God of War - Karmic Cycle [AU]

[juniorsundar]

Wait, can't they use an AOE attack and kill the entire army? Pretty sure Kratos alone can do it?

Click to shrink...

He could. But Kratos is not emotionally invested enough to do it.

The thing with his character at the current point is that unless it has something to do with him directly he won't interfere.

 

[juniorsundar]

Dude doesnt count ,he is a god already .but his hope power doesnt care about such silly thing as immortality wish

*man it still feel weird to read the the actual version of the character instead of a bastardized version of ramanyana i have been raised with *

Click to shrink...

I think the best media depiction of Ramayana till date is the semi-anime type version they made a long time back. It was in collaboration qith some Japanese company.

Ramayana: The Legend of Prince Rama - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

You can probably get the whole video for free on Youtube

 

[juniorsundar]

On a side note. At a more literary level. The concept of face corresponds to pride in most eastern cultures. (Losing face... saving face... etc.)

It is a recurring motif when relating to the eldest Lankan brother in this fanfic.

Him being called the one with many faces. Him forcefully shedding his face in reverence to Shiva. And ultimately what becomes of him. It all relates to his pride.

Just something deeper for you guys to think about.

Tbh idk if the authors of Ramayana had this in mind when creating his character. I like to think that they did

 

[Hyperionthetitan]

I think the best media depiction of Ramayana till date is the semi-anime type version they made a long time back. It was in collaboration qith some Japanese company.

Ramayana: The Legend of Prince Rama - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

You can probably get the whole video for free on Youtube

Click to shrink...

Yeah ,just that the one i was raised with is an adaptation of the mythos to make it into our own version ,its an entire thing of their own with it own fucking storyline .
The main different is probably length since it start at basically rama grandfather generation and ravanna past life allllll the way till rama kids .
also ravanna immortality inthat version is basically lich phylactery

 

[juniorsundar]

The elderly and the children ran like their lives depended on it. Because it did. Their panicked gasps and the frantic pounding of their feet filled the forest in a symphony of desperation. Yet, for all their terror, they moved with a resolute trajectory. This was the path assigned to them by the ashen warrior. They had just one command to execute: "Run without stopping."

Munni was her name. It meant 'little girl'. It was not the name given to her at birth, but one her parents had used affectionately due to her short and petite stature as a child. As she grew, the name stuck. Even now, at eighty years old, with her back bent and her skin a tapestry of wrinkles, she was still called Munni. The irony was evident, but unintentional.

Munni's bones screamed. Her muscles wailed. Her breath came in ragged, shallow bursts, and her lungs strained at their absolute limits. But she did not stop running. She had to reach the designated spot before their pursuers arrived. She was certain they would be pursued. She had made sure of it, leaving just enough evidence along the way - a broken twig here, a scuffed patch of dirt there - for even a dim-witted scout to track them.

And then she felt it. A faint vibration in the soles of her worn feet. Even through the cacophony of her own overloaded senses, she could feel the gentle tremors in the ground begin to grow in amplitude. They were approaching. And they were approaching quickly.

By the time she could hear the pounding hoofbeats, the strained grunts of the bulls, and the excited, guttural cackles of their pursuers, the group had nearly reached their destination. But they were not fast enough. They would not make it before the enemy was upon them.

At that moment, Munni halted abruptly. Seeing their leader stop, the fleeing group also skidded to a halt, their faces a mixture of confusion and terror.

"GO!" Munni yelled in a raw, commanding bark. She began physically pushing the others forward. "I will slow them down!"

"Munni Ma-" a young teen tried to argue, his voice thick with panic. But he was met with a firm, unyielding glare from the old woman.

"I will only slow us down," Munni explained. "Don't worry about me. You need to save yourselves. Run!"

The children wanted to argue, to plead. But the other elders among them understood Munni's intention immediately. With grim faces, they began to urge the children away, their own hands now pushing the younger generation towards safety. They continued fleeing, leaving Munni alone on the path.

A strange calm settled over her. Lord Kratos had promised her this moment. "You are going to die today," he'd said, his voice devoid of warmth or pity. "It is up to you if you want it to be quick. Or slow and painful." He had a way with words; he didn't use many, but they were enough to state a cold, hard fact.

