AND there the world lay dead and shattered before his weary eyes. Dusk, and nothing but waves and waves of doom unfurling upon the last ruins of mankind. There were no longer skies, nor seas. Only darkness ripped by the serrated lines of the cliffs, pierced by the glistening arrows of deluge.
All around the world was howling its end, and the rain kept on falling, and falling, hammering his face with the fury He wielded to bring the gods down.
And it would keep on falling and falling until all was gone.
Kratos rolled to his side, body bent in agonal groans. A broken colossus, shaped by the roaring lightning, clear-cut in black and white facets, mourning over what once was home and hell. He rolled and crawled, one arm pressed on his spilled guts, to the edge of the cliff, where he looked down, foggy-eyed and bloody-mouthed, that sea of nothingness engulfing past and present.
Now, he saw the tide coming for him, the dark waves clenching their cold hands on his burning entrails, and so he closed his eyes, not only to savour the peace they would bring along, but to avoid what could lie below the foamy surface – and though there wasn't much to face deep into the abyss, the prospect of having his thoughts, and only his thoughts, to accompany him for eternity was enough to indent a small cleft of fear into the iron will that forged his own fate. He could no longer wonder what he would become. That time had ended the very moment he crushed to a pulp the skull of his own father; hope was now gone and guilt was long overdue.
Guilt, he would carry it forever, suffocating under the layered sheaths of chaos he brought upon himself. There, in the darkness, he awaited. A bitter oblivion consumed him whole – and disintegrated, dissipated him.
Above light was lifting a shroud of lead clouds. He couldn't see it.
2.
IT was dark, and then blinding-bright. Perched on the high tower, the grey-haired man shielded his face with his arm. He turned away from the coast, but the fiery light was spreading everywhere, even under his closed eyes. He staggered, almost fell over the barrier, and gripped his sword.
"We're under attack!" he yelled, but the light seemed to absorb any sound.
A drop crashed on his face, then another, and another, and the skies roared and split into a formidable thunderstorm. The grey-haired man tried to open his eyes, but the light was still consuming the world. There was nothing left, but a mute, blank, luminous canvas he kept trying to colour with his shouts.
And then it stopped — just like that, in the twinkling of an eye. A black, velvety drape smothered the blaze and plunged him back into the dark, where the faint lines of Koegria appeared, hazily, on the gilded horizon.
All around him, an evanescent mizzle was evaporating, as if nothing happened — but the grey-haired man was soaked to the bone, and the cobbles were still wet, glistening gold as the sun rose on the Iliac Bay. Rain was still dripping from the thatched roofs. It hadn't been a dream nor a hallucination.
The man shook the water off his grey hair and put his right hand over his eyes, though the light was long gone. Beyond the decaying docks, a drizzly breeze was sweeping the scaly waters, and the ships, oblivious to any sudden light, were nonchalantly swaying to the swell, sails waving the beginning of a new day.
The grey-haired man snorted. His eyes, behind the shield of his hand, glared with meek hostility toward a white tower, whose outlines, blurry, were glowing eerily in the distance.
"Fuckin' mages." He loosened his grip on the sword and rubbed his forehead. "Fuckin' tower..."
A gust of wind flattened his cape against his legs and carried, but very faintly, the muffle sounds of felt shoes on the wet cobblestones. The grey-haired man turned around and bent over the barrier. A fleeting silhouette passed under the watch tower.
"Hey!" he yelled, and jumped down the ladder, fist clenched on the pommel of his sword. "Hey, you!"
The silhouette stopped, and – on his deathbed, he still thought about it – her arm shot up in the air to wave extravagantly at him, as if they knew each other for a long time now and not mere seconds. He saw the arm before the girl, then the big smile that shone under her gold-embroidered hood, and he strangely felt compelled to wave back like an idiot.
"Hello!" she said,veryenthusiastically.
And he realized what she was. She was a fucking mage. The grey-haired man stepped closer, though cautiously. He didn't fear the possible extent of her powers – he knew he was no match against a mage in any way or form – but he wasn't too keen on catching her enthusiasm. He still felt humiliated by that stupid urge to wave back.
