My story | PJO x male reader

Chapter 38: Welcome to Hell!

We followed Charon through the crowd of spirits, who started grabbing at our clothes like the wind. They were whispering but I couldn't hear anything. Charon simply shoved the ghosts out of the way, grumbling. "Freeloaders.

He took us into an elevator, which was already crowded with spirits, each one holding a green boarding pass. Following us, were two spirits, trying to sneak in, which Charon quickly shoved back into the lobby.
"Right. Now, no one gets any ideas while I'm gone," he announced to the waiting room. "And if anyone moves the dial off my easy-listening station again, I'll make sure you're here for another thousand years. Understand?"
He shut the doors. He put a key card into a slot in the elevator panel and we started to descend.

"What happens to the spirits waiting in the lobby?" Annabeth asked.
"Nothing," Charon said.
"For how long?"
"Forever, or until I'm feeling generous."
"Oh," she said. "That's... fair."
Charon raised an eyebrow. "Whoever said death was fair, young kids? Wait until it's your turn. You'll die soon enough, where you're going." I really felt like punching him right now, but I didn't feel like meeting my friends in the Underworld as a spirit.
"We'll get out alive," Percy said.
"Ha."
I stumbled a little as I got a dizzy feeling. We weren't going down anymore, but forward. The air turned misty. Spirits around us started changing shape. Their modern clothes flickered, turning into gray hooded robes. The floor of the elevator began swaying.
I closed my eyes and shook my head trying to get the feeling to stop. After a few moments, it did. When I opened my eyes, Charon's suit had been replaced by a long black dove. His glasses were gone. Where his eyes should have been were empty sockets—like Ares's eyes, except there was no fire in Charon's eyes. Only night, death, and despair.

He caught Percy staring at him. "Well?"
"Nothing," Percy said.
I thought he was smiling or grinning, but he wasn't. The flesh of his face was becoming transparent, letting me see straight through to his skull.
I can't wait until this quest is over.
The floor kept swaying.
Grover said, "I think I'm getting seasick." I had to agree with him.
I blinked again, the elevator changed into a wooded barge. Charon was poling us across a dark, oily river, swirling with bones, dead fish, and other, stranger things— plastic dolls, crushed carnations, toy cars.
I felt Annabeth grab my wrist. "The River Styx, Annabeth murmured. "It's so..."
"Polluted," Charon said. "For thousands of years, you humans have been throwing in everything as you come across—hopes, dreams, wishes that never came true. Irresponsible waste management, if you ask me."
I think the insanity of the world hit me right then. I was now floating on the River Styx, watching broken hopes and dreams flow by and I was surrounded by dead people. I got lightheaded all of a sudden. I didn't stumble or anything but it was just... insane.

Mist was raising off the water. Above us, was a ceiling of stalactites that I could barely see through the mist. Ahead, the far shore glimmered with greenish light, like the color of a poisoned leaf.

I slipped my hand into Annabeth's. I needed to know somebody else was here and not just the deceased. I closed my eyes and muttered a prayer to my mother. Not like it mattered. Down here... we're in his domain. No amount of prayers is going to help us. At that realization, I could practically feel my entire body tighten. My chest, my throat. It even felt like my shoes were tightening.

I opened my eyes to see the shoreline of the Underworld come into view. Uneven rocks and black sand made their way inland to about a hundred yards before stopping at the base of a high stone wall, which stretched in either direction as far as we could see.

I heard a deep growl echo around the cavern. "FOOD!!!!" Ok, that's not human.
"Old Three-face is hungry," Charon said. Yup, not human. His smile turned skeletal in the greenish light. "Bad luck for you, godlings."

The bottom of the boat slid onto the black sand. The dead began to disembark. A woman holding a little girl's hand. An old man and an old woman hobbling along arm in arm. A boy no older than us, shuffling silently along in his gray robe.
Charon said, "I'd wish you luck, mate, but there isn't any down here. Mind you, don't forget to mention my pay raise."

He counted our golden coins into his pouch, then took up his pole. He warbled something that sounded like a Barry Manilow song as he ferried the empty barge back across the river.
We followed the spirits up a well-worn path, my grip on Annabeth tight the entire time.

I really wasn't sure what I was expecting— Pearly gates or a giant black portcullis, or something. But the entrance to the underworld looked like TSA mixed with... depression.

There were three separate entrances under a giant black archway that said YOU ARE NOW ENTERING EREBUS. Each entrance had a pass-through metal detector with security cameras mounted on top. Beyond this, we're tollbooths manned by black-robes ghouls like Charon.
"FOOD!!" The howling was getting louder, but I still couldn't see the giant three-headed dog. That put me more on edge than not seeing him.

The dead queued up in the three lines, two marked ATTENDANT ON DUTY, and one marked EZ DEATH. The EZ DEATH line was moving right along. The other two were crawling.
"What do you figure?" Percy asked us.
"The fast line must go straight to the Asphodel Fields," she said. "No contest. They don't want to risk judgment from the court, because it might go against them."
"There's a court for dead people?" I said, slightly laughing.
"Yeah. Three judges. They switch around who sits on the bench. King Minos, Thomas Jefferson, Shakespeare— people like that. Sometimes they look at a life and decide that person needs a special reward—the Fields of Elysium. Sometimes they decide on punishment. But most people, well, they just lived. Nothing special, good or bad. So they go to the Asphodel Fields."
"And do what?" Percy asked.
Grover said, "Imagine standing in a wheat field in Kansas. Forever."
"Better than what we're about to do," I said.
"Harsh." Percy summed up.
"Not as harsh as that," Grover muttered. "Look."
A couple of black-robbed ghouls had pulled aside one spirit and were frisking him at the security desk.
"He's that preacher who made the news, remember?" Grover asked.
"The one you guys told me about?" I asked. They nodded.
Percy and Grover told me about this one guy who'd raised millions of dollars for orphanages and then got caught spending said money on stuff for his mansion, like gold-played toilet seats and an indoor putt-putt golf course. He died in a police chase when his "Lamborghini for the Lord" went off a cliff.
Percy said, "What're they doing to him?"
"Special punishment from Hades," Grover guessed. "The really bad people get his personal attention as soon as they arrive. The fur—the Kindly Ones will set up eternal torture for him."
The thought of the Furies made me instinctively look down at my necklace. It was a hawk.
I tried to take my mind off of them. "But if he's a preacher," I said, "and he believes in a different hell..."
Grover shrugged. "Who says he's seeing this place the way we're seeing it? Humans see what they want to see. You're very stubborn—we, persistent, that way."
"Nice save," I whispered to him.

We got closer to the gates. The howling was so loud that it shook the ground at my feet, but I still couldn't see the source.
Then, the green mist shimmered about fifty feet in front of us. Standing just where the path split into three lanes was an enormous shadowy monster.
I hadn't seen it before because it was half transparent, like the dead. Until it moved, it blended with whatever was behind it. Only its eyes and teeth looked solid.

And it was staring straight at me.