Ouch... this was a really short chapter. But I can't post for a long time (I think) because I'm going to a sleep away camp that has strict Internet rules (no going on unless you have staff supervision). I'm not sure whether they'll let me on Fanfiction, but if they do, I think that you can expect the chapter next week or so (I'll be there for about three... I think). Anyways, happy reading! PLEASE REVIEW! XD XD!

Chapter IV

Percy

I have to admit, that was totally unexpected. Even the crowd was stunned for a moment as they surveyed the two collapsed demigods.

The only difference was that Luke was still conscious but in desperate pain, and Thalia was unconscious and in desperate pain—if not more. So it's obvious who had the better bargain. As much as I now despised him, I'd sooner be Luke than Thalia, lying there helplessly on the ground while she bled to death.

I thrashed even harder against the confines of the guy's arms. "Let me go!"

His face was expressionless as he kept on holding on to me. "I told you," he growled, "time for you to fight later… after the girl dies."

"What?" That statement just made me wriggle harder.

Luke had apparently managed to get over his confusion and staggered up, his right hand flopping uselessly by his side. Grimacing, he stumbled over to his sword, the newly re-forged Backbiter. Just the sight of the sword filled me with rage, but there was no water near me—or, for that face, within five hundred miles of Mummy Mountain. I was sure, that, while Kronos and this Apophis dude neglected to make our prison magic-proof and not disarming us, they had drained all the water from the five hundred mile radius.

Luke grasped Backbiter with his left hand. As soon as he touched the evil weapon, the crowd erupted in cheers and stomps: "Kill her! Kill her! Kill her!"

It did nothing to improve my mood. But I saw something that gave me a flicker of hope. Was it just my imagination, or did Thalia twitch a little bit?

"Bah!" somebody screamed from the stands. Every person and monster turned towards the source of the voice. It belonged to somebody… or something that I couldn't see.

"Just kill her already and be done with it!" the voice said impatiently. "Then, we will be rid of one of the four that stand in our way and you can deal with the boy next, Castellan!"

Luke flinched. "Yes, sir!"

What made him so scared of the voice, I didn't know at that time, but it didn't sound so great. It sounded even harsher than Kronos's, as if he had a lion claw his vocal cords. In short, it was absolutely terrifying, so I guess that I could understand Luke's nervousness. Blast what I said before.

Luke strode over to Thalia and raised his sword, the blade wickedly winking in the open torchlight. But he hesitated. One second, two seconds. One minute.

"Castellan!"

Luke was beaded with sweat, even though it was icy cold in the arena. He appeared to shut his eyes and brought the sword down. I averted my eyes as I heard the sickening thump. The sound of a certain sword connecting with a body.

Thalia Grace, as it seemed, was dead.

But there was something wrong. The stadium was deadly silent. There was a single cry of outrage, and then the whole arena exploded into chaos.

I opened my eyes a crack and found that Thalia had completely disappeared. In fact, instead of Backbiter hitting the intended target of the daughter of Zeus, it had taken flight and hit a Laistrygonian giant. Needless to say, the monster had evaporated into dust.

But there was one problem. When the dust cleared, I swept the arena for any sign of the blue-eyed daughter of Zeus and found… nada. Nothing. Empty air as if Thalia had never existed.

"You vaporized her!" a delighted voice called from some obscure place in the stadium spectators.

"Don't be ridiculous, Allen," somebody else called. "Demigods can't be vaporized, not even the weakest child of the dumbest minor god! Much less a child of the Big Three, even lesser of a child of the king of the gods!"

"But she isn't there," Allen dubiously said. "She isn't—"

"Quite the contrary," a voice snarled from one of the balconies. I blinked and whipped towards the source of the voice.

Thalia was still deathly pale, but she wasn't… dead, obviously. Unless a dead corpse could talk and walk and have a beating heart.

"Thalia!" I called, finally kicking myself free from the grasp of the strange guy. She dropped down from the balcony, but as soon as she gave me a feral grin, I knew that something was wrong. There was something different…her eyes. Her eyes, instead of being electric blue, were startling midnight black. They were like tiny black holes. This wasn't the real Thalia. The real Thalia, as I found out was locked in the grasp of the monster, Kampê. She was conscious now, and desperately trying to free herself from the monster. Her wound had been healed, though.

