Time Throws Fire | Volume Two | Chapter Seventeen
volume two of the second story in The Foundry series
Time Throws Fire | Volume Two
By Ophelia Everfall
Part One - Cosmonaut | ONE | TWO | THREE | FOUR | FIVE
Part Two - Holy Fire Priestess | SIX | SEVEN | EIGHT | NINE | TEN
Part Three - Get the Guts | ELEVEN | TWELVE | THIRTEEN |
Part Four - Demon | FOURTEEN |
Part Five - Synecdoche’s Synapse | FIFTEEN | SIXTEEN |
Part Six - Viscera Rising
Part Seven - Exile
Part Eight - Semblance
Part Nine - Threnody of Lojack
Part Ten - Time Throws Fire
PART SIX | VISCERA RISING
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Synecdoche had seen, and that petty woman felt her there. It’s why Elaria had truly come to Boreál from the start. While the sighting hadn’t happened yet, it always would have back when and then.
The Empress hadn’t run upon those balls of feet in lifetimes. Shelter in a most special and highly protected place of self-worship was being sought for safety.
Taking to fleet-footed fleeing felt felicitous, yet wrong, for all inside the woman of such historically royal lineage. There hadn’t been a moment spent throughout her time doing anything but exactly what she wanted without lamentations and trifling. To flee was heard of for her make, yet rarely by their own true efforts.
Fear wasn’t shown to any throughout an eon of spent-time.
Her lineage in Ecatosh bore fruits of longevity she’d fail completely towards witnessing the cruelty of, and that upon herself the least. She’d love unknowing the becoming towards evil incarnate through her bitter end.
Centralizing self into singular-visage was not something ever done. Redundancies, back-ups of back-ups, near-constant uploading which drove towards obsession ensured no speck of conscious lifetimes most-precious could ever be lost. The idea of destroying her-all, somehow, from Boreál to Elaria and beyond, was oft perceived lost upon a man born from such ill-fated-consequence, as Elliot Harper had been.
Rory Tyrell knew better to understand than most.
They saw something, someone, which allowed through-connection for her understanding of what might be accomplished. Then another, and much the same, with knowledge shared to then be taken from Lojack and Beatrice Undroth respectively, which Rory would then choose to use. To make for taking back of that horrific vessel grafted in disharmonic internal conjunctions within its populace, such shared blame around, after time spent crystalizing a transformation through perpetration of old wounds upon each other, great lack of disallowance owned-wholly by almost every person therein, everything unchangeable by any except a woman, on who’d found those means to simply not care; forgings within Rory would know themself rightest to act with precision, at that time of their unique choosing, out of so many availabilities within their abundance of spacetime.
An empress’s apathy was the fruit of hell, complacency its course towards realization, and dishonor the right of passage bestowed upon all who willing chose that path by failing to resist with all their power. Nothing changed because people were scared.
Elliot had been terrified. He loved his things. He’d loved that image of a lifetime spent being witnessed as special and beautiful, it adorned him with graces of materiality. He knew it unrighteous to waste what was precious.
He’d suffered, and owned that loss in humanity the same, more, his station offering privilege which might’ve been used towards change most justified, ever rejected. Instead, all that could be grasped was kept, each privilege abused through defiance he’d not see as anything but righteous — no matter how rough it got, or true the consequences of his actions became apparent upon the frightened faces of those he’d flex that might of social power towards, nor who they were — imagining himself the greatest victim of all while shoehorning his own life within the worst slot imaginable for that deeply stowed spirit within.
People of Vermillion were native to the great simulation itself, its finest product of divine distillation, spirit taking hold within the folk of that planet more directly, allowing them fuller access to their aptitudes than an average human throughout the galaxy. They were an excellent people by spirit; their minds, bodies, and hearts of some purest make beyond those hailing from Ecatosh.
Many facets within humanity’s unfathomable plethora, in variations of living settings, would see their existence beginning as manifestations of their simulation.
Rory’s people had been that way, as were all souls who’d been abandoned to that Rheinmaast left unremembered by all — from before Olmec’s remaking — some timeless womb they’d one day recognize and use for re-creation had protected those abandoned by forces-unseen, and no matter where their own indigenousness had remained in time, or how lost that sacred-familial-knowledge found itself to their understandings.
An ultimate sign to place of unseen caste-placing within any human civilization of generational warfare, built upon the power struggles of fiefdoms, could be plainly witnessed through the availability of access for its populace toward uncorrupted truths of their own indigenous myths and histories.
All aboard Exile were of lineage from Vermillion, in some way, or a lover, and then there was The Emperess. Every original form of humanity from that gleaming ball of cerulean life had conglomerated aboard into a single-most consistent tonal presentations towards the eye over time. Skin pigment, by-and-large, was evenly matched before choices after birth.
