Aletheia: the Oracle of Delphi

Aletheia was the Oracle of Delphi, a mortal woman whose name meant truth in the Greek tongue and whose eyes were the source of a power no god could counterfeit. She saw the future, and she saw through every lie. It was Aletheia who uncovered the scheme of Ares and the Furies to overthrow Olympus, and Aletheia who paid for that knowledge with her eyes, her freedom, and at last her life. Blinded, imprisoned in her own temple, and exploited by the false prophets Castor and Pollux, she held on long enough to tell Kratos how to break the blood oath that chained him to the War God, and her stolen eyes became the weapon that destroyed the Furies.

The seer of Delphi#

Aletheia was born at Delphi and served there as its Oracle, dwelling in the Oracle's Chambers within the temple where petitioners came to hear the will of the gods. Unlike the seers of other cities, her gift did not rest on ritual or vapors but on her own eyes. Those eyes granted her precognition, unveiling visions of what was to come, and a rarer power still, the awareness to see through illusions and even dissolve them outright. No glamour or deception could touch her. Even the Furies, whose craft was built on twisting the minds of their victims with false visions, could not deceive her sight.

The office she held carried its own inheritance. A necklace glowing with the power of prophecy was passed down to each Oracle of Delphi in turn, and Aletheia's charm was later found resting in the catacombs beneath her city. She also kept the Amulet of Uroborus, a talisman of the serpent that devours its own tail, with the power to decay and rebuild what it touched.

Aletheia did not live only for her office. She was the lover of Orkos, the half god son of Ares and the Fury queen Alecto, who served his mothers as Oath Keeper. When Orkos began to doubt the justice of the blood tasks his mothers had laid on the Spartan Kratos, it was to Aletheia that he came for counsel, and it was through her that he learned how deep the rot truly ran.

The plot against Olympus#

Through her visions Aletheia came to know the most dangerous secret in Greece. Ares was not content to serve Olympus. He was plotting with the Furies to overthrow it, and Aletheia had foreseen the destruction of Olympus at the hands of the God of War. She believed the vision spoke of Ares, and with reason, for the War God was in truth preparing to seize his father's throne.

She and Orkos resolved to stop him by carrying the warning to Zeus himself. They never reached him. Ares discovered their intent and loosed the Furies upon them both. Orkos escaped the sisters' grasp, but Aletheia did not. The Furies fell upon the Oracle before the warning could be spoken, determined that every trace of proof of the conspiracy would be rendered useless.

The Eyes of Truth#

The Furies' punishment was made to fit her gift. They ripped Aletheia's eyes from her skull, taking from her the source of all her power, and transformed them into a weapon of their own, the Eyes of Truth, capable of wiping out any illusion. What had been the one sight in Greece that could expose their deceptions became a relic they controlled.

Such a weapon could never be allowed to fall into other hands. The Furies carried the Eyes to the cursed city of Delos and hid them in the lantern of the colossal Statue of Apollo, the final work of the inventor Archimedes. The sisters had aided Archimedes with the resources to finish the monument for exactly this purpose, and when the statue neared completion it was Castor and Pollux who arrived to conceal the Eyes within it, to the builder's dismay. The statue was later ruined, its wreckage guarded by the sea and by the Furies' servants, and the Eyes stayed buried in its lantern while their blinded owner languished far away.

Prisoner of the false prophets#

Aletheia's captivity was its own cruelty. With the help of Castor and Pollux, the Furies locked the blinded Oracle inside her temple at Delphi, and the twin brothers set themselves up as the prophets of the Oracle in her place. The impostors stole the Amulet of Uroborus from her and demanded tribute from petitioners in exchange for an audience with the seer, growing fat on the offerings of those who came seeking truth from a woman they kept caged.

So matters stood when Kratos came to Delphi. The Spartan had broken his blood oath to Ares and was hunted by the Furies through waking nightmares and illusions he could not distinguish from the world. Orkos had directed him to the Oracle, for only Aletheia knew a way to sever the bond. To reach her, Kratos fought his way through the temple and through Castor and Pollux themselves, killing both and claiming the stolen amulet.

Death in the Oracle's Chambers#

Victory came at a price Aletheia paid. During the battle between Kratos and the twins, Pollux caused a fall that left the Oracle mortally wounded. Kratos found her dying in her chambers and tried to heal her with the Amulet of Uroborus, but she told him its power could not mend her wounds, and she asked to be left to die in peace.

She did not spend her final moments on herself. Aletheia revealed to Kratos the plans of the Furies and told him where his freedom lay, in the cursed city of Delos, where the Eyes of Truth were hidden within the ruined Statue of Apollo. Only the Eyes could break the illusions that bound him.

The Ghost of Sparta was not a man known for gentleness. He had raged at oracles before and would again. Yet with Aletheia he was tender, comforting the dying seer, and when she passed he mourned her, one of the few souls in his long and bloody life to earn that grief rather than his contempt.

The prophecy fulfilled#

Aletheia's last counsel decided the war she did not live to see. Kratos sailed to Delos, tore the Eyes of Truth from the Furies' keeping, and with their power stripped away every illusion the sisters could weave. Megaera, Tisiphone, and Alecto all fell to him, and with Orkos' final sacrifice the blood oath to Ares was broken at last.

Her great prophecy outlived them all, though not as she had understood it. Aletheia had foreseen Olympus destroyed at the hands of the God of War and had moved against Ares to prevent it. But the very help she gave Kratos freed him to defeat Ares, take the fallen god's throne as the new God of War, and in the end bring Olympus down himself. In striving to turn the vision aside, she had cleared the path for its completion.

The Oracle was not forgotten. Long after Greece lay in ashes, in the frozen lands of the north, Kratos recounted the story of Aletheia to Mimir and Freya, carrying the memory of the truthful seer of Delphi into another world entirely.