a story as endless as the ocean . pjo / allie jackson

1.8 family reunions suck

1.8 My Little Chat With Hades Goes Just About As Well As You'd Expect (Badly)

First, I want you to imagine the largest concert crowd you've ever seen— Madison Square Garden type, or AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, the NFL stadium with the most seats, combined with a rowdy crowd that was just told that something bad happened.

Now imagine a field a million times that big, packed with people. The electricity has gone out, and there is no noise, no light, no fans waving colored flags and signs and and pom-poms. Something tragic has happened. Whispering masses of people are just milling around in the shadows, waiting for a game or concert that will never start.

If you can picture that, you have a pretty good idea of what the Fields of Asphodel looked like. Not quite, but the best you're gonna get without seeing it in person.

The black grass had been trampled by eons of dead feet. A warm, moist wind blew like the breath of a swamp. Black trees— poplars, they're called— 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 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.

Luke, Grover, and I tried to blend into the crowd, keeping an eye out for security ghouls and play-acting as zombies. I couldn't help looking for familiar faces among the spirits of Asphodel, but the dead were hard to look at. Their faces shimmer. They all look slightly angry or confused. They will come up to you and speak, but 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-tinted 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. 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 don't want to describe. The images were branded on the inside of my eyelids.

The sound of screams made me shiver and move closer to the boys, who had also shifted closer to me, grim looks on their faces. Luke and I intertwined our fingers again.

The line coming from the right side of the judgment 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 and Victorian mansions. Silver and gold flowers bloomed on the lawns. The grass rippled in beautiful rainbow colors. I could hear laughter and smell delicious scents wafting from it, like barbecue and freshly baked cookies.

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. It was, depressingly, the smallest section of the Underworld.