Time Throws Fire | Volume Two | Chapter Eight
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 |
Part Three - Get Guts
Part Four - Demon
Part Five - Synecdoche’s Synapse
Part Six - Viscera Rising
Part Seven - Exile
Part Eight - Semblance
Part Nine - Threnody of Lojack
Part Ten - Time Throws Fire
PART TWO | HOLY FIRE PRIESTESS
CHAPTER EIGHT
Flickering data-feeds caught the inner eye of Poe Halroth as she sat in darkened private chambers, pouring over her former friend Rory Tyrell’s histories of usage and seeking made into data trails throughout the phase-link, and within their own applications.
They’d been a monster all along. Right before everyone and playing the hero was some biggest liar anyone would ever fail to meet. Rory had known it too. She was consciously malicious.
Poe could see there dysfunction immediately upon witnessing those hundreds of thousands of lines in Rory’s logs. Appearing as they did, showing as some friend to Poe had been the biggest traitor’s mark, whoring themself to who they perceived each might want them to be, quite apparently the case shown with many others. As long as there was some way to wring some corruption of self from another, Rory Tyrell was in.
They’d been a fool of a genius—mighty in their disregard for self. They’d been the worst at one thing more than all. They hurt themself the most. It seemed to be a pastime they enjoyed.
Sadness had been harvested for remainder of that lie in what they were—gripping fast to many obscure tellings from fate that seemed worthy of thrashing and taking a woman along with them—Rory Tyrell had been obsessed with Echo Béleaph in her own way, an inverse, it was hatred.
Poe couldn’t help but understand from the data. Rory enjoyed some self-made punishment in pouring over Echo’s suffering. They’d saved much of it for keeping in their drives. She was present always and forever to watch Echo’s makings shared about the phase-net, yet never interacted, and more than anyone else.
Rory clearly loved her—everyone had seen it when they were together.
Hatred was borne from love alone, is what Poe had long ago resolved, and Rory appeared to seek in staining Echo always for how she’d been so open about what they’d wish shrouded most.
How Echo loved them, and Rory refused to accept any notion of relationship between them except one of brunt-force ownership—proved them some devil beyond redemption. That final line of their own fate was writ by how they’d allowed the fight to go on which took Echo’s life, which they could have ended at any time. An offered hand would’ve been all that woman needed, even if it had become that it was from Rory alone which would’ve healed that echoed heart.
Echo Béleaph was an angel who loved everyone. Evil itself, eking into manifest form of multitudes, would be cared for as family. That fall which came from watching Echo’s joyful and terrible creations of furiously simulated excellence, to fret of heartful worry most profoundly selfish, while remaining some steady pond of drug-induced stupor on surface levels of indifference, eliciting disgustingly perverse bliss through the abhorrent mutilation of love, had been Rory’s answered call towards living in hell.
Rory hated love. They loved too hard. So they’d seek to destroy it within themself and others consciously through obvious manipulation which people would see as that of an innocent and damaged child, which they’d once been, and so made others into by response. It was their game.
They’d been hurt as a teenager and blamed themself—everything was always to be theirs and burn for whatever pleased them most—some bodied-boy who thought themself a girl would always be seen for what they were to Rory by their trauma, and they’d teach it forward through actions obscured. They hated Echo for being trans. They’d hated her for being more woman than they ever once had been, and rejecting by privilege they’d seen in her life—some envy—some reflection acted upon most disparately.
Poe shook. She’d trembled as her jaw tightened, slouching and breaking not. She was hardening. She had been that iron bar of forged ore which made its change through outpourings of compassion towards her people. When challenge such as this had spoken, she acted differently.
One line stood out. She lifted the glass from her bedside, consciously raising her chamber’s lights on instinct of those findings in the logs. Legs slinging over a lumpy plethora of cushion atop her mattress brought Poe’s feet hanging, toes wiggling, and she’d stretched up tall with her arms to breathe.
Poe’s tea was cold, but she’d finish it still.
“Leopold.”
