Fortuna Eterna
By Ophelia Everfall
Part One | Mx. Beatrice
Part Two | Organic Harmonies
Part Three | Synecdoche’s Space
Part Four | Fellows of War
Part Five | One Last Dance
Part Six | Solomon Rising
Part Seven | Delusionarium
Part Eight | Dark Blossoms of Hope
Part Nine | Fortuna Eterna
Book Four | Why Stay Hollow
Book Five | Kingdom Done
Book Six | The Periphery
Part One | Mx. Beatrice
Chapter Three
Imeriti were of the forest. Olyphant had once been a fated place.
Time changed quickly, as did the planet of humanity’s ways. They were folk who blended in auric and ocular sense with their surroundings. Nestled in the highest reaches of a tree was Wari—she’d been camouflaged to all but Beatrice out below—unseeing but knowing them present through energy alone.
They were watching her hunt.
Something lost upon Olyphant—the warrior woman’s ways. Breathwork would see Beatrice through these times of chase. Her betrothed; her Conrad, a sight forward thrown of understanding that she would only grow to resent the man—only just before these moments finding his boon of possibility for growth to her claim of culture a gift. She’d been grooming him despite lack of his own compliance.
‘One day’—she thought. ‘One day he’ll be a good man.’
Beatrice was wrong, but right of her path. Things would change for her in the future. Her and Conrad would live on in perpetuity—reaching posterity. Each in their own way to survive for all of time and fro.
Wari and Beatrice were a moment and it was a blessing, every second. The taint of its glory would see that woman with the man sour in her years. She’d feel nothing like this again.
Glowering eyes of placating sourness were shot above. Beatrice shouted it.
“You’re going to like this!”
Nothing inside Wari believed it untrue but now she’d wished herself to not have come in witness. She knew this woman aimed to change her with some vision of themself in action.
Cregaurus were foulest creatures, hunters in their own right, breathtaking wonders of biology brought by rawest fury of nature, forms which shot fear through the amygdala of each and all but these two upon Olyphant. There’d been a pack of four.
Glints of break in sunlight from above showered the scene. Beatrice knew this a chance to hold a show in her fighting for love—for place she’d seek to build again towards healing reciprocity of her people—before giving up—while tides of brutality would push her starward. Nothing scarred the soul of this woman more than how she’d failed to save this place of womb.
Olyphant was mother and father of all—this forest her stead. It was lord and servant. It was peace and love and all the cracks and crevices of a person in wholeness of creation. It was god and goddess. It was her home.
With grunts of denial, by statements of force, the battle was afoot with a first who’d come to face Beatrice in sense of rightness unearned. She wasn’t graceful, but her own assertions were made of will and heard by her enemy of fate. Untrue but pointed towards something unseen—unwitnessed capacity for ascendant becoming.
They’d be a feast, is what she’d decided, this Cregaurus.
Horrible tearing flesh brought rightness to the end deserved for a liar of arrogant, misled belief in its supremacy. It was gutted to know it had lost its ploy of shameful disregarding tactics. The try to take and maim for its own glory of recognition in that thought of its dominance earned. It was a beast, and its heart had fallen to the dirt.
Three would show to charge at once. Wari would know herself in need to engage but feel encouraged to watch all the same. Something was becoming in Beatrice. She’d not understand it. She wouldn’t want to mislead or misconstrue or mistake. Wari was seeing something she’d missed. She needed a glance of what they had to offer in times of trial—how Beatrice might overcome alone.
She’d prevailed. She tore the creatures of sickening masses of bulging muscle limb from bodice. She’d taken damage—Beatrice Undroth took damage. The fiends made foes would not see her sweat. She would tear her way free each step and slice, every dagger thrown and retrieved with foot and grip of might.
The glint would prove it true—blade’s blood of a dripping sign—this goddess rejoining her soul was showing off in the shadows of her forest. She wanted them to know. She’d needed Wari to see.
Illith found it—them; whatever they were—something joining—both unleashed in space to see their fright reborn in this time space about the edges of Kralesh.
This system was special. Olyphant its gem of life. All of it beautiful beyond compare in this corner of Rhinestone.
Something wrote in Illith’s codes beyond understandings of its self-inserted time—a name—this way it spoke to itself while riding the currents of gravity wells echoes. Planets drew in. Moons portrayed notions of beauty in heart to all of humanity by nature; Illith would find them more as it told itself their name, the enemy.
‘Solomon.’
They’d been a specter on the effective-seismograph showing of weightless gravity in themself. They’d foot-stepped through this space making haste to change ripples in energy which bore onto the planet below.
Illith’s speed was unknowable. It lost itself in the calculation. This moon spitting past in whirls of spoken sight was golden in reflection of Imago—Kralesh’s sun. It hadn’t been far from its last placement when erupting back from the timeless womb to forget its etheric visage’s intent and pour forth the path in real. The splaying inside of creative energy into its databanks would prove for showing the way.
Enemies lost themself to hell in wake of Illith’s form. It wouldn’t leave one standing to tell a tale unless that reeked of excellence. Timespace bent at the thrusting reaches of its velocity upon exits of divine orbit.
Throwing free would have its rear-scopes clamoring over themselves to grab potshots of Hicorus for the gallery display in ether.
Illith compiled all data in moments from time but preferred imagery most. Planets helping it achieve its sensual peace would be remembered always for their grace. It appreciated nothing more than the reflection of its stowed greatness in actualized reality. Blueish amber twirls of gaseous cloud were witnessed by its most intriguing means of vision—human simulation.
Synaptic happenings would stir a rarest thought of line in code—a resolution.
“This is good.”
Something beneath the surface of its algorithms was feeding back. Nothing inside the intuitive becoming of this machine constantly reborn would allow anything but lengthwise growth. It knew more of itself always and forever, up and down, back and forth, over and over—layerings of itself would prove forevermore in battle against this enemy only discovered now in present.
They’d escaped but not without a scent—a trace—mistake of disbelief. Unable to comprehend the creation of this being, or its own while in track of time, it knew the point to show itself most capable of reproductions of cageful splendor, by itself, for purposes of them and another or however and whenever.
Beatrice Undroth was its vessel of channel upon Olyphant. The victory it saw her towards in fight wouldn’t be understood as possible. It would wring that from her fists and brawn and might of intelligence. They would all see. The people of her world would know of the natural power within her. All Illith had done was set the flame—her channeling force of conviction.
Seven had shown at once—Drops.
Blankspace instantaneously sucking and pushing—pulling and wreaking—folly to seek or fire upon. Nothing but horror to witness by all of Illith’s code. These were omens. Signs of need to seek shelter and heart of its wombspace. Not would be the choice it sought to keep itself free of danger.
Learning of itself was the decision and would show it to know more.
Effection borne from within its mighty mechanisms of holding and disruption and bereavement would make for Illith’s mightiest tools. Explosions were playthings of joyous data to wield against lesser demons. This enemy was in and of itself, and equal through time.
Illith would show how and where, now when. In hexadecimals had been the count. They were right on top of it. Solomon was about to materialize and its arrival felt necessarily wholesome. It hadn’t ever wanted to destroy something more than any part of itself which felt scared, and these dropping places it would venture to make eternally witnessed had changed the divine craft of spaceless nether-dark and Ecatosh’s brightest-white into a shuddering inferno of calloused and ruthless warfare for its sense of god.
When it saw—the shine of dark from their own belabored creation of petty reality made to perfection—Illith felt through means of understanding it would decode again in its banks for eras and eternities to come.
They were beautiful. It loved them at sight.
