The Hidden Oracle: Chapters 30–39

I stared at my beloved Dumpster waif.

Facing Nero, I remembered all the tawdry details of his rule—the extravagance and cruelty that had made him so embarrassing to me, his forefather.

“Ah, yes...the House of Gold. It was beautiful, Meg! I had my own lake, three hundred rooms, frescoes of gold, mosaics done in pearls and diamonds—I could finally live like a human being!”

I sensed the trees’ implacable resistance, their mistrust of outsiders.

I’d hoped the grove could be useful, but obviously it is fractured and confused. You can’t believe what it says. It’s the mouthpiece of a senile Titan queen. The grove must be razed.

I am a natural storyteller. I have an infallible instinct for drama.

Alas, the truth constrains me.

He landed on Nero’s arm, chomped the lit match from the emperor’s hand, then landed a few feet away, wiping his tongue and crying, “Hat! Hat!” (Which I assumed meant hot in the dialect of deciduous fruit.)

Like any invasive weeds, they must be burned. And the only way to do that is with a true conflagration—flames stoked by blood.

I could tell she wanted a way out—some eloquent argument that would mollify her stepfather and allow her to follow her conscience.

The shimmering forms of dryads emerged from their trees—a legion of Daphnes in green gossamer dresses.

He took in the scene—the smoldering forest, the other prisoners.

I had been handed an edict worse than a thousand advertisements for pasta makers.

“There’s no more we.” Meg’s tone was as acrid as the volcanic gas of Delphi. “Do what you need to do. That’s my final order.”

I wanted to think this was just bluster. Nero had always loved threats and grandiose statements.

Austin picked some incendiary fluff off his shoulder.

Bless his conniving little heart, Cecil Markowitz tried his best, but he kept throwing off my rhythm section with his spastic clapping and terrible air mic noises.

Nico and Will were floundering in the lake, apparently having been capsized in the middle of a canoe ride.

Chiron galloped through the dunes, harrying the Colossus with his arrows. Even by my standards, Chiron was a very fine archer. He targeted the statue’s joints and seams, yet his shots did not seem to bother the automaton at all.

The missiles stuck in his joints, discharging tendrils of blue lightning, but the statue barely seemed to notice.

Its nostrils were sealed with bronze...I supposed because Nero hadn’t wanted his detractors trying to shoot arrows into his imperial noggin.

His voice was definitely male, sonorous and grave, like a bad Shakespearean actor’s.

THOU SHALT NOT THINKEST ABOUT IT, he intoned.

Out of the shadows dropped a furry black monster dog—a hellhound—and astride his back was a young man with a glowing bronze sword.

Odious green mist now wreathed the arrow. It smelled faintly of fast-food deep fryers—a good sign that it carried some sort of horrible malady.

Our entrance might have looked dramatic if the centrifugal force hadn’t thrown Kayla, Austin, and me from the chariot.

“Only you can shoot it without succumbing to the disease. Only you can hit such a target.”

Because his face had no other open orifices, the pressure of his sneeze forced geysers of motor oil out his ears, spraying the dunes with environmentally unfriendly sludge.

“I’m afraid I—I summoned a rather benign illness. I believe I have given the Colossus a case of hay fever.”

I had never before seen a centaur hang hooves on a tubular crest, but Chiron acquitted himself well.

After the sneezing
Healing peeps, parsing limericks
Worst God Award? Me

Chiron provided healing poultices for the most extreme cases of hay fever.

I imagined Poseidon would replace the statue’s gorgeous face with his own weathered, bearded mien.

At the moment, I did not want to be Apollo. All the destruction I saw below me...it was my fault. I had been blind and complacent.

In real life, she didn’t look so pale and aloof—well, not most of the time, anyway. I pondered why the sculptor, Phidias, had chosen to make her look so unapproachable, and whether Athena approved.

I was afraid they might wake the grove and drown us in a cacophony of prophecies, bad jokes, and infomercials.

Their descent was silent, but in my mind a joyous fanfare of Valdezinator music proclaimed the good news.

She slapped Leo, then berated him in rapid Spanish.

She may not have been immortal anymore, but she still had a grace and easiness about her that I could not fathom.

Groans were mixed in with the cheers, but most everyone got to their feet and ambled toward the bonfire now blazing in the distance, where Nico di Angelo stood silhouetted in the flames, preparing rows of marshmallows on what looked like femur bones.