"Hey," he said, his voice unsteady. "Did you trigger that?"
"What?"
She took off her hood, and the man froze.
"Oh! The light?" she said, still smiling. "Nah, that wasn't me. Not sure what happened. I was just walking down the road. I'm going to Camlorn." She was very animated when she was talking. Her goofy mouth got twisted in all directions as if to show off her teeth. She had very good teeth, asveryenthusiastic strangers tended to have around Koegria. "Hey, is there a place I could stay for a few days? Somewherecleanand nottooexpensive?"
But the grey-haired man had stopped listening to her as soon as her mouth opened – he didn't even start, really. He was studying with a restrained disgust the lineaments of her striking face. First he was taken aback by the lavender tint of her skin, as he never ever thought, once in his life, about meeting a friendly, smiling Dunmer. Then he noticed how her brows weren't arched enough, and he thought, quite rightfully, that they were probably straightened by some curious interbreeding.
But her most striking, repulsive feature lay underneath the full fringe of her dark lashes. There, a hazy band of red tainted the greenish, greyish sea of her eyes. In the dull light of dawn, they had almost appeared hazel, but now the grey-haired man could see they somehow reflected the colours that had the misfortune to gravitate around them. It was as if they caught the gleams of any light around her and sent them back into the world through the radiance of her eyes, which were indeed red and greenish-blue, not hazel, and absolutely abnormal embedded in such a waxy, silver skin.
Now the girl had fallen silent and was inquisitively staring at him with her odd mongrel eyes. The grey-haired man cleared his throat.
"Did you... Did you see anything? Around Balfiera, I mean. Do you come from Balfiera?"
The girl blinked, then frowned a little, as if that question displeased her. "No. I just told you... I was walking down the road. I come from Alcaire. I'm going to Camlorn." She had lost her smile. "Are you alright? You're looking really pale."
"I'm fine," the grey-haired man said. He rubbed his eyes. "It's that damn light. I'm still having..." He waved his hands around his head. "You know, those bright dots...dancingin my eyes."
"Ah, yes. Yes... I see. I mean, I kinda see them too."
The coastal breeze slightly lifted the hems of her cape and she shivered. The grey-haired man was avoiding her weighty gaze. He did have bright dots dancing in his eyes.
"Well," she said after a while. Her voice was also unsteady now. "I should get going. I'm a little tired."
"Hey," the grey-haired man called before she could turn her heels.
The girl raised her eyebrows at him.
"You shouldn't be travelling alone. And at night. It's a dangerous world we live in, kid."
The girl didn't say anything; she simply nodded and smiled politely, as if she didn't have the heart to dispute his claims but still the energy to display her objection. She waved goodbye, much less extravagantly than when she had seen him jumping down the ladder, and the grey-haired man raised a timid hand – again.
"Fuckin' foreigners," he muttered at her back.
3.
THE pain came before the light. Waters spat him out violently on the tall grass of a river's bank; and then all got dark and foggy, as if he were still trapped in the depths.
For a moment, his name got lost in the meanders of his drowned brain, and he could only feel the waves crashing on his legs and his cold chiton sticking to his skin. Sounds came and went rapidly, interrupted by his heartbeats pounding hard to his ears: the trickling of the current at his feet, a breathy whistle, an earthy silence, wood birds chirping hastily high above. Then the sounds adjusted and synchronized, interlocked, completed themselves wholly, and nature seeped into him with a violent, ferrous smell only sweetened by the morning dew.
For a moment he didn't feel like he existed among those sounds and smells, but rather within them, blown away by the wind, dissolved, doubled into all tiny particles floating around him, as if his foreign atoms were trying to materialize into a new world that both pulled him in and pushed him away; he felt stretched and retracted in all directions by something eager to feed on him and send him back where he truly belonged – though he didn't remember where.
Then a lightning struck his skull, and he saw it once more.
The dusk, the storm. The whole world beaten by the floods, bloodied by sorrow. The darkness overtaking cities, catching men the size of ants, whirling screams into the deep. And the rage and the tide all coming at once...
