𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐞𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐭 𝐋𝐢𝐟𝐞

Chapter 20

The book opens and the screen shown the chapter title
'We Find Out the Truth, Sort Of'

|Sereia: 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 Muggle-raised eyes widen in shock

The black grass has been trampled by aeons of dead feet. A warm, moist wind blows. Black trees grow in clumps here and there. The cavern ceiling is so high above us it might've been a bank of storm clouds, except for the stalactites, which glow faint grey and look wickedly pointed.

|Sereia: I tried not to imagine they'd fall on us at any moment, but dotted around the fields were several that had fallen and impaled themselves in the black grass. I guess the dead didn't have to worry about little hazards like being speared by stalactites the size of booster rockets.|

Annabeth, Grover and Sereia try to blend into the crowd, keeping an eye out for security ghouls.

|Sereia: I couldn't help looking for familiar faces among the spirits of Asphodel, but the dead are hard to look at.|

Their faces shimmer. They all look slightly angry or confused. They come up to them and speak, but their voices sound like bats twittering. Once they realize they can't understand them, they frown and move away.

|Sereia: The dead aren't scary. They're just sad.|

They move along, following the line of new arrivals that walk from the main gates towards a black-tented pavilion with a banner
'JUDGMENTS FOR ELYSIUM AND ETERNAL DAMNATION
Welcome, Newly Deceased!'
Out the back of the tent come two much smaller lines. To the left, spirits flanked by security ghouls are marching down a rocky path towards the Fields of Punishment, which glows and smokes in the distance, a vast, cracked wasteland with rivers of lava and minefields and miles of barbed wire separating the different torture areas. Far away, they see people being chased by hellhounds, burned at the stake, forced to run naked through cactus patches or listen to opera music.

|Sereia: I could just make out a tiny hill, with the ant-size figure of Sisyphus struggling to move his boulder to the top. And I saw worse tortures, too - things I didn't wish to see.|

Most look horrified, silently hoping they won't go there when they die. Hades smirks hearing their thoughts.

The line coming from the right side of the judgment pavilion leads down towards a small valley surrounded by walls - a gated community.
Beyond the security gate are neighbourhoods of beautiful houses from every time period in history, Roman villas and mediaeval castles and Victorian mansions. Silver and gold flowers bloom on the lawns. The grass ripples in rainbow colours. They can hear laughter.

|Sereia: I could even smell barbecue cooking... Elysium.|

In the middle of that valley is 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.