Changes befell The Foundry. Echo’s leaving then near immediate reappearance had been a boon to the hearts of all so ready to see a chance for undoing the disregard they’d held for one of their brightest hearts.

With her gone things were realized at last. That’s what it would take for most.

They’d need her absence to understand what it was she’d left behind. To see that everything she’d created and safely secured on Boreál’s phase-link network proved it at last, her true worth.

Nobody had been able to acknowledge that but the woman herself. Everyone thought Echo was joking. To inspire others would be her ploy. To inspire herself would be the truth. Every calloused barb she slung around the understanding of her own excellence would be thought something meant for a laugh.

Just like everything she did—meaning was layered. She’d not only hope to inspire those who might one day eclipse her at any given task, or graft seeds planted which would see positive change for all, or look for the beating she’d be so excited to take from another, or set goals which would bring the best from her in the pursual; she was telling herself the truth no one else could.

She was different—unpretentious in a universe of people built on the notion. There hadn’t ever been a force of strength and tenacity like her own soul in Ecatosh—the willful disregard of a lost god’s perspective of dominance would be the change maker for all in every simulation.

This one; The Foundry’s Echo, took place within that sacred and most favorite life. The one Echo would see herself onto a throne of Ecatosh just to take back in some manner, for another chance to do it right.

She’d done it. She made the change upon her return which had seen these people past deliverance in the Brawl of Boreál. Her key of slicing prayer made for cutting etheric bliss had been wrought by dance and cast by intention into the beast of Hex. It would never have stopped. It would have destroyed everything through its doings. Letting it die would be her most perfect choice of heart.

Nothing would ever take it away from her—the rightness of her ultimate doings. Even when things she saw and slung protruded beyond the boundaries of loving compassion wielded for the healing of others and into the realms of murderous destruction of consciousness, they’d teach back in the end as divine.

Poe had been the one seeing to the upholding of principles of society emplaced by all in witness of Echo’s shouting at the council. She’d been the one who always made it feel right by simple presence beside, through reflection of her innocence. Something about the girl—Echo’s best friend—would know the heart within the woman who tore language from her fury and fired it like molten magma from War Cry’s twin cannons. She’d see through it in a way others could not. She would remember that as others seemed dour in face of letting Echo go again without speaking the truth of their feeling.

Sadness pervaded the Council chambers as she’d taken a stand—made herself a place at the front. Poe’s presence there was a rarest thing. She’d been a one whose voice was squashed by those who’d deign to speak louder without provocation. Every person here—all six hundred and forty-two of them—contained within the upper reaches to the lowest benches of the surrounding observation theater, and those few who’d found the honor given or took it themselves to find station at this session on the central plaza below—had failed to see Poe for who she was, a leader.

She stared them down. There wasn’t much but anger in her eyes. Poe had been the only person to stand by Echo’s side without a hint of artifice or self-delusioned need to exploit the woman. She’d just loved her spirit.

When the tears in her eyes held, and the tightness of her gripped throat muscles loosened—it didn’t prove to dull the emotion as she’d spoken the only words they all needed to hear.

“We’re going to save Echo.”

Time Throws Fire | Part Six | Chapter Thirty-Seven

the second novel in The Foundry series

Time Throws Fire

Part Six | Whirls of Wind

Chapter Thirty-Seven

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