Chapter 6 - Depth

The axe craved violence. It revelled in it. As Kratos followed the river upstream, he tried to pry into his memories to unearth his mental state during his rampage earlier.

All was well until the axe tasted its first drop of blood. After that, it was like it had a life of its own. It radiated bloodlust, so much so that it incited entities predilected to violence in its vicinity into a frenzy. To top it all off, it even clouded his consciousness, sending him into a trance-like state that revelled in the bloodshed, where his body moved through pure instinct. He was only freed from this trance when he drowned and revived.

Kratos looked at the axe with a tinge of fear and great frustration. Just as he'd rid himself of one weapon that messed with his mind, he was foisted with another that was equally taxing. The axe stimulated his innate bloodlust, and if Kratos decided to give into the state completely and provide positive feedback back into the weapon, it would probably reveal a greater portion of its power.

But Kratos had no desire to go down that path. As a warrior by blood, he believed firmly that weapons were merely tools to realize the wielder's will. That had been his training from the start.

That being said, the irony wasn't lost on him that for the greater portion of his life, he'd wielded the horrible Blades of Chaos. While they were a symbol of his bondage to Ares and the Gods of Olympus, they were also his de facto weapons of choice. The blades would kindle Kratos' rage and be equally augmented with the rage he fed back into it in a sort of grotesque symbiosis. Very much like the axe.

During his quest for vengeance, Kratos had cared little for the consequences of using the blades. He just wanted results, and the Blade of Chaos were notoriously effective in materialising those results. Now, with hindsight, he could see the cost more clearly. After learning from his mistakes, Kratos resolved to listen to his overseer's teachings from his childhood and denounce any weapon that overpowered his psyche, depriving him of clarity and sense.

Yet, the axe was now tethered to him.

As he ripped apart the jaws of a tiger that had attacked him and shattered its skull, he glanced at the axe embedded in a tree on the far side of the clearing. It called to him. It sensed the carnage and yearned to partake in it. But it was a slippery slope, one he would descend deeper into if he kept succumbing to its siren call.

After rinsing his bloodstained hands in the river, he caught his reflection in the swirling waters.

It perfectly reflected his state of mind: unsettled. Spartans were trained to have a clear mind from birth. Their only duty was to follow orders; thinking was reserved for those above them. Until they reached the rank where decisions were required, obedience was all that mattered.

Kratos' brows furrowed as he jerked his head up, listening intently. The river's babble and the chirping of crickets and birds surrounded him. But beyond that, there was a voice. Faint, human, coming from somewhere, or everywhere. It was a whisper, barely audible but echoing in every direction, which made its source elusive.

...

..

.

It vanished.

He growled low in his throat and approached the tiger's corpse. Drawing a knife from the pouch at his waist, he began to skin the beast. This land was teeming with creatures he had never encountered. The tiger was one of them: a predator with the strength of a lion and the cunning of a wolf, and worse than either.

Another was the water buffalo, outwardly nonchalant, with skin as dark as the river Styx. Its peaceful demeanour belied the brutal force it wielded when provoked. Kratos had witnessed a herd trample a pack of wolves into pulp. The peasants had, fortunately, found a way to tame them.

It was odd how a seemingly gentle herbivore could be capable of such violence.

His mind recollected Rama, the herbivore, and contrasted him against the same Rama from his axe-induced nightmares. And then it all made sense.

Everyone is capable of violence. It lies dormant within their animal nature, barely restrained by the thin veneer of civilization. For most, all it takes is a gentle nudge for that facade to crumble. For others, more force is needed. But in the end, violence always prevails.

Kratos lit a fire and methodically treated the tiger's hide. His deer hide garments had been reduced to tatters from his recent battles, and the tiger's pelt would make a worthy replacement. Perhaps it would also send a clear message to potential threats.

And as he let the hide dry itself before the fire, Kratos fought against his fleeting consciousness as sleep attempted to embrace him.

Kratos snapped awake at the sound of a voice. The whisper had returned, faint and omnipresent, echoing from all directions. His head swivelled, searching, but once again-

...

..

.

It vanished.

