You're in front of the home of major god!
Oh. Right. You are.
The thought looped uselessly in Cyd's mind as he stood frozen on the ashy plain, staring up at the monolithic bronze fortress. The divine shove—the instantaneous, continent-spanning relocation—had short-circuited his higher reasoning. One second, forest. The next, this. His brain was stuck on the logistics, trying and failing to process the sheer, casual violation of physics he'd just experienced.
He was so deep in his stunned reverie that he barely registered the approach. A soft clink of metal on stone made him blink. A woman stood before him. She wore a simple, practical dress of dark grey linen, her hair pinned back neatly. Her face was… pleasant. Unremarkably pretty. Her eyes were a calm, focused brown. She looked like a head servant from a prosperous estate.
"Greetings. May I ask who you are?" Her voice was polite, neutral, and utterly without inflection.
"Uh. I'm… um…" Cyd blinked again, his mouth opening and closing. The question was simple. The answer was a minefield.
How do I introduce myself?
Option A: 'Hi, I'm Cyd, I'm here to ask Lord Hephaestus to forge me a divine artifact that can nullify curses from other gods, including his family! Also, I might need some knuckle-dusters.' That would get him tossed into the nearest volcano.
Option B: 'I'm Chiron's student, Cyd. I seek a boon from the Divine Smith.' That painted him as another glory-hungry hero-in-training, which was the exact brand he was trying to avoid. Plus, Heracles's ominous tone and pitying look hung over him like a storm cloud.
"I'm, uh… you know," Cyd leaned in conspiratorially, lowering his voice to a whisper. "That guy. The one Lord Hephaestus… mentioned… recently?" He wiggled his eyebrows, hoping sheer audacity would carry him through.
The maid's expression didn't change. Not a flicker. She continued to look at him with polite, empty curiosity. "I'm sorry, sir. Which guest are you referring to?"
Crap.
"I… am the one who failed at verbal warfare," Cyd mumbled, defeated. He sighed and straightened up. "My name is Cyd. I have come to humbly request an audience with Lord Hephaestus." He bowed his head slightly.
Why is she looking at me like I'm a slightly interesting rock? he thought, a flicker of bruised ego surfacing through the panic. Chiron always said I had a 'striking' look. Shouldn't that at least warrant a blush? A stutter? Something?
"Cyd," the maid repeated. She paused for a fraction of a second, as if accessing an internal ledger. "Acknowledged. Please follow me. Lord Hephaestus has been expecting you."
The words were so matter-of-fact, so devoid of surprise, that they were more unsettling than a denial. It was like a machine confirming a pre-programmed event.
"Well… that's… flattering, I guess?" Cyd said uncertainly, falling into step behind her as she turned and walked toward a smaller, human-sized door set into the colossal bronze wall.
The interior of the forge-palace was a symphony of industry and heat. The air shimmered with contained furnace-blasts. The distant clang of hammers was now a pervasive, rhythmic thunder that vibrated in his teeth. And everywhere he looked, there were maids.
Dozens of them. All identical to his guide. Same face, same dress, same calm, efficient movements. They polished endless corridors of bronze, carried trays of glowing coals or strange metallic ingots, operated bellows the size of houses with silent, synchronized effort.
"Um… are these… your sisters?" Cyd asked, unable to contain his curiosity. He tapped his guide lightly on the shoulder.
She stopped and turned. "We are all constructs forged by Lord Hephaestus," she said, her voice still that same, pleasant monotone. She gestured ahead to a pair of towering bronze doors, twice as tall as a man and covered in intricate, hammered reliefs depicting the forging of the sun and the chaining of Prometheus. "The Lord is within."
"Oh. Thanks," Cyd said, his attention already consumed by the intimidating doors. The maid's words—constructs—registered a moment later, but by then she had already turned and melted away into a side passage, leaving him alone in the echoing hallway.
He stared at the doors. A cold dread, different from the fear of gods or monsters, settled in his gut. This felt like walking into a trap he'd set for himself.