He heard the voice of a child swell. Tremors shook the earth that supported him; he sank into the mud, deep into the clay that lined the river, tucked into the clots of his own blood. There was a shrill laughter, then a gasp and a cry. The earth in which he kept sinking palpitated oddly. A crack echoed into his skull, then the pain shattered the cartilage. He gasped, opened his eyes.
The whole world was bright and blurry. An explosion of grey, green and red intertwined into one shapeless mass. Shadows wavered onto the foggy sky; they loomed, loud and mouthless, and leant closer, and closer, to struck again. He felt his fists instinctively clenching but the strength that once steered them was gone and they remained limp and lifeless along his sides. He knew why those punches hit. He knew the hate that governed them within all the fibres of his agonizing flesh – and it suddenly ignited his brain.
A blood-curdling scream sprang from the blaze. He spun round. In the hills, waves of Spartans surged about him, dashed through the grounded meat of villagers. Blood, guts, flesh glistening in the harsh light of the fires. Charred meat, white bones. He yelled to stop, but instead, he heard the cruel, harrowing bark of an enraged dog pushing for carnage. Those words weren't his. That body wasn't his. His legs were moving by themselves, striding tenaciously and ruthlessly toward the temple. For a second, he stared at the delicate profile carved on the low relief, and his sneer shivered and vanished. The eyes glittered toward him.
"Kratos," a familiar voice echoed.
"It is over, Athena."
"That I will deci–"
But her voice petered out and the flames receded into the darkness. The glaring blaze softened into bleak moonlight; the clear-cut low relief blurred into a familiar silhouette, hair as heavy as marble. Two gleams remained hovering above him. Her face was in shadows, so he couldn't make out her identity, but an unmistakable tenderness flowed from her fingertips. She was tracing the scars the Blades of Chaos had indented on his flesh. It made his heart jump in his throat. He almost whispered her name – with the loving tone he only expressed in the intimacy of their bed –, but something held him back. The inescapable truth it couldn't be her. Lysandra had faded away years ago, and those hands that ran along his skin had indeed tenderness in the touch, but also clinical, reserved expertise.
"Hey there, buddy..."
Her voice was faint and husky, and she drawled her words in a very specific, peculiar way that definitely wasn'thers.
"Where am I?" Kratos grunted.
She didn't answer. Muffled voices arose in the distance. Lightly, her fingers brushed his forehead and swept the sweat away, and her cold hands slipped out of his arms, and through his lashes, he saw the light bending around her silhouette, and her memories-made skin fading into dawn, her limbs fleshed and lengthened by shadows. Her golden-haloed face loomed over him for a moment, then swam blurringly out of his reach.
4.
THE jail of Koegria, a low-ceiling basement under the barracks, reeked of fresh blood and dried garlic. It was an exceptionally sunny day, and the walls themselves, gorged with a damp, hot humid air, seemed to absorb and ooze the stench right into the only two cells, both large enough to stuff at most three drunks. That sheer amount of cell wasn't specific to Koegria: those kind of small Breton towns never really needed more, as the travellers, the only economical resources of the local inns, were incited to drink and stumble within the shadows of back alleys, where guards, lying in wait, would fined them fordisturbance of the peace– which wasn't extortion, really, but areminder of the law. Most complied and paid not to end up into one of those two cells where those who objected, of course, had been crammed early in the evening. No one wanted to share the space with such extreme disturbers of the peace.
That day, flies were buzzing idly in and out the farthest cell. A scorching sun, hanging high from the tiny, unreachable gaps that dotted the top of the wall, was pinching and burning some garlic braids twisted around the bars. Esylt, with a stick of elves ear root in her mouth, her red leather gloves clenched in one hand, stood for quite a while before the second cell. She was squinting at the harsh daylight, which cut deep the shadows budding at the corner of the cells, and fell directly, in a rather flattering way, on the prisoner's face. It was as if Magnus Himself touched and shaped the sharp lines of his cheekbones and, with frantic perfectionism, sculpted the fiercest profile one could ever imagine. But it seemed even Magnus couldn't bring light beneath the surface of his bald skull; a ferocious snarl twisted his mouth and wrinkled his aquiline nose into a desperate, raging illustration of his torments. There wasn't only pain on that face. There was something terribly human, deceptively mortal in the way his flesh emoted. A void-like essence, eternally sombre, that the sun would never be able to reach.
