“Zeus joined the battle, Terpsichore. What about that?”
“He said he would, Urania. That’s hardly a twist! I need more, something unexpected! You know what I mean, don’t you, Melpomene?”
“Well, I didn’t expect Hermes to turn into a bunny.”
“Please, stop musing children’s books until you do more tragedy. A bunny? You’re getting soft!”
“Puns are lazy wri-ting . . .”
“Clam up, Thalia.”
“You clam up, Terpsi. Why get so worked up about it?”
“I muse thrillers, you tosspot! I demand surprising developments! If there isn’t some sort of twist soon, I swear I’ll—”
“Um, everyone? This conversation is showing up in one of the chapter openings. How’d that happen?”
“We’re Muses, Sister. It happens.”
“Hee hee! Look at it go! Ooh, is that enough of a twist for you?”
“Do you really think I can settle for that? No, what I need is—”
“Sisters, please! Clio’s trying to transcribe the battle!”
“Yes, Calliope.”
—Muses Urania, Terpsichore, Melpomene, Thalia, and Calliope (final moments of the Second Titan War)
ZEUS SIMMERED WITH smug triumph. “Once more I turn the Titans aside!” he declared to the Olympians. “The vortex must now be sealed, my subjects, but you may rest yourselves. Be not ashamed of your weakness! Mighty Zeus shall do the sealing himself!”
Poseidon could not abide this. “Weakened or no, it is we who shall accomplish the feat! We need you not, Zeus. You are hardly stronger than all of us; you shall not claim this victory for yourself!”
“I hardly think you up to the task, Poseidon,” answered Zeus with a laugh. “You aren’t fit to lead a parade in your current state. I shall do the sealing single-handedly, and then you shall witness the glory of Zeus and why he is the most fitting to rule you all!”
“You shall do nothing but stand aside!” Poseidon insisted, continuing the classic shall-off. “Olympians, lend your strength! We seal the portal ourselves!”
“Are we to argue the matter until Cronus escapes again? As you wish, Brother. I stand aside.”
Zeus returned to stand by Apollo and Tracy. “He would block my efforts just to ensure I do not get the credit,” he whispered. “I expect I would do the same in his position, were I foolish enough to get myself into it. Poseidon is prideful.”
Next to Tracy, Leif laughed. “Pot calling the kettle . . .”
“Silence! I command it!” Zeus commanded, and did not notice Leif’s responding gesture. “The effort of sealing will weaken them further. Observe.”
“Did Poseidon pick up the Idiot Ball in battle or something?” Tracy asked.
“No, this is simply politics.”
“Where is the Idiot Ball?” Apollo wondered.
Once the Olympians gathered together, it happened rapidly. Energies poured from their hands and minds. They rewove the dimensional fabric, first tugging the vortex closed and then locking away the seams within the re-gathered cans. Their task complete, they collapsed, exhausted.
Zeus clapped. Slowly. “Well done! You show the strength of your will, unconcerned that it leaves you weak as kittens!” (“Don’t knock the strength of kittens,” Leif muttered.) “Bravo! You now will surrender to me, unconditionally.”
Poseidon and Ares were the first to their feet at this. “Never!”
“The time for discussion has passed!” Zeus thundered in murderous contempt. “Surrender now!”
Ares stepped in front of Poseidon to glare at Zeus. “Ares don’t surrender!”
“Surrender now, apostate!” Baskin cried. Standing before Zeus, he mirrored Ares and brandished his spoon in frigid readiness.
Ares sneered. “And he definitely don’t take no damned orders from ruttin’ sweets!”
“I am not sweet! I am shock and awe with a cherry on top! I am your frigorific doom!”
(“Frigorific?” Tracy whispered. “It is a word,” Apollo answered sadly, “though I believe it should be otherwise.”)
“Upstart!” Ares yelled.
“Traitor!” Baskin screamed.
“Second banana!”
Perhaps had Baskin known him longer, the semi-cleverness of Ares’s retort might have momentarily stunned him. As it was, Baskin could take no more. He launched himself at the war god, screaming all the way.
