Percy Jackson's Greek Gods (Percy Jackson and the Olympians companion #5.5) - Rick Riordan Page 0,75

said. “If you’d like, I will play you some music while you rest for a moment, before your tiring climb to victory on Mount Olympus.”

“Hmm. Music.” Typhoeus’s eyelids drooped. “Perhaps just a short…Zzzzzz.”

His massive head slumped against his chest, and the storm giant began to snore. Aegipan played his sweetest lullaby to keep the giant dreaming happily.

Meanwhile, Hermes sneaked out and took the sinews, then stealthily dug around in Typhoeus’s man purse until he found Zeus’s lightning bolts. He nodded at Aegipan, like, Keep playing!, then flew off to Zeus’s cave.

It was messy work, sticking tendons back into the sky god’s arms and legs, using careful zaps from a lightning bolt to reattach everything. A couple of times Hermes put the tendons on backward. When Zeus tried to move his arm, he slapped himself in the back of the head.

“Sorry!” Hermes said. “I can fix that!”

Finally Zeus was back to normal. Being an immortal god, he healed fast; and once he held his lightning bolts again, anger surged through him, making him feel stronger than ever.

“Time for payback,” he grumbled.

“What can I do?” Hermes asked.

“Stay out of the way,” Zeus said.

“I can do that.”

Zeus marched from the cave and grew in size until he was almost half as tall as Typhoeus—which was huge for a god. As soon as Hermes plucked up Aegipan and flew him to safety, Zeus yelled, “WAKE UP!”

He slammed Typhoeus in the face with a thunderbolt, which was kind of like having a star go supernova right up your nostrils.

Typhoeus fell flat on the ground, but Zeus blasted him again. The giant staggered, trying to rise. He was still half asleep, dazed and confused and wondering what had happened to the nice satyr with the pretty music. Zeus was hitting him with lightning…but that was impossible, wasn’t it?

BLAM!

KA-BOOM!

The giant went into full retreat. Lightning crackled around him and blew the snakes right off his fingers, shredding his cloud of darkness and blinding him over and over.

Before Typhoeus could recover, he stumbled into the sea. Zeus ripped a mountain from the earth and held it over his head.

“EAT ETNA!” Zeus bellowed. (Because that was the name of the mountain.)

He smashed Typhoeus under the weight of Mount Etna, and the storm giant has been trapped there ever since, rumbling beneath megatons of rock and occasionally causing volcanic explosions.

So that’s how Zeus saved the universe, with a little assist from Hermes and Aegipan. I’m not sure if Hermes got a reward, but Aegipan was given a constellation to honor his bravery. It’s in the shape of a goat with a fish’s tail, to commemorate the form he took when he escaped Typhoeus. Later on, that constellation became a zodiac symbol. We call it Capricorn.

And finally, hooray, I can stop talking about Zeus.

The bad news: it’s time to talk about a goddess who dislikes my dad and isn’t very fond of me, either. But I’ll try to be fair, because after all, she’s my girlfriend Annabeth’s mom—good old crafty, scary-smart Athena.

ATHENA ADOPTS A

HANDKERCHIEF

SO ABOUT A MILLION PAGES AGO, I mentioned Zeus’s first wife, the Titan Metis. Remember her? Neither did I. I had to go back and look. All these names: Metis and Thetis and Themis and Feta Cheese—I get a headache trying to keep them straight.

Anyway, here’s a recap:

Last week on The Real Gods of Olympus: Metis was pregnant with Zeus’s child. She had a prophecy that the child would be a girl, but if Metis and Zeus had another child after that, it would be a boy who would grow up to take Zeus’s place. Hearing this, Zeus did the natural thing. He panicked and swallowed his pregnant wife whole.

Dun-dun!

What happened next?

Well, immortals can’t die, even when they’re ingested by other immortals, so Metis gave birth to her daughter right there in Zeus’s gut.

(Feel free to get sick now. Or you can wait. It gets worse….)

Metis eventually faded into pure thought, since she was the Titan of deep thoughts anyway. She became nothing more than a nagging voice in the back of Zeus’s mind.

As for her daughter, she grew up in Zeus’s body, the same way the earlier Olympians had grown up in Kronos’s belly. Once the child was an adult (a small, super-compressed, very uncomfortable adult) she started looking for a way to escape into the world. None of the options seemed good. If she erupted from Zeus’s mouth, everyone would laugh at her and say she had been vomited. That was undignified. If she followed