"Well," he whispered, rolling his shoulders. "No turning back now. Can't be worse than the Gorgons. Probably."
He placed his hands on the cool, textured bronze. The doors were immense, thick, surely weighing tons. He braced his feet, bent his knees, and pushed.
The doors flew open.
Not with a stately groan, but with a violent, sudden WHOOSH. They weren't heavy. They were impossibly, deceitfully light, as if made of painted silk over a frame of balsa wood. Cyd's full-body shove, calibrated for resisting immovable objects, met no resistance.
His own strength betrayed him. He lurched forward, his feet scrabbling for purchase on the smooth metal floor. Momentum took over. He became a human tumbleweed, arms pinwheeling, pack swinging wildly, as he careened through the doorway. He rolled, clattered, and skidded across the floor in a graceless, noisy heap, finally coming to a stop when he collided with something solid, yet oddly yielding.
Oh no. Oh no no no.
The collision wasn't with a wall or an anvil. He'd come to rest half-sprawled across someone's lap. His face was buried in soft, warm fabric, and beneath that, the firm, smooth curve of a thigh. He could feel the heat of a living body through the material.
He'd crashed into Hephaestus.
A cold, mortal terror clamped around his heart. But a second, more immediate sensation cut through the fear: confusion. The leg beneath his cheek was slender, shapely… unmistakably feminine. And his hands, thrown out to break his fall, were currently gripping that same leg, his fingers sinking into yielding flesh. There was no… masculine anatomy in the vicinity.
A goddess?
A single drop of cold sweat traced a path from his temple down to his jaw.
"Do you intend to lie there indefinitely? It is merely an ugly thing. Nothing of value to linger upon."
The voice that came from above him was low, slightly husky, and held a weary, self-deprecating edge. It was undeniably a woman's voice.
Slowly, tremblingly, Cyd lifted his head.
His face was now mere inches from hers.
He'd expected a burly, soot-stained smith with a beard and a hammer. The reality stole his breath.
She was beautiful. Not in a soft, pastoral way, but with the severe, flawless beauty of a master sculpture. High cheekbones, a perfectly straight nose, lips that were neither too full nor too thin. Her eyes were a deep, molten amber, like cooling gold, and they held an intelligence that felt ancient and fathomless.
But that perfection was fractured. Across the left side of her face, from her temple down to her jaw, spread a web of scars. They weren't jagged or brutal; they were intricate, almost artistic, like the crackle-glaze on a fine ceramic pot or the branching pattern of lightning frozen on skin. They gleamed with a faint, metallic sheen, as if the flesh there had been fused with molten bronze and then cooled. They didn't mar her beauty; they complicated it, made it tragic and profound.
"An ugly face, is it not?" Hephaestus said, her lips twisting into a bitter, self-mocking smile. It was a statement she'd made a thousand times, a shield against pity or revulsion.
Cyd's brain, still reeling from the crash, the proximity, and the sheer unexpectedness of it all, operated on pure, unfiltered instinct. His mouth moved before his sense of self-preservation could engage.
"I think it's beautiful."
The words hung in the superheated air of the forge. The constant clang of hammers from deeper within seemed to pause for a single, echoing beat.
Hephaestus froze. Her bitter smile vanished, replaced by utter, blank astonishment. She was a goddess. She couldn't read minds, but eons of dealing with supplicants—heroes, kings, even other gods—had given her an infallible ear for falsehood. Flattery was a currency she was fluent in, and she despised its hollow ring.
This… was not that. The pale-haired youth staring up at her with wide, startled eyes wasn't trying to flatter. He'd simply stated what he saw. The sincerity in his voice was as stark and unadorned as his white hair.
She didn't know how to react. No script covered this. So she just stared, her golden eyes searching his face, trying to find the angle, the ploy, and finding only bewildered honesty.
Cyd, for his part, was also locked in a silent scream. What did I just do? His internal monologue was pure panic. I called a goddess 'beautiful' to her face while groping her leg! I'm going to be a statue. A very attractive, very embarrassed garden ornament in Hades's front yard!
