As we got closer to the gates, the howling was so loud now it shook the ground at my feet, but I still couldn't figure out where it was coming from.
Then, about fifty feet in front of us, the green mist shimmered. Standing just where the path split into three lanes was an enormous shadowy monster.
Cerberus looked exactly like any other hellhound, but he was enormous about the size of a small mountain, having three heads, all with red eyes, and very sharp teeth.
My jaw hung open. All I could think to say was, "He's a Rottweiler."
I always imagined Cerberus as a big black mastiff. But he was obviously a purebred Rottweiler, except of course that he was twice the size of a wooly mammoth, mostly invisible, and had three heads.
The dead walked right up to him—no fear at all. The ATTENDANT ON DUTY lines parted on either side of him. The EZ DEATH spirits walked right between his front paws and under his belly, which they could do without even crouching.
The dog's middle head craned toward us. It sniffed the air and growled.
"It can smell the living," I said. The middle head snarled at us, then barked so loud my eyeballs rattled.
"Hey, Big Fella," I called up as I grabbed a stick from the ground. "I bet they don't play with you much."
"GROWWWLLLL!"
"Good boy," I said as I threw the stick as far as I could. "Fetch, boy."
The stick sailed and landed in the River Styx. Cerberus glared at me, unimpressed. His eyes were baleful and cold. Cerberus was now making a new kind of growl, deeper down in his three throats.
"Wait!" Annabeth said. She started rifling through her pack. Annabeth produced a red rubber ball the size of a grapefruit. It was labeled WATERLAND, DENVER, CO. Before I could stop her, she raised the ball and marched straight up to Cerberus.
She shouted, "See the ball? You want the ball, Cerberus? Sit!"
Cerberus looked as stunned as we were.
All three of his heads cocked sideways. Six nostrils dilated.
"Sit!" Annabeth called again. I was sure that at any moment she would become the world's largest Milk bone dog biscuit.
But instead, Cerberus licked his three sets of lips, shifted on his haunches, and sat, immediately crushing a dozen spirits who'd been passing underneath him in the EZ DEATH line. The spirits made muffled hisses as they dissipated, like the air let out of tires.
Annabeth said, "Good boy!"
She threw Cerberus the ball. He caught it in his middle mouth. It was barely big enough for him to chew, and the other heads started snapping in the middle, trying to get the new toy.
"Drop it,'" Annabeth ordered. Cerberus's head stopped fighting and looked at her. The ball was wedged between two of his teeth like a tiny piece of gum. He made a loud, scary whimper, then dropped the ball, now slimy and bitten nearly in half, at Annabeth's feet.
"Good boy." She picked up the ball, ignoring the monster spit all over it.
She turned toward us. "Go now. EZ DEATH line—it's faster."
Clarisse and I inched forward warily. Cerberus started to growl.
"Stay!" Annabeth ordered the monster. "If you want the ball, stay!"
Cerberus whimpered, but he stayed where he was.
"What about you?" I asked Annabeth as we passed her.
"I know what I'm doing, Percy," she muttered. "At least, I'm pretty sure...."
We walked between the monster's legs. We made it through. Cerberus wasn't any less scary looking from the back.
Annabeth said, "Good dog!"
She held up the tattered red ball, and probably came to the same conclusion I did—if she rewarded Cerberus, there'd be nothing left for another trick.
She threw the ball anyway. The monster's left mouth immediately snatched it up, only to be attacked by the middle head, while the right head moaned in protest. While the monster was distracted, Annabeth walked briskly under its belly and joined us at the metal detector.
"How did you do that?" I asked her, amazed.
"Obedience school," she said breathlessly, and I was surprised to see there were tears in her eyes. "When I was little, at my dad's house, we had a Doberman...."
"Never mind that," Clarisse said, tugging at our shirt. "Come on!"
We were about to bolt through the EZ DEATH line when Cerberus moaned pitifully from all three mouths. Annabeth stopped. She turned to face the dog, which had done one-eighty to look at us. Cerberus painted expectantly, the tiny red ball in pieces in a puddle of drool at its feet.
"Good boy," Annabeth said, but her voice sounded melancholy and uncertain.
The monster's heads turned sideways, as if worried about her.
"I'll bring you another ball soon," Annabeth promised faintly. "Would you like that?"
