The Cult of Dionysus

Callida

The Underworld is huge. I'm reminded of being in the ocean, looking at Silenus's island. It had seemed so close by, but the swim was much farther than I thought. It's the same with the Underworld. I look at the barbed wire wall of Asphodel and think to myself, It'll take me five minutes to walk there, and then it takes me thirty. And that's the northern wall. I need to get to the southwestern one.

I make the decision to cut through the fields, rather than walk around the entire wall. Sure, it's ten times faster, but oh boy does it feel like total schist.

Every foot of the fields is covered in lost souls. Where there aren't any dead people, there are enormous black poplar trees. The trees seem to come out of nowhere in between the spirits. Multiple times, I push past a ghost and almost face-plant into a tree.

Amber and Giuseppe also seem a lot more lost in the fields. I have to hold their hands even tighter than before, because if I let go, they immediately become a soul, wandering aimlessly.

It's absolutely horrifying.

I remember the conversation I had with Leo the night before he died. I told him I didn't want to be a lost soul in Asphodel. They wander around for eternity, thinking of the things they should've done or said. Now I'm actually here, and the reality is a lot more terrifying than I thought. I'd rather end up in the Fields of Punishment than here.

My mind starts wandering. Hades wants me to deal with some problem in Elysium. Of course, Leo is going to be in Elysium. He sacrificed his life to save the world. I wonder if he'll even want to leave. Oh, gods, what if he doesn't want to leave?

No, he's going to want to be rescued. The Underworld can always wait. It's always here. I'm going to all this trouble to rescue him, and he'll appreciate that. I hope.

"Come on!" Amber pulls on my hand. I hadn't realized I had stopped walking. I had stopped among a crowd of spirits.

I shake myself out of my trance and keep moving, trying not to think about the fact that I almost just started wandering around aimlessly like the other spirits in here.

We reach the back wall easily enough. But what I'm looking at doesn't make sense. The wall looks like it's been blown up from the inside out. Barbed wire and chain-link and brick all scatter the ground outside of Asphodel, as if the spirits ganged up for some Underworldly prison escape.

I step over the remaining bits of fence, trying to see what could have caused such violent damage. Then, I look past the fence.

It's like my blood turns to ice. I start shivering uncontrollably. My knees turn to jelly. Involuntarily, I walk to the edge of the massive chasm. It's so dark and deep that it looks like it falls into a black hole.

Tartarus.

A cold wind blows up from the cavern. I look back at the fence. Had Tartarus done this? Had it created a suction so strong that it tore the fence to bits? If so, why?

I remember that Annabeth and Percy said that they saw the god himself. He had turned human to try and stop them at the Doors of Death. Maybe the force of so much power solidifying had created a black-hole sort of effect around the cavern. Around the border of the pit, it looks like everything has been sucked downwards. Poplar trees now look like they grew upside down. There are rocks that have been dragged to the edge of the pit, leaving vertical lines that remind me of wine legs.

I try not to think too hard about what will happen to Amber, Giuseppe, and I if Tartarus decides to take on a solid form again. Instead, I turn my attention to the fence. It should be easy enough to repair. I just need to bend the metal back to it's original form and weld the pieces back. The brick base is the trickier part. I don't have any mortar. The only option I can think of is to literally melt the bricks back together.

In other words, a lot of hard physical labor on my part.

I pull Giuseppe and Amber over to me. "Listen, I need you two to stay near me, okay? Do not go near that hole. I have to fix this fence." I repeat the instructions in Italian, and the kids nod. Now that we're outside the fields, they seem to have regained their focus, thankfully.

They run off to play a game of ghostly tag.

I get to work on the fence. The bricks are easy enough to put back in place. A few are missing, but I don't dare go looking for them. More than likely, they got sucked into the pit. No getting those back. I shoot concentrated columns of flame at the bricks. It's just hot enough to sort-of melt them together, though I doubt they would stay in place if Tartarus decides to go all vacuum-cleaner again.

I'm finishing up with the final bricks when Giuseppe appears by my side. He's so quiet about it that I don't notice until he's right there. He startles me, and I jump to the side.

"Cosa fai?"

"Oh." I explain to him how I'm repairing the fence, and he frowns. He scoops up a handful of dirt, lays it on the bricks, and melts it with his own fire, creating a clay seal around the bricks.

"Questo e meglio."

"Uh, yeah. That is better." I nod. "Grazie."

He smiles and returns to his game of tag. I coat the entire repaired section with the dirt seal. Now that is some solid craftsmanship. On the last section, I decide to leave my mark. Using my finger, I write into the dirt.

Callida Rivera was here :)

Below that, I write,

Dionysus rules, Tartarus drools

"Hah." I can't help but smile at my little note that will be here hopefully forever. I might not be eternal but my name will hopefully forever be marked into this wall.

It's the little things that bring me joy.

I bend the bronze wires back into place. It takes a lot of strength, and multiple times, I poke my hands with the broken ends of the wires. I weld them back together with more fire.

The fence actually looks like a fence again. I finish up by replacing the barbed wire that had been strewn to the ground, slicing my hands open even more, but after a few hours of work, the fence looks good as new.

The bad news: we now have to walk all the way around the fields. I fenced us out.