Time Throws Fire | Volume Two | Chapter Twenty-Six
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 | TWENTY-TWO | TWENTY-THREE |
Part Nine - Threnody of Lojack | TWENTY-FOUR | TWENTY-FIVE |
Part Ten - Time Throws Fire
PART NINE | THRENODY OF LOJACK
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Star-shaping still most completely embodied, War Cry thundered forward and towards the nigh insurmountable wall of swarm-drones, as that only Foundry warship without a warrior form.
Poe was always a warrior.
She was crying. Their plans felt ruined. Everything had fallen apart by time unspent towards glory. Too many were dead. The wrong people. Futures were collapsing into the-now and only a breath was left before that final hope to be launched.
Poe felt as if with no options remaining. She’d been afraid, but not, knowing her family was beside her in spirit throughout Boreál, a beloved aunt, Carol, in particular, as dear-late D’Artagnan had taught her.
She was taken with a notion inside that remained present too long after chances lost to hear her Vikki speak. Subsumed at last, there’d been a great stowing of release.
“What was she going to say?”
Poe had been it asking aloud, reminding herself of that woman she’d loved so preciously, as they’d fluttered around quietly in her cabin.
Lauren’s death was watched back by all. That horrible fate, unknown. How Ulysses had prodded their still living body with technologies discovered as plans within their own printers — frustrating. He’d been amongst them unnoticed. That was the man who’d died along with all of their sleeping families, whose time-distorted, technology-remade visage caught upon video had proven as casting the death blow of self-destruction.
Ulysses had no right to be remade amongst them.
Everything was a lie. The Foundry had been corrupted. Poe alone knew who was to blame, but only after such time hearing out Yars. That man had worked himself into a huff of explanation without any actual answers, yet said it plainly to Poe.
Pauline and Marcus Demitrius would be the two responsible, unseen, allowing change but resisting through connections unknown.
She felt it within her gut before those two confirmed that on record in their airlock. They’d been the ones to call Elaria forth. They were traitors working above Count Salus, planning in precipitation for the Undroth Hegemony’s arrival, calling response upon immediate witnessing of Auluré’s failure to-be.
That matriarch inside the man had said those words which would live in record as proof of his ever before unrealized intents. Marcus was a boy who didn’t know he was indicting himself to history by reactive response, that his weakest proclamation of blame was in fact a greatest admission, and all would know in time by Poe’s good sense to tell things truthfully of how they really were.
“I think you all need to get help.” Marcus said with pretense of nonchalance that informed of some inner-perceived authority. His visage would be seen by every person alive, within Chiron’s protection, in time.
Poe hadn’t decided until then. She’d not previously said a word.
Then she smiled, no need to talk with others who hadn’t a reason to do anything but support what they’d know she wanted to hear, forging-chance to prove herself as that truest leader who acted by forces of rightness within herself alone.
The Foundry was watching in the moment. Poe had Hatchet make sure of it.
Finally taking that step, raising that hand, waiting that moment — fear was seen through the way he’d not be able to look, Marcus wouldn’t see the truth in Poe’s eyes, he’d not be able to hold his pretense of authority.
She’d opened the communication line.
“You’re a petulant child who lost your toys and nothing more.” Poe told everyone into his angered gaze, with a wink for Marcus and his silent-toadstool, Pauline, so wavering by his side.
“I know what you do. I know who you are. I’m most aware what you see yourself to be. I’m allowing you to live so be grateful.”
Marcus was aghast, shuddering, shaking, teeth showing from those retracted muscles in his ever-tightening jaw.
He’d rattled his head in stutters of wobble, forcefully birthing words which held, lips curling, nostrils flaring, breathing with difficulty, neck twinging, hopes drooping, some sight from afar — within Poe’s fiery eyes — would prove the man’s fate in hell, alongside his most insignificant others, and to himself alone.
Everything he’d hoped to do was cursed, and always, by how he’d held himself beneath the layer of superfluous grandeur used for steering so many helpless youth’s towards abuse his own, despite that foulest smell, worsening through life with his body’s eternal soreness, from all he was doing to those he’d pretend himself some protector.
