Faye pulled the shed door shut. Emotions thundered over her like a waterfall.
What the fuck am I doing? This is a terrible idea. I am not yet fully possessed. We can stay together longer, continue on this journey together. This plan is too volatile. It is not too late to stop this. I need more time to make sure it will work. I…
All of her doubts were true, but could feel the Souls of the Slain battering against her mental defenses, searching for a way in. Once she was forced to sleep, she did not know who she would be when she awakened.
Faye settled onto the furs and bound her knees and ankles together with sashes. If her husband and son found her dead in the morning, she wanted them to find her kneeling. She could not use an improvised dance as a spiritual tether, but Faye was beyond the point of that making a difference. She set out eight elixir vials in a row. Once, the elixir had kept the enchanted spear shard dormant inside of her chest. After making a plea to the Souls of the Slain for help, the protective effects of the elixir had reversed, possibly as a way for her captors to keep Faye dependent on them. It would now be their undoing.
"I revoke your protection. I will die as myself."
Faye choked down the first dose. She drank another vial, retched, and felt the blade quiver deep in her chest as it vibrated to life. She downed the the third vial and the shed around her dissolved, the wooden walls yielding to stone and expanding into the vast halls of Jotunheim. The ceiling vaulted high overhead and stone pillars materialized in endless hallways. Murals reflecting the many threads of fate covered the walls. As her body knelt in the shed in the Wildwoods, Faye rose to stand in the halls of the Souls of the Slain.
"Laufey, what the fuck are you doing?"
Faye whirled to face Hyndla.
"I do not answer to that name," Faye snarled. Laufey. The name was poison to her ears. It was the name of someone corruptible.
"Right. Faye. Whatever. Put those elixirs down, you are going to hurt someone."
Back in the shed, Faye uncorked another vial, and said, "I revoke your protection. I will die as myself."
"Enough of that," Hyndla snapped. "You will do no such thing." She slammed Faye into the ground, driving the air from her lungs. Her scalp stretched and burned as Hyndla seized a fistful of her hair and dragged her along the floor. Faye clawed uselessly at her hands. Whatever strength she had in the Nine Realms meant nothing here.
In the shed, Faye crushed the fourth elixir vial in her hand, digging fragments of glass into her palm.
Hyndla hauled her to a staircase leading down to a dining hall filled with long tables laden with fruit and golden pitchers, and shoved Faye over the edge with her foot. Faye tumbled down the stairs and crashed at the base. Gasping in pain, she staggered to her feet.
The forms of long-dead Jotnar warrior coalesced around her, some of them staying indistinct as shifting shadows, others forming into the face and shapes of her former friends. At least, whatever was left of her friends after the long years spent trapped in these halls, not able to fully move on after death, growing more bitter and rotten with each passing year. The stone Jotunn Hrungnir towered over her, three times her height, his stone face frozen into a twisted snarl and his hand knotted into club-like fists. Thiazi scuttled around her as a crab with brandished claws, then shifted to a horse-sized scorpion. Geirrod menaced her with a flaming branding iron. A final figure slipped through the gap between them, and turned to face Faye.
It was her own counterpart in this realm. Laufey. The version of herself as Faye had once been, wearing her old set of gold embossed armor, the Leviathan axe trailing from her fingers. Out of everyone, Faye hated her the most. Faye and her former self were two different people. Once it had been the source of her strength, the entirety of her world, and now it was the chink in the amor that allowed the poisonous rot to corrupt her soul and threaten the fragile peace she held with her husband and son.
"You have grown soft, old girl," her counterpart said with a rueful smile. " It is time for you to go to pasture, enjoy a nice long rest. I will take it from here. Too many years of peace has made you weak. "
"NO!" Faye spat back at her, "it has made me strong."
"That temper and determination all comes from me, you know," her counterpart said with a sneer. "You are nothing without it."
Faye lunged for her, but Thiazi trapped her foot beneath a sharpened pincer and ground it against the stone floor. Faye stifled a scream.
"I am Faye," she said. "I will die as myself. I revoke your protection. I care nothing for your agenda, for your vengeance. I care only for my husband and son."
"Not this lie again," Hyndla groaned, shaking her head. "You do things for yourself, Faye, not for them."
Hrungnir scooped Faye up by the waist and hurled her across the room. She bounced across the table tops, scattering bowls of fruit and flasks, and rolled to a stop in a puddle of ale.
