Forty-Three: Kalypso
I Get to be Python's Piñata
All Kally needed was an opening to attack Python.
She clutched Vinyl's black mane, terrified of being bucked off. When the blur of color had charged her, Kally hadn't been sure if it was for a rescue or a mercy kill, either of which were equally likely from Calex's volatile friend. Fortunately, she hadn't been gored on the broken horn in a mess of bloody rainbow sparkles.
The problem was—she'd never ridden a horse before, let alone a unicorn at stop-and-go hyperspeed. Once, at her old Bible camp, a pony had relieved itself all over her duffle bag at their orientation, but that was the extent of her horse whispering. All she could do was cling on. [footnote 1]
As Python hissed and darted at her, the gust of breath was noxious, reeking of rotting corpses. Spittle struck her cheek and she didn't want to think about apologizing to Alabaster for getting snake goop on his helm. [footnote 2]
Vinyl shook his mane, clearly displeased. The motion shook up the scent of horse sweat.
Another problem: Kally had no way to spin her discus for deceleration.
When she saw the green glow incoming behind the drakon, she squeaked internally, Uh, helm, do you speak unicorn? We might need to dodge.
Of course I can't speak fucking unicorn. What do I look like, a Disney princess? [footnote 3]
As Vinyl dashed them away from Python's jaws, Kally realized dismounting would be suicide. Python was intent on having a Kally-and-unicorn chaser after whichever demigods the drakon had swallowed. But, if Kally couldn't dismount to decelerate the discus, she didn't know how to stop the discus. If it hit her full speed without her catching it, the metal might break a bone or knock her unconscious.
When Vinyl had pivoted to avoid Python, the discus had readjusted its trajectory, proving she couldn't trick it away. It would hit them full speed.
She wondered if the discus would turn back into an Argonaut statue in the last second so it could make a face while crushing her skull.
Even if Kally could redirect it, she needed a weapon. Vinyl wasn't going to slow down enough for her to pick one up off the ground. There wasn't enough energy in her to do more than a few fancy Apollo light blasts. The missed shot at Atë left Kally with second degree burns. She needed to find a weak spot so those attacks weren't wasted deflecting off Python's scales. Python's enflamed eye didn't look like it would work again, other than to distract the drakon. Kally couldn't really pry its eye back open with a, "Hey, could you hold that pose so I can hit you again? Thanks."
Kally's heart thudded in her chest.
She didn't have enough time to form a plan. Buzzing through Vinyl's blinding sparks, the green, hissing discus was about to hit her.
Reflexively, Kally's hand snapped out. She tried to catch it early, so she could decelerate it by giving her hand room to move backwards.
No! You—
When the metal smashed into her fingers, her miscalculation became clear without needing any scathing comments from the Cloven Terror.
Something in her arm cracked.
Kally choked on pain, forcing her fist to keep tight around the discus. The names of bones and ligaments streamed through her head, but she forced that part of her brain to shut up. She clenched her other fist in Vinyl's silky black mane, the ache of her scorched fingers becoming more apparent.
"Child of Apollo!" Python roared after her.
Kally wondered if gods and monsters would forget about demigods if they didn't always announce them by heritage. Likely, but that didn't make it any less annoying.
The drakon lunged again.
Vinyl snorted. The unicorn dashed to the side. Kally could feel the rush of air more than see the blur of Python as the drakon's mouth came within inches of their retreat. She gagged at the stench. There was one nice thing: the rainbow sparks sputtering from Vinyl's horn cooled the searing pain in her fractured forearm and the burns along the hand clutching Vinyl's mane.
Time slowed as she had to make a choice. In the split second that Vinyl dug his hooves into the ground to pivot and Python's head was mid-raised, Kally squeezed her legs on either side of Vinyl's body. She released Vinyl's mane to take the discus from her broken arm to her burned one.
There wasn't any space to wind up for a real throw, but maybe the return recoil would be less. Python was only a dozen feet away.
Kally twisted her torso with a throw. Pain erupted in her burned fingertips and tender opposite arm.
The discus hissed to life.
Kally gripped Vinyl's hair again with her burned fingers, barely managing to stay mounted. She lifted her fractured forearm up to get as many healing sparks as she could. That arm needed to be as stable as possible so it wouldn't completely shatter under the next discus return, and she couldn't waste her energy on sing-healing it. As she'd say in Dungeons and Drakons, she needed to be a striker right now, not a support character.
