Words gushed out of Kratos like an unending tide with each syllable carrying the weight of centuries. He wasn't used to such eloquence, nor was he accustomed to sharing so much of himself. His voice, usually sharp and commanding, now flowed with an unfamiliar cadence as if the stories themselves were alive and demanding to be told. All the while, he was actively self-reflecting, trying to rein in the torrent of memories. But something primal and insistent urged him to continue - to not leave things incomplete, to not let the past remain buried.
As he spoke, his gaze flickered toward the skies. The storm clouds had grown more violent. They churned like a cauldron of wrath. Lightning split the skies in jagged streaks, and thunder roared with such ferocity that it drowned out all other noise. The intimate sphere of influence surrounding him and Murugan felt like a world apart that was isolated from reality. There was something eerie afoot. Something ancient and deliberate, and it was affecting him in ways he couldn't fully comprehend.
At first, Kratos had felt only frustration and rage at being compelled to recount his past. He hadn't planned to delve into such detail. He was a man of action, not words, and the idea of being controlled - by the storm, by the universe, by his own unspoken need to unburden himself - gnawed at him. But as the stories spilt forth, a strange shift occurred. The frustration gave way to something softer, something raw and vulnerable. Memories he had locked away, emotions he had buried beneath layers of discipline and fury, began to surface. The weight of his past felt like a river breaking through a dam.
___
The air itself felt like a living enemy.
Murugan sucked in a breath that scorched his lungs. The desert heat clawed at his throat like a parched beast. The weight of the Spartan armour pressed into his shoulders and the grit and sand that had edged its way into the nooks and crannies between the plates ground against his skin like sandpaper as he moved. His hands ached faintly, with his knuckles still raw and split from battle. The itch was further amplified by the salty sting of sand as it mingled with the soft tissues exposed to the environment.
Before him knelt the captive scout, bound in chains that gleamed dully under the relentless sun. The man's attire fascinated Murugan - a tight, sand-coloured fabric woven in a diamond pattern, seamless as a second skin. Every inch of him was covered, save for slivers of sun-leathered, and sand-caked flesh peeking through his wrappings. His face, framed by a muslin headscarf, was a map of cracked lips and dust-caked defiance with eyes as sharp as obsidian chips.
The scout's arms were wrenched apart by iron chains anchored to stakes and his legs were splayed wide. Murugan's muscles tensed as he circled the prisoner like a wolf sizing up wounded prey.
"Despicable!" the Captain interrogating the prisoner spat. "You fight like jackals. Without honour!"
Noticing a smirk on the scout's face, the Captain standing beside the man walloped the captive with a full-bodied punch, causing the prisoner to cough out a mouthful of blood.
Murugan's eyes moved past the prisoner and towards his unit. The thousand-strong army had been reduced to a fifth of its size. And those who remained were near-hollow shells with eyes bored into their sockets like deep wells due to the utter lack of sleep.
From what he could see, Murugan was certain that this mission was on its way to becoming an utter failure. Though he knew that this was the intention from the start - it was assigned to him with the sole purpose of getting him to fail, after all.
It was hard for the aged hands leading the Spartan armies to swallow the fact that a man as young as he was had entered their ranks. And so, as is human nature, they cast a ploy to tame him. Thus, he was shipped off south of the Mediterranean to tame the Scorched Wastelands and the heathen tribals that lived there.
What was the purpose of this conquest? Murugan did not know, and as a soldier, it wasn't his place to ask. But it was evident very quickly that this was a fool's errand and a distasteful one at that.
There had been four prior excursions of this type into the Scorched Wastelands, and each of them had ended in utter failure. Not many knew of the cause because those that survived and returned were mere shells of their former selves. Whatever had transpired had traumatised them harshly, that much was evident.
And it had quickly become apparent as to why they were the way they were.
