A GHOST IN A STRANGE LAND

CHAPTER 10

The five of them were seated around the conference table, no one speaking. Romani turned his gaze from person to person.

Da Vinci was still rattled - and he wasn't sure what was more unsettling about that, that she still hadn't regained her composure, or that she had gotten rattled at all. Da Vinci was NEVER rattled.

But something hijacking the Chaldea summoning system to force itself into existence - that was the sort of boogeyman story technicians might have told themselves in the dark hours of the night shift. To have it happen, and, moreover, to bypass every single precaution she'd built into the system….

No, Da Vinci had to feel like she'd been playing chess and been checkmated out of the blue. The problem with thinking you have a plan for every contingency meant when you got unexpectedly punched in the face, it tended to shake your foundations pretty badly, and Romani guessed that was what Da Vinci was feeling right now.

There was no sign of the affable, devil-may-care Cu Chulainn. The man was sitting straight up in his chair, his posture unusually perfect - possibly the first time Romani had ever seen him seated and not slouching. He was watching everyone carefully, every inch the predator of his namesake.

Mash was worried. The poor girl had been chewing her bottom lip so much that Romani was surprised she hadn't bitten through it yet. They'd just been settling down to something that sort of resembled normalcy - much as they could have that, given their situation, and then something like this.

And then there was Kratos.

Their resident deity was stiff as a board, his eyes focused straight ahead, on the center of the table.

Where rested the twin blades that had fallen through the tear in reality that had manifested itself in the middle of the summoning chamber.

Somehow, Romani found his voice, though he wasn't sure from where. "Respectfully….Kratos, what the HELL just happened?" His voice didn't quaver, which, honestly, shocked him. "I think it's pretty clear from your reaction that you know those daggers, given you looked like you'd seen a ghost when they fell out of that rift."

And whatever he had been looking at, immediately after the weapons had fallen to the floor, and he'd whirled his head about, looking just past Da Vinci at….something. Something none of the rest of them had seen. If the god they had made an alliance with was seeing things, was mentally unstable…it was a nightmare he didn't even WANT to consider.

But it was one he had to consider, because he was Chaldea's acting director. He had to shoulder this burden, because no one else could.

With an effort of will, he pushed down all the fear, all the frustration, all the stress, all the sleepless nights, the 20 hour work days and missed meals, and softened his tone. "Please, just…..explain what just happened. If we're about to have more visitors from your neck of the woods, I'd like to be forewarned. There's a lot of questions you've got hanging around you, and we've not pushed - you deserve your privacy in that regard as much as anyone, but after this…." He gestured at the center of the table, where those two weapons laid. "I'm going to have to insist on some answers."

For a long moment, Kratos said nothing, barely moved. Then, he gave a sigh, and began speaking. "Once, I was a captain. The youngest captain Sparta had ever seen. I was heralded as a prodigy - it was believed I would bring great glory to our city, and lead our men to many victories."

He closed his eyes. "Under my command, my men did see many victories. But I was foolish, short sighted, and hungry for glory. I believed myself invincible, and led my men into a battle with a horde of barbarians many times our number, led by a mighty king of their kind. We were routed."

"In my lust for power, my hubris, I called out to Ares. I swore that I would serve him if he would only grant us victory." His face twisted into an expression of such…..hate, that Romani was floored. To see such on the face of a man who was normally so tightly controlled was deeply unsettling, to say the least.

"To my eternal misfortune, he heard." Kratos reached out to the blades, hand ghosting over them. As his hand hovered over them, close, but never touching, the blades flickered red for a moment, as if reacting to his proximity. "He gifted me these blades, with which I killed the barbarian king, and won my battle."

"It was only after the battle that Ares revealed his other gifts. Bondage - eternal service to him, and an unthinking rage for his new champion. These Blades too, he bonded them to me. The scars on my arms….they are from the Blades."

That…explained so much. Romani hadn't shared it with anyone, but the scars of chains on Kratos' arms, they were more than skin deep. The bones of his arms were riddled with the same scars. At the time, Romani had thought them a result of the time Kratos referred to as having a yoke around his neck - that they were, but in such a different fashion than he had envisioned.

"I cannot be rid of them. After I left Greece, I tried many times to be rid of them. I sold them, buried them deep, threw them away. Each time, they returned to me. Once, I even dropped them from a boat, deep into the ocean. A storm wrecked the boat, and I was knocked unconscious. When I woke on the beach, the Blades were there, right beside me, when they should have been at the bottom of the ocean."