"You spin around in circles, trying to serve so many different masters and failing all of them," Hyndla said. "If you were a better wife, your husband would be at peace now. Your mind drifts to other things and you forget about him."
"He has a long journey to heal," Faye gasped, rising. "He must take those steps on his own. I cannot make them for him."
Hrungnir swiped at the table with a massive fist, overturning it on top of Faye and using his weight to pin her underneath. Faye clambered against the crushing weight.
"If you were a better mother, you would not have spent so many years letting your son be around a father who openly disdains him," Hyndla continued, leaning over her.
Faye wriggled out from beneath so she could breathe, her hips and legs still trapped beneath.
"Atreus is resilient," Faye wheezed. "There is time for their relationship to grow into something new, something better."
Hyndla leaned in close to her, pressing their foreheads together.
"You burdened Kratos with a child he never wanted. You cursed him to live alongside a visage of his worst mistakes and greatest fears. You knew that. You had many opportunities to stop Atreus from being born, starting from mere hours after his conception where all you had to do was save yourself. The sourness between your husband and son is entirely your own creation. All because you insisted on playing housewife with a god, instead of following the path you agreed to centuries ago to bear Loki and take the path of war."
Faye's heart dropped through her stomach and she felt the taste of bile crawling up her throat. She had no defiant reply.
Hrungnir launched his bulk into the air and slammed down onto the overturned table with the force of a landslide. Something deep in Faye's pelvis cracked and split open, white-hot fractures spider webbing across her bones. Faye screamed, waves of pain rippling across her body in muscle spasms so intense, it felt as though she was being ripped apart. She ran out of breath, took a sobbing gasp, and screamed until her voice grew reedy and her wail dissolved into whimpers.
"You still insist you are doing all of this for them, so that they can have a better life together after you are gone," Hyndla continued over Faye's sobs. "Conveniently, their path to salvation involves an elaborate plan where you try to send them to reopen the gates of Jotunheim, right underneath Odin's nose. Pick what you want, Faye. Housewife, or warrior? By trying to be both, you ruin both."
"Without me, Kratos and Atreus are nothing to Odin," Faye choked through gritted teeth. She vomited. The bones in her pelvis were grinding and crackling as she breathed. "They are just curiosities. It will take time for Odin to realize who Atreus is."
"I suppose it could work," Hyndla grunted, waving her hand. "If they can work out the labyrinths that can be opened only by Jotnar. If they can win the race to gain a few tenuous allies because Odin closes in. If making that journey actually brings them together. That is a very elaborate series of events."
"It was the best I had," Faye whispered. The room swam in a blackening mist as her vision faded in and out through tear-blurred eyes.
"You try to serve so many masters, and yet you fail them all. Here you are, insisting you do everything for your family, and yet you are sending them on the path as unknowing and unwilling sacrifices to fulfill your failed mission of reopening the gates of Jotunheim. All under the guise of fulfilling some 'blah blah blah' funeral rite."
The table shifted over Faye's shattered pelvis and Hrungnir leapt high into the air, and came crashing down. The overturned table buckled underneath the weight and jolted back onto Faye's chest. There as a moment of resistance, and then a sharp snap as her lower ribs cracked and caved beneath the weight. Faye tried to scream again as a fresh wave of agony spasmed across her chest, but could only rasp. The pain dissolved like the edges of her fading vision. Her chest, now lopsided as she looked down at her body, hitched silently as she sobbed.
Faye had nothing to say as she closed her eyes. No last appeal to justify anything she had done. Everything Hyndla said was true.
"It is time for you to sleep. As you have seen, we have an offshoot of your soul here with us, as you have always belonged," Hyndla said gently as Faye slipped into cold emptiness. "We will take care of everything from here. Laufey, Kratos, and Loki. On the path of war to destroy the gods. In fact…I think we can begin now. We have visitors."
Kratos and Atreus sat with their backs resting on the cabin, their eyes fixed on the shed, silent as they held vigil while the day faded into evening. Then the noise started. First it was quiet and muffled. Then it grew louder, punctuated by sharp bangs and the sound of rolling thunder.
Kratos listened with a growing scowl. The grumble crescendoed to a cacophony of crashing timber and shattering glass. He shoved to his feet and stalked towards the shed.
"Father, wait!" Atreus shouted, scrambling after him and clutching his arm. "She said she had to do this alone."
Kratos brushed him aside and opened the door.
