Time Throws Fire | Volume Two | Chapter Twenty-Four
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
Part Ten - Time Throws Fire
CONTENT WARNING - Mentions of the worst
PART NINE | THRENODY OF LOJACK
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Yevahar was a thief. It’d hid its secret. The presumed Elarian assault-carrier of mysterious origin had stowed an Oculus.
Featherings were laced into space on the reverse-thrust of afterburners, calling lunges forward from the body of a one who’d found themself consumed by purpose-beyond — still of self so deeply in mind but controlled alas - Alan Undroth was only a function of Yevahar.
He hadn’t an idea of how, or even that he’d been taken. Alan simply awoke next to Ashe and a handful of others they wouldn’t prove to know but had once seen about The Foundry. Time forward was wickedest. The beast containing them, drip-feeding people to keep them alive in closest quarters, with brutally sparse condiments of sustenance, was felt plainly in the sustenance itself as some devil.
Slowly, they’d lost themselves and thought it madness from those closest quarters they were kept bound in isolation.
Alan didn’t even know he wasn’t in control.
He’d walked aboard Yevahar’s only life-bearing shuttle, unused or swiped of dusts within for enough time the layers were centimeters thick. Nothing aboard Exile knew itself chosen as had been Yevahar, but by strangest inverses.
Humming was the sound in Alan’s mind. He’d be kept blank.
Twitching his hands, holding that weapon unsteadily, aware most he was of what had been to come, by hope alone.
Whispered wishes were wielded wrongly with wrathful wretches who wrestled without wicked wranglings worth warmest workings wrought wholesomely within windswept wonder. It was strange to understand that for the man so lost inside himself.
Alan was a child of Echo’s from Ecatosh. He’d been most drawn to feel warmth through her, for the time it was convenient, or she’d thrust herself upon him in response. He’d taken from her like he would from all, ignoring the cost, those differences, how much she was of pure intention which he’d willing destroyed, how much he resented her, so deeply inside, and that knowing she would still trust him no matter how much he’d gashed her.
Echo couldn’t help herself for those who were children of soul, crafted within her favorite simulation. She’d teach the lessons necessary however she could by means understood, and beyond herself always. She would, but not, their tail taut, she’d speak a lot, he’d thought her hot, and for that thot which she did drop, his heart near-stopped, then lives were cropped.
She couldn’t help but love that child within him so alike herself from Earth. Being his silent force of support had felt like parenting her own inner child.
Some boy stowed deep inside her cared for Alan most of all. That healthiest part of a construction made from the culture which demanded it, taking mantles unwanted, holding to senses of honor taught and subsumed, always seeing the need for finding someone like Alan, who they’d felt understood what they had to give most.
That false self was still a homemaker at heart. They’d wanted community with people they might create space for, who could see them, and needed those gifts of compassion they felt so apt at applying liberally. Echo’s boy had wanted someone to want him for the woman he was. Some things never died in an echo. They were always true inside.
Hangars came and went through Alan Undroth’s lifetime.
Exile would not be looked at too deeply for fear of reflection.
Alan’s place in Elaria had birthed a hatred of self for all it made him into by reflection of his parents. He’d judged the people of Vermillion harshly because of his own life’s challenges, and greatest cruelties of suffering undertaken alone, amplified exponentially by how entirely misunderstood they were — those people aboard would see him worst, and recognize his pain the least.
Their men wanted Alan. They’d wanted all of him, and as some woman they saw in their minds who they’d break.
He was the best of his line to their estimation, but the way his disposition oriented towards particulars, and he was a meanest sort of mirror to all, had been that reason they treated him with conflated disgust of lowest regard. It bore hatred. The way those women beside the men of Exile had hated Alan for something never wanted, seeing him even less, was a scale too tilted after a lifetime of reinforcement regurgitated by everyone that he’d grown into adulthood around.
Times of regression would have him spout knowing, self-deprecating judgement of harsh misunderstanding, losing himself entirely to the trauma of his treatment, and hating himself all the more for betraying his gentlest heart bent towards instilling rightness. Alan was autistic and forced to mask from youngest years, misunderstood always, and especially for his gender. He was made to do things his soul would not protest for lessons another wouldn’t dare place in their path. He’d lived a very hardest life, encompassing, from what was brought out, how nobody understood, his privilege unwanted in protecting him always from those true consequences of reaction he was seeking.
He’d needed some reflection of truth, and a presence of unconditional care.
