Lester - Dodges Python

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 barreled toward 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.

***

The Tower of Nero, Chapter 33