A/N: This is a 'clean' version of chapter 11 of the Curse of Lethe, specially for CupcakeQueen816 and any of my readers who are uncomfortable with reading material of a higher rating.

OoOoOoOoOoOoO

XI

THALIA

If it hadn't been for the ledge, Thalia would probably be dead. As it was, she hit the ground hard enough to knock the wind straight out of her. But the fall—maybe twenty feet or so—wasn't deadly. She didn't even seem to have broken any bones, although pain flared through her joints as they absorbed the shock of her landing.

Thank Artemis she still had her teenage body, with its youthful resistance to serious injury. She had a feeling that at her true age, her bones should have been more brittle.

Grassy debris rained down, scattering around her the earth that had crumbled in Percy's Eris-induced landslide. A few feet away, Nico groaned. He and Will had landed in a heap—it looked as though Nico had actually broken Will's fall—and his ankle seemed to have borne the brunt of the impact. His foot was twisted in an awkward angle.

Will rolled to the side and sat up.

'Don't think it's broken,' gasped Nico.

'No,' Will agreed, putting one hand out to feel it. 'A really bad sprain, though. A couple of snapped ligaments.'

He started to concentrate, but Nico knocked his hand away. 'No. You've already stretched your healing powers to the limit. You need to save your energy. Just use—' He stopped and looked blankly around them for Will's supplies.

'My pack's gone,' Will said. 'I think it fell…' He waved his hand at the drop-off.

Thalia sighed. Great.

Will pursed his lips. 'Never mind. I'll improvise.'

While Will set to work fashioning a crutch for Nico out of his jacket and a few of Thalia's arrows, she tried to assess their situation.

They were on a narrow, rocky ledge no more than six feet wide. It was a miracle they'd even hit it instead of tumbling all the way down to the bottom. Thalia couldn't tell how far the cliff extended downwards.

Although they couldn't be that far from the top, it was shrouded in darkness. She couldn't even see three feet up the cliff face. The rock was smooth as bone, with no outcroppings or indents. Unscalable. The only crack in it was a split that started a few inches above her head and ran down vertically, widening into a two-foot gap from her waist down.

Thalia contemplated using her arrows. If she could shove them into the rock face, they might be able to etch a route up. Experimentally, she stabbed one at the rock. It struck with a dull clang that reverberated in her ears like the hunting bells Artemis used to confuse prey—a magical echo that muffled all other sound and dulled the senses of their quarry.

'What in Hades?' she muttered.

The arrow hadn't made even the slightest notch in the black bone. Maybe if she fired it from her bow…except the ledge was too narrow for her to get a good shooting angle.

Thalia gave up the idea. Nico wasn't in any shape to climb, anyway.

She gritted her teeth in frustration.

Will looked up from his work. He'd strapped up Nico's foot and managed to cobble together a thin stick from the shaft of several arrows, held together by strips of leather. Nico leaned on it cautiously. It twisted a little under the strain, but bore his weight nonetheless.

'We need to get back up there,' Nico said. His voice sounded hazy and distorted through the echo of arrow against cliff. 'We left Percy and Annabeth with Eris.'

Thalia decided not to mention that Percy had sent them plunging out of the fight. It was Eris's fault anyway. She looked guiltily at Nico, whom Eris had egged her into attacking. 'That was her strategy, wasn't it? Divide and conquer.'

Would she succeed with Percy and Annabeth, too?

Before, Thalia would have said it was impossible, that no force on earth—or below it—could have made Percy turn on Annabeth. But this new Percy, she wasn't so sure of. He was all the power commanded by the son of a Big Three and none of the heart. Colder, more suspicious—less Seaweed, more Brain, she thought ruefully.

The image of Percy's face, contorted with hatred as he plunged his sword into the ground, blended into an older memory. Another cliff, another fight, a different boy.

The same twisted anger.

Luke's expression gives way to desperation and a softer, pleading look. And then he topples from the cliff—at her hand—and falls, and falls, and falls…

Thalia shook the memory away. It had been nearly a decade ago. Why was she still thinking about it?

Percy, she reminded herself. Percy was supposed to be different. He wasn't supposed to turn hard and angry and traitorous like Luke had.

Artemis would have said, 'What can you expect from men?'

But it was Reyna's voice Thalia heard in her head instead. 'It doesn't matter who hurt or betrayed you. We don't define ourselves by what men do to us, but what we choose to do to ourselves.'