"Faye? Are you alright? I know you did not want to be bothered, but, the noise…"
Faye knelt on a pile of furs, her back turned to them. The air reeked of acrid smoke, and there were shattered glass vials strewn around shed. Her shoulders spasmed, and she turned towards them, her eyes serene.
"My ancestors can be very opinionated," she said gently. "They can be loud, but it is nothing to be worried about. All is going well. Very well, in fact."
"And of the broken glass?" Kratos pressed.
"I sometimes get overly enthusiastic during these rituals," Faye chuckled. "There is no need to worry. I am feeling better than I have in long, long time."
Kratos and Atreus glanced at each other, sharing puzzled glance. Something about Faye was slanted. Wrong. Probably just a side effect of her trance. Kratos nudged his son further back with his elbow, obeying an instinct he did not fully understand.
A spasm passed over Faye's face, followed by the same serene smile.
"I really do need to finish this," she said apologetically. "If you could please..." She nodded towards the door.
Kratos backed out, easing the door shut.
"You cannot have them," Faye whispered into the black. There was no pain any more, no sense of self, nothing but an empty and aching coldness. Except for a single ember of defiance.
"I am happy to keep breaking all of your bones here one by one until you stop resisting," Hyndla sighed, "but it will get tedious. Go back to sleep."
"You cannot have them," Faye repeated, cracking her eyes open. How dare you speak to my husband and son through my lips, you fuckers. I will kill every last one of you.
"Hit her again, " Hyndla ordered. "She's still too lucid. Kratos and Loki can tell something is wrong."
You will not touch my husband and son. You will not force them on a path to endless war. This cycle of destruction has to end. There is more to our story than mutually assured destruction between the Jotnar and the gods.
Hrungnir leapt into the air. Faye shoved herself out from underneath the table and rolled away. Hyndla reached down to grab her, but Faye snatched her wrist and twisted her hand back. Hyndla escaped and withdrew her hand to her chest.
Faye inhaled with shattered ribs, fanning the ember of jealousy into smoldering anger, and then rage. It flowed through her, healing her injuries, every breath a wave of purifying fire. Hrungnir swung a monstrous fist down at her, and she scrambled out of the way as the floor caved in around his hand. Faye staggered to her feet, retreating as the massed forms of the Souls of the Slain advanced towards her. Splintered bones ground together in her hip, but she could feel them mending.
During her years in Midgard, Faye felt like she was living as two people: Faye the wife, and Laufey the Jotunn warrior. She had come to disdain the part of herself that was Laufey as the part of her soul that opened her up to corruption. But she had only ever been one person, navigating the shifting currents of duty and family. Sometimes badly. There were many years where her anger and ruthlessness had kept her alive. They were every bit a part of her as her clumsy attempts to navigate life as a mother and wife.
"You should continue insulting me, Hyndla," Faye said, her lip curling into a snarl. Thiazi rounded her in the form of a scorpion and struck at her from behind. Faye batted his stinger away without breaking stride. "If we are listing out my failures, you missed quite a few. I can also be petty, impulsive, possessive, and cruel. I have a temper. But my biggest flaw - "
Thiazi struck at her again, and Faye snapped the stinger off the end of his tail. He shrieked and scuttled up a stone pillar. Faye backed away until her heel hit the staircase. Her chest rose and fell symmetrically as she breathed. Hrungnir, Hyndla, and Geirrod fanned out before her and shared puzzled glances with one another. Faye's own counterpart locked eyes with her from across the room, the Leviathan axe and gold-embossed armor a shimmering beacon amongst a hall of shadows.
That temper and determination all comes from me. You are nothing without it.
"But my biggest flaw" Faye continued, holding her hand to the vaulted ceiling, "is that I demand that everything is done my way."
The Levithan axe tore away from her counterpart, hurtled across the room, and snapped into her outstretched palm. Faye's counterpart vaporized into a swarm of golden fireflies that streamed towards her, covered her body, and coalesced into her old battle armor. Hyndla's mouth slipped open into a confused "o". Faye roared and charged.
She slammed into Hrungnir, burying her axe into the joint below his knee. He bellowed and swiped down at her. She wrenched her axe out of his knee and sliced upwards into the palm of his hand, striking the clefts of stone that joined his fingers together. He recoiled, and Faye ducked between his trunk-like legs to meet Geirrod's flaming branding iron. They locked blades, matched for a moment in raw strength, before Faye disengaged and struck him hard in the gut with the shaft of her axe, forcing him back. As she rose to swing again, Thiazi scuttled up her armor in the form of a wolf-sized spider and latched his many legs around her head, fangs sinking into her neck. Faye swooned and staggered as the venom hit her bloodstream and pulsed with electric pain. She hurled her axe towards Hyndla, then wrestled with Thiazi without looking to see where it landed.
