Cerberus Mongrel: the lesser hounds of the Underworld

The Cerberus Mongrels were the weakest breed of the Cerberi, the race of multi-headed hounds kept by Hades as the beasts of the Underworld. Gaunt and starved in appearance yet savage in temper, they crossed the path of Kratos in two ages of his life, first as soul-wreathed hunters bearing the powers of their master and later as the ragged packs that prowled the land of the dead. Weak though they were beside their greater kin, the Mongrels proved more useful to the Spartan than any other beast of the Underworld, for a Mongrel that was beaten low enough could be mounted and mastered, its claws and fire turned against its own side.

The weakest of the Cerberi#

The Mongrels stood at the bottom of the Cerberi, beneath the Breeders that seeded new packs and far beneath the magma-skinned Hades Cerberus that ruled the deep places of the dead. They appeared as large three-headed dogs with a gaunt, starved look, and they fought in two fashions, either leaping upon their prey with their claws or spitting fire from a distance. What they lacked in strength they made up in hunger and persistence, and they were dangerous enough to any warrior who let their strikes land unanswered.

Kratos found the measure of the breed early. By blocking or evading a Mongrel's strikes and answering with heavy blows, he could weaken and daze the animal, then leap onto its back and latch his blades around its left and right heads. So harnessed, the beast obeyed him, clawing and breathing fire at whatever enemies surrounded it. When a captive Mongrel had endured too many wounds to serve any longer, Kratos ended it by yanking his blades and ripping the left and right heads from its shoulders, then driving the middle head down and impaling it into the ground.

Hounds of the death lord's power#

The Mongrels that hunted Kratos in his younger years, in the days of his persecution by the Furies, were of a stranger and deadlier strain. These beasts carried the powers of their master, the lord Hades himself. Their fur was purple, and the strength of souls ran through everything they did. They could raise shields of souls around their bodies that no weapon could pierce, then burst those shields outward to stun anyone standing too near. They could also open portals beneath themselves and pour into the ground as if digging, only to reappear beside their quarry and slam their paws down as they surfaced, hurling their enemies back.

Kratos met these soul-touched Mongrels at the entrance to the Oracle's chamber, at the Prison of the Damned, and on the Island of Delos. They were far harder to break than the starved packs he would later face in the Underworld, deadlier and more resistant, and a lone warrior seldom brought one down quickly. Even so, a Mongrel of this strain could still be stunned and mounted, though the struggle was fiercer, and a rider who mastered one found that it spat waves of purple soul energy in place of common flame. When such a beast was finally worn down, it died as all Mongrels died, its outer heads wrenched loose and its middle head stabbed through with both blades.

The bond between the breed and its master ran deep. When Kratos at last faced Hades in his palace in the Underworld, the lord of the dead called a Cerberus Mongrel out of the souls in his keeping to fight at his side, even as he swung the Claws of Hades against the Spartan.

The burning of Peirithous#

Kratos met the common breed of Mongrel shortly after his descent into the Underworld during his last war against the gods. It was there that a Mongrel served him in one of the crueler bargains of his journey. Deep among the prisons of the dead he came upon Peirithous, trapped behind a cage of bramble, who begged the Spartan to set him free in exchange for the Bow of Apollo. On the far side of the prison a Cerberus Mongrel was kept penned, and when Kratos approached it, the beast breathed fire from its mouths in an attempt to kill him, managing only to ignite a bramble pot.

Kratos broke the animal to his will and turned its fire where he wished it. The bramble of the cage caught and blazed, and Peirithous burned to death within his own prison while the weapon he had bargained with passed into the hands of the Ghost of Sparta. The Mongrel's flames served Kratos in humbler ways as well, for the burning of bramble pots loosed hot air that rose in great vents, and on those rising currents the Spartan was carried upward through places no stair could reach.

A beast of burden in the war on Olympus#

As Kratos fought his way up through the roots of Mount Olympus, the Mongrels he subdued became weapons of war. In the caverns beneath the mountain he found Minotaurs battering at the great chains that held aloft a section of Daedalus's vast maze, and he rode a captured Mongrel against them, its fire and claws driving the bull-men back before the chains could be broken.

He rode the breed once more inside the maze itself. In the first trial of that vast prison of stone and gears, a mounted Mongrel carried him through the gauntlet, destroying the statues that barred his way, among them a Bronze Talos that came to life against him, along with every lesser hound that crossed his path. The weakest of the Cerberi thus ended its days in a strange station, despised by its greater kin and starved in the dark of the Underworld, yet again and again it was the beast a god-slayer chose to ride.