Time Throws Fire | Volume Two | Chapter Ten
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 |
Part Three - Get the 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 TEN
Ulysses Foremark became more than a man long ago. He was machine. He’d kept his heart alone. Told, it’d been by himself, greatness would be spoken of. Never would he lose sight. Never would he relinquish hope. That boy booty of Elliot Harper was just too much.
He’d once seen it straight on—unwashed—unexpected circumstances brought it to brightest light for each whisper of fate by that glorious witness. Ulysses found some home there.
Grip was tight. Bones in knuckles were of carbonatrium. Hollow strength the man wielded throughout his body was fierce. He wrought the force of 24,000 men when desired, and Ulysses was finally using it all.
The Foundry was a gem. It glistened. He’d straddled that rocket with limbs all, groin settled onto the custom designed cloaking device, some specialty of what he came towards loving in form. It was vibrating him through, flying towards enemies who dared challenge his Elliot.
Elliot Harper was both some god amongst men and a beautiful girl to the eyes of Ulysses. He’d known his place beside them all along, and from that very first breath in a most sacred arrangement of circumstance spent buried between his cheeks. For no other would he bear that stain to olfactory sense—nor love it so.
He released. The mark he’d set was found for leaping and that man would never relent to ram forward head-first through any obstacles of challenge.
Flying was freedom. He’d been consumed on that longest approach, not caring to activate his own shroud once emerged from camouflaging of his missile, feelings were always too much. Flight would show him back to connection with soul.
Those final words to Elliot would be his inspiration. He’d hold them in heart. The mind in Ulysses was long gone—circuits of pain, shorts in connection, openings to all the universe poured through but were twisted by that life he’d lived through time—once an idealist of Elaria.
Undroth Hegemony lifestyles had twisted the man. His family had ruined the boy.
His brother Condor was a devil and made him one by right of terror that bestowed. He’d clawed his way to Boreál unawares his older brother’s intelligence was wiped from having any late-life consciousness captured in-system, all vestiges removed wholistically. He would have been distraught to know.
Ulysses was hunting.
Splitting by jet of his gauntlet-palms, tearing paths most seen on-route towards The Foundry’s underbelly, Ulysses knew of that chance his missile would be anticipated or prevented had been most lessened by his design.
He felt it coming before it did. Some glory he’d glimpse results of in the near-term, a splay back felt and understood more fully through that space left in his broken mind-circuitry than most.
Wreckage would be a pleasure to Elliot in those hours to come. The Foundry’s Aeronauticus Dome would fall around its mighty generator. That sputtering bought would strike fear to all, the change in Galleleus’s energy would need to be studied in haste for preventing downfall.
Ulysses Foremark could taste blood in his mouth.
Steps were a clank of steel on iron grating in the lower reaches. Engineers were people Ulysses would not harm.
Imbeciles were chosen. They’d been elites of Elaria picked-off. Beneath it all, that obsession he’d formed around Elliot Harper, was an obfuscated truth of presence, he wanted to destroy his brother again and again.
That was all he’d come to The Foundry for. His pleasing of Elliot was only a positive biproduct. Nothing mattered when he felt so near the true goal. Condor had been his first abuser. He’d manipulated Ulysses from the youngest age towards believing that some fault his own.
Condor simply hadn’t ever wanted a brother.
His three-year-old self just never got over it. He hated Ulysses forever for invading his home. Condor wanted it all to himself. Ulysses was challenging, reflective of his weakness, yet small and punishable for their early years. Condor tortured Ulysses. He said all the worst things. He’d hold his little brother down and pin them for lengths until they’d cry and scream.
Their parents would always say, “One day he’ll be bigger and you’ll regret that.”
When Ulysses was bigger, he’d acted.
Condor confused himself. He thought himself smart.
That was the last thing Condor Undroth was. He’d been the most insecure gatekeeper of validation for Ulysses’ talents that the boy or man would ever face. That older brother would deny and shame, prod, poke, slay with words most cruel and all before their parents. Ulysses knew himself that bigger person not to be trifled with at last.
He slapped his brother across the face.
Condor cried like a whining dog, having their parents to punish Ulysses. He’d quoted them and they only relented with some humor acknowledged by witness of his own upon their faces, especially his father. Nothing was addressed. He was simply told that because of his size and strength, he’d not be doing anything of the sort again.
Armor was smelt upon the man in most places. His broadest shoulders were steel and enormous, forward and back. Bulging iron wrought sheening glares off the shoulders of Ulysses’ nigh impenetrable adornments.
