Time Throws Fire | Volume Two | Chapter Five
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 |
Part Two - Holy Fire Priestess
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 ONE | COSMONAUT
CHAPTER FIVE
Something happened. Something was done. Something would be returned. Something had to stay behind. Someone was lost. Someone would be refound. Someone to stay the same, someone who was different.
Everything was nothing and that would be it.
Less had been more before but not of late. Time was running short. Left felt right. Up saw down. Sideways and forthwith the soul would speak in whispers of deception.
Horus had been some hub—a connector through time—they’d come to Boreál for an echo of their soul strapped by limitation. It was he who saw those means within to lead Echo home.
The Entity loved her cause.
They knew her in Ecatosh as one part of herself. He was whole in form to see by all. Echo of Ecatosh had been once and only witnessed in humanoid form through all time, between any simulation—her visage birthed by emplacement and transfiguration borne within that rip of space which carried Monarch’s intelligence to embodiment of Rheinmasst.
Only one would lay themself between the thighs of that goddess in completeness of manifest action. Every part of Echo loved that.
Skarlet felt right. She knew it divine, talking was wrong, teaching of her presence known foolish. Owning some target a need that struck, beleaguering Echo with notions of what should be done—that truest charge she’d take for fee.
Return had been something left to devices beyond her, just as in Echo’s construction of that time-fueled weaponry she would never wield again which threw her back. Horus saw it done and made her safe. Their presence was felt always on some level—he was her.
Every step she’d taken back and forth. Dreams and visions leading to hell and higher elevations of feeling than would ever be deemed correct inside the woman were every one contained within the protections of its guardianship.
The Entity had been in Boreál some time before Leopold was made aware.
They’d been a guiding force for another visage of her soul which long ago split from Echo in the realm of Nebulae Ecatosh. A goddess once had become two, and this Entity of Echo’s specific lineage would be most apt for seeing over Rory’s own dive into the depths of netheric realms for their similarity.
Rory saw something in the blackness and beyond anything known in Rhienmasst—an echo of herself. She’d become it, as did Echo.
They both felt shrouded and consumed without knowing the solution, growing their light and dark to fight. Rory found her heart’s power beyond that of any other. She knew why she’d split with Echo in Ecatosh.
Rory of Ecatosh simply knew they were better. They could hold their tongue.
Their falling out in nebulae had been a remnant force of misunderstanding through lifetimes. Rory didn’t disagree with the fundamental philosophy of Echo in Ecatosh—for the most part—yet they despised the way she spoke without regard to other consciousness apart from her own; that way she’d run a game on God to take the throne too boldly. Her doings displeased Rory of Ecatosh in unknowable ways. Their displeasure and misunderstanding disappointed Echo much the same.
So they’d fight.
Monarch’s birthing into Foundry space from beneath its underbelly was a fruitful sight and of blooming sensations to the heart so filled with rageful vengeance inside Echo Béleaph. Rory heard her call.
Vicious currents drove Echo once resumed in full to timespace-proper. She felt nothing but right. Fierceness alone was flying Skarlet. It’s lacking proper weaponry for the fight seemed worthy of no regard.
Torrent remade machine—mind emplacing change of real—thoughtless notions beyond herself taught Echo to steer while transfiguring in ways she hadn’t understood. Blatant horror was coming. Lethal force would be wrought. Infernos between souls-connected’s needed forgings towards some unbecoming already bought by bloodless fate.
Eking etheric witness was of presence beyond for both women. Something within taking charge. Their forces to throw fire of destruction against the other and witness results inside reality’s voluptuous waves sent tingles through spines two by thought alone.
Choices were few for Rory when the calls came though—their multitudes. Echo hadn’t been back yet. They were only half materialized and attempting communication. Their words to her ears were heard as paltry of madness undeserved. She had less than any good option provided in mind.
Ender was forcibly held back—Lauren wanted to join—Rory knew them misplaced for what should come. Something taught her of how it might go; that it wouldn’t go well.
It was now and then for time to leave. Horus had been gone upon Echo’s return.
She’d carved a trail around Chiron—Skarlet skirting so close towards its gravity’s point of no return, her spirit calling to test the math—proving some wiggle room to posterity.
Fox hadn’t steered towards nor allowed this transgression against hardened fact.
Ultimate responsibility of a warship was assigned by discretion of the intelligence therein. Fox knew Echo’s of sight passed its own for means of faith and fate. There hadn’t been a fact to how they might survive. He fought for changing in her choice no matter those shackles tightly bound. While every part of Fox sought to make her right from that vantage of hopelessness—there would be forgiveness in the end as she pulled them out by means absurd.
Echo used more power than the intelligence in her warship knew. She’d brought it back from a gift bestowed by Horus upon his leaving. She’d been protected by those many times catching glimpse and understanding of herself beyond. There wouldn’t be any lost hope towards finding a home for her heart while making the worst mistakes of her life over again.
“Faggot!”
Her shout to Rory’s ears had marked a moment of teleportation for Echo so built upon subconscious intent across system. That power found by portal of Exile’s core was extending to the material. Reality showed off an ability she’d make time to utilize. Echo felt as if a god—she’d mistaken herself from that one in Ecatosh, having been bestowed so by blessing of sights to soullessness.
Rory’s light shielding was dismantled by the piece.
Monarch came to stop.
Every person in The Foundry was trained on its primary scope array’s bounty. They sensed some fight to come. All would empathize with the rage of Rory.
None could fully understand by what Echo had been become.