Gender of harshest patriarchy lived on beneath the surface, as did their tribes from about that homeland-lost, while social power still found itself distributed by remembrance of those places they’d come from in a most distant past. Those same which would never have earnest-place holding bearing on the fresh lives of human beings.
Elliot’s family had been a top-tiered force, Elaria’s rising star in popularity aboard Exile. Women who MaryCate appeared most alike made it all possible — his Dia reminded him of her sometimes — dysfunction bearing into even the rightest-destinations of decision were an always-truth within Elaria, ultimately run by the pussies and throats of baby girls like those two palest queens.
Elkat Deepstar was a unique sort of person.
They were seen as part of the crowd. Their family of families had been lied to most. Their indigenous tribe was dishonored beyond conceivabilities of recognition and that healing owed would go forever unaddressed — torn-deeper by those who’d fail to see their ancient-remnant-of-culture’s continued suffering, while perpetrating against them still, committing greatest atrocities of blatant destruction to be endlessly wielded towards their faith and remaining traditions — all while people smiled-some-lie.
Everyone lied to survive, and with especially flavored distaste. Amplified by their royal station. Elliot Harper and his family felt their right to a holistic piece of the victimhood-privilege-pastry called into question by reflection of Elkar’s lineage.
It had only and evermore would be Elkat’s peoples who remained truly faultless for what Elaria became — standing beside their forced-peers without pretense of respect in the least — that most honorable kind of human, and the truest people of Vermillion.
Rory and Elliot worked themself up to it thoroughly. They’d not fallen for his game, but there was something romantic about his martyrdom. It reminded them of younger version of themself. Rory was beginning to hope he’d live.
Fate was a written thing to Rory’s sense of gut borne rightness.
They’d come back to first end The Empress, and they would. Rory realized themself having also come to save a boy somehow as well, for what had passed between, into, all about, for finally washing down his front side, unable to contain their joyful spoutings both.
His fight was weakest then. Defeated from some spirit of falseness carried in every moment Rory had before seen that boy. He’d been some puppy-dog deep inside.
Taking to hallways in shortest order, disallowing time for a rinse, forcing the waft of greatness for showering upon all instead, amongst the many lengthened passages in which their clamoring would find foot-purchased flooring for claiming of ground. Their bond was growing to feel as if evermore tightly knit.
Elliot carried that stillness in character discovered within release towards Rory’s sublimation of his senses as of some peace he seemed more self-completed operating within. He was smiling without a single falseness understood by Rory. They’d liked it in a strange, yet unpleasing way.
Yestercycles proved a man becoming inside that growing heart of Elliot Harper, and he’d always been a better aim than most. He wore that long-shot’s eye.
The Empress scarred him deeply, allowing cruelest hopes in his heart all the while. That darkest witch had been a matriarch — the matriarch — that one and only to stand beside Tetra in their once and so nearly boundless etheric home of Ecatosh.
She had so many of his others consumed. Women too. Men as well.
That boy inside who’d made Lojack with brightest joy throughout, for which he’d tap into love-eternal, would buy any chance for touching the feeling of companionship held beside it again. That teenager who’d designed Thrust Forcer through the man he’d pretended so completely to be was reborn when making it to reality and forcing its name upon the records regardless of what may be thought by others. That child would remaining so true of heart — stowed too tightly within, a protector — while loosened to live in freedom of fullest-spirit at last with the falling of an empress who’d owned him along with all of his fellows and inferiors.
For chance at some hope of an empowering love would be his boon to choose for fighting, even against his others.
Those corrupted would seek towards harming and fail to land a single blow upon deliverance of Elliot’s auriclly-formed, tracking de-pulse field, creating an effector-birthed spacetime knotting which made sightings by phase-linked connection to the nano-chip supercomputer stamped into his neck’s right side.
It found glimpse through feeds of wavelengths all, along with that captured stream of his full body senses and thoughts hurried-through algorithms towards quickest solutions, to vector-constantly its protective reemergence. Everything failed towards the target it would never reach, to be repelled by forces quite apt. His shielding flitted faster than any eye might keep up, no chance to buckle, and even under the enormity of oncoming fire he was sharing with Rory. The two were guarding themselves in lights most disparate yet profound for their own needed defense, yet it was the sight of Rory alone which bought that fury of purpose into Elliot’s stride.
Their sledge would end those foolish enough for standing against rightness — Rory’s own choice of manifestation — some grafting in its make too hidden behind remembrances lost — still known inside as some ancestral right. It split but dulled. It cut but struck. It bled by crushing bones to dust. It was a holy weapon of Olmec reborn by light.
