by J. M. Barlog
“Noooo!” Atreus screamed. In that moment, indecision flooded his brain. He had to decide in a single second which one he must go to.
Atreus rushed to his father’s side with knife drawn. Shredding wildly at the roots, he tore away sufficient strands to enable his father to breathe. The roots, however, continued to wrap the God of War and constrict his chest.
Baldur rushed at the trapped Kratos.
“You might want to turn away, son. This will not be pretty,” Baldur said.
Atreus ceased chopping, turning his blade on their nemesis. “I will never allow you to hurt him,” Atreus spat defiantly.
“No, boy,” Kratos ordered. But Atreus refused to move.
“Show me what you got, you little shit.”
Atreus lunged, vaulting into the air like he had seen his father do a hundred times, slashing savagely side to side.
“No!” Kratos yelled. “Leave the boy be!”
In desperation, Kratos worked a hand free and began ripping with all his strength to break his bonds. Freeing his other hand, Kratos shredded roots until he could return to his feet. Throwing his arms out, he broke free of the roots with a final pull.
“Stop!” he yelled.
Baldur bobbed and weaved to dodge the lad’s attack, launching his own counterattack with a fist slamming squarely into the boy’s chest.
Atreus left the ground, tumbling backward into Kratos’ arms.
“Stop!” Kratos snarled. His face contorted in anger.
Wheezing and incapable of speech, his son fought for each breath. Kratos used a few precious seconds to check his son’s chest. He drew back a bloody hand. The front of Atreus’ shirt and his quiver strap were blood-soaked.
“Atreus, breathe… please…” Kratos pleaded. His heart was breaking. He couldn’t let his son die.
He couldn’t fail his wife.
Atreus shook his head. Between labored inhalations he murmured, “Not mine.”
He extracted the broken piece of the mistletoe arrow shaft from his quiver strap. Unable to eject any more words, he pointed to Baldur.
Baldur stood unmoving, staring at his hand.
Blood.
“What is this? Pain,” he muttered to himself.
The arrowhead and wood splinters stuck out of his fist at obtuse angles. His incessant laugh echoed off the nearby ridges.
“I can feel it,” he announced. He reluctantly lifted his stare from his hand to the boy.
A thin, and until that moment unseen, layer of magical protection that rendered him invincible became visible as it cracked, with the shards toppling off Baldur like sheets of ice. Freya’s enchantment evaporated from Baldur’s body while he flipped from hideous laughter to sobs of realization.
“The spell is broken!” Mimir said.
“The mistletoe arrow was his weakness?” Atreus said.
“He can be killed?” Kratos asked.
“You’ve seen it yourself, he’s vulnerable now.”
Kratos and Atreus drew their weapons, simultaneously advancing on Baldur.
“No!” Freya screamed, having regained consciousness. Now horrified, she stared from a distance. The arrowhead used to repair the lad’s broken quiver strap had been mistletoe, one Freya missed when she burned the lad’s mistletoe arrows back at her cottage.
Kratos attacked, slamming a fist into Baldur’s jaw.
“Yes. Yes!” Baldur cheered, as if experiencing some ecstatic pleasure from the attack.
Kratos pummeled him to the ground.
“Oh, the pain. It is wonderful!”
Atreus hastily launched an arrow at Baldur on the ground while his father retreated a step to recover his fighting stance. The tip winged Baldur’s shoulder.
Baldur let out a wretched scream, staring quizzically at the blood. “I can feel it. More. Give me more!” Baldur taunted.
Kratos obliged.
Baldur rolled away from the God of War’s battering attack to bounce back to his feet, counterattacking with flying fists that landed about Kratos’ face.
“Feeling! Glorious feeling!”
Kratos blocked Baldur’s fists to force him to retreat.
“I never knew how much fun this could be!”
“I will kill you!” Kratos yelled.
“Ha! Killing you is going to feel so rewarding now!”
Baldur grabbed both Kratos’ arms to prevent him from reaching his blades.
