IMMATERIAL CONTEST

Project Steki

Immaterial Contest

*

Copyright © 2026 by Project Steki

All rights reserved.

*

First published in 2026 by Project Steki

projectsteki.neocities.org

May 2026, Greece

*

ISBN

*

No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and

incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locates or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

DEDICATED

TO ZUCCHINI

Contents

PART A

Lost Sponsorship 6

At The Doctor’s 9

Sacred Patron 14

Two Versus Two 20

Elements 24

Discovery Of Inner Peace 29

The Gray 36

Kingmaker 42

Downtime 52

Disconnection 55

Reconnection 58

Cannon’s Fanfare 63

Banquet 74

References 85

Seithr 94

Warfare Institutions 101

Kingmaker II 107

Debts 124

Philosophy 133

Lesser Horrors 141

Recuperation 150

Death 158

Budgeting 165

Baal Moloch 169

Space Cattivelli 176

PART B

The Announcement Of Colours 184

Sicela 192

Blood Magic 198

Lecture 203

Preparations 211

ABRAXAS 217

Crater 225

Eryx 232

Pressure 240

Downtown Eryx 245

Five Minutes Remaining 257

The Painting 262

Meeting 267

The Rebels 272

Battleground 276

Ex Champion 285

Confidence 294

Beasthunt 301

Anavasis 310

Teutons 313

Young Sea Witch 323

Inner Alchemy 328

Eros And Agape 334

Work 339

Movie Night 347

Horror Marks 356

Alleyways 364

The Opponents 370

Slow Shimmer 372

The Mess 378

Thracians 385

The Finals Part I 395

The Finals Part II 404

The Finals Part III 412

Away 422

PART A

Chapter 1

Lost Sponsorship

Cyclopean walls, slits in-between the stones become str

eams of Contestant blood. At a mismatched base, oval droplets fall over a fresh corpse. Its broken skull, reveals a golden-layered organ that blinks out of reality.

With its brain missing, the skull suddenly becomes open to the extreme temperature of the planet. Without force from this instant movement, outwards goes from the hollow escape blackness and steam.

On Ohros, there is only gradient, from void to hellish glow and back again to blackness. Seas of magma cover the small planet, they expand around the arena and the fortress at its center. Light pollution of molten rock chokes all starlight. The celestial lights of spectators too, the few pairs of eyes from beyond that are focused on this game become invisible in this overhead blackness.

As such, the final moment of quiet for this match begins. And anew goes Jorj to the familiar process of a resurrection pod.

Jolts of nerves return between his fingerprints and so breaks the pain of a new body being woven onto him, extreme, intense and shocking. Another iteration of a plex that makes him. Marrow to skin, neurons branch themselves out into metal needles and silicone binding seals. Bones become real through pressure sockets spewing calcium and noble minerals. Sinews are grafted to the expanding flesh, drawn to where they should be.

At every respawn Jorj stretches his hands. The limbs can move again and after all of his organs become bound and pumped with blood, his sight and hearing returns which take the hue of enveloping white light, white noise.

In such deaf and blinding flash, he is pushed out of the pod, Gymnete armor forged directly on-top of his skin. A breastplate, a light tight second skin, thigh-plates, gloves and grafted devices on his eardrum and nasal cavity.

As willpower binds signals to new flesh, so comes a whisper. The Claimant that hovers besides him in fantasy, he is running in his ear, tightening logic in this light Gymnete armor, making the currents, circuitry and few hydraulics obedient to their combined will.

The first breath is always hell. Jorj’s flesh sweats instantly as if the previous death was mere lapse wherein no time had passed and the accumulated fatigue and dehydration, they too have been grafted into his body. Heat, uneven gravity, unnatural industrial wind, the atmosphere itself makes the matches that much more cruel. Death is neither escape, nor chance to swat exhaustion away. The man breathes this prison of burning air, scorch and gasp become plastered in every cell of his lungs.

No relief comes from the Claimant, the other person who is besides Jorj. In-between the ears and besides all matter of stimuli, he can not bring ease. The Contestant’s flesh alone has to make due without support. The abstractive magic of a Claimant that pushes chemistry and physics within machines, is simply not there in the Gymnete armor.

