The Tower of Nero (The Trials of Apollo #5) - Rick Riordan Page 0,103

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!” 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