Dark Rider: the Warrior of Destiny

The Dark Rider, known also as the Warrior of Destiny, was the leader of the Griffin Riders, the winged guardians who protected the Island of Creation on behalf of the Sisters of Fate. Counted among the most powerful warriors in the Fates' service, he was entrusted with the Spear of Destiny, a weapon of such potency that it was reserved for only the most dire emergencies. When Kratos crossed the sea on the back of Pegasus to reach the island and change his fate, it was the Dark Rider who rose to bar his way, and the duel they fought high above the waves cost the Fates both their chief warrior and his terrible spear.

Leader of the Griffin Riders#

The Griffin Riders were the airborne sentinels of the Island of Creation, warriors who commanded Griffins and hurled themselves upon any intruder who dared the skies on the approach to the Fates' domain. The Dark Rider stood at their head as general and leader, and everything about him marked him apart from the riders he commanded. Where his subordinates were ordinary soldiers of the Fates, he had darker skin and wore armor of gold, and where the common Griffin was a brown beast, his mount was a creature of another order entirely. The Dark Griffin was far larger and stronger than the rest of its kind, dark blue and violet in color, with a great rust colored head and a ridge of spikes running down its back.

He was reckoned one of the most powerful warriors in the service of the Fates, and his final commission proved the measure of their trust. Beyond his own gleaming battle axe, he was given the Spear of Destiny, a magic weapon of extraordinary power whose tip crackled with electric energy. So potent was the spear that it was kept in reserve, to be surrendered to a warrior only when the Fates faced the gravest of emergencies. The coming of Kratos was judged to be such an emergency.

The summons of Lahkesis#

The Rider's last errand began in the counsels of Lahkesis. The Goddess, looking with her powers into a possible future, grew worried about the Spartan who had defied her by arriving in the Lair of Typhon without injury. She summoned one of her High Priests and gave him a double command: to call forth the Warrior of Destiny, and to place in his hands the Spear of Destiny itself.

So armed, the Dark Rider took to the air and shadowed Kratos on his flight from Rhodes, watching from a distance as the Spartan and his Pegasus battled through the Griffins and Ravens sent against them. Kratos marked him from afar, a distant purple and green speck hanging back from the fighting, and asked himself how fearsome a warrior could be who hid from combat. As if in answer, the voice of Gaia boomed around the Spartan, warning him of the power of this warrior and of the extraordinary weapon he wielded, and promising a swift return to the Underworld should Kratos underestimate the foe. The Rider then closed in and intercepted the Spartan, and the first meeting went to the Fates' warrior. The nearly exhausted Pegasus was forced from the open sky to seek the ground, and Kratos found himself driven into the snowbound caverns of Typhon's mountain prison.

The duel above the sea#

Kratos did not remain grounded. When he escaped the mountain and took wing once more toward the Island of Creation, the Dark Rider met him for the last time, high above the waters, and the two fought a running battle in the air. Early in the fight the Rider's Griffin was deeply wounded, and the faster and more agile Pegasus held the advantage. The Warrior of Destiny fought skillfully with his battle axe against the Blades of Athena, absorbing slash after slash and piercing armor in return, but he was cautious with the unfamiliar spear at his side. Rather than risk losing so potent a weapon with a careless thrust, he saved it for the right moment, and Kratos noted that he held it "gingerly", as a man handles a thing he fears.

The duel turned twice. Kratos drove a seemingly fatal wound into the Rider's chest and pressed his advantage, yet the Warrior of Destiny proved surprisingly strong, pushing the Spartan back and tripping him onto his back. Declaring to the Slayer of Ares that it was time to die, he finally drew the Spear of Destiny, and its electric energy, flowing from the tip down the Warrior's arm, left Kratos briefly dazed and confused. It was nearly the end of the Ghost of Sparta. But a powerful kick against the Griffin's back unbalanced the Rider, Kratos regained his footing, and in the final struggle the spear was turned against its bearer.

In that last exchange the Dark Griffin slammed Pegasus out of the sky with its tail, and Kratos hooked onto the great beast with his blades and hauled himself onto its back. There, on the Rider's own mount, he finished the duel. He drove the Spear of Destiny through the Warrior of Destiny, stabbed the Griffin with the same weapon, and ripped one wing from the creature's body, sending it plummeting to its death with the spear still lodged in its flank.

The reckoning in the Loom Chamber#

The Rider's death was a heavy blow to the forces that served the Fates and guarded the Island of Creation, and the loss of the Spear of Destiny weighed heavier still. The corpse of the Dark Griffin came to rest in the Lowlands of the island, where Kratos later found it and pulled the great spear from its flank, adding the Fates' most guarded weapon to his own arsenal. The Rider's body was accounted for less surely. By one telling he fell into Poseidon's depths; by another his corpse landed somewhere upon the Island of Creation and was never found.

In the Loom Chamber, Lahkesis could not understand how her warrior had lost. She had intertwined his thread of fate with that of Kratos and decreed that only the Warrior's thread should continue, and she wondered aloud whether one of her Sisters had meddled with her plans for the Spartan, which until then had been her concern alone. Atropos answered that she already knew of the Warrior's death in battle, for she had studied his Life-Thread, and it had shown her the truth of the duel: the Warrior of Destiny had been afraid to properly use the Spear of Destiny against Kratos, and that fear had killed him.

Whatever thread the Fates had woven for him ended above the sea he had guarded. Whether the unraveling of destiny that followed Kratos' conquest of the Loom ever restored the Rider was never recorded, and he was not seen again in the wars that consumed the Greek world.