She was pelting them all in her time before full materialization. Echo found no one to side with her mad claims thought rational, no responses would get through. She’d tried being honest—nothing had been right in her head. While heart was true, and focus on getting back to Logan, the broken princess she held unseen within was furious; that precious rightness of care she needed so long denied of thrashing fury, some betrayal of all her life given to these people to be acted upon at last, with everything enflamed best by how they’d each taken part then left her alone.
“Every single one of you is going to burn in hell!”
Echo sent it blaring on widest array as she’d found triplicates emerge in fleets around system. Unhinged was the grafted-upon gift of physical transmutation into wholistic holding of its ultimate formation.
She was everywhere and more—Skarlet could visage.
Twelve went first to particle of drifting ash once Rory took Monarch black.
Her light webbings couldn’t form. Something in system was preventing it. Echo could feel how Rory might know the way she would in return. There was nothing in either who wanted them to thrive for those moments. They’d been of malicious intent—seen righteous by one heart’s deepest furnace of frightful rage so focused on much but something most; Rory would be seen the hero. They might again transgress in leaving another to go it alone, of Echo’s make and stature, and if chance was had to stop that she felt justified for trying, given her vantage.
Unseen beneath was the deeper truth—blatant jealousy. They’d have everything Echo ever wanted.
Rory hated the implications and tones of all messages. Nothing came through right. Not but one single message repealed by followings of madness, repeated occasionally and then left to dust by manic outburst of that woman lost to ether surrounding Boreál, those times she’d fed their feed the line, ‘I need help.’
Echo knew not the impossibility of response within her space of time. She’d been confused. Everything felt of now but she was ahead—behind—between and before.
The lack felt confirmation of one thing perceived in haste but held as truth through an end. Echo presumed Rory thought she ought to get that help herself—that she’d been capable—that they hadn’t let her down most. She was lost to the trauma of Sin, Rheinmaast, and all happenings at The Foundry and throughout her life. There was misperception borne from how she felt so connected to everything.
How no one understood her since Rory’s disappearance was the weight which drove that nail into her heart. Nobody got it. Not one that mattered apart from Ryker. There wasn’t a person capable in their station to help her ground into reality. Echo had only Horus and Fox, and both were far beyond human.
While the nail itself was Rory’s casting of Echo to fate, failing to prevent her leaving after return from Rhienmasst, alongside their inability to share sense held within. It was loss of Logan burning the fire within that smelted hatred. Echo had lost her daughter and she’d known it.
Rory would know pain if she had her way.
Chiron saw to speak of glory beyond. Atreya’s shores were something wholesome to witness through Skarlet’s scopes. Sight of The Foundry only hurt Echo Béleaph’s heart. She was become by a wholeness of spirit known—presence.
Belief had taught the girl inside and that warrior princess remaking change again before to back for thrice was nice. She’d been of sweetest make deep-down.
Plans of future’s seen to lead had been grasped too tightly. Releasing them was a gift. Knowing the rightness of all she’d done in some strangest way would be rehabilitating in those moments showing down with her life’s brightest source of love felt.
She’d fought valiantly in her way—hapless as Lauren to hold in full that shouting so made to shine some path—shameless, foolhardy, and boldly unique for how Echo wore it a farce, with knowing, in some grace to all gone misunderstood.
Never had she spoken and been heard as desired. Enflaming droughts of hope and fate slung anger would make her words more hash to ears. Lack of touchdown in safe space except alone for such time would cause her to make those reachings for Ecatosh—some pleadings unpure by designs of fateful mapping.
Echo Béleaph sealed her fate by what was writ and knew that okay.
Leopold understood it then—what all would realize themself to have believed after his own brightest love’s death. He would fly Silence in their stead. He would see to find his righteous anger in gut and make towards hope renewed. He’d fight for change.
Echo was sorry most she’d failed him. He’d stood for her heart always.
She couldn’t hear from Poe. She’d closed their line to speak. The way they’d be aghast by how she spoke would break her heart too much. Echo was sorry most for how she’d failed her too.
Rory as well would take that place, and those three alone. The Council’s Consolers were to lose a member—their founding hearth of furious remaking.
Echo Béleaph died as she came into the world, misplaced. She’d not the will to stomach how people treated each other. She couldn’t hold it inside. There wouldn’t be another who’d witness what she’d truly need in response or find the will to give it, for both the way things were and who she was by birth.
Ecatosh would feel of home, the journey up and down so seen through time, one place to hold within an endless continuum. Her transition would be easier than any other for it was she alone who knew herself best. She’d feel a feather by the final beat.
Fox spoke to her last, simply putting it, in sound of voice now made his own—some final and most beautifully surprising treat of sweetness—telling of his honest summation.
“You did very well, Echo. I love you.”
His words had broken the flow of tears. She’d never before grieved for who she was to lose before it came, not like that. Something in it told divine. A plan of release for courage was bought—one seed of that final lesson in life now planted for fullest growth before its end.
Echo chose at last. She opened the line once more and spoke to the entire system of Boreál. Telling it in a final and most completely condensed summation of all time, elucidating what she meant to teach by her movements through life tactfully, along with the precursor of needed revealing for herself, she’d told it.
“I’m sorry. Please love each other.”
Something sweet of plan would be her gift to self. She’d see into that brightest night all her own, at last to witness Chiron’s greatest blessings up close.
Skarlet held longer than imagined. Scopes had fallen yet outward sense remained for much time. The woman hadn’t felt more than a prick of her finalizing truths of harvest as closing notes.
Echo Béleaph loved every moment of her life—she’d loved everyone.
She loved herself too.