"Hm..."
Esylt glanced toward the barracks and, after adjusting her leather gloves, abruptly opened the cell. From the tip of her felt shoe, she tipped over the piss bucket and directly sat down on it, at the prisoner's deathbed, to observe, almost hovering over his face, the gaping wound tearing his stomach apart. The sinewy muscles of his chest were tensing and relaxing to the rhythm of his groans.
"Hey there, buddy," she said.
She rested an empathetic, rather maternal hand on his shoulder. His head frenziedly turned toward her, then away from her shadow. An unhoped-for peace had suddenly settled over him; his fists, once shut tight, opened wide on the straw bed and his brows rose, but just a little, not to alter too much the severity of his face. Conversely, Esylt frowned. She patted his forehead to feel the fever, but it was ice cold and sweaty.
"You're a tough bastard, aren't you?"
She smiled and shifted toward the hole in his torso. The rims of the bucket scraped the dusty tiles.
"Nasty wound, though." She put her hand back on his shoulder and affectionately squeezed it. He groaned, and his lashes fluttered. She saw he was staring at her through a thousand layers of fog. His parched lips moved but no sound came out. "Don't worry, we're gonna fix you up. All right? Just hang in there..."
She swiftly adjusted her position on the very uncomfortable bucket, straightened the angle of the elves ear root dangling at the corner of her mouth, and leant forward, toward the ripped guts and sectioned spine. A sudden thought narrowed her eyes; she nodded expertly and placed her gloved hand on the wound.
"All right... Well, that won't hurt – or sting, or burn," she said, looking straight into his half-open eyes. "Ready, buddy?"
She shook her wrist and brushed the shredded edges of the wound. A warm radiance faded into the harsh daylight; the energy around vibrated, shivered and her fingers quivered, as if she were trying to hold down an alien force and summon its powers at once, but the wound, the despicable wound, was still staring wide at her, gaping and nagging her efforts.
With her clean hand, Esylt took off the elves ear root from her mouth and swung her gaze toward the peaceful, snarling face of the man. He was resisting the spell.
"Are you messing with me?" she said. She scratched her nose, inhaled sharply. "You better not be –"
A creak and cry got a jolt out of her. She jumped to her feet and took off her red leather gloves.
"You! How the hell did you get in there?"
Behind her two guards tried to enter the cell at the same time – even though they both didn't fit in the door-frame. She saw their shadows extending on the ground, mingling together, then heard thebangof two colliding armours and the whistle of an unsheathed sword. The blond one, certainly a novice, retreated far back into the corridor, head down, to let the high-ranking, helmeted guard enter the cell.
"What do you mean?" Esylt asked, glancing over her shoulder. "I asked to see theDaedra, andyouopened the cell for five coins."
An outraged cry echoed inside his helmet. The blond guard, reddening, immediately looked up.
"Ididnotopen that cell for five coins! What are you talking about?"
"Whatever," Esylt said, waving away the offence. "The guy I talked to was wearing his helmet. You all look the same with your helmet."
"All right, just get out of that cell. We'll see later which fucker let you in," the guard said, and he extended a hand toward her. "Come on, kid. Get out! Come on, hurry!"
Esylt put out a hand to stroke the man's shoulder one, twice, then sighed, shoved her leather gloves inside her satchel and shuffled across the room. The guard quickly closed the cell behind her.
"Well, you're lucky he didn't awake, kid."
He was busy fidgeting with the lock, as the large key didn't quite fit into the hole. Esylt tilted her head to better meet his eyes while he was focusing on the damn door, but the mighty guard only looked up to make sure that the man, who had resumed his groans, was still half-conscious on the mouldy straw bed.
