𝙰𝚗𝚝𝚑𝚘𝚙𝚑𝚒𝚕𝚎: 𝙰𝚜𝚝𝚎𝚛 [𝙿𝙹𝙾 𝚡 𝙷𝙿] (𝟷)

16

LORD OF THE DEAD

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 anyone can picture that, that's a pretty good idea what the Fields 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 said that 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. Dotted around the fields were several that had fallen and impaled themselves in the black grass.

Many felt uneasy at the description.

"Okay. That's a little bit creepy," one of the first-year students muttered out.

The quartet tried to blend in with the crowd, keeping an eye out for security ghouls. Walking through herds of spirits, they couldn't help looking for familiar faces among the spirits of Asphodel, but the dead are hard to look at. Their faces shimmer. It reminded (Name) of the ghosts in Hogwarts, but somehow very different. The spirits all look slightly angry or confused. They will come up to them and speak, but their voices sound like chatter, like bats twittering. Once they realize no one can understand them, they frown and move away. (Name) realized something: They weren't scary at all. They were just sad.

"That's just sad," Luna said with a wistful tone. "They just want people to understand them, but you guys couldn't."

"Well. That's just the way spirits are extremely different than the ghosts in Hogwarts," (Name) shrugged.

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:

JUDGEMENTS FOR ELYSIUM AND ETERNAL DAMNATION

Welcome, Newly Deceased!

(Name) raised a brow and shrugged. She thought that it was kind of nice that they'd put a welcome banner coming from well... Hell?

"That's quite welcoming," Sirius said with the same expression of his daughter on screen. Many others nodded their heads, agreeing with them.

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, they could see people being chased by hellhounds, burned at the stake, forced to run naked through cactus patches or listen to opera music.