“I won’t hide,” I muttered. “I won’t cower. That’s not who I will be.”

The arrow buzzed uneasily. SO…WHAT IS THY PLAN?

I grasped my ukulele by the fret board and held it aloft like a club. I raised the Arrow of Dodona in my other hand and burst from my hiding place. “CHARGE!”

At the time, this seemed like a completely sane course of action.

If nothing else, it surprised Python.

I imagined what I must have looked like from his perspective: a raggedy teenaged boy with ripped clothes and cuts and contusions everywhere, limping along with one bloody foot, waving a stick and a four-stringed instrument and screaming like a lunatic.

I ran straight at his massive head, which was too high for me to reach. I started smashing my ukulele against his throat. “Die!” CLANG! “Die!” TWANG! “Die!” CRACK-SPROING!

On the third strike, my ukulele shattered.

Python’s flesh convulsed, but rather than dying like a good snake, he wrapped a coil around my waist, almost gently, and raised me to the level of his face.

His lamp-like eyes were as large as I was. His fangs glistened. His breath smelled of long-decayed flesh.

“Enough now.” His voice turned calm and soothing. His eyes pulsed in synch with my heartbeat. “You fought well. You should be proud. Now you can relax.”

I knew he was doing that old reptile hypnosis trick—paralyzing the small mammal so it would be easier to swallow and digest. And in the back of my mind, some cowardly part of me (Lester? Apollo? Was there a difference?) whispered, Yes, relaxing would feel really good right now.

I had done my best. Surely, Zeus would see that and be proud. Maybe he would send down a lightning bolt, blast Python into tiny pieces, and save me!

As soon as I thought this, I realized how foolish it was. Zeus didn’t work that way. He would not save me any more than Nero had saved Meg. I had to let go of that fantasy. I had to save myself.

I squirmed and fought. I still had my arms free and my hands full. I stabbed Python’s coil with my broken fretboard so forcefully that it ripped his skin and stuck in his flesh like a massive splinter, green blood oozing from the wound.

He hissed, squeezing me tighter, pushing all the blood into my head until I feared I would blow my top like a cartoon oil well.

“Has anyone ever told you,” Python rasped, “that you are annoying?”

I HATH, the Arrow of Dodona said in a melancholy tone. A THOUSAND TIMES.

I couldn’t respond. I had no breath. It took all my remaining strength to keep my body from imploding under the pressure of Python’s grip.

“Well.” Python sighed, his breath washing over me like the wind from a battlefield. “No matter. We have reached the end, you and I.”

He squeezed harder, and my ribs began to crack.

I FOUGHT.

I squirmed.

I pounded on Python’s skin with my tiny fist, then wriggled my ukulele thorn back and forth in the wound, hoping to make him so miserable he would drop me.

Instead, his giant glowing eyes simply watched, calm and satisfied, as my bones developed stress fractures I could hear in my inner ear. I was a submarine in the Mariana Trench. My rivets were popping.

DIEST THOU NOT! the Arrow of Dodona implored me. THE TIME HAS COME!

“Wh—?” I tried to wheeze out a question, but I had too little air in my lungs.

THE PROPHECY WHICH PYTHON SPAKE, said the arrow. IF THOU MUST FALL, THEN SO YOU SHALL, BUT FIRST, USETH THOU ME.

The arrow tilted in my hand, pointing toward Python’s enormous face.

My thought process was muddled, what with my brain exploding and all, but its meaning jabbed into me like a ukulele fretboard.

I can’t, I thought. No.

THOU MUST. The arrow sounded resigned, determined. I thought about how many miles I had traveled with this small sliver of wood, and how little credence I’d usually given its words. I remembered what it had told me about it being cast out of Dodona—a small expendable branch from the ancient grove, a piece no one would miss.

I saw Jason’s face. I saw Heloise, Crest, Money Maker, Don the Faun, Dakota—all those who had sacrificed themselves to get me here. Now my last companion was ready to pay the cost for my success—to have me do the one thing it had always told me never to do.

“No,” I croaked, possibly the last word I would ever be able to speak.

“What is that?” Python asked, thinking I had spoken to him. “Does the little rat beg for mercy at the end?”

I opened my mouth, unable to answer. The monster’s face loomed closer, anxious to savor my last sweet whimpers.

FARE THEE WELL, FRIEND, said the arrow. APOLLO WILL FALL, BUT APOLLO MUST RISE AGAIN.

With those last words, conveying all the power of his ancient grove, the arrow closed the reptile’s prophecy. Python came within range, and with a sob of despair, I jabbed the Arrow of Dodona up to its fletching in his enormous eye.

He roared in agony, lashing his head back and forth. His coils loosened just enough for me to wriggle free. I dropped, landing in a heap at the edge of a wide crevice.

My chest throbbed. Definitely broken ribs. Probably a broken heart. I had far exceeded the maximum recommended mileage for this Lester Papadopoulos body, but I had to keep going for the Arrow of Dodona. I hadeth to keepeth goingeth.

I struggled to my feet.

Python continued flailing, trying to dislodge the arrow from his eye. As a medical god, I could have told him that this would only make the pain worse. Seeing my old Shakespearean missile weapon sticking out of the serpent’s head made me sad and furious and defiant. I sensed that the arrow’s consciousness was gone. I hoped it had fled back to the Grove of Dodona and joined the millions of other whispering voices of the trees, but I feared it was simply no more. Its sacrifice had been real, and final.

Anger pumped through me. My mortal body steamed in earnest, bursts of light flashing under my skin. Nearby, I spotted Python’s tail thrashing. Unlike the snake that had curled around the leontocephaline, this serpent had a beginning and an end. Behind me yawned the largest of the volcanic crevices. I knew what I had to do.

“PYTHON!” My voice shook the cavern. Stalactites crashed around us. I imagined, somewhere far above us, Greek villagers freezing in their tracks as my voice echoed from the ruins of the holy site, olive trees shuddering and losing their fruit.

The Lord of Delphi had awoken.

Python turned his remaining baleful eye on me. “You will not live.”

“I’m fine with that,” I said. “As long as you die, too.”

I tackled the monster’s tail and dragged it toward the chasm.

“What are you doing?” he roared. “Stop it, you idiot!”

With Python’s tail in my arms, I leaped over the side.

My plan should not have worked. Given my puny mortal weight, I should have simply hung there like an air freshener from a rearview mirror. But I was full of righteous fury. I planted my feet against the rock wall and pulled, dragging Python down as he howled and writhed. He tried to whip his tail around and throw me off, but my feet stayed firmly planted against the side of the chasm wall. My strength grew. My body shone with brilliant light. With one final defiant shout, I pulled my enemy past the point of no return. The bulk of his coils spilled into the crevasse.