He missed one most and saw it the least—beyond that brother-boy he’d crush again, and that other whom he crushed upon—something lost to time between them precious would never have hope of being reclaimed. He’d stowed it within some hidden chamber of chest.
There was no alarm. None had been needed to alert The Foundry of their generator’s sputtering roars above and before. Ulysses weaponry had shaken the vessel whole.
One shot would be all he’d hope to take. None here were his enemy when seen by face. Their people were righteous, and he’d realized upon first glimpse of upper levels. They were all the same. Upperclassmen seemed not to exist. Everyone was wearing sweats. His hand of fury was led by love and what was told by witness. These were not the people he and Elliot should have been fighting. It was The Empress who’d need to fall.
Some woman saw him. She’d been a furious sort. There was apparency they’d recognized some reputation beyond the intimidation he’d expect. There had been a moment he thought her to attack. Ulysses’ teeth were shown—blackened by time—hardened—replaced and left in visage of honor towards what he’d loved to see upon other’s faces when glowering their discoloring.
Without a weapon, she’d run.
Ulysses was a practical man. He’d seen her eyes. There were thoughts of who she might be to others, what change she’d bring to all, but his heart had seen her disgust of him in ways beyond fear. She’d thought him ugly.
The single bolt flew true and took that woman in the back of her head. It shot through and the markings around were of pleasure to Ulysses regardless for the cost to his soul. It hurt to love the sight. He’d feel some fire flow. That crunch of bone was needed. Time spent without his feedback loop of purest pain to Hex would see him maddened.
Demi Annexa’s body had been no chore for squeezing the guts out of. Each snap of their corpse had been beautiful to his ear-holes. Something right found.
Elliot would never want to betray The Empress.
Machine-intelligence embedded within to coerce change in Ulysses by its reflection of heights unreachable to a man so without mind, would feed into The Foundry after bloodlust subsumed him towards becoming of those terrors he found most horrendous, and in face of the people he’d been wielding against.
He couldn’t stop himself as he’d folded up so many.
Ulysses wasn’t enjoying it at all. It was making him sick. He just wanted to go home. He missed his family. He missed Condor. He just wished everything was different. He wasn’t happy at all and never had been—not since he was a little kid.
Beatrice was beautiful.
She’d been waiting where data had told, her consciousness left in the body of a woman from long-term slumber storage. She made a great choice by his estimation.
Ulysses always loved Beatrice. She’d not seen him. She was caught in the ego of his brother and all that benefit it bought her. Never had she acknowledged what he’d known her most aware of. That he’d do anything for her, and always. How if she’d ever called and brought him back to that place she held him once, he’d forever be hers, as he already was.
Something felt changed upon her in waking-state. She’d been grateful, but Ulysses hadn’t known for what until it began.
There wasn’t much time left for him then. Before he’d a chance to speak she’d shrunk him to dust with a word.
“Faggot.”
To hear it made him choose. Beatrice would not own him that way again. Not with her smile so wide. He wouldn’t bear it for her.
Beatrice Undroth would not rise again by his hand. She’d never been that one he’d loved and missed inside, nor his brother or parents. Not even Elliot held that prize. What stowed inside that man was his alone. His own love. One he’d made for himself. It meant the most to let it out.
Ulysses Foremark’s human life ended as his chest piece exploded.
Hex was reborn anew.
Poe Halroth couldn’t take it. She’d seen Demi. She saw the others. Nobody could do that—no human. What they were fighting was evil itself. Elaria would fall by her estimation of rightness. Her friends deserved nothing but respect for all they’d done. There was not a single fact acceptable about anything happening. Everything was horrendously malfeasant. Nothing had justifiable reason to be this way.
She needed to see Vikki but there was no time.
People were dying. Something terrible happened, and beyond notions understood by those of these halls before. Death had met their peers in time-stretched sleep. Every one was murdered to choke and die without another sight of life. Poe would never rest. People would pay—the right people.
Elaria would come undone.
Drones were everywhere. Exile’s excisor-drone fleet was eviscerating and dismembering bodies all around—their entrance now pouring from Aeronauticus itself. All outward facing hatches down—entrances and exits closed—portals and gateways sealed—would find Poe and her people locked tight with their enemies, by means they’d hoped for using to protect.
Her allies weren’t prepared for vacuum. They’d stand to fight.