For someone so young, that girl had a lot of wisdom and a yard of guts.

Thalia wondered what Reyna would do if she'd been the one to come down here instead.

A shout from Will brought her back to the present.

'I think this leads somewhere.' He was peering into the narrow opening in the rock face. It was just wide enough for a thin person to crawl through.

It was also the only path with a remote possibility of getting them off this ledge.

'All right,' Thalia said. 'Lead the way.'

OoOoO

It made no sense whatsoever that it should be brighter inside the rock than out on the open ledge. But Thalia had long since given up trying to wrap her mind around the physics of Tartarus.

After they crawled through the gap in the cliff wall, they found themselves in a narrow passageway that widened into a tunnel barely high enough for them to walk upright. The cave walls were coated in a filmy grey substance that bathed them in a hazy light. It was brighter than the inky darkness outside, but also foggier, like they were trudging through industrial smog.

Thalia ran her hand along the wall. It didn't feel like rock. The surface was slick and slimy, and it pulsated beneath her fingers. She pulled her hand away quickly with a hiss of revulsion.

'What is it?' Will asked.

'It's…gross.' She shuddered. 'Feels like we're inside a monster's—'

'Don't,' said Nico darkly. 'For your own sanity, don't follow that thought to its conclusion.'

Will changed the subject. 'Where do you think this leads?'

'Not a clue,' Thalia said. She could no more fathom the geography of Tartarus than she could its physics.

'It feels familiar,' Nico said.

'Reminds me of the Labyrinth,' Will agreed. 'Same twisting tunnels.'

Nico shook his head. 'I think this might be the way I was…' A shiver ran through his body, '…taken.' He swallowed hard. 'By Gaia's forces. To the heart of Tartarus.'

Thalia suppressed a groan. 'Why does that sound ominous?'

'It's not,' Nico said. 'Not a bad thing, I mean. That's the only place the Doors of Death can anchor down here. It's where we'd have to go eventually. Percy and Annabeth—if they survive—will have to get there, too. We just have to hope we'll meet up.'

It sounded like a long shot, but what better idea did they have?

The tunnel sloped downwards, which Nico also declared a good sign. After a while, they heard the sound of running water. Another positive, according to Nico. 'Everything flows to the heart of Tartarus.'

Thalia hoped it might be the Phlegethon, carving an underground path through the rock. Then she decided she was definitely going crazy if she was hoping to meet the River of Fire.

They needed it, though. None of them had been in great shape to begin with, not after the attack of the arai, and the cave smog was clogging up their lungs now, making them labour for every breath.

The trickle of water got louder. An orange glow appeared in the distance, like a lantern on a foggy moor.

Their tunnel opened up into a warmly lit cavern. The ceiling made a low dome several feet above their heads, dotted with glittering amber gemstones. These were embedded along the cavern walls as well, giving it its dim glow. Their tunnel wasn't the only entrance; there were at least eight other openings leading in. Two had streams trickling through, which cut across the cavern. Each divided into two branches. One of the four divided branches merged with one from the other stream to form a single line that snaked around the far edge of the cavern and ran out along a different tunnel. The remaining two streams ran in a parallel, faster flow out another exit.

'Maybe one is the Phlegethon?' But even as she said it, Thalia heard the faint, watery wail of misery that marked a different river.

'The Cocytus,' Nico said grimly. 'And the other is the Lethe.'

They hobbled along the cavern edge, careful to avoid the rivers.

'Which tunnel do we pick, then?' Will asked, peering at the multiple openings in the cavern wall.

'That depends,' said a low, gravelly voice, 'on where you want to go.'

Out of the cavern entrance between the two rivers came a stooped figure shuffling slowly towards them. He moved sluggishly, hunched over a staff that supported his laborious steps.

'Demigods,' he said. 'So…young.'

He was a shrivelled old hunchback with a tiny, withered body. His mottled skin was cut so deep with wrinkles that it resembled a patchwork quilt stitched together by an uneven hand. The loose skin on his face hung revoltingly in a floppy wattle beneath his chin.

'Who are you?' Thalia demanded.

'Oh, you know me,' said the old man. 'Everybody knows me. No one escapes me, in the end.'

He leered at them, revealing three crooked teeth in a maw of diseased gums.

'Stay where you are,' said Nico. 'Not a step closer, old man!'

'Old man?' The old geezer's mouth formed a tight, angry line. His eyes gleamed dangerously, going from milky white to a bloodshot pink.