So is known to Jorj and so knows his Claimant Maras.

To that lapse of initiative, Jorj moves faster than the whisper in his ear.

Dashing on the dry gravel around the wall’s outer perimeter, a Shock Lanza rests idle. The weapon remains there unpowered, concealed in shadow, revealed only by its dull, cyan light. The Lanza is standing on its metal stock, lifeless and pale, the same colour as the corpse Jorj left besides it. And the machine whispers. Seeking hand to wield it and as Jorj answers with a swift grab, the Lanza returns to its bright azure, a radiance of malice and drowning pull. From its core, the long cobalt cylinder glows, so that it becomes plastered in the enveloping metal, the handle, its scope, the Lanza’s bolt and trigger and to Contestant’s body too. On its tip, the weapon has a muzzle brake shaped to an arrowhead. Mere minute ago that it was fired, streaks of white smoke break and dissipate around Jorj.

There is no sound but a soft sizzling. To where ear might beget movement, there is only stillness. Jorj remains calm.

Maras talks into the man. A distraction among the moments, Jorj digs into his ear and pulls out the small earpiece that was grafted to his eardrum. Where there was that hush of sound, therein now rests more, deeper, introspective joy of the moment and the streak of blood that runs down his side of the neck, it evaporates and stiffens. Jorj smiles. Clots become a cracked row moving anew as it mixes with evaporating sweat.

Somewhere in this smile, Jorj refuses thought. In that absence, he is well aware, that he becomes nothing else but an impulse, some urge animated out of experience. The teeth clench, the smile breaks.

And at that movement, tiny a gap, tiny a passing place. Manic, infinitesimal chance crowns the Contestant. On the ecstatic nudge beyond pain, with his jaws pressed to breaking clench, one strong push of the wall sends him sprinting away.

From above, a flak round the size of a human head, arches over and explodes behind Jorj. Shrapnel follows along the fleeting of his foot. Between the shrill of a torn eardrum, a torrent of gravel and hot metal resounds. A cacophony that nears and consumes him from below. Flickers and lodestone, superheated shrapnel passes, eats and bores along as he shifts mid-momentum.

Beyond prayers, beyond the tight woven plex of experiences and other abilities that define prowess, through pathways of blood working in habit and though chance itself, a certain aim happens that is once again empty of thinking. The manic thundering collapses in a hole within the gray. Then and thus, Jorj pulls the trigger of the shock Lanza.

Fired from the hip, with the long cobalt rod staring upward, the streak of blue light powers through the air and there is nothing left but a swirling void that vacuums within it, sizzling particles of air. Jorj feels the recoil pull his shoulder off as every hypertrophic, tightened part of his core and arm pushes against the handheld horror of physics.

In the distance above, the other body opens up. In deep blue the shape is unmade from that of a five edged humanoid, to that of a gaping nothing. An absence of a silhouette where there should be an opponent, a shade unmade to expanding rings of rubbery flesh.

The score is five to four as Jorj falls on his side. All the tightening unwinds, the body relaxes and he remains there.

When he tries to enjoy that empty moment of aim again, detached pain breaks that effort. He turns on his back, chin to breastplate. He thinks it might take a while for the cleaners and other services to take him away. Much more so now that Maras and his twenty bronze neck-rings rattle in anger.

From one of his pockets he pulls a strip of cloth. The Contestant straightens the ageless black rag and then creates a makeshift tourniquet on his thigh.

The pain is there, but muted from the many and more, exalted moments that had been. And to his mind, this is all manageable pain, an otherwise normal shock to his body, much experienced and many times felt. Before passing out, Jorj recounts it all one last time. Bleeding eardrum, missing leg, strained shoulder and perhaps a few other broken things within him, they are all cloaked in a membrane. A thin, see-through plastic, a dampening coating, that makes pain horrible and overall, not that important.

The limbs stop itching. Within him now is no death, but worry. Worry on whether he might not make it the cheap way out and how much more so now, with an angered sponsor evicted from his eardrum.

But that fades also, as worry too, is coated by that membrane. Interlocking particles, extreme systems, beliefs and things that have gone past humanity and all his worry becomes muted noise as he passes out.