He was right, of course. In a world where few lived past sixty, she was a relic. Age brought the experience that helped the community thrive, but it was also a weight. When survival was at stake, you could not be held down. A trapped tiger would chew off its own arm to live another day. She was that arm.

The sounds of the approaching horde were deafening now. Munni bent and picked up a heavy, rough stone. A violent tremor shook her, but it was not fear. It was the sudden, shocking release from the weight of eighty years of memories, duties, and being a liability. It all fell away. She was light. She was free. She was ready.

Munni blinked. Her eyes closed for a moment longer than was natural. When they reopened, the horde was standing before her.

Many miles above, Murugan hovered alongside his Guru and the three brothers, riding atop his peacock. His palms rolled into a tight fist that trembled as he watched the elderly woman confront the small war party.

The leading barbarian, a man with a jagged scar for an eye, tilted his head with a leering grin. He gestured lazily for two of his companions to drag the old woman away.

Murugan moved to interject, to leap from his mount, but Kratos' palm landed on his shoulder. An immense force held him down.

"G-Guruji -" Murugan pleaded with his voice choked in outrage.

"This is necessary," Kratos stated with a resolute growl.

He watched as the two bull riders dismounted. They approached the woman with dirty, fatalistic looks, their eyes filled with a cruel amusement. Murugan could see the other mounted barbarians gesturing wildly and pointing at the woman. Their guttural laughs were enough to suggest the type of brutal games they intended to play with her.

Murugan couldn't hold it in any longer. But right as he was about to leap off, he saw something that shocked him to his core.

The old woman pulled a knife. In a flash of movement that defied her age, she slashed the throat of the man approaching from her right. As he gargled and choked on his own blood, she spun and stuck the weapon deep into the other's eye socket.

She took the rock in her grasp and tossed it, with impeccable accuracy, into the eye of the bull of the scar-eyed barbarian. The beast keeled over to the side and caused the mounted man to fall off.

Then, with an impossible burst of energy, she ran up to the collapsed barbarian. She leapt, using the beast's surprised face as leverage, and collided with the war party's leader. Like a rabid animal, she clenched her jaw around his thick neck and tore out a chunk of flesh.

Blood gushed like a fountain. The two tumbled near the bull. The enraged animal, now blind with pain and terror, began to buck and stomp, trampling the grappling duo into a mush of blood and gore.

Murugan couldn't process what he had just witnessed. Evidently, neither could the barbarians. There was a long, stunned pause as all eyes followed the bull as it charged blindly into the forest. They then looked down at the pool of mush on the ground.

"She did better than expected," Kratos expressed with a snort that somehow sounded impressed.

Murugan looked to Kratos to expound, but he did not get an explanation. Instead, it was Faceless who spoke calmly, analysing the instance. "She has agitated the enemy. It will make them callous."

Murugan still looked confused. Faceless explained, "There is a saying from the far north that describes this situation rather aptly: the mantis stalks the cicada, unaware of the oriole behind. The elderly and children are the cicadas. The barbarians are the mantises." He then placed a palm on his own chest and said, "Orioles."

The group followed the charging barbarians. Once again, the eldest of the retreating group, a frail-looking man, stayed back to distract the opponents. Their enemies did not make the same mistake twice. They simply charged the man and trampled over him. It was a gruesome display for Murugan, though he was once again shocked to see that the man, in his final moments, had managed to slice away the testicles of the bull trampling him. The creature jerked up with a high-pitched squeal and dislodged its rider, who was also turned to mush by the bucking animal. The bull later collapsed and died from blood loss.

"This is disgusting!" Murugan exclaimed with a yelp.

"They are fighters," Vibhishana affirmed. "I'll give you that."

The pattern persisted. Once an elder fell, another would halt to delay the enemy. Though it was effective at first, the attackers grew more cautious and gave the "distractions" a wider berth, opting to dispatch them with their spears over a longer distance. They did not even desecrate the corpses by running them over. It was as if they were afraid the dead bodies would come to life and take them down as well.

