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Through the smoky miasma, thick and smelling of conflict and heat and pressure, on the other side is a forest. This one is less garish, less saturated than the rest of Tír na nÓg. Two fae creatures, odd feathered humanoids that resemble crows with cracked and broken beaks, sit at the rocks around a steaming hot spring, soap and strigils beside them.

The fae are seemingly mute, but won't allow Achilles to leave without a thorough wash. The sort that practically scrapes a whole layer of skin off, the sort where they insist on his hair to be cleaned and his nail beds scrubbed. His white tunic is whisked off to be burned, and only once he is deemed fit by the fae attendants to be properly cleaned of the remnants of the Morrígan does one bring the clothes he left behind with Hermes. They're neatly folded, but Hermes' scarf sits on top like a nest, holding Achilles' ring, his bracelet, and the stone with a hole in the middle. The scarf smells distinctly of Hermes, like cleverness and courage and Greece. Almost like Hermes is trying to give Achilles his blessing and support, even when they can't see each other before his trial.

After he's clean and dressed, the bath attendants point in the direction he's meant to walk, a plunge into the dark woods. There's the soft giggling of children within.

In the woods, children from all across time and the world huddle together. A boy holds a fist of straws, and each of the children draw a straw at once. They mumble amongst themselves, checking the straws, and three boys have the shortest one.

"Seems unfair to make him convince Stab," says a girl with messy red braids and two missing teeth.

"If you want a mulligan, you gotta give up treats until the next hunt," a blond boy with gray eyes and a short straw says, waving it in her face. She wrinkles her nose.

"I didn't say I want a mulligan!"

"Then shoo!"

As Achilles approaches, the children with longer straws scatter into the woods, some laughing. Three boys remain. One boy, with pale skin, ragged dirty blond hair and crooked teeth, wearing an oversized sweater and shorts and no shoes and a canvas bag big enough on him to almost drag on the ground. A second boy, skin dark as jet and head shaved, a pair of binoculars dangling from his neck, wearing loose sweatpants and an old linen button-down with sneakers with a check drawn on. A third boy, the smallest of them, maybe close to Lyra's age, looking like one of the people from the far east but with a permanent glower in his face, sitting on the ground and looking a little like he's drowning in the adult-sized jacket draped around him.

The blond boy jumps up on a tree stump to greet Achilles at eye level, putting his hands on his hips and smirking. "Hello, grownup! Here starts your trials! I call being the judge."

"Don't be silly. It's not a court trial." The boy in the button down approaches, holding an aluminum can colored bright red. He pops the tab, a sickly sweet smell rising in the air as the liquid inside hisses, and he holds the can out to Achilles. "My dad said men welcome each other with a beer, but if you get to Birdy she's going to make you drink a lot, so here's a coke instead."

The boy in the button down strategically stands between Achilles and the smallest boy. The smallest boy makes no movement to greet Achilles, instead staying on the ground, glowering at him with dark eyes.

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Achilles feels the itch to speak more—to apologize for what must be the twentieth time, or make more promises—but he forces himself to honor the silence instead. He feels the life still in his son. His breath, his pulse. Against all odds, he lives.

“You are most welcome, Pyrrhus.” He plants a kiss on his son’s forehead.

“Yes, Lord Hermes conveyed me here, with the help of his local counterparts. A temple would please him, or games held in his honor.” Achilles gives a lopsided smile and a small shrug. “He’s not a demanding god, but he won’t object to a bit of praise and attention.”

Pyrrhus huffs softly with a crooked, amused smile. "Gods are so much stranger than I expected."

One doesn't demand anything despite helping extensively, far beyond what could be asked of any god. Another plucks people out of time and plants them like flowers before releasing them with strange trials. Pyrrhus doesn't really understand people, so maybe he never has hope to understand gods.

Nephos barks. He chases his tail in one, two circles before running ahead, stopping to make sure they follow him. He's grinning, joyful as any fluffy cloud dog, but the air is strange about him. He can guide them back to where time flows linearly.

Pyrrhus offers his father his hand. "Walk with me until we arrive wherever we do?"

