Time Throws Fire | Volume Two | Chapter Twenty-Two
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 | SEVENTEEN |
Part Seven - Exile | EIGHTEEN | NINETEEN | TWENTY |
Part Eight - Semblance | TWENTY-ONE |
Part Nine - Threnody of Lojack
Part Ten - Time Throws Fire
PART EIGHT | SEMBLANCE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Rory was feeling more herself, stroke by slash, while the ether-light sledge she wielded tore through men like those she’d want for destroying most. Those same alike the people of her origin world, responsible for that very reason she’d reached Boreál to begin with.
“Six-Six-Four.”
She’d been saying it over again with no reason to understand the meaning.
“Six-Six-Four.”
Rory had become Olmec too much. Each demon fell would be her taking back a right to own herself. They’d fall — writhe — scream — and die.
These women, men, others, all horrors. She’d take them to hell by her estimation — those who were taking too much. Each shot would be the way she turned their bows to crash by storms of sea to rocky cliffs. The sledge was bleeding to bone. It was taking right to breathe. Rory was consuming their senses with terror they’d deserved to know so long.
Numbers repeating would be that striking force, gripping, calling for great releases of surrender.
“Six-Six-Four.”
Rory had only been able to break for thoughts in briefest glimpse, apart from choosing next targets within the backrooms of Leftovers. Some itch they’d bear into her body. A question lingered in all left unexplored aboard Exile — who might truly linger through the silence — who that vengeful darkened shadow might actually be within herself.
Whoever it was, Rory became them at once.
She knew it that final time she’d spoken the words.
She’d been clearest of all upon that synchronized striking down of a largest man who’d been surrounded by others of his clearest leisure, performing wrath upon those-deemed luddites.
His split face would wreak an understanding. She’d been of false visage all along and throughout her lifetime. Rory finally knew who she was. Also, that meaning upon its final release was heard alas.
“Six-Six-Four.”
Simulations of such count in Ecatosh were all to be hers somehow.
Rory was a god. They were to be Monarch through eternity.
Every place had seemed of fright — every glare did bore its might — each heart slain was torn by chance — death, it gleamed some hopeful dance.
Vicky Darkblood was a princess in her keep.
She did not know herself as anyone but that girl she’d been born into her life as. Challenge through simulation was set by demands of the practices at play. The world surrounding her was of greatest demons and cruelest fates.
Romance was bright throughout, however, connection to their Earth abundant, no stains of unforgivable design yet wielded by civilization. The only thing they truly harmed was themselves and for learning. They’d been fighting for the fun of it deep down. Many victims sought the path they found by need for a lesson in tears. Violence was everywhere, yet people held together, in all.
The fight was for each other. Everyone simply thought they knew best.
Echo of Ecatosh would love to hate the simulation, as would all, and it had been chosen as some truest visage of Ecatosh itself, winning prize none knew they were playing for. Its souls were the only to reach for etheric vantage by Tetra’s designs so supported.
To be back, again, was that chance her heart only whispered of. There would be some hope in all chambers of lifetime, new learning connected through strangest tethers to everything, books of specific designs told tales to her heart about the one to return. She’d heard them clearly then. Each choice Vicky Darkblood made proved paramount to a future she’d never understand and would not speak of plainly.
Lying for God was her only burden left. She would do her best for him.
It often felt as if she’d a guardian. That princess was different. Everyone but her had held together so tightly. It was she who protested the tragedy of loving-hate that her life embodied most. Which meant she’d loved it all the more as well — some nigh unfathomable calculation of reasoning.
Showers often poured upon her skull. Tingles would most commonly be creeping, as if from Mother, and into her body for deepest holding to nature’s grace. There was one place she’d feel them most. Whoever he was, God to whom she spoke and aloud, but in that most special place alone.
Vicky Darkblood would only ever, truly feel at home beneath the stars.
