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 Three
Ulysses Foremark shot the boy between his eyes. The thread-bolt cast sliced through the medulla within, severing function without.
“Collect him.”
His eyes seemed not to blink while holding that stare upon the marks before him. One after the next had soiled themselves in some way or another, each showing the very thing he detested most; displayed weakness.
“Collect him!”
There’d been a scuttling fare of bots who begun their automated traipsing toward his downed imbecile; the very class created by Ulysses for their propensity to be forced into living within never-ending and eager acceptances of squalor—paralyzed under fear of wrath—made to crawl over each other for the survival they were clawing their way farther away from every moment in his presence. His shouts mobilized the nearest of those human conscripts to clamor forward to remove the still twitching body of their former friend, allowing the ever-lagging bots to attain the ireful stare of this King of Space.
“Let this be a lesson to you all.” He’d growled it—staring down each and every one of those on their knees before him.
The woman had caught his eye. She was pretty. He hated that. Of all the threats unknown to good natured people of this galaxy—it was this man alone who would prove equal part of the force which would see it all cut by the ankles, onto its knees violently, wringing supposition into force from empire towards the seeing forth of his will.
She tried to look away, but all here had been trained to do the opposite. When master called you with his eyes it was not a choice—you would freeze, hold, wait—provided would be your eyes to his for the appraisal of their honesty, vanity, and the value of their offered kinship.
Stalking forward from his throne he’d griped the woman by her throat, slinging her back front to side, force in which he’d taken it causing her eyes to goiter-bulge.
There was a moment shared between this young woman and her liege. He saw to provide her allowance and rise by his grip. A moment would be seen by the few lone living humans with enough distance and courage to flit their eyes up from their chained cross-poses, while mounted to the side walls, who would recognize it as what it was; he’d loved her.
A whisper shared was heard only by her ear and that one left upon the boy beside her.
“You’ll be seeing me again very soon.” Is what he’d whispered, before snapping her neck half-around in a swift crack and twist of his top-heavy musculature. The reverberations of that etching series of fast-flung bone crunch were music to Ulysses’ ears. He’d not stopped there.
That boy who dared to hear of his secret plans to accost that woman in hell with his purest form would not live to blink the tale. He’d been met with the slicing blade upon the lower heel of his shining-steel armored boot—leaving an indentation of like-shape implanted across the forehead of that then screaming man-child.
Ulysses had taken his ankles first—seeking more of that sound which brought him to seek its call once more. Each crunch would twinge a region of his belly reserved for the purest of pleasure. He’d take every twist to it’s limit. He would make every reverse joint folding a moment to remember. He’d stomp the bits which seemed stubbornly held together throughout the boy’s legs as their cries grew tart.
A something had been missing from Ulysses’ life—a someone. He’d not tell a soul of this, but he was sad.
The final scream to escape from the boy emanated around the projectile viscera flung from his mouth at the same time, as the folding of his body caught up to his neck.
“Fuck!”
Only one spoke on this ship.
The battlecruiser known as Opus had an elemental guardian. Its name was simply Hex. That spirit of malformed ethereal hatred once projected from their King himself had been brought to conscious being and ocular-perceptivity—when it chose—through technological means beyond the man who sat in the throne.
Hex was imbued with layers of nanomaterial spoken of only in whispers amongst Elaria. For that damage created to humanity in its presence was known to be catastrophic. No fear would hold a one such as Ulysses back from utilizing these bio-bits birthed of the rarest captured particles of supernova’s radiance to bring his terrible designs to fruition. It’s sound was silence.
Ulysses thoughts commanded it with the fury of his hate to take a man from bondage on the wall and tear the bones from within—swirling clouds of charcoal-colored micro smoke wisping their tips down to sharpest points—delivering them to his plate skinned palms. He’d thrust one down through the boy’s skull and into carbon-mesh floor paneling beside the protruding catch-boxes which projected emotive and physical control over his imbeciles.
The remaining two on their knees then shared the longest bone shard which lodged their skulls through—thrown by his stronger arm.