There wasn’t honor lost, only found, to see it spill the blood of those who’d chose to stand beside an empress’s ways known-justified.
Elliot had earned his place by fortitude shown while standing beside Rory in that fight, how he’d proven himself ready to break his own chains beneath the falling monarch’s mighty gripping of Elaria’s history, grafting divine dishonor to The Empress’s lost matriarchal steed.
Doors were sledged. Pathways cleared. The Empress knew them coming but not what mattered most — what Rory knew.
That woman sheltered in sacred space. Treacherously intentioned displacement — what The Empress believed her right — was a showing of sacrilege to all.
Evened odds would balance forth in that fight only just to come.
Chaos erupted within the security center of Glowing Tree’s sanctuary space.
Everything was madness on communication-channels-all, people everywhere creating more their own, nobody had been right to act how they were. The honored tree itself seemed to be speaking to Elkat Deepstar in their quiet booth, beautiful whispers.
Family of their own stewarded that tree towards its growth upon Vermillion.
They saw place standing beside it, even draped upon by their enemy’s uniform, the best-worst choices available. They hated everyone for what Elaria made itself into — rightly — and righter than any to hold that privilege — the only who’d bear honor by wielding disgust without compassion-most-equal in spite of themself.
Elkat loved people and life, earthen homelands all, and the universe themself more than any of those people who’d presume to call them a fellow.
Ulysses Foremark’s rampage on the foredeck’s entertainment avenue had been halted at Elkat’s sighting, and for that knowing, some witnessing within their eyes. It was the way Elkat stood towards him without a shred of fear, despite no provided right to believe themself fated for anything but death, accepting it without surprise, which told exactly of who Elkat was, some feather inside.
That family from which they’d come was felt by hearts-resounding, no matter how alike they’d seem after being bred with as captives for generations on end.
Watching everything crumble was satisfying to Elkat’s thoughts.
Nothing really mattered to their conscious self — the biggest travesty of all — people tarnishing those truest hearts of home throughout Elaria was commonplace. Elkat’s kind were disregarded outright, except for exhibitionist bouts of out-borne pride seeking amongst Elarians, performed in wholeness of dishonest spirit, the entirety of its more socially distinguished lineages feigning recompense paid long ago, too many apathetic.
Elkat Deepstar’s face melting through from behind wasn’t felt — not even that strike upon his mind’s precious cradle.
Bloodspat blithering of emulsified viscera was made reality by the second blast, so unnecessarily gruesome, it dripped — merciful chambers of spirit inside the human of graceful and divine designs marked Elkat’s fallen place upon false-earth in which they’d lay for rest.
Corpse-belches, glurping which seemed as if it would’ve gone on, were erupted outward in some final crescendo of wrought gore-stain upon the lowest reaches of their security center’s electronic-ridden control panel — that spirit of the person within was long-gone, finding purchase in some place for being reborn anew, and of greatest peace.
Elkat Deepstar and their people would be the very first welcomed by Illith into New Ecatosh throughout all of time.
That final blast from Elliot’s cannon had been for nothing other than what his adrenaline begged him towards doing after years spent idolizing warriors of brutality. All of Elaria bore his refounded stain in some way.
He’d known enough of Rory to realize the sight would not be welcome to her eyes. Elliot would occlude the truth if he could. They didn’t seem to like unnecessary violence, but that fallen man had been known to him, an unwanted presence often lurking around Glowing Tree, presuming themself more place than deserved by station earned through taking to Elaria’s fight.
Most of all, and that only thing which truly led Elliot’s cruelty into a third and most morally repugnant firing of his weapon — beyond bounds of what would’ve been bestowed upon anyone outside his family that he’d not been actively fucking — was how Elkat had never shown any respect of deference in their eyes.
Lessons were being bestowed upon all and The Empress most.
Something in that woman knew what was coming but couldn’t believe it possible. Everlasting was the girl inside without control who’d held that fear now witnessed by all of herself, quite there always, but lost for sighting to any but her mightiest foe of soul.
Echo felt herself the martyr of Ecatosh. Rory knew themself to own place in a rebuilt heaven of its own making. Yet it would be Helena, known most purely through bodily visage of Poe, who’d seen to sparking the fires from intuition which had freedom’s ringing in store.
She’d stood the truest in honor of all against the discordance between Ecatosh and its proposed purposes, holding within accords struck, while bearing that burden her own, never sacrificing or begging another for salvation to be grasped, fighting always with grace.
She took her weights by self without a single malice allowed, to fair perception, for being borne into another, and not once. Poe didn’t apologize because she had no right to. That rarest virtue of a truest angel was founded to form through her soul alone. It opened Lojack’s calculative emotion-zone into a truthfulness which told the single secret to seal an empress’s fate.
