poison healing

I was so worried about defending myself against the fiery lion's mouth, I completely forgot about the serpent tail until it whipped around and sank its fangs into my calf.
My whole leg was on fire. I tried to jab Riptide into the Chimera's mouth, but the serpent tail wrapped around my ankles and pulled me off balance, and my blade flew out of my hand, spinning out of the hole in the Arch and down toward the Mississippi River.
I managed to get to my feet, but I knew I had lost. I was weaponless. I could feel deadly poison racing up to my chest.



The Chimera's mouth glowed red, heating up for another blast.
"You have no faith," Echidna told me. "You do not trust the gods. I cannot blame you, little coward. Better you die now. The gods are faithless. The poison is in your heart."
She was right: I was dying. I could feel my breath slowing down. Nobody could save me, not even the gods.



I turned and jumped. My clothes on fire, poison coursing through my veins, I plummeted toward the river.


The river raced toward me at the speed of a truck. Wind ripped the breath from my lungs.
Steeples and skyscrapers and bridges tumbled in and out of my vision. And then: Flaaa-boooom!
A whiteout of bubbles. I sank through the murk, sure that I was about to end up embedded in a hundred feet of mud and lost forever.
But my impact with the water hadn't hurt. I was falling slowly now, bubbles trickling up through my fingers. I settled on the river bottom soundlessly. A catfish the size of my stepfather lurched away into the gloom. Clouds of silt and disgusting garbage — beer bottles, old shoes, plastic bags — swirled up all around me.
At that point, I realized a few things: first, I had not been flattened into a pancake. I had not been barbecued. I couldn't even feel the Chimera poison boiling in my veins anymore. I was alive, which was good.


TLT ch.13-14