"And it's time for you to die!" the fake Thalia smiled. I didn't even have time to fumble for Riptide, dented as it was. In a flash, I felt the tip of a sword slice my arm open. The sight of my blood, warm and cold at the same time, made me woozy.

"Who…who are you?" I managed. "What kind of crazy person are you?"

The real Thalia yelled, "Don't listen to her, Percy! She's—"

Her mouth was clamped shut by Kampê, and I would never know what she was going to tell me.

"No," the fake Thalia purred, "don't listen to her."

"And why should I trust you after you sliced my arm open?" I faintly demanded. My vision was creeping towards blackness. That wasn't a good thing. I didn't want to be pulled into the first stages of unconsciousness.

"Ha!" she snapped, losing her calm demeanor at once. "You don't know who you're facing, boy!"

The real Thalia nodded her head empathetically, willing me to ask who the girl was.

"That's true," I ground out. "I don't know who you are, so who are you?"

"Now we're getting somewhere," she muttered. Luke, from the actual fighting ring, retched, and said, "Why the Hades are you here?"

The same horrible grating voice rose from the spectators: "Silence!"

The girl continued as if nothing had happened. "I'm Crystal," she said, "daughter of Thanatos, reaper of the souls."

Thalia pounded Kampê's scaly forearm and managed to spit out, "And you're an absolute traitor, even worse than Luke!"

"Why do you…" I trailed off, noticing the distinct similarity between Crystal and Thalia.

Crystal didn't answer, just glared at me for asking such a question. As if it would do anybody any harm. Thanatos, the reaper of the souls… why did that name strike a bell in my head? Of course, it was not necessarily that I met Thanatos in person. "Hey, I remember him—uh, your dad!" I brightly said. "He was the guy who got tied up or something by Sisyphus, right?"

Crystal flipped her sword, which I identified as some sort of silvery metal I've never seen before. "Watch your mouth, Jackson. But yes, he's the one. Got tricked by Sisyphus."

I recalled the old man with the potbelly from when we saw him in the Underworld.

Luke impatiently called up, "Are we going to proceed with the second fight already? Or am I just going to stand here all day, waiting for my broken wrist to ferry me into unconsciousness?"

He shot a glance at Thalia, who stopped thrashing for a moment to stare stonily back.

"And of course," Crystal said with a sly smile, "I'm sure that Luke and Thalia remember our encounter from a couple years ago, don't we?"

"Don't even remind me," Luke grumbled. Thalia was making muffled noises from behind Kampê's hand, and I would bet Riptide that she was screaming every foul name she could think of at Crystal. It was all she could do to not make a very nasty hand gesture at Crystal.

I started to say something, but Thalia lost it and in a split second, Kampê went flying to land in the middle of the fighting ring, sending up an impressive plume of dust. Growling, she righted herself and jumped on her scaly dragon legs to imprison Thalia again. She was too late.

Did I mention before that I didn't really want Thalia as an enemy once she literally sent Kampê flying across the whole stadium with electricity as soon as the monster got within ten feet of her?

I gathered my wits, drew Riptide, and hacked at Crystal, who easily parried. But now, she had an enraged look-alike named "Thalia" on her trail. They started—or more accurately, Thalia started chasing after Crystal. They were literally scrambling over the heads of monsters and demigods and giving those who were unfortunate enough to be stepped on a brain seizure.

I watched, amused as Luke ducked to avoid being hit by Crystal's Nike sneakers as she jumped into the fighting ring, Thalia close behind her. He was then spun dizzy by the fact that Thalia was chasing Crystal around the son of Hermes.

"This is even more exciting and suspenseful!" the same girl who had said that Luke's fight with Thalia had been "suspenseful" gushed. She seemed to like the word "suspenseful" a lot.

"Luke Castellan, you dolt!" the raspy voice screamed. "Stop them!"

Luke's eyes were spinning in his sockets and he didn't seem to register the fact that his boss had told him to start chasing two insane girls that were running around the stadium. I wondered if he could get vertigo.