The tribals of these lands were disjointed and unaligned. They fought amongst themselves much like the Greeks did. But unlike Greece, where the fertile lands could support the development of sprawling nations with a population of multiple thousands, these Scorched Wastelands were exceedingly starved for resources. As a result, these folk had to make do with the little they had. Which in turn gave rise to such ruthless and disgusting tactics, the likes of which Murugan had never seen before in his life.
An exhibit of their tactics could be observed right now. Five men had been sent to the infirmary due to poisoning after a short blade carried by the scout had faintly grazed them.
After the repeated loss to this tactic, Kratos had realised that no exposed sharp edge on these tribal warriors was safe, as it could be doused in one of a myriad of poisons brewed in the ghastly venom glands of the sand vipers that called these Wastelands their home.
The prisoner's coughing fit warped into a rasping laugh of mockery. He looked at Murugan and said, "Honour? Your dead men sing of honour. Their corpses feed the vipers. Tell me, Spartan - do their ghosts praise your pride as they rot?"
The Captain raised his fist again, coiled to strike, when Murugan halted him, "Enough!"
"Tell me where your people live and I will let you go," Murugan said, though he already knew the answer - silence. It was impossible to catch the tribals alive, as they would sooner kill themselves than be taken prisoner. The fact that they had gotten themselves such a talkative native was already a blessing.
"The General asked you a question," the Captain bellowed with a growl. Another punch landed on the man. As the prisoner crumpled, a stone amulet popped out of his neck and landed on the sand. Murugan picked it up and inspected it under the beating sun.
It was a coiled viper. As the stone danced on his fingertips, Murugan's mind started to draw a connection. He whistled behind him and a young soldier marched up to him.
"These amulets," he said while holding the stone trinket up to the soldier, "We have more like these, correct?"
The soldier responded loudly in the affirmative before running back and retrieving a sack a few minutes later. Murugan took the sack from the soldier and overturned its contents.
Out poured a myriad of similarly faceted stone amulets - each harvested from tribals killed in battle. But immediately determined that no one looked exactly the same as the other. Usually, if a set of artefacts is created by the same artist, there are often overlapping artistic flairs that tie them together. But although there were over twenty snake amulets within the sack, none had the same artistic flair as the other. Some emphasised the snake's fangs, others its conspicuous horn, some even went as far as to etch in the snake's diamond-like mosaic leather. Evidently, they were created by different people. But if one considered the sparse population of these tribals, the more obvious conclusion would be that they were created by the wearers themselves.
Snakes weren't the only creature amulets found within the sack. The general trend was constrained within the bounds of insects, arachnids or reptiles. The feature that bound them all together was the fact that they were all venomous, and they were all hunters of opportunity.
Murugan's mind started to compile every interaction he'd ever had with the tribals, and how contact with them usually transpired.
Poison and subterfuge, once again, was the general trend. They would poison the watering holes frequented by his soldiers in the middle of the night, resulting in widespread illness and death. They would sprinkle poison into the food and rations. They would let venomous creatures into the solider's tents in the cover of darkness. They would carry a poisonous pill under their tongues, spitting it onto their attacker's faces when confronted in close proximity. They would remain in waiting beneath the dunes, slashing his soldier's feet, when approached, with poison-coated daggers and running away.
They attacked at night and hid away when sunlight rained down on them.
They were a nuisance. A deadly nuisance.
But unlike his earlier conclusion, they were not unpredictable. Murugan let his rage settle and worked his mind, and very quickly a tactic started to take form.
"Bring me the snake captured last night as it was skulking in our barracks," Murugan declared. The soldier beside him flinched involuntarily. After all, it was never a pleasant experience to wake up in the middle of the night with a deadly viper slithering into your britches.
Like any good Spartan soldier, the boy returned with another sack. He was careful to hold it an arm's length away, ensuring that it did not jerk in his direction.
Murugan grabbed the sack from him and tossed it away. It rolled a few inches in the sand before a snake slithered out. The creature did not waste another moment and started to sidewind away.
Murugan immediately gestured for his Captain to approach him, "Follow that snake. Map out where it goes and regroup here."