Water is the bedrock of any civilisation. Water gives life, water sustains life. Without water, there cannot be life.

This fact held true even here. Wherever the river flowed through, Kratos could see life flourishing. Villages and whole cities had grown up around the river. It cut through forests, plains and hills, and left vibrant life in its wake. But what astonished Kratos was that the river was the pathway into the afterlife for the people in this world. Upon death, the corpse is burned and the ash is deposited into the river amidst prayers.

It was off: the same entity that bestows life and is celebrated for it is the same entity that shuttles the dead away.

His trip that veered northwards brought him to a large city.

From a distance it was a smear of white and gold with the river cutting through the middle of it. Tall stone walls ringed the whole city, old enough that the wind had rounded their edges. They looked less like a defence than an enclosure, as though what lay inside was being kept rather than guarded.

As he approached the city, its walls climbed out of the earth itself. The surface was adorned with intricate carvings of deities, celestial beings and sacred animals, along with a good deal he could not recognise at all. They were so well-detailed, and he was so deeply engrossed in them, that he completely overlooked the long throngs of people waiting in line to enter through its gates.

Above the walls rose the spires of temples, their golden tips catching the sun. Bells sounded somewhere behind them, deep and slow and overlapping, and the closer he came the harder it was to stay angry.

"Toll-" The guard droned in boredom while adjusting his helmet, pulling Kratos out of his calm stupor.

"I wish to pass through," Kratos responded blankly.

"Okay... Toll?"

"I said-"

"You still need to enter if you wish to pass through," the guard clarified. "Look, you are free to go around if you don't want to pay. But the entry is tolled. Everyone must pay."

As he said this, he gestured beyond Kratos towards the massive line that led into the walled city. Kratos followed the city's boundary with his eyes, and it disappeared into the horizon. He estimated that a detour would waylay him by a day or two at least.

"Fine," he acquiesced with a growl. "How much?"

The guard raised two digits, and Kratos in turn furnished him with two cowrie shells.

"Thank you. Welcome to Kashi," the man responded while moving aside and letting Kratos through. "I pray that you find peace."

And Kratos was certain that he meant it.

The moment Kratos stepped into the city, he was overwhelmed by an aura of solemnity that hung thick in the air. The scent of incense permeated every corner, drifting from recesses he could not see. Even the gentle bubbling of the nearby river could be heard over the monotonous hum of the bustling crowd. Merchants hawked flowers, oil lamps and powdered ash. Their cries blended with the sharp chants of priests, whose prayers resonated like a constant drone through the air.

This was clearly a place of pilgrimage, Kratos deduced from the reverence in the behaviour and hushed conversations of the people passing by. They were undoubtedly here to pay homage to their gods.

"Begging for forgiveness from beings who care nothing for their suffering," Kratos thought with a sneer. "Weak-"

"It's not weakness to seek forgiveness," a voice interrupted from behind him. Kratos spun around to face a short man, whose height barely reached his chest. The man had long, matted hair, and a gaunt frame, and his entire body was smeared with white ash.

Kratos narrowed his eyes, suspicious, and immediately cleared his mind of all thoughts.

"I'm not reading your mind," the man remarked, his voice laced with knowing. "I can recognize a sceptic just by looking at one. Though I must say, it's rather unusual to see a Shiva-Bhakta harbouring doubt."

"Bhakta?" Kratos echoed while searching his memory for the word. "I am not some sycophant who bends the knee to a god that couldn't care less about the mortals beneath him."

"You say that, yet you cover yourself in ash..." The man reached out, rubbing his fingers along Kratos' triceps, before recoiling in surprise. "Wait, that's your actual skin? Incredible!"

With a growl, Kratos yanked his arm away and stormed off into the heaving mass of people. At that very moment, a loud bell tolled throughout the city. Its deep reverberations cut through all the noise.

The crowd froze in unison, still as statues. Then, as if propelled by a single force, they all began to move in one direction, like the flowing current of a mighty river. Unfortunately for Kratos, he was caught too deeply within the throng to escape.

