A GHOST IN A STRANGE LAND
CHAPTER 1
The Spartan's world was fire.
Not the fires of Tartarus – assuming the Underworld was still taking in the dead all these many years after the downfall of Olympus (or, that there were any Grecian dead to take in). Kratos was very much alive, having passed through the afterlife several times, both as one slain fighting his way back out, and as one who had either been cast down there, or one who journeyed there for one reason or another and now sought to leave, he knew what it felt like to be in the realms beyond life.
And in any event, whatever punishment there may have been, or still was waiting for him in Tartarus would be more personal than this indifferent bonfire.
He was surrounded by fire. Crackling flames clung to everything, buildings, streets, trees, hungrily consuming the city he had found himself in – the conflagration having initially distracted him from the manner of his surroundings, before the discipline that had seen him though many human lifetimes had asserted itself, and he had fully taken in just where he was. And he was not in the Eight Realms – he could feel it in his very bones.
Kratos was surrounded by more metal than he had ever seen in his life – even amidst his fellow Spartans amongst the legions besieging Troy – easily the largest mustering of men he had seen in his lives, both before and after godhood. The buildings were made of metal – and towered high enough to reach the clouds, it seemed. And unlike the titanic structures of both his homelands, they were numerous, not unique creations that defined their cityscapes like the statue that stood over Rhodes, or fantastical creations such as Tyr's Temple. No, they sprouted from the ground like grass, towers of metal and shattered glass looming high over him, the fires raging throughout the city flickering in the windows, the light reflecting down to the streets. The strange vehicles that littered the streets were made of metal – though most were wrecked and twisted such that he could not guess their manner of operation. Metal poles of varying sizes had been erected at every street, some holding what he could only assume were sources of light, others with thick cables strung between them, yet others at cross-streets with strange metal devices hanging between them.
No, wherever he was, this was not Midgard – nor any of the other Eight Realms. This place was far too alien, too other to be the place Kratos had come to know since departing Greece.
It had started with a letter, borne by a former God of War.
Tyr had been an infrequent sight since he and Freya had liberated the man from Odin's prison in Niflheim. Once released from his bondage, the former War God had expressed his desire to be left alone, and to travel the realms, and Kratos had been more than willing to let the man go his way, as had most of the others that had kept the Spartan's company.
Kratos suspected that for at least a few of them, the memories of Odin-as-Tyr were still too near to the surface, and while the real Tyr bore no blame for Odin's actions while wearing his face…..
…Brok's blood still stained the floor of the Treehouse. Kratos had seen it on the infrequent occasions when he stopped by the refuge, hoping that Sindri might have returned there, that some form of reconciliation might be reached.
He was…..worried for the dwarf. He knew well what paths a single-minded obsession with revenge could lead a person down, and he did not wish it for Brok's brother.
But Sindri was never there when he stepped from the gateway. Whether the dwarf knew he was coming, and stepped between realms to avoid speaking with Kratos, or the house had been well and truly abandoned, he did not know. Once, the mere existence of dust or clutter would have shown the house to be uninhabited, given Sindri's fastidious nature (Brok would have said 'fussiness'), but that Sindri scarce seemed to exist anymore. Seeing the messy, disheveled dwarf that had turned up for Ragnarök had been a shock – and the few times anyone had seen Sindri since then gave a picture of a Sindri that had not changed much from that. Thus, the shambles that the Treehouse remained in gave no clues to its state of habitation – it was equally likely that Sindri was living there, with no care to the state of his once pristine home, or that he had outright abandoned it, unwilling to live in a place where his brother had been cruelly taken from him.
So, it had been frankly shocking, when Tyr had appeared on his doorstep this morning, bearing a note from Sindri. The letter itself had been short, and to the point. "Come to the treehouse, alone. We need to talk.", signed with Sindri's half of the Huldra brother's rune.
Kratos had not hesitated. Mimir hadn't even protested being left with Tyr, the head busy filling Tyr in on what had happened to him in Tyr's absence – his imprisonment by Odin, how Kratos gained him his freedom – such as it was – and what he had experienced in the three years he had traveled and lived with Kratos and Atreus. Most would have never realized the head was talking just a bit too loudly, just a bit quicker than normal – he was worried and trying to cover it up by being even more talkative and garrulous than normal, but Kratos had experienced much of Mimir's 'personality' over the years.
And, as it turns out, Mimir had been right to be worried.
Kratos had barely left the gateway when they had set upon him, their bellowed cries for the All-Father making it clear that it was revenge for Odin's death that was driving them. A mixed group of Einherjar, lesser Aesir, and, sadly enough, a small handful of humans – clearly survivors of Ragnarök, people who had lived in the village at the base of Asgard's walls, and people who Odin had used as living shields against the armies arrayed against him on that final day. Possible they were here against their will, pressed into service and used in the same fashion as Odin had used them on that day, thought it was equally possible they were just fanatics – bound and determined to kill Kratos for taking their god away from them, as were the others in this motley band. It truly made no difference, for they were trying to kill him with the same fervor as the others.
And yet, something made Kratos stay his hand, just a touch, passing by lethal blows for incapacitating ones. Maybe the months of peace and the regard he had gained in the wake of Ragnarök had made him soft, maybe the god he was becoming recoiled at meeting revenge with his usual means – but something held him back from slaughtering them all as had been his way mere months ago – even the Einherjar, already dead and with nothing to live for with their great fated battle over did not feel like they warranted his rage. Perhaps he had some hope of being able to talk them down once they were beaten, perhaps he feared that tearing through this group would only embolden the next…in the end, it was moot.
He was to regret his mercy that day.
Most of the humans were down, nursing broken bones where they weren't completely unconscious – as the first, sacrificial wave thrown against them, they had accomplished little. Now the more formidable combatants were testing him, the Einherjar leashing their battle-rage as they harried at him, looking for him to overextend so they could rush him – the narrow paths of the World Tree were more Kratos' ally in this fight than theirs, preventing them from surrounding him and threatening his flank. Bellowing in rage, one of the larger ones that Mimir had dubbed a 'Brute' finally seemed to give into his fury, and had charged Kratos, heedless of the consequences. Kratos met him, shield to fist, the strength of the monstrous warrior pushing him back a step, but his shield held, and he made to throw the man back with a vicious swipe of his shield…but the Brute had seized the ends of Kratos' shield in his meaty hands, and was holding it in place, his formidable strength able to match the war god's, if only temporarily. Had he time, Kratos would have eventually ripped the shield from his opponent's grasp, but time was a commodity he did not have.
The rest of the Einherjar had plunged into the fight, clearly anticipating their larger comrade's stratagem, and Kratos was now sorely pressed. He twisted and weaved as best he could while still matching his strength against the Brute's, but his mobility was compromised, and the narrow paths of Yggdrasil now worked against him. A false step would see him plummeting off the path – and worse yet, one of his enemies might well be willing to make that sacrifice to see him ended – the Einherjar were dead, after all, what else did they have to lose? His axe slashed through the air to his right, its keen edge keeping the attackers back for the moment, but this was a stalemate that could not endure. Worse yet, through the crush of flesh trying to get to him, Kratos could see the lesser Aesir had huddled up, and were doing something – spell-work if he had to guess. Lesser gods they may be, but Kratos had learned from hard experience never to underestimate the powers of even the meanest god. He had to break from this situation – and fast.
The red energy of his last resort had just begun to flicker across his skin when his doom came, not from the undead warriors pressing him, nor from the minor gods weaving some spell that would seal his doom. No, his doom came from a pair of arms wrapping around his left leg, and a rasped voice.
"Face oblivion, false god." Forced through a mouthful of bloody froth, eyes consumed by fanaticism, a man, a human, one of those that Kratos had stuck down, but not killed, had drug himself on two broken legs to grasp Kratos' leg. His grip was that of string, it would be less than a moment's effort to kick him away, but it was a moment Kratos did not have. For in his hand, this human held a Yggdrasil Seed, the only means of accessing the World Tree's branches, but one cracked, and leaking energy in an alarming fashion.
His attention already pulled in so many directions, this newest distraction proved to be the tipping point, for a split second, Kratos' focus wavered, and his opponents took vicious advantage. With a guttural yell, the giant's arms surged as he overpowered Kratos, first breaking the god's stance, and then hurling him to the side.
Off the path.
As he fell, he could hear the man clinging to his legs laughing, a wild, mad thing that still rang with a note of triumph. For a long moment, the two of them hurtled through the empty space in the Realm between Realms, then whatever stresses had been placed on the seed reached the breaking point, and it detonated, tearing the two enemies apart, sending them spiraling through the void in opposite directions. The last thing Kratos saw was a tear in the air, a rip something like what Nidhogg had appeared from.
And then blackness.
When Kratos came to, it was in the depths of a crater of his own making, one he had driven into the streets of this strange, burning city.
He hurt – he had no idea the distance he had fallen, but comparing his aches to previous instances of him plummeting from great heights, he had to have fallen a considerable distance, possibly equivalent to the height had tumbled from Baldur's slain drake. At least that time he had been able to absorb some of the shock of the impacts with his shield, though his pain had been the farthest thing from his mind at the time. Baldur had had his son, and mere pain was not going to stop him from tearing the god apart, 'invulnerable to all threats, physical or magical' be damned.
Gingerly, he picked himself up from the ground, and took stock of his injuries. Nothing broken, as far as he could tell – he was battered and sore, and would be sore for a time, but he could move, and he could fight, if need be. He had enough in his reserves to rapidly mend his flesh once, maybe twice – but not knowing what, if anything, may be lurking in this pyre of a city, better to husband that for a more dire situation that what he currently faced. He was not in peak form, not remotely, but he was still a god – which meant he would be more than a match for just about anything he could encounter, short of another god.
His injuries seen to, Kratos then quickly took inventory. While it had not been in his hand when he woke, his axe had been nearby, as it came quickly to his call when he summoned it. He had left the Blades at home – he was carrying them less and less these days, as the need for them diminished daily. Hel-walkers were becoming less and less common, with Sigrun working tirelessly to fix the massive overcrowding that the Desolation had caused in Hel. Draupnir, however, remained on his finger, hidden in its passive form as an innocuous looking ring, so he had another option beyond his fists should he somehow be prevented from using his axe. His knife was secured on his belt, unlikely to be useful in combat, but still useful to have for sheer utility. The light source remained on his waist, and it seemed to only have suffered superficial damage in the fall. That was good – there was likely no way he could replace it if it was lost or broken, Brok was dead, and Sindri….
Later.
The small pouch where he kept his keepsakes was intact – the cloth that had held his wife's ashes remained inside the pouch, undamaged, wrapped around a small object. While none of the objects inside that pouch held any intrinsic value, he would have been loath to lose them. His other pouch held a few small handfuls of hacksilver – with Fimbulwinter receding, money was once again being accepted as barter in parts of the Eight Realms that had previously had no use for it – as one could not eat money, nor could it keep you warm. Kratos had, in the previous months, had the novel experience of using hacksilver for something beyond paying for a dwarf to mend or maintain his equipment. The other odds and ends in that pouch did not seem to have taken any damage from the fall. His Yggdrasil Seed, however, was cracked.
His Yggdrasil Seed was cracked.
For a moment, that Rage, the deep, surging well of anger that he kept so tightly leashed inside of himself HOWLED, and Kratos saw red – before the discipline he had learned as a Spartan slammed down, and he mastered himself, again. Taking deep, slow breaths, he forced calm through his veins as he turned the Seed over in his hands.
The crack was minor – much less than the more serious damage that had been done to his attackers' Seed. He could still feel power in it, whatever magic the Huldra brothers had worked on it to create the realm travel key still remained within – but Kratos had no idea if, that should he find a gateway to Yggdrasil's branches, the Seed would function – properly, or at all. That would, of course, require finding said gateway, first. And that would mean exploring this city, or leaving it entirely and hoping to find a gateway in another, more intact city.
The decision was simple, in Kratos' mind. This city was a ruin – the odds of finding what he sought in it was not equal to the risks of exploring it in the hopes of finding a gateway that had survived whatever cataclysm had befallen this land. Escape was the best option – and for that he would need to get his bearings.
Find some sort of vantage point, then make his way from the city, then.
Kratos set off into the ruined city, head flicking back and forth as he picked his way through the rubble. Fortunately, the streets were clear enough that he was making decent time, no major obstructions blocking his chosen path, for now. Atreus, he knew, would have been gawking at the strange sights in this place, and their pace would have been slower, but Kratos put the unfamiliar surroundings from his mind and concentrated on his goal. He had little enough to fear from the fires at the moment, but that could change in an instant. More concerning to him was the utter lack of bodies he was seeing. No stranger to seeing a destroyed city, Kratos knew there should have been some sign of those who had made their homes in this place – and there was none – no corpses, no bones, not even parts of bodies. Either the fire had consumed them – and the buildings were durable enough to withstand fire that could turn flesh and bone into ash – or, more likely, something had collected the bodies.
An uneasy feeling began to settle in the Spartan's gut. Something was wrong with this place – beyond the once massive city having been transformed into a raging inferno.
His pace slowed somewhat, his hackles up, as he began to look more carefully at his surroundings. He'd not yet gotten the sense of eyes upon himself, but he was wary now – the city odd to him for more reasons than just its unfamiliarity. If whatever had caused this calamity was still within the borders, and it proved hostile, he would not be caught unaware.
For another ten minutes or so, he carefully crept through the city, and still he saw nothing, no people, no animals, no monsters, no life at all. He was beginning to wonder if his caution had been misplaced, when the wind shifted, and for the briefest of moments, he heard something over the crackle of the flames around him.
Metal on metal, the clash of arms – a familiar refrain that had been the background noise of much of his life. And a voice, crying out – a young girl, possibly, though it was hard to be certain.
Everything had gone wrong so quickly. The big day, Chaldea's first foray into the past, the maiden voyage to stop the looming catastrophe that SHEBA had detected, had come. Mash had been on her way to the Director's meeting, when she had stumbled across one of the Master candidates unconscious on the floor. The girl, Gudako ("Just Gudako, please," she had insisted) had been pleasant enough, but that had not kept her new senpai from being unceremoniously tossed from the meeting by an irate Director Animusphere. Mash, well used to the Director's temper, felt bad for her new co-worker, but put it from her mind – best not to have the Director's anger focused on her too.
Then the explosion, the fire, the pain. A hand grasping hers, her vision dimming to the point where she couldn't even tell who it was that was with her in what were to be her final moments. A voice, dead of inflection, toneless, saying something.
Then a jerk, and movement, and then the pain was gone, and Mash felt stronger than she had ever felt in her life.
It had taken a few moments for her to process once she fully came back to herself – she had closed her eyes to a raging inferno, and opened her eyes up to the same, so she had initially thought herself in the same place, but a quick look around showed her that this wasn't the depths of Chaldea, but somewhere else entirely. For the first time in her life, Mash Kyrielight was outside the walls of Chaldea.
That she had Rayshifted was the only possibility. And somehow, against all odds, she had bonded with the Servant inside of her – her new armor and weapon were clear proof of that, even without the new strength and vigor she felt literally thrumming through her veins. And finally, there was a...pull, for a lack of better words. She could feel where someone was, and could feel that that person was important to her. That could only mean she had, somehow, Contracted with a Master.
Events had proceeded a pace from there. Finding Gudako, the girl having somehow breached the ruined control room and, in attempting to comfort Mash in her death throes, having formed a Contract with her. The first battles, smashing aside rattling skeletons with power she had been told would be someday hers, but still managed to defy her expectations, standing between them and her Master, the urge to protect swelling so strong in her chest she almost felt like she would burst from it.
Were these her feelings? The Servant's? Some combination of both? Mash didn't know, Mash didn't have time to know. The city was on fire, her Master needed her, and danger was all around them.
Finding Director Animusphere, seeing off another band of skeletons that had the young Director cornered. Quick, spotty contact with Chaldea, elation at finding that Dr. Roman had survived, terror at wondering about others – Pepe, Ophelia, the rest of Team A. Were they alive?
No way of knowing, no time to wonder.
Barking orders, the Director had marched them to a leyline near the Fuyuki bridge, reasoning that a connection with it would stabilize their communications and allow their Master (a title she gave Gudako grudgingly, but with acceptance that they had the army they had, not the army they wanted) to summon another Servant to bolster their forces. The skeletons between them and their goal had fallen easily, no match for the power of a Servant, even a confused failure of a Demi-Servant like her. She had begun to feel a spark of hope as they reached the shadows of the bridge. Another Servant would help cover for her many deficiencies, and maybe the Doctor would be able to send more help from Chaldea, so that so much of the burden wouldn't be on her questionable shoulders.
Then, IT had descended from the spires of the bridge, fluttering black robes like the tattered wings of some horrible, winged predator, and things had gone, as Pepe would have said, 'completely tits up'.
That it was a Servant was without question – all three of them could feel the power radiating off of it, and they had been prepared to fight one or more Servants in this ruined Fuyuki where a Grail War had apparently gone horribly, horribly wrong. But none of them were prepared with the hazy fog that leaked from the Servant, nor the palpable sense of pure Evil that had oozed from its pores. Something had twisted this Servant into a corrupted shell of its former self.
It had landed almost soundlessly, touching down on the cracked street with barely a whisper of sound, despite falling several stories. Almost deliberately, it had taken in each of them, then the rictus skull mask it wore had seemed to twist and crack a grin.
Then it was on her, and Mash's only thoughts were of survival.
It was fast, impossibly fast. A dagger in its left hand jabbed and slashed at her, trying to find a way around her massive shield, while its right arm, wrapped in cloth save where pointed claws had ripped through the bindings, freakishly large and swollen to inhuman proportions, swiped at her, tried to use its length to simply reach around her shield and rip at her flesh. All while it weaved around her clumsy counterattacks with a nimbleness that ill-suited its form.
Mash was stronger than it, that had been clear from the first few clashes of their weapons, even its unnatural right arm couldn't overpower her in a straight contest of force – and it had realized that. After she had pushed it back the first time it had tried to lock her shield in place with its right hand, it hadn't attempted that again, constantly using its speed to keep her moving, forcing her to defend herself at odd angles, always trying to trip her up or catch her wrongfooted so it could around the massive wall of steel that kept its daggers from her flesh. She, meanwhile, was certain that one good blow from her could, if not end the battle outright, certainly either drive the thing off, or give her just enough of an advantage to put it on the defensive, where she felt it would do far worse than she. Servants were durable, yes, but a solid blow from her shield would comprise, if not outright shatter one of its three human limbs, and while those could be healed, it would take time the thing didn't have. It was all a question of which of them would make the first mistake, and like the disparity in speed and strength, both of them also realized this.
When that mistake came, it came in a flash.
The Servant had huffed a noise through its mask, almost a disdainful sniff, and had flowed around Mash's shield as she had cut at its head, then it sprang back, putting distance between them. Daggers had suddenly filled the spaces between the fingers on its left hand, and then it had filled the air with steel.
But not at Mash. Instead, it sent half of its arsenal at the Director, and half at her Master.
Olga Marie Animusphere had grown up as a Mage. She had weathered assassination attempts – Lev's patronage had protected her somewhat, but he couldn't be everywhere at once, and some had tried, but she had been raised in the Clock Tower, and paranoia was an old friend of hers. When the thing had jumped back from the fight, she had already been moving to put the Shielder between herself and the enemy Servant. It saved her life.
Mash Kyrielight was a novice to combat – even with the Servant she had bonded with lending its assistance, she was horribly inexperienced, having gotten by the previous fights with the mindless undead through sheer brute force, the power of a Servant allowing her to smash through enemies that were well below her level. She had seen what the Servant was doing, saw it was targeting both of her charges, and for a moment, a sheer split second, she had frozen up. Who to protect? The Director, who had been an authority figure in her life for years now – the terrible head of Chaldea that she had always leaped to obey? Or her Master, someone she had only known for hours, but still….her Master. It was a sadistic choice that Mash's mind had not been prepared to make, and for a split second – a veritable eternity in a fight between Servants, she had locked up, unable to make a choice. As none of the blades were targeting her, her life was spared, as her life had never been the goal of the attack.
Fujimaru was a mage of little talent, barely better than an average girl. She had never been in a fight in her life. Today was the first time she had heard of any of this – Chaldea, Rayshifting, Servants, etc. She had only barely been able to follow the combat in front of her – the skeletons had been frightening enough, if less so once Mash had bulldozed through them, but this…..to say she was terrified was to sell her feelings short. So, when the Servant had fired half a fistful of daggers at her, she had locked up, a small part of her sure that Mash would interpose herself between them, would protect her, but most of her simply unable to process everything, her legs turning to jelly as she heard the blades scream through the air. It cost her dearly.
Four daggers buried themselves into her flesh, none fatal on their own, all merely incapacitating wounds: gut, arms, legs. Whether it was though sheer sadism, or simply the difficulty of precisely aiming several daggers at two separate targets with a single hand, none of the hits were immediately lethal. Not that either Mash or Olga Marie knew this – all they saw was their sole Master falling like a puppet with their strings cut, a low whimper of pain escaping them as they crumpled to the ground.
"Senpai, SENPAI!" Mash's scream tore from her throat, as she felt the stream of mana from her Master, thready to begin with, noticeably weaken. Her Servant garb flickered; the energy necessary to maintain her Demi-Servant status having been drastically throttled. Desperately, blinking back tears of frustration, Mash marshalled what remained of her mana, and struggled to make her body move fast enough to end this fight. But she felt so slow, so weak again.
With a howl far too inhuman to come from something that held the shape of a man, the Servant charged her, moving even faster than it had been during their brief skirmish. Mash could see it, as if in slow-motion. The right arm would get around her guard this time – she wasn't fast enough to stop it anyone, and it would rip her to shreds. Maybe it would be over in a single blow. Maybe it would take its time, toy with her a bit before letting her bleed out. Either way, it no longer mattered. She had failed her Master, she was about to fail the Director, she had been granted a brief reprieve from death, had been allowed to be out of Chaldea for a heartbeat, but death was not to be denied.
Then, a roaring body collided full-on with the Servant, a lowered shoulder blasting the thing across the broken ground.
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