Episode 5.a
>Ascending from Tellus's Chamber, mythic time, returning to the Caucasus<
The seam closed. Prometheus looked at you for a moment and turned away, and then the light folded shut, leaving you in Tellus's chamber with your argument still in your mouth and no one to hear it.
Now you are climbing. The trail from Tellus's chamber winds upward, and the stone changes as you rise, from the old, tightly packed rock of the deep to streaks of ore and then to cut stone, while the heavy cold slowly lifts. The flame in your hand has changed, too. It burns low and steady now, and it has stopped pulling you anywhere. You are simply carrying it.
You pass places you have been before. You hear the forge before you see it, Vulcan's hammer and the Cyclopes striking one after another, the red glow washing over the walls of the passage, and every part of it is whole. Higher up, you pass the round room, where Vesta's hearth burns clean and straight in its pale stone. Everything you mended on the way down is still standing on the way back up, and you did that, with names and fire and your own hands.
But the TSTT is still not right. In the passages between the places you healed, the stone is thin, and something flickers behind it. The places hold, but the spaces between them are still coming loose, because the falx is still missing from its place at the beginning of everything.
Quintus has been quiet for most of the climb. When he finally speaks, he doesn't try to explain the failure away. "We told him the world has an order and that he's breaking it. But he already knew that. He's the Titan of forethought, and he knew it long before we did." He walks on for a while. "We told him about the world. We never told him about the people in it."
He stops and looks at you. "So what does Prometheus care about? Forget the ordo for a moment, and the chain of events. What has he cared about from the very beginning?"
The trail opens ahead of you onto grey rock and open sky. It is the Caucasus, where all of this started, back when the chains were broken and the rock was empty. From here you can see the ledge.
Prometheus is sitting on it, waiting.
Prompt: Quintus asked what Prometheus has always cared about, and you know the answer. Before you step onto that ledge, decide together: what will you say to him this time, and why will it be different from what you said before?