Chapter 2

At The Doctor’s

The makeshift white of a tiled room, a full of cracks ceiling which is filled with white Mucus anti-fungus powder in-between, they are all buzzing with that head-aching ambience of fluorescent tubes. Nauseating, going from one side of comfort in the hospital bed, to the discomfort of jelly meals, to uncaring doctors, to space Cattivelli breaking into rooms and selling plastic junk, to them being chased out by moon-gypsies for few iron coins, to the old people having their souls prolonged a bit further than they want to call a stop, to the faded windows that cannot even showcase the orbiting lava-planet and of course, to the passive aggressive corporate meetings that he has to attend, all is to and endless fro, more so leaning to extreme displeasure.

Jorj has a new earpiece. Not fused with him, it remains on the side of his bed. From that small machine the room fills with a woman’s flat, corporate voice.

‘It has come to our attention that in the previous IC match you have disconnected corporate property during an active session with your assigned support Claimant. Please clarify why this happened. But before that please understand that you have to perform your needful reassignment of trainings as per company policy 145-IC-10040. I will send you the respective document numbers by EOTD as per YOP.’ Some other voice, the one familiar to Jorj as Maras, continues immediately after. ‘What helps me Jorj is that I try to put everything I can into Cel. A Cellblock and every time that I have something new, irrespective of what happened, I add...’

Off from one side, Jorj gets up from the bed and walks out of the room. The meeting ambience becomes replaced by crude language and half-arguing filth as soon as the door closes behind him.

The thin corridor is gray, with green, plastified floors that look as if molten paint was flooded here and let to cool off. Jorj is walking barefoot and the coolness underneath is otherwise pleasant. There is also a light freshness, spreading across his flesh as Mucus anti-fungus spores float and latch around him.

A pair of Cattivelli teenagers close in to him. The two young men carry a water tank on their backs and they stop in-front of Jorj.

The difference of size between the three is unnatural. At one meter and ninety-eight centimeters tall, Jorj is considered short for Contestant standards. Even so, he is proportionately wide, of such a broad plex of shoulders and waist, that the other two meager humans stand side by side together at the distance of his shoulders. They cannot pass through unless they take a long way around his body.

There is a brief stop. The water tank is already open and a cup of factory-grade, microplastics-full water is offered to Jorj.

Offering of a fandom that he does not know, he accepts the cup. Truth is, that the two are overtaken by slight fear. An awkward moment of uncertainty where violence can simply not manifest. The three men go their own way, wholly complacent to not compare themselves to the other inhuman shape of man.

However fearful though, in deeper hues of personal understanding, all three know that they are of the same classification. The same colour or texture of purpose. They believe themselves Commoners, people of toil, neither special nor important in the vastly mystical order of the world out there.

***

A small device on his hand displays numbers. The costs of a respawn, the cost of each Lanza shot fired. All debts that keep pilling at every match, but hardly a worry to someone like him. The screen powers down as the man removes it from the power socket.

Diners are widely known for their services. Not because one could find hearty meals or rare stimulants in them, but because the power sockets spewed out cheap energy that came along with the rest of the bill.

Slop is served, recycled matter sprinkled with traces of noble minerals, micro and macro nutrients. It matters little to the physical condition of a Contestant however, as their bodies have been locked at their prime when issued their unique BRM license. This is why it is considered a common occurrence for one Contestant to perform better after they are fragged for the first time in the arena. The resurrection pod uses a Body Rights Management license that the Contestant has procured in order to remake the entirety of their body, at the exact specifications when that the BRM license was taken. All bodyparts are woven as they were, bringing a Contestant to their prime, regardless of whether they got fatter or thinner during his time. Resurrection works as such on the entirety of a body, excluding the brain. As the body is approximated to be in a perfect form when the BRM license was taken, that very snapshot is without injuries or diseases. The resurrection pod spits a perfect Contestant out with the only change being some added fatigue, to reflect what has already been accumulated during a match.

The process is as such for every single cell of a Contestant, minus their brain, a smaller part of the brainstem and the cerebellum. These non-replicating organs and their folds are covered in a golden layer made of technology of vast, horrifying density. Such technology that makes whatever is enveloped by it, immune to almost all forms of change and damage. For any damage that technology does let through, there is usually some genetic mutation to recuperate such unwanted changes.