Once the last elder fell, all that remained were the children. The gaze of the eldest boy solidified with resolve as he realised it was his turn. He was not like his elders; he was terrified. His body shivered with a fear so profound it felt like a physical illness. His hands shook, slick with a cold sweat. But he knew there was no other way. Munni Ma had bought them time. The others had bought them more. Now, it was his responsibility to buy a few more precious seconds.

He stopped running. His lungs burned, and his legs felt like lead, but he forced himself to stand straight.

The other children, seeing him stop, also stumbled to a halt behind him. A young girl, no older than seven, grabbed the back of his tunic. "Brother, what are you doing?" she whimpered.

"Go," he urged them, his voice cracking. He did not turn to face them, afraid that if he saw their terrified faces, his own resolve would crumble. "Keep running. Don't look back."

But they did not listen. They huddled behind him, like a small, frightened flock of sheep seeking shelter behind a trembling shepherd against a pack of wolves. He could hear their ragged breaths, their quiet sobs. There was no time left.

Within moments, the children were surrounded. The horde of barbarians raised a dust storm as the enraged bulls formed a circular formation, trapping them inside. Unlike with the elderly, they did not immediately move to dispatch them. Their eyes twinkled with lecherous thoughts as they leered at the little girls of the group. Even the young boys who still had not grown enough and carried a petite appearance were targets.

The de facto leader of the horde, a hulking man whose stench of stale sweat and blood reached the boy even from a distance, leapt off his bull. He approached with the slow and deliberate swagger of a satiated predator, evidently enjoying the terror of his cornered prey. The boy, summoning his last shred of courage, tossed the rock in his hand. The large man dodged it with an almost lazy contempt. He walked up to the boy and, without a word, slapped him hard across the face.

A loud crack echoed in the forest. The world spun, and a flash of white light exploded behind the boy's eyes. He doubled over, and the coppery taste of blood instantly filled his mouth. He spat a thick glob onto the dirt. Before he could even straighten, the barbarian's massive hands enveloped his head. The man's thumbs pressed into his temples, and he began to squeeze.

A strained, high-pitched cry tore from the boy's throat as an unimaginable pressure built around his skull. He could feel his own bones groaning, threatening to splinter. The barbarian revealed an evil grin and pressed on, savouring the sound of the boy's pain. The other children screamed, though their cries of horror were muffled by their own small hands.

In an instant, the boy's cry stopped. A gruesome, wet crack echoed amidst the woods. A body fell to the ground with a dull thud. The lingering silence was shattered by another deep wail, this one of pure shock and horror.

The boy looked at his hands as his mind struggled to process what had just happened. He was shocked to see a severed hand clutched in each of his palms. He looked up and saw the barbarian who had been squeezing his skull shouting, horrified, with two exposed, bleeding stumps where his arms had been. To his left, the boy saw an axe embedded deep into the earth.

A loud boom shook the ground behind him. He turned around and saw a dust cloud emanating from a crater. Before the dust could settle, a bull's head, detached forcefully from its body, soared out and impaled the leader, killing him instantly. A body followed, arcing above him and wrecking the formation in front. From the cloud, a large man ascended - the giant who followed Lord Murugan.

For the children, it was as if a mountain had come to life. The giant, Kumbhakarna, was a force of pure, unrestrained nature. He let out a primal roar that did not sound human at all. His guttural bellow shook the trees and sent the barbarians' bulls into a frenzy. He charged into their ranks like a devastating natural disaster. He grabbed a bull by its horns, and with a sickening twist that sent bone fragments flying, he cracked its neck. He then plucked the bull's head from its socket as easily as a child picks a wildflower, and hurled it with enough force to kill another barbarian instantly. He did not stop. He grabbed the bull's massive, headless corpse and used it as a club, pummelling its rider into a mess of gore and shattered bone.

The barbarians, who seconds ago were confident predators, broke from their trance. Their lecherous grins had been replaced with masks of panicked rage. They charged the giant like a wave of fury battering against a mountain. But a mountain is just that - immovable.

