Hydra

The Hydra was a colossal multi-headed sea serpent that terrorized the Aegean Sea, a beast roughly the size of a small island that sank ships and devoured sailors. A child of Typhon and Echidna, it was slain by Kratos in the service of Poseidon, the first great monster to fall in his long campaign of vengeance.

The serpent of myth#

In the oldest tales of Greece the Hydra was a multi-headed serpent that dwelt in a swamp beyond the city of Lerna. It was most often said to bear nine heads, though some accounts gave it as few as five and others as many as a hundred, and in every telling it was deadly poisonous, the very air around it able to kill a man in moments. Worst of all, it could regrow its heads when they were severed, sprouting two for each one lost, and one head among them was held to be immortal.

That first Hydra was slain by Hercules, the son of Zeus, as the second of his labors. Holding his breath against the venom, he cut away the heads and burned each stump so it could not grow again, and afterward dipped his arrows in the monster's poisonous blood. Its immortal head he pinned beneath a great rock, and the beast itself was placed among the stars as a constellation. The Hydra was counted among the mightiest and most terrible children of Typhon, the Father of Monsters.

The terror of the Aegean#

The Hydra that arose in the age of Kratos was a different and greater beast, a freshly born serpent conceived by Typhon and Echidna, larger than the one Hercules had bested ages before. Even Zeus was startled to see it, believing its kind long dead. It was a massive serpent roughly the size of a small island, its many lesser heads ruled by one dominant central head, the Hydra King; should the King fall, the whole beast would die with it.

The monster challenged the dominion of Poseidon himself, wrecking ships and devouring their crews across the Aegean Sea, and so the Sea God charged Kratos with its destruction. The Hydra fell upon the Spartan's fleet as it neared Athens, and Kratos battled its heads one by one: first a lesser head that smashed up through the hull of his ship, then another that struck from above amid a flock of Harpies after gorging itself on the sailors. His final reckoning came upon the deck of another ship, where he faced the Hydra King together with two of its lesser heads and slew the beast at last by driving the ship's mast clean through the King's skull.

After the kill#

The death of the Hydra brought ruin to the sea around it. Its many wounds and its dark, poisonous blood contaminated the waters, and thousands of sharks perished trying to feed upon the vast carcass. The kill stirred a brief quarrel between Ares and Poseidon, for it was whispered that the Hydra had been set in the Spartan's path by Athena in a clever scheme to trick Poseidon into empowering her chosen warrior. Whatever the truth, the Lord of the Oceans rewarded Kratos with a sliver of his own rage, a divine gift that served the Spartan well through the streets of Athens, through Pandora's Temple, and in his final reckoning with the God of War.

The Hydra's hide was not forgotten. After Kratos became the God of War, the temple atop Olympus was found hung with the trophies of his past foes, and the long serpentine skin of the Hydra was displayed high behind the throne, its severed neck and head looming above all who entered.