For a Contestant thus, there is no reason to care for their diet. All the services of a diner, the cheap toilets, the basins of water and leather couches are only matters of comfort. And by extension, the rest of life itself.

Some birthday is taking place deeper in the dank interior of the diner and five cake slices are handed to the few people gathered here. One such slice is brought to Jorj by the waitress. The microscopic bident-fork cuts along the pointy end of fluffy sugar clouds. The wafer at the base of the slice is stale, but otherwise moist in concentrated sweetness.

For Commoners, plain events are never reasons to be in a place. These boring, uneventful moments invite only another particular class of people. People that would run along the most mundane, the most normal and dig out from said moments, something special and memorable.

Such people are called Claimants. Harbingers of attention, people that gather around rare and mundane moments alike, often provoking fate itself to become interesting.

As soon as Jorj finishes the tiny slice, another plate enters his view. The white disk slides across the table. Matter of fact, the plate makes a weak sliding sound, of rough to rough texture as it is pushed by two fingers.

Jorj imagines it another fan’s offering, another equally thin slice of cake. His eyes glance at the man on the other side of the table and there is a null moment before any name is exchanged.

This Claimant is dressed in what Jorj can only perceive for the moment as layered black. Black folds of much detail. In such detail he is able to discern that the man seems covered in kenophobic texture. The most common feature of fashion on a Claimant, as Jorj is aware. But this one is also marked by corporate ownership. A pin covers the Claimant’s heart and that heart rests behind layers of blackened cloth, in a moody envelop of Makkaras fashion.

‘Makkaras? Magnisia? What’s the brand you’re wearing?’ Asks Jorj as he half focuses on cutting the cake.

‘I am wearing Makkaras. Good eye.’ The Claimant lets the compliment out with a tap of his finger and Jorj strains to listen.

‘I am a bit shaken up here.’, says Jorj, pointing to his own head.

‘CTE?’

‘A little bit. I respawned in a pod, but my brain needs...’ Jorj halts in the common, word-fumbling pause of brain damage. ‘...rest’.

‘I thought Contestants had few genetic anomalies to help them with such issues.’

‘I do.’ Replies Jorj, leaning back to give some outstretched poise to his chest. ‘About a twentieth or something, I have blood from Khanza-Rum...’ He pauses, searching for the word and moving his hands along. ‘...running through me.’

‘How long do you need to rest for the brain to heal?’

‘Two, five sleep cycles? I can’t know.’

‘Well, I cannot wait that long to speak to you. I saw the match and it was horrible.’ Says the Claimant in a rushed string of words.

Jorj, presses his mouth together in a straight line where his lips become seemingly flat. With one hand he forks the rest of the cake, while the other scratches away at his short stubble. The cake is almost mush and if Jorj could do the BRM scan again, he would have gone through that process freshly shaved. He runs his open palm over the prickly stubble, always there after a short while and always with the same minute composition of hair ordered in such recurring reminder of tiny mistakes.

The usual thoughts of why that is not possible passes him by. The Claimant takes initiative while Jorj thinks. He pushes a small syringe to the hulking man on the other side.

‘What is this? How much?’

‘Free. Just shoot it up now. It will help you think.’

Jorj leaves the cake alone. He drops the fork and wipes his mouth on his backhand. He leans sideways revealing the great girth that is his neck and afterwards he shoots the liquid through.

Balancing between taboo and frowned upon actions, the Claimant thinks widely as the man ahead begins to wake up. Widely, he thinks, of how sacred it is, to be the sole priest of the holy altar that is one’s mind. In that pinpoint thought that defines most Claimants, he wonders about how fateful is such a moment. A personal priest, someone that tramples the sanctity of the brain with offerings of drugs. Fateful, as in controlled, expected outcome surging through a bloodstream.

As soon as the Contestant on the other side is fully awake, the Claimant wraps up this stream of thought and speaks.

‘I am Varhas, pleased to know you Jorj.’

Chapter 3

Sacred Patron

As the drug settles within Jorj, a fastening grip surges and describes all within the dinner anew.

