Percy Jackson's Greek Gods (26 page)

Like Thebes was important. Please! What kind of name is
Thebes
?
It’s not as cool as Sparta. Besides, there was already a city called Thebes in Egypt, so having one in Greece too was going to confuse people!

Then, on top of everything else, the other gods decreed that the dragon-killing jerk got to marry Ares’s daughter. Not funny.

For his daughter’s sake, Ares tried to keep his cool; but he
hated
his son-in-law. Finally one day he saw Cadmus out by the sacred grove, gazing at the spot where he’d killed the dragon years before.

For some reason, this completely torqued off Ares.

The war god appeared in front of him. “What are you looking at, punk? The place where you killed my dragon? You hate reptiles, huh? Well, guess what? You
are
one!”

WHAM!
Ares turned Cadmus into a snake.

Unfortunately, Queen Harmonia had just been walking up to check on her husband. She saw what happened and shrieked, “Dad! What did you do?”

“He deserved it!” Ares snarled.

“I love him! Change him back!”

“Oh, you choose him over me? Is that how it is? Maybe you’d like to join him!”
BLAM!
He turned his own daughter into a snake, and the king and queen of Thebes slithered away.

That’s how Ares got his revenge. But when the snakes Cadmus and Harmonia died, Zeus sent their souls to Elysium so they could live together in peace and happiness forever. (Just don’t tell Ares. He’d probably go down there and whammy them all over again.)

As for Ares’s other sacred grove, the one in Colchis, things were run a little differently over there. The king was a guy named Aeetes. (As near as I can figure, that’s pronounced “I Eat Tees.”) His big claim to fame was that the Golden Fleece—that magical sheepskin rug I’m related to—ended up in his kingdom, which made the place immune to disease, invasion, stock market crashes, visits from Justin Bieber, and pretty much any other natural disaster.

Aeetes wasn’t a son of Ares, but he was a big-time worshipper. He would go out of his way to start wars and kill as many people as possible, just so he could get extra points in the Ares Reward Program. Pretty soon King Aeetes had scored all kinds of swag.

Ares sent his second dragon son to guard the Golden Fleece, which hung in an oak tree in Aeetes’s sacred grove. The dragon was only friendly to Aeetes, so it would let the king gather its teeth. Then Aeetes would go to the special Field of Ares and plant the teeth to get himself a fresh crop of skeletal soldiers whenever he needed some. But he didn’t have just any old John Deere tractor. Ares gave the king a special plow pulled by metal fire-breathing oxen. And to keep the king safe from the fire, Ares gave him a set of fireproof, bulletproof, everything-proof armor that Ares had won during the war with the giants. (Which is a whole other story.)

As if the metal oxen, the skeleton warriors, and the dragon weren’t enough security, Aeetes also built a wall around the entire area so nobody could get close to the field or the grove. Considering that his kingdom of Colchis was pretty much at the end of the known world, the chances of anybody coming to steal his Golden Fleece were pretty slim.

Of course, somebody came to steal his Golden Fleece. The dude’s name was Jason. But that’s also a big long story for some other time. For now, we’ll leave Aeetes in Colchis, all smug and confident and worshipping Ares and thinking, Yeah, I’m cool.

But even the god of war couldn’t get away with killing people
all
the time. Sometimes Ares had to explain himself to the other gods. In fact, he was the defendant in the first and only godly murder trial—the pilot episode for
Law & Order: Olympus.

Happened like this: There was this jerkish demigod son of Poseidon named Halirrhothius. I’m not going to claim the dude as a brother. His name alone should tell you he was no good. Sounds like some kind of throat disease.
I think I’ll just call him Hal.

Anyway, Hal lived in Athens. He fell in love with this beautiful Athenian princess named Alcippe, who happened to be the daughter of Ares; but Alcippe didn’t want anything to do with him. A son of Poseidon? Gross!

Hal wouldn’t give up. He followed Alcippe everywhere, stalked her on Facebook, sabotaged her dates, and basically acted like a creep.

Then one night Hal cornered Alcippe in an alley. When she tried to get away, he knocked her to the ground. She started screaming and kicking and yelling, “Help!”

Finally she thought to say, “Dad! Ares!”

That did the trick.

Ares appeared in a flash and yanked the young man away from Alcippe.

“MESS WITH MY DAUGHTER?” Ares bellowed so loud, he made the kid’s cheeks flap from the g-force.

“Sorry, sir!” Hal said. “I give up! Don’t hurt me!”

“Oh, I won’t hurt you,” Ares promised. “I’LL KILL YOU!”

The war god pulled a knife and turned Hal into demigod Swiss cheese. Then he slammed the kid on the ground and kicked his lifeless body a few times for good measure.