“I will not allow you to kill my son!” Freya snarled, slamming a fist into the ground, which caused the earth to tremor with violent rumblings.
Behind Freya, an enormous silhouette emerged in the distance.
The stonemason’s corpse, which Freya reanimated with her ancient seiðr magic, gazed at them through the twilight mist. In the next second, the stonemason charged, and in response to Freya’s sweeping arm movement, the creature’s monstrous hand slammed in front of Kratos and his son, knocking them from their feet, at the same time cutting them off from Baldur and herself.
“You will stop this now!” she demanded.
Realizing Freya now controlled the stonemason’s every action, Kratos needed to find a way to reach her to prevent her from using it against them.
“Do not do this, Freya!” he growled. His words would land on deaf ears. The goddess intended to do anything necessary to protect her son, even at the cost of her own life.
Releasing the Blades of Chaos, Kratos attacked the giant corpse. But the blades were all but useless against it, and nothing he could do could break the magic Freya had employed.
“Father, we need to get around it,” Atreus barked, when he realized Freya’s intent was not to harm them, but simply to block them from reaching her son.
Kratos consumed a precious moment calculating a leap timed perfectly against a chaotic wind, in order for his action to carry him atop the giant hand. Atreus followed a second later. Jumping down the other side, they charged Baldur, forcing him to retreat from his mother. When Freya raised her hand to bring the giant hand up, it crashed into the rock cliff, sending snow and ice shards raining down upon them.
“Ah! I feel it. I feel the cold and the ice. Glorious!” Baldur shouted, spreading his arms to take in the new sensations. But his respite lasted only seconds. He launched a furious attack on Kratos, simultaneously kicking Atreus to the ground on his way to colliding with the God of War.
Baldur now had to become deft on his feet in order to sidestep Kratos’ swipes with the Blades of Chaos. Since he could be harmed, and even killed, he had to change the tactics in this fight. He had to bob and weave to escape Kratos’ assault. Taking up a large chunk of fallen ice, he swung it wildly, forcing Kratos into a temporary retreat.
A hastily launched arrow sailed wide of its mark. “I will get to you shortly, little boy,” Baldur taunted.
“You will stop!” Freya yelled from her place a safe distance from the confrontation. She slammed the hand down again, hoping to knock both men off their feet. But it didn’t work. Baldur scrambled to his feet, to charge Kratos before he could position his blades to defend himself.
But instead of meeting Baldur’s attack, Kratos dodged his assault and jumped up onto the stonemason’s hand, when he remembered a ring on one of the fingers. Lifting the ring exposed a crystal beneath it. That had to be the source of the magic Freya was using to control the creature.
“Atreus, the crystal!” he called back, remembering what Sindri had done to the bow with the dragon’s-tooth magic. He had no time to act. Baldur jumped him from behind and threw him from the hand, back down to the ground. Kratos squirmed beneath him to reach his blades. But Baldur knew how to keep the God of War from harming him—keep him from using his blades.
Atreus nocked an arrow and swung around to level it at the crystal.
“Noooo!” Freya cried out.
The arrow hit its target, producing a blinding explosion, just as Sindri had said it would. When he landed, Kratos spun about, chaotically searching for his son. He had no idea what had hap
pened to Baldur, and at the moment he couldn’t care.
“Atreus? Atreus!” he called in a panic.
“I’m up here! I’m okay!” the lad called down from a twenty-foot-high snowy ridge, where the explosion had deposited him.
A thud turned Kratos’ attention away from his son, who disappeared over the ridge, dashing away in the direction opposite to the fight.
“And I am doing won-der-ful, thanks for asking. Why, I’ve never felt so alive!” Baldur said, with a voice loaded with excitement.
Baldur relaunched his assault on Kratos, grabbing him by the neck and throwing him into a choke hold. Behind them the stonemason’s corpse struggled to regain its footing and return to life. Shattering the crystal had only slowed the corpse; it had failed to destroy the magic controlling it.
“Before you die, I want to thank both of you. You’ve done what even the Allfather himself could not. I’ve never felt more alive!”
