"Okay. Okay! So there's a really really really big dragon coming this way and wants to kill us!" Sindri paced back and forth, nervously biting his nails and babbling their present circumstances. For once, Brok looked no more at ease with the situation than his brother, though kept his unease constrained with stillness. "Okay. We need a plan. Options. Maybe if we—"
"Won't work," Mimir interrupted.
Sindri stopped, looked at the head and remembered. "Right. Future sight. Okay. So that's out, but how about—?"
"That won't work either."
"Well how about—?"
"No."
"Do you have good options or are you just shooting down everything I—?!"
"I'm running every bloody outcome through me noggin so fast that it hurts!" Mimir snapped back. "Each and every one ending in our untimely and usually gruesome deaths! You come up with the options, and I can tell if they might bloody work! AND THOSE WON'T!"
"Mimir," Kratos rumbled, sensing an escalating and unproductive argument he knew they didn't have time for. "What is it? This dragon?"
"He says people call him Great Red. Or the Dragon of Dragons as 'e had me say before. It guards the world we're meanin' ta get to to rescue your boy. No outsiders get in."
"But Atreus—" the god of war began to ask.
"Aye. An' 'e's more'n a bit peeved about tha'. Thought it was a football?"
Something was odd about the head's words. "He's speaking to you?"
"There's outcomes where he's a wee bit chatty, I'm working with what I got."
"If he might speak, is there a way he would let us pass?"
"No." The answer was final and uncompromising.
Kratos nodded, looking from Mimir to the red dot in the distance. "... But if we do pass, he will not follow. He did not follow Atreus."
"Aye..." The artificially precognitive paused for a moment. "Seems 'e's staked a claim against another dragon an' he's not keen to lose his spot. Between you me, rare that he admits that. And... Now he doesn't like that I'm cheatin' him a bit by readin' the futures that end wi' us suffering sudden and terrible deaths."
"... There is only one future we need. One in which we get past him alive. Nothing else matters. We cannot fight him?" It didn't need to be a true victory. Only one that would allow them to survive and escape him in the end.
"You'd lose, brother," Mimir answered. "Place like this, he's got more than the home field advantage. If'n you're lucky, you get tossed off the boat and unmade by the forces of chaos or worse, tumble endlessly into the abyss."
"Hm." If that was the case... The dragon was clearly able to hear them if he had already become aware of Mimir's ability to see the future, or was aware of their words at all. In which case... "DRAGON OF DRAGONS! I WOULD SPEAK WITH YOU!" Kratos bellowed.
"Talking doesn't go well," Mimir reminded him.
"Then find a plan that will," the god answered, jerking his head at the dwarves who crowded around the head, the three of them speaking in hurried whispers. Meanwhile, "I DO NOT SEEK BATTLE. I AM HERE FOR MY SON ALONE."
It took a brief moment. Long enough that Kratos opened his mouth to bellow again. But eventually words reached him as though the seemingly infinite space between them was a mere few feet. "No can do, pal," came the response, much more conversational than Kratos expected. "This is my world. Nobody gets past me."
"I DO NOT SEEK CONFLICT WITH YOU OR THIS WORLD."
"You don't have to shout, idiot, I can hear you just fine. And the answer is still, 'no can do, pal'."
The others were still whispering. "I am willing to bargain," Kratos replied, still loudly, though not bellowing as he was before. "I have no malice for you, only a need to retrieve my son after he was stolen from me."
"And I'm real sorry about that. But I'm going to say it for the last time. No. Can. Do. Pal."
"An arrangement then!" Kratos tried. "We will not enter your world! Perhaps someone on your world retrieves Atreus and we take him with us! We leave you and your world in peace! There is no need for this to end in bloodshed!"
"You don't get it. This isn't just about you and that boy. If I let you leave, what's to stop you coming back and trying this again?" the dragon asked. "What's to stop somebody else seeing what you did and getting a bright idea to come calling? This ends here. That's the end of it." The beast let out a dissatisfied snort. "Nothing personal."
"Kratos!" Brok whisper-shouted.
The god looked back to see nervous, not entirely optimistic, but resolved expressions. They had a plan then. Not a good one, but one that had a chance to succeed. It was more than they had before and they were running out of time. "So be it." He turned away from the front of the boat. "If you have a plan, get to work," he told the dwarves before addressing Mimir. "What must I do?"
