The Foundry | Part Four | Chapter Forty-Four
the next chapter of my forthcoming novel
The Foundry
by Daphne Garrido
Part Two | Rebuilt; Refound; Reclaimed
Part Four | Unmasked; Unbound; Unleashed
Chapter Forty-Four
Echo fired the shot, and she was only now waiting to see what happened.
Scarlet had lost negligible energy shielding-reserves, throughout all her most joyously fulfilled legs of The Guantlet, which stretched between that defeat of Horath on Leg Three, and this challenge now shining so brightly before her at its final container of proving.
Nothing but a swarm of the most elite goonships known to simulation had been any threat to her journey, and it was only because she’d just left that enchanting leg nine; her mind would remain there for some time.
Something about that violent black-hole and the most challenging passage one had to seek in its orbit — dodging and weaving such debris from all those destroyed there in the past — it simply called the excellence out of Scarlet. For there to be such beauty and danger, and to be near it all at once, such chances alchemize away her insecurity, could only remind Echo of that one thing she loved the most.
Echo had even seen what she swore were the remnants of that first Scarlet floating about. Something in her had come to believe that old comms panel would’ve been swallowed up into nothingness. It was a bittersweet realization to think of how it had been there all along. Although, Echo would be most pleased to have her updated model shown-out in presence of simulation’s greatest singularity.
Still carrying that weight of her mind’s absorption into a purest passion wrought from witnessing such magnificence in form — from both herself, and that gargantua of absolute darkness — she’d been foolhardy.
Echo had used The Void a hair too early, and there was a pair who’d escaped in that dogfight on Leg Ten.
They were beasts in their hunger for her destruction, once they’d seen all she would be capable of, their programing would teach of Scarlet as a most serious threat to their continued existence as more than the scattered pieces of themselves which would surely remain by the reflection of her true power.
One of those ships had proven no match in the wrath she brought. Having momentarily caused a deepest well of despair to form in Echo, at a mistaken thought of Scarlet’s immanent destruction — she’d began utilizing that curling transformation of re-orientation so exemplified by Rory.
She’d carved right through them with her molten-heated laser of constant forbearance. Their two halves only just drifting apart as she’d flipped Scarlet ninety degrees starward to slip right through their simulated viscera.
The other had trailed for some time, taking pot-shots which her shields proved most worthy of deflecting, coaxing them in slowly as the rest of those fiend’s struggle against The Void’s pull finally ended, each one lost to their processing, trying desperately to calculate what it was they’d gotten wrong.
Scarlet’s infallibility to their ways, especially at the hands of a pilot like Echo Béleaph, was that thing they’d missed.
“They’re so fucked, dude!” Fox shouted.
Rory later told Echo she’d still been watching as that goonship was chasing after her, realizing quite fully the intent she held for The Void to swallow them whole. Nothing of what existed behind her would remain once they’d felt the pressure of that singularity’s crushing weight upon their hull.
“Check this out!” Echo shouted in blind hope Rory might still be in the simulation hall.
She’d been coaxing the fool inward, ever closer, for what felt like so long, a broadest sweeping curl, with her coreward side hanging low to pull the turn of Scarlet in a left-side orbit of her own greatest weapon’s impending wrath.
It had been about three seconds since they’d cut through that other one.
“They're going to fucking love this!” she’d shouted, knowing the goonship would not enjoy the aftermath at all, as it struggled to avoid the inescapable pull of her void once caught.
The ship had done exactly what Echo expected, attempting to cut her angle and make up the ground by skirting closer, unknowing it was already upon the very edge of her singularity’s langrage point.
“I just pulled that move right out of my ass!” Echo shouted, uncaring that no one may be listening but Leopold, finding great reflection in the wisdom leading her through such a terrifying moment of becoming.
While she watched that pre-blast implosion finally triggered by the first ship to break The Void’s core radius, her rear-scopes trained in a tightest zoom on the action, Echo fired Scarlet’s drive core, out away from that ensuing detonation. She’d flipped her primary scope as the blast drew such light that she felt the need to shield her eyes — which themselves had nothing to do with her perception of the imagery at all — feeling an immediate pressure within from what would be next.
Echo spent all the time she’d needed — driving her machine on full into the simulated stars — allowing Scarlet’s ultimate weapon the needed minutes to recharge before engaging warp to the next leg.
Once she’d found herself in the presence of the twelfth leg’s foe — Echo panicked.