The collective movement was so powerful that it nearly lifted him off his feet and dragged him forward in a relentless surge. He fought to resist, but the press of bodies was overwhelming. His only option was to force his way out, though he wasn't sure he could do so without causing a scene, and perhaps casualties.

Reluctantly, he allowed himself to be swept along in the tide, which flowed inexorably toward the heart of the city.

As they moved closer to the centre, the smell of incense grew stronger, the monotonous drone of the crowd louder. Kratos noticed that people were converging from every corner of the sprawling metropolis, their paths merging into one. And it wasn't long before he realised exactly where they were all headed.

His eyes were drawn to a colossal structure that gradually emerged from the haze of incense and dust and towered over the surrounding buildings. Its spires were gilded, and the sun coming off them threw light back across the rooftops below. Each one stood higher than the last, up to a central dome.

The temple was vast, far larger than any structure Kratos had encountered. After all, if it was supposed to house all these people at once, it HAD to be big enough. Its foundation stretched for what seemed like kilometres in every direction, cut from a single slab of white marble that took the daylight and held it. The walls were crowded with carved figures, human and otherwise, celestial and Hades-spawned, every face caught mid-fury. Stone elephants the size of houses stood along the base with their trunks raised.

A staircase flanked by pillars taller than any tree led up to the main entrance. Each step was wide enough for dozens to walk abreast, and yet people slowed as they climbed, their feet going quiet. The pillars were carved top to bottom with stories Kratos could not read: battles, couplings, figures with too many arms. Brass bells hung from the arches between them, loud enough to be heard over the whole shuffling crowd.

As Kratos was pulled closer he saw murals on the walls, painted so vividly that they appeared to move in the light of the ever-burning lamps. The stone pulsed with something old. Whatever had raised this place, it had not been mortal hands alone. Close to the walls the air turned thick with sandalwood and flowers on top of the incense, which came from everywhere and nowhere at once.

Kratos had felt this before, in Olympus and in the temples his own people built. Power collects in a place when enough people decide it is there. And there were more people here than in all of Greece.

The central spire went up further than he could comfortably follow, ending in a gold finial that held a point of light like a low star. Smaller shrines ringed it at even distances, one for each deity, each one packed with relics and carvings worked so fine they looked half alive. The archways were tall enough to march a column through, and they opened into chambers that stretched on forever.

The final archway opened into a hall so large the crowd's rush broke apart inside it. People slowed, then stopped, then settled, each one finding a place as though the floor had been marked for them. Nobody spoke.

The chamber was so vast that the ceiling vanished into shadow. Circular balconies spiralled up the walls like ribs, loop above loop, until he lost count of them. Priests stood at even intervals along every level in plain sandal-hued robes, each holding a metal vessel, eyes shut, toes at the edge of the drop. The faint clink of metal carried down through the stillness.

The architecture, the priests, the people all fell away into the background. A smooth, void-black stone stood like a monolith and dominated the space. It towered nearly thirty metres into the air. The stone absorbed light, drawing all focus toward its inky surface. It pulled at him the way a wound pulls at a hand.

No matter where he looked, the monolith called him back by pulling his thoughts toward it. He felt it deep within his bones, in the core of his being, a resonance that echoed through him and, disturbingly, through the axe strapped to his back. The weapon trembled slightly, as if alive with a strange excitement and a sense of recognition.

Kratos frowned, his hand instinctively reaching for the axe, but before he could explore the sensation, a loud gong sounded through the chamber. The deep, sonorous tone reverberated through the stone walls, and the chant of "Om Namah Shivaya" rose from the balconies above, layering in deep, resonant tones. In an instant, everything stopped.

Kratos stiffened, his warrior instincts heightened and his senses were on full alert. He glanced upward just in time to see a droplet of liquid land on his forehead. He saw a torrent of milk cascading down the sides of the black monolith. Priests standing on the balconies above poured vast quantities of the white liquid from metal vessels, drenching the stone structure.

But even with the nigh uncountable horde of priests showering the structure with milk, there just wasn't enough to drown the void-black surface with the off-white blanket of the liquid. What did make its way to the base of the structure was then directed through rock channels, allowing the crowd to dip their palm into the stream and take a sip.