"Get ready to fight the dragon?" Mimir answered with his tone rising in uncertainty. "But, eh, make sure yer footin' is stable, yeh?"
"What does that mean?"
"Ask me no questions and I give our dragon friend no answers. We've got about six minutes until we're in the narrowest life or death situation you an' I have ever faced so... If ye've got any last words brewin', now'd be the time."
In a lifetime of regrets... Kratos had already made peace with how his journey would end. Had no choice but to confront that end after seeing the giants' prophecies. Everything he'd seen, everything he'd been subjected to, everything he'd done. There was only one thing left in the world that still mattered to him. "Mimir," he said, "If I do not survive, please watch over my son. And thank you for everything... Brother."
"Och..." A choked gasp came from the head. Mimir might have seen the words coming, but hearing them directly held different meaning. "The pleasure was mine, Kratos. Brok! Sindri!" he called out to the back of the boat. "I'll be giving directions, so no questions, no backtalk, I tell ye somethin' ye just bloody do it! Ye got that?!"
Brok shouted back. "We heard ya, ya loudmouth draugr cock gobbler!"
"Think he might be nervous," Mimir said more quietly to Kratos. "Far less creative than 'e usually is."
"Hm."
They continued their approach, making no move to change course. Kratos didn't know Mimir's plan, but he could understand the purpose. Every inch they moved in the direction of Atreus was distance they did not need to make up while being assaulted by that dragon. The beast getting clearer as they got closer. It was of a truly monstrous size. Kratos had seen larger. Faced larger. Yet, in battle, size was far from the greatest signifier of power, else he himself would not have defeated those foes that had towered over even small buildings. Wings, claws, fangs, all deadly weapons inherent to its shape and nature, a mountain of swift and powerful muscle protected by gleaming red scales. Perfectly suited for battle in an environment like this in a way that Kratos absolutely was not.
"It's gettin' ta be about that time," Mimir murmured as they began to feel the wind of Great Red's wingbeats. The first change in the air any of them had experienced in years. "Lads, it's about time!" he called out to the dwarves. "Ready?!"
"As we'll ever be!" Sindri answered.
"Alright then... Steer to starboard and get us movin'!"
The Mjolnir Engine. What had once been a legendary artefact acting as a constantly sparking propeller at the aft of another legendary artefact. Now it sat on a new apparatus extending from the aft. "Alright! Let 'er rip!" Brok exclaimed, yanking on a chain that had not been there minutes before. With one firm pull, the Mjolnir Engine picked up speed. Rotating faster and faster, the sparking hammer becoming a storm of wind and lightning, lurching Skithblathnir forward at much greater speeds. "Sindri, steer us starboard!"
"Right!" his brother answered, turning them left.
"THAT'S PORT, YA FUCKIN' IDJIT!"
"DO I LOOK LIKE A SAILOR TO YOU?!"
The benefit of precognition. Mimir wasn't simply telling them what they needed to do. He saw not only what they needed to do, but what he needed to tell them to get them to do what he needed them to do. Every step on this path would lead them toward victory. He knew what mistakes they would make, and so his instructions would still lead them to the right path so long as he compensated for them.
The smartest man in the world. If they were all going to survive this, he had to prove it. Linked up to an uncountable number of futures, he could feel it burning. If he were the man he was, not an animated head, his brain would have cooked in his skull by now.
Sindri's mistake had a purpose. Kicking off at surprisingly high speed and turning one way, only to then swerve in another direction. It acted as a feint. Great Red, surprised by their heightened velocity, had moved to block them, only to then have to move again in an attempt to block their new path.
"Drop us!" Mimir shouted. The Mjolnir Engine moved high, pushing the boat into a dangerous dive as the dragon swooped overhead. The quick manoeuvre gained them an extra mile toward their goal. "Kratos! Spear! Wing!"
Weak points. The god of war had fought enough dragons to recognise them, even if this one wasn't entirely alike the others and far larger. A hide coated in gleaming scales, immaculate and surely unbreakable. The call out for the wing was one such weakness, however. Yet... They were far too heavy, far too large. He wouldn't be able to tear through sufficiently to cripple its flight. But... The joints. If he could lock them up a little. "RAH!" Thus spears sailed unerringly toward literally the most pivotal point of the wing. Lodging in the root of it. Once, twice. Only two managed to hit the target.