Just as they were about to crash against him, another sound cut through the chaos - a high-pitched, whistling shriek. Something fell from the sky, crushing a bull and its rider into a flat, bloody ruin. From the dust of the impact, two spinning, ethereal mandalas of intricate, glowing geometry shot out like chakrams. They moved with impeccable grace, slicing through the air and through the necks of a dozen bulls and their riders. The barbarians fell, their heads tumbled from their shoulders before their bodies even knew they were dead. The chakrams then rebounded, returning to the dust cloud, which dissipated to reveal a faceless man.

The ethereal weapons whirred around Faceless's palms as he charged the remaining enemy. If the giant was a landslide, Faceless was a whirlwind. He moved with a deadly grace; his chakrams were a blur of light and death that sliced through the barbarians and their mounts like a hot knife through butter.

The sudden silence that followed was deafening. All that remained after the brothers' onslaught were corpses steaming in the cool forest air, and a pond of blood that soaked into the earth.

Kumbhakarna picked up a still-living man and clasped his head between his palms. As he started to apply pressure, the man's skull began to groan, though he lacked the energy to vocalise his pain.

Just as the giant was about to finish the job, Faceless approached and placed a calming hand on his shoulder. He then gestured upwards. A third figure descended from the sky, floating down as gently as a falling leaf. It was the scholar, Vibhishana. He approached the unconscious barbarian, ignited his palms with a warm, yellow glow, and placed them on the man's chest. The barbarian was healed instantly and woke up screaming in pure terror.

Faceless grabbed the man by his jaw and looked deep into his eyes. He saw fear, but beneath it, a hint of defiance. This was good.

He lifted the barbarian and placed him on the last surviving bull. With a sharp slap to the creature's hindquarters, he sent it fleeing into the forest.

The giant approached, his rage subsiding into confusion. "W-W-Why did you l-l-l-let him go, b-b-b-brother?"

Faceless bent down and picked up a rock. He tossed it lightly in his hand, gauging its weight. He watched the fleeing barbarian regain control of his mount and adjust his trajectory. Then, with a smooth, powerful motion, he threw the rock in a high arc.

The children, still huddled together, watched the rock disappear into the distance. A moment later, they saw the head of the disappearing barbarian suddenly explode like an overinflated leather sack.

"The barbarians will ride to investigate the loss of one of their war parties," Faceless explained, though the giant simply nodded without fully understanding its meaning. "This will provide a greater motivation for them."

---

Another party was dispatched from the main horde. This group was larger, more heavily armed, and led by another grim-faced lieutenant who rode at the front. They did not rely on scouts alone. They unleashed a pack of gaunt, vicious hunting dogs, whose slobbering jaws and bloodshot eyes promised a savage end to any prey they cornered. The dogs immediately caught the scent and led the bull-riders on the trail. They arrived first at the place where the scar-eyed lieutenant, the chieftain's right-hand man, had fallen. The lieutenant dismounted and let his eyes scan the scene. There was not much left. The cloying smell of old blood hung in the air, but wild animals had already dragged away the remains, leaving only dark stains on the earth and a few splintered bones.

The trail of death led them ever deeper into the forest. As the dogs pulled eagerly at their leashes, the lieutenant's initial confidence began to curdle into confusion. They found the body of the second elder, then the third, each acting as some sort of gruesome signpost. Clearly, this was not the work of mere fleeing villagers; this was a calculated retreat. Something was wrong. His unease solidified into cold rage when they found a lone bull wandering haphazardly through the trees. Atop it was the body of one of the scouts from the earlier batch. Just the body, as his head, or what remained of it, was a hideous, exploded ruin.

The lieutenant let out a furious roar and commanded his men to retrace the bull's path, his mind now set on vengeance.

They arrived at the massacre site. The pools of blood, the scattered flesh, and the sheer number of their dead brethren told a story of a swift and brutal slaughter. There was no one there. His men let the dogs inspect the area. Their noses twitched as they sniffed at the carnage.

Suddenly, a sharp whistling sound cut through the air. It was followed immediately by a symphony of wet, choking gasps and the heavy thud of bodies hitting the ground. The lieutenant spun around. A dozen of his men were on the ground, clutching at the arrows that had pierced their necks, as their lives gurgled away in a froth of red. Before he could even shout a command, a second volley sprang from the woods, killing another dozen in one fell swoop.