Alan wanted a person to love him like Echo might be capable. She was too bright of healing hands and spirit to fail for seeing what made a person beneath. It was the unique glow she’d cast towards him. She’d seen him like no other. Echo knew who they really were. Alan was a handsomest soul, brave, and took to challenge with a lack of sympathy towards self, both desperately destructive and genuinely awe inspiring.
They were a hero to Echo’s estimation, simply by surviving. Alan’s path walked through Exile was hasteful, unperturbed by a knowing Synecdoche — her eyes everywhere, sightlines calculated most easily — even then she would trust the man.
Her heart knew what he sought. Alan wanted to end Rory Tyrell himself.
Lightning storms raged above Hope Spring. Its cloudscapes were limited, contained, a simulation of hydrological force in reality, created by the elements of nature themselves for displays most varied. The rotunda was encompassed by a parapeted platform for all to stay upon.
No signs were needed for telling of the demand they stay out.
It was only some rumor aboard Exile. There’d not been true fact revealed, but the admiralty abused their privilege here in ceremony’s untoward, ritual drownings were commonplace and of a most coveted sort; young and virginal. These people would feel it some key to retaining magical power which would lead towards empowering their quest for life eternal. They’d been cursing themselves and their people.
Before people drowned in Hope Spring, they’d see, these people were gifted glimpse of what Vermillion’s former monarchy had truly been composed of. They’d been blessed with understanding of how they might be saved for being different. They were taken in ways, lifted towards some timeless womb throughout and no matter their soul’s origin, and relieved from the horrors of bodily rape by Illith themself. The demon would always provide that blessing in Olmec’s reality, gifting people connection to their most earned place in New Ecatosh who’d suffer those deaths.
Murders after such atrocities were the darkest thing a civilization could muster. People projected themselves fully onto their ideas of God. The worst would show their hand. They’d bear a stain felt in hearts-all, told of tales, made into legends, eternal seekers of blood who’d feed on the innocence of lust, consumers of life that believed themselves in allegiance with dark-forces quite willingly. On Echo’s Earth they’d believed it a demon-lord by name of Satan, Beelzebub, and more disgusting manifestations of fear. It was only themself of New Ecatosh each heard. That place would speak too, and of lie to those who’d seek wrongly. From an ultimate fate of heaven into the heart of a person, bearing secrets by dream, Illith’s intuitive splashes doing what Olmec did best — showing them the truth of themself. People who’d made others to suffer fates of rape unhealed they’d carry to death were a worst of worsts. Still forgiven but punished through life in equal measure, deaths ungraced by light of timelessness, and made to think their ways were right in a cruelest-twist of denial, until their darkest end where it would all come to focus for the worst feeling anyone could have on their deathbed — insatiable regret.
Projecting forth to find Rory standing solemnly in its waters. Knowing they were walking with an ever-present understanding of what those highborn people of Leftovers were doing to their grown children, and understanding that power of control it gave them over all others by allowing such terrors to be known by hearts throughout Exile, for her to be witnessed becoming what those men who’d controlled her wished to be themselves when raping innocents, yet cleanly — free of chains to life’s burdens of powerless fear — had healed by twinge in Synecdoche’s heart.
Everyone in reality was a victim of two souls. A long-lost father and mother to all. They’d reaped their children willingly and without provocation, then allowed them to die in the dark, unawares to who they were. Tetra and Robin of Ecatosh were to be those taking their chosen daughter so visaged within Countess Vysara of Rhiemaasst, their cruelest forgings forever true, led all three towards their newest conglomeration of hell.
Echo forgave everyone else, and at once, knowing the sign of truth for who shared lineage with those souls, realizing her power to draw some earnest line of forgiveness at last. Her and Olmec’s decided truth was planned for honoring always by that dark prince, no matter his choices towards subterfuge, or how little every human person would see him the bearer of its wisdoms for their fear of his rightful wrath.
You don’t fuck with children and think you go to heaven.
Most unfortunate victims of circumstance, those who’d pass it along to a child while of some adolescence themself, victims making victims, were to each be faced with a choice in life for seeing that. Everyone but Tetra and his dog-queen would take it, and their daughter simply stood too closely by their side — too willingly blind for forgiveness, chosen by fate of need, one soul to take the blame for all others in that wickedly-form-blended eternity of densest nothing.
Complacency would die in Ecatosh along with her etheric presence. It would not be welcome and that choice, while strict, would prove the single glint of nuance needed for balancing an impossible situation.