"Rgh!" the dragon grunted. "You think a dragon god needs wings to fly?!" he asked, continuing to move just as easily as he had before.
Kratos readied to detonate the spears. "Not yet!" Mimir called out. "Axe! Keep aimin' fer the wings! Sindri! Climb!"
"Ah!" A pull of a lever and the Mjolnir Engine swooped from high to low, upsetting the balance of everyone aboard with the sudden change in direction. "Brok! How's she holding up?!"
"Not good! It's a rush job!" the blue dwarf answered as he climbed onto the apparatus, slamming it with a hammer to set it back into place. "Come on ya shitass beatstick, stay together!"
Mimir continued to scan futures, having guided them toward outcomes with surer and surer chances of victory. But as he looked forward, he could see past them. See past the end-point. When they did achieve victory... And the path he had been steering them towards... Mimir was unable to see beyond the end of his own future. And the safest path against the dragon ended with Kratos cradling his son's decapitated head. And the apocalyptic rage and despair that followed.
"... Stop repairs!" Mimir shouted.
"You lost your fuckin' nut?! What the fuck're you—?!"
"Just do it!" Mimir shouted again. "Sindri, level us out! We're goin' straight for our goal now!" They didn't have time to play games like this. They had to get there now.
"Mimir?" Kratos asked, calling the Leviathan Axe back to his hand.
"It's all or nothin', brother."
"... Very well."
"Wait for my calls, and when I say, throw the axe starboard high." The Spartan nodded silently. Mimir knew timing was crucial. "Brok, give 'er everythin' she's got!"
"Ya better be fuckin' sure about this!" the blue dwarf warned as he ripped the chain again. The aft of the legendary vessel was consumed in a mass of blue and white lightning, so thick and dense it more closely resembled flames. The apparatus the Mjolnir Engine had been attached to visibly suffered for the forces acting on it, the metal heating and warping already after only a few seconds of exposure. Becoming unstable, and leaving Sindri unable to steer. Options were dwindling. All they could do was rely on Mimir's guidance.
"Idiots!" the Dragon of Dragons called out, swooping toward them from their left.
"... Spear! Now!"
With a stomp, Kratos detonated the spears lodged in Great Red's wing joint. The beast listed slightly, barely deterred.
"Axe! Now!"
With a mighty heave, the god of war tossed his weapon in the opposite direction of the beast, not knowing why but trusting Mimir.
"What—?" The dragon was as confused as the dwarves watching.
Until the dwarves were distracted by the screeching of metal.
"BRACE YOURSELVES!"
The words were barely out of the head's mouth when the steering apparatus sheared clean off, leaving the Mjolnir Engine to spin itself out into the chaotic forces of the Realm Beyond Realms at horrific speeds. The effect it had on the stability of the boat was catastrophic.
The effect of the spinning lightning hammer slamming into Great Red's head was worse.
"GAHHHHH!"
The dragon missed the boat entirely. For the best, as they were completely unable to do anything to defend against him at that moment, the vessel turned into a missile pointed directly at the gateway to the world Atreus had landed on.
"KRATOS! CALL IT BACK!" Mimir screamed.
The Spartan raised his hand, willing his weapon to come back to his hand.
Unfortunately for Great Red, he was now in the way. And the weapon lodged into his open jaw. "AH! WHAT IS—?!" The pull didn't stop. It kept the beast disoriented for a precious few extra seconds as he tried to fight the pull on his head via his sliced jaw. His body turned, writhed as he tried to get the weapon free, only for it to free itself when he happened to turn in the right direction. It slammed against his teeth, then flew through when he opened his mouth. "Clever dick!" An axe coated in dragon blood finally returned to Kratos' hand. "You!" The dragon could see how close they were. "No! I won't let you!"
"HOLD ON TO SOMETHIN'!" Mimir yelled as loud as he could.
In a last desperate attempt, the dragon reached out, determined to destroy the vessel with a rake of his claws before they could reach their destination. They were already so close, he had no choice but to reach out with a swipe of his claws. Only the very tip of one managed to nick the boat. Yet, with the size and strength of Great Red, even nicking the boat was enough to snap the ethereal vessel in two.
But it was already too late.