The golden gleam smashed into Python's underbelly, where the neck would have been if the creepy monster wasn't just one continuous wormy neck.
"I will devour you and your siblings!" Python screamed, though Kally was satisfied to hear she might have hit its larynx, assuming drakons had those. Python's voice sounded scratchy.
But, as she feared, that had done little other damage. They needed a plan.
"You'd have to catch me first!" she said, feeling like Pax would tease her for such a cliché, stupid taunt. At Python's mention of her siblings, she feared the drakon would remember the other campers trying to seek cover around them.
Her stomach fell when the discus gleamed green again on the return spin. When Alabaster's jaw was fixed enough that she could hit him without him passing out from pain, she was going to give him a proper thank you for this very complicated gift.
While the world blurred with Vinyl's speed, every muscle in her body shook when she prepared her fractured arm to catch the discus again. Although the sparks soothed the ache, pain still made her arm quiver. But, it had to be this arm. She couldn't risk breaking her throwing arm too.
Right when she thought the discus was about to impact her and make her scream, Vinyl did something she wasn't expecting.
The psychotic unicorn dashed under Python's rearing form—taking them within inches of the shield-like, massive scales of her underbelly.
Kally shrieked, leaning low on Vinyl's back, really wishing the helm spoke unicorn to ask a simple, "WHY!?"
Python dropped, trying to crush them. Kally swore she could hear Vinyl's tail swoosh against the scales.
But, at the same time, she heard Python let out a frustrated hiss and the thunk of her discus.
She looked back in enough time to have the discus bounce over Python's massive body and practically plop into her hand. Although clutching it hurt, the now-Argonaut statue had lost almost all its momentum when it struck Python on the return swing.
Vinyl, Kally realized, was a genius. Either that or very lucky to time out a second hit on Python with the discus' return honing.
They couldn't keep this up though. They needed a plan other than Be Bait.
A little help? She thought loudly to the helm that wouldn't shut up earlier.
I already told you. You seek the wrong target. We should help the Silver-Tongued Snake with his quarry.
While Vinyl pivoted again for another dash, Kally couldn't help but imagine this was the same frustration that Axel felt when arguing with Alabaster. This was the most stubborn helmet she'd ever met. When she first trudged towards Python, the helm had informed her that it was designed for use against gods and demigods, not giant squamates, [footnote 4] but she guessed survival instinct would kick in and make it help her.
She was wrong.
Its words echoed in her memory, Hecate's Helms are more powerful when we work in harmony with our masters.
They could probably work in tandem, and with Pax, to take out Eris. But, she couldn't abandon the fight against Python. From what she could see, she was the only child of Apollo left standing. Python would likely go back on its rampage to destroy all the cabins in search of any living members.
Her fingers tingled with heat at the thought.
You're letting her wind you like mice in a laboratory.
Enough with the metaphors! Kally wanted to scream.
You're a child of the poetry god! it countered.
Hoping she wouldn't lose her balance with nausea, Kally glanced to the corner of her peripheral. With how fast Vinyl raced, the disorientation was worse when her vision went panorama.
She expected to see how the Roman troops were fairing or see if the huntresses of Artemis or daughter of Demeter had used her distraction to get away from Python.
Instead, she saw what the Cloven Terror meant.
Python had removed her tail from the other side of camp and slammed it down to encircle them. Vinyl must have realized it to. He let out a burst of speed, racing towards a rapidly closing opening—
That Python's body now obscured.
They were trapped and the coils were rapidly constricting like… like—
Like a python? Did you forget who you were facing?! We should have fought Eris!
Not helping! Kally shouted at the helm.
With each twist of a coil, Kally's throat constricted too. She remembered her nightmares—being crushed by a smothering, squeezing darkness. Panic began to mount. Could she make another light burst and shake Python off if the snake smothered her again? She wasn't sure. And what if Python only left them last time to enact Eris' plan? Maybe—if Python swallowed her—she could explode the drakon from the inside, though that didn't have a smilie mark on the list of ways to live through this.
Vinyl didn't rear and freak the way she suspected.
The unicorn continued its dead sprint, building speed, at the rapidly enclosing wall of Python's body. Maybe Vinyl thought it was better to die in a high-speed collision than by digestion.
Right when Kally started screaming, Vinyl lunged.
Kally gasped, scared of having hope. They were going to clear the coils. Unicorns could jump.
In mid-blur and mid-air, something moved again in her peripheral.
That something had the consistency of a brick wall when it smacked them out of the air.
Vinyl shrieked.