As she pulled the spider free from her neck, Geirrod swung at her knees with his flaming iron. Faye summoned her axe back to her hand, letting it slice through three of Thiazi's legs on the recall and twisting her body to meet Geirrod in a clumsy Ironwood guard. His attack broke for a moment over her guard, then followed through and crashed into her shins in a flash of pain. Faye screamed and cleaved at his shoulder with heavy attacks, heedless to the damage he did to her leg. He stumbled forward, sinking to the ground, and Faye hacked away at the back of his exposed neck.
There was a clatter of falling fruit and silverware as Hrungnir picked up a long table and swung it at her. Faye twisted away from Geirrod and lunged to meet the table blade first. The shock of the impact slammed her back on to her macerated leg, which buckled beneath her and forced her to one knee. The table splintered and split in two against the blade of her upturned axe. Hrungnir fumbled the end of the table, dropping on its side. Faye darted around it for cover and chopped at the back of his heels, hacking at the gaps between his stone exterior. He turned towards her and Faye chucked her axe into one of his scowling eyes. He howled in pain and clawed at his face, trapping the axe between his massive fingers as he thrashed wildly around the halls.
Thiazi charged Faye again, taking the form of a wolf-sized crab with venom-laced pincers. Faye dodged the pincers and body slammed him, wrapping her arms around his carapace. She hauled him off the ground and smashed him again and again into the stone pillar, until his carapace split open. Hrungnir staggered back across the hallway, dug the axe blade out of his pulverized eye socket, and charged Faye. She called the axe back to his hand, and hurled it into his other eye. He bellowed in agony and thrashed wildly around the hall, upturning tables.
Geirrod lay motionless on the ground, the back of his neck resembling partially chewed meat. Thiazi spun in circles on the ground as she shifted wildly from lopsided spider, to a tail-less scorpion, to a crab missing his front pincers. Hyndla stood with the same stupid "o" on her face. Faye lunged towards Hyndla and wrapped her hands around her former mentor's throat. The look she gave Faye was so pathetic, so helpless, offering no resistance as Faye began to strangle her. With a snarl in disdain, she cast Hyndla onto the floor and stood in the middle of the halls, panting.
"IS THAT IT?" Faye roared. Her muscles itched to swing her axe again, to feel the metallic sting of blood in the air, to feel flesh yielding before her blade. Hyndla, Thiazi, and Hrungnir looked so pitiful, killing them would do nothing to stave her blood lust.
"The moment you get a real fight, you fold over and die?" She screamed at the shifting masses of the Souls of the Slain. "CHALLENGE ME!" No new figures coalesced from the mist.
Rage churned inside of her, bottled up from twelve years of being held captive with their claws dug into her heart. She would not be denied her warpath.
She summoned her axe back to her hand, eliciting another scream of pain from the blinded Hrungnir, and marched towards the rows of endless murals painted along the hallways. When she had first come to the Souls of the Slain, she could not look at the murals without her mind slipping into the stream of endless futures. Now, she could study them with a calm eye, and recognized them as works of her own order. Some of them she had painted herself, others were painted by her closest friends. Murals of Kratos brooding over the destruction of the Nine Realms, Blades of Chaos raised high. Murals of Atreus becoming the servant of Odin. Murals of the gods and Jotnar continuing their endless war. Her axe worked poorly on stone, but maybe battering the walls would alleviate some of her bloodlust.
She swung hard at the first mural, and it shattered. A thin layer of stone collapsed from the wall, defacing the mural and leaving only plain stone beneath. Faye cocked her head and struck another one, watching how it crumbled into a pile of fine sand. Faye walked along the wall, striking each mural with short, hard chops, savoring the reverberating clang and the pile of dust crumbling off each one.
"Faye!" Hyndla wailed. Faye turned to see Hyndla staggering towards her, arm outstretched. Something familiar in her eyes soothed the wrath burning inside Faye's belly.
"Those murals are not metaphorical," Hyndla pleaded. "Not just here in the halls. These are the actual shrines of our prophecies. You can't just…"
Faye grinned. Ever mural she destroyed here correlated to the destruction of an actual painted mural within the Nine Realms.
