Time Throws Fire
by Ophelia Everfall
Content Warning: This is a story.
Part One | Redux Eterna
Part Two | Polymath Blues
Part Three | The Feather
Part Four | Wizard
Part One | Redux Eterna
Chapter Four
“Do you think this is acceptable?” Elliot Harper demanded of the frightened man struggling to find his words, their back lodged to the grip tight doors of a freight elevator.
“Did you even try this?”
The cold portion of block-ration wiggled in response to Elliot’s thrusting of that plate it lay upon nearer the cook’s tremor ridden facial features. He was shaking his head—searching for words—unbelieving this captain of Exile might be unaware of the complete inability his cooks had to improve such a meal; it was flavored protein.
Something was off within Elliot upon waking this morning. He aimed to set it right. His bed chambers reserves had been bare for the first time since resuming from deep sleep and there wouldn’t be a thought except for that of finding inadepts to punish.
Eyes glazing over, his attention paled towards the digital interface seen by augmented vision; fields of ship control and personnel information that were occluded to everyone but himself. The youth before him twinged at some sight over his captain’s shoulder.
Elliot finished sending the command as the haze dropped, snapping a sharp eye back to whatever source drew this profusely inappropriate reaction from his charge. She was standing there—some plebian woman—begging this ill-fated boy who’d attempted delivery of the wrong meal plate with her eyes.
A hardened stare was graced by the growling admission of her captain’s perfect teeth. He’d not had to say it with anything but his fiercest expression of ruthless intimidation. She took one flitted glance at her soon-to-be former life companion and whimpered while crashing through a push-door into the dining hall.
Sounds of a woman’s weeping could barely be heard as the door paneling settled. Elliot’s attention landed back on the servicer caught by his outstretched trap-arm, holding fast on elevator’s outer edgework. That boy was pinned by the plate now impressing upon his nose to the brink of rupture.
“Did you try this?”
Protestations of silent denial swung from the neck of that young-adult who’d been in the most unfortunate of places, at the worst of times, assigned the last delivery he’d ever make as the reason—to be explained—for his imminent demise began dribbling from his soaked through slacks onto the floor beside his steel-toed clogs.
Elliot heard the drizzle and soured his appetite completely. Disappointment riddled the emotions coursing through the man, and that cook found proof of his fate at last in the reflection of his captain’s horrified witnessing; their seeing of that shame now spreading upon the floor.
The doors slid open behind the boy as the realization sunk in—there was no elevator car behind it.
In time spent since waking Elliot was rediscovering pleasure beside his curiosity. He’d had his pick of women, men, and others to awaken while his co-captain and wife remained in tank-cradled slumber.
The one before him now was limber—if a little worn out.
Multi-tasking was an ultimate tool of Exile’s fierce captain. His battle cruiser was flagship to Elaria’s homestar fleet now bearing upon Boreál. There’d not be a moment spent holding focus with any one paltry facet of this ship, nor the squirrels. That amount of care was only for his wife, the Queen, and he was enjoying every moment he could without her.
The dead-man-pounding behind was enjoying a sight that would only be permitted once before one’s life would surely end. This captain’s rear-facing eye was not for anyone but his queen and she’d not have any interest in such delightfully transgressive proclivities.
A unique singularity of this Commander of Space’s lifetime had seen one devil of a man fuck his ass and live to remember it. Streams of data were poured over. The mystery within them absorbed Elliot’s remaining consciousness as he played his favorite game of physicality; ‘finger trap’.
He’d been taking in everything missed. Time spent in sleep-berths were wasted moments which intensity could not be wrung from. He’d let his focus on the data slip and allowed himself to fully soak back the joy from this re-enforced suspension-bridge he was being made into through action.
One point of raw intelligence would never be released by his field of attention after it had been seen. Not even while his face squinched in those special ways, a sight inevitably marking another for ‘unaliving’ in the latent minutes, would prove able to tear it from mind. A ghost from his past was trailing Elaria’s armada—Elliot’s armada.
Some specter of star borne warfare was leaving touches of heat-signature, echoes of radiation cloud, intentionally cast radio waves meant to distract and confuse its occluded bearings. The signs were clear to Elliot alone. He knew this man and they’d compromised him once before.
Elliot Harper would be making sure it was they who were bested this time around.
Dia was the most beautiful woman in the universe—perfection of form. She was something to be protected and Elliot was unable to see her as anything less than ‘heaven’s angel,’ no matter how cruelly she’d treat him.
He would leave her sleeping.
Too much was to be done and the woman had a propensity for inserting herself into places, and proclaiming things, which would legitimately make worse results for all. Her input was not considered so much as spat, insights therein simply nonexistent. She’d be most displeased when her anti-sage advice was less than strictly adhered to. Still, she was goddess to Elliot.
There was just something inescapably divine about the shape of her ass. It was the one thing he couldn’t let go of no matter what. Sometimes he’d dream of it and wake in a puddle of tears. Ever yet, she was an idiot.
Dia floated in her tank-berth held at gaze of his expansive and sunken bed enclave, itself carved from its rectangular precipice into the gold-veined marble flooring; an entire sculpted segment of his home world, Vermillion’s tallest mountain dominated, Cromagnum.
The Queen’s pale visage had now been revealed by Elliot’s pulling back of a velvet curtain she’d proclaimed to be died a hideous azure and clashed with every other design choice of the space.
She was known for this throughout Exile’s legends, sensibilities ruining the perfection of his people’s immortal constructions of excellence repeatedly. He’d been glad she was asleep. Especially since the squirrels—his menial staff; ‘rodents on his nuts’—hadn’t yet cleaned up the viscera left behind from those two who’d witnessed him compromised.
At last, the call he’d been waiting for came from Empress Lithia.
He’d ignored it as he flung himself off the upper landing onto the bed far below with a gleefully childish yelp, crashing into his pillow fortress and bouncing thrice on that triple thick ‘cloud mattress’ he’d had designed by his finest engineers. Hugging a pillow and rolling onto his back he’d beamed his widest grin.
Elliot was giggling.
The Competition