As they passed through the gateway, as they tumbled through the air, Kratos grabbed Mimir's head and ripped him from the Farseer Heimdall and hooked him to his belt. "Ah know we're potentially fallin' to our deaths but lemme just say thank fuck I'm out of that thing!"
"What of the dwarves?!" Kratos shouted.
"They'll be fine... I think!"
"You think?!"
"Fairly sure! I don't see the future anymore, again, thank fuck! My priority was gettin' us all out alive, includin' your boy! Did the best I could!"
Kratos couldn't argue with the results so far. The dragon had continued to chase them through, though had stopped, only his head poking through the gateway.
"More importantly, brother! There's not much time! Look down!"
The Spartan did. From far, far up in the air of this new world, he saw a great patch of devastation. A circular blot in a verdant countryside of... Of his home. He recalled the shape of it, had seen maps, had seen the world as an Olympian god similar to how he saw it today.
And in that blot on the map... He saw...
There were winged figures surrounding it. Others within, he could see them. He recognised the location. The Temple of Styx. He recognised... No. Where was his son? There was a great beast down there, battling a man and losing badly. Stabbed, consumed by fire.
And then, the beast changed.
It felt as though someone had gripped hold of Kratos' heart and squeezed. "Boy," he whispered, seeing the broken form of his son, burned, bleeding. "BOYYYYYYY!"
He was too far! Others raced toward the two. One fell to their knees, pleading. Their pleas falling on deaf ears as the other raised his spear. No! "BOYYYYYY!" With all his might, Kratos raised his axe and threw with everything he had, silently begging Faye to help guide it on its path, to protect their son. And with a clang, the spear was deflected, tossed away. The axe recalled to his hand, ready to be thrown again. "BOYYYYYY!"
He could see the face of the one who would kill his son, or the lack of a face. The skeletal figure was unfamiliar, and yet something in him thrummed angrily at the sight. Yet this new, foreign anger mattered little. He had sufficient rage already. "ATREUUUUUS!"
The Draupnir Spear. Thrown, aimed with pinpoint precision at the arm holding his son. Then detonated. It may have tossed Atreus away, but that was at least safer than where he had been. The boy did not move from where he had landed, but the girl who had begged for his life quickly moved to his side.
And so, with the impact of a meteor, kicking up an explosion of ashes, the Spartan landed on this new world. Between his son... And Hades. Something inside him knew it instinctively, slotted the information into his understanding of the situation. Mimir had said Atreus was involved with familiar faces. They were in Greece, outside the Temple of Styx. The god of the dead manifesting as a man of only bone and wielding a bident.. Who else could it have been?
As those around stared at him in abject bewilderment, Kratos readied himself for a fight he hoped he could avoid. "I know what you are," he said, his voice low and filled with both threat and promise.
"And yet unlike everyone else attempting to defy fate tonight, I do not know what you are," Hades replied. "An outsider. You could not have declared it more openly than with the manner in which you arrived." Both skeletal arms reformed as he spoke. "Will you introduce yourself before you die?"
"... Girl!" he called out, not looking away from his enemy. "Can I trust you with Atreus?"
"I won't let him die!" the girl answered, cradling Atreus' beaten body.
"Then go. Tend to him." He didn't watch her go as she fled the immediate battlefield with his son in her arms. "... I am Kratos of Sparta. The boy's father."
"Father?" The skeletal god turned, looking at the fallen body of another man. Bald-headed, ashen-skinned. Tended to by one with chalk-white skin and wearing red. "What a ridiculous farce. Whoever you are, another who stands in the path of fate is just as fated to fall."
"Fate is the excuse of a coward."
"Spoken like one who has not witnessed their binding threads himself."
"I have seen the threads of fate," Kratos refuted him. "I have been subject to them, defied by them and defied them in turn. If fate is your purpose then you have no purpose, forging your threads into adamantine chains. A coward hiding in slavery."
"Yes." Hades didn't deny it. He confirmed it without shame. "An existence filled with toil. With duty. With doing what was needed of me. And what fate awaits me? What fate awaits all those I love? Pain, suffering, torture and death. And I left alone as witness, as the one to continue his toil. Continue his duty. Continue to do what is needed. If that is to be their fate, if that is to be my fate, then I would have it delivered swiftly, as painlessly as I can. If I am permitted only one fate, and must see it through, then I will see it through as I choose. They will not suffer as she suffered."
