We shook, and off I went.

I found the stairs and took them. I didn’t trust the elevators. During my dream in the cell, I’d seen myself sweeping down the stairwells of the tower when I fell to Delphi. I was determined to take the same path in real life. Maybe it wouldn’t matter, but I would’ve felt silly if I took a wrong turn on my way to confront Python and ended up getting arrested by the NYPD in the Triumvirate Holdings lobby.

My bow and quiver jostled against my back, clanging against my ukulele strings. My new supply pack felt cold and heavy. I held on to the railing so my wobbly legs wouldn’t collapse under me. My ribs felt like they’d been newly tattooed with lava, but considering everything I’d been through, I felt remarkably whole. Maybe my mortal body was giving me one last push. Maybe my godly constitution was kicking in to help. Maybe it was the nectar-and-Mountain-Dew cocktail coursing through my bloodstream. Whatever it was, I would take all the help I could get.

Ten floors. Twenty floors. I lost track. Stairwells are horrible, disorienting places. I was alone with the sound of my breathing and the pounding of my feet against the steps.

A few more floors, and I began to smell smoke. The hazy air stung my eyes.

Apparently, part of the building was still on fire. Awesome.

The smoke got thicker as I continued to descend. I began to cough and gag. I pressed my forearm over my nose and mouth and found that this did not make a very good filter.

My consciousness swam. I considered opening a side door and trying to find fresh air, but I couldn’t see any exits. Weren’t stairwells supposed to have those? My lungs screamed. My oxygen-deprived brain felt like it was about to pop out of my skull, sprout wings, and fly away.

I realized I might be starting to hallucinate. Brains with wings. Cool!

I trudged forward. Wait.…What happened to the stairs? When had I reached a level surface? I could see nothing through the smoke. The ceiling got lower and lower. I stretched out my hands, searching for any kind of support. On either side of me, my fingers brushed against warm, solid rock.

The passageway continued to shrink. Ultimately I was forced to crawl, sandwiched between two horizontal sheets of stone with barely enough room to raise my head. My ukulele wedged itself in my armpit. My quiver scraped against the ceiling.

I began to squirm and hyperventilate from claustrophobia, but I forced myself to calm down. I was not stuck. I could breathe, strangely enough. The smoke had changed to volcanic gas, which tasted terrible and smelled worse, but my burning lungs somehow continued to process it. My respiratory system might melt later, but right now, I was still sucking in the sulfur.

I knew this smell. I was somewhere in the tunnels beneath Delphi. Thanks to the magic of the Labyrinth and/or some strange sorcerous high-speed link that connected Nero’s tower to the reptile’s lair, I had climbed, walked, stumbled, and crawled halfway across the world in a few minutes. My aching legs felt every mile.

I wriggled onward toward a dim light in the distance.

Rumbling noises echoed through a much larger space ahead. Something huge and heavy was breathing.

The crawlspace ended abruptly. I found myself peering down from the lip of a small crevice, like an air vent. Below me spread an enormous cavern—the lair of Python.

When I had fought Python before, thousands of years ago, I hadn’t needed to seek out this place. I had lured him into the upper world and fought him in the fresh air and sunlight, which had been much better.

Now, looking down from my crawlspace, I wished I could be anywhere else. The floor stretched for several football fields, punctuated by stalagmites and split by a web of glowing volcanic fissures that spewed plumes of gas. The uneven rock surface was covered with a shag carpet of horror: centuries of discarded snakeskins, bones, and the desiccated carcasses of…I didn’t want to know. Python had all those volcanic crevices right there, and he couldn’t be bothered to incinerate his trash?

The monster himself, roughly the size of a dozen jackknifed cargo trucks, took up the back quarter of the cavern. His body was a mountain of reptilian coils, rippling with muscle, but he was more than simply a big snake. Python shifted and changed as it suited him—sprouting clawed feet, or vestigial bat wings, or extra hissing heads along the side of his body, all of which withered and dropped off as rapidly as they formed. He was the reptilian conglomeration of everything that mammals feared in their deepest, most primal nightmares.

I’d suppressed the memory of just how hideous he was. I preferred him when he’d been obscured in poisonous fumes. His cab-size head rested on one of his coils. His eyes were closed, but that did not fool me. The monster never really slept. He only waited…for his hunger to swell, for his chance at world domination, for small, foolish Lesters to jump into his cave.

At the moment, a shimmering haze seemed to be settling over him, like the embers of a spectacular fireworks show. With nauseating certainty, I realized I was watching Python absorb the last remnants of the fallen Triumvirate’s power. The reptile looked blissful, soaking in all that warm, Nero-y goodness.

I had to hurry. I had one shot at defeating my old enemy.

I was not ready. I was not rested. I was definitely not bringing my A-game. In fact, I had been so far below my A-game for so long, I could barely remember any letters north of LMNOP.

Yet somehow I’d gotten this far. I felt a tingly sensation of power building just under my skin—perhaps my divine self, trying to reassert itself in the proximity of my old archenemy. I hoped it was that and not just my mortal body combusting.

I managed to maneuver my bow into my hands, draw an arrow, and nock it—no easy task while lying flat on your belly in a crawlspace. I even managed to avoid whanging my ukulele against the rocks and giving away my position with a rousing open chord.

So far, so good.

Deep breath. This was for Meg. This was for Jason. This was for everyone who had fought and sacrificed to drag my sorry mortal butt from quest to quest for the last six months, just to get me this chance at redemption.

I kicked forward, spilling headfirst out of the crack in the ceiling. I flipped in midair, aimed…and fired my arrow at Python’s head.

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 center 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 humor. 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 savoring 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.”