For the Contestant, his eyes fall again on the black attire of the Claimant. This time, the kenophobia within radiates meaning and the grip that describes reality latches onto the details. Black robes that conceal light, in an impenetrable darkness. Layers of hanging metallic curtains that flow in the texture of silk, faded mica and rose gold layers in white fringes hang in place. Ill-coloured chemistry is the only texture that exists on the black fabric and it appears that everything on the Claimant is a swaying of imagination brought to boundless fashion. And yet all contrasting pieces are not as such. They flow from one form to the other, never sacrificing uniqueness or becoming obstructive to a body’s natural range of motion, or a spectator’s taste for order.

The details give way to imagination as Jorj continues staring at the man. Three streams of thoughts invade him one after the other.

Jorj imagines firstly, fresh wind, cold and slicing, electric current, static and surging at imperceivable windy patterns over the clothing. There is force underneath all of the hanging pieces of the Claimant’s attire. Force and flow that give even more detail to Varhas as his body shifts underneath.

In that shift, Jorj imagines stars on the blackness, without being certain if he actually sees them. Without a uniform pattern, these glimmers of deep blue, orange and yellow are an ordered chaos of starlight. These hints speak of order and some childlike awe, uniform and magical spectacle.

Lastly, Jorj looks over to the man’s face. At first glance, the man appears in his late twenties, but as soon as he turns his attention around to his eyes, the man gives off a hint of old age. There are creaks there, strained geriatric crevasses stretching almost from ear to eye. Jorj thinks he is a dead man, one who is of cold skin, a straight nose that leads to sharp predatory eyelids which always stand wide, in the most common characteristic of a Claimant. Revealed, always manic eyes, whiteness on top of their irises. Calculating and feeling without stop. This one’s thoughts, forming as endless dead battlefield. Silent, without miasma, rummaging through moments as old bones and rusty equipment.

This is how Jorj half-thinks, half-imagines this brief moment. He finds these thoughts odd, but perhaps a result of drugs all the same. He chooses to wait for a response from the man.

For the Claimant, this moment is silent and that is by choice. He passes his fingers through the nape of his neck. A short buzz cut and hairless neck meet his fingertips as he goes back and forth, enjoying the prickly resistance of short hair. All the while, he prepares his words, two, ten sentences ahead.

Jorj grabs the initiative anyways and he speaks first.

‘10k a syringe, isn’t it? Stimulant and trip.’

‘A trip? You are most welcome for the surge of thoughts.’

Jorj finds the response in bad taste. High and mighty pleasantries bring misfortune. He then turns away towards the glass panel on his left. The drug has already worn itself off its peak, but he is still able to enjoy its slow decrease. Varhas follows this turn of the head, looking to his right.

Nothing is happening outside of the diner. And that nothing soon takes the form of a running man. Naked from the waist up and in an unfitting happiness, the man plants two firm feet on a wooden bench’s back. Hands outstretched towards the high ceiling and the half-naked indoor trees of rock and glass. He stands as summoner amidst the plaza, wholly submerged in divine awe and mania, acting it out. Teal and faded, microcline leaves swirl all around him in the simulated winds inside of orbital stations. Both Jorj and Varhas watch this nothing unfold. Four eyes stare through happenings such as this, of long forgotten autumn and they both enjoy the strangeness of this spectacle.

Four eyes see. Yet the Claimant is lost in streams of divination where emotion guides decisions of the future.

‘Let me sponsor you. Orichalcum Megacorp.’ Says Varhas in this divinating absence as they both remain steadied to the spectacle outside.

‘Is there good money in this? Metallurgy corporations have good payroll I hear.’

‘Just as much as pharma pays you.’

‘It’s a no then. I’ve been running on a debt spiral for over a decade now.’

‘We do not have paperwork in Orichalcum Megacorp.’

Outside, the madman removes his pants, tosses them away into the cold gusts and runs away from two arbiters that have come to apprehend him.

‘I hope he goes far.’ Speaks Jorj, half-smiling at the incident.

‘Most likely a gambler. Lost it all at the odd shift of chances in your last match.’

‘Is this what you inhuman mind tells you Claimant?’

Varhas refuses to answer, by way of absently staring at the passage of the naked gambler and then the trees and then the other people who stare the spectacle in deeper parts of the station.

