Untitled Part 32
'I WAS DREAMING ...' I POINTED WEAKLY at Meg. 'And you weren't there. Neither were you, Lu. Or Nico and Will ...'
Will and Nico exchanged worried looks, no doubt wondering if I had suffered brain damage.
'We need to get you to camp,' Will said. 'I'll get one of the pegasi –'
'No.' I struggled to sit up. 'I – I have to leave.'
Lu snorted. 'Look at yourself, buddy. You're in worse shape than I am.'
She was right, of course. At the moment, I doubted my hands were working as well as Lu's dagger attachments. My whole body shook with exhaustion. My muscles felt like worn-out tension cords. I had more cuts and bruises than the average rugby team. Nevertheless...
'I have no choice,' I said. 'Nectar, please? And supplies. More arrows. My bow.'
'He's right, unfortunately,' Rachel said. 'Python ...' She clenched her jaw as if forcing down a belch of serpent prophecy gas. 'Python is getting stronger by the second.'
Everyone looked grim, but no one argued. After all we'd been through, why would they? My confrontation with Python was just another impossible task in a day of impossible tasks.
'I'll gather some supplies.' Rachel kissed my forehead, then dashed off.
'Bow and quiver coming up,' Nico said.
'And ukulele,' Will added.
Nico winced. 'Do we really hate Python that much?'
Will raised an eyebrow.
'Fine.' Nico dashed off without kissing me on the forehead, which was just as well. He couldn't have reached my forehead with the massive brim of his cowboy hat.
Lu glowered at me. 'You did good, cellmate.'
Was I crying? Had there been any point in the last twenty-four hours when I hadn't been crying? 'Lu ... You're good people. I'm sorry I mistrusted you.'
'Eh.' She waved one of her daggers. 'That's okay. I thought you were pretty useless, too.'
'I – I didn't say useless ...'
'I should go check on the former imperial family,' she said. 'They're looking a little lost without General Sapling.' She winked at Meg, then lumbered off.
Will pressed a vial of nectar into my hands. 'Drink this. And this.' He passed me a Mountain Dew. 'And here's some salve for those wounds.' He handed the jar to Meg. 'Could you do the honours? I have to find more bandages. I used up my supply outfitting Luguselwa Dagger-Hands.'
He hurried away, leaving me alone with Meg.
She sat next to me, cross-legged, and started fingerpainting my ouchies with healing ointment. She had plenty of ouchies to choose from. I alternated drinking my nectar and Mountain Dew, which was sort of like alternating between premium gasoline and regular gasoline.
Meg had thrown away her sandals, braving bare feet despite the arrows, rubble, bones and discarded blades that littered the floor. Someone had given her an orange Camp Half-Blood shirt, which she'd put on over her dress, making her allegiance clear. She still looked older and more sophisticated, but she also looked like my Meg.
'I'm so proud of you,' I said. I definitely was not weeping like a baby. 'You were so strong. So brilliant. So – OW!'
She poked the dagger wound in my side, effectively silencing my compliments. 'Yeah, I know. I had to be. For them.'
She chin-pointed to her wayward foster siblings, who had broken down in the wake of Nero's death. A couple of them stormed around the room, throwing things and screaming hateful comments while Luguselwa and some of our demigods stood by, giving them space, watching to make sure the imperials didn't hurt themselves or anyone else. Another child of Nero was curled up and sobbing between two Aphrodite campers who'd been pressed into service as grief counsellors. Nearby, one of the youngest imperials appeared catatonic in the arms of a Hypnos camper, who rocked the child back and forth while singing lullabies.
In the space of an evening, the imperial children had gone from enemies to victims who needed help, and Camp Half-Blood was stepping up to the challenge.
'They'll need time,' Meg said. 'And a lot of good support, like I got.'
'They'll need you ,' I added. 'You showed them the way out.'
She gave me a one-shoulder shrug. 'You really got a lot of wounds.'
I let her work, but as I sipped my high-octane beverages, I considered that perhaps courage was a self-perpetuating cycle, like abuse. Nero had hoped to create miniature, tortured versions of himself because that made him feel stronger. Meg had found the strength to oppose him because she saw how much her foster siblings needed her to succeed, to show them another way.
There were no guarantees. The imperial demigods had dealt with so much for so long, some of them might never be able to come back from the darkness. Then again, there had been no guarantees for Meg, either. There were still no guarantees that I would come back from what awaited me in the caverns of Delphi. All any of us could do was try, and hope that, in the end, the virtuous cycle would break the vicious one.
I scanned the rest of the throne room, wondering how long I had been unconscious. Outside it was full dark. Emergency lights pulsed against the side of the neighbouring building from the street far below. The thwump-thwump-thwump of a helicopter told me we were still making local news.
Most of the troglodytes had vanished, though ScreechBling and a few of his lieutenants were here, having what looked like a serious conversation with Sherman Yang. Perhaps they were negotiating a division of the spoils of war. I imagined Camp Half-Blood was about to be flush with Greek fire and Imperial gold weapons, while the trogs would have a fabulous new selection of haberdashery and whatever lizards and rocks they could find.
