Percy Jackson x Male Reader The Lightning Thief

I Make A Sacrifice

Y/n's POV

Imagine the largest concert crowd you've ever seen, a football field packed with a million fans.

Now imagine a field a million times that big, people squished together, and everyone is completely quiet. No sounds, no light, no beach ball bouncing around over the crowd. Something tragic has happened backstage. Whispering masses of people are just milling around in the shadows, waiting for a concert that will never start.

If you can imagine that, you have a pretty good image of the Fields of Asphodel. The black grass had been collapsed upon by the feet of the dead for millennia. A thick humid air held over the place like a blanket, like the feeling of a swamp. Black trees grew in clumps here and there in splotches.

Annabeth, Grover, Percy, and I tried to blend in with the masses, keeping an eye out for security ghouls. I couldn't help looking for familiar faces among the spirits of Asphodel, but it was hard to look at the ghosts. Their faces phased in and out, and they all looked slightly irritated and off kilter. but their voices sounded like chatter, like bats twittering. Once they realize you can't understand them they shake their head and hobble away.

The dead aren't all that frightening, just a bit depressed.

We crept along, following the line of new arrivals that snaked from the main gates toward a black-tented pavilion with a banner that read: JUDGEMENT FOR ELYSIUM AND ETERNAL DAMNATION, WELCOME NEWLY DECEASED!

Out the back of the tent came two much smaller lines.

To the left, spirits flanked by security ghouls were marched down a rock path toward the Fields of Punishment, which glowed and smoke in the distance, a vast, cracked wasteland with river of lava and minefields and mules of barbed wire separating the different torture areas. Even from far away, I could see people being chased by hellhound, burned at the stake, forced to run naked through cactus patches or listen to opera music. I could just make out a tiny hill, with the ant-size figure of Sisyphus struggling to move his boulder to the top. But that was hardly the worst torture I saw before me. Things I could hardly ever put to words, or ever desire to try in the first place.

The line coming from the right side of the judgement pavilion was much better. This one led down toward a small valley surrounded by walls-a gated community, which seemed to be the only happy part of the Underworld. Beyond the security gate were neighborhoods of beautiful houses from every time period in history. Roman villas, and medieval castles (if I died and got in there, I was definitely demanding my own private castle), and Victorian mansions. Silver and gold flowers bloomed on the lawns. The grass rippled in rainbow colors. I could hear laughter and smell barbecue cooking.

Elysium.

In the middle of that valley was a glittering blue lake, with three small islands like a vacation resort in the Bahamas. The Isles of the Blest, for people who had chosen to be reborn three times, and three times achieved Elysium. I mean I was never that much of an over achiever, but that would be a pretty cool place to spend all of eternity.

"That's what it's all about," Annabeth said, like she was reading my thoughts. "That's the place for heroes."

It made me smile, that even the darkest places in the world, still had a side of light to it. But as we continued on an unconscious thought filled my mind, echoing through my head. 'I wonder if my dad is in there.'

I shook it off as we continued walking, and tried to block out the thought. As much as I yearned to see him one more time, I knew it would be impossible, I couldn't let myself hope for that chance.

We left the judgment pavilion and moved deeper into the Asphodel Fields. It got darker. The colors faded from our clothes. The crowds of chattering spirits began to thin.