"Why?" Esylt asked, chewing on her elves ear root. Behind her fingers, delicately wrapped around the root, she was hiding a grin the guard could've caught in the twinkle of her eyes – but he was still busy with the lock.
"Why?Are you serious, kid? That beast would've killed you. That's what would've happened. That's what Daedra do." Miracles, apparently. The blond subordinate discreetly adjusted the position of the key and finally locked the cell. Now the helmeted guard could lecture her as he pleased. Fists on both hips, he turned and leant toward her like he wanted to tell a secret. "Theykill.But perhaps you wanted to die, huh? You wanted to die? Is that what you wanted?"
"But, you see...," Esylt pointed at the man with the tip of her elves ear root. "He's not aDaedra."
"He'snota Daedra!"
"Nah, he's not."
The helmeted guard exchanged an incredulous, rather silly glance with his blushing subordinate.
"Ah! Bless our Lady Dibella! She sent us a real expert."
"You shouldn't use the name of Dibella in, like, a sarcastic way," Esylt nonchalantly said, crossing her arms. Now was the time to lecturehim. "And as a matter of fact, I kinda am – a Daedra expert, I mean. My parents are Daedrologists."
"Sure they are," the guard muttered.
"You don't even know what that is, do you?" Her voice didn't sound mocking but very factual.
"Nay, I don't," the guard spat. The sun was shining right onto his helmet now and under the iron, almost burning white, his cheeks were suddenly as red as the face of his subordinate. "And I don't fucking care if your dad's Pelagius III or Titus Mede II Himself. All I know is that bastard's washed up gutted like a fish and still breathing, just after that cursed tower shone and all, and it's been three days now he's been spilling his guts everywhere in my jail and he won't fucking die. But let's hear your explanation! Tell us! What is he, if he's not a Daedra, huh? Come on, tell us!"
Esylt, leaning against the bars of the cell, neck craned to stare at the prisoner, chewed on her elves ear root for a moment. In a suspensive, almost frightening silence, the two guards followed the pendulum of her eyes as it swung back and forth his head and his toes.
"Well," she finally picked up. "You have to know the Adamantine Tower was built and inhabited by the Aedra. You know that, don't you?"
"Of course I know!" The guard snorted very rudely.
"So, if he really comes from the light emitted by the tower, he must've been sent by the Aedra themselves. And..." She lifted her finger as the guard opened his mouth to object. "He doesn't die because he's beenblessedby them."
"That doesn't make any sense."
"Does it?" the subordinate whispered. "I mean, it's true that the Adamantine Tower was once –"
The helmeted guard menacingly snarled at him, so he lowered his head and stepped back into the corner. Esylt watched this whole interaction, unruffled. She had chewed her elven ear root into a fibrous, knotty little broom and she was starting to feel the dreadful, unwelcome sense of boredom most of her kind experienced in such situations.
"Well, I'm not taking any chance with him," the guard was saying. She glanced at him with open hostility. "Hewillremain in that cell until he awakes – or dies, for all I care." He pointed at the door. "Now get out of here before I fine you for trespassing."
"Allrighty," she sighed, and threw the fibrous little broom inside the Daedra's cell. The guard frowned but said nothing. "Good night, sirs."
"Good night," the blond subordinate immediately quipped.
Under the shadowy protection of his helmet, the eyes of the guard were glinting, as though his body had fully absorbed the fires of the sun. They followed the slow, swaying gait of the girl to the heavy door of the jail, and when she turned one last time toward them, all grinning and teasing, they glittered murderously.
"What?"
"Just for your information," she purred, in a terribly annoying, as-a-matter-of-factly voice. "The singular form isDaedroth."
"Just get the fuck out of my jail!"
5.
THE brisk rustling of pages jolted him out of sleep. In the distance chops and cracks cut the mournful caws of crows. A whistle came and went with the crunching of footsteps. Slowly a pale, dusty yellow light sketched the outlines of metal bars, then painted the brown and grey blots of rugged stone walls. They oozed a damp, rotten stench only matched by the smell of urine and faeces carried by the breeze.