The scene was so gruesome it was in the news for weeks. All the mortal commentators were asking, “Godly violence against mortals—has it gone too far?” and basically giving Mount Olympus a bunch of bad press.

Poseidon demanded that Ares stand trial for murder, since Hal was his son.

Ares exploded. “It was self-defense!”

Poseidon snorted. “Self-defense? The boy surrendered to you. Then you stabbed him six hundred times and stepped on his face. How is
that
self-defense?”

“I was defending my daughter, Barnacle Beard! Your punk son was trying to rape her!”

Poseidon and Ares rolled up their sleeves to fight—which would’ve been sweet, because my dad would have totally owned that idiot—but Zeus stopped them.

“Enough!” he snapped. “We will have a trial, as requested. I will be the judge. The other gods will be the jury.”

They had a trial for Ares on a hill in Athens. Zeus made a big deal about calling witnesses and hearing the evidence. I’m not sure what would have happened if Ares had been convicted. Maybe Zeus would’ve thrown him into Tartarus, or sentenced him to a thousand years of community service, picking up trash on the side of the highway. But in the end, the gods decided Ares was innocent. Sure, he’d gone a little overboard, mangling Hal’s body like that, but the guy had been assaulting Ares’s daughter. That wasn’t cool. Only gods could get away with stuff like that!

The hill where they held the trial is still there. If you’re ever in Athens, check it out. It’s called the Aeropagus, the Hill of Ares, and in ancient times the Athenians built a law court at the top for all their murder trials. I guess they figured if the place was good enough to try Ares, it was good enough for their mortal psychos and ax murderers and whatnot.

Me, I agree that Ares had the right to defend his daughter, but I still think Poseidon should have beaten the snot out of him, just because that would’ve been awesome to watch.

One more story about the war god, because I want to end with something that makes him look like a complete loser. (Which, honestly, isn’t hard to do.)

One time, these two big giant brothers named Otis and Ephialtes decided they were going to destroy the gods. Why? Probably the Earth Mother Gaea put them up to it, or maybe they were just bored. The twin brothers were called the
Alodai,
which means
the Crushers
. I don’t know if they had matching wrestler costumes, or what.

Like most giants, they were…well, giant. They started ripping up mountains and piling them on top of each other, trying to make an assault tower from which they could destroy Mount Olympus with boulders—the same way Zeus destroyed Mount Othrys back in the old days.

The gods looked down from their palace and saw these two big giants piling up mountains, getting closer and closer, and Zeus said, “Someone should stop them.”

“Yes,” Hera agreed.

Nobody volunteered. This was shortly after the fiasco with the storm giant Typhoeus, and all the gods were still a little shell-shocked. The idea of fighting
two
massive giants wasn’t very appealing.

Finally, Hera said, “Ares, you’re the god of war. You should go fight them.”

“Me?” Ares’s voice got squeaky. “I mean…obviously, I could destroy them if I wanted to. But why
me
?
Athena’s a war goddess. Send her!”

“Ah, but I’m
wise
,” Athena said. “Wise enough to make
you
do it instead.”

Ares cursed, but he couldn’t argue with her logic. He got on his armor and jumped in his chariot and went barreling down the side of Mount Olympus, shouting and waving his spear.

The giants weren’t impressed. They’d been expecting an attack. In fact, they’d made some super-strong chains for just this occasion and set a trap—laying the chains along the ground right in the chariot’s path, covering them with branches and gravel and stuff.

As Ares charged, the giants leaped to either side, yanked the ends of the chain, and made a trip line that his horses couldn’t avoid.

WHAM!

Horses went flying. The chariot exploded into a million pieces. Ares wasn’t wearing a seat belt, so he flew about a hundred yards, slammed into the ground, and would’ve broken his neck if he were mortal. While he was still dazed, the giants tied him up in their huge chains and carted him away.

“Oh, bummer,” Athena noted, peering down from Mount Olympus. “They’re kidnapping Ares.”

“Wow, that’s a shame.” Poseidon yawned.

“We should help him,” Hera said, but even she sounded halfhearted.

Before any of the gods could decide what to do, the Alodai disappeared into the mountains. They took Ares to a faraway cave and stuffed him in a big bronze jar, where he suffocated and sweltered for thirteen months.

Ares tried to break the chains, but they were way too strong for him. He yelled and screamed and threatened, but as he got weaker and weaker, with no nectar to drink or ambrosia to eat, he just whimpered in the jar and pleaded to be let out.

Zeus couldn’t be bothered to launch a rescue mission.

The Alodai kept sending ransom demands. “Open your gates or we’ll destroy your son! No, really! We mean it! Okay, how about a million drachmas worth of gold? Seriously, we’ll hurt him! Come on, guys! We’ve got your son in a jar! Don’t you
want
him back?”