Demigod children of Demeter were tending the overgrown dryads, discussing how best to transport them back to camp. Over by the emperor's dais, some of the Apollo kids (my kids) conducted triage operations. Jerry, Yan and Gracie – the newbies from camp – now all looked like seasoned pros, shouting orders to the stretcherbearers, examining the wounded, treating campers and Germani alike.
The barbarians looked glum and dejected. None seemed to have the slightest interest in fighting. A few sported injuries that should have made them crumble to ash, but they were no longer creatures of Nero, bound to the living world by his power. They were just humans again, like Luguselwa. They would have to find a new purpose for their remaining years, and I supposed none of them loved the idea of staying loyal to the cause of a dead emperor.
'You were right,' I told Meg. 'About trusting Luguselwa. I was wrong.'
Meg patted my knuckles. 'Just keep saying that. I'm right. You're wrong. Been waiting months for you to realize it.'
She gave me a little smirk. Again, I could only marvel at how much she'd changed. She still looked ready to do a cartwheel for no reason, or wipe her nose on her sleeve with zero shame, or eat an entire birthday cake just because yum, but she was no longer the half-wild alleydwelling urchin I'd met in January. She'd grown taller and more confident. She carried herself like someone who owned this tower. And for all I knew she might, now that Nero was dead, assuming the whole place didn't burn down.
'I ...' My voice failed me. 'Meg, I have to –'
'I know.' She looked away long enough to wipe her cheek, knocking her glasses cockeyed in the process. 'You have to do this next part on your own, huh?'
I thought about the last time I'd physically stood in the depths of Delphi, when Meg and I had inadvertently wandered there through the Labyrinth during a threelegged race. (Ah, those were simpler times.) The situation now was different. Python had grown too powerful. Having seen his lair in my dreams, I knew that no demigod could survive that place. The poisonous air alone would burn away flesh and melt lungs. I did not expect to survive there long myself, but in my heart I had always known this would be a one-way trip.
'I must do this alone,' I agreed.
'How?'
Leave it to Meg to distil the most important crisis of my four-thousand-year-plus life into a single unanswerable question.
I shook my head, wishing I had an unquestionable answer. 'I guess I have to trust that ... that I won't screw up.'
'Hmm.'
'Oh, shut it, McCaffrey.'
She forced a smile. After a few more moments of putting salve on my wounds, she said, 'So ... this is goodbye?' She swallowed that last word.
I tried to find my voice. I seemed to have lost it somewhere down in my intestines. 'I – I will find you, Meg. Afterwards. Assuming ...'
'No screw-ups.'
I made a sound between a laugh and a sob. 'Yes. But either way...'
She nodded. Even if I survived, I would not be the same. The best I could hope for was to emerge from Delphi with my godhood restored, which was what I had wanted and dreamed about for the past half a year. So why did I feel so reluctant about leaving behind the broken, battered form of Lester Papadopoulos?
'Just come back to me, dummy. That's an order.' Meg gave me a gentle hug, conscious of my injuries. Then she got to her feet and ran off to check on the imperial demigods – her former family, and possibly her family yet to be.
My other friends all seemed to understand, too.
Will did some last-minute bandaging. Nico handed me my weapons. Rachel gave me a new pack stuffed with supplies. But none of them offered any lingering goodbyes. They knew every minute counted now. They wished me luck and let me go.
As I passed, Screech-Bling and the troglodyte lieutenants stood at attention and removed their headwear – all six hundred and twenty hats. I recognized the honour. I nodded my thanks and forged on across the broken threshold before I could melt into another fit of ugly sobbing.
I passed Austin and Kayla in the antechamber, tending to more wounded and directing younger demigods in cleanup efforts. They both gave me weary smiles, acknowledging the million things we didn't have time to say. I pushed onward.
I ran into Chiron by the elevators, on his way to deliver more medical supplies.
'You came to our rescue,' I said. 'Thank you.'
He looked down at me benevolently, his head nearly scraping the ceiling, which had not been designed to accommodate centaurs. 'We all have a duty to rescue each other, wouldn't you say?'
I nodded, wondering how the centaur had become so wise over the centuries, and why that same wisdom had escaped me until I had been Lesterized. 'And did your ... joint task force meeting go well?' I asked, trying to remember what Dionysus had told us about why Chiron had been away. It seemed like so long ago. 'Something about a severed cat's head?'
Chiron chuckled. 'A severed head. And a cat. Two different ... uh, people. Acquaintances of mine from other pantheons. We were discussing a mutual problem.'
He just threw that information out there as if it wasn't a brain-exploding grenade. Chiron had acquaintances from other pantheons? Of course he did. And a mutual problem...?
'Do I want to know?' I asked.
'No,' he said gravely. 'You really don't.' He offered his hand. 'Good luck, Apollo.'
We shook, and off I went.
I found the stairs and took them. I didn't trust the elevators. During my dream in the cell, I'd seen myself sweeping down the stairwells of the tower when I fell to Delphi. I was determined to take the same path in real life. Maybe it wouldn't matter, but I would've felt silly if I took a wrong turn on my way to confront Python and ended up getting arrested by the NYPD in the Triumvirate Holdings lobby.
