As Athens began the long task of rebuilding the city, Pinkie and Calliope tended to Kratos' injuries. With the Blades of Chaos shattered, Kratos no longer had much of the power he had once wielded. Though the magic he had acquired was still his to command, without the Blades he lacked his normal channel for the magic. However, he did not feel he actually needed the magic for a while. After all, he had completed his last task for the Gods of Olympus.
On the return to their ship, Kratos had approached the statue at the helm. "Athena!" he spoke firmly. "I have completed the task set before me."
"Indeed, Kratos," Athena replied. "Though we mourn the death of our brother, the Gods are indebted to you. As per our promise to you, your life shall be greatly improved."
"Then my nightmares will end?" Kratos asked.
"Your past shall no longer be a weight upon your soul," Athena replied. "However, the memories themselves - the source of your nightmares - shall remain. That is something no mortal or god can - or should - interfere with."
Kratos lowered his head. At first he felt rage spark inside him at this seeming betrayal. Why would the Gods not cleanse him of his nightmares? However, before the rage could take hold, he looked into his own soul and questioned it.
What had rage ever given him? His rage had led him to promise himself to Ares, and cost him his family. It had led him to defy Ares, which left him to the tortures of the Furies. And it had not been rage that had freed him from them. It had been his strong will, and Orkos' friendship and aid. And after that, it had not been rage that had guided his footsteps. it had been hope, in the form of Pinkie Pie.
She had become his responsibility, his joy, his hope for freedom from his nightmares and the pain of his past. She had dedicated herself to making him smile again, and somehow the drive to not disappoint her had pushed him far more than any desire for vengeance against Ares. And rage had nearly destroyed Pinkie, briefly turning her into a monster worse than he had ever been.
Rage had destroyed him. Love had saved him. Sighing, he nodded acceptance of Athena's pronouncement, and let go of his rage.
Pinkie Pie had been watching him as he thought this through, and gasped as she saw his thoughts reach their conclusion. "Now I get it!" she said suddenly. "Daddy, you went to the Gods to cleanse the Nightmares cause you thought they were a curse, right? Part of the spell that Oracle did on you binding the ashes to your skin?"
Kratos tilted his head in confusion. "Yes, that's right," he said slowly.
"But they weren't!" Pinkie proclaimed. "If they were, you'd have suffered from them while the Furies were tormenting you, but you said you didn't! And the nightmares would have stayed fresh and new from the moment they began until today, but they haven't! You've mentioned they've been growing less severe over time, especially since Calliope left Hades to come with us!"
Kratos' eyes widened. "You...you're right. But she said-"
"What her curse actually did was make you face what you'd become under Ares manipulations!" Pinkie proclaimed. "Everything became fresh and vivid in your mind in that moment! That's what created the nightmares. Not her curse, but your own mind after witnessing how far you had fallen and all you had done! And that's why the gods can't do anything about it...but you can!"
"Excuse me?" Kratos demanded in shock. "Are you saying I can do what the gods cannot?"
"Yupperooni!" Pinkie stated plainly. "The gods can't mess with the way your mind works without breaking something, because aside from Morpheus they don't actually know how the human mind works! If they did, half those stories of people we've heard about wouldn't have happened. Like that Oedipus fellow, serious mishandling due to just not knowing how people tick there! But the key to purging your nightmares is just what you always thought it was...forgiveness.
"But you didn't get how your mind worked either!" Pinkie continued. "The gods can forgive you, Sis can forgive you, I can forgive you, Mom can forgive you - or not, we haven't actually seen her - and the people you killed can forgive you they'd better...but none of that will do a thing for your nightmares!" She pressed a hoof to his chest. "The only thing that will cleanse them is if you!" She pounded her hoof against his chest. "Forgive!" Another pound. "Yourself!" A final pound.
Kratos stared at his equine daughter as if she had just grown a second head, although that would have been less of a shock than the wisdom she had just professed. "I must...forgive myself?"
"It was our hope that through your journeys with your daughters that you would discover that truth for yourself, Kratos," Athena pointed out. "It seems that in that regard, we overestimated you."
