Second Titanomachy

The Second Titanomachy was the cataclysmic war that Kratos set in motion against the Gods of Olympus, seeking vengeance for the betrayals he had suffered at their hands. Having traveled back to the first Great War and carried the Titans into his own time, he led them up Mount Olympus against Zeus. The war ended with the death of nearly every god and Titan and the ruin of Greece.

The assault begins#

Having trapped the Sisters of Fate, slain the youngest, and failed in a first attempt to kill Zeus, Kratos returned to the final moments of the first Great War and carried the Titans back into his own time. Guided by Gaia, he led them in a full assault on Mount Olympus, where the Gods, stunned at the sight of the Titans climbing the mountain, swiftly rallied their forces. Helios summoned his fire steeds, Hermes ran down the slope on his winged boots, and Hades swung into the fray with his chains, while Zeus, still weakened from his earlier fight with Kratos, remained in the temple overlooking the battle.

Poseidon leapt from the mountain, smashing through the Titan Epimetheus and taking his monstrous watery form to decimate the Titan army, his Hippocampi dragging Hyperion and others into the sea. Hades dislodged Oceanus and Helios struck Perses from the mountain, leaving only Kratos and Gaia to press on. Kratos fended off the Hippocampi attacking Gaia, and after a long battle the two knocked Poseidon from his watery construct, whereupon Kratos gouged out his eyes and broke his neck. The Sea God's death loosed a great flood that drowned much of humanity.

Betrayal and the Underworld#

Kratos and Gaia ascended to the summit, where Zeus struck them with a bolt of lightning that blasted them both from the mountain. Clinging to the rock, Gaia refused to save Kratos as he slipped from her back, declaring that he was a pawn whose usefulness had ended. Betrayed yet again, Kratos swore vengeance on both Zeus and Gaia as he fell into the Underworld.

With the aid of the astral form of Athena, who forged him the Blades of Exile from his ruined weapons, Kratos worked his way out of the realm of Hades, taunted all the while by its lord. He met the exiled smith god Hephaestus, who told him of the Flame of Olympus that housed the power to kill a god, and he recovered the Blade of Olympus. At last he confronted Hades himself, stole his claws, cracked his skull, and claimed his soul, the god's body washing away on the souls of the River Styx.

The killing of the Gods#

Emerging through a Hyperion Gate outside the city of Olympia, Kratos came again upon Gaia, who marveled that he yet lived and begged his aid. Still enraged at her betrayal, he cut the vines of her wounded hand and severed it with the Blade of Olympus, sending her falling once more. In the ruined city he aided Perses against Helios, then interrogated the wounded Sun God over the Flame's location before decapitating him with his bare hands, plunging the land into storm and darkness. He later slew Perses himself within an Icarus vent.

After finding the Flame and within it Pandora's Box, which he could not yet claim because the Flame killed all who touched it, Kratos hunted down and killed Hermes, whose body became plague-bearing flies. He bested his half-brother Hercules by stealing the Nemean Cestus and beating him to death. Tricked by Hephaestus into seeking the Omphalos Stone in Tartarus, he met his grandfather Cronos, cut his way out of the Titan's belly, and slew him. Returning to the forge, Kratos killed Hephaestus with his own anvil, and in the Garden of the Gods he snapped the neck of Hera, whose death withered all plant life in Greece.

The Flame and the final battle#

Kratos freed Pandora from the labyrinth and brought her to the Flame of Olympus. As she walked toward it to extinguish it, he had second thoughts and pleaded for another way, but Pandora broke free and ran into the Flame, opening the way to Pandora's Box. Zeus had tried to stop her, and the two had brawled near the upper chambers before her fall. When Kratos at last opened the Box he found it empty, and Zeus mocked his failure, driving the Spartan into a deeper rage.

Gaia, the last great Titan still standing, returned to interrupt the final duel between father and son, intent on her own vengeance. Zeus and Kratos escaped into her heart chamber, where Kratos drove the Blade of Olympus through Zeus and into Gaia's heart, killing the Titan and collapsing much of Olympus beneath her. When Kratos drew the Blade from Zeus, the god's astral form rose, blasted him with lightning, and infected his mind with fear before draining his strength and snapping his neck. On the brink of death, Kratos journeyed through his own psyche with the spirit of Pandora, learned to forgive himself, and overcame the astral Zeus with the power of Hope, then beat the weakened King of the Gods to death.

Aftermath#

With Zeus dead, Athena demanded the power of Hope that Kratos now carried, which had been buried within him since he first opened the Box to slay Ares and infected the Gods with its evils. Kratos refused and instead impaled himself with the Blade of Olympus, releasing Hope to all mankind so that they might endure the chaos without the Gods, earning only Athena's disappointment as she departed.

The Second Titanomachy brought the complete end of the reign of the Olympians, but at terrible cost: the deaths of the Gods unleashed flood, plague, famine, and disaster across Greece. The spread of Hope allowed the survivors to go on without divine aid. His sins too great to die, Kratos survived his own attempted suicide and was cursed to walk the earth. He left Greece and traveled until he settled in the Norse lands, where he would meet his second wife Faye and father a son, Atreus. The legend of the war that ended Olympus spread far beyond Greece, to Egypt and the Nine Realms, instilling fear and awe in all who heard of the Ghost of Sparta.