That dreadful woman had been most queer and never once indulged.
Deepest fouls of Ecatosh’s great failure were reactions which came to bear denial’s radiations across the entirety of reality. Those in Echo’s favorite simulation would all prove to transgress upon her ideals of sexual propriety, projected through disgust she’d only truly held towards herself — inwardly harming by nearest-entirely, unconsciously steered actions repeated through moral transgression over again — taking homes from all forms wrought to existence out of pure malice.
Rory was an adaptable creature to the eye, and a pleasing one at that.
The Empress thought they held some place of in-between for grasping what might be wanted most, while playing towards pretend, grafting pretense they might show for how they’d seen Rory. That witch was clever — the girl inside a false-matriarch was learned of the virtues found abundant when telling people what they wanted to hear.
Not a word was required or would abide of being spoken.
Rory was seen stalking about Glowing Tree. They’d been known as who they were to an empress. Their surfaced intentions to deceive by lust had been seen through by sight. It was decided they’d chosen against slaying by violence, and that unbeatable intuition of a goddess most correct. The Empress had honed a cruelest visage through Ecatosh’s eons meant for suppressing that very one who was seen as prime-threat to some perceived liege over heaven.
Realizations were also failed-for-grasping in regard to Rory’s capabilities towards resistance, subversion, infection, destruction, and of raw talents enabling them to eliminate trace-connection of all conscious-stowings through The Empress’s impractically maintained phase-bursting, porthole satellite-fed transceiver for bleeding out death at the quickest-spreading speed of faster-than-light communication available by any known technology. Rory had come back from the nether a virus themself.
Death’s Kiss then claimed its newest mark.
Elliot Harper offered his hand despite the way he knew Rory liked to take one of their own accord. She’d abided but only because of how heroically he’d arrived. Genuine authority was held in that way he’d strode so proudly, telling of the right he felt to stand alone in that control Rory knew he sought over and beyond them.
While they would never allow it, that was what they’d once respected most, and still found appealing, a false endeavoring, but sign of an honestly honed competitor, attempting some thwarting of Rory’s monarchy which had only just begun, and to everyone’s unknowingness.
He’d been broken and loved it, by their side. Rory saw it in his eyes every time, just before some action fired them up to get furiously hot and sweaty.
Those two would make way back to a quiet place quickly — Elliot had been seeing to that, something inside him wanted a confessional, breaking ground on what was held within his chest seemed as if a happening he was dying for.
Rory took a chance they’d known to help them both. They pulled that boy who’d taken them by hand and dragged him towards Glowing Tree. They’d shown him again where he came from — his right of lineage — what it was he’d been fighting for all along to their estimation. None of that was thought towards inside Mx. Tyrell themself.
They’d known it true by instinct of their action’s reflection alone.
Elliot cried. He seemed to host a reckoning of spirits within himself. He’d finally confessed to Rory through that weeping.
“I want you to be my girl, Rory. I love you.”
Blunt-faced rails were chosen divinely in retrospections of the moment. Glowing Tree was stronger than any wall a man could build.
Elliot Harper ended how he’d come to life, aboard that legendary vessel of Vermillion, of great privileges he’d never realize, wielded upon by fate most cruel, and of the coursing actions borne to be by one soul alone. Some echo who’d left him behind to become an atrocity in that Rhiemaast she’d never know. For it was Echo herself who’d been the fabric that first-time-around, in a simulation lost to gods who would be fell and left behind through the fires of time — her design — as that goddess’s favorite things were always her own.
Every soul present began within their universe, if not from seeds of Ecatosh. Each human person left to die and never know their nebulae was her responsibility. Nearly every one of Ecatosh had created a simulation their own upon a once. They’d all failed.
Every goddess and god would wear a weight within their eternal forms through denial of hope. It was only three who wore it wholly. Two sisters, Helena and Echo were true to honor, along with one who’d been there all-along beside them. Someone of Ecatosh was made anew after the closing of simulations, unseen. Rory there had been unknown to all. They’d been the least responsible. They knew what it was that stained those souls-all.
It was called Rheinmasst.
Some loss inside Ecatosh’s etheric consciousness had been forced by each of own’s genuine victimhood, enraged by power so out of control, predisposing them from to holding it all. Except those royal two who hadn’t created a simulation to begin with, and their chosen favorite — some name-stricken daughter who was allowed for having her dreamland to live on.
Everyone in Illith’s universe, who’d not been a dispatched piece of Ecatosh, was its Echo’s child. She was their mother.
Synecdoche felt Rory’s eyes strike her own. She knew the fight to come. There was no apparent reality available for peace after the choices she’d made. Yet forevermore would hope remain her steed.
Echo of Ecatosh had borne her line well.
