Episode 3.a
>Vulcan's Forge, mythic time, after the Titanomachy<
Prometheus has his fire now. One way or another, he took his share from Vesta's hearth and went, and behind you the round room is already settling: the flame stands straighter, the stone grows quiet, and the air feels calm again. But the small flame Vesta gave you to carry won't settle at all. It leans hard, pulling forward and down, toward somewhere deeper and older than the hearth.
You follow it down until the passage opens into a huge cavern full of red light. A forge fills the space. Three anvils, each taller than a grown man, stand around a fire pit so wide it could swallow a house, and at each anvil stands an enormous brother with a single eye and a hammer raised over his head. None of them is striking. All three are looking at someone slumped on a stool in the corner, whose own hammer lies on the ground beside him.
He is hard to see. He looks thin and faded, as if someone had started to rub him out and stopped halfway. He doesn't look up when you come in.
The smallest brother, the one with the brightest eye, turns toward you. "He won't work," he says. "He's forgotten what he was making."
Quintus stops at the mouth of the cavern and lets out a long breath. "Oh," he says. "Oh, that's not good." He studies the fading figure for a while. "The trouble at the hearth was new. This is older. Whatever Prometheus is doing, it's knocking the ground out from under the ones who came before him." Then he nods at the flame in your hand. "Look at that, though. It wants to be here."
The flame burns brighter than it did on the trail, and it is straining toward the man on the stool.
Prompt: The god of the forge is fading, and his three workers can't start without him. You are carrying a piece of Vesta's living fire, and it is reaching for him. Decide together how you will bring the flame to him. What do you do, and what do you say to him? The Cyclopes know him better than anyone, and they may help if you ask.
