Untitled Part 33
I MISSED.
Don't even pretend you're surprised.
Rather than piercing the monster's skull as I'd hoped, my arrow shattered on the rocks a few feet from his head. Splinters skittered harmlessly across the cavern floor. Python's lamp-like eyes snapped open.
I landed in the centre of the room, ankle-deep in a bed of old snakeskin. At least I didn't break my legs on impact. I could save that disaster for my big finale.
Python studied me, his gaze cutting like headlights through the volcanic fumes. The shimmering haze that surrounded him was snuffed out. Whether he had finished digesting its power, or whether I had interrupted him, I couldn't be sure.
I hoped he might roar in frustration. Instead, he laughed – a deep rumble that liquefied my courage. It's unnerving to watch a reptile laugh. Their faces are simply not designed for showing humour. Python didn't smile, per se, but he bared his fangs, pulled back his Tootsie-roll-segmented lips and let his forked tongue lash the air, probably savouring the scent of my fear.
'And here we are.' His voice came from all around me, each word a drill bit set against my joints. 'I have not quite finished digesting Nero's power, but I suppose it will have to do. He tastes like dried rat anyway.'
I was relieved to hear I'd interrupted Python's emperortasting. 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 barrelled towards 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 lifespan from a few minutes to a few fewer minutes. I limped towards 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.
'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!' CRACKSPROING!
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 – paralysing 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.
Bạn đang đọc truyện trên: Truyen3h.Co