As soon as the liquid touched their mouths their expressions went slack. Their eyes clouded over as they fell into a trance-like state and prostrated themselves before the monolith.

Kratos' eyes narrowed. There was something in the milk, something that affected the crowd. Yet no matter how hard he focused, his keen senses detected nothing unusual about the liquid.

And then he saw it.

The monolith moved.

Three-quarters of the way up the structure there were three thick horizontal lines of ash drawn across the black surface. They were bisected by a sharp crimson slash of powder as vibrant as fresh blood. Kratos stared in disbelief as the monolith shifted. The crimson line quivered, splitting further until it resembled an eye, a single blood-red eye that pierced through him.

The eye locked onto Kratos.

A force slammed into him, unseen but palpable, driving him to his knees. The oppressive weight bore down on him, and his muscles screamed in protest as he fought to remain upright. His gaze never left the crimson eye, and he met its malevolent stare with one of his own. The stone structure grew angry, affronted by Kratos' defiance.

The pressure increased, the ground beneath him cracking under the strain. His body trembled with the effort to resist, but he refused to yield. And then, as suddenly as it had come, the weight lifted. The eye flicked away, but in its wake, a new sensation overtook Kratos: an unbearable itch, as if his skin were on fire.

Every inch of his flesh burned with an insatiable itch that no amount of scratching could soothe. It was maddening, a torment unlike anything Kratos had ever experienced. He gritted his teeth, fighting the overwhelming urge to claw at his own skin.

The crowd began to move again and converged once more, leaving Kratos no room to breathe, let alone escape. Desperate to calm the itch, he shoved his way through the throng, pushing bodies aside as he fought his way to the nearest exit.

When at last he broke free of the mass of humanity, he found himself in an unfamiliar part of the city. The temple loomed ominously behind him. He gasped for air, still battling the maddening itch crawling all over him. His breath came in ragged gasps, each one feeling like fire burning through his lungs. He clawed at his skin desperately to rid himself of the unbearable sensation.

"You looked Him in the eye didn't you?" A familiar voice spoke up from behind. Kratos didn't need to look to know it was the vagabond-like man he'd met after entering the city. "I should've warned you. But you should rejoice, He has taken an interest in you and is prepared to absolve you of your sins."

"W-What-"

Kratos felt his arm being grabbed and pulled. The man led him down the stairs which descended into the river itself.

"Relax, and let Her take you the rest of the way."

The man didn't deign to explain any further before shoving Kratos into the still river.

Kratos was no stranger to drowning; it was a feeling he'd unfortunately grown familiar with. Yet, though he found himself submerged in an endless deluge, he wasn't drowning.

His vision was clear, but the waters were not. A thick, viscous fog hung all around and blurred what lay beyond. And something did lay beyond, as he could see a shadow moving.

Humans weren't meant to swim; water wasn't their intended habitat. Besides, the waters are treacherous, and hid secrets beyond human comprehension. Such uncertainty breeds doubt, and doubt, over time, gives way to fear.

But Kratos was not afraid. Spartans have fear drilled out of them from a young age. Years of abuse and indoctrination numbed away that emotion. Spartans rely on those above them to tell them what to feel, trusting that their superiors have experienced similar things and know the appropriate reaction.

But what if there are no superiors? What if there's no one telling you what to feel or do?

Spartans aren't trained to be independent thinkers.

In the face of unpredicted adversity, they revert to their basest instinct: fight or flight.

That was Kratos' operational philosophy. Yet in this case, he had no idea what he was fighting. The water? Or the shadowy creature circling him suspiciously?

Suspicion deepened as the shadow became clearer with its approach. It bore the eerie form of a woman.

Sirens!

"I'm not like those creatures you're thinking of," a melodious voice invaded his thoughts. The sound echoed everywhere. "I should be insulted, but I'll let it slide."

Suddenly, the shadow jerked, and in an instant, the creature crossed the distance. Kratos found himself face to face with a woman who was not entirely human. She seemed made of water, her edges undulating against the current, resembling a viscous ghost.

