Fire and Metal: Chapter 6

Fire and Metal: Chapter List

Camp Life: Lance's POV
I was walking along the lake, thinking about the past day and everything that had happened to me. Suddenly, I was overcome by a vision, and toppled into the lake.

''"Traitor!" I screamed. A vaguely familiar shrouded face turned towards me, "I had no choice, no more than an ox being controlled by a yoke." As I collapsed, the last things I saw were a flash of light and a flare of flames.''

After some time in the water, I was being pushed up. After I hit shore, I looked back. Those were naiads, fresh water spirits. Felicia had told me. What had happened? I swear I've had that dream before. Anxious, I headed towards the Hecate Cabin, intending to ask Neil about it.

"Hey man! Why are you drenched?  I thought Clarisse promised Percy not to dunk new kids into toilets?" Neil said as he saw me.

"No, I... Wait, what?" I stuttered, unsure.

"Well, you see, Clarisse, the head of the Ares Cabin, likes to dunk 'newbies' into the camp toilets. Huh, I remeber when she tried doing that to me.  It was the first time I cast a spell.  She almost did it, but, poof, and our positions were switched.  It was after that when I got claimed." He smirked.

"Oh, well anyways, I was waling by the lake, and I was hit with a vision and blacked out."

"And then you fell into the lake?" He snorted. "Seriously though, demigods have dreams and visions all the time. So times their reflections upon the past, other times its things that are currently happening else where, still other times are visions of the future."

"Well, I had the same dream twice, and I don't remeber experiencing it in my past, so will it happen in the future?" I asked.

"I don't know." Neil shrugged, "I wouldn't think too much on it though."

The conch blew. It was time for breakfast. Along the way we met up with Felcia, who had just come fromt he Hermes cabin.

"So, what's going on today?" She asked.

"It's a Saturday, so.. nothing much.  We've got Monster Fighting class in the morning, and our afternoons are free." Neil answered.

We walked in silence the rest of the way. ''Monster fighting? Sounds painful.''

After breakfast, we went down into the arena. We separated into groups. One group was taught by Percy, another by Annabeth, and yet another by Clarisse. The people assigned to Clarisse's group flinched a little upon hearing their name. I was in Annabeth's group, along with Neil and Felicia.

Annabeth began, "Alright, today we'll be discussing and fighting agaist dracaenae. We caught a bunch of them in the woods, and they're in the little alcoves underneath us.  We will take turns fighting them.  First, though, you need to know their fighting styles and their weaponry.  Dracaenae are like the retiarius gladiators of Ancient Rome.  They fought with a trident and a weighted net.  Generally, they use the net to tangle your weapons and then lash out with the trident.  Beware, the trident allows for extra reach.  One weakness of theirs however is the possibilty of tangling their tridents in their nets.  A very common strategy is to cut their net without tangling your weapon, and then tangling their trident with the cut off portion.  Now, I will demonstrate."

A slot opened near the edge of the arena, and a dracaena came slithering out. It had the upper body of a nymph, but inplace of legs, it have the lower body of two snakes. Hissing, it lashed out at Annabeth with its net. Annabet rolled aside, and jabbed her knife at its "legs." Having missed, he lept up, grapped hold of the net, and slashed it apart. She flung it onto the dracaena's head, in hopes of distracting it. Growling, the dracaena swung its trident, but Annabeth jumped up and cut off its head, causing it to disintegrate. Applause filled the arena.

"All right, everyone, form a line, and get ready. Oh, and try not to get killed." She smiled.

The first kid followed the strategy Annabeth had taught us, and quickly killed the dracaena. He had definitely done this before. The next person must've been an Apollo kid. He stumbled around with his sword, and in the end, just threw the sword at the dracaena with deadly accuracy. Neil came up next. This time I watch carefully to see where he took his staff out from. It seemed to just bend out of the air.

Neil crouched, and waited for the dracaena to come out, as soon as it did, he charged, and spun around the dracaena. He pummled it in its back with the sharp end of his staff. The dracaena hissed and turned around, it threw its net at him. He was caught. "No!" Felicia shouted. He laughed and muttered a spell. The bronze staff glowed orange. The staff burned through the net quickly. The spell seemed to have drained quite a bit of energy from Neil, but he still managed to wack the dracaena's trident away. He yelled something in Greek, but I recognized it as "sharpen!", and the staff magically cut through the dracaena. Drenched with seat from magical exertion, he came over to me. "Nice, eh?"

Nodding, I continued to watch the campers take on the dracaena. There were quite a few campers who failed to defeat their dracaena, but usually Annabeth or someone else skilled jumped in and killed the dracaena before the campers could get hurt. Soon, it was my turn. I pulled out my Swiss Army Knife, and clicked the sword. With a yell, I swung my blade at the new dracaena's legs. It swatted my blade aside with astounding strength. I knew I could not overpower it by brute force. I had to be quick. I dove aside as it swung its net at me. An idea occured to me at that very instant. The next time it swung the net at me, I was ready. I rolled to the side its trident was on, and the net tangled with the trident. A grabbed the net and gave it a yank, and the trident spun out of its claws. Weaponless, it screeched at me, but I silenced it with a blow to the head.

Tired but pround, I trudged off the fighting platform. I waited until Felicia's turn came up. She took out her spear. As she waited for the dracaena to advance, she twirled her spear. As the dracaena started with its classic first move of net throwing, Felicia did the unexpected. She threw her spear at the net. The shaft of her spear went through the net, and then she twisted the spear, and the net went flying. Next she stuck the spear between the points of the dracaena's trident, and once again twisted. The trident clattered to the ground. Exaggerating her movements, she stabbed it through. Applause filled the arena once again.

"Wow, that was very... graceful." Annabeth complimented her. Slowly, the line dwindled, and soon, everyone had had a turn.

"Okay everyone! Tomorrow afternoon we will work on giants.  Class is dismissed!"

I walked toward the showers with Neil. "You sister's great with her spear."

"Yeah, she's— What just happened?!" I broke off as shouts erupted from the arena. We ran over there quickly, and the sight was horrifying. Roughly fifty previously captured dracanae flooded out from underneath the arena floor. Annabeth, Percy, Clarisse, and most of the other senior campers were there fending them off. Felicia was there as well, fighting like a maniac. We rushed in to help. A drew my sword, and began slashing off dracaenae heads. I accumulated dozens of cuts, but I thought nothing of it. Then, I was trapped. Three dracaena had thrown nets over me. I tried cutting my way out, but it was in vain. They closed in on me, when suddenly, a spear sprouted from a dracaena's chest. After it disintegrated, Felicia stood in its place. She beat back the other two, and then began hacking at my net. After giving me several more cuts, she seemed to realize it wasn't going to work. Then, to my instense astonishment, she lit her hands on fire and burned the netting off, scorching me only a little.

"How-?"

"Later."

She continued fighting, this time her spear was on fire. Soon, the dracaenae were reduced to piles of golden dust, which were blowing away into the wind.

"Felicia! How in the name of Hades did you do that?!" I asked. Suddenly, a flaming hammer appeared over her head. "You... you've been claimed."

Felicia was pointing at the space above my head as well. I looked up. Unlike Felicia, a shimmering hologram of a bronze hammer, anvil, and a pair of tongs had appeared above my head. Chiron, who had also come to help out with his bow and arrows, saw this.

"Hail, Felicia and Lance Forgeron, children of Hephaestus, god of blacksmiths, fire, techology, volcanoes, and metals." He cried.

Everyone knelt until the images had completely faded. One question kept reverberating within my head. Why were the symbols different?