A thought enters Jorj in a subsiding surge. He turns to face Varhas. His body becomes alert, ready for action and by sight alone the Contestant measures the man ahead.

‘You know I am in deep debt right?’ Continues Jorj.

‘I do. I also know it would take extreme odds to get out of.’

‘Then why do you want to sponsor me? Why do you want me to be your Contestant? Isn’t it cheaper to go into the proving grounds of Khanza-Rum, or some mining planet, grab a newcomer there? Get their brains all golden-layered, get them a BRM license and be done with it?

‘It is not credit I am worried about. Time forces my choice. Time and sacred machinations of...’

‘No. I am not doing this. Stop.’ Jorj speaks halfway as a warning.

‘... of Pantokrators and...’

‘Just. Shut the fuck up.’

The man ahead is not really slowing down in his sermon. Before he is able to continue a deep narrative of things beyond, Jorj arches forwards just enough to put his right hand in range and then he gently pushes against the skull of the narrating Claimant with his thumb.

The schizophrenic speech stops before it accelerates to total, mind-bending influence full of symbols and meaning.

Perhaps the Contestant is trying to avoid the vivid dreams or headaches that come after one happens to hear such speeches. More than that he realizes by a light hint on his memories, the words themselves invite trouble, change and the hard press of circumstances over one’s life. To him, this is neither the place or the time for such beginnings. And whether he feels logical or superstitious caution, Jorj doubles down on his angry decision.

Varhas stops. He is well aware that commoners such as Jorj, rarely enjoy this craft. Much so at idle times like this. Even so, he thinks in earnest pride, how much of a shame it is that the times of old have passed. Before he opens his mouth to speak in what he perceives as, flat and boring words. He too turns to the past. He instead, does not rely on hints, but an overarching and fast scouring of history. In places and times where Claimants controlled language. At the previous era where constructs of flesh became animated by such complex sermons and it only took a clever string of words to control men.

Frustrated also, the Claimant steadies his face and cloaks in shadow this prideful reminisce. In this minute moment, the Contestant grabs the initiative of speech again and he belches the words out with a stern shake of his index finger.

‘I am not in the mood for nightmares next time I go to bed. I should cave your skull in for speaking Claimant babble on me.’

‘Apologies. I too am a victim of this...’

With wide eyes and a bloodshot, frozen expression, the brutish man stands idle just enough for Varhas to understand that he is going back the very same direction he was swayed off only a second ago.

Varhas hushes mid sentence. When he opens his mouth again, the words come out one by one, carefully strained.

‘You are just good. Just that. You are a good Contestant.’

‘Good how?’

‘I cannot think of many that would have hit that last Lanza shot. It was extraordinary. Fate would not...”

The Claimant halts again, closing his eyes and opening an awkward hand as if balancing while swaying himself out of mystical images and things of higher functions.

‘Alright. But what is the goal here? You stand to lose money in the long term and the debt is not going anywhere with these license rates. I am playing in the low leagues anyway.’

‘Do not worry about that. I got a secret hint that the Contest is about to change.’

‘Go on.’

‘Have you made up your mind?’

‘Speak and I will decide later.’ The Contestant finishes talking and falls back on the red leather couch. The broken crimson leather creaks and tightens.

‘The new season’s Announcement of Colours will be delayed. The Champion’s crew will been prosecuted for terrorism or some other act against general, galactic order. Qualifiers will begin soon after. The rankings will reset. I speak of events very close and nearing.’

‘When?’

‘I can only fathom symbols. So I cannot speak of when.’

‘When?’

‘I do not know. Truly.’

‘So the Greens are to be outlawed? You are telling me that this is decided already?’

‘Indeed. The Greens have amassed too much public support. Some believe that this might lead into another Rabble March. So some think.’

‘So some think. All conspiracy nutjobs. Claimants like you? Buttbuddies and colleagues?’

‘I mean, obviously, let’s be honest here. But there are, how do I put it, pincer attacks of these cultural divinations. These conspiracies as you call them. Random thoughts by completely different people, all point to the same happening in the future.’

‘And what do they say?’