"I'm not a ghost either," she sighed, shaking her head in mock disappointment.

By instinct, Kratos flooded his mind with white noise.

The entity sighed again and placed her right thumb on his forehead. Instantly, Kratos felt his body grow lighter, far lighter than one already submerged. It was as though he was being unburdened.

And at the height of this release, he noticed something shocking: the ash embedded in his skin was dissipating, revealing his natural pink hue.

Kratos froze. It had been years since he'd seen his natural skin colour. Yet he had barely a moment before the feeling ceased abruptly.

"Oh-" the voice muttered as the ash dispersed into the water, then rushed back into his skin.

"You are repenting, but not seeking forgiveness. How strange…" she commented. "Instead, you adamantly carry your sins upon your skin."

What did she mean? Why would he want to keep the cursed ash on his body?!

"It's not about what this wants." She tapped his forehead. "It's about what this wants." She pressed her palm to his chest.

"I'm sorry, I cannot help you if you don't want it," she shrugged. Then, with a wave of her hand, Kratos was pulled through a turbulent vortex before he lost consciousness.

Only for a moment, though, as he suddenly felt his lungs flood with water. He coughed violently, expelling water from his mouth and nose.

As his vision cleared, he realised a crowd had gathered. At first, it was a single ash-covered man in ragged garb, but now he was surrounded by a horde.

"He saw Her!" one of the men whispered reverently. The man who'd tossed Kratos into the river squatted and grabbed his hands.

"What did she look like?" he asked frantically, his eyes wild. "Tell me everything."

Kratos shot him a confused, irritated look as he tried to pull free while still sputtering water.

"Ganga Ma! You saw her! We know you did! What did she look like?" he bellowed as he shoved his face into Kratos'.

Still fighting for breath, Kratos reacted instinctively and headbutted him. A crack echoed that silenced the crowd, as the man fell back and blood seeped from his crooked nose.

Without hesitation, Kratos leapt up and hobbled away.

The crowd parted, forming a passage for him to escape the river's edge.

Once far enough, he turned into a narrow alley and collapsed. He inspected his skin for any sign of change. He felt a strange mix of relief and disappointment upon confirming it was still covered in ash.

Was it all a vision? A manifestation of a water-addled mind? And what did she mean by "not seeking forgiveness"?

Kratos knew there were only two ways to find answers: look within or look without.

He wasn't built for introspection. That wasn't how he'd been trained. Spartans don't question. They act. So his only option was to dive back into the waters and confront the spirit.

Sometimes, the solution to a problem is a straight line. Drowning wasn't a concern. Even if he failed, he would try again and again.

And so he did, for a week until city guards evicted him for "desecrating the holy site by attempting suicide." Kratos lacked the patience to explain he couldn't die even if he wanted to. But the spirit never reappeared, no matter how often he tried.

He even revisited the temple, defiantly facing the rock's eye, but the fiery sensation never returned.

After a week, Kratos concluded his efforts were a bust. It was time to abandon this detour and return to his journey.

The river that flowed crystal-clear and jubilant, had abruptly turned a deathly crimson. A faint smell of iron - of blood - tainted the air.

Kratos narrowed his gaze and followed the bloodied river downstream. His eyes fixed on the plains over two kilometres away. There, amidst a mountain of armoured corpses, humans and horses and elephants alike, sat a giant creature. Its skin was red as blood and its nails as long as scimitars. Its horns twisted back over its skull like tree branches.

All around it lay a wasteland - a remnant of a long-drawn and epic battle that had finished a while back. Smaller creatures of similar appearance roamed the battlefield and dragged corpses towards the growing mountain to make them easier for the larger creature to consume.

And the larger creature couldn't care less what its palms grasped, be it a dead carcass or even its smaller brethren. Each and every single piece of flesh found its way into its gaping maw indiscriminately.

The creature tossed a severed arm into its mouth and chomped down greedily. Then, as if sensing him, its gaze jerked towards Kratos.

Its grin widened. Its saliva mingled with the blood of its prey as it dripped from its maw.

With a sudden burst, it stood and broke into a sprint.