"Last calls," said the bartender, glancing around the tavern, his eyes taking in the coarse floorboards, the flickering oil lamps, the barred windows. Oh, and the enormous pile of lacerated corpses lying in a puddle of congealed blood in the middle of the bar, mangled limbs sticking out at odd angles, hacked-up intestines strung over the pile like the ribbons on a particularly gory Christmas present.
A few weak groans emanated from the middle of the pile, a brace of atrociously wounded but still only half-dead bar patrons who had been lucky (or unlucky) enough to survive the slaughter. The bartender repeated his statement, but "Uuuuurrgggghhhh" was not much of an answer, so he deemed that no one else wanted a drink.
He turned back to his remaining customers.
All the girls in the bar had now congregated around Kratos (once he'd had a quick bath to get all the blood and severed fingers off him) and were listening eagerly to his half-drunk tales. Some of them had been initially sad seeing their boyfriends reduced to the rough consistency of jelly in a bar brawl that made the Battle of Thermopylae look like a back-alley bitchfight, but between the free alcohol the bartender gladly handed out to the monstrous Spartan and the rousing tales of slaughter and pillage, they were starting to warm to the "unconventionally handsome" super-soldier.
"Anyway, so that's how I killed 250,000 rabid Mongolian warriors with my left arm tied behind my back. Once the last of them was disembowelled and thrown to the mutant weasels, I hunted down the Mongolian Khan, ripped his eyes out, smacked him in the face with a live porcupine, cut out his large intestine and strangled him with it. After that, I barbecued his uncle over a small volcano, and stole his wallet. And then," he said, swelling up with pride, "I bought myself an iPod."
"Hooray!" the girls said simultaneously, apart from one, who asked in all seriousness, "iPod or iPod Nano?"
"Nano. 'Nother drink, Barkeep." The barkeeper slid a new round of pina coladas along the bartop, smiling broadly all the while. "Closing time soon, Kratos," he warned.
"Sure, sure. Who'd like to see my playlist?"
"Oh, me, me, me!" various girls shouted. Kratos drew a dagger the size of a small dog from between his shoulder blades, swished it around in the air, and pressed down on the pommel. The brutish chords of Mastodon's "Blood and Thunder" echoed around the bar.
"Lovely," one of the girls said, her smile shrinking a few inches.
"Oh, I'm quite a geek when it comes to folk music," Kratos slurred. He put a massive arm around the waists of seven of the girls, pulling out his Blades of Chaos to encircle the rest. Then, very slowly, the whole group tipped over onto the bloodied floor.
"I think you've had enough," the bartender commented.
"Fuck off," Kratos mumbled. "Blood and Thunder" played on.
The door to the bar crashed open. Kratos, the bartender and the girls looked up as one. Not another drunkard, surely? They'd piled in thick and fast during the brawl, it was true, but since Kratos had massacred them twice as fast as they arrived, the influx had slackened somewhat (to the point of not actually existing any more).
But it wasn't some shitfaced punk or vodka-laden nudist. A dark spectre, clad head to toe in the finest burnished gold armour, clutching a blade of pure midnight, stood silhouetted against the night sky. A cold wind blew in, rustling the newcomer's mane of eldritch fire. Raising a bladed gauntlet, the arcane monstrosity intoned, "KRATOS. I HAVE COME FOR THY SOUL."
"Oh fuck, not this hallucination again," Kratos said, extricating himself from his slightly tipsy harem. "It's rubbish. I prefer the one with the elephant and the dancing kippers."
"I AM NO ILLUSION, SPARTAN! FEAR ME! I AM THY DOOM INCARNATE!"
"And I'm your fucking Great Aunt Millie. Bugger off."
"I'll have no hellish immortal assassins from the accursed plains of Hades in my bar!" piped up the bartender. "I've got a reputation to uphold."
"SILENCE, MORTAL, LEST YE BE SMOTE AND SMOTE WELL!"
An unearthly hush fell over the bar. "You threatened the bartender," Kratos said icily, his voice now cold and sober.
"Yeah, you tell 'im, Kratos," the girls said, getting to their feet and regarding the spectre with distaste ("What the fuck is 'e wearing?" one girl whispered to her friend).
"No-one threatens the bartender. No-one but me." Very slowly, Kratos angled his Blades of Chaos at the demonic beast standing in the door. His eyes narrowed.
"THEN LET US DUEL, AND BE DAMNED!" The beast's blade described an elaborate figure of eight in the air, trailing flames of pure Satan behind it.
Slowly, but getting faster, the girls started to edge away from the two opponents. The barkeeper crouched down behind the bartop, gingerly folding his fingers over the head.
"THIS DAY SHALT THOU TASTE THE PAIN OF DEFEAT, SPARTAN. THOU SHALT KNEEL BEFORE ME, AND SUCK MY COCK!"
"Excuse me?" Kratos said, raising an eyebrow.
"UH...I MEANT...UM...SURRENDER THINE SOUL! YEAH, THAT'S IT."
"OK, buttfucker." Kratos took a step forward. "Blood and Thunder" died away, to be replaced by The Misfits' "Die, Die My Darling".
"It is so on."
2B Kontinued!