She’d said it aloud to Theodore—that blessed intelligence she was so grateful to be part of shepherding towards fullness, always around—before awaiting the call to go through whilst in her quiet space.
Grumbles of cough and clearings of voice, along with his word, revealed Leopold willingly unprepared for conversation at that hour. “Hello?”
“Honey, get your shit woke. I sent you something.”
“What? Oh, okay.” Leopold relented into thoughts through spoken word.
“Rory found something important. Let’s talk later, okay?”
Leopold clearly composed himself by telling of his eventual response, taking some time in the ambience of breath through their open line, finding the datasets shared. Poe would count on him most in a pinch to be an ally. They’d worked long and hard together without acclaim, to support their Foundry family from the ground up, unseen by witness of their perceived place in the Council’s Consolers, so obscured beside their loudest and ever clashing compatriots.
Poe Halroth and Leopold Nettle were the Council’s Consolers. They always had been—Echo too.
They’d been their heart in Poe’s estimation. Echo would always be so prone to give her back enormous credit for some stature towards that title, and to all, Poe would be fixing that posthumously.
She’d shared Rory’s history with The Foundry at large.
To fix the thing so quickly would be a lie. There was another discovery unlaced in superficial truth of dates in log, something Rory’s evil addicted mind would seem to have missed by fault of its own obsession.
Despite everything, in reaction, Poe realized herself grinning.
Something precious was found after Poe’s searching did realize before her the woman she’d once known as been Echo Béleaph.
They’d been stained of blood—dried up—crusted upon—nothing near of water except a tin with some for drinking.
That woman was in darkness. She’d called herself Semblance.
They agreed to think of a new name together, as none would recognize her. Semblance shattered in witness of her oldest friend become with wholeness. To grip them seemed what she would need to heal—that long-lost night with Poe had been hers too, and most of all.
Semblance was never the visage, not the second in command, not once until reaching Rhienmasst. Everything Poe and Echo had been, shared, was remembered between these two physical beings together again in an instant. Their bodies brought it all back, they always would.
Semblance was no more. Echo was gone too.
Poe Halroth would help them find again who it was they were. She would take Semblance first and to stay for time within her cabin. They’d make it some home near part of others. Nothing broke Poe’s heart more than to know she’d been the one to quit that rumble first.
While Elektra’s appearance had been too outwardly bizarre seeming for most to understand Semblance’s belief it would be received better, Poe’s steely heart would let that projection, disgust others might wield toward non-conformity of societally perceived stigmas towards ideals proclaiming correctness, wane most quickly. They saw through always. They’d spent much time with people in recovery, and more beside fellows suffering chronic conditions of deteriorated mind.
She knew now that Semblance had only wanted to play.
In their time upward, inward, and homeward, Poe found herself becoming enamored in newfound ways with their dearest old friend. Echoes of age were showing on the woman now before her. They were a hero of courage to walk as they were. It only took one brave approach, her outreached hand, and everything lost inside Semblance came out, they’d simply cried until they were different.
Semblance was sorry. She’d told her the horrible truth about Rory’s murder. Poe would seek to have it known in time, once that might be understood in rightness. She would see that done for the woman so left behind while soiling her soul for everyone’s hope. People would know her as someone else henceforth, and that was as it should be, she was different.
Echo Béleaph died.
Vikki was her name. She’d been taken that way. It felt right to them both.
No one on The Foundry had ever been had in such a way before. Vikki was being blessed by sight and not of touch to something witnessed in a rarest pleasure gifted by those few luckiest alone.
Poe wouldn’t let people touch.
She’d sometimes let them watch if they were really good little girls or boys for her though.
Difference in means and pleasure of their long denied and fatefully shared occurrence was found by many nuanced variations of heightened correctness. Vikki was shaking the whole time, staring into Poe’ eyes, not some object of lesser self, and they were in witness of each other’s souls through those portals of pupil and corneal beauty. It proved some blessing.
Most aware of how badly Vikki wanted nothing more but to join in touching herself too, only eclipsed by desire to please Poe, and would deny that forever, had been some key to taunting their greatest releases for times to come.
