Episode 4.a
>Tellus's Chamber, mythic time, before everything<
Behind you, the forge is ringing. Vulcan's hammer strikes the anvil, the three brothers have found their rhythm again, and Jupiter holds the bolt. Whatever was broken there is healing. But your flame still pulls at you, restless, wanting to go on.
It leads you down, past the roots of Vulcan's mountain and deeper than any cave you have ever imagined. The way down is long. The heat of the forge fades behind you, and a heavy cold takes its place, pressing in from every side. The rock changes as you go: first cut stone, then rough streaks of metal ore, then stone so old and so tightly packed that it has no cracks in it at all.
At last you step out into a space too big to call a cave. The walls seem to rise and fall slowly, as though they are breathing, and the ground under your feet is warm, though there is no fire anywhere. Pale roots hang down from the ceiling. Somewhere nearby, water is running.
A woman is here. She seems enormous, though you can't tell whether she really is or whether this huge place only makes her look that way. She stands with her back to you and one hand pressed flat against the stone wall, listening to something inside it. She knows something is wrong, and she has been searching for it for a long time.
She turns partway toward you, but her eyes don't quite find you. "There were names," she says. Her voice is low and very old. "I held every one of them, every name that came after me. I can still feel the places where they used to be."
She presses her hand harder against the stone. "Something is missing. More than one thing. I had children, and they had children, and those children made..." She stops. "I cannot find the rest."
Quintus speaks quietly beside you. "She's the oldest one we've met. Older than the forge, older than the hearth, and she has lost more than either of them." He looks at the flame in your hand, bright and steady in the deep dark, and then at Tellus. "We've been collecting names the whole way here: Vesta, Vulcan, the Cyclopes, Jupiter. She needs to hear them."
The flame leans toward her, warm and patient, waiting for you to offer it.
Prompt: Tellus has lost the names of her own family and the memory of everything they made. You have met them. Speak their names to her, show her the flame, and help her remember what she started. Which name will you speak first, and why?