'I don't like this,' whispered Will.

They backed away quickly towards the nearest tunnel. At least the dude's approach was slow, hampered by his reliance on his staff.

'Old man,' he repeated. 'Let's see how you like old age, young ones.'

The air of the cavern thickened until it felt like they were wading through honey. Thalia had once been in the presence of Kronos when he had manipulated time itself, and it was exactly like the Titan of time was taking control now, with everything slowing to a snail's pace.

Except when she looked at her friends, time also seemed to be speeding up. With each step they took, they seemed to gain ten years. Their faces drooped; lines etched themselves in the corners of their eyes and mouths; their shoulders hunched forward despondently.

Thalia put a hand to her own cheek. Although her movements were sluggish, her skin still felt supple and smooth.

Of course—she couldn't age.

'You're Geras, aren't you?' she said.

The old man kept plodding towards them with a smug, satisfied look on his weather-beaten face.

Nodding slowly, he said, 'Behold my power—no man escapes my scourge.'

Caught in his spell, Will and Nico's bodies were becoming nearly as shrivelled as Geras's. Their mouths hung open listlessly. They seemed incapable of producing coherent speech.

If this kept up, would they age all the way to death?

'Stop!' Thalia cried. She racked her brain for anything she could remember about the god of old age. 'Aren't you—aren't you supposed to be a good god? I mean, that's what the ancient Greeks believed, right? You were supposed to bring fame and excellence to the elderly.'

Geras gave a loud, phlegmy harrumph. 'Once,' he growled. 'Once I was respected, revelled. Once I conferred wisdom and experience along with wrinkles and osteoporosis. My gifts were once coveted as a crown of maturity.'

As he spoke, the ceiling of his cavern came to life to illustrate his words. White-bearded men in togas presided over a court while young courtiers served them fruit and wine. Youths kneeled and kissed the feet of iron-haired grandmothers.

'And then what happened?' Geras waved his hand and the paean to senescence morphed into pitiful scenes of degradation. A decrepit old beggar was spat on while he huddled in the doorway of a building. Children giggled and made faces at a wrinkled old crone as she hobbled laboriously along the sidewalk. Four vacant-eyed octogenarians sat around a bingo table in a drab nursing home, staring listlessly at the game cards in front of them.

'Demoted by gods and mortals alike. Banished and forgotten. Cast down to Tartarus to rot while they celebrated that slut Hebe instead. No honour. No respect.' He glared at Nico, whose hair had gone snow-white by now, but fortunately seemed to have otherwise stopped ageing while Geras focused on Thalia.

Then Geras's sinister, gap-toothed smile returned. 'But I get my revenge, don't I? I wither all, crumbling your bodies to dust, drawing night across your eyes and turning them milky with age. Perhaps you do not respect me. But you will fear me.'

'But we do respect you!' Thalia said quickly. 'If anyone appreciates old age, it's demigods. I mean, think how many of us die young.'

She couldn't even count the number of friends who had fallen before they'd had a chance to grow old. She thought of the gamble they'd taken in coming down here, trying to give Percy that chance. Her mind flitted again to Luke, cut down in the prime of his life. Once, they'd met a demigod in his sixties and marvelled at his longevity. She remembered thinking, what if that could be us, too? What if they'd both had a chance to grow old together, without being dogged by monsters and prophecies?

She'd sidestepped death and ageing, but she sometimes wondered what it might be like if she'd remained mortal. Would she look like Reyna and Annabeth, with their knowledge and experience written across their faces? What would it be like to grow old alongside them?

'Hmph,' Geras said. 'What's your name, girl?'

'Thalia.'

'I knew a Thalia once.' Geras looked slightly less grumpy. 'Daughter of an old friend. Used to be quite fond of her.' His face darkened again. 'But that was before. When I had a place on Olympus. Before everyone decided old age was to be avoided.'

On the ceiling, pictures appeared of middle-aged ladies injecting botox into their faces and rich men undergoing liposuction. Geras looked at them in disgust. 'Mortals are cheating left and right these days—they'd rather tango with Thanatos than come quietly to me.'

One of the men bled out on the operating table, dead in his attempt to regain his youthful physique. Thalia shifted her weight uncomfortably, acutely aware of her own age-defying appearance. Geras didn't seem to have noticed yet that she hadn't turned as decrepit as her companions.

