I Am Zeus - Chapter 235

Chapter 235: Two Half-Brothers
The silence around Mephisto’s fallen throne was brief. It was broken by a roar of pure, undiluted rage.

Moloch surged to his full height, ignoring the gashes Kratos had carved into his flesh. Black ichor steamed from his wounds. Beside him, Belial rose, clutching his broken ribs. His elegant sneer was gone, replaced by a look of raw, hateful shock. Their king was dead. Dust.

Their eyes, burning with hellfire, locked onto the one who had allowed it to happen: Kratos.

The Ghost of Sparta didn’t even look winded. He cranked his neck to one side, then the other, the pops echoing like small cracks of thunder. The Blades of Chaos, still looped around his arms, smoldered with a low, eager heat.

“You…” Moloch’s voice was a rockslide. “You stood by and let that happen!”

Kratos’s gaze was flat, devoid of triumph or fear. “The monkey earned his kill. Your turn is now.” He took a step forward, the ground seeming to solidify under his tread. “I am a godkiller. You are but older gods. Look upon each other. Say your farewells. Then, say them to the others you will soon join.”

The sheer, unvarnished audacity of the statement left even the demon lords speechless for a moment. The indignity of it boiled over.

“Farewells?” Belial shrieked, his voice losing its cultured edge, becoming a screech. “We are the eternal lords of this pit! You are a mortal ghost with delusions of grandeur!”

Moloch answered with action. He slammed his fists together, and the ground for fifty yards around them ruptured. From the fissures, a swamp of Hell bubbled up—thick, tar-like water teeming with things that had too many teeth and not enough eyes. A tide of slithering, scuttling horrors surged forward, a living wave of fangs and claws aimed solely at Kratos.

Kratos braced, his blades flaring.

But another figure landed beside him with a heavy, metallic clang.

Ares, the God of War, his own armor dented and bloodied, hefted his spear. “Need a hand, Spartan?” he grunted, his eyes fixed on the approaching swarm.

Kratos didn’t look at him. “I do not.”

“Tch. Still holding a grudge?” Ares said, a bitter smirk on his face as he fell into a fighting stance beside his half-brother. “Look… about what happened. In Athens.” He said the words quickly, like pulling out a rotten tooth. “I was… wrong.”

Kratos finally glanced at him, his expression unchanging. “You were a fool.”

“I was!” Ares admitted, his voice rising with a strange mix of anger and sincerity as the first of the hell-beasts reached them. Kratos’s blades became a whirlwind of fire, dismembering three creatures in one sweep. Ares impaled another on his spear. “I sought power. I used you. I made you kill them. Your family.”

Another beast leaped. Kratos caught it mid-air, snapping its spine over his knee before throwing the twitching corpse back into the horde.

“You showed me what I was,” Ares continued, his words punctuated by the thrusts of his spear. “When you defeated me… when you humiliated me… I felt it. For the first time. I felt a fraction of what I had made you feel. The rage. The betrayal. The… emptiness.”

Kratos stopped for a moment, turning fully to face Ares amidst the chaos. The hell-beasts seemed to hesitate, confused by the sudden stillness. The air around Kratos was cold, despite the hellfire.

“You felt nothing,” Kratos said, his voice low and final. “What you felt was a shadow. A whisper. Compared to the void your actions carved inside me, it was nothing.”

The truth of it hit Ares harder than any physical blow. He stood there, spear half-lowered, understanding dawning in his eyes. He had spent ages nursing his wounded pride, but he had never truly grasped the depth of the chasm he had created.

A massive, worm-like beast with a circular maw of teeth erupted from the swamp between them, aiming to swallow Ares whole. Kratos moved without thought. He lunged forward, plunging both blades deep into the creature’s head, holding its jaws inches from Ares’s face.

“Do not stand there,” Kratos growled, shoving the dying beast aside. “Fight. Or die.”

The command broke Ares’s stupor. He nodded, a new, grim determination setting on his features. The apology was made. It was insufficient. It would always be insufficient. But the war was here. And for now, they had the same enemy.

The swarm was thinning, their bodies piling up around the two gods.

“The pests are gone,” Belial spat, flexing his fingers. “Now, we finish this.”

“The brute is mine,” Moloch rumbled, his eyes fixed on Kratos.

“Then the traitor is mine,” Belial said, his gaze shifting to Ares with malicious glee. “A god who turns on his own kind? My favorite.”

The two pairs closed in.

Moloch charged, a living avalanche. Kratos met him head-on. There was no finesse here. It was pure, brutal power. Fist met armored flesh. Kratos was driven back a step, his boots carving grooves in the bone floor. He answered by swinging a blade, not at Moloch’s body, but at the massive chain still fused to his back. The metal, superheated by hellfire and divine rage, screeched and sparked.

Ares and Belial were a different kind of fight. A whirlwind of precision and poison. Belial was faster, his thin sword a silver flicker, aiming for joints, the eyes, the throat. Ares was stronger, his spear blows meant to shatter and crush. Belial danced around him, laughing.

“You see?” Belial taunted, ducking under a spear thrust. “This is what you are! A blunt instrument. All rage, no grace!”

Ares didn’t reply. He was learning. He feigned a clumsy, heavy overhead swing. Belial saw the opening and darted in, sword aimed for Ares’s heart. It was exactly what Ares wanted. He released the spear with one hand, letting the blade graze his side, and grabbed Belial’s sword arm.

“I am the God of War,” Ares snarled, his grip like iron. “I am not just rage. I am strategy.” He headbutted Belial square in the face. The demon lord’s nose shattered with a wet crunch.

Across the battlefield, Kratos delivered a devastating kick to Moloch’s knee, buckling the giant leg. As Moloch roared and stumbled, Kratos yanked hard on the chain still wrapped around his arm. The massive links, already weakened, snapped at the point fused to Moloch’s spine.

Moloch bellowed, not in pain, but in shock and loss. The chain was part of him, a symbol of his domain. Kratos swung the broken end, the heavy links wrapping around Moloch’s throat.

“Your reign ends,” Kratos stated.

He pulled.

Moloch’s roar was cut off into a gurgle. He clawed at the chain, his feet leaving the ground. Kratos, with a final, titanic heave, swung the gargantuan demon lord through the air and slammed him down onto the stone floor with earth-shattering force. The chamber shook. Moloch did not get up.

Belial, seeing his last ally fall, froze for a fatal second.

Ares didn’t hesitate. He drove his spear forward, through Belial’s back and out his chest.

Belial looked down at the spear tip protruding from his ribcage, a look of profound insult on his face. “This… is undignified…” he whispered, before his body dissolved into a pool of shimmering, toxic sludge.

Ares yanked his spear free, breathing heavily. He turned to look at Kratos, who was unwinding the broken chain from his arm.

The two half-brothers stood amidst the carnage, the bodies of two Hell Kings at their feet. No words passed between them. There was no camaraderie. No forgiveness.

But there was, for the first time, a grim and bloody understanding. They were weapons, pointed at the same enemy. And for now, that was enough.