The giants got no reply from Mount Olympus. Ares might have withered away to nothing, which would’ve been fine with me; but the twin giants had a stepmother named Eriboea, who was kindhearted and took pity on Ares. Or maybe she just got tired of hearing him whimper in the jar.

One night, she crept out of the cave and found the messenger god Hermes.

“Hey,” she said. “I can show you where Ares is being kept. You can sneak in and rescue him.”

Hermes wrinkled his nose. “Do I have to?”

“Well…if you don’t, my stepsons are going to get tired of trying to ransom him,” Eriboea said. “Then they’ll finish their mountainous siege tower and destroy Olympus.”

Hermes sighed. “Oh, all right. Fine.”

So Hermes sneaked into the cave and rescued Ares. They flew back to Mount Olympus, where the sight of Ares’s sickly pale, withered form made the other gods angry and ashamed. They hated Ares, but nobody should be allowed to treat an Olympian that way.

The gods rallied and eventually managed to destroy the Alodai twins.

As for Ares, he got back to his fighting weight and pretended like the incident never happened; but after that he always had a soft spot for prisoners of war. If you mistreated your captives, Ares would find you and have a heart-to-heart.

Also, Ares developed a serious fear of jars.

I think I’m going to get him a nice one for Christmas.

HEPHAESTUS MAKES ME
A
GOLDEN LLAMA

(Not Really, But He Totally Should)

I
F YOU WANT TO SEE
H
EPHAESTUS’S BABY PICTURES
,
you’re out of luck.

He was born so ugly that his loving mother Hera tossed him off Mount Olympus like a bag of trash. If somebody
had
taken a baby picture, it would’ve shown homely little Hephaestus plummeting through the clouds with a surprised look on his face like,
MOMMY, WHY?

What happened next? Well, Hera was hoping never to see the kid again.

But eventually Hephaestus came back, just like a boomerang, and smacked her upside the head. I love that guy.

Baby Hephaestus fell into the sea, where he was rescued by the leader of the fifty Nereid sea spirits—Thetis. She’s the chick who later freed Zeus when the gods tied him up.

Anyway, Thetis felt bad for this poor little baby. She decided to raise him in a secret underwater cave.

Thetis didn’t mind ugly. She lived with jellyfish and eels and anglerfish, so Hephaestus didn’t look so bad to her. Sure, his legs were malformed and too scrawny to support his weight without crutches or braces. He had too much man fur, and he had to shave like five times a day, even as a baby. His face was red and lumpy like he slept in a hive of African killer bees. But his upper body was strong and healthy. He had clever hands and keen intelligence. As the young god grew, he developed a talent for building and crafting, just like the Elder Cyclopes. Give the kid a bucket of Legos—come back in an hour, and he’s made a functioning long-range ballistic missile.

Good thing Thetis didn’t want to take over the world. All she wanted was jewelry. She put Hephaestus to work making intricate gold necklaces, fancy bracelets of pearl and coral, and neon crowns that lit up and displayed various messages like
HAPPY NEW YEAR
and
YOUR AD HERE,
so that she always had the nicest bling whenever she went to parties.

Hephaestus spent nine years under the ocean as Thetis’s personal blacksmith. He enjoyed the work and loved his foster mother, but always in the back of his mind, he wanted revenge on Hera.

In his spare time, he worked on a special piece of furniture—a dangerous gift for his dangerous mother—and dreamed of the day he could return to Olympus.

Finally he finished his project and told Thetis good-bye.

“Beloved foster mother.” Hephaestus knelt at her feet, which wasn’t easy, since his legs were twisted and withered and encased in golden braces. “I must return home and take my place among the gods.”

Thetis had always suspected this day would come, but she cried anyway. “They will not appreciate you,” she warned. “They will only judge you by the way you look.”

“Then they are fools,” Hephaestus said. “I don’t care what anyone thinks. My mother threw me away. She must pay for that insult.”

Thetis couldn’t argue. She wished Hephaestus luck, and the god embarked on his journey to Olympus. He rode a donkey up the mountain, because he liked donkeys. They were ugly and stubborn, comical, but strong and sturdy. Hephaestus could relate to that. And if you underestimated or mistreated a donkey, you were likely to get your teeth kicked in.

Behind Hephaestus plodded an entire caravan of pack mules, loaded with special gifts for the gods.

Hephaestus rode straight into the Olympian throne room, and the other gods fell silent in amazement.

“Who is
that
?” asked Ares.

Hera made a strangled sound in the back of the throat. “It can’t be.”

“Mother!” Hephaestus grinned. “It’s me, Hephaestus!”

Zeus choked on his nectar. “Did he just call you
Mother
?”