‘From one side, some people obsessed with the patterns of order, they believe that the Greens will be removed because they have gained a lot of popularity over the last twenty-four seasons. From the other side, more entertainment-flow oriented people say, that it is only a matter of boredom that invites such change. I mean, you know this. Most spectators that boot up IC telestim, they tend to watch lower-league matches like yours. Gone is the popularity of Color Leagues. The Greens have dominated it for so long that there is no point to watch sometimes.’

‘Yeah, but the money is in those leagues not here.’

‘And that is why you should come with me.’

Jorj looks at the man and the brief stop reveals that he understood the implication.

‘Eh... I am not the one for many eyes looking at me.’

‘What do you mean? You are a Contestant. You’ve spent a lifetime in-front of lenses.’ Says Varhas with surprise in his voice.

‘I don’t know what I mean. I am but a stupid Commoner in-front of a Claimant. How do you people say it? Woes me.’

‘I think you got to try me anyways. If we keep winning, who knows, Orichalcum might make you a powerarmor. Do you want me to promise you a Kingmaker match? What do you want to convince you?’

Jorj smiles at the thought. The sheer spectacle that he himself has not lived through, motivates this reaction. With new light on the man’s features, Varhas realizes that he has thrown the hook that lands. His voice holds notes of confidence.

‘Give me that and I will follow you anywhere.’

To Jorj, the man ahead remains solid, in the demeanor of business. However, the excitement that he feels is also superimposed on the Claimant. And Jorj gets an uncertain hint that the man ahead wants this too.

Jorj leans his head back and then he lets his elbows push back on the sofa. The smile turns into a yawn and then he speaks.

‘So we have a new season approaching then? Another round of Qualifiers. Business as usual.’ He yawns again. ‘Answer me this though, will the private sectors allow for this dissolution of the Contest?’

‘They have a say, but ultimately they have to follow the flow of events. We do not live in times where corporations own everything. Even if it doesn’t feel like so.’

‘So we won’t see another Miner’s Embargo?’

‘I doubt it. Long are the days of airdropping one million tonnes of tungsten from the stratosphere of Dur-Baqa in protest. Did you know, that there are still preserved holes on the glass skyscrapers of that city? An aesthetic of through and through penetration?’

‘I do. Been there. Fought in their glass arena. Weird design, to keep the holes as a memento.’

‘The architect of that city is a Claimant. Its...’

‘Yeah, weird. All of you. All the things you touch, all the things you make.’

‘You think I am weird?’ Varhas asks in revealed curiosity.

‘Who cares what I think. At the end of the day I am a commoner and you live in a world I do not understand. I am meat, you are...’

Jorj scratches his stubble. He fumbles to find the correct word. Varhas remains completely devoted to the effort, listening and waiting for, what he believes, a revelation.

‘...I don’t know.’ The Contestant shrugs.

Varhas loses interest but he still puts enough effort to appear interested. ‘So what is it then Jorj?’

The diner’s waitress walks besides their table and stops, drawing their attention. Her tattooed arms hang with nothing to hold to. In the inner part of her elbow two needle marks break from between pale skin and dying layers. The fresh marks are laid there and the two men witness them. Stimulated, mindlessly dead, she asks them if they would like anything else with the nothing that they ordered.

Jorj shakes his head and he waits for the woman to go away. In earnest rhythm, so that two replies don’t mix together, he turns slowly to Varhas and speaks in one surrendered breath.

‘Sure. Let’s do it.’

In a reminisce of ancient times, the Claimant puts a hand forwards and the commoner looks at it for a moment.

‘I will only shake at it if you spoil me.’

‘That’s easy.’

‘Right after we hit a few more restaurants yes? I haven’t even had my complimentary cigarette yet.

Chapter 4

Two Versus Two

Dur-Baqa is a planet closely resembling Earth. The glass spires and skyscrapers that curl without touching, they expand over the flat swampland in a jagged effort to copy that now abandoned silver globe of ancient times.

Over massive underground complexes, slabs of bedrock and tunnels, the glistening asphalt streets make up the surface of a metropolis. The city appears as if submerged in fog and neon white reflections, street lights of yellow, resurfacing underground clouds, they all move and weave to its rhythm. Their drowning momentum breaks on the odd, solitary, cloak-and-blackened shapes of its inhabitants. If anything, there is more life underneath the asphalt, in equally wet corridors of cement and enclosed spaces of stale air. Unlike other planets however, there are no overarching bridges here, or balconies, or hanging gardens, platforms and roads to connect the vertical architecture. Each spire stands isolated on its own. Their foundations lie deep underground in colossal steel rods driven inside of the bedrock and the rest of these grand structures reach upwards to the sky, parting through various compositions of clouds.