Before the Captain could affirm the order, Murugan interrupted him and said, "Ask the men to put away the vibrant armour. For the remainder of this campaign, we will dress like this man."
"But General-" The Captain exclaimed, but Murugan's growl halted the man's complaints.
"The enemy has lived in this land longer than we have. They know it better. It is foolishness to bend the environment to our will," Murugan explained.
He then turned to his dismayed and exhausted soldiers and bellowed loudly, "Four others tried to conquer these lands. And all four failed. Why?!"
"Do we fight on boats when on land?!" He asked, rhetorically.
"Do we fight on horses in the sea?!" Another rhetorical question.
"There is a right way to fight on every battlefield. And those that refuse to adapt to the battlefield, are failures. Are we failures?!" Murugan asked.
The soldiers assumed that the question was rhetorical, but Murugan disabused that notion by asking again with greater force, "ARE WE FAILURES?!"
"NO, SIR!" His soldiers responded. Gone was the dread and exhaustion. Their hollow eyes were replaced with conviction and bloodlust.
"But, General…" The Captain said in a low whisper as the soldiers celebrated the rebound in morale. "These tactics… they are sacrilegious. Poison is a woman's way. It is cowardice!"
"War is war, Captain," Murugan responded. "It matters not where or how it is plied. In fact, Ares would be more disappointed in us if we did not evolve our tactics to match and trounce the enemy."
He then approached the kneeling Scout whose eyes alternated between dread and rage.
"The snake must know the way to the closest watering hole," Murugan stated matter-of-factly. "It wouldn't be far-fetched to assume that other… creatures that are in need of water would be nearby as well, correct?"
A sense of urgency flashed past the scout's face before he opened his mouth wide and let his tongue slither towards his molars. But Murugan was faster. Like a scorpion ready to strike, his palm wrapped around the scout's neck and squeezed.
The involuntary muscular reflex caused the scout's jaw to go slack, wide enough for Murugan to send two fingers into his mouth and fish out an inconspicuous capsule similar in appearance to a regular tooth.
"Ask the medic to try and replicate this," Murugan said as he handed the capsule to his Captain. "If they are willing to carry it in their mouths and use it to kill themselves, then they must not have built immunity to this strain."
As he left the wheezing scout behind him, the Captain suddenly asked, "What do we do with this one? Do we interrogate him for more information?"
"He has nothing more left to give us. He is of no use to us anymore," Murugan declared. And not a second later, the Captain separated the scout's head cleanly from his neck.
And in the man's eyes, as they rapidly lost the spark of life, Murugan saw himself. He was still Kratos. And his skin was a healthy shade of peach.
___
What is the definition of victory in warfare?
This was the thought roaming through Murugan's mind as he stood atop the hill overlooking the burning city of Helikos. For all intents and purposes, this was a victory. The siege was long but decisive. The soldiers in the city were outnumbered by Spartan soldiers at a ratio of 4 to 1. There was absolutely no way they could lose!
They did not lose. The Spartan army had sieged, captured and razed the city to the ground. But at what cost?
"Over five thousand, General," the Captain explained with a quiver in his voice. Murugan turned to face the individual and was inwardly surprised to see a different face. It was at that moment that the gory visual of his previous Captain being pulled out of his horse by deranged citizens and torn apart resurfaced in his mind. "The medics are still counting, so it could be more."
"What of the city?" Murugan asked. They weren't supposed to raze it. But they weren't left with much choice.
The response was silence, which ironically spoke volumes.
"I don't understand, General," the Captain expressed. "We won. I know we did. But it doesn't feel... right. We lost so many brothers and gained so little. The victory rings hollow. But I do not know why things turned out this way."
It was a complex query because the answer was shrouded beneath layers upon layers of actions that culminated into the current consequence.
Weeks earlier, Murugan's strategies had been flawless - one could even say textbook. He first cut the supply lines and truly isolated the cities by shooting messenger birds. All he had to do was wait.
