Astral Form

Zeus' astral form

“	My sacrifice to save Zeus has brought me to a higher existence.	”
–Athena

After dying, certain gods can return in an astral form. The form is accessible to some, if not all, Gods.

God of War III

In the Underworld, after Kratos fell into the River Styx, he reunited with Athena, who, after death at the Spartan's hands, had transcended into an astral form. Upon being killed by Kratos, Zeus took an astral form as well, placing Kratos in a choke-hold, severely weakening him, and forcing him into his own psyche. Kratos escaped his psyche however, successfully battling the astral form with the power of Hope. As Zeus' astral form retreated into his own body, Kratos beat Zeus to a bloody pulp, effectively having cancelled out Zeus' astral form, as well as having killed his father himself. Athena's astral form then insisted on Kratos to give the power of Hope to her, in order for her to establish herself as leader of men in a world engulfed by chaos. Kratos, in refusal, impaled himself with the Blade of Olympus, releasing the power of Hope to the world, much to the disappointment of Athena. After extracting the Blade from the Spartan's body, Athena left a mortally wounded Kratos in a puddle of blood. However, Kratos survived due to absorbing the godly powers from the Blade of Olympus and crawled his way off the mountain and into the chaos he's created and the hope he gave to the people.

Trivia

• While Zeus' astral form was his soul infected by the evil Fear, Athena reached hers by the selfless act of sacrificing herself to save Zeus's life in God of War II, reaching this "higher existence", more powerful than the other Greek gods. The way they died was not the reason for the reach of their astral form.
  • Maybe the power found by Athena after she died in God of War II and the power of the evil Fear are similar, since both reached this form.
  • However, it is possible that the evils from Pandora's Box are what allowed Athena and Zeus to gain access to these forms upon their deaths, as they were likely infected by Greed and Fear respectively, and Athena was infected by Greed after her passing.
• When the other gods infected by the evils of the Second Titanomachy were killed, these evils immediately infected their domains and caused the destruction of Greece.
  • Poseidon's death caused an increase in sea level (chaos in the seas).
  • Hades' death released the souls from Tartarus (chaos in the Greek underworld).
  • Helios's death clouded the weather (chaos in the Greek sun).
  • Hermes's death released a swarm of disease-carrying flies, covering the land with pestilence (chaos in people of Greece's health).
  • Hera's death caused all of the plants in her garden to die (chaos in the vegetation).
  • Fear, the evil that infected Zeus, stayed in his soul even after his death, but then was spread throughout the world after the definitive death of the King of the Greek Gods, contaminating the entire Greece.