Chapter Summary: Will's method of defeating Python proves he is a son of Apollo.

XxxX

Standing before the cave entrance, knowing that giant snake he'd seen attack Will in his dream is inside, makes Nico's legs tremble. The fact that he's standing on sand doesn't help either. Ever since the war with Gaea, when it'd felt like he was standing on the goddess's throat, he's come to loathe unstable ground.

Will grabs his hand and gives it a squeeze.

This is it. He's going to do whatever it is he's planning to draw Python out of the cave.

He leans over, brushing his cheek against Nico's. "I'm going to do an ultrasonic whistle. Cover your ears, just in case I mess it up."

Nico furrows his brows, but nods. It's hard to not do what Will asks when he's touching Nico. His hand is warm in Nico's despite the fact he's not wearing a coat. He lets go of Will's hand and covers his ears, watching as Will purses his lips and supposedly whistles. Nico can't hear anything, but a moment later a stalactite crashes from the cave ceiling. The impact shrouds the mouth of the cave in a curtain of dust.

Nico lowers his hands as the dust settles, gazing into the cave's depths. The sound of hissing issues from the darkness, though it's not an angry sound, more like the serpent is amused. It grows louder; it's deep, rich, almost melodic. Nico swears he can feel the vibrations through his shoes.

"Son of Apollo," the voice says, more mature than it had been in Nico's dream – the thing has to have grown. "You think you can draw me out so easily?"

"No," Will calls back. "Just saying hello!" The laughter ceases. Nico wonders what in Hades's realm Will thinks he's doing. It sounds like he's inviting the snake to have a conversation. After a long pause, a giant yellow eye rises just inside the cave's entrance looking out at them, its slitted pupil enormous in the dark. Nico's sword is in his hand before he's even aware he's drawn it. Will stays his arm. "Wait. Do you trust me?"

Nico blinks, turning to look at Will, locking eyes. He nods, but doesn't put his sword down. Will gives him a half-smile and turns back as Python's giant head lurches forward into view. It's so large it nearly fills the entire cave entrance. It flicks its tongue.

"Hello to you," Python says. "You have grown." The voice sounds feminine, but Nico's not sure if it even matters what gender it is. It's so large it could wipe them out without even trying.

"You have, too," Will says. "I remember the last time I saw you, you were only about as thick as a crocodile. Now, you're nearly as large as a bus. It's amazing."

Nico glances over his shoulder at Lou Ellen. She's holding the illusion of the stretched out cave entrance, but Nico can see her shaking her head from where he stands. She's probably wondering what Will thinks he's doing talking to the snake when she'd warned him against it. Nico turns back. As snakes can't blush, he's having a hard time finding a better word for what Python is doing. She cocks her head like she's taking a bow, or perhaps she's just pleased that Will noticed her growth.

"The Delphic Oracle is mine again. It feeds me. I am flourishing here, back in my element, so to speak."

"You know what I came to do?" Will asks, no different than if he were asking her if she'd like a peanut butter sandwich.

Python sticks out her tongue, tasting the air. Her voice is still melodious, sibilant. "I thought you had come to attempt to slay me, though I do not taste bloodlust in you. Why have you come?"

Will moves his bow from his shoulder, resting it in the sand by his feet. It turns into a staff. "Only to talk. My father is dying, and the woman harboring the spirit of the Oracle is also near death. It's because of the toxins in your skin. They are killing a god and the Oracle. When she dies, she won't be able to feed you any longer. You'll waste away."

Unless Nico's mistaken, he thinks he hears actual sorrow in Will's voice at the idea of Python wasting away.

She cocks her head in the opposite direction. "It is not my fault … these toxins. I didn't choose to be born from them."

Will nods. "You understand how you were born then?"

"Of course," Python hisses. "After Zeus flooded the earth, destroying the upstarts, his wrath and bitterness seeped into the foam left behind. The remnants coalesced to create me. I was born from Zeus's own despair, his bitter disappointments, his fears and loathing."

