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The thing about Asphodel—well, the other thing. The main thing about Asphodel is the whole “River Phlegethon flooding the meadows with fiery magma.”—is that it is an extremely boring place to be in.
Which makes sense. There are many epics sung about the glory of Elysium, the paradise where the greatest of the greats go to spend their afterlife in eternal wonder and relaxation. Likewise, there are countless cautionary tales about the suffering of Tartarus, a wretched place for the only the most heinous to endure punishment for the crimes they committed in their mortal lives. Not much, however, is said about Asphodel. All everybody on the surface knows is that Asphodel is where you go when you’re nothing special. It’s a realm for the regular folk, for those who cannot do anything grand nor anything terrible with their lives.
So what does this realm give to those who are not great enough for paradise but not bad enough for torture?
A great big pile of nothing, that’s what.
Which is a pretty fair afterlife for people like you, you figure. A mortal life of mediocrity followed by an afterlife of mediocrity. You get what you give, that’s how justice is maintained in the world.
It is hard to cope with the boredom though. Asphodel is vast, but you’ve been dead for days or months or years and you’re pretty sure you’ve seen every island, every stream, every inch of what it has to offer. You have explored all the chambers, have looked into every smoke hole, and have endlessly observed the behavior whopping three species of magmaquatic life. You have done everything that could possibly be done in Asphodel, and still, you have nothing but time. This is the reward for the life you lived. This is the punishment for the life you lived.
So you roam.
-
The Prince comes across you eventually.
It was probably inevitable, what with how lately he’s been storming through Asphodel on a basis so regular nearly every shade here is gossipping about him. It’s clear that he’s trying to escape the Underworld, but something must keep offing him, because once he’s gone, it doesn’t take much waiting at all for him to be back. Personally, you are uninterested in whatever the Prince of the Underworld is up to. You’ve been dead for too long to care.
“Hello,” The Prince says amiably as he walks over to where you are floating at the edge of an island.
You nod your head slightly in greeting. You may not care, but you also wouldn’t like to be sent to Tartarus for being impolite to royalty.
“Mind if I fish next to you?” The Prince asks. “I think I can see a Chrustacean scuttling about right there.”
“Do what you want,” You shrug. That’s what everybody else here does.
“Thanks, mate,” The Prince smiles.
It’s been a long time since you’ve seen a smile.
The Prince fetches his fishing rod from where it was strapped to his back and promptly casts a line into the magma. He watches the float bob intently, and you don’t care, truly, but you watch along with him.
He reels in much too early, the splash scaring off the approaching Chrustacean back into deeper magma.
The Prince sighs. “I can never tell which bob is the right bob.”
“You’re too excited,” You say. Uncaringly, of course.
The Prince turns to you. “What do you mean?”
“Chrustaceans swim up from the riverbed looking for companionship. They’ll clamp onto your lure if they think it is a friend.” You tell him. Vaguely, you expected your voice to be hoarse from disuse, but its sound simply echoes aimlessly from wherever your core is. “But Chrustaceans are still very shy, when approaching each other. You need to be more still. Less...fidgety.”
“Huh,” The Prince says as he straps his fishing rod secure again. “Thank you for the advice. Do you fish too? I’m Zagreus by the way, what’s your name?”
“Shades who have been dead for as long as I have don’t have names anymore,” You scoff. “And, no, I don’t fish. Nobody fishes in Asphodel. I’ve just watched the Chrustaceans out of boredom for a few decades or so.”
“Boredom?” The Prince squints. “Is that a problem among the shades here?”
If you still had eyebrows, you would have raised one of them. “This is Asphodel, your Highness. Boredom is not a problem, it’s the design.”
“That doesn’t seem very nice,” The Prince tilts his head. “You lot didn’t do anything to deserve it.”
“Us lot didn’t do anything to deserve anything,” You say. “That’s the kind of the whole point.”
The Prince is silent for a moment, looking at you with a gaze that is still unreadable, even for all your years of existence.
Then, he straightens. “I have to get going, but thank you very much for the chat. I enjoyed it and it’s got me thinking about something I should bring up to the House Contractor.”
And with that, he embarks on a nearby boat raft onto the next island.
