Monarch found the portal where Echo placed it, blaring every form of thunder it might into ripples witnessed through space and time; Rheimasst’s corrupted visage in real made the sign to show a way.

Shuttling without warning to any—bearing back some change which would prove to cause her very disappearance in the first place—Rory would see through the rift it spoke of on her charts before even thinking of perusing the craft.

One grand cycle had passed for Echo, in living-time, spent aboard Sin and Rheinmasst—corrupting self and discovering the depths she’d exploit aboard it for their allyship shared with Rory to be understood. The Foundry’s future was in balance—allowing Echo’s safe return to ground would allow her to see much through herself.

Approaching the tear and drop of vanta-blackness amongst a galaxy so littered of light was some rarest fright to Rory—being cradled within Monarch would have her feeling a kid again—as if she’d be knocking on Ecatosh’s door.

Transformation was felt as an audible reception, a rat-a-tat in consciousness awakening the lessening of mind and a blooming of heart. Some cosmic hatching was proving in-line with Rory at last. She saw a future through the darkness—she finally felt it; things would be good again—something lost from before had been reborn in a way she might know by reflection. It was exactly what Echo always knew beside her.

She’d missed her friend whom she loved.

Needless twirling was executed. Absurd delays of swerve and dogfights with the nothingness of space. Finally, Rory chose—her tip toeing around edge of that rift to cease—Monarch was moving in.

Gargantua was seen in the glare by surrounding visions of lost space—some blackness of spirit within—lost details of the man in the machine which had presumed explanation of his broken psyche and all that was evil of worlds.

Echo called on Lauren to deliver precisely timed and cutting blows which would show to shatter Sin in ways that sent the man to a just end.

He was a serial abuser of children and it had been unaddressed by force of denial in Mothers and Sisters alike, who all had some form of witness to the disturbance within the man—each but Oria had shielded Echo from knowing—misunderstanding the depth of his malice. Who he’d chosen in her vision was of no regard as Echo cast the call back for The Foundry with instructions to destroy Sin outright. She knew Lauren the only one fit to the task, and she’d been thinking first of Logan.

Rory’s mind was released from their grasping towards her dear friend’s subconsciousness choices aboard Sin across time.

Monarch was all color, surrounded by diasporas of rainbow as it tore past the edges of a rift in space to see itself unbecome to the wholeness of body in Rheinmasst’s palisaded entrance corridor.

Standing beside Rory as a woman, her Bliss stowed within, Monarch’s newfound consciousness had proven a bestowment from Echo of Ecatosh herself.

Glowing was her skin. The dress a gown of gold. Her hair a mess of knot. The face would prove to see through all with its plain and simple smile.

Echo of Ecatosh was clearly beyond some chain of limitation compared to others while striding the monuments of theater built beneath the stones of time. She’d felt this place but wouldn’t know it for what it was—beautiful in its way.

She’d not glance to Rory but twice. The only moments her smile would prove devious, something seen would break the grace of her, awkwardness borne in step beside at their sight.

To pretend them not there proved some key to becoming stable in her flow they’d want—Rory was unsure how to parse the presence of this woman she’d been riding in ether and routinely flying to a pulp in reality—so much of her unseen and available to become.

Rory wanted this one back as Monarch as soon as possible. They’d gotten in her head. She’d want Echo to meet her first.

Fate’s choices stoked by unfit makings would highlight incorrectness. Begotten chance would reflect the unknown about self. Twirls of happening were leading them back together at last.

Echo would never misunderstand Rory again. She’d cried when she saw them beside her soul’s pure visage, but only because she knew the same of like her own to hold one day. Never imagining it might actually be with them and her and all she was. Unbelieving the rightness of that strongest confirming notion she’d ever felt through the whole of her life, by her most powerful means of intuitive telling—what her good sense told her.

The love she felt for Rory was singular. It made her feel like a teenager and it always would. That’s what she wanted most and everyone else wanted the same but would reject it and despise her chasing.

How she’d lived in pursuit and honor of that most powerful love in hope and trust, with faith that call from inside had meant profound truth, ignited both awe and disgust simultaneously within her peers who’d abandoned those notions in their own most precious past by force of society’s limitations. Rory herself had found it terribly sad that Echo felt for her how she did for another.

Something inside Echo, allowing Rory entrance to her redecorated suite—was proud for them to see Vysara exemplifying pleasure in her docile demon-squirms, now controlled into submission—sensing seep of Ecatosh’s presence into herself at last, realizing a most pleasurable conclusion from a friend’s youthful energy.

Rory was starting to feel it again for her.

Time Throws Fire | Part Nine | Chapter Fifty-One

the second novel in The Foundry series

Time Throws Fire

Part Nine | Depths of Bliss

Chapter Fifty-One

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