¹Pocket Full of Posies, p. jackson

xiii. Pets and Pawns

chapter thirteen
❛ pets and pawns ❜

━━━━━ IMAGINE THE LARGEST concert crowd ever seen, a football field packed with a million fans. After that, picture a field a million times larger than that. Imagine it packed with more people than humanly possible, and that all of the electricity had gone out — no noise, no light, no beach ball bouncing around over the crowd. Instead of cheering and adoring fans, it was whispering masses of people just milling around in the shadows, waiting for all eternity.

        That was the Fields of Asphodel. The black grass had been trampled by eons of dead feet. A warm, moist wind blew like the breath of a swamp. Black trees — she recognized them as poplars and elms — grew in clumps here and there.

        The cavern ceiling was so high above the questers it might've been a bank of storm clouds, except for the stalactites, which glowed a faint grey and looked wickedly pointed. Josephine tried not to imagine they would fall on her at any moment; however, her mind continued to wander as dotted around the fields were several stalactites that had fallen and impaled themselves in the black grass. She guessed the dead didn't have to worry about little hazards — you know, like being spontaneously speared by stalactites the size of booster rockets. They didn't have to worry as they were already dead.

        She, Annabeth, Grover, and Percy tried to blend into the crowd, keeping an eye out for security ghouls as they tried to find their way out. She couldn't help but look for her father or Mrs. Hall among the spirits of Asphodel. She wasn't even sure if either had passed (but deep down, some part of her just knew they were), but even then, the dead were hard to look at. Their faces shimmered when looked at head-on. They all looked slightly angry or confused all the time. They'd come up to her and speak, but their voices sounded like chatter — like bats twittering. Once they realize that Josephine couldn't understand them, they frown and move away.

        That's what made Josephine realize the dead aren't scary, they're just heartbreaking.

        I don't ever want to end up like them, she thought quietly as an elderly man walked through her.

        Then don't, Onesimus said passingly, his voice eager to get away from here. Become something better than just the Field of Asphodel.

        That's easy for you to say, Josephine gripped. You're not the one who sucks at being a daughter of Apollo!

        You don't suck, Onesimus corrected. You just have ... different strengths than your siblings. A different path. Now, hurry! Your answers are near!

        The four questers crept along, following the line of new arrivals that snaked from the main gates towards a black-tented pavilion with a banner that read:

JUDGMENTS FOR ELYSIUM AND ETERNAL DAMNATIONWelcome, 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 towards 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, Josephine could see people being chased by hellhounds, burned at the stake, forced to run naked through cactus patches, or whatever else Hades thought fit for their forever punishment. She could just make out a tiny hill, with the ant-size figure of Sisyphus struggling to move his boulder to the top. And there were worse tortures, too — things she never wanted to live through.