The air inside Forward Base Avalon's makeshift war room tasted like burnt coffee and existential dread. Captain Alastair Reid stared at the Forgotten Flame's containment unit—a jury-rigged contraption of dwarven runes and elven crystal that pulsed like a dying star. The Ashen Spire's ash still clung to his boots, a gritty reminder of how close they'd come to becoming volcanic confetti.
"So," Williams drawled, poking the containment unit with a stick he'd inexplicably produced from somewhere, "we risked becoming lava pancakes for a fancy paperweight. Anyone else feeling buyer's remorse?"
Dr. Eleanor Whitaker slapped his hand away, her glasses reflecting the Flame's erratic glow. "It's not a paperweight, Sergeant. It's a primordial fragment of stellar core energy stabilized by druidic wards older than Stonehenge. And if you touch it again, I'll use your skull as a calibration device."
Reid ignored their banter, his eyes fixed on the holographic map flickering above the war table. Avalon's ley-lines throbbed beneath their feet, their pulse syncopated and weak. The Flame's retrieval had bought them a reprieve, not a victory—a distinction that gnawed at him like a bad tooth.
Across the room, Maeve sat cross-legged on the floor, her palms hovering over the Flame's containment field. The ley-line markings on her arms writhed like living tattoos, reacting to the artifact's energy. Sweat beaded on her forehead despite the room's chill.
"How's our living reactor holding up?" Reid asked quietly, joining Singh by the medical station.
The lance corporal didn't look up from her inventory of burn salves and adrenaline shots. "Her vitals resemble a seismograph during an earthquake. The Flame's energy is…" She paused, searching for a metaphor worthy of Whitaker. "A feral stallion. And Maeve's the idiot trying to ride it bareback."
As if on cue, Maeve gasped, jerking her hands back as the Flame flared violently. The containment unit's runes glowed red-hot, casting hellish shadows across walls still scarred from Seraphine's last attack.
"Third time this hour," Singh muttered, snatching a fire extinguisher. "Shall I start a bingo card?"
In the armory-turned-lab, Whitaker hunched over spectral projections of the Flame, her fingers dancing across holographic controls. "Fascinating," she murmured, zooming in on energy patterns that resembled Celtic knots made of lightning. "The druids didn't just contain stellar plasma—they convinced it to follow aesthetic principles."
Williams leaned against a rack of plasma rifles, nibbling a biscuit salvaged from someone's care package. "Doc, when you start admiring the interior design of apocalyptic weapons, it's time for a nap."
"It's not a weapon, it's a scalpel." Whitaker's eyes gleamed with dangerous enthusiasm. "According to these readings, the Flame could sever Seraphine's connection to the ley-lines permanently. Or…"
"Or?"
"Turn both worlds into a Jackson Pollock painting rendered in gamma rays." She tossed him a graphite tablet covered in equations. "Pass this to Reid. It's the math confirming our inevitable doom."
Maeve found Singh later in the barracks, organizing refugee supply lists by the dim light of a malfunctioning glowstone. The druid's hands still trembled from her latest training session.
"It's getting worse," Maeve admitted, collapsing onto a cot. "The Flame doesn't just draw power—it hungers. Yesterday, it showed me London burning. Not Seraphine's doing. Ours."
Singh set down her datapad, her expression unreadable. "Reid's considering using it against the Gate."
"He shouldn't."
"You'd prefer we ask nicely?"
Maeve's laugh sounded more like a cough. "I'd prefer not to become the monster we're fighting." She flexed her fingers; faint burns spiderwebbed up her wrists. "The Flame's previous wielders—their statues in the Spire? They weren't heroes. They were warnings."
Reid found the spy during midnight rounds. Private Jenkins—baby-faced, always first to share his rations—huddled in a supply closet, whispering into a comms device etched with Seraphine's thorn sigil.
"Tell her we've located the convergence," Jenkins hissed. "Two days' march northwest of—"
The door hissed open. Reid leaned against the frame, his shadow swallowing the cramped space. "Northwest of where, exactly?"
To his credit, Jenkins tried to fight. To his detriment, he chose to swing a plasma wrench at a man who'd headbutted a lava wyrm.
"You're getting rust on my floor," Reid remarked, pinning the younger man against crates of dwarf rations. The scent of pickled cave eel filled the air.
"She'll kill them all," Jenkins spat. "Your precious refugees. Your druid."
Reid's smile could've flash-frozen magma. "Tell Seraphine this: I'll save her a seat in hell."
At dawn, Whitaker burst into Reid's quarters waving a stone tablet older than the Magna Carta. "The Guardians of the Spire left us a roadmap! There's a ley-line convergence near the Gate's original site—ground zero for The Weaver's prison!"
Reid squinted at the hologram she projected—a topographic nightmare of glowing fissures converging like arteries around a wound. "Let me guess: it's guarded by lava sharks. With lasers."
"Worse." Whitaker's grin was all teeth. "According to these inscriptions, it's where Seraphine's ancestors first bound The Weaver. And it's where she'll try to control it."
Outside, the base's alarms began to wail. Somewhere, a sentry shouted about winged shadows circling overhead.
Reid strapped on his sidearm. "Pack the Flame. And the good biscuits."
As they moved out, Maeve lingered at the Gate's threshold, her hand pressed to the ancient stones. The whispers started again—The Weaver's voice, smooth as poisoned honey.
You'll burn them all, it crooned. But oh, how brightly you'll shine.
She tightened her grip on the Flame's containment unit and stepped through.