The Tower of Nero

I was relieved to hear I’d interrupted Python’s emperor-tasting. Perhaps this would make him slightly less impossible to defeat. On the other hand, I didn’t like how unperturbed he sounded, how utterly confident.

Of course, I didn’t look like much of a threat.

I nocked another arrow. “Slither away, snake. While you still can.”

Python’s eyes gleamed with amusement. “Amazing. You still haven’t learned humility? I wonder how you will taste. Like rat? Like god? They are similar enough, I suppose.”

He was so wrong. Not about gods tasting like rats…I wouldn’t know. But I had learned plenty of humility. So much humility that now, facing my old nemesis, I was racked with self-doubt. I could not do this. What had I been thinking?

And yet, along with humility, I’d learned something else: getting humiliated is only the beginning, not the end. Sometimes you need a second shot, and a third, and a fourth.

I fired my arrow. This one hit Python in the face, skittering across his left eyelid and making him blink.

He hissed, raising his head until it towered twenty feet above me. “Stop embarrassing yourself, Lester. I control Delphi. I would have been content to rule the world through my puppets, the emperors, but you have helpfully cut out the middlemen. I have digested the power of the Triumvirate! Now I will digest—”

My third shot throat-punched him. It didn’t pierce the skin. That would’ve been too much to hope for. But it hit with sufficient force to make him gag.

I sidestepped around piles of scales and bones. I jumped a narrow fissure so hot it steam-baked my crotch. I nocked another arrow as Python’s form began to change. Rows of tiny leathery wings sprouted from his back. Two massive legs grew from his belly, lifting him up until he resembled a giant Komodo dragon.

“I see,” he grumbled. “Won’t go quietly. That’s fine. We can make this hurt.”

He tilted his head, like a dog listening—an image that made me never want to own a dog. “Ah…Delphi speaks. Would you like to know your future, Lester? It’s very short.”

Green luminescent fumes thickened and swirled around him, filling the air with the acrid scent of rot. I watched, too horrified to move, as Python breathed in the spirit of Delphi, twisting and poisoning its ancient power until he spoke in a booming voice, his words carrying the inescapable weight of destiny: “Apollo will fall—”

“NO!” Rage filled my body. My arms steamed. My hands glowed. I fired my fourth arrow and pierced Python’s hide just above his new right leg.

The monster stumbled, his concentration broken. Clouds of gas dissipated around him.

He hissed in pain, stomping his legs to make sure they still worked.

He roared, “NEVER INTERRUPT A PROPHECY!”

Then he barreled toward me like a hungry freight train.

I leaped to one side, somersaulting through a pile of carcasses as Python bit a chunk out of the cave floor where I’d been standing. Baseball-size debris rained down around me. One chunk hit the back of my head and nearly knocked me unconscious.

Python struck again. I’d been trying to string another shaft, but he was too fast. I jumped out of the way, landing on my bow and shattering my arrow in the process.

The cave was now a whirring factory of snake flesh—conveyor belts, shredder apparatuses, compactors, and pistons, all made of Python’s writhing body, every component ready to grind me into pulp. I scrambled to my feet and leaped over a section of the monster’s body, narrowly avoiding a newly grown head that snapped at me from Python’s side.

Given Python’s strength and my own frailty, I should have died several times over. The only thing keeping me alive was my small size. Python was a bazooka; I was a housefly. He could easily kill me with one shot, but he had to catch me first.

“You heard your fate!” Python boomed. I could feel the cold presence of his massive head looming above me. “Apollo will fall. It’s not much, but it’s enough!”

He almost caught me in a coil of flesh, but I hopped out of the snare. My tap-dancing friend Lavinia Asimov would have been proud of my fancy footwork.

“You cannot escape your destiny!” Python gloated. “I have spoken, so must it be!”

This demanded a witty comeback, but I was too busy gasping and wheezing.

I leaped onto Python’s trunk and used it as a bridge to cross one of the fissures. I thought I was being clever until a random lizard foot sprouted next to me and raked my ankle with its claws. I screamed and stumbled, desperately grasping for any handhold as I slipped off the side of the reptile. I managed to grab a leathery wing, which flapped in protest, trying to shake me off. I got one foot on the rim of the fissure, then somehow hauled myself back to solid ground.

Bad news: My bow tumbled into the void.

I couldn’t stop to mourn. My leg was on fire. My shoe was wet with my own blood. Naturally, those claws would be venomous. I’d probably just reduced my life span from a few minutes to a few fewer minutes. I limped toward the cavern wall and squeezed myself into a vertical crack no bigger than a coffin. (Oh, why did I have to make that comparison?)

I’d lost my best weapon. I had arrows but nothing to shoot them with. Whatever fits of godly power I was experiencing, they weren’t consistent and they weren’t enough. That left me with an out-of-tune ukulele and a rapidly deteriorating human body.

I wished my friends were here. I would have given anything for Meg’s exploding tomato plants, or Nico’s Stygian iron blade, or even a team of fast-running troglodytes to carry me around the cavern and screech insults at the giant tasty reptile.

But I was alone.

Wait. A faint tingle of hope ran through me. Not quite alone. I fumbled in my quiver and drew out Ye Olde Arrow of Dodona.

HOW DOETH WE, SIRRAH? The arrow’s voice buzzed in my head.

“Doething great,” I wheezed. “I gotteth him right where I wanteth him.”

THAT BAD? ZOUNDS!

“Where are you, Apollo?” Python roared. “I can smell your blood!”

“Hear that, arrow?” I wheezed, delirious from exhaustion and the venom coursing through my veins. “I forced him to call me Apollo!”

A GREAT VICTORY, intoned the arrow. ’TWOULD SEEM ’TIS ALMOST TIME.

“What?” I asked. Its voice sounded unusually subdued, almost sad.

I SAID NOTHING.

“You did too.”

I DIDST NOT! WE MUST NEEDS FORMULATE A NEW PLAN. I SHALL GO RIGHT. THOU SHALT GO LEFT.

“Okay,” I agreed. “Wait. That won’t work. You don’t have legs.”

“YOU CAN’T HIDE!” Python bellowed. “YOU ARE NO GOD!”

This pronouncement hit me like a bucket of ice water. It didn’t carry the weight of prophecy, but it was true nonetheless. At the moment, I wasn’t sure what I was. I certainly wasn’t my old godly self. I wasn’t exactly Lester Papadopoulos, either. My flesh steamed. Pulses of light flickered under my skin, like the sun trying to break through storm clouds. When had that started?

I was between states, morphing as rapidly as Python himself. I was no god. I would never be the same old Apollo again. But in this moment, I had the chance to decide what I would become, even if that new existence only lasted a few seconds.

The realization burned away my delirium.