What If?

1. I Fall Into the Pit...On Purpose

I DO NOT own the book or the characters. All I own is the plot line 

Percy was trying to wrap his mind around the Fields of Asphodel. 

It was as if he was at the largest concert he could imagine; a football field packed with millions upon millions of fans. But something had gone wrong. There were no lights, no sound, no beach ball bouncing around. People just milled in silence, whispering, waiting for the main event that would never come. 

Nevermind that the black grass had been trampled by eons of dead feet giving it an even more depressing outlook, or the moist wind that blew reminding him of the breath of a swamp. Black trees—Grover told him they were poplars—grew in clumps and clusters, adding to the depressing aesthetic. 

The cavern ceiling was so high above them it might've been a bank of storm clouds, except for the stalactites, which glowed faint gray and looked wickedly pointed. Percy tried not to imagine that they'd fall on them at any moment but the stalactites dotted around the fields said another story. 

He guessed that the dead didn't have to worry about stalactites the size of rocket boosters. 

Percy, Annabeth, and Grover tried to blend into the crowd, keeping an eye out for security ghouls. Percy couldn't help looking for familiar faces among the spirits of Asphodel, but the dead were hard to look at. Their faces shimmer. They looked angry or slightly confused. They would come up to him and speak, but their voices sounded like bats twittering. Once they realized they he couldn't understand them, they would walk away, dejected. 

The dead weren't scary. They were just sad.

Their group crept along, following the line of new arrivals that snaked from the main gates toward a black-tented pavilion. Waiting for them was a banner that read:

JUDGMENTS FOR ELYSIUM AND ETERNAL DAMNATION

Welcome, Newly Deceased!

Out from 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, Percy could see people being chased by hellhounds, burned at the stake, forced to run naked through cacti patches or forced to listen to opera music. He could just make out a tiny hill, with the ant-sized figure of Sisyphus struggling to move his boulder to the top. And he saw worse tortures, too—things he didn't want to describe.

The line coming from the right side of the judgment pavilion was much better. This one led towards a small valley surround by walls—a gated community, which seemed to be the only happy part of the Underworld. Beyond the security gate were neighborhoods full of beautiful houses from every time period in history; Roman villas and medieval castles and Victorian mansions. Silver and golden flowers bloomed on the lawns; the grass rippled in rainbow colors. Percy could hear the laughter and he could smell barbecue cooking.

Elysium. The places for heroes. 

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 in those three lives, they had achieved Elysium. Immediately Percy knew that's where he wanted to go when he died.

"That's what it's all about," Annabeth said like she was reading his thoughts. "That's the place for heroes."

But Percy thought about how so few people there were in Elysium, how tiny it was compared to the Fields of Asphodel or even the Fields of Punishment. So few people did good in their lives. It was depressing.