Vikki wanted nothing more, she’d realized at last, without the need to perform, no denigration to it in the slightest, just suppliance of exactly what she’d wish to give most in harmony, holy ecstasy refound, divinity in synchronistic configuration with another bestowed, allowing them both to grip places of release sought while never understood before. Vikki discovered that notion completed within her conscious understanding while snuggling into the fortress of pillows besides, as Poe kissed her forehead.
Nor Echo or Semblance had ever before slept in better place, or of righter purpose, than that night of heaven and Vikki and Poe.
Poe hadn’t told her. She didn’t need to.
Echo always felt it deep-down—Semblance too—Vikki would be the one to actually see what it meant.
Some vantages found would prove herself able of witnessing, peering between the stalks of earth-soul reaching from earthen floors of those woods she’d feel as some calming terror, lifting her fading lantern of hope in one hand, griping tightly her heart beneath the other, pacing a dirt ridden path.
Demons were felt. Semblance had known them well but only now what they were. They’d always shown as specters. Here in dream, Vikki understood.
They were always one the most, visages seen within these places, herself, yet others too would invade from how they made wrongness to her name. She’d been connected with those needing retribution of judgement, thinking that speaking of slumbered vision some divinity of connection, mistaking her role entirely.
Vikki had always been a reaper of soul.
Echo of Ecatosh birthed herself here into body, and their plan was made as part. Nebulae of shadows in sidewidth and entwinement to physicality would have that woman she’d always been, through every form, seeking to heal with demons left behind in resurrected simulations of reality.
Some would not be saved after-all. One, a visage of her split-sister in Ecatosh who believed themself the righteous truth sayer, while standing in blatant hypocrisy, would take a longest journey home, if that lifetime of stowed conscious-ripeness proved welcome in Ecatosh at all.
Rory had failed.
What Poe saw within that fools’ data, Vikki would know by right of feeling attached to dreams of mist-strewn wood she’d found herself moored about. No sound came alongside it. She’d not an idea where or why she was, only that it would hurt, only how there was some witnessing still which would change her unexpectedly.
Rory was caged beneath a mound of rocks in the meadow mists of that apollonian forest within Vikki’s dreamscaped mind. They’d been made to form of action’s spirit, both recognizable and more unique to their proven nature, so echoes of herself within might know what Vikki had unchosen for loving the most—the worst.
Rory Tyrell was some devil himself.
Echo of Ecatosh added one more to the list who would not be accepting their second, third, last-chance ticket for coming home. She’d know them to enjoy the way they’d be raped by eternity—spoiled—destroyed—made less by lie—ever-over until what was left would be—tarnished as their own rueful marks.
They would never again have a heart. They’d wanted it that way. Rory never wanted to come home.
Gripping iron bars with claws and markings absurd about hands, dripping head to toe from every orifice, fangs on each, taunting their prey to dare, their growling and guttural chortles were known as some dare. Rory still thought they’d a chance in some fight only they’d been fighting all along, unknowing themself already stained for time to all.
Echo just loved them. She’d only wanted them to receive it with an open heart—honor that truth with due respect—not betray it beyond comprehension of morality until the most forgiving person of all would make the hardest and most justified choice of their lifetime.
Semblance hated Rory most—which is all one might do with someone whom they loved and held unhealed wounds with at those levels.
Vikki was indifferent.
Rory was only getting what they deserved, at the last, and on—Echo of Ecatosh’s choice—none other—one she’d always been to make since re-opening the simulations on behest of herself; reclaim what was lost, owning all who’d taken it to begin with, visages of heart focused most on those few who’d been chosen for judgement through trials of their life. Vikki would be that one to make their hardest proclamation of right and wrong, earning or denying forgiveness bestowed, by reflection of heart returning words strewn through from her soulful visage of some nebulae beyond.
Learning her heart the steering force it was, some channel directly to Echo of Ecatosh and nothing more, she’d at last accepted the role she played in full.
Vikki Blieth dropped the cage to hell.