"Our order had a good run old friend, but it is time for it to end," Faye said ruefully. "We became too obsessed chasing futures that worked out exactly how we wanted it to. We ignored so many other possibilities, failed to see there was every an option other than open war with the gods." Faye winked at Hyndla over her shoulder, and swung her axe above her head.
"Maybe the best thing to do is to create a blank slate. Open up space for something new, for people that are new. Something better than what any of us envisioned."
Faye hacked at the walls, destroying murals with short, efficient chops of her axe, paying no heed to their contents. Dozens of them fell before her axe, each one dissolving in a pile of sand. The work was thrilling, freeing, exhilarating.
Cracks spidered up the stone pillars, erupting with showers of ceramic and stone. There was a deep grinding noise, then a roar as one side of the hallway collapsed and dropped away, opening up the hallway to a flash of evening light and fresh air. Faye ventured to the edge of the collapsed section, and peered down thousands of feet to an unfamiliar landscape below partially obscured by sunlit clouds. Mountain tops peeked out from beneath the clouds, dotting the horizon. Warmth glowed a Faye's back and a warm breeze brushed past her shoulders. Streams of golden fireflies streamed on either side of her, scattering across the sky and dissolving in the sunset. She turned behind her.
Geirrod, Hrungnir, Hyndla, and Thiazi glowed with golden light, their forms disintegrating into swarms of golden fireflies streaking into the open air. The hallways of shifting, amorphous shadows emptied as the Souls of the Slain, trapped for centuries by bitterness and denied vengeance within the confines of prophecy, flowed out of the hallways and scattered among the sky as floating lanterns against the twilight. All of the forms vanished except for Hyndla, her glow fading, who stared at Faye from across the hall.
The old Hyndla. Her teacher and mentor. Not the twisted creature who had held her soul captive for over twelve years.
Faye sat down on the edge of the cliff and patted the ground beside her. Hyndla settled down at her side, and they stared out together into the coming night.
"What is happening to them? To you?" Faye asked.
"I really have no idea," Hyndla admitted, weaving her hand through the streaming light. "I can say for for me it feels… like a release. Like breathing fresh air after spending, well, centuries inside of an old, moldy hallway. I can stay here with you a little bit longer, but soon I will go too. It's nice. I welcome it."
"Good," Faye said. "I was not trying to do that," she added, jutting her chin at the escaping sprits, "I was mad and wanted to hit something. Or maybe, in a way, I did know. These years I have spent in Midgard have changed me. I started to let go of controlling everything. I learned how to flow, like a leaf drifting on the stream. Maybe this was an act of defiance against the idea of fate."
Hyndla snorted. "A leaf drifting on the stream? You threw a temper tantrum and started smashing priceless, sacred, shrines depicting prophesies that you didn't like."
Faye shrugged. "I chose a battle axe as my weapon. I am not a subtle woman."
"One thing I am curious about. Why break the protection stave?"
"The path to the Mountain is dangerous, and I thought Kratos might be unwilling to risk Atreus on it," Faye said. "Between us, Kratos has always been the more protective one. I was worried he would delay, and them just staying close to home for too long would make them sour." She slumped, drawing her knees back from over the edge and clutching them against her chest. "Is it over? The blade… the corruption…" she asked, her voice quiet and small.
"The blade is awakened. The elixir will help you no longer. I can stay long enough to keep the pain at bay, but…the Souls of the Slain as they existed are vanishing, freed from this prison. They will not influence Jotnar again."
"Good," Faye said. Then she burst out crying. Deep, heaving sobs that racked her body, convulsing through her shoulders and ribs as she buried her face against her knees.
"You were right about everything," she gasped between sobs. "About Kratos and Atreus. About how this journey up the Mountain is a terrible idea. I should have done something else. There is so much that can go wrong..." her voice faltered into incoherent sobs. Tears streamed down her face and soaked her trousers.
"Faye," Hyndla said softy, resting a hand on her back. "You do not have much longer. Time passes differently, here. Do you want to go back out to them?"
"No," Faye whimpered, not knowing how she could look them in the eyes after what she had done. "Or, yes," she said, her heart pounding with a new, wild idea. "I can tell them to stop, to just bury me, to forget about all of it, to work together on building a shrine, or…"
"Did you ever prepare yourself to let go of them?"
"What?" Faye asked, looking up from her knees and wiping snot off her face. Of course she had been preparing for her own death.