“The stories I could tell about the gods,” Achilles laughs. “But most will have to wait until you’re safely in Lord Hades’ keeping.” In his experience, the gods are less concerned about the stories shades tell; their influence is minimal.

Achilles cradles the delicate lace veil in one arm and takes Pyrrhus’ offered hand in the other. “I will walk with you until the gods themselves break my grasp.”

He tightens his grip, calloused and firm. “And when they do, I won’t be far. Find me in dreams—Skyros, where we met before—or ask a witch to summon my shade. I will be there.”

Pyrrhus smiles, and he starts walking. "I will, Dad."

Nephos leads them. The world around them loses definition as they pass through the border of Ember's land and into spaces more subject to fae whims. Nephos barks every so often, making sure they're following him, tail high and wagging.

The transition to a land of linear time is just as sudden as the transition into Tír na nÓg. One moment, Pyrrhus' hand is in Achilles', Nephos ahead of them. The next, Pyrrhus and Nephos are gone. Achilles is on the emerald green grass of Ireland again, right where Thetis, Patroclus, and Hermes arrived.

And Hermes is immediately hovering around him like an anxious bee, orbiting Achilles as he says, "Oh thank goodness, you're back, you didn't eat or drink anything bad, are you hurt, are you confused, do you remember why you're here or who you are--"

Achilles lurches to a startled stop and scarcely has time to register his son’s abrupt absence before Hermes is upon him.

“Calm down, magpie,” he urges, catching Hermes’ arm to slow his fretful buzzing. “All is well.”

Patroclus and Thetis both look skeptical. Pat steps forward to investigate the dressing covering Achilles’ eye. “What happened? Did the Morrígan do this?”

“No, I did this to myself,” Achilles says, overwhelmed and embarrassed by the fussing … and his mother’s disapproving frown. Why would her perfect, god-like son do this to himself?

Pat lifts the wrap enough to see the sagging lids and empty socket. He winces. “It’s gone. But it will regrow, of course. Once you return to the Underworld?” His eyes flick to Hermes. “Shades can’t be permanently maimed, except by a god.”

Hermes manages to stop orbiting, but his wings buzz harder, almost lifting Achilles off the ground as he looks at the dressing over his eye. "All is well, you say??"

He picks up on the odd magic around the injury. He continues hovering--he's far too worked up to stand on the ground--and leans downward to look at the injury under the dressing that Patroclus partially reveals.

His brow creases, a dark furrow marring his young features. "You did this to yourself?"

Clearly, he's taking this seriously, because his flapping suddenly stops and his feet hit the ground hard. He takes the dressing between his fingers, peering closer. He doesn't care how close it puts him to Patroclus--they both have common cause for concern here.

"It's gone. Gone gone." Hermes smooths the dressing back over Achilles' empty socket. Hermes' nose twitches. He can also smell strange things on Achilles, smells like tobacco smoke and warm nuttiness and baking bread and astringent alcohol. "Did a fae demand it as payment for a favor?"

Demanding body parts is usually one of the nicer tricks of the fae in Hermes' experience.

“The Morrígan appointed a human woman to judge my case for Pyrrhus’ release. She demanded I give one of my eyes to him.” He raises his chin, confident. “This was a perfectly reasonable request. His eye was ruined by my own negligence.”

Of course. Pat isn’t surprised at all by this dramatic self-sacrifice. He can only hope that it alleviates some of Achilles’ guilt over his son’s abandonment.

Patroclus doesn’t cede any space to Hermes; he finds Achilles’ hand. “Then you succeeded? Pyrrhus is back among the living?”

“Yes, we both crossed the threshold together—I think—but the Morrígan sent him to another land.” Achilles turns to Hermes and asks, “Is there some way to learn where?”

Hermes keeps frowning, but nods at the answer. Yes, that makes sense. And perhaps it'll be for the best. There are precious few sacrifices the dead can make for the living, and he knows that being unable to give his son something to atone for his choices in life was eating away at Achilles.

Hermes' wing twitches at the question. He turns his head, looking at nothing in particular for a moment, as if concentrating on listening to something.

