𝙎𝙤𝙪𝙡𝙨 𝘿𝙤𝙣'𝙩 𝙈𝙚𝙚𝙩 𝙗𝙮 𝘼𝙘𝙘𝙞𝙙𝙚𝙣𝙩 - 𝙋. 𝙅𝙖𝙘𝙠𝙨𝙤𝙣

Father-daughter bonding time

"I'm so good at telling lies
That came from my mothers side."

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. 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 they were poplars – grew in clumps here and there. The cavern ceiling was so high above 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. The dead didn't have to worry about little hazards like being speared by stalactites the size of booster rockets.

The four tried to blend into the crowd, keeping an eye out for security ghouls. Their faces shimmered. They all looked slightly angry or confused. They would 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 maingates 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 pathtowards 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, Novalie could see people being chased by hellhounds, burned at the stake, forced to run naked through cactus patches or listen to opera music. Novalie 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 couldn't even describe.

The line coming from the right side of the judgment pavilion was much better. That 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 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 rainbow colors. They 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.

"That's what it's all about," Annabeth said. "That's the place for heroes."

But Novalie was busy thinking of how few people there were in Elysium, how tiny it was compared to Asphodel or even Punishment. So few people did good in their lives. It was depressing.

They left the judgment pavilion and moved deeper into Asphodel. It got darker. The colors faded from their clothes. The crowds of chattering spirits began to thin.