The Tower of Nero

“No and no,” I said.

Rachel stared into the air, as if reading a prophecy written in the dancing lights of the disco ball. “I can’t see the outcome,” she said. “But he has to try.”

I took the fasces, struggling not to collapse under its weight. The ceremonial weapon hummed and shuddered like an overheating race-car engine. Its aura made my pores pop and my ears ring. My side started to bleed again, if it had ever really stopped. I wasn’t thrilled about the blood trickling down my chest and into my underwear while I had an important job to do. Sorry again, underwear.

“Cover me,” I told the ladies.

Lu leaped into battle, stabbing, slashing, and kicking any Germani who got past the troglodytes. Rachel pulled out a blue plastic hairbrush and threw it at the nearest barbarian, beaning him in the eye and making him howl.

Sorry I underestimated you, Rachel, I thought distantly. You’re actually kind of a hairbrush ninja.

I cast a worried glance across the room. Meg was all right. More than all right. She had convinced all her remaining foster siblings to throw down their weapons. Now she stood in front of them like a general trying to shore up her demoralized troops. Or—a less flattering comparison—she reminded me of one of Hades’s dog trainers working with a pack of new hellhounds. At the moment, the demigods were obeying her commands and staying put, but any sign of weakness from her, any change in the temperature of the battle, and they might break ranks and slaughter everyone in sight.

It didn’t help that Nero was stomping up and down on his couch, screeching, “Kill Apollo! Kill Apollo!” as if I were a cockroach he’d just spotted scurrying across the floor.

For Meg’s sake, I had to hurry.

I gripped the fasces with both hands and tried to pry it apart. The golden bundle of rods glowed brighter and warmer, illuminating the bones and red flesh of my fingers, but it didn’t budge.

“Come on,” I muttered, trying again, hoping for a burst of godly strength. “If you need another immortal life as a sacrifice, I’m right here!”

Maybe I should have felt foolish negotiating with a Roman ceremonial ax, but after my conversations with the Arrow of Dodona, it seemed like a reasonable thing to try.

The troglodytes made the Germani look like the bumbling team the Harlem Globetrotters always played. (Sorry, Washington Generals.) Lu sliced and poked and parried with her knife hands. Rachel stood protectively in front of me and occasionally muttered, “Apollo, now would be good,” which I did not find helpful.

Meg still had her foster siblings under control for the time being, but that could change. She was talking to them encouragingly, gesturing to me with a look that said Apollo has this. He’ll destroy Dad any minute. Just watch.

I wished I shared her certainty.

I took a shaky breath. “I can do this. I just need to concentrate. How hard can it be to destroy myself?”

I tried to break the fasces over my knee, which nearly broke my knee.

At last Nero lost his cool. I supposed there was only so much satisfaction he could get from stomping on his sofa and screaming at his minions.

“Do I have to do everything myself?” he yelled. “Do I have to kill you all? You forget I AM A GOD!”

He jumped off his couch and marched straight toward me, his whole body starting to glow, because Will Solace couldn’t have his own thing. Oh, no, Nero had to glow, too.

Trogs swarmed the emperor. He tossed them aside. Germani who didn’t get out of his way fast enough were also thrown into the next time zone. Meg looked like she wanted to challenge Nero herself, but any move away from her foster siblings would have shattered their delicate standoff. Nico was still only half-conscious. Will was busy trying to revive him.

That left Lu and Rachel as my last line of defense. I couldn’t have that. They’d been in harm’s way for my sake enough already.

Nero might’ve been the most minor of minor gods, but he still had divine strength. His glow was getting brighter as he approached the fasces—like Will, like me in my own godly moments of rage.…

A thought came to me—or maybe something deeper than a thought, a sort of instinctive recognition. Like Caligula, Nero had always wanted to be the new sun god. He’d designed his giant golden Colossus to look like my body with his head on it. This fasces wasn’t just his symbol of power and immortality—it was his claim to godhood.

What had he asked me earlier…? Are you worthy of being a god?

That was the central question. He believed he made a better deity than I did. Perhaps he was right, or perhaps neither of us was worthy. There was one way to find out. If I couldn’t destroy the fasces myself, maybe with a little godly help…

“Get out of the way!” I told Lu and Rachel.

They glanced back at me like I was crazy.

“RUN!” I told them.

They broke to either side just before Nero would have plowed through them.

The emperor stopped in front of me, his eyes flickering with power.

“You lose,” he said. “Give it to me.”

“Take it if you can.” I began to glow myself. Radiance intensified around me, as it had months ago in Indianapolis, but slower this time, building to a crescendo. The fasces pulsed in sympathy, beginning to superheat. Nero snarled and grabbed the handle of the ax.

To our mutual surprise, the strength of my grip was equal to his. We played tug-of-war, swinging the blade back and forth, trying to kill each other, but neither of us could win. The glow around us increased like a feedback loop—bleaching the carpet under our feet, whitening the black marble columns. Germani had to stop fighting just to shield their eyes. Trogs screamed and retreated, their dark goggles insufficient protection.

“You—cannot—take—it, Lester!” Nero said through clenched teeth, pulling with all his might.

“I am Apollo,” I said, tugging the other direction. “God of the sun. And I—revoke—your—divinity!”

The fasces cracked in two—the shaft shattering, the rods and golden blade exploding like a firebomb. A tsunami of flames washed over me, along with thousands of years of Nero’s pent-up rage, fear, and insatiable hunger—the twisted sources of his power. I stood my ground, but Nero hurtled backward and landed on the carpet, his clothes smoldering, his skin mottled with burns.

My glow started to fade. I was unharmed…or at least, no more harmed than I’d been before.

The fasces was broken, but Nero remained alive and intact. Had all this been for nothing, then?

At least he wasn’t gloating anymore. Instead, the emperor sobbed in despair. “What have you done? Don’t you see?”

Only then did he begin to crumble. His fingers disintegrated. His toga frayed into smoke. A glittery cloud plumed from his mouth and nose, as if he were exhaling his life-force along with his final breaths. Worst of all—this glitter didn’t simply vanish. It poured downward, seeping into the Persian rug, worming into cracks between the floor tiles, almost as if Nero were being pulled—clawed and dragged—into the depths, piece by piece.

“You’ve given him victory,” he whimpered. “You’ve—”

The last of his mortal form dissolved and soaked through the floor.

Everyone in the room stared at me. The Germani dropped their weapons.