'So they wish to keep their youthful appearances,' Geras sneered. 'But there is plenty more I can steal.' He spread his fingers along the cavern wall and the gemstones embedded in it moved aside to make room for a glowing five-by-five grid. Rosy pink cheeks appeared in one square; in another, a network of dots connected by blindingly white lines.

'Health…' said Geras, 'cognitive ability…vitality…'

Each lit-up square condensed into a gem as Geras spoke. He regarded them with smug satisfaction.

'They're actual qualities,' Thalia said. Horror and fascination flooded her as she stared at the gems in the wall. 'You're taking all of that from people—their health, their minds—' All squirrelled away into his despicable collection, leaving their owners stricken with illness, impotence, and dementia.

'I collect the years of mortal life.' Geras filled a horizontal row with gems and drew his finger across it like he was playing a ghoulish game of bingo. The gems sank into the cavern rock and the line he'd drawn through the squares solidified into a long silver rod.

'What else have I got to entertain me in this infernal pit?' he growled. 'Here at the confluence of Cocytus and Lethe. Bah! If they want old age to be synonymous with misery and senility, that's exactly what they'll get.'

Geras touched his rod to the ceiling. A butterfly cloud blossomed from its end and splattered across the domed surface. The rod transfigured into a remote, which Geras aimed at the ceiling. Above their heads played a video of a girl in a cap and gown walking up the steps to a stage.

'Is that…?'

'A memory, of course,' said Geras. His eyes followed the graduate across the stage, watching her receive her diploma. 'I have an understanding with Mnemosyne. Alzheimer's they call it these days, I believe—such a wonderful affliction.'

With a practised flick, he cast his rod and discarded the memory into the stream on his left, which had to be the Lethe.

'You just—you took someone's memory!'

Geras shrugged. 'They'd wash out to Chaos in the end anyway. All I'm doing is hastening the process along. Sometimes I can even collect from early-onset years. Now those make for great streaming quality.'

Like an expert fisherman, he cast into the Lethe again and reeled in a squirming silver fish. He flung it up to the ceiling and pressed play. This one featured a mother cradling her first child in her arms. Geras fished out another, and another—little moments of their owner's lives, strung together into a stream of experiences. The rapacious grin on his face as he watched the memories play out on his cave screen sickened Thalia. She could just imagine him holed away down here, binge-watching his stolen memory collection like it was a Friends marathon.

Then her mind snagged on the way he reeled in each memory. Geras was pulling against the current.

'Where does the stream lead to?' she asked.

'Chaos, naturally.'

'And you're retrieving the memories from there? You can do that?'

'Of course. I am the son of Nyx herself, you know,' he said loftily. 'And this is my private channel. What's that they call it these days…pirating? High definition streaming, any time I want it.'

An idea began to form in Thalia's head. 'I'll strike a bargain with you,' she said quickly.

Geras snorted. 'What can you possibly have to bargain with me? I'll collect your years one way or another. No mortal can avoid me. You all come to me in the end, and those of you who don't…well, the dead don't bargain either, do they?'

'I'm not mortal.' This was a real gamble. If Geras hadn't caught on yet, he certainly would now, and given his attitude towards age-reduction plastic surgery, Thalia doubted he had much love for the immortally young Hunters. She'd have to keep his attention by dangling something he wanted in front of him instead. She hoped she'd read him right.

Geras squinted at her. 'Curse my eyesight! It's been getting worse by the millennium.' His filmy eyes finally focused on her tiara. 'One of Artemis's infernal Hunters. Cheats, all of you! Never ageing, always evading me. I should have known.' He stamped his rod on the ground in a rage. 'That's why you're not responding to my powers. Well, maybe I can't get at you, but them—' His head turned slowly back to Will and Nico.

'No, wait,' Thalia said firmly. 'You're mad that you'll never get to collect from me. But what if I gave you something?'

'Keep talking.'

'The missing years. The ageing that never happened. What if I offered you those?'

Bingo, she thought, as Geras's eyes sparkled. He was clearly enticed by the idea of collecting a coveted, unreachable prize. She saw the glow of her own immortality reflected in his greedy gaze. It seemed to hang over her like a second skin. There were layers to them: the years of her childhood clung most tightly to her; her six years as a Hunter danced on the surface. Was that what Geras was drooling over now?

It made her skin crawl to think of the memories she could lose to Geras's video collection. But she had a hidden hand up her sleeve, if she could just play her cards right.

'I'll give you a year,' she bargained. 'In return, I want safe passage for me and my friends past your cavern.'