Hephaestus climbed off his donkey, his leg braces creaking. “Oh, did she not mention me, Father?”

(Actually, Zeus wasn’t
really
his father, since Hera had created the baby all by herself; but Hephaestus decided not to dwell on the technicalities.)

“Probably just an oversight.” Hephaestus smiled grotesquely. “You see, Hera dropped me from Mount Olympus when I was a baby. But rest easy. As you can tell, dear parents, I survived!”

“Oh,” Hera said. “How…nice.”

Hephaestus told his story about growing up at the bottom of the sea. “And I brought presents!” He unpacked the big bundles from his mules. “New thrones for everyone!”

“Thrones!” Ares leaped up and danced with excitement.

The other gods were a little more wary, but they got pretty psyched when they saw Hephaestus’s workmanship.

Zeus got a solid gold seat with cup holders on the arms, lumbar support, and a built-in rack for lightning bolts. Demeter’s throne was shaped from gold and silver cornstalks. Poseidon got a sea captain’s chair with a place for his trident and his fishing pole. Ares’s iron throne was upholstered in leather with lots of uncomfortable spikes and barbed wire on the armrests.

“I love it,” Ares said. “Is this Corinthian leather?”

“Mortal skin, actually,” Hephaestus said.

Ares got teary-eyed. “This is the nicest gift…I—I can’t even…”

All of the gods’ new thrones were fully adjustable with wheels, so in no time the Olympians were rolling around the palace and spinning in their seats.

“You
made
these?” Apollo ran his hand along the back of his chair, which was shaped like a giant harp. “They’re awesome!”

“Yep,” Hephaestus said. “I’m the god of blacksmiths and craftsmen. I can make pretty much anything.” He smiled at Hera. “Mother, you’re not trying your throne?”

Hera stood next to her new chair, which made of adamantine—a super-strong metal that glittered translucent white, sort of a cross between silver and diamonds. The throne was the most beautiful thing Hera had ever seen, but she was afraid to sit on it. She couldn’t believe Hephaestus was being so friendly to her.

Nevertheless, all the other gods were spinning across the room, having a great time, so finally she relented. “Very well, my…er, my son. The throne
is
beautiful.”

She sat down. Immediately invisible cables lashed around her so tightly, she couldn’t breathe.

“Agghhh,” she gasped.

She tried to change shape. No luck. The more she resisted, the more the cables tightened. She tried to relax. The invisible cables squeezed until her face turned pale, her eyes bugged out, and all the ichor in her body pooled in her hands and feet.

“Mother?” Ares asked. “Why are you so sitting so still? And why are your hands and feet swelling up and glowing gold?”

Hera could only whimper,
“Help.”

The gods turned to Hephaestus.

“All right,” Zeus grumbled. “What did you do?”

Hephaestus raised his bushy eyebrows. “Why, Father, I thought you’d approve. You’ll have a much quieter wife now. In fact, she’ll never get out of that chair again.”

Hera squeaked in alarm.

“You threw me away,” Hephaestus reminded her. “I was ugly and crippled, so you tossed me off the mountain. I want you to suffer for that, dear mother. Think about all the things I could’ve made for you if you’d treated me well. Then maybe you’ll understand that you threw away something valuable. You should never judge a god by the way he
looks
.”

With that, Hephaestus limped over to his donkey and saddled up to leave.

None of the other gods tried to stop him. Maybe they were worried that their own thrones would explode, or their seats would sprout Vitamix blender blades.

Hephaestus journeyed down to the mortal world and set up shop in one of the Greek cities. There he made horseshoes, nails, and other simple stuff that wouldn’t require much thought. He had hoped his revenge would make him feel better, but it hadn’t. He felt even emptier and angrier than before.

Meanwhile in Olympus, the other gods got tired of listening to Hera whimper. They tried everything to free her—bolt cutters, lightning, bacon grease, WD-40. Nothing worked.

Finally Zeus said, “Enough is enough. Ares, go find your brother Hephaestus and convince him to release your mother.”

Ares smiled cruelly. “Oh, I’ll convince him, all right.”

Ares readied his war chariot. He donned his burning golden armor, got his bloody spear, and his shield that dripped gore. His sons Phobos and Deimos hitched up the fire-breathing horses, and off they went.

They rode through the city of mortals, causing panic, trampling everyone in their path. They burst into the courtyard of Hephaestus’s blacksmith shop, where the crippled god was repairing a teapot.

The horses reared and breathed fire. Phobos and Deimos unleashed waves of pure terror that caused sixty-five heart attacks in the surrounding neighborhood.

Ares leveled his spear at Hephaestus. “YOU WILL FREE HERA!”

Hephaestus glanced up. “Go away, Ares.” He kept hammering on his teapot.