The Adventure That Lies Ahead | PJO x HP

CHAPTER 14

Imagine the largest concert crowd you'd ever seen, a football field packed with millions of fans.

Now imagine a field a million times that big, packed with people, and imagine 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 of 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 them it might've been a bank of storm clouds, except for the stalactites, which flowed a faint grey and looked wickedly pointed. Isa tried not to imagine they'd fall on them at any moment but dotted around the fields were several that had fallen and impaled themselves in the black grass.

Annabeth, Grover, Percy, and Isa tried to blend into the crowd, keeping an eye out for security ghouls. Isa 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 will 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 main gates towards a black-tented pavilion with a banner than read:

JUDGEMENT FOR ELYSIUM AND ETERNAL DAMNATION

Welcome, Newly Deceased!

Out the back of the tent came two smaller lines.

"Don't look to the left," Isa warned. Obviously, they didn't follow that and looked.

To the left, spirits flanked by security ghouls were marched down a rocky path towards 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, she could see people being chased by hellhounds, burned at the stake, forced to run naked through cactus patches, or listen to opera music. She could make out a tiny hill, with the ant-size figure of Sisyphus struggling to move his boulder to the top. And she saw worse torturers too⎼things she didn't want to describe.

The line coming from the right side of the judgment pavilion was much better. This 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. Isa 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 have chosen to be reborn three times, and three times achieved Elysium. Immediately, Isa knew that's where she wanted to go when she died. She either wanted to go to Elysium or Isles of the Blest.

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

But Isa thought about how few people there were in Elysium and how tiny it was compared to Asphodel or even Punishment. So few people did good in their lives. It was depressing.