DAISY || P. Jackson x Fem O/C

1.9 | 𝐎𝐦𝐥 𝐒𝐡𝐞'𝐬 𝐀𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐓𝐫𝐲𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨 𝐃𝐢𝐞 𝐚𝐭 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐏𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐭-

 ~⚡~{[CHAPTER NINE]}~⚡~

[The Underworld and It's Master]

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, 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 Fields of Asphodel looked like.

"I can't see over anyone, and I'm tired," Daisy whined. "Can someone carry me?"

"No, you just told Crusty that you're not a little girl, so act like it! Stop weighing us down! As far as I recall, you haven't helped at all so far, so I'd stop whining if I were you." Percy snapped at her, and she glared at him. She did look unusually pale and exhausted, but they had been on the road for days with barely anything to eat or drink, so Percy brushed it off without a second thought. Annabeth put a hand on his shoulder.

"Percy, we know you're stressed, but really, there's no reason to be so mean, I-"

"I'm not! I'm just telling the truth, Annabeth!" Percy interrupted. Grover shifted uncomfortably, and Annabeth fell silent.

The black grass had been trampled by aeons of dead feet. A warm, moist wind blew like the breath of a swamp. Black trees – Grover told them they were poplars – grew in clumps here and there. The cavern ceiling was so high above them it might've been a bank of storm clouds, except for the stalactites, which glowed faint grey and looked wickedly pointed. Daisy tried not to imagine they'd fall on them at any moment, but dotted around the fields were several that had fallen and impaled themselves in the black grass. She guess the dead didn't have to worry about little hazards like being speared by stalactites the size of booster rockets. Annabeth, Grover, Daisy and Percy tried to blend into the crowd, keeping an eye out for security ghouls. She 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, 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. They 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 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 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, Daisy could see people being chased by hellhounds, burned at the stake, forced to run naked through cactus patches or listen to opera music. She could just make out a tiny hill, with the ant-size figure of Sisyphus struggling to move his boulder to the top. And she saw worse tortures, too – things she didn't want to describe. The line coming from the right side of the judgment pavilion was much better. This one led down towards 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 neighbourhoods of beautiful houses from every time period in history, Roman villas and mediaeval castles and Victorian mansions. Silver and gold flowers bloomed on the lawns. The grass rippled in rainbow colours. 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. Immediately Daisy knew that's where she wanted to go when she died.