“Frjósa!” Freya called out, summoning an Ice Breath spell.
The stonemason responded by blowing a fierce frost blast that separated Kratos from Baldur.
Beyond the ridge, Atreus stopped fifty paces before the serpent’s head, which appeared dead. His mind raced through the earlier exchanges Mimir had had with the serpent. He just needed to piece together a few words to communicate with the snake.
“Mooooog-taaaaaaay-oooooom!” he shouted. He couldn’t be certain, because he had loosely stitched the shards of sounds together, but he hoped his clumsy plea could gain the World Serpent’s help.
He then raced back to help his father in the fight. Three errant arrows whizzed past Baldur harmlessly. He scolded himself for firing without thinking. He stopped, nocked a fourth arrow, and cleared his mind to take aim on Baldur’s back. A deep hiss and the rising shadow stole his attention.
“Father, look!”
All turned from Freya and Baldur.
The World Serpent towered over the ridge, with jaws gaping open to engulf the entire stonemason’s head. It dragged it away while lifting it skyward to swallow the creature whole.
“Damn you. No!” Freya screamed, her magic severed.
Finally free of the stonemason’s attack, Kratos dashed at Baldur, clamping both hands around his throat, tightening slowly to choke the life out of him. Freya, still weak and exhausted, watched from the ground nearby, unable to muster the energy to defend her son.
“Come on, do it!” Baldur taunted, the corners of his mouth inching into a grimace.
“Stop… please!” Freya cried, surrendering to the agony of her breaking heart.
“This must end,” Kratos snarled.
“But he is beaten, Father. No longer a threat.”
Something in Atreus’ voice stopped Kratos in his tracks. He stared first at Baldur, then at his son, then back at Baldur. It was Freya’s influence that tugged at his son’s heart. Was Atreus allowing emotion to cloud his thinking? Was it the way he cared for Freya that made him wish compassion on this fiend? The old Kratos lived only to kill, and would have snapped this one’s neck then pummeled him until every bone in his body splintered. That Kratos could find no reason to let this monster live. But he was no longer that man.
Hearing Freya’s whimpers behind him, he yielded to the god he desired to be, rather than the god that was.
He released Baldur’s throat.
“You will never come for us again. You will never touch her in anger,” Kratos commanded, his face hard as stone.
“I need no protection from you,” Freya said, her voice growing stronger from the realization that her son would live.
Kratos cast his gaze to Freya as if to dismiss her words. She stared back at him, disappointed, hurt, and broken.
The God of War turned his back to her. Then he walked away. Atreus looked at her sadly, wishing he could change the way these things had come to be. He so wanted to be close to her. He needed to feel even a surrogate mother’s love. But instead, wordlessly, he trailed after his father.
Speaking in hushed tones, so neither of them might hear, Baldur addressed his mother where she lay spent on the ground.
“You just cannot help yourself, can you, Mother? No matter what I say or do. You won’t stop interfering in my life,” he muttered, while he himself still lay battered in the snow.
“I was always trying to protect you. I was—” She stopped, knowing she was just regurgitating the same old excuses. “Wrong. I held on too tight. Out of fear… but also out of love. It is not too late for us to build something new,” Freya continued.
“New? No. We cannot. I will never forgive you. You still have to pay for the lifetime you stole from me.”
“Do you not understand? I pay every day that you hate me. But if my death is the only way to balance this wrong—if that alone will make you whole—I will not oppose you.”
Freya looked up. The sadness and acceptance consuming her face were more than any human soul could bear. But they meant nothing to a fiend like her son. Baldur loomed over her, his hands clutching a huge, jagged ice rock, poised to smash her head.
“I know,” he said.
“I love you,” she said in a whimper, now at peace with her destiny and her decision.
Baldur drew back. His face lit up with a perverted gaze of sick satisfaction.
In that moment, Kratos delivered a killing blow to the rear of Baldur’s head. Blood gurgling from his lips, Baldur turned in disbelief. He released a strangled croak. The God of War leaned into Baldur’s ear. “You chose this end,” he whispered.