From the corner of his eye, he saw movement - a flicker of motion deep within the trees. "There!" he roared, pointing with his axe. "After them!"

He spurred his bull, and his remaining men galloped into the woods. The forest grew narrower here; the trees closed in and forced them to orient themselves into a thinner line as they rounded the tight turns. The lieutenant saw her then - a young girl scrambling to climb a tree with a bow tied around her back. She looked down at him with her eyes wide and an expression of pure, panicked terror. Without a second thought, he commanded his men to charge. This was the prey. This was the one they would make an example of.

Right as they were about to reach her, he felt the ride beneath him buckle. The world tilted violently. The last thing he saw from his peripheral vision was a taut rope, hidden beneath vines and leaves, stretched between two trees. The riders behind him crashed into each other in a chaotic pile-up of splintering bone and panicked animal screams. His own bull collapsed as its legs broke, and he was thrown to the ground with the immense weight of the beast rolling onto him.

He awoke some time later; he did not know how long. A universe of pain assaulted him. He could not feel his lower body anymore, and his vision was a blurry, swimming mess. When it finally cleared, he saw the girl looking down at him. The panicked look was gone.

She revealed a cold, hard smirk before sending her dagger plunging into his right eye.

---

The Chieftain - the Butcher - sat on his throne of bone with a storm of frustration brewing behind his eyes. For the first time since he had set out to lay waste to the world, his progress was halted. The unease was a new and unwelcome feeling. It was like a sour taste in his mouth that even the roasted meat could not wash away. His horde, a force of nature that had shattered disciplined armies and burned fortified cities, was being bled dry. Day by day, his numbers dwindled.

What galled him most was the nature of his enemy. He was not losing to a great king or a well-managed army. He was being dismantled by a handful of forest dwellers. The irony was a bitter pill. He and his people had once been just like them: savages living in the dirt. But he had conquered. He had defeated real soldiers and proud commanders. He had grown proud. Now, to be brought to a standstill by those he considered beneath him, by a reflection of his own past, was an unbearable insult.

He knew their numbers were small. They were barely enough to fill a village. Yet for every one of their fighters they managed to kill, he lost a hundred of his own. His army, which was an impressive fifty thousand strong, had been reduced by half. He was not a strategist, but he was not a fool either. He could do the simple math. The rate at which he was being routed was not sustainable.

This would not do.

He bellowed a command, and his lieutenants scrambled to obey. A new kind of energy filled the camp, not of battle, but of focused ceremony. Slaves were forced to clear a large, circular area at the heart of the encampment. In the centre, they erected a massive, crudely carved stone - a Linga. This was not a stolen prize of war, but a sacred relic from the heart of the forest of his homeland. And it was a conduit to the god he truly revered. As his men struggled to raise the heavy stone, the Butcher approached. For a moment, the brutish warlord vanished and was replaced by a devotee. He ran a hand over the stone's rough surface with a strange reverence and with an expression of intense focus, before he stepped back and resumed his commanding presence. The ritual was not a desperate gambit; it was an appeal to the source of his strength.

His men dragged forth the prisoners they had managed to capture during the skirmishes - a few of the village fighters. They were bound and forced to their knees before the stone. The Butcher dismounted from his throne. He grabbed the first prisoner, a man who spat defiance at him, and carried him effortlessly to the top of the Linga. With a ritual knife, he eviscerated the man. His purpose was not just to kill, but to let the sacred stone be showered in blood. It would be a worthy offering to the Great God.

It was at the height of this gruesome ritual that the attack came.

From atop the Linga, the Butcher saw the entire instigation unfold below. A giant of a man burst from the trees like a living avalanche of muscle and rage, and ploughed directly into the main body of the barbarian horde. He was followed by another being, of a lesser stature but equal strength, whose most intriguing feature was his lack of a face. The faceless man wielded ethereal chakrams in each hand, which were already a blur of lethal light. And then came the third. Preceded by an axe that flew with such momentum that it separated the heads clean off the necks of five men and made it over three-quarters of the way through the sixth, an ashen warrior stepped out of the shrubbery and came into focus. The man raised his right palm, and the axe embedded in the corpse separated itself cleanly from its kill and returned to him.