"...Yes, I can learn where. I'm sure he'll make a splash, and gods are gossips."

But now that the anxiety over Achilles' eye is (somewhat) mollified, Hermes turns his attention to the other obvious thing Achilles brought from Tír na nÓg.

Hermes takes the edge of the rich purple veil from where it's draped on Achilles' arm, examining the foreign but exquisite needlework. How would someone make a thing like this? Even Athena would be enchanted with it.

"Please tell me you didn't take this from a fae." Hermes is pretty sure something this beautiful would send the fae into a furious, cursing frenzy if it were taken from them, even in rightful contest.

“It would put my worries to rest.” Or make them worse. As much as the Morrígan’s kidnapping worked out in Pyrrhus’ favor, the goddess might still wish to test him. She could place him anywhere—the far east or on Coyote’s continent or in the lands controlled by the new God …

Achilles follows Hermes’ attention to the veil. He plucks a few strands of stray, fluffy fur from the lace. “No, not at all. Pyrrhus made this for his wife.”

Pat’s brows raise with a mix of surprise and skepticism. Achilles’ children are capable of a great many things, but Pat can’t imagine either of them spending hundreds of silent hours hunched over delicate fiber work.

Achilles has no reason to lie, though.

“He mastered strange weaving techniques, taught by the Morrígan’s shades. He finds the work soothing.” A proud smile curls his mouth. “It may be that you hear rumors of a quiet artisan who weaves webs like a spider.”

"Pyrrhus made this?" Hermes carefully spreads the veil across his hand to look at the full majesty of the needlework, disbelieving. He'd seen the shell bracelets, and they were skillfully made, but he hadn't thought that the dreaded Neoptolemus had the skill or patience to make something so... delicate. Not just beautiful, but delicate.

"Lady Thetis, look at what your grandson made," Hermes shifts to offer Thetis room to approach and look at the work. "Lady Athena would be impressed. More than impressed, she might even ask him to show her how it's done."

He knows his sister, and she does not like asking for lessons on anything at all. But the weaving is so beautiful and foreign that she might deign to at least ask Neoptolemus to demonstrate the technique before privately mastering it herself. This is beyond what can be done on a loom.

Hermes can't help but be a little baffled. He'd never had an inkling of Neoptolemus having an artistic streak, much less with thread. And Hermes likes to think he's very in the know whenever it comes to anyone worthy of divine notice.

“I assure you he did.” Achilles puffs with pride at Hermes’ incredulity.

Thetis inspects the work with a carefully neutral expression, hands clasped at her waist. At first glance, it brings to mind a fisherman’s net, but after examining it more closely, the work has an undeniable elegance. The way the fibers lattice together brings to mind sea foam gathering in shallow waves. It’s hard to imagine a mortal made this—much less her grandson.

“Are you certain this won’t be cause for jealousy?” Thetis muses. “He may suffer the same fate as Arachne.”

“Mother, Lord Hermes knows his own sister,” Achilles says firmly.

"Arachne boasted she was better than Athena, then gloated after she won the competition," Hermes says, shaking his head at the audacity of the woman. He doesn't think she deserved to be turned into a spider, but it's hard to be too sympathetic when she did repeatedly did things so clearly, obviously foolish. "If I haven't heard about his skill with thread, then he can't be particularly boastful about it."

If Neoptolemus continues to approach this level of skill with humility and discretion, Hermes can't see Athena doing anything other than lauding his work. Hermes quirks an eyebrow as he looks to Thetis. "Athena usually likes people who excel in her domain, so long as they don't get a big head about it."

Though he doesn't know how Athena would feel about Neoptolemus even with his skill in thread. He knows she'd been repulsed by his actions as a boy in Troy, and Athena is far less willing to empathize with humans than Hermes is.

Thetis withdraws to a comfortable distance; Hermes and Patroclus still haven’t earned her trust, even if they happen to have Achilles’ love. “True. Let us hope Neoptolemus remains modest. He’ll need all the divine favor he can gather after his defiance of the Fates.”

Achilles nods, carefully folding the veil before draping it back over his forearm. After a moment he says, “Pyrrhus’ time among the fae healed him, at least in part.”