Marcus Demitrius raped women, mothers, he’d taken them from children, left them to die in chambers unseen within the bowels of what he’d once deemed his foundry. Throughout his longest life, would be the means, cursed from the start. He’d heard voices in his head since a child. Spirits had done things to him. He forgot but remembered at once by reflection of divine infernos of femininity embodied so empirically.
“Just do it—I don’t care.” Glaring he’d spat to that woman he saw so beyond him.
“I’ll see you in hell.”
His final admission had slipped out beneath. The fact he’d said those words to Poe alone had made him seen. That was his hope all along. He’d been trying to drag people with him. All Marcus had come to want was for destroying people in measures outstripping every little insignificant and superficial band aid he’d apply on behalf of his own un-witnessed, autocratic devilries.
Poe let him go then.
That held out hand so queued for threat before speaking, it simply pressed the other button. He’d not be seeing anyone how he imagined. As some frozen corpse-sickle, was Marcus’ drifting fate spent drifting through the stars.
Preserved, not thought out, technology of mind-captured stowage had been disabled and deleted by the divine, etheric, code-blade of Hatchet at once. It was a blunt tool of removal, that severing-justified had proven some purpose driving Yars all along.
Inside the shell of form to drift and decay — floating into purest darkness — protected from total destruction by technologies willingly taken in, he’d be consumed by all done wrong and left unchangeable. He would never know Illith’s splaying of intuition. Every belief Marcus had of that blessing in his past would prove some lie. It gave to show what he’d never have again.
Marcus would remain alive in mind, alone, his body dead, consumed by heartful regret, rumpling inward, to relive those moments of their final sight; Poe Halroth’s eyes, again and again, until eventually, upon one long-distant cycle of unknowable time, he’d be swallowed by Gargantua himself.
That woman beside him, her name would be stricken from databases, choosing station so beneath a man like Marcus presumed all women to be as such, through spiteful reckonings of projection, which mutilated itself into enjoyments of masochism within her always. They were only a dog — some princess of privilege unchecked — taking place in culture they’d no place — earning trust they abused by sexual misconduct upon young women themself — and Marcus’ drudge would simply perish in that moment of release.
She enjoyed pain too much for reliving her own.
Poe was going back for her friend, that’s when she’d felt her. Vikki had been around somehow — dancing. Vibrations were tingling Poe’s shoulders, need to move was rebound in body. Something wriggled loose inside.
Detours were taken. Friends could wait. Sex was now.
It wasn’t her choice. Something of spirit had thrust itself upon her. She’d been waiting for it all along, spoken in riddles to Vikki, asking without asking, telling of Poe’s desires plainly from the start, leaving out that need for them to take a first step fearlessly for earning some place.
Vikki had taken it posthumously.
Poe was led by heart, something coursing through her body, she’d found the closet of a kitchenette.
Soul was dancing, she was clawing, shredding her own hosiery to pieces, flailing to relent, holding back from touching herself as the spirit of her passed love’s coursings over her breasts and through the delicate places just beyond-boundary of heavenly gates.
Poe planned to keep a secret of this.
Ryker would be hurt to know. Yars however, would be that companion in which she’d share the stains of truth. He’d been doing her laundry out of deference to all she was taking on. Hatchet told of Echo being near-ready to speak from within The Foundry’s phase-matrix, yet something in Poe was feeling that could wait.
Readiness was a notion resumed, understood to Poe’s body.
She’d thrown stowage from the shelving unwitnessed, above and behind to below, knocking free enormous containers towards spillage in that little room.
Nothing would need-be touched or cleaned up. Spirit’s hands were everywhere, except that one place they’d make Poe scream most, her clit the bridge too far for a woman unheeding contact she’d always used for pushing beyond that ecstatic edge in-past.
Some echo wanted to show her how it could be done without. Why that might make Poe scream the way they had.