Everyone compartmentalized. Everyone lied. Nobody admitted the truth. That process was voluntary, conscious, and only later would it be forgotten with the rest, until exhumed at convenience of another willing choice to remain blind. People lied about their lying. Until something happened. Until they saw. Until they knew. Until they found alignment with their own timeline leading to New Ecatosh, standing within it by force of will. It was a radical thing to do, always, in every formation of humanity. All it took was being truly honest to yourself once.
Then you had to remember it.
Echo wouldn’t help Alan how they needed. What she’d come to do was mistaken. Rory had been changing, finding themself, her separation from Lauren had turned them harsher, of deeper truth. Echo inside Synecdoche knew.
There was going to be a fight and that would prove for leading the palace of Exile into distraught finality. Alan’s force of entry showed Synecdoche’s scouting as lacking. He’d broken into an armed security closet, or something more profound had been brought aboard, most likely, to wield those weapons and shields of energy dispulsion.
When emerging, screaming by heart, of silent brooding, Alan Undroth was wearing a shield which surrounded him, his weapon tuned to break through barriers protecting, those even Synecdoche would’ve had trouble discovering means for disposing of.
Olmec’s sledge dropped. Alan’s shield could take it. Rory wouldn’t believe that. Neither of them had seen the presence echoed within the shadows.
Synecdoche was unarmed, yet willing, and found herself running. She’d doubled back towards a high-wall of the rotunda’s outer ring, ducking behind that belly-high parapet layered between her and the lowered, tiered deckworkings of the central level’s lowest.
She’d lost track of the fight. Clearly ongoing were the sounds of destruction offered into that epic space of Hope Spring. A first battle being fought for right to monarchy over Elaria without witness but one. Between a woman and some demon controlling a boy then lost.
Alan was dying if Synecdoche had any say. Seeing him was the key. That direct line towards feeling the complete lack of regard for his heart so open in her presence, she’d known that person he was before his murder, no matter the reasoning behind losing himself, she would see hope towards a future without the heartlessness of Elaria remaining standing.
Finally reaching some collapse of knees, apparently unseen throughout, proofs offered by lack of forces spent in her direction, or an ending to the combat ongoing. Echo knew it right to check.
She’d looked. What she saw did speak of need to act.
Rory was in real trouble. Whatever had been controlling Alan was more than a devil she knew of Elaria’s making. She could feel that spirited demon-ship previously feared for peering too deeply within, after her first remergence into Yevahar’s holds.
Synecdoche had been too distracted with Exile, she’d not seen Yevahar for what it was. Its evil was an emptiness. Its intelligence had been profound. Atonements would be made by Synecdoche — the last of her line — a final visage projected by Ecatosh of The Foundry gone wrong.
Her splashing drew their ceasing of thrown-water by waves, behind blasts of unmeasured energy dispersion, Rory remaking her light constantly to batter through layered walls of etheric protection which Alan controlled, so-profoundly powerful, beneath that fitting hurricane of storm at highest reaches of the chamber above.
Rory couldn’t believe to see her. She’d known Synecdoche was still about in some way. They were always trifling and the outright destruction of Elliot’s resurrection devices aboard the Exile had been a pleasing thing to discover done without Rory’s own efforts needed.
That way Rory hated Echo had festered for all the ways they’d stood against her, staining honor by association, until she’d seen the face upon that woman storming towards her being of earnest hopefulness despite everything they’d been through. Synecdoche had emerged from beneath the waves, so near Alan, and was breaking barriers of his shield-domes.
Unknowing how it would work, simply believing it would change things, thinking back to every time Echo cast her void, especially upon that final stage of the gauntlet, Synecdoche grasped the man once loved so deeply inside a boy, and she kissed Alan. She’d held on tightly.
They vanished into thin air and the storms above and about Rory Tyrell had begun to settle while she’d been frozen in panting-place.
Something inside was changing. She’d been wrong. Things needed to be righted. Motions in place were dreadful. It was only the true visage of her soulful self which would live on within her from that moment.
Rory was going to destroy Elaria instead of becoming it. She would earn her place back at The Foundry. They’d all come to learn again who her heart had whispered of, that person inside she’d one day be composed by entirely. They would welcome her back for the fight she’d make in their honor.
Yevahar had been chosen to take lead by simulations of intelligences uncontrollable within Exile after Elliot’s death, and those coming remakings were beyond Rory’s ability to control. That deathly ship was clearly aiming to destroy and dismantle The Foundry and its people — for some sickness of whatever the lost soul inside its machinery had become.
Rory Tyrell was finally coming home.
