Percy Jackson's Greek Gods (Percy Jackson and the Olympians companion #5.5) - Rick Riordan Page 0,71

bull was taking her; her only choice was to hang on and hope for the best.

Zeus swam all the way to the island of Crete. Once there, he turned back into a god and said, “Finally, we’re alone! How you doing? I’m Zeus.”

Well, one thing led to another, and since Europa couldn’t get back home, she ended up staying on Crete, where she had three sons with Zeus. Because nobody back home knew where Europa had disappeared to, her name eventually came to mean, those lands we don’t know much about. The Greeks started calling the lands to the north of them europa, and eventually the name stuck as Europe.

Zeus didn’t always get his way with women, though.

After that little rebellion when the gods tried to overthrow him, he spent some time flirting with the Nereid Thetis—the lady who had released him from his bonds. Then Zeus heard a prophecy that Thetis was destined to give birth to a son who was greater than his father.

That freaked Zeus out pretty good.

“A kid greater than me?” he muttered to himself. “I don’t think so!”

So he broke off flirting with Thetis, and their relationship never went anywhere. Thetis eventually married a great hero named Peleus, and they had a son who was an even greater hero than his dad. In fact, he turned out to be the most powerful and famous hero in all of Greek history. His name was Achilles. So we can be thankful Zeus didn’t marry Thetis. None of us needs a super-powerful Zeus Junior running around.

Zeus by himself was powerful enough to handle anything…well, almost anything.

The only time he got schooled, fooled, and totally tooled was when he faced a monster called Typhoeus.

The stories about him are pretty confused. They can’t even agree on his name. Sometimes it’s Typhoeus. Sometimes it’s Typhon. Sometimes Typhon and Typhoeus are treated like two different monsters. To keep things simple, let’s call him Typhoeus.

What did he look like? Hard to say. He was always shrouded in storm clouds. BIG, for sure. Like, so big that his head seemed to scrape the top of the sky. His shape was more or less humanoid from the waist up, but his legs were like the bodies of boa constrictors. On each hand, he had a hundred fingers that were tipped with serpent heads, each of which had fiery eyes and spit venom, so that when he got mad, he just showered poison all over the place. This also made it totally impossible for him to get a manicure. He had massive leathery wings, long matted hair that smelled like volcanic smoke, and a face that was constantly shifting and changing so that it seemed like he had a hundred different faces—each one uglier than the last. Oh, and he breathed fire. Did I mention that?

Typhoeus was born and raised in the pit of Tartarus. The spirit of the pit—the primordial god Tartarus—was his dad. His mom was Mother Earth. I guess that explains why Typhoeus was both big and evil. His parents must have been so proud.

Typhoeus had a lovely wife named Echidna down in the pit. Okay, she wasn’t really lovely. She was a hideously foul she-monster, but they must have gotten along, because they had lots of kids together. In fact, just about every horrible monster you can think of was a child of Typhoeus and Echidna.

Despite this, one day Typhoeus got restless and decided to leave his comfy home in the pit of eternal damnation.

“Honey,” he told Echidna, “I’m going upstairs to destroy the gods and take over the universe. I’ll try to be back by dinner.”

“This is your mother’s idea, isn’t it?” Echidna complained. “She’s always telling you what to do! You should stay at home. The Hydra needs his father. The Sphinx needs her dad!”

Typhoeus shuddered. It was true that Mother Earth was always goading him to destroy the gods. Gaea hated the gods ever since they defeated the Titans. But this trip was Typhoeus’s idea. He needed a vacation from his monstrous kids and his she-monster wife. Taking over the universe sounded like just the ticket.

“I’ll be back,” he promised. “If I’m late, don’t wait up.”

So the storm giant Typhoeus broke into the upper world and began destroying everything in his path. It was pathetically easy. He ripped up a mountain and smashed a city. He summoned a hurricane and drowned an entire island.

“Is this all you’ve got?” Typhoeus yelled toward Mount Olympus, far in the distance. “Where are