The warrior's entrance went unnoticed, at first. Apart from his unusual appearance, his performance wasn't as attractive as his compatriots'. But as the fight progressed, it became harder and harder to ignore the man. He fought with the ferocity of an animal unafraid of death. He was swift, brutal, and unforgiving. Not even those who surrendered, gripped by raw fear, were precluded from being prey to his violence. He was subjected to innumerable attacks that would have killed any normal person. A spear through the eye, a stab in the liver, a punctured lung. He was littered with injuries, but he just refused to die. Was it his raw will, or was it something more? As the three warriors neared the ritual site, the Butcher was leaning towards the latter hypothesis.

But the Butcher refused to be drawn in. He did not move from his sacred task. He turned back to the prisoners with absolute focus. He had to take the ritual to completion.

---

Murugan grew increasingly disillusioned the longer the skirmish progressed. He had seen the reality of conflict through the visions from his Guru's past, but he had not truly understood how brutal and inhumane the concept of war itself was until he witnessed it firsthand. The treatises written by scholars and sages spoke of righteous wars and codes of conduct, but down here, amidst the screams and the stench of blood, those words were meaningless. All the truths written on war were falsehoods, because the act itself was one without true justification. It was an act of brutality wrought by a sentient creature's inherent need to rule and feel superior. To place bounds on it would mean placing a bound on the ego. And the ego was something that could never be satisfied. In turn, war was absolute, inevitable, and unchanging.

Did this realisation make Murugan want to distance himself from the concept of war? On the contrary, he was weirdly drawn closer to it. He realised that war, in and of itself, was a primal truth and an act of expression. Just like the arts, it was an expression of a primal emotion. However, unlike the arts, there was little justification to prove that the act of war was a display of a positive emotion. One doesn't go to war because they are happy. War is an expression of the darkest emotions of the sentient mind: envy, pride, rage, gluttony, and greed.

But Murugan didn't want his expression of war to be exemplified by these emotions. Because emotions, in general, are instigators; they force retaliation in kind, causing the emotion to grow. Love, when reciprocated, can grow and become something beautiful. Equally, envy can cause decay and ruin the same beauty. He wanted to learn to supersede these negative emotions. To be better. He didn't want violence to be an outlet for these degrading emotions, but a pathway to uplifting ones. A pathway to protect.

And sometimes, to protect something you care about, you had to do unconscionable things. The Chieftain and his barbarians were irredeemable. They had committed acts that warranted no forgiveness, not in this life at least. For that, they had to be erased.

Murugan was tasked with confronting the Chieftain. That was his Guru's edict. All this preparation was to ensure that Murugan could reach the man on the throne of bone. Murugan did not anticipate a challenge here, for he knew that ultimately, his opponent was just a man. He felt nothing for him; no anger, no pity. He was unapathetic.

But as he saw the man climb atop the large stone - a sacred symbol of his father - as he saw him place a still-breathing villager upon it; as he saw him tear open the man's abdomen in a blasphemous mockery of a holy rite; as he saw him desecrate his father... an unquenchable rage began to boil over from within.

He was supposed to wait. The plan was for his Guru and the brothers to engage the Chieftain's lieutenants, to draw the horde's attention before he made his move. But he could no longer contain the fury that now consumed him.

A shower of divine spears rained down from the sky, skewering every barbarian who stood within the ritual circle. A beat later, the spears exploded, coating the ground in blood, gore, and bone fragments. Before the last piece of shrapnel had hit the dirt, Murugan landed in front of the ritual site with eyes burning with a cold fire.

The Chieftain returned a smirk as he slid down the blood-slicked surface of the Linga. He landed in the pool of the villager's blood that surrounded its base. He then cupped his hands and took a long, deep sip from the pool.

To Murugan's shock, the blood in the pool began to move. It climbed up the Chieftain's skin like a living shroud, turning his tanned-dark flesh into a dark and pulsating maroon.

Once all the blood was gone, the Chief picked up his mace and, with a roar, hit himself hard across the chest. There was no damage. Not a single mark.

Murugan was stunned.

His father had answered the man's grotesque prayers!