-
After that, Asphodel gets strange.
The shades are excited about something. Instead of roaming aimlessly, like you’re all supposed to be doing, the shades are floating with some kind of direction and goal in their minds. From where you are on a random island, you can see them pass by. They come into the island on one raft in small crowds before leaving on the next raft, tittering and chattering the entire time. You pointedly do not care about whatever is going on, but by the 7th crowd of noisy shades passes by, you cannot stop yourself from floating towards the group.
“Hey,” You say. The shades of this group turn to you. “What’s going on?”
“The Prince has ordered some kind of construction on one of the islands,” One shade tells you. “We’re on our way there right now, to check it out.”
“Word has gone around that it’s something for us,” Another shade says enthusiastically.
“For us?” You ask. “What could possibly be constructed for us?”
“No idea! I hope it’s a Bingo Hall.”
“A Bingo Hall...” You say, vaguely pained. “It’s definitely not going to be that.”
The shade shrugs. “Never say never.”
Despite not caring, you decide to join this group of shades as they embark looking for this mysterious island. It takes a while, what with how the islands of Asphodel rearrange and move, an endlessly shifting puzzle, but being dead gives you a lot of time, and you and the other shades find it eventually.
Though what it is seems to still be unclear.
On the large island, the usual deathly pillars have been cleared out, leaving a flat expanse of land. On this flat expanse, there’s quite a lot going on. There are tables and chairs arranged everywhere, seemingly put into different sections. One section seems to be some sort of reading area, bracketed by shelves that have real actual books in them. Another section has tables with what look to be games on top of them. The singular pool of magma in the center of the island, instead of being the danger they usually are, have cauldrons of delicious looking food stewing on top of the magma’s flames. There are other sections of tables and chairs, atop them, materials like yarn and wood and parchment, but ludicrous of all is at the far end of the island. Overlooking it all, elevated by just a bit, is a stage.
Crowds of shades look upon the strange island in confusion, whispering about what this all means.
And then, as if on cue, another bone raft comes in with none other but the Prince of the Underworld on it. All the shades hush into silence.
“Ah, hello everybody!” The Prince greets happily to everybody. “This island I’ve commissioned is for all of you.”
“All of us?” You say incredulously. The Prince immediately looks to you, the only shade of them all who spoke up, and he brightens.
“Fishershade, there you are!” The Prince waves enthusiastically at you, inexplicably recognizing your lack of a face from every other shade who looks exactly the same. “I’m so glad you found your way here, the conversation I had with you inspired this.”
The shades around you turn to look in your direction, murmuring among themselves. Embarrassed, you float right up the Prince and hiss. “And what is this, exactly?” You gesture frantically at the island.
“It’s a place where the Asphodel shades can come together and stave off boredom through, well, whatever activities you folks want to do,” The Prince says. “It’s a Community Center.”
The moment those words are out of the Prince’s mouth, the crowd of shades erupts in excited cacophony.
“A Community Center? For us?”
“Your Highness, you mean to say we are free to read those books there?”
“I can see a chess set, I haven’t played chess in a century, Your Highness, may I?”
“Is the wood over there for carving?”
“Can we organize a Bingo Night?”
“Yes to all of those questions!” The Prince says to the crowd. “You are free to use this island and everything on it for anything you wish to do. Organization is up to you yourselves, though the shade Eurydice has volunteered to head any logistical matters that need to be brought up with me. Aside from that, I’m sure many of you are capable enough to get some sort of system going on over here.”
You can see the shades speak to each other, smiles gracing their ghostly faces as they experience something Asphodel shades aren’t meant to experience.
Joy.
“Your Highness,” You say, your voice pinched. “May I have a word? In private?”
“Of course, Fishershade,” The Prince nods.
The two of you move over to a part of the island near the exit bone raft. Around you, you see the crowd of shades disperse to explore the so called Community Center, some of them looking reverently at the books, others taking in the aroma of the steaming food, others hesitantly sitting at the game tables and cracking a smile. It’s—It’s not right.
“Your Highness,” You start as diplomatically as you can. “I don’t mean any disrespect but—well—this place”
“You hate the Community Center,” The Prince says, with a wry smile on his face. “I could tell the moment I saw you.”
You sigh. “I don’t hate it, I just don’t think it’s. Proper.”
“What do you mean?”
Your spectral hands gesticulate in frustration. “We were sent to Asphodel for a reason, and that reason was because all of us, all of the shades you see here, we did nothing in our mortal lives. And so it is just that we deserve nothing in our afterlife.”
The Prince hums. “Fishershade, I must admit, I’ve never met somebody who has complained about things getting better.”
“Things shouldn’t get better here. We didn’t do anything to better the world up top.”
“So you’re saying it should get worse?”
“No! We didn’t do anything to worsen the world either.” Blood pressure is something you no longer have, and yet, you feel yours rise nonetheless. “The boredom you’re trying to remedy, that’s what we deserve! That’s the reward, that’s the punishment, for people like me!”
The Prince reaches out for you, “Fishershade, I didn’t mean to make you upset—”
You jerk away.
“It doesn’t matter,” You say as you board the exit bone raft. “None of us did. And so none of this will.”
The bone raft embarks, and you watch as the Prince of the Underworld, with his sad and puzzled expression, leaves your view.
-
It goes without saying that you avoid the Community Center. This is difficult, given that Asphodel is designed to change every few hours and thus getting anywhere or evading some place is nigh impossible. But you manage it, through sheer force of will. Every time you board a bone raft, you stare at as intensely as you can, and the bone rafts never lead you to the island you do not wish to visit.
So you can avoid the Community Center. Alas, you cannot avoid bumping into shades who sing its praises.
“It’s a wonderful place. I was a professor, in my mortal time, and now I’ve organized literature classes anybody can attend, and let me tell you, I wasn’t expecting my lectures to be so popular!”
“I’ve asked Miss Eurydice to teach me how to cook, and she decided to to make it a whole thing. Took a few of us shades who really wanted to learn, and now we’re apprenticing under her kind tutelage!”
“I used to be a woodcarver, before I died, and it was what I missed most about the surface. Not the sun, not the birds, but the feeling of making something new with my hands. The Community Center let me create again.”
Everything you hear about the place makes your spectral heart do things you do not deserve to do.
It makes your heart feel. It makes your heart care.
It makes your heart, after so many years, try its hand at beating.
The Prince comes across you again after a few days or months or years. You are floating at the edge of an island, just like last time, and in the magma ahead of you, you see a Chrustacean swimming around.
“Fishershade—” The Prince starts.
“There’s a Chrustacean over there,” You interrupt him. “Best to cast your line now or it’ll get away.”
The Prince is silent for a moment, unmoving, before he reaches for his rod of fishing and casts the lure into the magma.
The two of you watch the floater bob and bob and bob.
And just like last time, the Prince reels it in too early.
The Prince sighs, “You know, the Chrustacean is the only River Denizen I’ve yet to catch.”
“Really now?” You turn ever so slightly to look at him.
“Really,” The Prince is looking out into the magma with a soft smile on his face. “It’s odd, I know, they’re not particularly rare, according to the other shades I’ve spoken to, but they also don’t know why they’re so hard to catch. Not a single one of them gave me advice like you did. Not a single one of them really knew the Chrustacean. Funny little creatures. Hard on the outside, able to withstand the worst heat Asphodel has to offer, and mostly solitary. Except for when they swim up looking for a friend.”
You sigh. The Prince has the subtlety of a rock to the face. “Your Highness, I am not a metaphorical Chrustacean and even if I was, I’m quite fine on the metaphorical riverbed alone.”
The Prince laughs. “Apologies, being inconspicuous was never my strong suit. May I ask you something?”
You shrug. “You can certainly try.”
“Why are you so adamant about the Asphodel shades, about yourself, not deserving the Community Center?” The Prince says, looking at you intently.
You figure that if you don’t give him an answer now, he’ll never stop trying to figure it out.
“When I was alive,” You begin, looking out into the bright, fiery magma. “I lived my life as each day came. I came from a big family, but we were poor as well. Not poor enough to starve, but poor enough that it nipped at our heels. The moment I was old enough to, my parents cast me out, one less mouth to feed. Alone, I did what I had to do to see the next day, and that was the only thing I ever did. When you spend your entire life living like that has its perks. You forget to look down into the dirt, into the worst people could do to each other. But you also forget to look up into the sky, into the best people could be. All I looked was ahead until may days ran out. So now, to make up for it, I will only ever look behind, at everything I didn’t do. I was sent to Asphodel because I was useless, Your Highness. We all were sent here for the same reason.” You tell him. “And we aren’t allowed to forget that. I won’t let myself forget that.”
The Prince is silent, and his silence makes you tilt your head up to look at him. Really look at him. His gaze is intent, but now is the first time you’re really looking at his eyes. One is the eye of the dead, and the other is the eye of life.
Then, he speaks.
“It seems,” The Prince says slowly. “That the circumstances of your mortal life pushed you to live in a certain way. You chose your choices, but there were walls in your life that, while they prevented you from being cruel, they also prevented you from being some kind of grand hero. And yet, even with those walls in place, I don’t think living for yourself is a crime that you need to walk on your knees for eternity for. At the very least, it shouldn’t be an excuse to stay the way you were when you were alive.” The Prince looks out to the magma for a moment. He is calm, and his expression is completely at odds with how your spectral heart feels the pain of feeling, caring, beating once more. “The Chrustacean swims up from the riverbed looking for a friend, but maybe it also swims up looking for change. Knowing that change is possible. Fishershade, you have nothing but time right now. Maybe it’s time not exactly to forget, but to swim up from the riverbed and see what you can do, not what you couldn’t.”
There is silence for a long, long moment before you do something you haven’t done since you were alive.
You laugh.
The Prince jerks to look at you, bewildered and pleased at the same time, while you laugh and really mean it. Sure, your laughter is a bit wet at the edges, but it is joyous at its core. It is real.
“Your Highness, you can’t just make up Chrustacean behavior and expect I won’t catch onto it,” You say.
“It was for the metaphor!” The Prince laughs along with you. “I was trying to make a point!”
“No worries, you made your point quite well,” You tell him, shaking your head incredulously. “I can’t guarantee you that I’ll go to the Community Center, but maybe. Maybe I’ll drop by.”
“Really?” The Prince smiles.
“Really,” You nod. “Afterall, it seems like no shade there knows anything about Chrustaceans, and I better tell them the facts before your tall tales take root and confuse everybody.”
“If it’ll make you come over faster, I promise I will spew out ridiculous amounts of fake Chrustacean trivia to every shade I see.”
“You wouldn’t dare!”
“I would!” The Prince says. “But Fishershade. Thank you.”
“For what?” You ask.
“For trying.”
“Well, thank you as well then, Your Highness.”
“It’s my pleasure.” The Prince straps his rod of fishing to his back once more, smiling bright and happy. “I’ll see you around, yeah?”
You nod. And with that, he embarks on a bone raft onto the next island.
When the next bone raft comes in, you board it, and you don’t look at where you came from.
You to where you’re going.
You look ahead.
-
The thing about Asphodel is that, while it is a boring place, that boredom can be tempered through many activities in a place nobody on the surface really knows about.
Sure, there are many stories about the endless shows in Elysium. There are many scary stories about the nightmares in Tartarus. But not much is said about Asphodel or the Community Center within it. There are no songs about Eurydice’s cooking classes. There are no epics about the chess tournaments or the literature lectures. There are no poems about the legendary Bingo Nights.
Which is fine, you figure. It can be a surprise, for the new shades who come in here. They’ll be dejected at first, that they were sent here, but the smile that graces their face when they find the Community Center is always a sight to behold.
Asphodel is where people go when they don’t do anything grand nor cruel with their lives. The Community Center is where shades go when they move forward, not back.
These days, you don’t avoid the Community Center anymore. You don’t seek it out either, but sometimes the bone rafts have a mind of their own and send you there anyway. Once there, you go over to the table where you can rent a rod of fishing, making idle chat with the shade stationed over there. You float through the island, saying hello to all the friends you’ve made, and you settle at the edge, cast your lure into the magma, and wait.
You have nothing but time. This is not a reward or a punishment. It’s just another part of life, and life, perhaps, is about making things better.