Kratos groaned and flattened a numb hand on his face. His arm had pressed for so long the hole tearing him apart he thought it had fused with his spilled guts. The pain no longer inflamed his body; he felt fresh out of the Phlegethon, hurt and despair consumed away, flesh purified by anguish.
He was weary and ready, though there was an unmistakable buzzing passing through his temples – his heart beating hard in spite of his wish for death.
And then it hit him with the full realization of a granted wish. The nightmares. They were gone. He remembered Athena, and her vengeful sneer, and the furious echoes of her voice – and thecut.All disappeared as violently as the flames arose every time he closed his eyes.
The straw he lay on crinkled as he propped himself up, and a shadow wavered in the right corner of his eyes. He turned his head and clenched his fists, then froze as he saw a girl sitting on an upside-down bucket, book wide open on her knees. A dusty ray of light was falling right on the black braid that crowned her little head. In the gloomy light of morning, her skin appeared even paler, even greyer than it usually looked, and he wondered for a brief moment if she wasn't dead. But her breasts, shaped quite outrageously by her tightly fitting corset, were indeed swelling with life. He stared at them for a thoughtful minute – not in a lustful way, but in the truly naïve manner of a man who, once at death's door, had the strength to run back through the corridor of life and no longer had quite the energy to look away from where his eyes had decided to rest. To be perfectly honest, those were nice breasts too.
She flipped another page of her book. That affected detachment made Kratos frown. A hot flush of rage came over him. He tried to smother it, but still he barked at her:
"Where am I?"
"In jail, silly," she said, still reading her book, and for reasons unknown to him, lost among the fever, he immediately recognized her speech pattern, as if they knew each other once, at a time he was so blinded by rage her face never had the chance to find a place in his memories. She looked and sounded like a forgotten ghost of the past – and it made his blood turn to ice, more than the news of his imprisonment.
Suddenly, an image, a sensation arose into his mind. Kratos perked up and palpated the intact flesh of his marbled, sculpted abdominals, roughly sutured at the centre by some zealous will to live – or, he thought, by some untalented healer. A vicious snarl twisted his face.
"Did you heal me?"
"No."
The girl was now staring at him, utterly unfazed, almost blinking in a pretty insulting, disinterested way. Her eyes were reverberating the dusty light that fell all around her, and when Kratos leant toward her, he noticed the peculiar, striking colour that always singled her out; an hazardous drop of blood into the ambiguous waters of a lake. She had nice breasts and gorgeous eyes, but she wasn't pretty. She was odd-looking. She simply was no match to the Greek women he used to bed, and though there was a certain charm about her, something alluring in her posture and puckish gaze, her looks were too different from what he used to know, too foreign for him to spontaneously appreciate her alien beauty at the very first sight.
With a frustrated sigh, the girl slammed her book shut, pushed it back against her chest and bent toward him. Between her pale, lavender fingers lay an odd stick that had been mercilessly chewed.
"So,whatare you?" she asked with a knowing smile. "They think you're some kind of Daedra."
Kratos turned his head away from her inquisitive stare. He was pensive. He was thinking about how, when he had met the girl's eyes, there were no fear or apprehension in them, but rather a restrained interest, which meant that at leastsomeone, in that foreign land, didn't know who he was or what he had done. And, though he had no idea whatDaedracould mean, it didn't take an extensive knowledge of the place to realize that it was a terrible, terrible offence that led you right in jail.
"I don't think you are," the girl said. She had resumed chewing on the stick. "So... Are you going to answer me or what?"
The mischief in her voice sent shivers down his spine. His fears dissipated, there came back some paranoid, violent flash of intuition that she knew more about him that she would let on.
"Guess that's a no. Anyway..."
In one brisk motion, as if moved by the sudden desire to escape her questions, Kratos leapt at his feet and clenched the bars of the cell. The girl didn't flinch, her little stick dangling at the corner of her red mouth, her strange eyes anchored to his muscular back. She just sat there and watched, tapping her fingers on the cover of the book. Her interest was hard to ignore – her deception, too. Kratos felt her gaze burning along the length of his arm as he shook the bars once, then twice, and when he could no longer bear the intensity with which she gawked at him, he turned around and looked at her –glared,actually.