Kratos lacked much of the context for what Hades was speaking of. But he could pick up enough. The young man and woman who were tending Atreus. His son had gotten involved in all of this for them. Which would make them... "Your children?" he asked, not needing confirmation. "You would slay your own children?"
"I would deny them an end filled with suffering."
"You would deny them their lives! You would deny yourself their suffering!" Ashen hands gripped the axe tighter, only foreseeing this ending in conflict. But he would try once more. "Abandon this path you have chosen. Or I will show you where it leads." With those words, he returned the axe to his back.
"I know where this path leads. That is the tragedy of it." The bladed spear twirled in a disembodied hand before the hand returned to the wrist. "But I will not hide from the inevitable."
Kratos breathed out through his nose, slow and steady. And likewise, the Blades of Chaos slipped free of their sheaths, slow and steady, primordial flame coursing up and down the jagged edges. "So be it."
Was there a signal? Neither god would be able to point to any as the moment of instigation. Stillness, to a frenzy of movement, like they had somehow agreed on the very instant. The bident Hades carried swept toward the new foe while the Blades of Chaos swept in the other direction, the weapons clashing, the chained blades deflected but brought around again from another direction as Kratos ducked the heavy swing. Another followed it as the skeletal god continued moving, narrowly evading the follow-up swings of the chained blades. The second sweep of the bident was caught instead by a circular shield with a raucous clang of metal on metal. Not just blocked but deflected.
"What?!" Hades yelled, surprised by the power to redirect his weapon from the stranger calling himself Kratos. Even more so when the twin blades slashed through his bones repeatedly within a fraction of an instant. Many of his ribs reduced to blackened ash. It remained not a concern, he told himself. Restoring himself would be simple.
... Yet something was wrong.
But Kratos had no intention of letting him determine what that was. The blades flashed brightly, searing forward, under the shoulders of Hades, pulled back to coil around his arms. With a heave, the two gods were dragged together, followed by a slam of Kratos' shield into Hades' skull that shattered it in a single strike. Reformed again. For Kratos to follow with two repeated slams of the Blades of Chaos.
More blackened and broken bones. Once again restored. Something—
The stranger was relentless. Another assault, but this time stymied as the god of the dead shifted tactics. Fighting primordial flame with hellfire, an infernal beam with the weight of Hades' full power behind it melted the foreign god's shield to slag. His defense weakened, a curse followed, slamming into Kratos' chest and sinking into his soul. A debilitating force, the power of the dead anathema to the living. With a fraction of a moment's reprieve, Hades slammed his spear into the ground, summoning fell totems to hamper his enemy's movements.
And Kratos, not knowing what they were, fell victim to one as it burst under his feet. "Argh!" His body already feeling sluggish from whatever Hades had hit him with, he felt complete debilitation under the totem's effects, the noxious cloud it emitted clinging to his body. And Hades was coming. He raised a meagre defense as the bident swung at him, held it back for only and instant with his blades before the weapon carved a rent in his chest.
"ENOUGH! Submit to your fate!" the god of the dead commanded, swinging the weapon again.
"Rgh...! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
The arena exploded. Power bursting outward from the Spartan threw Hades back. The curse burst from Kratos' body creating fresh wounds that he ignored alongside the gouge carved into his body. He shook free of the totem's power. The Blades of Chaos dangled from his arms, not even in his hands.
"What?!" Hades asked, bewildered by the snarling warrior.
"AHHHH!" With a leap, Kratos slammed himself into the ground. The earth shook. More importantly, the totems were ripped free of the earth and tossed into the air. With another leap, the Ghost of Sparta snatched one out of the air and threw it at his enemy. Followed it as it burst over the one who had created it.
... Hades wasn't sure which punch discarded his weapon. It may have been the fourth. It may have been as late as the eighth. But as the fury of the Spartan slammed into him over and over again, fist after fist hammering into his bones, it didn't matter. Even with it, he would have been just as incapable of defending himself from the unrelenting onslaught of rage. Each impact kicked up more and more ash, each one digging them both deeper until the bare earth was once again revealed. Until the impacts of Kratos' fists cracked dirt and stone and shattered the god of the dead yet further. And all the while the dangling Blades of Chaos, not even an afterthought, completely forgotten by their wielder, followed every punch. Slicing into the Spartan's skin even as they burned Hades' broken bones to ashes.