I ran down into the ring myself, ignoring the cries of "Stop!" and "Hey, kid, your turn will come as soon as I get a lemon meringue pie in your face!". It's rather wonderful to know how many people actually care for you in the world.

But as soon as I jumped into the ring, I got trampled underfoot by Crystal and Thalia. So much for being helpful; they were more crazed than a pack of water buffaloes on a sugar high.

Groaning, I rubbed my head and started chasing after Thalia, screaming my lungs out, trying to tell her to stop. I wondered what Poseidon, Annabeth, and Hazel would make of this situation as I got knocked one way by Crystal's beams of dark energy and the other by Thalia's electric shocks. To make a long story short, Annabeth and Hazel would have definitely started giving me a lecture on the spot. I was now positive that Hera was delighted that I was being harassed by her archenemy and a daughter of the god who was tricked by a mere mortal.

"Um, Percy!" a voice called from the stands. The guy in leather armor had brought in Nico and Jay. Nico's eyes flitted at the remarkable scene. "Why exactly is Thalia apparently devoid of reason and is chasing her clone?"

I groaned as I got spun around by Crystal.

"Never mind. I see that you're… preoccupied at the moment," Nico shouted.

"A little help here?" I yelled back.

"I can't escape," Nico said, frustrated. Jay was watching the scene with icy eyes.

I managed to duck as a spidery beam of blue electricity shot past where my head was a millisecond before.

"Stop it!" the evil voice thundered. Willingly or not, Thalia froze in place (I'm guessing unwillingly) but Crystal was free to move about. I tested my limbs and found out that I, at least, could move as well. But with Thalia frozen there like a spider in hardened amber… well, let's just say that things would not turn out all right for her.

"Now that we're settled," the voice spat, "kill her."

"No!" Nico and I screamed at the same time.

"I'm glad that you're so willing to help me," Thalia acidly said. She hadn't lost the power of talking, it seems. I didn't know whether that was a good thing or a bad thing. On one hand, she couldn't move, so if she cast a spell of whatever sort, it could land anywhere in the stadium. On the other hand, if she still had the capability of speech… well, better alive than dead.

I thought about the book, Eragon, which I had been forced to read in school. If only you could just say, "Brisingr!" and a fire would leap up and incinerate everybody on the spot. Sadly, that wasn't real, even though… ah, you get the idea. If you just said the word "fire", amsiner, it would just produce a fire that you can manipulate and stuff like that. Only if you had the drastic power to make the flames flare up, using the word amsiner would be about as of use against a thousand-plus nasties in the stadium as a chip of ice would. Which none of us, not even Nico (who, by the way, is totally awesome with fire spells—come to think of it, I didn't know why he didn't melt Thalia's iceberg…), had mastered yet. So unfair!

I started running through different spells in my head. Jorst wouldn't work (just how effective is a plain of grass against a whole army?). Neither would feinstanum (I mean, stones. Really?). I was still pondering over what I would have done in Thalia's situation when she said, "Ewan ji hunasun amsiner!"

Wave of liquid fire? Just where exactly was she going? You can't make "liquid fire" unless…

Oh, gods. Æther. The substance that mortals believe is not real, but the ancients were right. It sort of fills a fraction of the universe, but when called upon, is extremely lethal to your enemies. And it usually leaves you right about to drop dead when you summon it.

"Thalia Grace, you idiot!" Crystal screeched. "Just what exactly were you thinking when you summoned æther? You've killed all of us!"

Thalia kept silent, her brow furrowed, concentrating on the spell to make sure it didn't go amiss. A minute passed. Two minutes.

Just when I thought that the spell had failed, Thalia's eyes rolled back in her head and she froze, obviously held in place by the spell that the raspy voice had uttered, yet unconscious. There was an ominous creaking sound. The stone and marble roof turned cherry-red. I had just the sense to drag Thalia out of the way and jump for cover (a.k.a. outside with Nico and Jay) as the small, seemingly harmless golf-sized ball zoomed towards the ground. Crystal leaped and snatched Luke and had the nerve to follow us as the small, molten, brightly gleaming ball of æther hit the exact center of the stadium.