Introduction: When the gods left, they took something from us. What they took was the element of fire, and without it, one by one, our empires crumbled. Firestone was anathema to the gods so it vanished from our earth; black oil, sacrilege, and the golden wells dried up. I had heard of saltpeter and sulfur and other things that burned, but the notion of flame lived only in myth now, as did the many things that man only found useful when offered in holocaust. It shouldn't have come as a surprise that they took it; after all, hadn't we only been borrowing it, according to the myths? It was only right for them to take it back, especially if the stories of what we had done with it were true....