Time Throws Fire | Volume Two | Chapter Twenty-One
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
Part Nine - Threnody of Lojack
Part Ten - Time Throws Fire
PART EIGHT | SEMBLANCE
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Crowding people were chanting, pulsing, taking breath from all within to stand amongst their peers so completely pressing into place beside each other. They were about to come on stage. It was an exciting discovery to Vikki Blieth. She’d finally allowed herself to take place beside everyone else.
Even fighting off anxiety, feeling herself of need to suppress such inner-calculation, so many catching her glimpse, eyes unable to dodge, heights reigning above others, it was some challenge she’d decided to face for the music alone.
Hushes spread. Already lowest lights had dimmed. Vikki’s attention was pulled.
Somebody was on stage. Someone in the dark. A star had been unseen. Everything had been of feeling. Vikki knew that one. It was a connection beyond that which would be understood by some proving out of sequenced thoughts towards conclusion.
Whoever they were — she loved them as much as anyone — more in her heart than ever before was blooming from their darkened sight.
Everything inside her was trained on their figure. It was familiar but ungraspable. They were bold and fierce but of some strangest, strongest grace to her sense of aura. Vikki was being grounded by them there, even in the dark.
It sheltered within, that knowing of who, through a guess most right. She hadn’t wanted it so. She’d wanted to let them lie how they were. Vikki didn’t want to be honest about how she really felt.
Breakers were thrown — that darkness surrounding went so black that no light reflected from a single surface — fear shot through the crowd by murmur.
Vikki knew then. She was dreaming. It wasn’t real. Threat presumed by false reality was simply too great, irrational, and so of beyond, it couldn’t help but spur her to understand.
Three lunges were made, up, out, she’d fly.
The third would always take for Vikki. She’d know herself about to lift-off after that failed second attempt. It was the effort towards dreamscaped skylines which couldn’t be doubted by right of ability, known from making that leap and staying in air so many times before.
Ripping through her consciousness as everything surrounding faded to a speck, in a sea of shrouded cityscape, she’d made speed for witnessing some scope of detail beyond even Vikki’s ability to believe it a projection purely from her subconscious.
That city was living. It was humming. The people in it were sharing with each other, loving, and their streets were decorated in cords of lights. Ground was covered by blankets of cool white that turned amber under the streetlamps so far below. Their homes were glowing of warmth through windows everywhere.
She knew it time to wake, and by glance towards that fire-ridden horizon alone. That next breath-unfelt was taken in acceptance of Vikki’s changing environment, notions having landed into her body completely.
She’d awoken.
It took her no time to realize she was still sleeping. Vikki tried again, closing her eyes in the dream, feeling back towards her body so unreachable, fighting those surging fears from witnessing the disconnection therein.
Too many times she’d done it for thinking herself dead.
That effort popped something. Released. Awoken again in sheets most fine.
She’d thrown them off inside Poe’s room to search for her friend. They’d been out more lately, leaving Vikki to enjoy the space and quiet. Toys were abundant in Poe Halroth’s domain, yet different than most people’s choices towards the same, she had collected bespoke artistic creations, blankets, and books most of all.
Poe wasn’t a fan of keeping things around which distracted from what mattered most to her, peace, and growth.
Tea was brewed. Vikki felt into how right that felt to be back, breathing into some release. Until Poe stormed in. Something was wrong. She’d discovered more details of Vikki’s murdering Rory and was disgusted.
Vikki swore they’d known — understood — that she’d been forgiven.
That slap across her face had made her cry some way she’d never before. It was a worst feeling to be admonished from a friend who’d never once acted towards Vikki, so needing of compassion, in any way but some dearest friend of spirit.
It taught her the truth. Vikki had made a mistake.
She was dreaming again.
To wake after such efforts to escape, in something so unreal was terrifying. Vikki couldn’t understand. Only a few times had she struggled that much to find full purchase in her living body and not.
Still — it was her death — not yet — she’d began to understand.
Vikki took in that place she’d arrived, its strangest surroundings, those ways the walls had been stacked, something here was being seen to. Something craved witness.
Outside her bed-chamber, picking a splinter from her foot, Vikki realized herself embodied as it felt to project a visage, but in-half, only just, something familiar within it all.
Men were at the end of that fire-bright hallway, so enclosed, she knew it a trap, some keeping place of her soul-passed.
To walk down that hallway, beyond those men, would be to see their faces and reactions, it would tell Vikki all she’d need to know for understanding; where and why she was there, discovered always and by even the quickest glances of fools.
She wouldn’t do it. Heart was speaking.
Tales were told, songs were sung, gut’s knowing was discarded for her heart’s belief, but she’d grasped by gasp, deep down, for that one truth still to come. The greatest reasoning for how and why she’d lie to herself was forged within its grasping over her consciousness.
Echo Béleaph, the woman who’d taken reigns of life by means less than understood, when transposing themselves through Sin’s portal to Rhiemasst, had become home to Vikki.
She been destined, Semblance, to rebecome, some part of Echo that died would take her back.
Vikki Blieth realized she was about to waking. She’d gotten to the point needed for understanding. While there wasn’t a part of her ready for the task at hand, it would be received by splaying from her crown-of-soul to hear most clearly, for the turning of her broken heart into a croon.
Echo was already in the place she saw before her. They would have some other name in that dungeon of reality so felt upon realization within it.
Vikki was a living part of Echo now, extended back to The Foundry for connection to those she’d loved and needed letting go of. Her chance to heal despite death a blessing taught over-again, before great change, had been discarded for that divine and unfolding reception it challenged with.
There were over six-hundred lifetimes for Echo Béleaph to live before she’d return in full to Ecatosh. At least, she’d hoped that was truth — for the next was that one which had always survived — her most hated sister’s making being fateful prescribed had told of tales most glum to come.
Vikki finally came back in a way undeniable. Time spent gripping the sheets of her bed was necessary to prove it. Though, it was in Vikki’s own cabin. She’d not truly wanted to leave Poe’s place of peace, only grateful for the chances she had to be there so often. Still, they were only just across the way.
She’d gone to see Poe after dressing.
Vikki sought a hug she’d needed after that dreadful dream. Nothing would be more untrue than how Poe acted therein. It was witnessed clearly always — who Poe was to her, through their eyes — releasing all worry from what she’d been working towards unrepressing about all to come.
Poe wasn’t home. She’d been busiest of late. Managing the cycled-schedules of nearly sixty active warpilots now patrolling, waiting, scouting, and posturing about Foundry space to keep trouble away until they were ready, for making their strikes of great stakes was some misbegotten romance.
Vikki found her with Ryker, Hyde, and Oria. That woman from Sin had seen to taking the fastest-tracked role of initiate. She wasn’t flying yet, but Oria would.
They were running simulations together, the four of them. Everything by near instantaneous calculations of forces they measured by facts in data, knowledge of mind, and wisdom wrapped hearts, empowered by Hatchet to make completely detailed graphing of what might happen when showing down against Yevahar and Exile’s remaining might.
To stand there with her friends was cherished more than ever now.
Vikki was going home to Echo soon. She’d take every moment she had, and there was one thing which simply felt wrong not to feel real. It hadn’t been a part of the plan to let all of her emotion unfold.
Poe’s focused brilliance of chest-spoken, self-actualized wisdom had brought it out of her. To see their drooping expression — feeling it burn inside — would change things. It was for how Vikki had been lingering behind backs apart from Poe’s own, which allowed it to only their eyes. That sight seen brought blaring sadness to bear, full-blast alongside Vikki’s brightest aching love.
Poe Halroth was first to see the visage wink.
