Percy Jackson's Greek Gods (Percy Jackson and the Olympians companion #5.5) - Rick Riordan Page 0,18
bad.”
Hera crossed her arms and sniffed disdainfully. “Boys and their toys. I don’t suppose we get weapons? Are we just supposed to stand back and be cheerleaders while you three do the fighting?”
Zeus winked at her. “Don’t worry, baby. I’ll protect you.”
“I think I’m going to be sick,” Hera said.
It’s possible the Cyclopes would have made weapons for the women. But at that moment Kampê turned and marched back toward the Cyclopes. Maybe she had noticed the smoke from Zeus’s lightning blast, or the swirling clouds from Poseidon’s trident. Maybe she could taste the residual fear in the air from Hades’s helmet. Whatever tipped her off, she detected the presence of the gods.
She raised her whip and howled, “RAWRGGGGWRRR!”
She charged toward their hiding place, her tail lashing, the thousands of vipers around her legs dripping poison.
“Great,” muttered Hera.
“I got this,” Zeus promised.
He stood and raised his bronze lightning bolt. He focused all his energy into the weapon.
KA-BLAM!
A column of white-hot power shot toward Kampê—the most blinding light that had ever been seen in Tartarus.
Kampê just had time to think Uh-oh, before the bolt blasted her into a million sizzling pieces of reptile confetti.
“THAT’S what I’m talking about!” Zeus yelled happily.
Poseidon lowered his trident. “Man, give the rest of us a chance.”
“You go free the Cyclopes and the Hundred-Handed Ones,” Zeus suggested.
Poseidon grumbled, but he used his trident to strike the dark chains from the prisoners’ feet.
“Thank you,” Brontes said. “We will help you fight Kronos.”
“Excellent!” Zeus said.
Hera cleared her throat. “Yes, but about those weapons for the ladies—”
Outside the bronze walls, monstrous roars reverberated through the pit. Every spirit and beast in Tartarus had probably seen the flash of lightning, and now they were closing in to investigate.
“We should leave,” Demeter said. “Like, right now.”
That was the best non-grain-related idea Demeter had ever had, so Hades led his siblings back to the upper world, along with their six large new friends.
Kronos wasn’t an easy guy to defeat.
By most accounts, the Titan War took ten years—or maybe Kronos just used his time tricks to make it seem that long, hoping the gods would give up. If so, it didn’t work.
Rhea the Great Mother visited every Titan she could, trying to persuade them to side with Zeus. Many listened. After all, Kronos wasn’t the most popular leader. Almost all the female Titans either helped Zeus or stayed out of his way. Prometheus, the creator of humans, was smart enough to remain neutral. Oceanus kept to himself in the depths of the ocean. Helios and Selene, the sun and moon, agreed not to take sides as long as they got to keep their jobs.
That left Kronos and most of the other male Titans, with Atlas as his general and champion fighter.
The gods and Titans skirmished back and forth—blowing up an island here, vaporizing a sea there. The Titans were strong and well armed. At the beginning, they held the advantage. Even with magic Cyclops weapons, the gods weren’t used to combat. It’s a hard thing not to drop your trident and run when Atlas is barreling down on you, screaming and waving his sword.
But the gods did learn to fight. The Cyclopes eventually armed all Zeus’s allies with top-of-the-line weapons. The Hundred-Handed Ones learned to throw barrages of stones like living catapults.
You’re thinking, How hard can it be to throw rocks?
Okay, you try throwing rocks with both hands at the same time and hitting your target. It’s not as easy as it sounds. Now, imagine coordinating one hundred hands—all throwing rocks the size of refrigerators. If you’re not careful, you’ll spew rocks everywhere and crush yourself and your allies.
Once the gods learned to fight, the war still took a long time, because none of the combatants on either side could die. You couldn’t just stab a guy, zap him, or throw a house on him and call it a day. You had to actually capture each enemy and make sure he was hurt so badly, he would never heal. Then you had to figure out what to do with his crippled body. As Zeus knew, even throwing somebody into Tartarus wasn’t a guarantee he would stay gone forever.
Little skirmishes weren’t going to decide anything.
Finally Zeus came up with his big plan.
“We have to storm Mount Othrys,” he told his siblings at their weekly war meeting. “A full frontal assault on their headquarters. If we do that, the hostile Titans will rally to protect Kronos. Then we can take them all down at once.”