The monster whimpered. I didn't need to speak to the dog to know Cerberus was still waiting for the ball.
"Good dog. I'll come visit you soon. I—I promise." Annabeth turned to us. "Let's go."
Clarisse and I pushed through the metal detector, which immediately screamed and set off flashing red lights. "Unauthorized possessions! Magic detected!"
Cerberus started to bark. We burst through the EZ DEATH gate, which started even more alarms blaring, and raced into the Underworld.
A few minutes later, we were hiding, out of breath, in the rotten trunk of an immense black tree as security ghouls scuttled past, yelling for backup from the Furies.
Clarisse murmured, "Well, Percy, what have we learned today?"
"That three-headed dogs prefer red rubber balls over sticks?"
"No," Clarisse told me. "We've learned that your plans really, really bite!"
I wasn't sure about that. I thought maybe Annabeth and I had both had the right idea. Even here in the Underworld, everybody—even monsters—needed a little attention once in a while.
I thought about that as we waited for the ghouls to pass. I pretended not to see Annabeth wipe a tear from her cheek as she listened to the mournful keening of Cerberus in the distance, longing for his new friend.
The cavern ceiling was so high above us it might've been a bank of storm clouds, except for the stalactites, which glowed faint gray and looked wickedly pointed. 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 guessed the dead didn't have to worry about little hazards like being speared by stalactites the size of booster rockets.
Annabeth, Clarisse, and I tried to blend into the crowd, keeping an eye out for security ghouls. 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 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. We crept along, following the line of new arrivals that snaked from the main gates toward 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 toward 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, I could see people being chased by hellhounds, burned at the stake, forced to run naked through cactus patches or listen to opera music. 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 the worst tortures, too—things I don't want to describe.
The line coming from the right side of the judgment pavilion was much better. This one led down toward 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. I 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 had chosen to be reborn three times, and three times achieved Elysium. Immediately I knew that's where I wanted to go when I died.
"That's what it's all about," Annabeth said, like she was reading my thoughts. "That's the place for heroes."
But I thought of how few people there were in Elysium, how tiny it was compared to the Fields of Asphodel or even the Fields of Punishment. So, few people did good in their lives. It was depressing.
We left the judgment pavilion and moved deeper into the Asphodel Fields. It got darker. The colors faded from our clothes. The crowds of chattering spirits began to thin.
After a few miles of walking, we began to hear a familiar screech in the distance. Looming on the horizon was a palace of glittering black obsidian. Above the parapets swirled three dark batlike creatures: the Furies. I got the feeling they were waiting for us.
"Welp, let's get this over with," Clarisse replied.
Up close, I saw that the engravings on the gates were scenes of death. Some were from modern times—an atomic bomb exploding over a city, a trench filled with gas mask-wearing soldiers, a line of African famine victims waiting with empty bowls—but all of them looked as if they'd been etched into the bronze thousands of years ago.
Inside the courtyard was the strangest garden I had ever seen. Multi Colored mushrooms, poisonous shrubs, and weird luminous plants grow without sunlight. Precious jewels made up for the lack of flowers, piles of rubies as big as my fist, clumps of raw diamonds. Standing here and there like frozen party guests were Medusa's garden statues— petrified children, satyrs, and centaurs—all smiling grotesquely.
In the center of the garden was an orchard of pomegranate trees, the fruit glowing in the dark. "The garden of Persephone," Annabeth said. "Keep walking."
The tart smell of those pomegranates was almost overwhelming. I had a sudden desire to eat them, but then I remembered the story of Persephone. One bite of Underworld food, and we would never be able to leave. I pulled Clarisse away to keep her from picking a big juicy one.
We walked up the steps of the palace, between black columns, through a black marble portico, and into the castle of Hades. The entry hall had a polished bronze floor, which seemed to boil in the reflected torchlight. There was no ceiling, just the cavern roof, far above.
Every side doorway was guarded by a skeleton in military gear. Some wore Greek armor, some British redcoat uniforms, some camouflage with tattered American flags on the shoulders. They carried spears or muskets or M-16s. None of them bothered us, but their hollow eye sockets followed us as we walked down the hall, toward the big set of doors at the opposite end.
The bolt should appear any minute now in the backpack, then we can finally leave this pit, no offense to my father. And then I have to fight the war god who will fade according to the prophecy I was given.