Episode 3.b
>Vulcan's Forge, mythic time, after the Titanomachy<
Vulcan stands at his anvil now, solid, his hammer moving, the Cyclopes ranged around him and striking in turn. What they have made lies cooling between them. It is a shaft of worked metal, narrow and forked at the end. Even lying still on the stone it throws a hard white light across the cavern, brighter than the forge fire, brighter than anything you've ever seen. The lightning bolt. Vulcan has made it for the new king.
The new king will not come near it.
He is young. Younger than you expected a king of the gods to be, broad-shouldered but somehow unfinished, standing well back from the cooling bolt with his arms folded. He has the look of someone who has just won something enormous and has not yet decided whether he wants it.
"I overthrew my father for this," he says, not quite to you. "Saturn ruled and I took the throne from him, and now they hand me a thing that can split a mountain and tell me it is mine." He does not move toward it. "How do I know if I can be trusted with that? How could anyone know? My father was sure of himself. Look where it led."
Vulcan glances up from the anvil but says nothing. This is not his work to do.
Quintus stands beside you, quiet for a moment, watching the young god watch the bolt. "He's not wrong to be afraid of it," he murmurs. "That's the honest thing. I don't know whether that makes him the right one to hold it or the wrong one." He looks at you. "I genuinely don't. What do you think?"
The flame in your hand has gone calm and watchful. It is waiting to see what is said.
Prompt: Jupiter has won his throne but will not take up the lightning that makes him king. He does not trust himself with that much power. He is asking, in his way, to be convinced. What do you say to him?