His eye wanders from Thetis, back to Hermes and Pat. “The Morrígan gathered many others like him—children and young people thrust into miserable, brutal wars. They understood him like few of us ever could. I think he needed that most of all.”

Hermes' brow furrows. His immediate questions are about the Morrígan--why would she do that, why in particular children of war, why children and not grown men, why she journeyed so far to grab another--but he pauses those thoughts for a moment as he looks at Achilles' face.

It'd serve Olympus best for Hermes to gather as much information about the Morrígan's motives as possible, but it'd serve Achilles best to have a chance to process whatever happened in Tír na nÓg.

Hermes takes Achilles' shoulder, squeezing gently.

"Why don't I take us all home? Then you can explain what happened after you started your trial." Patroclus will probably want to hear, but Hermes isn't sure Thetis will or won't. She's famously intolerant of the company of men, and she's been around a lot of men for an extended period.

“Yes, that would be best,” Achilles agrees. He realizes he’s still wearing Hermes’ scarf—and that Hermes looks a little incomplete without it. He unwinds it and coils it back around the god’s neck. “It’s never wise to keep shades from the Underworld for too long.”

And Achilles isn’t sure how long he’s been away. A day? A month? Will Lyra be worried? Will Hades be furious?

“Pyrrhus extends his gratitude, by the way. For guiding me here to find him,” he says, adjusting the drape of Hermes’ scarf. “He promises a temple in Epirus for your trouble.”

As Achilles wraps the scarf back around Hermes' neck, Hermes smiles, eyes warming, and rests his hand on the folds of the scarf. It smells like Achilles now.

"Make sure he gets the wings right." Hermes flashes the wings at his temples and his ankles, spreading them and turning them towards Achilles almost like a mating display from a bird. "They're my best feature."

If it weren't for present company, Hermes would kiss Achilles. But instead, he smooths his wings again and offers his arms out. "Everyone who wants a fast pass back to Greece, hold on tight."

“It could well be the first temple to get it right,” Achilles laughs, hooking an arm around Hermes’ waist. “Convincing the artisans that you don’t wear a winged hat will be a challenge.”

Meanwhile, Pat shakes his head at the obvious peacocking. Styx, is this how he managed to woo Achilles? This exasperation doesn’t stop him from gripping Hermes’ offered arm, though.

Thetis follows suit with her own cool hands. She could shift into a bird and fly back herself, but it’s a long journey and Hermes has proven himself trustworthy. “Let us be off, my lord.”

Hermes grins at Achilles, eyes sparkling at his laugh, before double checking that everyone's grip is tight enough. Once he's satisfied, they're gone.

It's a dizzying mess of senses--smells, wind, colors, speed--and then they're outside the mouth of the Temple Styx. The little hut Prometheus has set up for himself has smoke curling out of the chimney, and save for the lack of Titans, the space is as it was when they left, almost down to the position of the sun.

Hermes shakes himself off, flashing one of his breezy, customer service smiles. "I hope you all enjoyed that little jaunt out of Greece. Thankfully, we're all mostly intact." Minus Achilles' missing eye, which Hermes would very much like to ask more about when they have some relative privacy.

“Thank you, Lord Hermes, for your service,” Thetis says politely, stepping away to adjust her tousled hair and himation.

The two mortals take a bit longer to recover from the fast travel. Achilles keeps his balance with a hand on Hermes’ shoulder while Pat doubles over, hands on his knees until the nausea passes.

“Yes, none of that was quite what I expected,” Achilles sighs, stepping over to help steady Pat. “But I learned a great deal from the Morrígan’s trial. Pyrrhus and I are on much better terms than when we parted in Athens.”

Hermes gives Thetis a polite, acknowledging not before giving Patroclus a sympathetic pat on the back as he recovers. "Sorry, my good shade, the speed is a lot if you're not used to it."

He looks to Achilles next, breezy smile flickering. "I would like to hear all about it. But I wanted to see if you wanted to return to Elysium first."

