Kratos's Arc

Chapter 1 of 11

Kratos wanted one thing that no altar could give him: his three siblings standing together as the enforcers of Olympus's law. He had the plan. He had the will. What he had this morning was one sister, and two who would not come. Bia stood at the base of the ash-gray oracle tree, arms crossed, waiting for a word. The others had sent no answer at all. Kratos was the minor god of strength. He had watched the Titans crack before anyone else saw it, and thrown in with Zeus early. He wanted Zeus to say his name someday. But first he needed a force worth naming. "Zelus won't leave the war god's hall," Kratos said. "Nike still runs Zeus's errands and calls that loyalty. Two of us short. We can't be a fist with three fingers." Bia's hands moved, fast and blunt. *Send me. I bring them.* "You'd fight them." *I'd win.* Kratos looked at her the way he had looked at her since the war ended. Careful. Measured. He was about to soften it, to tell her the odds were bad, to spare her the trip. Bia saw the look. Her jaw tightened. She struck the tree's gray bark with her open palm. The old wood boomed like a drum. Roots shifted underfoot. *Stop that,* she signed. *I am not glass.* Kratos went still. *You stopped stepping into my fights,* her hands said. *You think it is kindness. It is not. I earned my place beside Zeus with these.* She held up both fists. *Send me like a soldier or don't send me at all.* The words landed harder than the blow on the tree. Kratos had been building a banner and forgetting the one already under it. He had one sibling who asked for no reasons, only direction. He had been giving her pity instead. He made his choice. "Then I'll say it plain," he told her. "Go to Zelus. Go to Nike. Not as my messenger. As my enforcer. Break their excuses. Bring them under our banner, or bring me their refusal in their own words." Bia's hands stopped. She read his face for the trick, the buried mercy. She found none. She nodded once. She turned and walked, and the oracle tree's roots settled behind her. Kratos watched her go and felt the cost of it. He had a sister who would not fail. That was the problem now. Bia acted on his word alone. Zelus and Nike did not. They answered to the war god and to Zeus. He had just sent one enforcer to pull two more away from powers that would not release them quietly. By dusk, Kratos knew, either his siblings would stand with him, or two of Olympus's greatest would learn his name for the wrong reason.