She’d never beaten it, not even the most muted simulative version of Leg Twelve; she hadn’t even tried it this time around at The Foundry. There was no way to utilize her planned maneuver outside the real deal, and Echo had been fully aware she might be killing herself with this one, so she’d not want to have practiced if that were the case.
In the time she might’ve lost if she had tried this sooner, everything she’d ever hoped for had come true. The Consoler’s were her whole heart, every last one of them, and she’d never felt what it was like to be part of such a family. There would be no fear left in face of that experience for Echo. She’d bear forward upon this challenge by that leading of her strongest-ever, and blindest intuition.
A dream Echo had when she was young had spoken something to her, its wisdom never forgotten, always looking for an answer within or without. There were sights and feelings of such profound emotion and excellence — and it had only been while preparing to face this threat when she’d realized exactly what they’d been.
Fate had been leading her where she’d needed to go throughout her entire lifetime, pushing her to take this bravest leap which would seem so foolish to all, but bring the most cathartic and satisfying realization of the truthful righteousness in Echo’s own intuition, and birth a trust in all her heart had ever spoken; those very same which enabled the choice to be made in the first place.
It was a white dwarf — a star on the immanent verge of supernova. That moment a warship hit the system of Leg Twelve, the only objective would be to survive. It was seen as a requirement for every mech to have some means of escaping immanent system-wide dangers, and the decision to include this leg had long ago been made by Pauline Demitrus herself; most worthy elder, and sole matriarch of The Foundry.
Echo was about to cheat her game; at least, she’d hoped.
There was no part of Scarlet able to outrun, phase-warp and fold time-space, or shield herself throughout an escape from such a blast. As Echo would often find herself most compelled in the face of such furious power, she’d hope to contain it.
The mass of this stellar core remnant was about to go full nova, and there wouldn’t be a word shared between Fox and Echo as Scarlet released the final shot from her undercarriage on this trip through The Gauntlet.
She’d flown straight towards it, and closer than she should’ve, knowing something about what was coming from within her heart and mind; a future remembrance now so clear to feel. The thought was of Rory’s wielded weapon of choice; her light, and the way it worked in such beautiful tandem with the darkness Echo could manifest, along with that near identical appearance of this star’s luminance.
Echo was right that. While Leopold hadn’t been able to quantify a thing about what happened from that data they’d recovered of the Hearthlight’s demise, this simulated data would work well in tandem to eventually prove fascinating discoveries.
No matter the mass this dwarfed remnant sported, or that three-thousand-kilometer breadth of its radius, there was an energy inherent to the light of a sun within Rory’s own, and it had taught of Echo’s ability to face down a threat of this size without fear.
There was also a realization of most profound gravity to the heart and soul of Echo, which found its way into her mind, and seemingly all at once while starting down the now shrinking dwarf and expanding blackness of her singularity. Long had she seen witnessed similarity in herself to Rory, but also some great duality, and this sight before her now caused it to appear within her thoughts as a holistic notion, despite its nuance.
Rory taught people by her very nature to do the one thing she demanded of herself, and that was to hold her own energy entirely. It had been the very thing Echo always looked up to most; the one thing she’d needed, proving the very key to finding herself. The inverse was what she’d always hoped to offer Rory in return, though never realizing what it was until this moment; she wanted to help her share herself the way Echo felt so able to. It was the brightest light they held inside their walls of solitude, and they’d healed her most completely with it. She’d not think there’d be a better way to serve the world than give that gift to her friend.
Seeing this happening before her made Echo quite sad as well. Realizing that without having been who she’d only become now, so long past activated by the wisdom her friend bestowed so effortlessly, she’d done the very thing Rory hated most; tried to consume their light for herself. Just as Rory had done the thing she hated most, twisting her up to disbelieve her feelings most entirely, and triggering those wounds of feeling unseen by one she’d witnessed so completely, and longed to stand beside. For both, quite amplified, as they’d seen so much hope in each other; that there was someone different at last.
A golden shimmer was borne to everything which happening before her, another yet to be understood phenomena, which glowed throughout and about the edges of the dwarf as it found balance with her singularity.
Neither one was going anywhere. The Void hadn’t swallowed it up, but there was no sign of the white dwarf going supernova either — an equilibrium had been reached, and it would allow Echo to propel herself at any speed she might choose beyond the bounds of this system, into the safety which would see her proven most fully to herself, once and for all a pilot of The Foundry. She’d known it in her heart as Scarlet burned a path into the darkness, even if she hadn’t yet allowed herself to believe it in her mind.
The Gauntlet was over.
