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CHAPTER THIRTEEN ( half the truth )
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THE FIELDS OF Asphodel weren't what I expected. They resembled a large ( that's an understatement, it was an enormous crowd ), sold out concert stadium, but without the noise and with no light of any kind. There wasn't the excitement you always see in shows, but a tension that settled over each and every one of the million people inside the stadium. The black grass had been trampled by eons of dead feet. A warm wind blew like the breath of a swamp. Poplars – like Grover pointed out – grew in black clumps here and there.
The cavern ceiling was so high above us it looked like a bank of storm clouds, except for the stalactites, which glowed in a faint gray and were wickedly pointed. Dotted around the fields were several stalactites that had fallen and impaled themselves in the black grass, so they could fall on top of us at any given moment and we'd then become real additions to Hades's realm.
The four of us tried to blend into the crowd, keeping an eye out for security ghouls. My impulses got me searching through the spirits of Asphodel for a specific person, but their faces shimmered and were difficult to look at for long. They will come up to you and speak, but their voices sound like chatter. Once they realize you can't understand them, they frown and move away.
The dead weren't scary or evil. They're just. . .sad. We walked along, and followed the line of new arrivals that trailed from the main gates towards a black-tented pavilion with a banner that read:
JUDGMENTS FOR ELYSIUM AND ETERNAL DAMNATION Welcome, Newly Deceased!
Out the back of the tent came two much smaller lines. 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 wasteland with rivers of lava, minefields and miles of barbed wire separated the different torture areas. From afar, I saw people being chased by hellhounds, burned at the stake, or forced to run naked through cactus patches. On a far away hill, I was able to recognize the figure of Sisyphus struggling to move his boulder to the top. Shudders ran through my body at the many other tortures, stuff I don't want to remember.