Nico senses the snake coming closer, preparing to strike. "Don't listen to it, Will!" he shouts, unable to stay still before it's too late.

"Nico," Will says, though he doesn't look at him. His eyes are still trained on Python. "She's speaking the truth. Can't you hear it?"

She slithers forward again, though Nico's vision distorts. He swears she's closer, but when he looks again, only her head is visible in the cave's entrance. He darts his eyes to Lou Ellen. Her Mist magic is working. Python is being drawn out, but still convinced she's safe in her cave.

"I am not used to engaging in intelligent conversation with anybody but the Oracle herself. She's fallen silent these past few nights."

"When you talk to her," Will says, still sounding as if he wants to befriend the monster, "do you listen? Do you learn from what she tells you?"

"Of course I do," Python answers. She sounds offended by the question. "It is how I learned to speak your language, how I understand where I came from, and why it is best I do not venture out to spread the diseases I carry. It's safer for everybody for me to stay out of the way, hidden by the Mist, with only the Oracle for company. It's kinder. Yet, you would have me venture forth? You ask that I deliver a plague on your homeland? Is that it?"

"Gods, no," Will says, chuckling. Nico's more than half convinced he's under the influence of whatever toxins are floating invisibly off the creature. But he waits. The plan was to draw Python out of the cave, away from the Oracle and it seems to be working so far. Still, Nico searches out the edges of the Underworld, gauging how much time it would take to call them closer should he need to.

"The voice of the Oracle is my father's voice. Do you understand that? She is the part of him that Zeus made him sever. He believed Apollo would overthrow him, but that he'd be unable to do it if he was split in two. With the Oracle unable to speak, Apollo's being consumed by the very things that created you."

"I see," Python says, turning her head again, her last word continuing longer than Nico is comfortable hearing. He senses danger. She moves closer still, though as Nico's vision catches up, it looks more like Will is the one who moved. "You want me to sacrifice myself willingly, to allow you to slay me, then? Is that what you suggest?" The anger in her voice makes Nico's bones ache. She looms even closer, making Nico step back a few paces, though Will stands his ground.

"No," he says. She could swallow him whole with hardly any effort. All she'd need to do is unhinge her jaw and snap him up.

A roaring sound fills Nico's ears. The wind is back. It whips Nico's clothes against the backside of his body, flapping about as if trying to break free in the front. He glances at Lou Ellen. She's also being bombarded, her black hair whipping across her face, and it looks like she's struggling to keep her hands up to control the Mist.

Will and Python continue to talk, though Will seems to have trouble staying put with the wind whipping his clothes. Nico can only make out a few words over the roar: Asclepius, healing, and antitoxin.

He watches in horror as the snake seems to nod in understanding, and then lunges past Will, her body as long as a subway car, breaking through the Mist until she's on the beach.

Will draws his bow and knocks an arrow as Lou Ellen screams behind him. Nico hears pain in her voice. He dissolves into shadow as Will lets his arrows fly.

Nico kneels at Lou Ellen's side, scooping her up and disappearing with her back to the shadows beside the mouth of the cave. As they step back into daylight, Lou Ellen grabs her leg and Nico lowers her onto the sand. Her right pant leg is shredded and her calf, bleeding, a gross, greenish tinge creeping over the edges of the wound.

"Got hit by her tail," Lou Ellen says through gritted teeth.

Nico pulls his jacket and shirt off. He wraps the black t-shirt over the wound, pressing hard. "Keep pressure on it," he says. "You still with me?" She nods, blinking tears, and then darting her eyes towards Will.

Nico looks, too, slipping back into his jacket. Python's enormous body steams on the beach, green vapor rising from it, a line of about a hundred syringes running its length. the arrow shafts lie impotent on the beach. Will's kneeling beside the monster, his bow in staff form beside him, his hands on her poisonous green skin. "What the actual Hades is he doing?"

