Callisto

Callisto was a Spartan woman, mother of Kratos and Deimos, and one of the many mortal lovers of Zeus. For years she lived hidden within the city of Atlantis, kept there by the same god who had fathered her sons, until Kratos came at last to the Temple of Poseidon and found her frail and dying. There, trying to speak the name of his father, she was transformed into a monster and slain by her own son.

Mother of two sons#

Callisto gave birth to Deimos in a small village, and while Kratos was still a young child she was forced to leave it with both her sons. Seeking a new life, she brought them to Sparta, where Kratos spent the rest of his childhood and grew to manhood. When the gods Athena and Ares came searching for the Marked Warrior, they mistook the young Deimos because of the unusual birthmarks on his body. Ares seized the boy, and Kratos threw himself at the god in a desperate attempt to save his brother, only to be struck aside. Ares would have killed Deimos had Athena not stayed his hand. After the gods departed, Callisto found her wounded elder son and carried him home; when Kratos woke, she told him only that Deimos was gone.

As Kratos rose to become a captain of the Spartan army, the two lost touch, and in time he came to believe his mother long dead. She, for her part, became aware of the slaughter of his wife and daughter, the killing that Ares had driven him to.

The Temple of Poseidon#

In truth Callisto had not died. Zeus had carried her to Atlantis and hidden her within the Temple of Poseidon, where she lived on though gravely ill, sustained for some thirty years by means beyond a mortal's own. When Kratos crossed the city in search of his lost brother, he came at last to the temple and was seized by a vision of himself and Deimos as boys, training with spear and shield while their mother called them home. Waking, he found Callisto upon a bed, weak and frail, telling him how she had missed him.

At first Kratos believed her a trick of the gods, for he thought his mother dead, but she swore that it was truly her, and on looking closely he knew her. She told him that his father had brought her there, that Deimos still lived in torment at Death's Domain, and that the road to reach him would be perilous. When Kratos demanded why she had hidden the truth, she could only beg his forgiveness, for his father had forbidden her to speak.

The curse and her death#

When Kratos pressed her to name his father at last, the words would not come freely. As Callisto strained to speak, a curse took hold of her and twisted her into a hideous beast, and Kratos was forced to fight the creature his mother had become. After he struck her down he gathered her into his arms, and in her dying moments she returned to herself, thanking him for setting her free, urging him to seek Deimos in Sparta, and slipping away. As Kratos cried out for his mother, her body vanished from his hands.

Her remains were carried to the Suicide Bluffs, where the Grave Digger laid her in a grave beside her younger son Deimos, kneeling in silence with the words that now only one remained. Long after, when Kratos walked the Norse lands, his son Atreus would ask whether his father had a mother of his own, a grandmother the boy had never known.