Percy Jackson's Greek Gods (Percy Jackson and the Olympians companion #5.5) - Rick Riordan Page 0,119

dude was spending with his sister.

Anyway, Orion soon had a mound of dead wombat carcasses piled up around him. He painted his face with squirrel blood and put leaves in his hair and started screaming, “I will kill all the animals in the world! All of them! Die, stupid furry critters!”

This didn’t really fit with the Hunters’ nature-friendly mission statement. It also didn’t please Gaea the Earth Mother. Orion was screaming so loudly that he got her attention, even while she was sleeping, and Gaea muttered to herself: “You want to kill something, punk? Try this.”

Just behind Orion, a massive scorpion emerged from a fissure in the ground. The giant turned and got a poisonous stinger right in the chest.

That was the end of Orion. Artemis went searching for him, and when she found his cold, lifeless body, surrounded (for some bizarre reason) by thousands of dead furry critters, her heart was broken again. This time Artemis made a constellation. She put Orion in the sky, with a scorpion nearby, so his story would live forever.

I guess the moral is: don’t try to massacre bunnies, squirrels, and wombats. They didn’t do anything to you, and you might find that they have a very big scorpion friend.

Artemis’s last best friend was a prince named Hippolytos. The guy was handsome and charming and had no interest in romance at all. He just wanted to spend all his time hunting. In other words, he was Artemis’s perfect man. She accepted him into the Hunt, which must have been a challenge for some of her female followers. The guy was a little too attractive for his own good.

Still, Hippolytos was a model follower. He kept his vows and never gave the ladies a second look.

Not everybody liked this, though. Up on Olympus, Aphrodite the goddess of love was outraged.

“Are you kidding me?” she wailed. “A hot guy like that, hanging out with eighty beautiful women, and he’s not interested? This is an insult! This is not okay!”

The next time Hippolytos went home to visit his dad, King Theseus (who is a whole other story, that dude), they got into this huge argument. Dad wanted Hippolytos to get married so he could have kids and carry on the family name when he became king, blah, blah, blah.

Hippolytos said, “No! I want to stay with Artemis and hunt!”

Theseus roared in frustration. “If you love her so much, why don’t you marry her?”

“She’s a maiden goddess, Dad! You never listen!”

The argument got more and more heated, because up in Olympus, Aphrodite was inflaming their passions. Sure, she was the goddess of love, but there really isn’t much difference between love and hate. They both get out of control easily, and one turns into the other. Trust me. I know.

Finally, Theseus drew a sword and killed his own son.

Whoops.

Of course the king was horribly ashamed. He placed the prince’s body in the royal crypts and ran off to mourn in private. Meanwhile, Artemis heard the news and came rushing to the tomb.

Weeping with rage, she gathered up the body of Hippolytos. “No! No, no, no! I will not lose another best friend. I won’t!”

She flew out of the city, carrying Hippolytos’s body. She searched all of Greece until she found the best physician in the world—a guy named Asklepios. He was a son of Apollo, the god of healing, but Asklepios was even better at healing than his dad. Probably that was because Asklepios spent all his time actually healing, while Apollo flirted and gave concerts in the park.

“Aunt Artemis!” said Asklepios. “Good to see you!”

Artemis laid the body of Hippolytos at his feet. “Asklepios, I need you to heal Hippolytos. Please! This is beyond even my powers.”

“Hmm,” Asklepios said. “What’s wrong with him?”

“He’s dead,” Artemis said.

“That’s a serious condition. It’s almost always fatal. But I’ll see what I can do.”

Asklepios mixed some herbs, cooked a potion, and force-fed it to the dead prince, who immediately woke up.

“Thank the Fates!” Artemis said. “Asklepios, you’re the best!”

“Hey, no problem.”

Actually, it was a problem. Aphrodite complained to Zeus. She was such a sore loser. Then Hades complained. Asklepios couldn’t go around bringing the dead back to life. That would cause chaos in the mortal world and the Underworld. Zeus agreed. He zapped Asklepios with lightning and killed him, which is why you can’t go to the doctor today and ask him to resurrect your dead relatives. Zeus declared that level of medicine off-limits.

As for Hippolytos, Artemis made sure he stayed