All else is equally damp. The quiet city ends where mud and stagnant waters begin, where mosquitoes and submerged trees survive off sweet and salty pools.

And as anything, as all in this galaxy hold spectacle to their concept, so the city is made to stand out. Designed in length by a Claimant architect who though that bored tungsten through glass skyscrapers, is art and meaning, the flow of all form, function and light is as square and ordered lines, parallel or touching in right angles.

This concept is universal on the cities of Dur-Baqa. Everywhere except for the arena-complex of this metropolis. Elevated from the asphalt streets and still in the middlemost part of the city, the skyscrapers around the complex choke its glass cupola by looming ever closer, straight and yet appearing as leaning to no contact. The spectacle therein can be overlooked by those wealthy enough to own such cloud-parting, vertical space in Dur-Baqa.

The arena-complex houses manifold modular rooms that can swap to the needs of the performers and their art. From dancing troupes to circuses of transhumanist freaks, from purists of old Olympiads to theaters of light and lightbending, the sacred ability of mankind rolls, spectacle to spectacle, whole of body, mind and script.

This fleshly, scripted and performative weight of many cultures collects and coalesces. The one and only arena of this planet housing one program after the other in an unceasing flow of moments. The spectacle in Dur-Baqa has not stopped in centuries. It has not stopped when disgruntled unions dropped tungsten cargo in protest, it has not stopped when the Pretenders of this planet fought for their Ascension to the throne of Pantokrator.

Within the arena, underdweller and skyscraping noble may rub shoulders with each other. Whether one carefully navigates the vast complex, or they are swayed by the gentle curvature of its corridors and things to see, the place is designed to assault the senses of all.

And even so, the one thing that grasps most of the attention, are the holes of this place. Where tungsten cubes had broken through and out, all of the walls and flooring and ceiling is as such. Cracked, jagged-holed. A cut and glued mosaic of premium pieces of the city.

Inside this holed place, the wet drip and bend of foggy light warms the forehead of Jorj. The man is noticeably fatter.

When his teammate arrives as a living contrast to him, neither group is surprised. The other Contestant is bare of bone, skeletal, willingly starved as he himself, his sponsor and his female Claimant will it.

Four people turn to a screen above as they introduce themselves to each other. Jorj remembers the thin Contestant as a man named Umza from some past moment in his vast span of life. The two Claimants glance at each other’s attire and the details of their wear remains undefined, courtesy of gentle and fair etiquette for the different sex.

As expected, the next program in the arena is a team deathmatch game.

Varhas eyes the woman again and with a gesture, he leads her through the twisting corridors. As the two Claimants leave, Jorj follows the woman with his eyes. She is a seductive form. Firm and all of her features gravitate towards elegant fairness.

When he turns to speak to Umza, the other Contestant is absent of mind, lost in the broken holes above.

‘How’s the Claimant snatch Umza?’

Umza doesn’t break eye contact with the ceiling. His mouth hangs a moment before he lapses into language. ‘She is out the other way. Complete psycho.’ He walks as he speaks.

Jorj eyes out Umza and the floating way his shirt moves along with his walking bounce. Bones and every other thing, it appears as a wholly different man than he remembers.

‘She is working me to death. Day trainings with barely anything to eat and at night... I am not even sure.’

‘Wish I had a female Claimant.’

‘You don’t. Believe me. She finds ways to drain off parts that should be, you know, infinite. Some of the minutes I am not in her presence, I find my soul’s pieces missing.’

‘Beautiful words. Didn’t know you spoke Claimant lingo. Did she put it there?’

‘Put what?’

‘The words.’

‘Maybe. Can’t say.’ As if broken from the animated trance, Umza stares at Jorj and focuses before he speaks. ‘Who put that great Lanza shot in you Jorj? That was a fantastic play, fantastic.’

‘It was alright.’

‘Were you zoned in?’

‘No. Actually, maybe I was zoned in. