The heat of the forge was becoming too much for Oisín, but he persisted. Goibniu, the god of smiths, struck at the anvil again and again, the ring of hammer on mithril drowning out all other sound; though, all the same, the ethereal metal sang. It was a song that reverberated violently through Oisín's bones and soothed his aching spirit. It told a tale of soft morning light as it filtered through the curtains in his room, and an epic of a prince lost across the ocean of time from his love. The furnace cast the god as a dark silhouette to Oisín's perspective, illuminated only in the fleeting light from each measured blow. Occasionally a spark fluttered up from the metal and caught in the god's beard. Though, if Goibniu felt it, he gave no sign. When the mithril began to dim from a radiant cyan to that familiar dim steel-blue, the god would grunt, and Oisín would plunge the forming shape back into the furnace until once again he was given the signal to pull it out. For fear of losing his grip in the wake of the god's powerful swings, Oisín dared not even reach up to wipe the sweat that had begun to sting his eyes. The smooth cloth of his tunic was now drenched and stuck to his back. He remained. It could have been minutes or hours they worked there in the darkness; however, this was the task he had been set by Goibniu, and so they continued.

The god hollered suddenly, a wordless bellow that shook Oisín as surely as the mythril's song. The door to the courtyard opened, bathing the two of them in light, and Nico padded in with a bucket of water. Goibniu paused long enough to take a large swig and hand it to Oisín to do the same. The god took the tongs from Oisín's hands and plunged the mithril into a nearby vat of fragrant oil. He clapped the fae on the back and ushered him out with Nico. The rest of this process was not for the eyes of mortals, alive or dead. The outside air felt almost frigid, though Oisín knew it was the same clemency as always. When the forge doors once again slammed shut, he made his way to a pump set into one of the brick walls and stripped down to his undergarments. The temperate water made him shiver as it washed away the itch. He plunged his face under, scrubbing around his eyes and his antlers. The fatigue started to overpower whatever energy he'd gained from watching Goibniu work, and he laid in the sun without redressing. Nico joined him, curling up under one of his outstretched arms.

The noise of the brass city reached them however faintly from so far above. The great clocktower, whose insistent ticking was loudest of all, dared not cast a shadow over the smith god's small abode at the bottom of the pit. It amazed Oisín that, by some miracle, the sun still reached them. For half the day, he and Nico had descended the winding staircase that spanned the stone walls down to Goibniu, and still the courtyard was bathed in warm light. Below the clocktower, suspended on impossibly thin stilts, the city thrived. Long brass tubes ran haphazard this way and that, occupied by metal balls that rolled and tumbled about to take souls to their various destinations like a great marble maze. Others had shining wings that flapped just slow enough to keep them airborne. These were the inventors and the smiths and ingenious minds of mortals, adamant even in death to be at the forefront of technology. Elsewhere, Oisín knew, were corners of the city higher still among the clouds where the humans breathed life into silicon. They were things for which his only reference was the fantastical descriptions of Fuiseog and Nico. Imageries of life painted by concepts he had no basis for. Fuiseog had once laughed in his face, likening him to a fish being told what it was like to climb a tree.

He wondered, briefly, what that challenge of Goibniu's would entail exactly. A feeling in his gut told him it was more than simply helping forge a new sica. Though, it also did little good to worry over it. The god would make his designs known in time. Absently, Oisín's fingers found purchase behind Nico's ears, and the cat began to purr roughly. The fae closed his eyes. The light's warmth had reached his bones and the sudden urge to sleep overtook him. He played in his mind over again his practiced argument to Aengus.

"My life was not done," he whispered, "My lord still needs me. It was a foulness that took me, sneaking behind me where no decent fae would be. Death was a wrongful punishment."

It sounded air-tight to Oisín. The others, he assumed, had lived long lives and died in natural ways. His case was different. In the courtyard, beneath the sun, he smiled. The only change he felt in the air was a sudden pressure between his ribs, and Nico pouncing out from underneath his arm. His eyes opened once more to see the smith god looming so close above, nose nearly pressed against Oisín's. In looking down at himself, the fae saw the sica planted handle-deep in his chest. As before he felt distant from himself, though he was squarely still laid out on the warm stones.

"Why?"

"You are weak, Oisín kin of Fódla. You were weak in life and you are weak in death. A pity upon your people for their complacence."

Oisín tried to rise, but the god kept him easily pinned. A certain desperation ate rapidly at his heart.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

"I was strong, undefeated by all except my liege. I—"

"You were felled from behind by a weaker opponent."

"A surprise attack. I couldn't have known—"

"A pity on your people for their complacence, to think warfare ought to be ordered. War is chaos, and had you half the skill you think, none would take you by surprise. Would your lord have been taken from behind?"

The thought had passed briefly through Oisín, though he'd dismissed it immediately.

"Of course not. Fuiseog is not fae-born, he is not ingrained with our honor. What would you have of me? To forsake my people?"

"My lesson," Goibniu growled and wrenched the dagger free, "is that of humility. Your people are weak. You are weak. All who have journeyed before you that died in battle said the same. It was a foulness that took me, death was a wrongful punishment.You know nothing of war as you play your battle games."

The three of them were elsewhere then. The air reeked of iron thick enough to taste. The field around them what once should have been verdant was now painted in mottles of thick crimson. Moans and screeches tore through from every direction in a symphony of despair. Here and there, shapes dressed in blood-stained black coats picked through the heavy grass with long polearms which brought swift silence to the dying. Others, bare to the waist with tattoos that danced on their muscles as they worked, hauled the bodies to a growing wall that already burned. Around their new vantage, the wind picked up and the putridity of flesh melting forced Oisín to his knees retching.

The scene shifted again. They were on a ship at sea, waves tossing them into the sky. Over the sound of raging water, a deafening crack split the air. A large black blur flew close enough to blow the god’s hair to the side. More followed soon after. Oisín watched their trajectory as they tore through the hull of a neighboring ship. The water greedily lapped at the holes, tasting the acrid gunpowder residue left behind. Before long, the ship was sinking lower and lower as men rushed to bail out the sea and sunk beneath the foam never to rise again.

They were on the ramparts of a castle as two soldiers tossed a prisoner in rags off the side. Oisín watched his body compress and explode as it came to rest on the stones below. They were flying high above a city of a thousand buildings as the sky turned to fire and the building crumpled to ash. Impressions were left where life had no time to flee, shadows of their very existence all that remained. They watched from behind a tree as a man felled his brother with a stone, and as lightning struck that very spot to marr the man forever.

Then without ceremony, they were back in the courtyard. Oisín stumbled back. This was war.

“What do you know?” the god rumbled.

“I know nothing. I am weak.”

Goibniu only nodded.

“Do not mistake this lesson as punishment. Take it instead, I hope, as a courtesy. Others have come before the god of love claiming their death was unfair, and none so far have succeeded. “

“I bow to your wisdom, lord.”

“And in doing so, you have lost another piece.”

Oisín wobbled suddenly and fell flat on his back. His legs were those then of a fawn, brown with tan spots coloring his thigh and hooves where once he’d had feet. The god offered a hand, pulling Oisín up just enough for Nico to scamper underneath and support him from behind. The fae fought to find his center of balance, but after a long moment of flailing he managed to stand on his own again.

“This is to happen every time I learn?” he asked. “I was told it was gradual as my days expired.”

“One and the same. What is each day but a lesson? I imagine you will see yourself change in many ways before you may come before Aengus.”

Goibniu retrieved the sica from his waistband. He pressed it into Oisín’s palm.

“This belongs to you. May it serve you until your true end of days.”

“Then you think I will succeed where all others have failed? The same as Beithe Bríd?”

The god shrugged. “I doubt it. I mean only that your soul is not truly dead. When the day comes that you meet the god of love, you will either pass back to the living or return to Cernunnos’ woods. On that day, I will reclaim the knife.”

“I see.”

“Let us speak of lighter things instead.”

Goibniu led them to the city above where each of them donned those bronze-worked wings. High above the city, looking down even on the great clock tower, Oisín saw the world stretch out before him. In the far distance, like the smudge of a painter’s thumb on the canvas, were the dense trees where his journey had begun. Beithe Bríd’s castle was all that was visible of the animal city, the size of a toy from that distance yet as rich in detail as if he could simply reach out and pluck it away. Further still he saw the lands of many gods as they came together. The deep purple waters of a river domain that spun and weaved a spider’s nest until it ended abruptly at a field of purple lavender dominated by a single lonesome tower. A great tree rose up in another corner, topped in scarlet blooms that oozed their color into the ground. In the clouds he witnessed a castle of pure gold flicker in and out of sight as the sun’s rays caught it floating past. It was to this Goibniu pointed.

“There is your next stop. The great hall of Rhiannon, first queen of the fae.”

Oisín felt a shiver run through him at the name. Though he’d been negligent beside Fuiseog in their studies, the tales of Rhiannon stuck plainly in the minds of every fae. The Mad Queen. She who had lived a thousand years and was said to send all wicked fae to their final torment. Though before Oisín could protest, Goibniu was sucking in a massive breath, and he blew the fae prince and the cat in one great gust towards the castle. Their wings let them soar unmoored for mere moments before some gravity took them in and brought them swiftly back down to the crumbling foundry of the castle’s stairs.

There waiting for them before the carved doors, as resplendent in azure and jewels as the day she’d died, was Queen Fódla.