Megaera's Parasites: scarab brood of the Fury

Megaera's Parasites were scarab like parasitic creatures that spawned from a diseased looking rash upon the chest of Megaera, the Physical Fury. When Kratos broke free of his chains within the Prison of the Damned, the living body of the Hecatonchires Aegaeon, the wounded Fury loosed these vermin against him in swarms. Through them she corrupted imprisoned men, hounds, and the flesh of the great giant itself, turning an entire prison into a weapon against a single escaped Spartan. The brood did not outlive its mistress. The moment Kratos slew Megaera, every parasite and every creature they possessed ceased with her.

Spawn of the Fury's flesh#

The body of Megaera was filled with monstrous parasitic arthropods that answered her will alone. They emerged through holes in her chest, crawling out of a rash that looked diseased, and once freed of her body they grew with unnatural speed until each stood roughly half the height of a grown human. The creatures resembled the scarabs of the Egyptian myths, tiny green insects swollen into winged horrors, their carapaces the same envious green as the spider limbs that grew from their mistress's back.

On their own the parasites were weak, relying on numbers rather than strength. In habit they recalled the nymphs of Hades that haunted the Underworld, and they died in much the same fashion. Kratos seized them from the air, tore the wings from their bodies, and dashed them against the ground, where their volatile bodies burst and wounded anything standing near. The simplest of these creatures, the brood born directly of Megaera's chest, infested the Prison of the Damned throughout his escape.

Thralls of Megaera#

The true horror of the parasites was not their sting but their hunger for hosts. They could latch onto living creatures, burrow beneath the skin, and drive two spikes into the spine, and the transformation that followed was almost instant. One prisoner of the damned was taken in his cell before Kratos's eyes: the parasite leapt to his neck, buried itself under his flesh, and within moments the man's screams turned to snarls, insect chatter, and shrieks as his body warped. The infested gained strength far beyond their mortal frames, armored hides, and a leaping agility no man possessed. That first wretch smashed through a wooden door to reach the Spartan.

These creatures came to be called Megaera's Minions, organisms forced to fight for the Fury against all who stood in her way. The parasites fused directly with their hosts, and they were not particular about whether the flesh they claimed still lived, for they could infest the dead as readily as the living. Throughout the vast interior of Aegaeon, Kratos met such thralls armed with swords, spears, and clubs, mutated men who retained the instincts of warriors but none of their own will.

Nor were men the only victims. Within the ribs of the great prison, in its guardhouse, hounds prowled with parasites lodged behind their necks. These infected beasts fought exactly as the feral hounds of Greece fought; the only difference was the mind that drove them, for Megaera herself steered them through her burrowed spawn. A prisoner known as the Scribe of Hecatonchires left scattered pages recording the torment of living beside the brood: "Every night they come to my cell... it is unspeakable what they do. Megaera's parasites... I cannot rid myself of them."

The Infected Hands of Aegaeon#

The parasites' power over flesh reached its most monstrous scale in the body of the Hecatonchires itself. Gathering in small groups, they could burrow into the limbs of vastly larger beings and mutate an entire member into a single new organism. As Megaera fled Kratos through the Prison of the Damned, she turned this power upon Aegaeon's hands, transforming them into towering guardians with insect qualities, armed with tusks and scythe like arms and able to spew forth fresh parasites in numbers. The mutation appeared to rouse the dormant Hecatonchires heads within the giant's palms while granting the limbs a will of their own.

Kratos was forced to destroy two of these Infected Hands before he could reach the Fury. When the chase carried them at last to Aegaeon's head, Megaera used her parasites to infect that as well, and the mutated skull fought the Spartan with the aid of a third corrupted hand. In that final struggle Kratos rode one of the infected hands to strike at the head itself. The corrupted skull did not survive its mistress; it died the instant Megaera did. Whether Aegaeon himself perished from the mangling of his hands and face or from the damage done by the parasites that had invaded and mutated his body was never established, but the giant did not live long past the Fury who had defiled him.

The elemental broods#

The brood born of Megaera's chest was only the simplest race of the creatures. Across Greece, Kratos encountered further varieties that did not issue from the Fury's flesh at all but hatched from bug nests, and by destroying those nests he could end their swarming at the source. All of them fought and died in the same manner as their kin, yet each carried an elemental power in its swollen abdomen, released in a burst when the creature was seized and destroyed.

Fire Parasites haunted the Village of Kirra and erupted in small fiery bursts. Ice Parasites gathered at Delphi, outside the temple of Aletheia, and any creature caught in their explosion was frozen for a short time, left brittle enough to be shattered. Lightning Parasites beset the Spartan on his road back to Kirra, their deaths electrocuting whatever stood in reach, so that a handful hurled together could ruin a whole pack of enemies. Soul Parasites dwelt within the Statue of Apollo on Delos and burst in raw soul energy.

The end of the brood#

The parasites had no existence apart from their mistress. When Kratos impaled Megaera upon the heights of Aegaeon and drove both his blades into her chest, the whole of her brood was extinguished with her. The parasites ceased, the mutated minions and infected hounds ceased, and the corrupted head of the Hecatonchires fell dead in the same moment. Of all the horrors the Furies set against the Ghost of Sparta, Megaera's crawling children were the first to be wiped from the world, undone by the single death of the Fury whose diseased flesh had birthed them.