"You have spent years trying to prepare Kratos and Atreus to carry on without you. Did you prepare yourself for the day when you have to let them go? Realize that a day would come for you to die, for them to go on living, and you never get to know how their story ends? These questions you are asking, 'did I do enough?', 'did I do right by my loved ones?' are questions we mortals all face at death. Did you prepare yourself for those questions? To meet them in peace?"
Faye straightened and dried her eyes. "No," she admitted. She had been so focused on crafting a plan, so focused on controlling the future, she had never thought about it what it would mean to come to this border and just let it all go from her hands. "I do not want them to see me like this," she protested, wiping another line of snot off her face.
"Like what, Faye? Crying? Sad? There are worse things to be."
Faye slumped against the doorframe of the shed, her legs wobbling beneath her. Her face and eyes felt raw from weeping, and her hair clumpy and streaked with sweat. She nudged the door, letting it swing open into moonlight-washed forest.
Kratos stared back at her from where he rested outside against the outer wall of their cabin. He nudged Atreus, who was dozing in a sitting position beside him, awake. Faye felt her throat close. They must have sat there all day and night, waiting for her.
She stepped forward, tentatively released the support of the doorframe, and crumpled to the ground. Kratos and Atreus flocked to her side, Atreus, supporting her head and Kratos lifting her into his arms. They started towards the cabin, but she whispered, "it is nice outside."
Atreus whirled and sprinted towards the cabin, casting the door open, diving inside, and stirring up inexplicable banging and thumping noises. A moment later he remerged, tugging a mattress behind him, and setting it out in the yard.
Kratos growled in approval. He lowered her down on the mattress and sat down with her while she clung to his neck, shifting to rest on his shoulder. She rooted around for Atreus with her free arm, and felt him curl up against her side. Her husband's eyes were dark in the moonlight, his face hardened in sorrow as he tucked her against his body. Atreus massaged her forearm and wrist, the way she had done to him whenever he was sick.
The Leviathan axe lay discarded in the shed, partially hidden by shadows. Faye reached out to summon it, and as she expected, nothing happened.
"Call it to you," she said.
"Faye…" Kratos said, voice cracking.
"Now. Quickly," she urged.
He raised out his hand, and the axe twitched and spun in a circle on the floor.
"Again," she whispered. "Remember its weight, how it feels to swing it, how it is an extension of your arm."
The axe began to crept forward, gathered speed, and snapped into his hand.
"Good," Faye said, nestling against his chest as he set the axe down. " You will need it. That is the weapon of a builder."
"Your… our… ancestors?" Atreus asked. "What did they say?"
"They gave me wisdom. And peace," she said, tightening her arm around his waist. She began to weep.
"Faye?" Kratos said, stirring.
"Mother?" Atreus asked, squeezing her arm. "What can I-"
"I am alright," she said, letting tears stream from her face. "Crying, but alright. I love you both so much. I just wish I was here to see the rest of your story. I am sad to miss it."
"We'll be okay," Atreus choked, stroking her arm. "Like you taught us. Don't worry."
"As you taught us," Kratos echoed, his voice thick and stilted.
A jolt of panic flooded through her veins, an impulse that she needed to say something more, do something more. She let the moment of panic pass in silence, watching the sky lighten with the approaching dawn. She burrowed against her husband and son, focusing on the sound of their heartbeats. Their warmth. The weight of their bodies and arms pressing softly around her.
She died at sunrise, her breath growing slow and shallow, then stopping altogether. For Kratos, all vitality fled from the forest. The scent of pine and loam dissolved into ash and the chorus of birdsong disbanded into a jumble of pointless noise. He remained seated on the mattress, letting the minutes pass by. Sitting or standing, it made no difference now. There was no reason to do anything other than sit here for an eternity. Breathing. Moving. Eating. All of it was pointless now, all the same unending drudgery.
Atreus waited until his mother's arm grew cold, then untangled himself and crossed the yard towards the cabin. He rubbed his puffy eyes, and paused to watch the trees. Chickadees flitted between the branches, shrieking alarm cries as they dove for cover. Jophie leered at him from the canopy, her golden eyes gleaming. He turned to where his father sat, rigid and stone-faced.
Your father is going to be overwhelmed by pain, even if you do not recognize it. I need you to be the strong one, at least for a little bit.
"Father?" he ventured, bracing for a reprimand. "Do you want to prepare her today, or later?"
Kratos startled, turning towards the noise. It was the boy. Atreus. His son, who carried so many of his mother's traits with him. His son, the only spark of life in a world filled with hollowed out shadows.
"Today," Kratos replied, rising.