Vikki did it herself, confirmed at that final moment in some whisper to Poe’s ear, from beyond, by right of connection with her dearest love’s sacred heart, the ultimate confirmation of faith for landing its synchronistic delivery upon her most righteously earned orgasm to date; whispering awareness of her presence in that shadowed space.
“That’s a good girl, baby.”
Gentle remaking within War Cry allowed her friend aboard, that little guy, taking place beside Theadore in coordinating all Poe’s mightiest warship had become.
Lojack was singing, literally, songs he’d been on about for some time, from a video he’d been begging to show Poe, over again, made by Elliot.
She’d only refused because of how much it would make her care for the boy they’d needed to see an enemy. Sounds of his awfully written, unmelodious words had been enough to sell her for watching with Lojack, if they all survived the onslaught.
“My girl! Baby! I want your booty back! I love it! It’s so round and pretty—shiny too! It smells sometimes but that’s okay—it’s really okay!”
Poe’s fortress was to be protected, it seemed. Plans for attack were lost when Yevahar had written its name into logs-all before going dark. Exile launching its excisor fleet, alongside swarm-drones made at the belly, had been a sign for need of relying upon those simulations most-similar to the situation at hand, for some groundwork to build upon.
They’d nothing truly of the sort. They’d thrown every mechanism of planning out.
Warrior forms were exhumed for use — playing with space — waiting to hope — more apt for receiving the oncoming disillusionment — fear-inducing sights to scopes were seen by reflective clouds of black in space, and the sheening chrome of those excisors, and their many collapsable, unfolding blade-bodies facets, driven by effector fields alone — their inability to act against the devilry, a people’s greatest burden.
Excisors would be remembered as a name of terror.
Forceful shoving by displacement of space, fore to aft, bearing upon their fronts and rears, sides when told, to fly and fold — killed young and old.
Venom was the warrior. It was grafted in honor of whatever urges drove Ryker most. He’d sent it barreling with arms unfolded, six-fold, each triplicate collapsable into paired wings when necessary, everything capable of hinging into spins wrought by its flipping over and upon itself in refractions of swirl.
Warship nosecones came in forms all.
Venom’s stayed out — beacon of its honored maiden’s siren song. That forceful weapon therein was named after the way she’d stolen Ryker’s heart once-most. Echo’s long reigning, stylistic dominance over an oft replayed Doghouse run, that void she’d released crafting such pull, had made the man to search for something more.
He’d worked with Leopold. They’d recreated his warship, then unfolded-a-warrior after time spent vrooming volumes, vetting velocities very vehemently varied, vacating vacuous voluptuousness vying Venom’s vivisectional, vindictive, voracious, vacuum-victorious Vikki.
Stowing that wrought energy in a void birthed containment just within the never-changing nose shaping meant to protect and consume both light and dark, particles of radio into volumetric range, nano-graftings left by still lingering tubules, and motes bearing gifts leading towards inter-connection laced through Boreál, the doings of Horace, and in honor of Illith’s right to bestow wisdom on those people therethrough, Ryker knew it time to fire his weapon.
Having chosen for changing its usable functions on the fly, as designed, inspiration was refound, as always, within malleability of utilized weaponry. That had been the single most repeated tenet for righteously destructive creation shared between Ryker and his late brother.
Hyde’s death was not being spoken of, resulting from the way Ryker seemed to be intimidating any efforts of communication by challenging, strong-eyed presence alone. Something everyone could witness plainly-written upon his face would seem for proving their sympathies had no room to be received. Poe saw better, and knew her place to bring Oria for what would actually be needed — empathy. He’d cried with them. He held it strongly. It was stowed within, like that budding power of recreation he would spread at rates of breadth bizarre. His inner-cloud of light-forms captured had been remade a swarm itself.
Those darkest spreads of beastly attack-force were everywhere around, creating a globe in the dreadfully-witnessable future by clearest intent, shown in how that wall was being built, spreading — multiplying upon release in constancies-absurd — its partial dome shape proving how that purpose of multiplication would aim to-contain.
