Stymphalian Birds: the armored plague of Laconia

The Stymphalian Birds were giant, monstrous birds of prey, armored in metal feathers and native to Arcadia. In the age when the young Kratos and his brother Deimos searched Laconia for the missing boy Vasilis, three of the creatures, named Ioke, Ponea, and Apate, invaded the region and seized nests in the Laconian Woods, on Mount Taygetos, and above the Passage of Monuments. Each in turn was beaten from its stolen roost by the Spartan brothers, and when the trio fell back together to the Drifting Spire, Kratos and Deimos followed them there and ended their mischief.

A pestilence out of Arcadia#

Some pestilent forces were subtle in nature. The Stymphalian Birds were not. They were enormous, belligerent, noisy creatures that could not coexist with anyone but each other, and at times not even that. The birds traditionally gathered in trios, but when even that arrangement wore thin, a bird would strike out and form a solitary nest of its own. From such a roost it could be expected to torment its neighbors until it was forcibly driven away, for nothing short of force ever moved one.

Their invasions remade the lands they touched. When a Stymphalian bird claimed a territory, everything else fled or suffered. The Kerkopes brothers Acmon and Passalus confessed that one of the creatures had helped drive them from their old grounds on Mount Taygetos, and the imprisoned griffin Adrasteia spent her days screeching from within that same mountain in a vain attempt to frighten away the bird that had settled at its top.

The scourge of the old histories#

The Stymphalian Birds were a voracious, man-eating breed long before they troubled Laconia. Old accounts described them as the size of a crane and like the ibis in form, with beaks of bronze and sharp metallic feathers that they launched at their victims. Even their dung was poisonous and highly toxic. They were said to have been the pets of the goddess Artemis, or else to have been brought up by Ares, the god of war, who counted them among his sacred animals.

Preyed upon by wolves, the flocks migrated to Arcadia and bred quickly in a swamp there, and soon they terrorized the whole region, killing the townspeople and destroying crops and fruit trees. Their infamy reached its height in the twelve labors of Hercules. For the sixth labor, his cousin Eurystheus sent the hero to Arcadia to kill the Stymphalian Birds, but his great weight barred him from wading deep into the swamp of Stymphalia. Seeing his plight, Athena gave him a rattle made by Hephaestus for that very occasion. Its clamor frightened the birds into the air, where Hercules shot many of them down, and the survivors flew away, never to return to the swamp. The Argonauts encountered the scattered birds again in a later age.

Ioke of the Laconian Woods#

Ioke was the first of the Laconian trio to cross the path of Kratos and Deimos. It had abandoned its fellows to keep a solitary nest in the Laconian Woods, and the brothers came upon it as they headed back toward Sparta after reclaiming a sculptor's stolen chisel tools from the Kerkopes.

Ioke fought as its kind always fought, with wind and metal. The beating of its wings threw out gusts strong enough to hurl a grown Spartan backward, and its roar alone could drive a man off his feet. It hurled itself at its foes spinning like a discus, and when it meant to crush rather than cut, it wrapped its wings about itself with the sharp metal feathers pointed downward and plunged onto the ground, splitting the earth with the force of its landing. Its most fearsome habit was to climb high into the sky and dive at terrible speed, shearing apart anything in its path with the blade of its crest. None of it saved the creature. The brothers beat Ioke from its nest and moved on.

Ponea of Mount Taygetos#

The second bird, Ponea, kept its nest high on Mount Taygetos, and its predatory habits differed enough from Ioke's that the two might have been taken for different breeds, though their common origin was plain. Kratos and Deimos climbed to its nest dreading what they might find, for they feared the body of Vasilis had been carried there. The nest held no trace of the boy, but the bird returned before they could withdraw and fell upon them.

Every blow Ponea struck carried a killing frost. When it spun like a discus it drew the very air inward, dragging the brothers toward its whirling feathers, and it could cast frozen bolts outward as it wheeled. It breathed out beams of ice three at a time, rained icicles down from high above, and slammed into the ground with its feathers leveled like spears. As the battle wore on, a freezing fog crept over the mountaintop until the ground itself burned with cold and would not relent. Even so, the brothers endured the frost and drove Ponea from the heights, and Adrasteia's mountain was quieter for it.

Apate of the Passage of Monuments#

The last of the trio, Apate, roosted above the Passage of Monuments. Kratos and Deimos climbed to the high ground there while searching for any sign that Vasilis had practiced his archery in the pass, and when they heard the Stymphalian's cry they chose to hunt the creature down before it could find them first.

Where Ponea froze, Apate poisoned. Every strike the bird landed left venom behind it. When it hurled itself spinning across the ground it did not drive straight at its prey but bounced, wild and hard to read, before crashing down in a slam. From high in the sky it loosed a barrage of bolts that chased its quarry across the pass, ending the assault by dropping bodily onto the ground, and it could spit three bolts at once as it wheeled aside. Wherever its slams struck the earth, poisonous plants sprouted from the broken ground and lingered after it. The brothers weathered the venom as they had weathered the frost, and Apate too was rousted from its stolen nest.

The last flight at the Drifting Spire#

With all three birds driven off, the question remained whether that was the last to be seen of them, or whether they had merely fallen back to some refuge from which they could redouble their mischief. The answer was the Drifting Spire. The rousted trio withdrew there together, beyond the reach of any ordinary pursuit.

Kratos and Deimos followed all the same. With the plumes taken from the three birds they opened the Muse Challenges at the Sanctuary, and having proven themselves in those trials, they spoke with the Oracle and were carried across to the Drifting Spire. At its top the trio waited, and the brothers fought them one by one in the reverse of their first meetings, Apate first and Ioke last. The birds were diminished from their earlier defeats but had lost none of their old tricks, and for once they fought as the trio they were born to be. Apate's bouncing spins now threw out shockwaves with every landing, and while it circled high above, Ponea joined the assault with barrages of icicles. It was not enough. One after another the three Stymphalian Birds fell at the spire, and the roads of Laconia were troubled by them no more.