But his patience had frayed as his and his troops' blood simmered for glory. Hungry for a swift end, Murugan had ordered the army to encircle Helikos's walls in a crushing display. Tents sprawled across the landscape like a meadow of steed with Spartan banners snapping in the wind. He wanted to crush their spirit.
To that end, he paraded siege engines daily. Using catapults to hurl not just stones, but the corpses of executed scouts over the walls as a warning. This was his first mistake. What was supposed to be a warning, had turned into the very symbol that united everyone within the city. Even the fracture of class and creed was healed in the city's square beneath the dangling corpses of the scouts.
His actions were successful, as the city offered a conditional surrender. But Murugan scoffed at the offer. In the face of an overwhelming advantage, he did not deign to consider his opponent's measly attempts to secure a meagre advantage. He was certain that he could take it all. This was his second mistake. His message of intimidation was the very spark that caused the city's leaders to set their own granaries ablaze. The message is as clear as war drums: If we starve, you'll feast on ashes.
His third was in taking the fight into the streets. The Spartan army siphoned into the city at the first breach, and spread themselves thin in an attempt to secure the city in one fell swoop. Their victory over the city's army was swift, but what transpired after was what sent things down a catastrophic spiral.
"When a cat chases a mouse, the mouse does not fight back and focuses only on escape. But when a cat corners a mouse, it fights back," Murugan explained. "Why? Because when it realises that there is no escape - when there is no option left for flight - all it can do is fight. And that is when it is most dangerous. Because although the cat is superior to the mouse in strength, its victory will not be without a cost."
The citizens had armed themselves. A Spartan private, barely sixteen, screamed as a vat of boiling oil drenched him from a rooftop. His skin sloughed off like melted wax, the stench of cooked flesh drawing feral dogs.
Elders tipped wheelbarrows of burning waste into narrow lanes. The sewage clung to armour, seeping into joints, and melting skin beneath. The men turned into living torches, with their agonising cries echoing off stone.
Blacksmiths ambushed the vanguard, pouring liquid metal into visor slits. One soldier's final scream bubbled through his helmet with his eyes boiling in their sockets.
A boy no older than ten plunged a rusted knife into a Spartan's thigh, severing the artery. "For my sister!" he shrieked, vanishing into a sewer grate before Murugan's blade could find him.
Murugan closed his eyes and let the moment seep into his bones. Above, thunder growled and a flash of lightning seared the sky. Storm clouds formed within seconds before unloading a torrent from the heavens onto the earth.
"You are correct," Murugan said. "This wasn't a victory. There is nothing to show for it."
The Captain opened his mouth to reply, but a crack of thunder drowned out his voice.
Murugan looked towards his feet, at the puddle that was rapidly growing. And in the unsettled waters, he observed his reflection.
He was still Kratos. And his skin was a healthy shade of peach.
___
Murugan jumped from one shattered memory to the next, each a fleeting glimpse into Kratos' past. They were presented in chronological order, but like shards of a broken mirror, reflecting different facets of the man's life in one battlefield after the next. Each memory revealed Kratos' exploits: his hard-won victories, the painful stumbles of his mistakes, and the difficult, often reluctant, process of his growth. These weren't just stories; they were visceral experiences for Murugan as he was reliving them himself.
Murugan had initially held a simplistic view of war. He was wrong to assume that it was a straightforward matter - a clean, efficient method of resolving disagreements. He had imagined it as a series of calculated manoeuvres and strategic decisions. But in Kratos' memories, Murugan saw the true face of war, the horrifying depths to which humanity could descend in its name. He witnessed the brutal realities of conflict: the senseless violence, the collateral damage, the lingering scars on both the victors and the vanquished.
This went on for a while until Murugan was thrust into one memory unceremoniously. There was no smooth transition, there was no context. It began simply with a sweeping vista of a battlefield. All around him was an endless expanse teeming with an endless tide of flesh, the size of which Murugan had never seen before in his entire life.