After a moment, Kratos once again gained full control of himself. Panting for breath, he stood over the broken and burned god. More a scattered pile of bone fragments and charcoal. Still moving. Still rattling, attempting to reform themselves. "Mimir... His weapon?"
"Over on the left, brother."
"Mm." Leaping over to it, Kratos took the weapon in hand. Hades was not helpless from this alone. Yet, if this battle continued, it would only continue to get worse for him. "Yield," he said. He didn't know anything of this conflict. Hades wanted Atreus dead, but, he would give the god of the dead a chance to relent. Once. If this could end without death... It is what he would prefer. "Living in fear of how they might suffer is the curse of being a father. But your children are alive and you are the only one making them suffer. If you care for them as you claim, end this madness."
"Madness?" Hades hissed. "Madness?!" The bones once again gathered. "I am the only one sane! We do not live to choose our own paths! We live as they design! Cruel, unforgiving, unfair, none of this matters to what we can't escape! We—!"
Something was wrong.
Everyone else could see it long before Hades realised it.
Every time he had reformed his body, it had been perfect. There had been marks left where his bones had been broken, even signs that they had been reduced to powder in places. Yet they had reformed whole and intact.
Such was no longer the case.
Where there had once been a complete skeleton of the man who had once been the revered god of the dead... Now there was an even more macabre blackened and broken husk. Chunks of bone, their ends blackened, hung freely within his frame. Missing segments left to sit empty between blackened fractures. Most of his right thigh was missing. A majority of his ribcage. His left arm.
"Pitiful god."
"Maddened sod."
"Your tragic end we all applaud."
The three disembodied voices giggled as the sounds of hands clapping together rained over the battlefield.
"What is this?" Kratos wondered, searching for the source.
"You hear them too?" Hades asked, though wasn't sure whether he cared to hear the answer. What they were saying... It didn't make sense.
"No heirs. No heirs."
"From yours to theirs."
"No bequeathments in your affairs."
"That is what you told me!" Hades agreed insistently. "Why do you return now?! After more than a thousand years of silence! I do not fight my fate!"
"The Fates," Kratos growled, the grip tightening on the grips of his weapons. Searching all the harder for any sign of them.
"Daughters!" Nyx yelled, "Cease this at once!"
The voices continued to giggle.
"Mother thought that fate had changed?" the first laughed.
"The threads, the weave, we rearranged?" the second mocked.
"Fate is fate, with no exchange," the third finished, with detached amusement.
"God of the Dead. The paths you've wandered."
"All the time, the love, you've squandered."
"No heirs. No heirs. No heirs for the conquered."
... The ensuing silence stretched on.
Many speak of how cruel fate can be. After all, there is one fate that all meet one day, a fate that cannot be fought no matter how hard one might try. Yet while many lived in resigned understanding of the cruelty of fate, few were cursed enough to understand how petty it could be.
And in that moment, Kratos, all on the battlefield, witnessed someone learning the truth of that in that exact moment. A truth he thought he understood, yet had only scratched the surface.
Hades laughed. He laughed as his bones rattled, he laughed as they fell to pieces as he no longer cared to support them. He laughed, loud and manic and terrible, the true viciousness of it all wrapped around his throat, turning his laughter into choked sobs. His wife, his love, stolen from him in meaningless suffering. His children, suffering by his hands alone. All for what? All for nothing. All to hide from his own fears, and in turn, make them come true.
"Melinoé... Zagreus..." he managed to say... "I am sorry..."
The being that had once been Hades. The being that had once been the revered god of the dead. His bones crumbled to pieces, dust and ash scattered on the wind.
There Kratos stood. The victor, even if it wasn't he who struck the killing blow. It took effort to resheathe his blades. A desperate, furious desire near-consumed him. Seeing someone suffering for the Fates' cruel jokes, it stoked an urge he had spent centuries trying to quell. But in the end, he slid the blades into their sheathes, if quite a bit more firmly than necessary.
"Brother!"
Kratos turned at Mimir's call, looking behind him to see the children of Hades staring past him with tears in their eyes. And between them...
"Father...?" Atreus asked, scarcely believing his eyes.
-(-)-
A/N: This chapter seen very early by my generous supporters on THE GREAT FORBIDDEN P! FEAR THE P! LOVE THE P!
