The Little Lightning Girl

54- We Almost Boil The Camp

Adrian's POV

I watched Alana's eyes flick towards me and Maya, watched them fill with alarm and... genuine fear. Unfortunately, the look cost her. Dragons must be smarter than the fairytales said because the shining beast noticed that look and lunged barely a moment later.

If Alana hadn't been gifted, well-trained, and far smarter than the dragon, she'd have been dead. But she managed to roll out of the way, getting her feet back under her with a feline sort of grace and speed. It was a good thing she was fast, because despite its size and overall bulky nature, the dragon was just as quick. In a six-combination move that she'd actually made up, Alana advanced towards the creature's head, slicing with her swords to keep those razor-sharp teeth out of the way. Alana's entire body was probably the length of just one tooth. When Alana finally landed a blow on the dragon's left leg, sparks flew and I realized that the dragon's scales were impenetrable, weapons wouldn't do any good.

I was no expert in reading dragon facial expressions, but it looked mad. All while swiping at my friend with its claws and teeth, the belly of that creature expanded. Drawing in a breath, an enormous breath.

Surely dragons couldn't actually breathe fire, right?

But as smoke started escaping its nostrils, dread curled in my gut. Faster than I'd ever done it before, I called as much water as I could from the creek in the middle of the woods. I didn't have time to wonder what the shouts echoing from that part of the woods meant. I looked to my sister and she nodded. Maya had discovered a talent this summer, one that we'd agreed she would only use in times of need. She aimed her hand towards where the dragon stood and the ground all around the beast began shaking.

All our lives, my family had assumed that I got more of Poseidon-related powers and Maya got more Athena-related ones. This summer, while in a bigger fight with each other than we'd ever gotten in, I'd found the ground around my feet cracking and shaking. It made sense that the power hadn't surfaced before, I doubted my generally easy-going sister had ever been so angry in her life before then and apparently that was what it took. People remembered that Poseidon was the god of the ocean, rarely did they recall that causing earthquakes was also part of his repertoire. As soon as she'd realized what was happening, fear replaced anger and the ground stilled. But over the past few months, slowly, she'd been learning how to control it. It was still dangerous and unpredictable, so we'd agreed that she would only use it if we were desperate.

A dragon attacking our best friend certainly qualified as "desperate."

We must have forgotten to inform Alana of this new development, because as soon as the earth beneath her feet starting moving, cracking and crumbling, the girl shot thirty feet up into the air, her fear more directed at the ground than the dragon. The collapsing ground made the dragon's right front half sink into a deep, deep hole, and when debris fell in around his leg he was effectively pinned in place.

A thousand gallons of creek water smashed through the trees into the clearing and began circling around the dragon, winding up and up, surrounding his limbs, his wings, then his head just as a stream of white-hot flame burst from his throat.

I clearly hadn't thought about the science that happens when cold water meets blazing fire. Blistering, boiling steam erupted from the tornado of water around the dragon. It would have filled the forest, would have burned, maybe even killed other demigods in the surrounding area. But the steam met with a wall of hard air that encircled the water and dragon. I jerked my chin to see Alana, still floating high above the ground, gritting her teeth as she held that wall and prevented that boiling steam from going anywhere but back to the dragon. The beast thrashed its head at the steam, but I doubted that would kill him.