This wasn't an army, this was a horde in the truest definition of the word. A horde of barbarians armed plainly with nothing more than simple weapons - blunt swords, spiked war hammers or axes. They wore no armour, just leather and bones of animals. And they had no tactics, no formations.
The air crackled with the raw energy of chaos. The Spartan phalanx met the barbarian horde with disciplined ferocity. Spears flashed, shields clashed, and the ground ran slick with blood. The Spartans, though outnumbered, fought with the training and precision that defined their reputation. Inevitably, barbarians fell in droves, as their crude weapons were no match for the Spartans' superior weaponry and formation. For a time, it seemed the Spartans might hold.
But the horde was relentless. Wave after wave of barbarians crashed against the Spartan line like a suffocating tide of flesh. Fatigue was quickly building up, not just amongst the soldiers, but on their gear as well. The Spartan shields began to splinter and their ranks started to thin gradually. The disciplined formation faltered, and a point of weakness grew into a blaring opening that finally broke it all.
The battle then devolved into a brutal and chaotic melee. Murugan felt the press of bodies, the screams of the dying and the metallic tang of blood in the air. It was a maelstrom of violence, blood, death and gore.
With a grim expression, Murugan abandoned his command and carved a path through the horde. His xiphos found its mark again and again as it cut through one opponent after the other. He fought with a ferocity that bordered on madness. Ultimately, though, it was a desperate attempt to stem the overwhelming tide. But even he could not be everywhere at once. The barbarians were too many.
Through the chaos, his gaze fixed on a hulking figure at the heart of the horde – the barbarian leader. The man was a mountain of muscle. He wielded a massive war hammer that crushed Spartan soldiers like insects with each swing. While the barbarians were largely disorganised, Murugan noticed that there was an unspoken deference when it came to the leader's commands.
With a swift decision, Murugan hoped that if the leader fell, the horde might falter. Without putting more thought into the decision, he charged towards the man like a whirlwind of destruction.
The clash was brutal. But Murugan immediately realised that he was outmatched. No amount of agility and skill could trounce the barbarian leader's raw power and endurance. The hammer, a crude but devastating instrument, smashed against Murugan's shield. The force of the blow reverberated through his bones and sent him flying. He collided against a large rocky protrusion and his shield splintered and crumbled around his arm.
The barbarian leader roared. The primal sound echoed across the battlefield and carved a moment of silence amidst the cacophony.
The man rushed towards Kratos with his hammer raised for the killing blow.
In his opponent's blood-red eyes, Murugan saw himself. He was still Kratos. And for the first time, he saw fear in Kratos' face. It was a momentary flash, which was immediately trounced by a wave of rage.
"ARES!" Murugan yelled. He was familiar with this name at this point. Each war that he had experienced from Kratos' memories had been in some way dedicated to this entity - the God of War from Kratos' lands.
"DESTROY MY ENEMIES, AND MY LIFE IS YOURS!" Murugan declared. In the silence carved by the barbarian leader's roar, Murugan's voice echoed into the heavens.
A beat passed in reality, but Murugan could feel his time extending. The cloudy skies parted, and two grotesque harpies, with their leathery wings outstretched, descended through the gap. In their talons hung a length of chain. And tied to the ends of the chains were two wickedly curved blades.
Before Murugan could fully process the approaching weapons, the chains lashed out, coiling around his wrists, searing into the flesh and tethering themselves to his bones. The pain was intense.
Murugan blacked out as his mind swirled into a vortex of agony. Then, just as suddenly, consciousness returned, and he found himself back on the battlefield. But the scene was transformed. The chaotic melee had ceased, replaced by an eerie stillness.
His gaze fell to his hands. He was holding something… something heavy and wet. He looked down. In his grasp lay the severed head of the barbarian leader. The man's eyes were wide and lifeless, and his tongue lolled from his gaping mouth. A dark, viscous pool spread beneath the head, staining the cracked earth and his feet. Murugan stared into the crimson reflection shimmering in the pool.
