up again. They represented the evil that was once the god, an evil that still haunted him to that day. Determined never to return to that life, he had promised himself he would live not for the evil the gods do, but for the good a god could do.

  Now the same blades fueled his hope that he might save his son.

  He brushed his fingers along the gleaming surface, pausing at the skull face on the hilt. The blades hummed with a power that would never die, never be silenced. They could never be broken or dulled. Thunder reverberated and jagged lightning veins spread across an angry sky as the red storm raged full tilt. It seemed even the gods became aware of what was to come. He gazed at his bandaged forearms—now soaked with blood, never-healing wounds from the chains used to fuse his flesh to his blades. That part of him he had grown to hate now wormed its way back into his tortured soul.

  He lifted the blades out, slowly wrapping the chain links over his forearms, wincing from the jolting pain accompanying each coil. A firestorm of conflicting emotions raged inside his brain, more intense than the tumult raging beyond his door. Part of Kratos felt complete; a darker part felt terrified that this return to his old life was not to be a brief detour.

  A reflection in a blade seized his heart. He turned. Athena, the one goddess that so tormented his mind, filled the doorway. A fierce lightning flash illuminated her silhouette as she watched him silently with a smug, satisfied smile on her otherwise stone face.

  “There is nowhere you can hide, Spartan,” she said.

  Kratos chose to ignore her, returning to the task of wrapping the chains.

  “Place as much distance between you and the truth as you wish. It changes nothing. Pretend to be everything you are not… teacher… husband… father.”

  The word father triggered a fierce snarl from the God of War.

  “But the one unavoidable truth you can never escape is that you cannot change. You will always be a monster.”

  Kratos completed chaining the blades to his arms. His stare held Athena’s.

  “I know, Athena,” he admitted. The shrill screams of those he had killed flooded every corner of his mind. His voice carried no strength, no defiance, only acceptance. Without breaking his stare at the goddess, he fastened the blades securely on his back.

  “But I am your monster no longer.”

  Retrieving the axe from the floor, the God of War holstered it now on his belt, on the side opposite Mimir, before marching for the door, walking through the apparition to dispel the goddess into a cloud of rainy mist.

  “I knew it! You’re Greek. Suspected it all along.”

  Kratos glared.

  “What? I am familiar with the goddess Athena.”

  The violent red storm lashed at Kratos as he exited. Surging rain pelted him. Thunderclaps resounded from within angry, churning clouds, accentuated by powerful jagged lightning streaks aimed at the trees near Kratos as he journeyed back to the caldera.

  As the storm shook the world around him, all manner of forest creatures prowled for things to kill. Employing his powerful blades with the same efficacy as in his past, Kratos easily dispatched each that chose to attack him.

  “Release the worst of your monsters! You will never defeat me,” he roared into the storm, his rage pitched by the thought of losing his son.

  As if to surrender, the storm diminished by the time Kratos reached the temple, marching past Brok at his workshop. The dwarf glanced up casually at first, but then he did a double-take, salivating when he saw the Blades of Chaos.

  “Sweet Nanna’s nethers, what are those?” he asked, held transfixed by the sight.

  When Kratos slowed, Brok stepped before him, forcing him to stop. The little man circled the God of War, indulging in a more discerning examination of the gleaming steel. The glinting light held him spellbound as he admired the craftsmanship with wonder.

  “I have never seen the like… not from any of these realms… That has gotta be a family heirloom,” he said, awestruck, his words laced with a metalworker’s reverence few others could ever understand.

  A cacophony of screams from the dying who had met their fate by those blades ripped through Kratos’ mind.

  “No. Nor will it ever be,” Kratos said, to silence the torment raging within.

  “Son, my brother and me created Mjölnir for the big idiot… I know quality. And them… them are special,” the little man replied. He scanned beyond Kratos. “Say, where’s the little turd?”

  “Fallen ill.” Kratos’ voice cracked.

  “No. What happened? Aesir?”

  “The fault is mine… and the responsibility to make it right.”

  Kratos’ words struck an uneasy chord. Lost in thought for a moment, Brok nodded, releasing a deep sigh.

  “We all gotta take responsibility some time, huh? Say, what can I do to help him? I can do things, you know. You want I should tag along?”

  “No.”

  “Where are you going with them, if I might inquire?”

  Prying into the comings and goings of a god was not necessarily the smartest move a dwarf might make.

  “Helheim.”

  “Shiiiit!” Brok returned his interest to the blades.

  Kratos remained motionless while Brok accepted the blades to hone their edges with his hammer and file while still chained. When he finished, he returned them.

  “You have done well,” Kratos said, as a way to thank him.

  “A privilege. Say hi to the pimple-flap for me when he’s better.”

  The roads leading back to the caldera proved even more dangerous than before, with warriors of the Aesir flocking to the area after hearing reports of Baldur and Thor’s sons in the area. The foreign magic of the blades, however, did not go unnoticed by them.

  Kratos left the Midgard forest, taking the boat back to the caldera. In the dome array at the caldera’s center, he discovered the bridge already lined up with Helheim. Referencing the Helheim rune Freya had drawn on his palm, he copied it into the sand bowl, using the Bifröst crystal to light the way across the bridge.

  Kratos swallowed any trepidation worming its way into his heart. He tightened his grip on his blades. Only one thing mattered now: his son.

  A frigid foreboding miasma awaited him.

  “What you are about to do is absolutely insane. Not even Odin can survive this cold, so I hope those blades work.”

  As Freya had warned, Helheim proved blisteringly cold, with icy fog permeating the air. The realm existed absent a day o
r night sky, bound in perpetual darkness, which made observation of their surroundings extremely difficult. Kratos sucked in a frostbitten breath before speaking to Mimir at his belt.

  “Freya spoke of a bridge.”

  “There is not a more inhospitable place than here.”

  “What do you know of this bridge?”

  “The Bridge of the Damned? The dead use it to cross into their permanent home, the city of Helheim. The bridge keeper who minds admission, he is the one we want. Just follow this path to the bridge. By the way, there is no avoiding it, or the bridge keeper.”

  “What exists beyond the bridge? What dangers should I be apprised of?”

  “I couldn’t tell you,” Mimir said.

  Kratos busied himself with cataloging every detail of anything observable in their vicinity. He had no inkling of what to expect in this realm.

  “You know, I had really hoped I would never see this place again,” Mimir added, after a discerning pause.

  Kratos shifted the head on his belt before beginning a climb up a rocky slope which, at its crest, revealed a dark, forbidding vista before him. The Bridge of the Damned stretched over a yawning, murky chasm that disappeared into the mist beyond. Dead men marched across, oblivious to Kratos’ presence. Some seemed confused, uncertain if they were walking in the right direction.

  “These dead… what awaits them in this Hel?” Kratos asked.

  “If they pass muster with the bridge keeper, they can cross the Bridge of the Damned into Helheim proper. There, the dead are appraised, sorted, processed, and otherwise put to rest. But judging by the number of dead walking in the wrong direction, the gates of Hel may indeed be closed. We will find out soon enough.”