Alrik

Alrik, better known as the Barbarian King, was the leader of the Barbarian horde from the east and a fearsome warrior himself, counted among the oldest enemies of Kratos. It was his assault on the Spartans that drove Kratos to beg Ares for salvation, the act that bound the Spartan to the God of War and set in motion the whole of his tragedy. Alrik's hatred would outlast even death.

The quest for Ambrosia#

A contest was created by several of the gods of Olympus, in which they chose mortals to be their champions, the goal being the capture of the healing elixir Ambrosia. Hades chose Alrik as his champion. Alrik went after the Ambrosia because his father had fallen ill with a living sleep, a curse secretly placed upon him by Hades himself, a deceit Alrik never came to know.

On his journey Alrik encountered Danaus, the champion of Hermes, and decapitated him before pressing on. He and his Barbarians then learned that Kratos, the champion of Ares, was searching for the same prize, and resolved to destroy the Spartans. Alrik first let Cereyon, the champion of Helios, fight the Spartans so they might wear each other down, but the Barbarians joined the battle after Kratos defeated Cereyon and seized the Ambrosia. In the struggle that followed, Alrik claimed the elixir and unleashed the severed head of Danaus, a commander of beasts, using it to call a great flock of Rocs against the Spartans before flying away with the Ambrosia in hand. Kratos pursued, turning the head of Danaus against him, until the two fell to the ground and fought. Kratos at last took the Ambrosia and left Alrik bruised and near death. Hades healed the Barbarian and commanded him to slay the Spartan who had denied him victory. Returning home to find his father dead and being cremated, Alrik took up the mighty Barbarian Hammer as the new Barbarian King and swore vengeance upon Kratos.

The battle against the Spartans#

During his conquests Kratos faced his most ruthless opponents, until he met the Barbarians from the east once more. Though the Spartans held the greater skill, the Barbarians numbered in the thousands, and Kratos saw that it was an unwinnable battle. Alrik began the slaughter by driving an arrow through the face of a single Spartan, and the horde showed no mercy, leaving the field heaped with the dead.

Even Kratos was no match for the wrath of this enemy. Standing atop a hill of bodies, Alrik raised his great hammer to end the young captain's life. Before the blow could fall, Kratos called upon Ares. Within moments the Barbarians were destroyed by the power of the God of War, their bodies split and burned, and Kratos was granted the Blades of Chaos. With them he beheaded the Barbarian King, who died shocked by the sudden intervention of a god.

Return from the Underworld#

Like the thousands of his men, Alrik fell into the Underworld, where he remained in torment and fire for decades. There he learned of Kratos' exploits in the world above, first as the Fist of Ares and at last as the God of War. It enraged him beyond measure that the enemy who had begged for divine aid now enjoyed the privilege of godhood, while he himself rotted in Hades. After beseeching his former master for resurrection in vain, Alrik took matters into his own hands and battled through the many guardians of the Underworld until he rose again, his form radically altered by the fires of Hades and granted new magical powers.

His escape was enabled by the Sisters of Fate, and Lahkesis in particular, who hoped he would help stop Kratos. Alrik journeyed to the Island of Creation, where he hoped, like others, to change his fate and gain his revenge. Yet Lahkesis did not consider him worthy of an audience and never intended to rewrite his destiny, holding his downfall by Ares' intervention to be final.

The final battle and death#

As Kratos crossed the Bog of the Forgotten, Alrik attacked, dragging the Spartan through the bog with his demonic, flame-wreathed steed. The two came face to face on a platform in the middle of a poisonous swamp, and Alrik laughed as he looked upon his greatest enemy. He asked whether Kratos remembered the day that changed both their lives, and Kratos answered that he would never forget it as he looked upon the scar that ringed Alrik's neck. The Barbarian King swore that this time he would have Kratos' head.

The souls of the dead poured from Alrik's mighty hammer, and by absorbing them he grew three times larger than Kratos. In the end Kratos shrank the King back down to size, seized the hammer as the Barbarian charged, and crushed his head with it again and again until he was dead. With his oldest enemy slain at last, Kratos roared a war cry of triumph, a rare thing for him, and a measure of how personal this third and final battle had been. He claimed Alrik's hammer and the warrior souls held within it, and carried the weapon for the rest of his quest.

A shadow over the Spartan#

Even after his death, Alrik lingered in Kratos' memory. The Spartan was unsettled to see the scars the Barbarian had left him, for they brought back the nightmares of that fateful day. Long afterward, in the halls of Valhalla, the memory of Alrik rose again to confront Kratos with his guilt over having called upon Ares to save Sparta. There Tyr told him that the act had not been cowardly or selfish but far more complicated, done in the only way he knew to save his people. Kratos admitted that had he died at Alrik's hands that day, the Barbarian King would have gone on to invade Sparta and slaughter its women and children out of revenge.