'That will cost more than one year.'

'Two, then.'

'Five.'

Thalia added quickly in her head. 'How about six, then?'

Geras's grin widened. She could see him mentally stripping off six years as a Hunter with his eyes.

'But I want one more thing, then. I want to know how you retrieve memories from Chaos.'

'Planning on putting together your own shows, eh? Just you wait—you'll be addicted to them soon enough.'

Thalia ignored his comment. 'Do we have a deal or not?'

'Deal,' said Geras. He touched his silver rod eagerly to her head.

Thalia ducked away. 'Swear on the Styx first. We pass through and you show me how to retrieve memories.'

'I swear. On all the rivers of Tartarus—oh, all right, Styx included. Safe passage for you lot and the key to memory retrieval. All for the bargain price of six years.' He was practically salivating now in his eagerness.

A deep rumble shook the cavern, sealing their bargain.

Geras pointed his rod at her again. This time, Thalia let him lift the ghostly shade of her years from her. She concentrated hard on feeding him the right ones.

Geras didn't seem to notice anything amiss. The shades he fished off her took the shape of a teenage girl. It was a good thing Thalia hadn't looked all that different at fifteen than she had at twelve. Or maybe Geras was just myopic enough from his days of constantly streaming movies in a darkened cave that he couldn't discern the subtle differences that might have alerted him to the fact that he wasn't extracting what he coveted.

The years lifted from her with a faint whiff of pine. Although Geras was removing them, Thalia felt instead like a mantle was falling over her shoulders. Her body seemed fuller, heavier, and—hang on, was she taller, too?

Geras wound the six Thalia-shades around his rod, then twirled the rod like a baton. The six years went flying like ninja stars and lodged into the cavern walls, six more gemstones in his vast collection. They were the verdant colour of a pine forest. Geras's eyes lingered on them as if he were itching to play the memories right there and then. Fortunately, he remembered to uphold his end of the bargain first.

'You can have this remote,' he said, handing her his rod. It weighed less than she expected, as though it were made of light, or thought. 'Fish as close to the source as you can, or else the buffering takes forever. It's easiest right at the edge of Chaos. Less drag.'

'Would I be able to return the memories to their owner?' She probably should have asked this first.

'Sure. I do it sometimes for kicks. The mortals get so confused when the addled old sundowners come lucid all of a sudden.'

Thalia tried not to let her disgust show.

'Anyway, if it's Chaos you're after, you'll want that tunnel.' He pointed. 'And…' With a careless wave of his free hand, Will and Nico unfroze. Thalia was relieved to see the scourge of age lift gradually from their faces. It was a bizarre reversal of time that would have put Benjamin Button to shame. Even Nico's bunged ankle caught the power of the rewind. He straightened, dropping his makeshift crutch.

Geras retreated into the tunnel between the rivers, probably to check out Thalia's gift in private. There wouldn't be much time before he realised she'd tricked him.

'Come on,' she said, looping her arms through Will and Nico's. 'We gotta get out of here.'

She led them down the tunnel Geras had pointed out.

'Thalia,' Nico gasped as they ran, 'you didn't seriously give him—'

'Of course not.' They were far enough down the tunnel that the orange glow of Geras's cavern was no longer visible behind them. She slowed to a jog. 'Six years as a tree, remember? What good were they ever going to do me?' She pictured Geras's outrage when he found himself staring at a solid pine tree. Serve him right, the old creep.

Will laughed. 'Apollo's hymns, that's brilliant!' He sobered quickly. 'You still look older, though. Not old-old like Geras made us, but like a grown-up.'

Six years, thought Thalia. She'd look twenty-one. Way too old to be Hunter. What was Artemis going to say?

Maybe she'd have to go join Reyna's sister and the Amazons. What would Reyna think of that?

'Never mind that,' she said. It wasn't something she could worry about now. 'We have to find Percy and Annabeth. And I have a feeling that the edge of Chaos is exactly where they'll end up, too.'

OoOoOoOoOoOoO

A/N: Geras is another one of the gods that got a cameo in HoH.

Note to CupcakeQueen816: I'm thrilled you liked the last chapter so much! It was really my baby. Well, that and the next one to come, which will be back on the main story. (Sorry this posting format may be a bit confusing, I wasn't sure how I could do it otherwise, since I didn't want to disrupt the flow of the main story, but also doesn't allow the same content posted twice so I couldn't simply copy the entire story over with only one changed chapter!)