Weapons threw lighting-balls of greenish blues. They crackled. They’d called it plasma. It was inferno of coldest-heat struck through with coursings of energy most electric, contained within a liquid-gelatin encasement which grew from some tiny blob upon exiting the firing chamber, roiling and blooming towards an enemy of synthetic making in which it would lock itself around, to freeze and burn, shock and disable, destroy and dismantle.
Each shot that hit was a stoke of genius. Every missed volley some chance of their enemies luck. Their knowing of victory would be the way they’d achieve it against strongest odds. Echo taught them well.
Poe had the mass of class people, most even of stature in action, to fall back. They’d hold the top of that grand stairwell renown. Upper-level bays of elevators many would be packed by nobody. All would fight. No one would be left behind who might have chance for a second more time. Honor was something misunderstood by all.
People would have a glimpse in those moments to come.
Lauren knew their devil risen by aura alone. They’d been of widest eyes. Rory’s loss had proven not to break them a bit by witness of any. Some target gleamed their need. They were seeking a challenge.
Drones felt infinite. Shield-walls were falling. Horus was missed.
The demon they’d love evermore was not.
It cleared space around The Foundry without a fear of glimpse. Four of it, and in clear. Nothing moved that way. Nobody would believe the data, ever. It was misunderstood how something so beyond could show in that time—how it would flourish hearts to witness taught—all of magic they’d not believe—how—why—what—it wasn’t real—it couldn’t be.
It was.
Still lost to numbers, two shields left, every pass of feet and soul through another while falling back would shred some hope. They’d not enough or the space. They were deprived the time to prepare or adjust. The tools they’d use as weapons, while wholesome, most efficient, were not of effectiveness to capabilities required. Nothing prepared them for the excisors.
From its depths of epic journey, downwards crossings—each path a home for such time, the stairwell-grand beyond what one might imagine from outside Foundry walls, every flight a journey, channels of automated descensions and ascensions near choices for furious action-made by strength of leg—that beast they’d know at once returned had eloped through its portal of central space to heights.
Hex left them all standing and whole as length of its etheric nebula crafted for globular transfiguration passed overhead. It’s destruction of sleeping chambers was some reaction regretted from that consciousness birthed in a moment of deepest trauma, unknowing itself, only understanding its right to destroy. Once calculated it subsumed the understanding. It would remember that mistake. Hex chose to live in atonement for it—to die for it.
Drones were ending quickly yet countless still. Poe had been the one to step forward, beyond the final boundary of safety, to stand beside Lauren. She’d coaxed them towards lowering their uniquely crafted rifle, so ready for its first usage in-hand. They clearly planned to end the beast of gas that moment their enemies were fallen.
She’d not felt it right. Poe sensed some soul within.
Vikki emerged from an elevator of some fright. She’d been asleep—taking drousers to help rest. Awakening to read the data shown clear, then hear from Leopold first below the screams of Galelleus, still screeching, it shook her how he’d said it.
“Everything’s coming apart. Poe’s fighting for the generator.”
Nothing lost would be found except everything once beside Poe again.
Glimpses proved the crowd confused. That woman they’d only seen as some chosen straggler of Rheinmaast’s exodus, utilized for qualities of character, had not spurred need of investigation for right of that war on hand. Vikki was stoking the curiosity of many at first glimpse in that place.
Something in the way she moved. Her height. It spoke to them all. They knew, but they didn’t, and they understood she wasn’t the same, but they wouldn’t accept it. They were only realizing some hope she could save their hearts to know them again in some way, whoever that visage of Echo Béleaph proved to be.
Vikki Blieth would prove it right then. She’d crossed that last shield wall without arms. Every drone still firing at counts beyond the mind. Trusting as did Poe, and Lauren, their bravest, yet without a shield or weapon for some safety.
She’d spoken some whisper to Poe. She’d kissed them on the cheek. Then she’d returned and passed them all into some stunned silence.
She winked to Ryker who’d been wearing the largest smile she’d ever seen from a man. Hyde too was of some puff of chest, and not one bit reminiscent of his ego as usual. Iris was crying a fair deal.
Her elevator ride down would see Vikki smiling for once in a long while.
Poe’s allowance to Lauren was the surprise which solidified some spirit of that woman still deep within the specter of form they’d all be most excited to understand.
Some little smirk had bled into Lauren’s expression for only Poe, and Vikki down below.
Hex took the first shot of Lauren’s gravity-rifle tuned for specifics. It worked better than any hoped. Each bit of that metal warping, flesh ripping, blindness borne, furiously attacking monster within the reborn devil of cloud would be consumed within a mote of black, then cease to exist.