Hermes generally feels woefully out of the loop, absent as he's been from Greece. It seems so much has happened with Neoptolemus/Pyrrhus, and he's only barely aware of such an important part of his lover's afterlife.

“Yes, let’s return to Elysium,” Achilles agrees. It’s the closest thing to home outside of the House of Hades itself. But before they return to the Underworld, he approaches Thetis, deferent, “But first Mother, can I ask you a favor?”

“Of course, my dear,” she says. Her expression is still restrained in mixed company, but she can’t hide a hint of deep fondness for her precious son.

“Please, go to Epirus. Deliver this to Lady Ophelia,” he offers the veil with both hands, reverently. “Let both her and Molossus know that Pyrrhus is safe, but the gods keep him from Greece.”

Thetis accepts the veil with a nod and gives Achilles’ curls an affectionate pet. “I’ll see it done.”

“Thank you, mother,” Achilles says as he gives her a grateful hug.

“Farewell, Lord Hermes … Patroclus,” Thetis intones before turning to leave.

Satisfied, Achilles joins his two lovers urging them deeper into the Temple of Styx and Elysium beyond. The Underworld feels almost normal and orderly compared to Tír na nÓg.

As they walk, Achilles rambles about more of his trial. He nudges Patroclus with his elbow. “I spoke with people from the future. Centuries on, they still tell our story, Pat.”

Patroclus gives a modest huff of a laugh. “Oh, do they?”

Hermes listens with fascination as Achilles talks of his adventure, occasionally asking clarifying questions. He huffs a chuckle when Achilles tells Patroclus of the future of their story.

"Well, the Fates did promise that your name would live on forever if you went to Troy. They're very good at keeping promises," Hermes says.

It's comforting to be back in Elysium for a moment, after spying in the desert then tiptoeing through Tír na nÓg. When they find a private glade, Hermes sits on a rock, slipping off his sandals to soak his feet in the Lethe.

"I hope they kept the story mostly accurate," he says.

“In the future, some will deny that we were lovers. They take offense at two men sharing such a bond,” Achilles’ lip curls. “But others know better. They see the truth and keep it alive. They find strength in it.”

Patroclus shakes his head. “What do they think we are? Brothers? Extremely good friends?”

Achilles shrugs and joins Hermes by the Lethe. “Cousins, maybe.”

A familiar sound approaches—snapping twigs, parting brush, heavy panting—and Méli bursts into the glade and skids to a stop by the three men. The dog takes a brief, appraising pause, then beelines for Achilles, sniffing his hands and tunic.

“Do you smell Nephos?” he laughs, then for Hermes and Pat’s benefit, he explains: “Pyrrhus keeps a fluffy-cloud-dog, very like the one your brother took the shape of.”

"What an odd hangup," Hermes comments, frowning. If the future takes offense to male love, he can't imagine they much like Greece or Olympus.

But a bounding dog interrupts Hermes' train of thought. He gives Méli an affectionate scratch, and winces when Achilles mentions his brother.

"Sh, sh, sh," Hermes says, putting a finger to his lips. Apollo had, after all, threatened to do something terrible if Achilles shared that story, and Hermes knows his brother to follow through on threats. But his face relaxes again as he considers what Achilles actually said.

"Really? The little dog? And he was allowed to take it here to our time?"

“To be truthful, it was a fae creature in a dog’s guise. A harmless one,” he adds quickly. “It was still at Pyrrhus’ side when we parted ways. I hope it followed him—it made a fine companion.”

Méli’s interest in Achilles wanes, and her attention turns to her master. He happens to be covered in equally strange smells. Where has he been today? Pat plucks leaves and twigs from her fur while she sniffs him thoroughly. “I wish I could see the strange pup for myself.”

Achilles smiles and uses a stick to draw an approximation in the Lethe’s bank. It amounts to a circle with radiating fur lines, four stick legs, and a large smile. A pause, and he sighs in defeat. “I haven’t done it justice.”

Pat raises his eyebrows. “It looks like an ecstatic sea urchin.”

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Whyyyyy didn't this comment post ;.;

S’all good. I’ve been in the Work Void

I feel that ;.;

And now I can’t remember if Pat ever saw the happy cloud