My bow and quiver jostled against my back, clanging against my ukulele strings. My new supply pack felt cold and heavy. I held on to the railing so my wobbly legs wouldn't collapse under me. My ribs felt like they'd been newly tattooed with lava, but considering everything I'd been through, I felt remarkably whole. Maybe my mortal body was giving me one last push. Maybe my godly constitution was kicking in to help. Maybe it was the nectar-and-Mountain-Dew cocktail coursing through my bloodstream. Whatever it was, I would take all the help I could get.
Ten floors. Twenty floors. I lost track. Stairwells are horrible, disorienting places. I was alone with the sound of my breathing and the pounding of my feet against the steps.
A few more floors, and I began to smell smoke. The hazy air stung my eyes.
Apparently, part of the building was still on fire. Awesome.
The smoke got thicker as I continued to descend. I began to cough and gag. I pressed my forearm over my nose and mouth and found that this did not make a very good filter.
My consciousness swam. I considered opening a side door and trying to find fresh air, but I couldn't see any exits. Weren't stairwells supposed to have those? My lungs screamed. My oxygen-deprived brain felt like it was about to pop out of my skull, sprout wings and fly away.
I realized I might be starting to hallucinate. Brains with wings. Cool!
I trudged forward. Wait ... What happened to the stairs? When had I reached a level surface? I could see nothing through the smoke. The ceiling got lower and lower. I stretched out my hands, searching for any kind of support. On either side of me, my fingers brushed against warm, solid rock.
The passageway continued to shrink. Ultimately I was forced to crawl, sandwiched between two horizontal sheets of stone with barely enough room to raise my head. My ukulele wedged itself in my armpit. My quiver scraped against the ceiling.
I began to squirm and hyperventilate from claustrophobia, but I forced myself to calm down. I was not stuck. I could breathe, strangely enough. The smoke had changed to volcanic gas, which tasted terrible and smelled worse, but my burning lungs somehow continued to process it. My respiratory system might melt later, but right now, I was still sucking in the sulphur.
I knew this smell. I was somewhere in the tunnels beneath Delphi. Thanks to the magic of the Labyrinth and/or some strange sorcerous high-speed link that connected Nero's tower to the reptile's lair, I had climbed, walked, stumbled and crawled halfway across the world in a few minutes. My aching legs felt every mile.
I wriggled onward towards a dim light in the distance.
Rumbling noises echoed through a much larger space ahead. Something huge and heavy was breathing.
The crawl space ended abruptly. I found myself peering down from the lip of a small crevice, like an air vent. Below me spread an enormous cavern – the lair of Python.
When I had fought Python before, thousands of years ago, I hadn't needed to seek out this place. I had lured him into the upper world and fought him in the fresh air and sunlight, which had been much better.
Now, looking down from my crawl space, I wished I could be anywhere else. The floor stretched for several football fields, punctuated by stalagmites and split by a web of glowing volcanic fissures that spewed plumes of gas. The uneven rock surface was covered with a shag carpet of horror: centuries of discarded snakeskins, bones and the desiccated carcasses of ... I didn't want to know. Python had all those volcanic crevices right there, and he couldn't be bothered to incinerate his trash?
The monster himself, roughly the size of a dozen jackknifed cargo trucks, took up the back quarter of the cavern. His body was a mountain of reptilian coils, rippling with muscle, but he was more than simply a big snake. Python shifted and changed as it suited him – sprouting clawed feet, or vestigial bat wings, or extra hissing heads along the side of his body, all of which withered and dropped off as rapidly as they formed. He was the reptilian conglomeration of everything that mammals feared in their deepest, most primal nightmares.
I'd suppressed the memory of just how hideous he was. I preferred him when he'd been obscured in poisonous fumes. His cab-size head rested on one of his coils. His eyes were closed, but that did not fool me. The monster never really slept. He only waited ... for his hunger to swell, for his chance at world domination, for small, foolish Lesters to jump into his cave.
At the moment, a shimmering haze seemed to be settling over him, like the embers of a spectacular fireworks show. With nauseating certainty, I realized I was watching Python absorb the last remnants of the fallen Triumvirate's power. The reptile looked blissful, soaking in all that warm, Nero-y goodness.
I had to hurry. I had one shot at defeating my old enemy.
I was not ready. I was not rested. I was definitely not bringing my A-game. In fact, I had been so far below my A-game for so long that I could barely remember any letters north of LMNOP.
Yet somehow I'd got this far. I felt a tingly sensation of power building just under my skin – perhaps my divine self, trying to reassert itself in the proximity of my old archenemy. I hoped it was that and not just my mortal body combusting.
I managed to manoeuvre my bow into my hands, draw an arrow and nock it – no easy task while lying flat on your belly in a crawl space. I even managed to avoid whanging my ukulele against the rocks and giving away my position with a rousing open chord.
So far, so good.
Deep breath. This was for Meg. This was for Jason. This was for everyone who had fought and sacrificed to drag my sorry mortal butt from quest to quest for the last six months, just to get me this chance at redemption.
I kicked forward, spilling head first out of the crack in the ceiling. I flipped in mid-air, aimed ... and fired my arrow at Python's head.
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