It was Kratos staring back at him. But the vibrant intelligence that usually shone in his eyes was gone, replaced by something altogether different.
Ingenuity and curiosity that had once flickered in those orbs now burned like two coals of pure, unadulterated rage.
___
The memories that followed were a whirlwind of death and rage - an endless, suffocating torrent of rage. It wasn't a controlled anger, like a focused strike against a specific enemy. This was a blind, all-consuming fury. It was like a wildfire that devoured everything in its path.
Murugan felt himself drowning in the emotion as the raw intensity of it seeped into every crevice of his mind and threatened to overwhelm him. He could feel himself, as Kratos, teetering on the edge of an abyss - the line between control and madness blurred with each swing of the blade.
There were flashes of clarity. There were moments where he could see the carnage he was wreaking and absorb the sheer brutality of his actions. But those moments were fleeting, swallowed by the ever-present tide of rage.
He was a weapon, a vessel for destruction, driven by a force he could no longer contain. Then, the whirlwind intensified. The images blurred into a chaotic kaleidoscope of blood and screams, culminating in a single, horrifying instant. The storm within him abruptly subsided, leaving an eerie silence in its wake. The ringing in his ears faded. The call of rage had subsided.
He looked down. His hands, still slick with blood, trembled.
Then, he saw them. Kneeling amidst the carnage and flames, Murugan found himself before two bloodied corpses. One was a woman, her once beautiful face now twisted grotesquely in a mask of terror. The other, a child - a little girl.
Lysandra, his wife. Calliope, his daughter. Their names echoed in his mind. Their faces, contorted in their final moments of agony, were seared into his memory, forever staining every happy recollection he had of them.
Murugan felt a wave of nausea rise in his throat. He looked at his hands again that was coated in a dark, accusing crimson hue.
It was all Ares' fault. Murugan managed to unearth another fragment of clarity from his earlier warpath and was shocked to realise that in his rage to quell the followers of Athena, he had killed them! He had killed the two people he loved the most in the world.
"Do you realise now, Spartan..." a voice rasped from behind him. Murugan followed the voice and was met with the spiteful gaze of the village's oracle. The woman had tried to stop him and reason with him. "The God of War you so ardently worship has fooled you! But you... *cough* didn't LISTEN!"
Murugan wanted to respond, but the guilt blocked the words in his throat. The woman struggled as the spear impaling her caused a fresh fountain of blood to gush out of her.
"This was all caused by you, Spartan!" She rasped. "Not Ares! YOU!"
She looked deep into Murugan's eyes, and as her life faded, she uttered words that were laced with venomous spite, "I curse you... to never forget what you did... may it remind you every waking day of your life... I... curse... you..."
With its foundations weakened by the battle's fury, the temple groaned and shuddered. Flaming pillars buckled and cracked, sending fiery debris raining down upon the carnage below. Murugan scrambled to his feet just as a massive pillar toppled towards the bodies of his wife and child. With a desperate grunt, he braced himself against its immense weight with the searing heat of the flames licking at his skin. He gritted his teeth as his muscles strained, refusing to let their remains be crushed. Through the haze of smoke, he gazed into Lysandra's lifeless eyes. The rage was still there, reflected in his own gaze, but now it was overshadowed by an even more profound pain - a grief so deep it threatened to swallow him whole.
Before his eyes, Lysandra and Calliope began to crumble. Their bodies dissolved into fine ash. The particles danced in the heat, swirling and rising before rushing towards him and searing into his skin. A wave of agonizing heat washed over him. It was a burning sensation that seemed to penetrate every inch of his body.
In those final moments, before their forms vanished completely, he saw his reflection in Lysandra's fading eyes once more.
He was still Kratos but irrevocably changed. His once tanned and vibrant skin was now ashen grey, like a ghost. The rage that had burned in his eyes while still present was now overshadowed by a kind of hollow emptiness.