Ryker tuned for an electric kind of transcendence, skipping in flares of spark and shot to link then draw alike, in return to amplify, chaining to each minute member of an infinitely capable swarm-unleashed — infecting each other into expulsive death-blares which showered space with radioactive material that would be witnessed in studies of perpetuity. Surviving people of The Foundry would worry, their family of ships remaining in long-orbit, most careful to return on that retro-swing they’d taken off from their briefest sweeping of their fathering gas-giant. In the end, those wastes of etheric irradiation-power would prove no match for Chiron, as the presiding guardian-soul of Boreál could swallow it all.
Sensors were notched to anti-light reception shielding, before left unused, in many warships and calculations of record within the stellar-scope array. The Foundry’s ability to witness raw destructive force peaked.
Exile’s swarm-wall crumbled by fire.
Streaming flows of drones in active release from its belly, produced by the fabricator beneath some protective layering of under-hull construction, had been sparked towards, too quickly for reactive countermeasures.
Ryker destroyed Exile outright and before another Foundry ship had fired a shot. It’s implosive, first, then reactive spraying outwards, was a release in the heart of every soul to witness by any means, and all aboard who’d perished were gladdened, those ancestors chained to terror wrought upon peoples for generations within at peace alas. Vermillion’s greatest creation of warfare was its ultimate casket of shame to live out those eras of regurgitated terror slung by all within its halls upon each other.
Excisors went to float. No one could believe it might be that easy. Some voice inside them each spoke of best shots taken which landed. In Ryker, that had a vision splay to mind: the truly greatest sight he’d ever see.
When Echo Béleaph wore her dress to fight that woman he’d always hated so, showing down before so many, as if she might slay them to step away from the abusive relationship all had seen Echo unwittingly challenging herself within. She’d stolen his heart for life to be that brave before people stuck in judgment by projections of reservation, and he would never stop being grateful how it taught him to live freely.
Ryker Innerath would have that paid back and more, much more.
That started when her voice spoke through Venom, Echo of The Foundry’s first words from within. He’d realized himself still very much in love with that girl he’d seen, and that he always would be.
“Nice shot—dude.”
Yevahar was just gone. It hadn’t come back. The ship couldn’t be scanned to location through space of time. Its Uno fighters were obsessed over, that felt-need to be ready, design-workings unprecedented, and dreams shared by all would prove fear of what they’d wrought from pressure inside. Any who’d felt themself the failure would be cursed as such.
People at The Foundry were distraught for times to come. No one could rest. Patrols were absurd in-number. Every pilot relocated their sleeping quarters to those petty hovels which bore exits some stone’s throw from the hangar.
Ryker took lead as battalion commander, installed, needed for tactic developments. Notions of warship pairs were disbanded entirely, after such time without them proving a functional means of warfaring-solution. Intuitions would remain trusted in the moment, changes always needed for efficiency, for seeking excellency being brought to form, some inspiration remembered always, but their foundations would be much stronger.
Holding everyone so alike his brother’s intelligence in nearest future, Gibraltar’s namesake reborn in visage of machine-mind stowed from the man which created it, had been a companion available for speaking with inside mind-of-heart, and Iris would stand beside Ryker proudly.
Oria proved a mother first and all else second. Logan had been growing up.
Rory Tyrell was gone. She’d not been seen or heard from once by people of The Foundry. Taking care of each other was paramount, and the only real priority in face of such circumstances.
Sleep was sparse for all but Poe.
She’d found something, realizing it from that beautiful intertwinement blossoming often towards Vikki within, beside Lojack, having utilized technologies uncovered of The Foundry — terrible by intent, pure of design — to recreate something which had been lost, creating the proper environment for that favorite-video’s reception.
Getting to watch Threnody of Lojack with the titular character themself was a blessing received in full witness of soulful presence for Poe. Being allowed to do that beside Elliot Harper, giggling, in his newly remade and emotionally-recuperating body, was something else, some unquantifiable feeling reborn had been touched in the memory to hold.
Elliot had been a good person all along, underneath that evil woman who raised him, and that told Poe Halroth all she needed to know.
Everything was going to be okay.
