The Tower of Nero (The Trials of Apollo #5)(89)

The air pressure became crushing. My eyes bulged. The heat baked me like a batch of Sally Jackson’s cookies, but still my body glowed and steamed, the arteries of light now closer to the surface, dividing me into a 3-D Apollo jigsaw puzzle.

The crevice walls opened around us, and we fell through the cold and gloomy air of Erebos—the realm of Hades. Python tried to sprout wings and fly away, but his pathetic bat appendages couldn’t support his weight, especially with me clinging to his back, breaking his wings as soon as they formed.

“STOP IT!” Python growled. The Arrow of Dodona still bristled in his ruined eye. His face oozed green blood from a dozen places where I had kicked and punched him. “I—HATE—YOU!”

Which just goes to show that even archenemies of four thousand years can still find something to agree on. With a great KA-PHROOOOOM! we hit water. Or not water…More like a roaring current of bone-chillingly cold gray acid.

The River Styx swept us downstream.

If you love category-five rapids on a river that can drown you, dissolve your skin, and corrode your sense of self all at the same time, I highly recommend a giant serpent cruise on the Styx.

The river sapped my memories, my emotions, my will. It pried open the burning cracks in my Lester Papadopoulos shell, making me feel raw and unmade like a molting dragonfly.

Even Python was not immune. He fought more sluggishly. He flailed and clawed to reach the shore, but I elbowed him in his one good eye, then kicked him in the gullet—anything to keep him in the water.

Not that I wanted to drown, but I knew Python would be much more dangerous on solid ground. Also, I did not like the idea of showing up on Hades’s doorstep in my present condition. I could expect no warm welcome there.

I clung to Python’s face, using the Arrow of Dodona’s lifeless shaft like a rudder, steering the monster with tugs of torture. Python wailed and bellowed and thrashed. All around us, the Styx’s rapids seemed to laugh at me. You see? You broke a vow. And now I have you.

I held on to my purpose. I remembered Meg McCaffrey’s last order: Come back to me, dummy. Her face remained clear in my mind. She had been abandoned so many times, used so cruelly. I would not be another cause of grief for her. I knew who I was. I was her dummy.

Python and I tumbled through the gray torrent and then, without warning, shot off the edge of a waterfall. Again we fell, into even deeper oblivion.

All supernatural rivers eventually empty into Tartarus—the realm where primordial terrors dissolve and re-form, where monsters germinate on the continent-size body of Tartarus himself, slumbering in his eternal dream state.

We did not stop long enough for a selfie. We hurtled through the burning air and the spray of the abysmal waterfall as a kaleidoscope of images spun in and out of view: mountains of black bone like Titan scapulae; fleshy landscapes dotted with blisters that popped to release glistening newborn drakons and gorgons; plumes of fire and black smoke spewing upward in darkly festive explosions.

We fell even further, into the Grand Canyon crevasse of this horror world—to the deepest point of the deepest realm of creation. Then we slammed into solid rock.

Wow, Apollo, you marvel. How did you survive?

I didn’t.

By that point, I was no longer Lester Papadopoulos. I was not Apollo. I’m not sure who or what I was.

I rose to my feet—I don’t know how—and found myself on a blade of obsidian, jutting over an endless churning sea of umber and violet. With a combination of horror and fascination, I realized I was standing on the brink of Chaos.

Below us churned the essence of everything: the great cosmic soup from which all else had spawned, the place where life first began to form and think, Hey, I am separate from the rest of this soup! One step off this ledge, and I would rejoin that soup. I would be utterly gone.

I examined my arms, which seemed to be in the process of disintegration. The flesh burned away like paper, leaving marbled lines of glowing golden light. I looked like one of those transparent anatomy dolls designed to illustrate the circulatory system. In the center of my chest, subtler than the best MRI could capture, was a haze of roiling violet energy. My soul? My death? Whatever it was, the glow was getting stronger, the purple tint spreading through my form, reacting to the nearness of Chaos, working furiously to unknit the golden lines that held me together. That probably wasn’t good.…

Python lay beside me, his body also crumbling, his size drastically reduced. He was now only five times larger than me—like a prehistoric crocodile or constrictor, his shape a mixture of the two, his hide still rippling with half-formed heads, wings, and claws. Impaled in his blind left eye, the Arrow of Dodona was still perfectly intact, not a bit of fletching out of place.

Python rose to his stubby feet. He stomped and howled. His body was coming apart, turning into chunks of reptile and light, and I must say I didn’t like the new disco-crocodile look. He stumbled toward me, hissing and half-blind. “Destroy you!”

I wanted to tell him to chill out. Chaos was way ahead of him. It was rapidly tearing apart our essences. We no longer had to fight. We could just sit on this obsidian spire and quietly crumble together. Python could cuddle up against me, look out over the vast expanse of Chaos, mutter It’s beautiful, then evaporate into nothingness.

But the monster had other plans. He charged, bit me around the waist, and barreled forward, intent on pushing me into oblivion. I couldn’t stop his momentum. I could only shuffle and twist so that when we hit the edge, Python tumbled over first. I clawed desperately at the rock, grabbing the rim as Python’s full weight almost yanked me in half.