The two clashed in an explosion of rage and cream and touched off a brawl that spread instantly among the ranks on both sides. Pandemonium again took the mountainside as the cacophony of battle drowned out Poseidon’s and Zeus’s shouted orders. No matter how reluctantly some of the combatants fought (Hephaestus, a dutiful husband battling only to protect Aphrodite, loathed every blow he gave; Artemis and Apollo avoided each other entirely), none escaped involvement in the struggle for supremacy.
Even the Erinyes—whom Poseidon had kept in reserve as fresh troops for this very circumstance—exploded into existence and tore into the maelstrom with unrestrained glee. While no direct match for a god, they were not without their strengths. They harried Zeus’s forces, serving as a violent, screaming nuisance that distracted them at key moments and keep them from full effectiveness.
Yet, ultimately, it backfired. Jerry spotted the Erinyes mere moments after they appeared. Fury alone propelled him across the battlefield until with a vindictive cry he leaped, seized all three by the ankles with his branches, and hauled them out of the air. More branches grew instantly to trap them further in a divine wooden grip stronger than iron. The Erinyes screamed vitriol and tried fruitlessly to teleport away, held fast by the god-tree’s newfound power.
“Bad ugly-womans!” he shouted. “You kill Jerry and be makings Jerry mad! You not be being nice!”
“We don’t do nice! We do vengeance!”
“We were only following orders!”
“Vengeance! Orders-vengeance-orders!”
“Zeus is tellings me you is supposed to be being avenging king- killings and father-killings! Zeus is king and father! Why you not avenging hims? Why!” He shook them violently and constricted further. “You will be answerings Jerry!”
“Because we—”
As one, the Erinyes stopped to consider this. That they couldn’t move an inch in Jerry’s grip possibly had something to do with that.
“Rather right, isn’t he?”
“Right, wrong, I care not!” Tisiphone screamed. “We get to fight either way! Make him release us!”
“Splinters!” Alecto wailed, to little point.
“Very well!” Megaera yelled. “We fight to avenge Zeus! Let us go!”
“Yes, truce!”
“You being saying you be sorry! And fight beside Jerry!” He squeezed tighter while the Erinyes screamed in pain.
“Yes! We’re sorry!”
“We swear!”
“Splinters! Splinters-splinters-splinters!”
Jerry released the Erinyes. Together they sprang into the fray.
Ares swiftly proved lactose intolerant. He fell to Baskin’s superior might, temporarily frozen and out of commission. Yet when the sundae- god stood to catch his breath, Hades avenged his blustering nephew, drawing molten metal up from the earth and showering it over Baskin in a desperate use of his remaining strength. Tracy watched in horror as it reduced Baskin to a useless, melted mess.
Even with Baskin sidelined, so weakened were Poseidon’s forces that the fighting ended soon after. Tracy herself whipped Hades’s legs out from under him and hauled him to the growing pile of defeated Olympians while Zeus fought on, apparently unmoved by Baskin’s fate. In his eyes shone gleeful vengeance that surpassed even that of the Erinyes as he gathered up his enemies. Apollo, Leif, and Jerry fought by his side, yet none so well as Zeus. Soon every offending Olympian was wrapped in a double-lasso of golden rope just as he once promised, bound together in a hapless, weakened cluster, and held fast in his grip.
Once Tracy shoved Hades into the center of the group, Zeus passed the twin lasso tails to Apollo and Jerry. Each gave a wrenching tug in opposing directions to lash the captives to the ground.
“We surrender!” Hera spit.
“No we do not!”
“Stuff it, Ares!”
“Isn’t it fun to get together as a family?” Demeter spouted. “Does anyone have a deck of cards?”
Not surprisingly, no one answered her.
“The time for surrender is past!” Zeus declared, grinning wickedly. “You had your chance! I make no empty threats, and now you shall have your punishment! I tolerate your presence no longer!”
With that, he blasted lightning into the ground beneath them and then poured energy into the crater until light burst forth like a fountain, streaming up beneath the captured Olympians. It launched them into the air and would have blasted them into orbit and beyond, had it not been for the efforts of Apollo and Jerry. The two strained and pulled, struggling to hold on to the ropes as Zeus had ordered.
