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“Ares! Destroy my enemies, and my life is yours!”
This is the moment where interest becomes fascination. Where a passing fancy becomes certainty, where a glance at the wars between anthills becomes true investment.
In his moment of direst need, Kratos of Sparta does not call for Athena. Not for the war goddess that Sparta holds dearest, whose strategy, focus and organisation is held so high among their much-lauded army, but for the god of true war. For the god of slaughter, invasion, bloodshed, war.
This one knows the wars he fights, and knows who truly holds dominion over them.
Ares likes that.
Athena has eyes only for heroes, for the notable men who, no matter her denials, always win her heart. She does not care for nobodies. Her eyes skim off of those whose seed of greatness has yet to sprout, especially when that greatness lies more within Ares’ realm than hers. The great Goddess of Wisdom cares for the generals, the artisans, the kings and princes whose names live forever on the tongues of the storytellers. But she does not care for the killers. Those noble grey eyes of hers do not catch upon the bloodstained spears of common soldiers, on the skulls they grind under their sandals.
This man is not Diomedes. He is not Odysseus, the complicated man she fusses over like a mother. He is not, and will likely never be, a hero like Perseus, Bellerophon, Theseus or Heracles, no matter their shared parentage or potential. Divine blood flows in his veins, but he is only a man like any other: a soldier, dying a coward’s death on a nameless battlefield. History will forget his name alongside this battle, will grind them under its heel until they are nothing but dust. It has no time for some foolish general, after all, one name among many the Barbarian Horde would destroy in their rampage across the Peloponnese.
No time for a single man, like any other, dying with his back against the dirt and his eyes caught fast on the falling weapon of his foe. A mortal soldier, tears in his eyes, terror in his heart, spilled blood being churned into mud under barbarian feet. A fool. A weak, cowardly man who could not hold himself to his ideals, who, when facing his end, called out for another to save him.
And not just any other, but the God of War himself. Offers himself to the god of slaughter, eternal servitude for his life: he sells himself with his blade held high, a shout of determined, last-ditch desperation in his battle-ragged voice.
All of Sparta will be destroyed if he fails. His home, his city hangs in the balance, all of those he swore to defend until his dying breath. Should he die here, everyone he has ever known or loved with be put in chains or to the sword. But that, Ares knows, is not why he makes this offer.
Kratos of Sparta is afraid to die. More than that, he cannot stand the idea of losing, of a foe being able to hold their head high and declare that they were the one to lay low Sparta’s youngest captain. The mere thought of it is enough to make him nauseous, wrathful, to strike harsher and fiercer than before, to maim and crush where he once would have merely defeated. He is angry, and he is afraid.
Athena would not have answered his call, that much Ares is certain of. The Goddess of Heroes has no use for a man such as this.
But Ares…he can think of a few.
With a great crackle of tearing matter, the sky above the battlefield splits in half to reveal the godly figure above. All those still alive to see it pause, freezing in terror like startled deer, watching the flickering, divine flames of the Olympian come to intervene. Ares reaches out to the sides of the wound and leaps through, crashing down atop the battle in a form the size of a mountain. Men are crushed under his heels, but he has eyes for none of them, not now, not with such a prize as this within his grasp.
His world narrows to that lonely, stock-still clearing, Alrik’s hammer still held high in utter shock, Kratos of Sparta’s eyes wide and body limp against a rock. The Spartan’s hands are empty, but even if they had Ares thinks it would have already slipped from his fingers.
You called, Spartan, Ares thinks. Do not be surprised that I came.
Ares does not kneel, never has, never will, and he does not stoop to let the Blades lunge forth – he does not wait for the Spartan, his Spartan to choose, because all of history knows that he already has. This is merely an afterthought for the Blades to wrap his arms, because Ares seals his oaths with blood and sweat and desperate, blinding terror. He does not wait for words, nor the petty seals of signet rings.
The Blades sink in, skin blistering and bone charring under their gentle touches, and that is the words on the page. There waits the text of the document, ink still wet, open space waiting for the finishing touch, mouth hanging open like a waiting maw. They sink into the Spartan’s hands as though they had always been waiting for him.
A message passes without words. When Kratos of Sparta lunges to his feet like a cornered stag and slices Alrik’s head from his shoulders, therein lies the signature.
Alrik’s head hits the floor like a stone, a heavy thump echoing against the dirt, and a moment later his army’s follows suit: a mournful, breathless gasp rising like the wings of the Keres as they follow their leader even unto death.
The pact is made. The Spartan is his until Chaos itself reclaims the earth, oath sealed in the blood that both men and War know is the only real arbiter of truth. Men may speak and gods may command, promises can be broken and documents may burn: but blood forever spills true, and Kratos’ oath is sealed in the chains on his arms and the thousandfold heads of his enemies hitting the dust.
This is where everything begins.