Python raises her head in what looks like a death throe, her tail thrashing feebly, and her jaws falling open, as if she's going to strike Will with her final breath. Nico runs towards him, his hands open and pointed down, bringing the Underworld closer to the earth's crust, but he halts at the last minute. It would swallow Will up along with the snake. "Will, look out!" he shouts, but Will begins to glow, the light building under his hands too bright for Nico to look at.

He shields his eyes, turning away, but Python doesn't strike. She sighs, and the last thing Nico sees before closing his eyes is her head flopping back onto the sand.

Nico can hear Will singing a hymn; he's actually healing the monster. Nico opens his eyes a crack, though the brightness isn't as unbearable as before. He blinks purple spots from his vision and watches as Python shrinks.

She keeps shrinking until she's only about nine or ten feet long and Will is able to pick her up. Stupidly, he handles her by her tail, her head swinging, but very much alive. Nico covers his ears again as Will brings his staff down in the sand with a piercing sound, ten times louder than his taxicab whistle. He closes his eyes as another burst of bright light fills Will's hands and he swears he can feel the top layer of his skin burning off.

When he opens them again, squinting, Will walks towards him and helps him to his feet. When had he fallen? But Nico doesn't have a chance to try and figure out what's happening because Will has him in a bonecrushing, Jason-esque hug. "What? What did you do?"

"Gods of Olympus, Nico," Will says, not letting up on the hug at all. "I'm shaking so badly. I did it. It actually worked."

Nico has to smack Will on the side of the head to get him to loosen up so Nico can breathe. He gasps as Will pats his back, releasing him, an apologetic and rather dopey expression on his face.

"I don't understand," Nico says. He grimaces and rubs his chest. "I think you bruised my ribs." Then he recalls Lou Ellen. "Shit, Will. Lou Ellen got hurt. Come on, quick."

Will waves to Lou Ellen, and Nico's relieved to see her wave back. Will holds his hand as they walk to where she's still applying pressure to her leg with Nico's t-shirt. Her face is pale, but nowhere near death.

"Will Solace, you are the biggest, fattest, hugest jerk and best friend liar ever!" Lou Ellen shouts, though it's hard to tell if she's angry or trying not to laugh.

Will drops to his knees beside her. "I love you, too, Lou," he says, grinning at her. He moves Nico's shirt aside and covers the wound with his hand, singing another hymn, and balancing his weight with his staff.

When he lifts his hand, the wound is gone.

"I think it would have been more efficient to use the hypolydian mode," a voice issues from above them.

Nico and Lou Ellen look up. Python is wound around Will's staff, now a part of it, staring down at them disdainfully.

"It's like Hermes's caduceus!" Lou Ellen says, her breath catching. She pokes Nico in the ribs with her elbow. "Like George and Martha."

Will wrinkles his nose. "Nah, I'd say more like Asclepius's rod. They're both underground, so I can't ask them what I'm supposed to do with it now."

Nico squints at the snake. She seems a bit uppity. "What's your name?" he asks without thinking. But as he blinks some more, his eyes still not used to so much sun exposure, he realizes he really wants to know what name she'd choose for herself. She doesn't look monstrous any longer, but Nico supposes he shouldn't take for granted that she's not still dangerous.

"Yeah," Will says, looking up at her too. "What do you want to be called? I think Asclepius's python goes by Spike."

She sticks out her tongue in an unmistakable expression of distaste. She turns her eyes and cocks her head in thought. "Pythia? Yes. Pythia is my name."

Will grins at Nico and Lou Ellen, shrugging. He's not larger than life like Frank was when he'd received his father's blessing, not chiseled and mature like Percy had seemed when he'd turned down Zeus's gift of godliness and demanded the Olympians do right by their kids. Will's still just Will, easy-going, laid back, and sometimes bossy. The only difference Nico can see in him is that he's brighter than usual, but Nico hopes it's only a temporary side-effect.