Percy Jackson's Greek Gods (Percy Jackson and the Olympians companion #5.5) - Rick Riordan Page 0,73

the wrecked chariot that lay smoking on a nearby island. “That’s good! Now you’re free to go. You can enjoy watching me destroy Olympus and taking over the world. Then I’ll come back later and step on you.”

Typhoeus tossed Zeus aside like a clod of dirt. The lord of the universe landed in a crumpled heap on the side of a mountain and whimpered, “Ouch.”

Typhoeus stormed off, heading for Olympus, with Zeus’s lightning bolts and gross sinews safely tucked in his pouch (or man purse, or whatever the fashionable evil storm giants were wearing back then).

Well, gang, at this point things weren’t looking too good for the gods. Or for humans. Or for anything that lived on the face of the planet. Zeus was lying on a mountainside helpless and in agony, watching as Typhoeus marched off to destroy Olympus.

Zeus thought: Why did I want to be king? This bites.

Meanwhile the other gods were hiding, and Typhoeus raged across creation, almost unopposed. An army of Poseidon’s sea monsters and whales did try to stop him, but Typhoeus just kicked them out of the way and poisoned their waters. Some of the sky gods tried to fight him—the spirits of the stars, and Selene, the Titan of the moon. In fact, the Greeks believed that the scars and craters on the moon were left over from when Selene rode the moon chariot into battle.

Nothing helped. The seas kept boiling. Whole islands were destroyed. The sky turned into a red-and-black boiling mass. Every so often Typhoeus would stomp on the earth, open a huge crevice, and reach inside to pull out some magma-like yolk from the inside of an egg. He’d throw fiery globs of lava all over the earth, setting fields on fire, melting cities, and writing burning graffiti on the sides of mountains like ZEUS SUX and TYPHOEUS WUZ HERE.

He would’ve made it to Mount Olympus, no problem, but fortunately a couple of gods decided to circle back and see what happened to Zeus.

They weren’t the bravest gods. They were just the sneakiest. One was Hermes the messenger, who could fly very fast and was good at staying off the radar. The other was a minor satyr god named Aegipan, who had furry legs and hooves like a goat, and generally looked like a regular satyr except that he was immortal.

Aegipan had managed to hide from Typhoeus by turning into a goat with the tail of a fish. (Why such a weird disguise? Maybe he panicked. I don’t know.) Anyway, he dived into the sea and escaped.

Now he was feeling bad about being a coward, so he hitched a ride with Hermes, and they flew around until they spotted Zeus lying in a heap.

“Ouch,” Hermes said when they landed. “What happened to you?”

Zeus wanted to chew them out for running away and leaving him to fight Typhoeus alone, but he was in too much pain, and he needed their help too badly.

He could barely speak, but he managed to tell them about the missing lightning bolts and the sinews that Typhoeus had ripped out of his arms and legs.

Aegipan looked like he wanted to throw up. “So we’re finished. Game over.”

“We can’t give up,” Zeus said. “I need my tendons and my bolts back. If I can get the drop on Typhoeus, hit him at point-blank range, I think I can take him out. But how to get back my weapons and my sinews….”

He stared at the panpipes hanging around Aegipan’s neck.

Bringing a musical instrument with you into battle might sound silly, but Aegipan always carried his pipes. He had a reputation for playing very well.

Suddenly, Zeus got a crazy idea. He remembered how he’d tricked Kronos into barfing up the other Olympians years ago, how he’d posed as a cupbearer and won the Titans’ praise by singing songs and dancing….

“When strength doesn’t work,” Zeus said, “trickery might.”

“I like trickery,” Hermes said.

Zeus told them his plan.

Fortunately, Hermes was a fast flyer. He picked up Aegipan and Rag Doll Zeus and zipped at top speed around Typhoeus’s path of destruction. The gods landed on the Greek mainland near the foot of Mount Olympus, right where the storm giant would have to walk.

Hermes deposited Zeus in a nearby cave, where the lord of the sky would have to wait like a useless sack of rocks while the plan either failed or succeeded.

Hermes hid out of sight in the nearest grove of trees, while Aegipan the satyr god made himself comfortable in a