The Foundry | Part Four | Chapter Forty-Two

the next chapter of my forthcoming novel

Aug 04, 2025

The Foundry

by Daphne Garrido

Part One | Thrice Bled Heart

Part Two | Rebuilt; Refound; Reclaimed

Part Three | Dominion

Part Four | Unmasked; Unbound; Unleashed

Chapter Forty-Two

Condor Undroth would soon be discovering that he’d made a great mistake in believing Alan was someone he might still control.

His son was beyond Condor’s means to manipulate, an evolution of growth completely beyond his awareness, and yet still he strove to do just that. Still, Father’s actions could prove him most able to draw responses from the boy, which wouldn’t have existed without the self-professed Emperor’s machinations of control.

Alan and Priscilla had been removed from their mission. It was an immediate response to his shaved head being seen within the Theater of War, and had proven to save his life, or at least prevented some fateful reckoning with those who still believed his allegiance to The Foundry was corrupted.

There’d not seemed any choice for Alan, when the plans began to emerge so clearly, as then Instructor Salus had brought them into their private office and presented them with their many preparations. Vladimir Salus had wielded threats borne directly from the will of Alan’s family, choosing to wield the only thing they’d left against him.

His brother’s daughter. She was like him, and not a girl at all. They knew it too. After having seen the signs so clearly in Alan through his lifetime, and struggling to find any means by which they might repress him into a visage of their making, they knew exactly who and what that child was.

To have young boy he’d never met except by shared video journals, themself having become pen pals through the breadth of space-time, be threatened by the very surgery which had been Alan’s own greatest nightmare, had simply not been a thing he was willing to tolerate.

Even Beatrice Undroth knew it was wrong. She’d even chosen not to do it to Alan because of this understanding; the rarest occurrence of morality within the woman, and perhaps the only he’d ever seen. Yet, he’d not doubted their will to execute it upon Logan if he’d resisted their demands. So, Alan had begun his own great plan.

There was a reason he’d not fought as Rory and Echo made way into that hangar, nor worked alongside them to fight those who believed him their compatriots. He’d felt trapped, and there’d been no action he could take which wouldn’t betray his heart, or the lies which were so necessary to uphold for him to save his nephew.

They would’ve remade the very pathways of Logan’s brain if he’d not joined appeared to join their cause holistically. That child who was still so far from discovering who they might be, would be denied the right entirely. Any who’d undergone this procedure were derogatorily referred to as ‘sleepers’, because this hegemony of evilest embodiment would change everything they’d want.

Compliance would be assured in sleepers. Their lives would be of unquestionable routine, and the way they’d see themselves would only ever fit into that most rigid box of dualism which Beatrice Undroth herself had been the sole responsible party for perpetrating.

It was that woman, a self-proposed Empress in the making, who’s bigotry had become culture through her manipulation of the man she’d wed.

No matter the appearance of things in this brutal hierarchy of clearest patriarchal values, it was the woman in power who’d supported made it possible, and that willing appearance of sublimation to a man that she’d control through the whims of her boredom. There was no part of Condor who was born to lead.

The violence he’d perpetrate on those who resisted his demands, was a projection of the insecurity he felt from knowing his place beneath the surface of his conscious mind. It was also an effort to impress that woman — by means which could never work — who he’d go to the ends of the universe for, lusting to always to win her true affection; something he never had.

She was a denier, and there was no part of Beatrice which felt more visceral erotic pleasure than watching the hopes of someone die before her eyes. The slower the better, and she’d been watching Condor die their whole relationship. It’s why he was her favorite. He’d misinterpreted that all along.

What Alan was about to do — believing himself the one ahead of all manipulations, in face of his own misunderstanding of his father’s power — was in-fact what Beatrice was hoping he’d do all along.

There was no part of Beatrice who wanted to win this battle beside Condor, she’d goaded him to undertaking without his awareness, a plan of most multifaceted intent borne from her own sickest instincts, which flowed from her darkest source of manifestation. She’d never have to think things through fully, or listen to her heart’s input on the matter. Beatrice found that by acting with her first thought, always, she’d lead herself towards exactly what she wanted.

Discovering in the now apparent results coming forward through her own lack-of-plan put to action, with the war he’d begun in her honor, she’d seen how badly she truly wanted Condor dead. As well as the Empress’s throne.

She’d also wanted one thing back the most. In her own words, Beatrice had missed her daughter dearly. There’d been a time at the beginning of Alan’s life, where this woman so long surrounded by men, had seen hope for something better existing within her heart. Betrayal was the only intention she could prescribe Alan’s choice to be himself, as she’d not the ability to see beyond the bounds of her own mind, that was how it would always feel to her.

The infinity pool on the coreward side of Auluré’s upper deck; home for the royalty class, was surrounded by viewing screens of highest caliber fidelity. They’d shown a near three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view of space surrounding the great battleship.

Alan’s mask was off as he waded towards Vladmir Salus.

He’d been sneaking up here afterhours and spending time with the sights of Chiron, and there was change he’d notice regarding the will within for making the moves required of him.

That man-made-devil was backing his way towards its corner edge, before the beautiful celestial giant itself, and so near that fall of the pool’s water, which would pour for levels upon levels into the singular ‘beautification’ feature of the commoner deck. A deigned fountain which proved to all who resided there of the grace those they served could choose to bestow upon them.

The feature had been dreamt up by Beatrice Undroth herself — another creation of purest instinct.

When Valdimir had been nearly out of breath, and Alan decided the best way to rid the man of life might also serve some purpose to the morale of those lower decks, there was a decision made; he’d not be drowning Count Salus after all.

So enraged in that moment, there wouldn’t be much Alan could remember afterwards. It would be the way they’d clawed at his arms, begging with their eyes as he’d held them so near the edge. There’d even been a glint of regret, or perhaps just sadness, which would prove to unearth a grief in Alan himself going forward, witnessed in those eyes. More than anything though, it was how that man standing beside those who’d see him re-made and chained as a false-woman, Mr. Vladimir Salus, had proven to scream like one themself — at least, within their own culture’s falsest depictions of a woman’s weakness — on his longest way down.

Chapter Forty-Three