“I declare you all banished!” Zeus boomed, clearly relishing the moment. “Into the vast emptiness of the stars you shall go, to rot in darkness away from mortal worship and the joys of this world!”
The entirety of the captured Olympians might have been banished right then were it not for the Muse Terpsichore. Having grown increasingly obsessed with the lack of a decent twist, she finally took matters into her own hands. The Idiot Ball had fallen from Cronus’s grip not long before his final struggle, and she’d snapped it up into its protective case before anyone else had seen it. When Zeus lassoed the others and began his speech, she slipped in behind Leif, whom Thalia had mentioned often during her retelling of their journeys. With nothing more than a wicked giggle, Terpsichore spilled the Idiot Ball from the case and shoved it—quickly—down the back of his pants.
“We need a twist,” she whispered in his ear.
He nodded vacantly. “Everything needs a twist.”
“Good boy. Zeus gave you power; now use it! The fight and creation of that exile-fountain has made him weak. He’s kind of a jerk, isn’t he? Now’s your chance to overthrow him and win!”
“He is kind of a jerk. Nearly all the gods are, I’ve noticed. And he still hasn’t put in a good word for me with Tracy!”
“Exactly! Er, except Apollo.”
“Except Apollo.” Leif nodded. “But—if I exile Zeus, Tracy’ll hate me!”
Terpsichore giggled. “Oh, no she won’t.”
“Why not?”
“Um, because?”
“Ah.” Leif grinned. “It all makes sense now!”
Zeus poured his energies into the fountain, working it into a geyser that would blast the captured Olympians off the planet forever. They struggled in vain to break free of their bonds. Some yelled protests; others hurled insults, but neither seemed to do any good.
Leif moved up behind Zeus and elbowed him in the back of the head.
Far too distracted and weakened from creating the exile-fountain, Zeus failed to react fast enough. In a flash Leif spun him around, grabbed his wrists, and kicked the elder god’s feet out from under him toward the fountain. It yanked Zeus’s ankles skyward and pitched him nearly upside down. Only Leif’s grip kept the violent currents from propelling the furious Zeus into an exile of his own.
Ares let out a weary whoop as everyone else tried to figure out what was going on.
“Are you mad?” Zeus cried, clearly unsure whether to laugh or rage. “You will put me down at once!”
“Oh, yeah, ’cause you’re the nice, forgiving type, right?” Leif asked. “Sorry, I’m taking over! Leif, king of the gods! I’m pretty sure that means I win!”
Tracy entangled a whip around Zeus’s ankle, holding fast should Leif release her father’s hands. “Uh, Leif?” she asked.
“What? You’ve seen what he’s like! What they’re all like! He let the Titans wreck half the world before he joined the fight, just to make sure he had an advantage! This is our chance to get rid of him and take over for ourselves! Do you know that when you were captured, he cared more about the insult to his authority than he did your own safety?”
“It’s true!” Hermes chimed in. “You remember what I said! You’re on the wrong side! Let him fly into exile, save the rest of us! Clean slate!”
“Shut up, Hermes!” Tracy shot.
“He didn’t need you anymore then,” Leif went on. “I’m surprised you made it out alive! Besides, god-mode’s fun, but I want to call the shots!”
Unable to free himself from the force of the fountain, Zeus could only blast impotent wrath at his captor, amusement fading fast. “You traitorous, pea-brained little geek! Do you know what happens to the power I gave you when I’m gone?”
“Um . . . it . . . gets better?”
“It’s temporary, you ungrateful lout! Kick me out now and you’re powerless! Instantly!”
“You said I’d be immortal! Immortal isn’t temporary!”
“I can make it permanent in time. Let me go now and you get nothing, not even Tracy! Or do you think she’ll want you after you betray her father?”
“Er, well, it made sense at—Okay!” Leif tried. “Here’s the deal! I pull you back down, and . . . you make it permanent and—and then go away!”