"Well, Daddy was a lot stronger here than here," Pinkie teased, pointing first to Kratos arm before pointing at his head.
"Hey!" Kratos complained as Calliope giggled. Seeing the humor, he managed a chuckle as well.
"There are other matters we must attend to," Zeus said, approaching. He gestured to Pandora's Box. "This, for one. It needs a new hiding place."
"I'll take care of it!" Pinkie said happily. Picking the Box up, she stuffed it into her mane. "Now nobody will ever find it!"
In a land of dreams, a round pink hero stumbled across a strangely decorated chest. Being the innocent that he was, he opened it.
Dark power erupted from the chest, bound to a blue light. Unable to anchor in this world, the power shot between worlds, seeking the world of its origins.
The pink hero glanced up at what had happened. "Hoyo?" he asked in confusion. Seeing nothing bad happening to the world, he dragged the box along behind him and started tossing food into it.
In an ancient land, a King of Demons considered his dispute with the Gods of the upper kingdom. While it was the nature of demons to seek war, he was considering if, perhaps, there was another way.
A blast of immense power ripped through the dimensional boundary. Streams of darkness split off from the blast, embedding themselves in the demon and his sword. Consumed by sudden fury, the Demon King made war on the upper world and its gods, a war that would shape that worlds history. Demise would never rest again.
Other worlds were touched by the dark power as it struggled to return to the world of its origin. In one, the dark power turned a good queen of Earth into a wicked tyrant that declared war on the moon. In another, a dark power anchored itself in a comet that reshaped the Earth with its light, creating a wicked, divergent evolution.
And then the light dragged the last dark power to another world...
Four years in the future and over a decade in the past, Pinkie Pie raced into the Everfree Forest. "Girls!" she called out in fear. "You shouldn't be going in there! I Pinkie Promised your sisters I'd keep you safe!"
Eventually she managed to track down the three fillies she had volunteered to watch over, but just as she found them a beam of blue light shot down from the heavens, a stream of darkness twirling around it. Misery, the last dark power from the box, distorted Pinkie's perceptions as it anchored in wicked seeds buried beneath the forest floor, empowering them to weaken the force that had held them at bay.
As the blue light embedded itself mostly into the necklace around Pinkie's neck - an artifact of great importance to her world - she heard the screams of the fillies. She thought the power had claimed their lives. She blamed herself. She had broken her promise.
The blue light returned to the world of its origin, twisted through space and time, leaving a changed Pinkie Pie in the home of the Furies...to be found by one whose life she would change forever.
Pinkie Pie shivered, feeling as though something of great importance had happened. As she shook, a gold choker fell out of her mane, bracing a blue gem in the shape of the marks on her flank. The gem glowed with immense power still sealed within, though it showed signs of having been tapped frequently recently. "Oh, pretty!" Pinkie said happily, putting the choker on.
Unsure what to think of this, Zeus spoke up. "However, there is a more important detail to be addressed," he explained. "While Ares had to be stopped, his throne on Olympus must not be left empty. Kratos, we promised you your life would be greatly improved. Will you accept your reward? Will you take the place you have earned on Olympus...as the new God of War?"
As the Olympian gate opened for Kratos, he found new blades bound to him, though less painfully than the Blades of Chaos had been. The Blades of Athena glittered gold in the sunlight. Smiling, he rested his hand on Calliope's back and Pinkie's head. "What do you think?" he asked. "Should I?"
"You should!" Pinkie said quickly. "It will let me keep my promise to Calliope! Now go on up, you two! I'll catch up in a jiffy!"
Smiling and nodding, Kratos took Calliope's hands and climbed the steps to his new throne on Olympus.
As soon as he was out of earshot, Pinkie turned to Zeus. "So when are you going to tell him why this all really happened...Grandpa?"
Zeus' eyes popped in surprise. "What...how do you...what?"
Athena rested a hand on his shoulder. "Father, I have watched over this family ever since they entered the service of Olympus...and I believe Kratos has discovered the greatest wisdom for a situation such as this."
"And what wisdom is that?" Zeus asked as the giggling pony bounded her way up the stairs after her father and sister.
Athena smiled. "It's Pinkie Pie. Don't question it."