A fluttering snowflake landed on Baldur’s face. He winced at the cold and smiled faintly, being reintroduced to a feeling he had been forced to live without for over a century.
“Snow,” Baldur uttered, before all life drained from his face. He crumpled dead to the ground, landing curled in the fetal position beside his mother. Screaming, Freya crawled atop her son’s body as plump snowflakes swirled around them. First a few, then the air filled with them.
“No, no, no! My child… my dear, sweet boy,” Freya sobbed, wailing as she surrendered fully to her heartbreak.
Kratos stared at her, unfeeling. Atreus joined him with the same empty face, battle-scarred and grown-up.
“I will rain every agony, every violation imaginable upon you. I will parade your cold lifeless body through every corner of every realm, and feed your despicable soul to the vilest filth in Hel. That is my promise,” she screamed at him.
“He saved your life!” Atreus said.
“He robbed me of everything that mattered to me!” Then she turned to face Kratos directly. “You are a monster… passing on your cruelty and rage to the product of your vile loins. You will never change.”
“Then you do not know me.”
“I know enough.” Freya’s face glowered.
“Do you?” he asked, so plainly that it forced Freya to pause. He addressed his son over his shoulder. “Boy, listen close. I am from the land called Sparta. I made a deal with a god that cost me my soul. I killed many who deserved death… and many who did not. I killed my father.”
The weight of his father’s words fell heavy into the core of Atreus’ very being.
“That was your father in Helheim?” Atreus said, shaking his head. He cast a glance at Freya, then at Baldur. He tried to make sense of it all. “Is this what it is to be a god? Is this how it always ends? Sons killing their mothers… their fathers?”
Kratos finally turned to face his son. Were those words the universal truth of the gods? An inescapable truth beyond anyone’s control, mortal or otherwise?
“No. We will be the gods we choose to be, not the gods who have been. Who I was is not who you will be. We must be better.”
Atreus nodded, convinced and at the same time relieved.
Freya pushed her way back to her feet and composed herself before picking up her son’s lifeless body. With her head high, and her dignity on full display, she turned her back on Kratos and Atreus, walking away.
“I don’t
understand… I know saving her was the right thing, but she seemed all evil at the end,” Atreus said.
“Not evil. You killed her son, lad. Her son. The death of a child is not something a parent overcomes easily,” Mimir said.
“But he was gonna kill her!”
“She would have died to see him live. Only a parent can understand,” Kratos said.
“So you’d let me kill you?”
“If it meant you would live... yes.”
“Look, there was no easy choice, for anybody, brother. But I think we can all agree you did the right thing. The world is a better place with Freya in it. Just… give her time, she’ll come around.”
Responding to a sudden impulse, he hugged his father, with Kratos sliding a hand to his son’s head, too tired to oppose the turmoil raging inside.
“We must finish our journey while I still have strength,” his father said.
“You have achieved the impossible, Kratos. That insufferable sonofabitch is finally dead,” Mimir spoke up after a long silence. For the first time, Kratos detected a subtle ring of respect in his voice.
“I’m not sorry we saved her. We had to,” Atreus said.
“Even if she curses us?” Kratos replied.
“Even if she curses us,” Atreus agreed.
“She’s always hated me… I’m finally remembering how much! But it’s true—the world’s a better place with her in it,” Mimir said.
“Why did mistletoe break the spell?” Atreus asked.
“Vanir magic is powerful, but its rules are slippery and elusive. I’m sure it makes sense if you’re a witch. Oh, but it’s all so bloody tragic… Baldur was the greatest gift Odin granted Freya, the one thing she treasured from their marriage. She only hoped to spare him pain, and spare herself loss—but such impulses can lead good parents to make terribly stupid decisions,” Mimir said.
* * *
Kratos and Atreus wasted no time returning to the realm travel tower on the caldera. Once inside the realm travel room, Kratos inserted the Bifröst into the receptacle to activate the device. Once was it activated, he positioned the table to the new Jötunheim tower.
