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Imagine the largest concert audience you've ever seen, or a football stadium packed with a million fans. And now imagine a field a million times as big with people standing close together, and then imagine that the power goes out, that there is no sound, no ball above the... Crowd jumping around. Something terrible happened backstage. Whispering crowds stand around in the dark, waiting for a concert that will never begin. If you can imagine that, then you already have a pretty good impression of the reason for asphodel.
The black grass had been trampled flat over eons. A warm, damp wind blew, as if over a swamp. Black trees grew here and there in small clumps - Grover said they were poplars. The ceiling of the cave was so high above us that we might have thought they were gathering storm clouds if it weren't for the stalactites, which glowed gray and looked dangerously pointed. I tried not to think about the fact that they could fall on our heads at any moment, but there were stalactites everywhere, having fallen and burrowed into the black grass, I assumed that the dead couldn't care less if they were crushed by stalactites the size of defense missiles.
Annabeth, Grover, Percy and I tried to blend in with the crowd, keeping an eye out for the security monsters. I just had to look for familiar faces among the ghosts of Asphodel, but it's hard to look at the dead. Their faces shimmer. Everyone seems angry or confused. They come up to you and talk, but their voices sound like confused chatter, like the chirping of bats. Then, when they realize that they cannot be understood, they frown and turn away. The dead are not scary. They're just sad. We made slow progress, following the line of newcomers that stretched from the main entrance to a black tent-like pavilion in front of which a banner proclaimed:
JUDGMENT FOR ELYSIUM AND ETERNAL DAMNATION Welcome, newly deceased!
Two much shorter lines exited the pavilion at its rear. On the left were the ghosts. Spirit monsters driven down a rocky path to the Fields of Punishment, which glowed and smoked in the distance; it was a vast, rugged desert with rivers of lava and minefields and miles of barbed wire separating different torture areas. Even from a distance, I could see people being hunted by hellhounds, burned at stakes, paraded naked through cactus plantations, or forced to listen to opera. I could even see a tiny hill in front of which an ant-sized Sisyphus was struggling to roll his boulder up. And I saw even worse tortures - things I just don't want to describe.
The people coming out of the right exit of the court pavilion were much better off. They were led to a small walled valley - an enclosed living area that seemed to be the only happy part of the underworld. Behind the security gate lay residential neighborhoods with beautiful houses from every period of history, Roman villas, medieval castles and Victorian mansions. Silver and gold flowers bloomed on the lawns. The grass waved in all the colors of the rainbow. I could hear laughter and smell barbecue. The Elysium. In the middle of the valley sparkled a blue lake with three small islands that looked like resort towns in the Bahamas. The Isles of the Blessed, reserved for those who chose to be reincarnated three times and made it to Elysium each time.