“Must I forever endure shortsighted fools?” Zeus demanded. “I returned from death, Mr. Karlson!”
“Yeah, but you’re weaker now, aren’t you?” He shook Zeus a bit, grinning. “You fought! You poured your energy into this fountain! Lightning god needs food, badly!”
Tracy renewed her grip on the whip, a gesture Zeus did not fail to notice.
“Weaker,” Zeus answered, “but never a fool. I built your divinity with safeguards, mortal. Now that you, too, have betrayed me, it ought to be slipping from your fingers right about . . . now.”
Zeus yanked his wrists from Leif's grip and let the fountain’s current propel him briefly higher before the anchor of Tracy’s whip jerked him to a stop again. His hands free, he hurled lightning into Leif, blasting him backward. Leif smashed into a boulder that popped the Idiot Ball from his pants like a wet balloon. He rolled off and slumped, stunned, to his knees.
“Ow.”
“Once more you make me proud, Daughter,” Zeus said aside to Tracy. He regarded Leif with the same lethal contempt he’d shown Ares. “Perhaps I see now why this liar failed to interest you. Haul me down and we shall finish this.”
Yet Tracy was busy with thoughts of her own. Her response was neither immediate nor helpful.
“You never meant for them to surrender, did you?” she asked after a bit of pondering. “You just wanted an excuse to kick their asses no matter how much it risked the rest of us, huh?”
“I am sure I don’t know what you mean. Now pull me in.”
“As a matter of fact,” she continued more pointedly, “you probably knew Baskin would attack Ares like that.”
It must be said for those who have not experienced it that floating in an exile-fountain is no picnic. Aside from the already uncomfortable upward pressure that was rapidly giving Zeus an enema, the sheer sensation of being poised on the edge of the possible end to one’s power is rather akin to that of being stretched on the rack while surrounded by howling cats.
“Do it now, Daughter.”
“I don’t think I want to yet. In fact, I’m starting to think maybe Leif had the right idea.”
Zeus’s face settled into an eerie calm, much like the air before a tornado. “Excuse me?”
“Oh, I’m not trying to be queen of the gods or anything. It’s just that I’ve been manipulated one way or the other since the start of all this, by you especially, despite what you’ve claimed, and frankly I’d like to do a little manipulating of my own now. The thing is, Leif does have a point, right? He’s just going about it in his usual obtuse way. (Also I think he might’ve had the Idiot Ball, but that’s not really the point right—)”
“Daughter! You will stop this immediately and—!”
Tracy let go of the whip and grabbed it again at the last second. The fountain’s current shoved Zeus higher before he jerked to a stop once more above the bound mass of Olympians. It shut him up for the moment.
“My own power’s fading as we speak, I’m sure, so you’d better let me talk ’cause there’s no one left to catch you, is there?”
Zeus glanced to Apollo and Jerry. Even if ordered to help, it was all both could do to hold on to the Olympians beneath him. The second either let go, the whole mass would knock Zeus free of Tracy, and they’d all launch into exile together.
“Here’s what I want: you and all the other Olympians withdraw again. It was fun while it lasted, but I’m thinking things got out of hand. And like Leif said, some of you can be jerks. I found the monsters as interesting as anyone, but that was before I knew you all created them intentionally! So clear those out, especially the damned razorwings.”
“They were not my—”
“Quiet! I command it!” She shook the whip again; it set Zeus dancing amid the current. “Sorry, power trip. Also, don’t exile everyone, right? Artemis helped us out; she just got a raw deal, and I don’t think Demeter and some of the others ever meant to do anything bad. And lastly, I want immunity for all of this, for me and Leif. No one comes after us for any of this stuff, not you, not someone you tell to go after us, no one. Agree to all of that, swear by the Styx since that hate-water seems to have some power over you types, and I’ll pull you down.”
“You cannot expect—”
“Grip’s getting weak, Dad. Better swear!”
“Fine! I swear by the Styx to hold to your conditions! Pull me down!”
She did so. Her divinity failed a moment later. Isn’t it remarkable how often the timing of such things works out like that? In fact, it happened just in time to end the chapter.