A more immediate horror dawned: his hands were still on her thigh. He could feel the fine weave of her chiton, the warmth of her skin beneath. It was… distractingly pleasant. Which was the worst possible reaction. He tried to subtly shift, to relieve the growing, entirely inappropriate pressure in his own trousers, only making things more awkward.
So they stayed there, frozen in a bizarre tableau: the goddess of the forge seated on what Cyd now realized was a magnificent, articulated chair of bronze and dark wood—a chariot for someone who did not walk—with a mortal sprawled across her lap, his face tilted up to hers, his hands still gripping her legs.
It was Hephaestus who broke first. A soft, almost imperceptible sigh escaped her. "I see," she murmured, turning her head slightly to the side, a gesture of surrender to this inexplicable situation. "You may… put some distance between us now."
"Yes! Absolutely! Right away!" Cyd babbled, releasing her legs as if they were red-hot iron. He scrambled backward so fast he nearly tripped over his own pack, putting a good twenty feet between them before coming to a halt, his back almost touching the still-open bronze doors.
"Too far," Hephaestus said, a flicker of what might have been amusement touching her scarred lips. She pointed to a spot on the floor about three feet in front of her chair. "There."
"Right! Sorry!" Cyd practically teleported to the indicated spot. His nerves were so frayed that his body defaulted to protocol. He dropped to one knee, bowing his head, placing himself below her eyeline. It was a gesture of respect to a seated sovereign, but also a desperate attempt to hide his burning face and the physical evidence of his turmoil.
Hephaestus stared at him, bemused. "Why do you kneel?"
"You're… seated," Cyd managed, his voice muffled. He gestured vaguely at her chair. "It seemed… disrespectful to look down on a divinity." And I really need to not be standing up right now, he didn't add.
This was, Hephaestus realized, perhaps the thousandth time this strange mortal had caused her to simply… pause. In all her immortal life, heroes had come to her workshop. They saw the forge, the wonders, the power. They saw the limp, the scars. They saw a means to an end—a divine artisan, a resource. They offered tribute, made promises, gave compliments that rang as hollow as a cracked bell. They never saw her. They certainly never worried about towering over her.
But this one… for eight years, his small, consistent offerings at remote shrines had been different. No grand requests. Just thanks for the warmth of fire, for the solidity of metal. And now he was here, sincere, terrified, awkward, and treating her with a deference that felt genuine, not strategic.
"Mortal," she said, her voice regaining some of its earlier sharpness. She rested her chin on her hand, fixing him with a glare that had made Titans flinch. "You displease me."
I KNEW IT! Cyd's heart tried to claw its way out of his throat. His smile was a grimace of pure dread. "How… how may I atone, Great Lady Hephaestus?"
"By answering a question." She leaned forward slightly, the motion causing the simple fabric of her dress to shift. Her other hand drifted down, her fingers tracing a slow, absent-minded path along the length of her own thigh, over the same spot his hands had been. The gesture was contemplative, not seductive, but to Cyd's hyper-aware senses, it was catastrophic. A traitorous gulp stuck in his throat, and he had to fight to keep his body from betraying him further.
Hephaestus's sharp eyes missed nothing. She saw the swallow, the subtle shift in his posture. It confused her even more. This man, who saw beauty in her scars, who knelt so as not to loom, was now… reacting to her? To her broken form? It made no sense. He should feel pity, or fear, or avarice. Not… this.
She couldn't comprehend it.
With another soft sigh, she reached out. Her hands, strong and calloused from millennia at the forge, yet surprisingly gentle, cupped Cyd's face, forcing him to look up and meet her molten gaze.
"The question can wait until I have decided what it is," she said, her thumb brushing over his cheekbone. "And your punishment will be determined after you give me your answer."
Cyd's brain, already operating at capacity, blue-screened. "Wha… huh? EEEEEH?!"