Kally yelled in pain, losing hold of Vinyl. Her broken arm burned with agony.
They tumbled down to the ground, crashing hard. Python's tail continued through on its strike, smashing into the metal shield-wall a few feet away.
The disorientation was intense. Kally feared she couldn't move her body. Her mind wouldn't—
Focus, the Cloven Terror commanded.
A wave of concentration seeped out like the helm was made of ice instead of metal and bone. She shot up, the pain in her broken arm going cold. Vinyl withered and floundered to get to his feet about a yard away. Kally didn't know where her discus went.
"Hey Python!" a voice with diva-like quality called somewhere above Kally. "You don't want to look at that ugly, little child of Apollo. You want to look here where the real stars are and pause to admire them."
Everyone froze.
Without wanting to, Kally felt her eyes trail upward. From the corner of her vision—that went panorama with the movement of her eyes—she could see Python also pause in lunging to eat her and stare at the figures at the same height as the snake's head.
In a slit in the shield, Drew Takana leaned out. Her eyes were red and puffy, but her voice projected with the confidence of someone who regularly treated hoards of people like steps on a stairway. Although Kally didn't need further convincing on the point, Drew's conviction was so strong, Kally—and Python—both paused to look up at the daughter of Aphrodite, someone Kally knew was more of a star without her needing to hear it.
To the side of Drew, Calex stood tall. His bow was propped on some weird stand, like his bow was, instead, a ballista. Even in the dimness and distance, Kally could see that something was wrong with him. His scarf was gone. The material of one of his sleeves looked like particles of it had been sucked away. Calex's muscles flexed as he drew his bow back. [footnote 5]
Two arrows glistened to life on the string, one a thin, glistening black, somehow darker than the night around them, and the other a sparkling, blinding gold, sputtering in and out of control.
"Ready!" Calex called with gritted teeth.
Something clinked into place behind him. "Ready!" someone said.
Both Kally and Python realized what was happening around the same time. However, Kally didn't need to dodge the way Python would have.
Calex released his bow.
Kally thought the arrows would ricochet off the scales, like everything else had. Instead, they pierced into Python's raised body. Cords whirled out with the arrows, lodging between the thick scales.
Calex slumped over, Drew darting to catch him.
Kally heard the sparks before she registered their effect. There was a crack, then Python screamed, as—Kally found out later—electricity surged through the snake.
The drakon's mouth dropped open so Kally had a perfect view of its fangs and the skin attached to them, the way the forked, black tongue dangled out, the strange tunnel-like structure just before the throat opening.
The entire coiling body withered.
This is the opening we needed, the Cloven Terror shook her from the charm speak.
Whatever Calex and the others were doing to stun Python, Kally doubted it would last or that it would kill the beast. She'd been so focused on distracting Python from attacking her friends; she didn't think that her friends could cause the best distraction for her.
Kally thought about her destroyed cabins, how many of her half-siblings were dead, how none of this would have happened if her monster of a father might have stepped in to help or listened to his children or be useful for once in his immortal life.
She harnessed that rage and frustration. Her already burned palms singed with heat before going completely numb. A blinding light exploded by her fingertips, honing in to the tip of a javelin.
Kally took a step back, then raced forward, feeling the energy start in the leg she used to ground herself, running up her thigh, through her back muscles as she twisted her upper torso. The scent of burnt skin intensified. The energy flared through her arm when she released the glaring shaft of light from her fingertips.
The bolt of pure, burning light flew upwards, straight into the roof of Python's mouth.
Hey guys! As always, thank you for reading! By the number of footnotes, you might have guessed that I had real time to actually edit this week XD I felt like this chapter was much smoother and I'm finally getting the hang of things again! :D
I hope you enjoyed! Stay tuned next week for Reyna's chapter!
Footnotes:
1 I personally love Worf… for the 1% of you who got that… I'll show myself out
2 Mel betanote, "Knowing Alabaster, tho, there's probably worse on that helm from him." Jack, "Accurate. Boy dissects bodies for fun. Imagine when he thinks it needs to be cleaned."
3 Mel betanote, "Sir! This was originally a PG-13 series XD …. Originally." Jack, *looks at death by electric base, implications of incest, and other traumas* "It…. Can still pass!"
4 Cute, crawly, scaly things. This is Pax's technical definition.
5 Mel betanote, "Meow?" Jack, "I can now that that Calex is canonically the most attractive male demigod in the series. Feel free to argue in favor of a Pax boy instead XD"
