The Fertility Was Stolen

"The spirit's boon came with a price. She could not create fertility, only transfer it. So the more women that came have their wombs rendered fecund, the more the grasses and trees around began to die, the game grew scarce...and then other women looked on jealously as they failed to conceive, their bellies remaining flat while the dark spirit's adherents swelled with life."

The lights overhead flickered, and for a moment Lois Lane shuddered in the brief darkness. She could see part of the story told in the pictures on the walls. Grasses and trees dying, women with bulging wombs...there was more, long-faded, and Lois couldn't make it out in the light. She tilted the cup to suck out the last sticky remnants.

"In time, the fiery spirit grew too powerful, the wasteland around the spring threatened to endanger the whole tribe...so the powerful sachems descended into the shrine. They tore out the root from the spirit, and placed it in the pool. Without that, the fiery spirit diminished and departed. The pool was declared taboo, and forgotten by all...except one."

"So...your 'Great Work'..." Lois said.

They hit the bottom. A rough, natural cave, the floor smoothed as though water had once flowed over it. Sloping gently downwards. There were no electric lighting here, but someone had placed an old-fashioned lantern on the final step. Angelica Blaze picked this up and lighted it, a spark seeming almost to leap from her fingers...though Lois had known plenty of conjurers with better tricks.

In the light of the lamp Lois saw they were in a tall, round chamber, walls and floors smooth...maybe an ancient riverbed or underground lake. Up ahead were the flickering lights of other lanterns...and Lois could see forms moving in the shadows around a depression. Naked, female forms, dancing between light and darkness.

"To find the root of the spirit's power," the self-proclaimed demoness said. "And reclaim it. But for that, we need something..."