"What?" she said, grinning, and he found that to be a scorching injustice, for it wasn't her question, but his, to ask.
He snorted with obvious discontentment, ignored the way her grin widened and, his fists clenched on the bars, just right above the lock, shook the door to weaken the hinges.
"Hey, buddy!" the girl shouted. He glanced furiously over his shoulder. "Don't break the door. This shithole won't have the money to repair it for like, five years." She was pointing her little stick at him. Waving it towards the innocent, fearful bars that were shaking in his fists. "The door's open."
She winked. He frowned.
"I'm not kidding. How do you think I got there?"
As a matter of fact, he hadn't thought about that, as it was pretty evident – andexpected– that prisoners were jailed by some guards, for some reasons, and not because they deliberately walked into a cell to read under the dustiest light.
Since he froze there, both hands gripping the bars, unable to decide whether it was a joke or not, the girl stood up and put her book under her arm. Then, abruptly, rather quickly, she skipped to the cell door; Kratos let his arms dangle at his side, in profound, quiet annoyance, as the doormagicallyopened.
"There you go," she said, and she spun round and immersed herself into the book. "Farewell!" As she turned her back, her arm shot up in the air, as if an independent, cordial appendage she could no longer control.
And for a strange minute, Kratos stood there and stared at her while she slowly paced round the cell. Not only with disillusioned mistrust at the prospect of new friendships troubling a solitary life, but also with the lack of understanding of a man thrust into a new world, and the violent, primal desire of companionship.
"Tell me your name," he said –ordered.
She immediately raised her nose from her book and he thought, at the sparkle in her eyes, that she would smile and laugh cheerfully, but an unexpected veil of wariness blurred her expression. Her face went blank, and her eyes went black, and she slightly tilted her chin in a way that suggested both provocation and interrogation.
"Why?"
Kratos remained silent. He didn't know what to answer to that question. That mood swing had left him puzzled, and he thought, quite rightfully, that she was the first to pry into his life.
"Esylt," she said, closing her book. "Does that ring a bell?"
He shook his head. She relaxed a little bit.
"What about you?"
He hesitated, then figured she couldn't know who he was. The skin and the tattoo were enough to identify him – if she was asking his name, she couldn't have heard of him. He closed his eyes, hoped his legend hadn't followed him into those lands, and mumbled – despite his best efforts.
"What?" she said.
The name burnt his lips as he said, louder:
"Kratos."
"Kratos!" she exclaimed, and a nervous tremor clenched his fists. "You're Kratos? The Kratos?"
"I –"
But she cut him off before he could say more.
"Never heard of you."
He stared at her, quietly outraged at that silly joke, and a mischievous sneer stretched one corner of her lips. "What? Weren't you expecting me to recognize you? Are youstillexpecting me to recognize you? You look like you are."
She was misinterpreting his annoyance. He simply hadn't found that funny at all.
"No."
"Come on! I saw how...reluctantyou got about giving your name away. You were well-known before. Weren't you?"
This time he didn't answer – he was busy regaining some composure before she could read more between the lines and twists of his winces. But instead of digging further, she opened her book and nodded toward the door.
"Hey, Kratos –buddy.Weren't you supposed to leave?"
He looked at the door, then back at her. She had resumed pacing round the cell, nose buried in her book. The question escaped his mouth before he had time considering asking it or not – probably because the oddity of that situation had to be explained.
"Why do you stay?"
She grinned and said: "I kinda like the light in here."
And he stood still at the threshold, puzzled.
ABOUT:'s formatting is absolutely awful. There I said it. I am SO SORRY about how bulky and uninviting everything looks. I might cut chapters on here so it doesn't look like a fat-ass block of super wordy text, and I am currently (trying) working on formatting that chapter the best I can (that 1., 2., 3... system is the only thing I could think about), but yeah. I can't promise anything. I'm just so, so sorry for you readers. I can only hope it doesn't bother you as much as it bothers me.