Death Girl || Leo Valdez (RTB)

WE FIND OUT THE TRUTH, SORT OF

19. WE FIND OUT THE TRUTH, SORT OF

Summer looked at her lap, avoiding eye contact.

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

"Football?" Ron asked.

"Think of a packed Quidditch pitch." Summer told him.

Now imagine a field a million times that big, packed with people, and imagine the electricity has gone out, and there is no noise, 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 picture that, you have a pretty good idea what the Field of Asphodel looked like. The black grass had been trampled by eons of dead feet. A warm, moist wind blew like the breath of a swamp. Black trees--Grover told me they were poplars--grew in clumps here and there.

The cavern ceiling was so high above us, it might've been a bank of storm clouds, except for the stalactites, which glowed faint grey and looked wickedly pointed. I tried not to imagine if they'd fall on us at any moment, but dotted around the fields were several that had fallen and impaled themselves in the black grass. I guess the dead didn't have to worry about little hazards like being speared by stalactites the size of booster rockets.

Annabeth, Grover and I tried to blend in with the crowd, keeping an eye out for security ghouls. Summer blended in perfectly though, her long black hair bung like curtains in front of her face, her face too pale for any kid her age. Her eyes were dark with the bags under them. The only way I knew she was alive, was because she had my hand in a death grip and her eyes were full of guilt and fear.

"You're acting weird," Reyna stated. "You never get scared."

Summer still avoided eye contact.

I couldn't help looking for familiar faces among the spirits of Asphodel, but the dead are hard to look at. Their faces shimmer. They all look slightly angry or confused. They will come up to you and speak, bu their voices sound like chatter, like bats twittering. Once they realize you can't understand them they frown and move away.

The dead aren't scary. They're just sad.

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:

JUDGMENTS 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 rocky path toward the Fields of Punishment. Which glowed and smoked in the distance, a vast, cracked wasteland with rivers of lava and minefields and miles of barbed wire separating the different torture areas. Even from far away, I could see people being chased by hellhounds, burned at the stake, forced to run naked through cactus patches or listen to opera music.

Everyone glanced at Hades.

"Running naked through cactus patches?" Hermes asked.

"Listen to opera?"

Hades shrugged.

I could just make out a tiny hill, with the ant-size figure of Sisyphus struggling to move his boulder to the top. And I saw worse tortures, too--things I didn't want to describe.

I covered Summer's eyes so she wouldn't have to see those horrid things.

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 made from every time period in history. Roman villas and medieval castles 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.