His hands gripped each other, clenching hard. "After that, I gave up trying to be parted from them. For many years, they lay hidden beneath the boards of my home in Midgard. It was only the most dire of circumstances that forced me to dig them up." A pause. "My son….he grew ill. The only cure that could be found lay in Helheim, a realm of eternal cold, where no fires could burn, and no magic in the Nine Realms could create a flame. My axe would not work there, and so….." He placed his hand on the handle of one of the Blades, and the metal flared red, and the scent of embers and ash flickered across their senses.

"So you turned to a weapon not from the Nine Realms," chimed in Cu. "Ignoring that easy leap of logic, let me get this straight. You WILLINGLY walked into Helheim, and managed to walk out in one piece?"

"It is not the first time I have had to fight my way free of a Realm of the Dead. Helheim was easier to leave than Tartarus." He released the weapon from his grasp, and pushed it away, heedless of the looks his statement was getting. "And to save my son, I would have stormed the very gates of Asgard itself, had the cure been there."

The room was silent for a moment, before Da Vinci found her voice. "We'll put a pin in that whole 'I've punched my way out of the afterlife multiple times' - because there's a story there that I'd LOVE to hear if you're willing to tell it. But I think any parent would move heaven and earth to save their child. At least any parent worth a damn."

Romani knew she wasn't looking at him directly, but he could feel her eyes on him all the same. She'd been the one to pull him off Beryl Gut, and her sitting in on the meeting between the two of them afterwards had been as much for Beryl's safety as it had been his. When he'd walked in to see what the man had been doing to Mash…..he just saw red, and then, the next thing he knew Da Vinci was restraining him, screaming words at him that he just didn't comprehend at the time.

"Mr. Kratos?" Mash was staring down at her hands, her fingers fidgeting as she struggled for her words. "Couldn't you have…gone to another god to get free of Ares? They weren't all bad, were they?"

"No…..no, they were not. The gods of my land were petty and cruel. Ares was unique only in the depths of his depravities, and the atrocities he had me commit in his name." He swallowed. "For a time, I served others of the Pantheon, chasing a promise that I would one day be free of their service, dangled in front of me like the meanest pack animal. It made no difference, I merely exchanged one yoke for another. That their orders were less than the butchery Ares commanded of me was little comfort to a slave."

The silence stretched until it became painful. At last, Kratos pushed himself from the table.

"I would speak no more of this."

Kratos strode from the room, and no one dared to stop him.

It was around 9 am - much later than when Kratos usually rose - when Da Vinci pushed her cart up to the door of his room. He hadn't been seen at breakfast in the cafeteria yet, and Mash was still in bed, sleeping in after the eventful night they had all had. Honestly, she would bet good money that the girl had tossed and turned for hours after returning to her room, the story she had heard haunting her and robbing her ability to fall back asleep.

Da Vinci was choosing to let her rest. They could afford a less productive day once in a while, end of the world or no end of the world.

Humming softly to herself, she pressed the doorbell to the room, and waited.

"Enter," came a rough voice from within the room.

She triggered the door to open - not that she needed anyone in the base's permission to enter their room, but it was a boundary she tried to respect save in the most dire of straits, which this clearly wasn't - and strode in, pushing her cart before her.

The lights were off, which wasn't surprising at all. The occupant himself was sitting on the bed, hands clasped before him, head resting on his hands. If his voice had been rough, the man looked even rougher. There were deep shadows under his eyes - he'd probably been sitting there since he stalked out of the conference room, stewing in his own thoughts, or she was a lizard.

"Good morning!" she chirped, giving him a pleasant smile. "I figured you probably weren't in the mood to deal with people too much today, so I took it upon myself to bring you some breakfast." She pushed her cart over to the small table, and set the covered plate in the center. "If you're amenable and don't really want to walk over there, we can have our class in here, too. Mash is still sleeping, but…"

"Why?"

The question was a single word, but there was a galaxy's worth of emotions in it. She sighed. "You could be asking why I'm bringing you breakfast when you know I know you haven't eaten yet today - and you've seen me nagging Romani about skipping meals. And just because you're a god doesn't mean you're immune to getting the same." Her smile dipped a little, becoming a trifle sad. "But I'm pretty sure that isn't what you're asking, it is?"

"Maybe it's 'Why are you not afraid of me?', or perhaps 'Why are you not treating me like a monster?'" She continued moving things from her cart, setting a hot plate down, then plugging it in and setting a kettle down on top of it. "To the first, I am afraid of you, Kratos. I have been since the moment we realized what you are. A fully incarnated god? You could probably kill everyone in Chaldea in less time than it would take me to heat up this kettle. Oh, Cu would probably give you a hell of a fight, but he's really hindered by being stuck as a Caster instead of a Lancer - much as he's exaggerating for drama, it really is his best class. Mash is already getting attached to you - she'd fight you if she had to, but her heart wouldn't be in it, the poor thing would be torn in two, and you'd be able to exploit that ruthlessly if you so desired. She's got a big heart, that one. She wasn't even close to Lev, and she's still taking his betrayal hard."

"And me, well. I could make things very, very difficult for you. But I was no fighter when I was alive. You've heard me list my titles before - general, soldier, brawler, warrior - none of those appear on that list. I'm still a Servant, with all the superhumanity that entails, but against a god? I'd have to get very, VERY lucky. So yes, I am afraid of you, in the sense that I'm afraid of anything that could kill me. DO I think you will?"

She shook her head. "Of course not. You've been a perfect guest so far, and I think we'd have to severely betray your trust to get you to turn against us. Something none of us want - and I'd be saying that even if you weren't a living deity."

She set the kettle to heating. "As to the last question? Well….." She turned to look at the man. "Did you know I robbed graves when I was alive?"

She waved (she wasn't flailing, and she'd deny that vehemently) her hand at his widening eyes. "Not me, really. People I hired to do it. And I wasn't grave robbing in the sense that I was looking to loot corpses for their jewelry or the fine clothes they might have been buried in. I was after the bodies themselves." She tilted her head back, remembering. "Back when I was alive, the dominant religion of the area had made dissecting corpses illegal unless you were a doctor. And most of the so-called 'doctors' of my time weren't particularly interested in expanding their knowledge - but you've heard me rant about how even in the Renaissance so many people were still stuck in the mindset of the Dark Ages, uninterested in learning anything new, content with the way things had been, living small, blunted, BORING lives."

She met Kratos' eyes. "So I paid people to steal bodies for me, so I could cut the bodies up, and learn how humans worked. So I could create greater works of art - 'It is necessary for a painter to be a good anatomist, so that he may be able to design the naked parts of the human frame and know the anatomy of the sinews, nerves, bones, and muscles.' My own words, left behind in some of the many notes I made in life. And probably at least somewhat, because I was told I couldn't. Sure, the things I learned helped me create the masterpieces I did - and probably could have advanced medical knowledge and science hundreds of years, if I'd been able to publish them."

She sighed. "But what comfort would that be to that person's friends and family to know that I ripped their loved one from their place of rest and cut them apart like they were so much meat? All because I wanted to learn, and couldn't stand to be told 'no'. That I wasn't looking for monetary gain like some common thief doesn't really make it any better, noble intentions or no."

"That does not compare…."

She interrupted him. "No, it doesn't. And if you think I'm trying to downplay what you told us, you're dead wrong on that. You made, frankly, an incredibly stupid choice, and it cost not just you, but probably hundreds of innocent people in the long run." She gave him a wan smile. "But I'm also guessing that's something you've told yourself hundreds, if not thousands of times since then, so hearing it from little old me is just an echo of your own thoughts."

He nodded. "And that's one reason why I'm not treating you like some sort of monster. You clearly regret that decision, and have been punishing yourself for it ever since that horrible day." The kettle began to sing, and she pulled it off the heat and began to pour the boiling water into a cup. "But you're also not the first person to make a stupid choice in the heat of the moment."

Index finger. "Lancelot was probably the greatest knight in the greatest collection of knights in history, the Round Table. And he carried on an affair with the king's wife that tore that group apart, and utterly destroyed the kingdom that they defended, and plunged England into those selfsafe Dark Ages that you've heard me ranting against."

She ticked off a second finger on her hand. "Arjuna, the hero of the epic Hindu poem the Mahabharata was so consumed with the need to defeat the forces arrayed against his side, and specifically, his rival Karna, that he sank to incredible lows to win. He even shot Karna in the back, while Karna was unarmed, and weighed down by three curses that were pretty much crippling him. It was only after the fact that he learned he and Karna were half-brothers."

Another finger. "The Shinsengumi, for all that they are beloved today, were essentially a secret police force propping up a government that was increasingly incapable of defending the nation from foreign interests, though I'm sure the revolutionaries would have said 'threats', or serving the people. And they suppressed any dissent in Kyoto, the capital city, brutally. Less a case of someone making a stupid choice, and more a group that was drenched in blood, yet still revered as heroes."

Pinky finger. "Gilgamesh, widely considered to be the first hero in human history, and probably the greatest Heroic Spirit on the Throne was, in his younger days, little better than a tyrant. Whatever he wanted from his kingdom, be it labor, treasure, women, he took, heedless of the consequences. It took him losing the only person in the world he saw as his equal to make him grow up and actually start acting like the king he was supposed to be."

She held up her hand, and waggled her thumb exaggeratedly. "I could go on. Hell, that Irishman you've been fighting with on a regular basis was serially unfaithful to his wife, Emer. And it's not like this was an arranged political marriage - the man was enough of a menace to the wives and daughters of Ulster that the crowned heads were TRYING to marry him off, but he wouldn't have anyone but Emer. But her father wouldn't have it, and tried to get Cu killed by telling him to go train under Scáthach - and yes, that's the teacher he's always complaining about - hoping he'd die in the process. It didn't take."

She shrugged. "The man goes through all that for a woman, and still can't keep it in his pants." A furrowed brow was her only response. "The point I'm slowly making my way to is that if you're going to talk about checkered pasts, you're among good company with Heroic Spirits. Yes, we changed history in our lifetimes, but we got dirty doing it, and made our fair share of mistakes. Even King Arthur, the supposedly perfect king, well, you saw her in that Singularity. A corrupted version of her, certainly, but whatever got to her got to her by preying upon, or magnifying the worst aspects of her personality. She was no half-formed, brainwashed wraith like those shadows she had bound to her, she was the catalyst for everything that went wrong there and chose to burn that city to the ground with her own two hands."

She paused for a moment, then continued, her voice soft. "And I'm sure you haven't told us everything - like, for instance, how you became a god."

She gave him a wry grin in response to his widening eyes. "It wasn't hard to piece together. There's a Kratos mentioned in our version of Greek myth, but his story bears no resemblance to yours. And I don't think a god would have struggled to vanquish a barbarian king, no matter how great his horde."

She pulled the cover off the plate, hoping the smell of food would lure the man over. "So, I'm assuming you got out from under Ares' thumb by putting him down, and that opened up his seat for you."

With a weary breath, Kratos rose from the bed, and walked over to sit at the table. "You are correct."

She handed over a set of silverware. "That fits the guesses I had. With you having said you'd fought Hercules before, and given everything about you…" She gave a general gesture at his musculature, weapons, and general self. "I was betting that you were a war god. Being that good at fighting didn't preclude you from being something else, but it was the simplest answer, and good old Occam wins again."

Judging that the leaves had steeped enough, she pushed a cup across the table to him. "Chamomile again. I figured after a talk like that, soothing was the order of the day. Though I did bring coffee if you feel like you need it to chase the cobwebs away. Just, if you do, let me know if you start getting jittery or feel weird. No clue how strong caffeine might affect a god, and I think we'd all rather you not have a bad reaction or anything."

A grunt. "Da Vinci." His head was still bowed, staring down at the plate in front of him. He'd made no move to begin eating. "Your words are….appreciated."

Feeling especially daring today, she reached out and patted him on the shoulder. Kratos wasn't very tactile with anyone at Chaldea - he kept his distance, largely only making any sort of physical contact with Mash when he was correcting her stances during training, and maintaining a firm personal bubble otherwise. But today, she was wagering he could use it.

Human contact had a special medicine all its own.

"I know it's early days yet, but you're one of us now, Kratos. What you did in your past, yes, it was horrible. But that person wouldn't have saved our people in that Singularity, wouldn't have fought so hard to help them get home safe, and wouldn't be helping us now. When you're ready to tell the rest of your story, we'll be ready to listen with an open mind."

"And on that somewhat related topic…." she reached over to the cart and pulled at a drawer on the side, sliding it open.

There, resting innocuously on the metal of the drawer, were his blades. "I'm going to need to know what you want me to do with these. I haven't so much as touched them, even had a robot pick them up and put them in the cart - you said they were bound to you, so I didn't want to risk getting hit by some sort of countermeasure if I picked them up and they decided they didn't like me."

She gestured to the hook on the wall where his axe was hanging. "I can easily work up another one of those, if that's all you want. Alternatively, I can have a safe - a really fancy lockbox - made for them if you'd prefer. I could even keep them locked up in my workshop, though I'd be worried if they'd consider that being apart from you and would pull another stunt like last night."

"A means to hang them is all I would ask." He picked up his fork, and was staring down at the food on his plate, clearly not even seeing it. "They are a useful tool, and our advantages are few enough as is, whatever my feelings for them may be."

"Simplicity itself. I'll have something for you by tonight." Another brief pat on his shoulders - purely for comfort's sake, she wasn't taking the chance to get a good feel of those muscles, nosiree. "Chin up, Kratos. It was a rough night for us all, and I can't imagine it was enjoyable having to relive one of your worst days like that. But no one here is judging you for your past - or at least, I'm not. Romani won't, and Mash won't." She considered. "And Cu better not, or I'll chew his ear off."

A thought occurred to her. "Though, I WILL warn you that you might be getting some amount of hero worship from Mash now. She's been obsessed with the Spartans since Romani showed her 300 as a little girl. To have a real-life Spartan here, and training her, no less? Oh, she'll think you'll hang the moon."

A blink. "What is 300?"

A few hours later, and Kratos found himself in the Simulator.

Their lessons that day had been, to put it kindly, a disaster. Kratos had tried, but his mind simply wasn't in it today - going in far too many directions after the events of the evening, and the lack of sleep wasn't helping. He'd made a game effort, but Da Vinci had seen through him quickly enough, and had shooed him away.

"Go on, there's no point teaching a student when they're distracted like you are. I halfway had a feeling this would be the case, and I went ahead and reserved the Simulator for you for the entire day. Go on, get it out of your system, and we'll pick this up tomorrow."

And then Kratos had been unceremoniously herded out of his room (kicked out of HIS ROOM - he was still trying to figure out how that had happened) with assurances that he could take today as a 'mental health day' and just relax - or chop the heads off of virtual enemies, which she assumed that was how Spartans would relax in the 21st century.

So he lost himself in the familiar routines of training, and slowly burnt the stress of the previous night away, and bit by bit, began to find his center again.

He wasn't sure how long he had been at it (he was reasonably certain he had missed the mid-day meal) when a voice echoed across the simulated planes.

"What, no Blades?"

Kratos paused his drill, shoulders heaving with exertion as he came back to himself, and his body reminded him how long he had been at this without pause, and turned to frown at Cu Chulainn.

The Servant was standing, as ever, lazily nonchalant, staff slung across his shoulders. "That's a shame, I really wanted to see those things in action, and not just as a spectator, either."

It took a moment for Kratos to find his voice. "I am unsure that would be wise."

"Oh c'mon. That axe and spear of yours are powerful toys, but those blades that showed up last night? The magic was so thick around them I could practically CHEW on it. I've been driving myself up the walls today waiting for our spar tonight." True, the man was practically vibrating in his own skin.

Also, tonight? Was it truly so late?

"Hell, if you showed up on the Throne with those things, the line would be halfway around the damn thing with folks wanting to take their shot at fighting you. And that's to say nothing about how outraged Goldie would be to lay eyes on a treasure he didn't have in his vault." Cu cackled, bouncing his staff on his shoulders. "It would make my day to see that, and it would be even better to see you mop the floor with the arrogant bastard when he tries to take them."

He idly twirled his staff in his hands, bouncing on the balls of his feet. "But in lieu of that, I just get to cut in line and get first crack at those fancy blades of yours. So c'mon!"

Kratos blinked. If Cu was treating him one iota differently, it was impossible for the Spartan to tell.

"Did your friend mention I killed my kid?" Gone was the playful demeanor, for the first time since meeting him, Cu actually looked…..mournful?

"One of them, anyway…..it was complicated - which sums up a lot of what happened in Ireland those days." He made a frustrated sound, and flopped to the ground, sitting cross-legged. "So, back when I was training with the old witch, one day Aífe shows up - that woman hated Teacher - and demands a fight. Well, Scáthach knew I'd stick my nose into it, and so she drugs me with something that's supposed to knock me out for the day, and goes off to fight. Me being me, I was down for an hour, and then immediately went off after her, because of COURSE I did."

He wiggled a finger, and the end of his staff sharpened into a point, and he began scratching images into the dirt. "So, I end up fighting as Scáthach's champion, and manage to win - though not without playing dirty myself. One thing leads to another from there, but somehow I managed to broker a peace between those two - scuttlebutt always said that Aífe was teacher's sister, but she was always mum on if that was true or not, and I learned to stop asking after the first time she kicked me off a cliff for doing so - but it required me getting Aífe with child."

The man's frown was growing in intensity as the picture he was drawing gained form - a young boy, one who had an obvious resemblance to Cu himself. "I give her a ring, and tell her to send my kid to me when he's seen seven winters." He looks up at Kratos. "So, wind the clock forward those seven winters, and Aífe sends my kid to me, but binds him to not back down from a challenge, and to not identify himself. By the time he reaches my doorstep, he's already terrified most of the land with how good of a warrior he is, and given how no one knows who this demon child is who's just beat the pants off most of the best fighters in the land, well, panic was the order of the day."

"Me being the big dumb idiot I am, we fight, and I win, because that's what I do. It's only as the kid is dying in my arms that I see the ring, and realize I've just killed my son." Slowly, painstakingly, he carved a handful of runes below the portrait. 'Connla'.

Cu heaved a sigh, his shoulders tight with tension. "I've got a lot of regrets about my life, Kratos. The way I treated my wife Emer - she's one of four women I couldn't keep my promises to in life. Ferdiad and I trained under the hag together, he was a brother to me in everything but blood, and we ended up on opposite sides of the war that ended up killing me - but not before I ended up killing HIM. And my kid - that one might burn me the most."

He lolled his head back, blowing out a long breath. "Tuesday nights on the Throne is the support group for people who have regrets about their lives. There's booze. STRONG booze, and lots of it, too."

He cocked his head, staring straight at Kratos. "So I'm the last person who's going to throw stones over your story last night. Way I see it, you're in good company with a world-class fuck up like me."

Cu shook himself like a dog, almost throwing off the melancholy clinging to him, and pushed himself to his feet. "One thing I will say is that I saw the end of Ragnarök from your point of view, when we pulled that trick to save the Director. You had Odin dead to rights - and while I don't know what he did to you, I've only heard that level of venom in your voice one other time, and that was last night when you were talking about Ares." His eyes flickered over his shoulder, almost as if he was looking for something. "You could have killed him. Maybe you SHOULD have killed him. But you didn't, you let your son choose another option."

He shrugged. "Showing mercy to someone as powerful as that? That's the mark of a better man than the one you told us about last night." He grimaced. "Of course, it was moot, after your little dwarf friend went and smashed his marble, but I expect that had something to do with how pissed you are at old One-Eye. But hey, good intentions, right?"

Kratos…..didn't know what to think. He'd expected condemnation, recriminations, or even some frightened distance. Not this matter-of-fact acceptance of his past, for all that he had shared only a fraction of it.

But then, Mimir hadn't been repulsed to find he'd been accompanying the Ghost of Sparta, merely amazed, once he put the pieces together. And Freya, for all that she'd still likely been plotting his death as they'd journeyed through Vanaheim, she had never once thrown an accusation his way when he had told her of Calliope and Lysandra - just horror at the story itself. And at that time she'd hardly been the friend she had become, frequently throwing all manner of vicious barbs his way as they had navigated the humid jungles of Vanaheim.

Maybe, just maybe, his expectations regarding the reactions to his past being revealed were a touch off. At least for those who had, and could, become true allies to the Spartan.

Ignorant, either willfully or otherwise, of Kratos' swirling thoughts, Cu continued. "Anyways, in my experience, the best cure for when you find yourself turning into a big mopey bear is a good round of fighting. So go grab those blades of yours and let me see what you can really do!"

Kratos couldn't help it. The man looked so hopeful, like a child begging for a sweet. He gave a small, very small snort of a laugh, and went to fetch his blades.

The Blades of Chaos screamed through the air, only to be batted aside by Draupnir. With a jerk on the chains, Kratos halted their motion and flicked them back at Cu, this time from opposite directions, to which the man merely ducked under them and burst forward, seeking to close the distance.

Like magic, Kratos tugged the Blades back to his hands and met the spear's thrust head on, using his greater strength to push the spear aside and move within its range, one Blade already moving to intercept the spinning butt of the spear, its twin slashing at Cu's eyes.

Cu twisted his body, using his blocked spear as a pivot point to spin himself out of the way of Kratos' attack, and launching his body into the air to throw a vicious spinning kick at Kratos' head, one that passed by Kratos by the thinnest of margins, as the Spartan threw his weight backwards and leaned out of the way of Cu's sandaled feet.

He sent the Blades on short, quick flights as the Caster flew through the air, but, as with the all the other times, Cu twisted and dodged, the Blades coming close enough to nick his robes, but always missing by a hair's breadth, when the Caster didn't simply slap them aside.

"Good gods, man, you are a MENACE with those things!" Despite his words, Cu's grin was wide enough to crack his face in two.

"And yet I have not managed to hit you once, Caster. You fight as though familiar with these Blades." Kratos spun one of the Blades idly as he considered how to approach the slippery Irishman, the fire within the Blades beginning to leak through the metal as it whirled through the air.

Cu slid into what Kratos was beginning to recognize as the most basic stance of Cu's style, spear held low to the ground, weapon angled diagonally down, body hunched just enough to make him capable of a terrifyingly quick burst forward. "Would you believe this is the second time in a week I'm fighting a chain-user?" At Kratos' somewhat incredulous look, he laughed. "No, hang me for a liar if this isn't the truth! The Rider of that mess of a war you lot bailed me out of used chains too. Though her weapons were more akin to stakes…or really big nails. But it gave me some practice against that style, for all that you're ENTIRELY another kettle of fish than she was."

He slid forward, eyes flicking between the Blade Kratos had spinning in the air, and the other one held in his left hand. "And like her nails, your Blades are JUST close enough to projectiles that they register with my Protection from Arrows, meaning I can stop them most of the time." He glanced at his tattered robes. "Though your Blades take a lot more effort on my part to stop than her nails did, even with your spear as a loaner." Another minute inch forward. "Thanks for that, by the way. I'd hate to think what those wicked little toys of yours would have done to my poor staff."

Cu's body was tensing, and Kratos prepared for the Irishman's charge - so he was taken aback when Cu sprang, not forward, but backwards, and up, high into the air, drawing Draupnir back to….

Oh.

Quickly, Kratos let the gathered energies dissipate from the Blades, and sent them spinning in a wall of metal in front of him, as what seemed like an endless rain of spears flew down from above. Focusing hard, he tracked each spear copy as it cut through the air, and sent a Blade to knock it from its path, each arm working independently. As one arm intercepted a screaming spear, the other was sending a Blade into an arc where he could block the next spear he spotted.

Blocking with his shield would have been a fool's game, handing Cu the means to detonate who knows how many spears at a terminal distance to Kratos. So, he sent the Blades flying.

It was a stalemate, and one that Kratos would eventually lose, was Cu capable of staying in the air forever. But Servants were beholden to gravity, for all that it at times only held a loose grasp on them, and Kratos whipped his Blades back, then sent them screaming at the Servant, as he landed.

Cu gave a frustrated noise as he parried. "The Soaring Spear that Strikes with Death just ain't the same without my Gáe Bolg, but STILL! I thought I'd at least nick you once with that!" His grin was all teeth. "Close quarters it is, then."

And the Servant rocketed forward again.

AUTHORS NOTES: Cue the Rocky 3 ending, with Kratos and Cu as Rocky and Apollo.

This chapter got to the point that I decided to split it into two - there's two main things I was planning to hit with it, but tonally, they're kind of different, and I feel they need some space between them. So next chapter will be the second half of this chapter, and might include the prologue to Orleans in it as well.

As a Shinsengumi mark, it hurt my soul (or souls, since I'm a horrible soul-stealing Ginger) to write that, even if it was true.

Chapter has been reworked as of 12/18/23, after feedback, and consideration made me realize it was FAR too early to have Kratos revealing about the fate of his first wife and daughter. So the scene in the conference room post Mash's question has been reworked, as well as some bits in the conversations with Da Vinci and Cu.