Fire and Metal: Chapter 3

Fire and Metal: Chapter List

Mountain Climbing at a Summer Camp: Felicia's POV
These past few weeks had passed so quickly for me. Beofre I knew it, I was bounding along behind Neil, with Lance trudging along behind me. He's so unenthusiastic sometimes. I felt a strange, but pleasant connection to this place, like I belonged here, and all the events of my life led up to this.

"Here is my cabin, Cabin Twenty. My mother is Hecate, goddess of magic, witchcraft, and crossroads," Neil said. As Lance was examining the walls, which had wierd engravings etched upon it, he knocked a peice of a brick loose.

"No!" Neil dived forward to catch it. For a terrible moment, I felt paralyzed, despite not knowing what the strange rock would do to cause such a reaction. "Thank the gods," Neil sighed after he caught it. "If that fell on the ground and broke, there would either be a minor explosion or something worse." I backed up from the cabin.

"Woah, girl, relax, it's never happened before, and such a small peice wouldn't cause that much damage," Neil jokingly amended, noticing my reaction.

"Okay, I'll trust you on this one, but next time a building's got a death trap built into it, warn my clumsy brother before he kills all of it," I replied.

After bypassing the death traps that made up the outer cabin wall, we went inside. There was a eerily green glow in the cabin, and the air was suffused with a thick, hazy fog that launched me into a fit of coughs. The cabin was mostly empty, except for a guy playing with some kind of flashing lights and a girl reading a book full of gibbersish. Why not? I thought, it's a magic goddess's kids, right?

"Felicia, Lance, this is Lou Ellen, my head counselor; Lou Ellen, these are Lance and Felicia. Lou Ellen looked up.  "What's that you're reading?"  I asked, as my curiosity got the better of me.

"A passage describing the effects of magic on weapons and other things that could help the camp." She said, and resumed reading.

"Oookay, moving on before he bores you on a lecture on the pricipals of magic." Neil cut in.

"I heard that!"

We left his cabin, and went to the other cabins. "There were originally twelve cabins, one for each Olympian god, but after the Second Tital War, we built eight more. This is the Hermes Cabin, where you will stay for a while until your parent claims you.  He should claim you soon, seeing as how you're already overdue.  Anyway, let's go to the climbing wall."

We went to a black cliff, which happened to be the source of a lot of noise. There were screams from people getting burned, and rumbleing of the cliff and its spewing out of lava. It looked amazing. "Can I try that now? Please?"

Lance immediately countered, "Bad idea, you haven't had any training yet, I don't want you falling and breaking your neck. Or getting melted by lava."

"Sure, go ahead, you might want to try it on rumble mode first though," Neil said, oblivious to the look of outrage Lance was giving him.

"But-"

"It's okay, the Apollo kids serve as the camp medics, they're very skilled." Neil assured him.

Lance didn't appear convinced, but remained quiet. Great, let's see if I can make it too he top without getting killed.  It seemed like a good challenge. I began climbing up, scrambling along the hand holds, when suddenly the cliff rumbled. I nearly lost my holding. That was... exhilarating! I kept going, despite being drenched with sweat from my exertion and the heat from the lava below. ''At least there isn't any lava pouring down for me to dodge. I wonder how anyone could do that.'' Finally I made it to the top. I yelled, "How do I get down!"

"Just climb back down!" Neil shouted back.

Uh-oh. Looking down the cliff, I realized it was a lot higher up. Coming up was easy, since I didn't have to look down, but now, my stomach was becoming queasy. "I can't!" I shouted.

"Keep trying!"

I put a foot on a ledge, and began lowering myself down. Then I threw up. My vision spotted, and my hands grew weak.

Finally, I fell.

Before blacking out, I thought: Lance is going to have a field day about my recklessness.