Percy Jackson's Greek Gods (Percy Jackson and the Olympians companion #5.5) - Rick Riordan Page 0,2

keep it together for the kids, Gaea thought. Maybe I should give it one more try with Ouranos.

She arranged a nice romantic evening—candles, roses, soft music. They must have rekindled some of the old magic. A few months later, Gaea gave birth to one more set of triplets.

As if she needed more proof that her marriage to Ouranos was dead….

The new kids were even more monstrous than the Cyclopes. Each one had a hundred arms all around his chest like sea urchin spines, and fifty teeny, tiny heads clustered on his shoulders. It didn’t matter to Gaea. She loved their little faces—all hundred and fifty of them. She called the triplets the Hundred-Handed Ones. She’d barely had time to give them names, though, when Ouranos marched over, took one look at them, and snatched them from Gaea’s arms. Without a word, he wrapped them in chains and tossed them into Tartarus like bags of recycling.

Clearly, the sky dude had issues.

Well, that was pretty much it for Gaea. She wailed and moaned and caused so many earthquakes that her Titan kids came running to see what was wrong.

“Your father is a complete __________!”

I don’t know what she called him, but I have a feeling that’s when the first cuss words were invented.

She explained what had happened. Then she raised her arms and caused the ground to rumble beneath her. She summoned the hardest substance she could find from her earthy domain, shaped it with her anger, and created the first weapon ever made—a curved iron blade about three feet long. She fixed it to a wooden handle made from a nearby tree branch, then showed her invention to the Titans.

“Behold, my children!” she said. “The instrument of my revenge. I will call it a scythe!”

The Titans muttered among themselves: What is that for? Why is it curved? How do you spell scythe?

“One of you needs to step up!” Gaea cried. “Ouranos isn’t worthy to be the king of the cosmos. One of you will kill him and take his place.”

The Titans looked pretty uncomfortable.

“So…explain this whole killing thing,” said Oceanus. He was the oldest Titan boy, but he mostly hung out in the far reaches of the sea with the primordial water god, whom he called Uncle Pontus. “What does it mean, to kill?”

“She wants us to exterminate our dad,” Themis guessed. She was one of the smartest girls, and she immediately got the concept of punishing someone for a crime. “Like, make him not exist anymore.”

“Is that even possible?” asked her sister Rhea. “I thought we were all immortal.”

Gaea snarled in frustration. “Don’t be cowards! It’s very simple. You take this sharp pointy blade and you cut your dad into small pieces so he can’t bother us again. Whichever of you does this will be the ruler of the universe! Also, I will make you those cookies you used to like, with the sprinkles.”

Now, in modern times, we have a word for this sort of behavior. We call it psycho.

Back then, the rules of behavior were a lot looser. Maybe you’ll feel better about your own relatives, knowing that the first family in creation was also the first dysfunctional family.

The Titans started mumbling and pointing to each other like, “Hey, you’d be good at killing Dad.”

“Uh, no, I think you should do it.”

“I’d love to kill Dad, honestly, but I’ve got this thing I have to do, so—”

“I’ll do it!” said a voice from the back.

The youngest of the twelve shouldered his way forward. Kronos was smaller than his brothers and sisters. He wasn’t the smartest or the strongest or the fastest. But he was the most power-hungry. I suppose when you’re the youngest of twelve kids, you’re always looking for ways to stand out and get noticed. The youngest Titan loved the idea of taking over the world, especially if it meant being the boss of all his siblings. The offer of cookies with sprinkles didn’t hurt, either.

Kronos stood about nine feet tall, which was runty for a Titan. He didn’t look as dangerous as some of his brothers, but the kid was crafty. He’d already gotten the nickname “the Crooked One” among his siblings, because he would fight dirty in their wrestling matches and was never where you expected him to be.

He had his mother’s smile and dark curly hair. He had his father’s cruelty. When he looked at you, you could never tell if he was about to punch you or tell you a joke. His beard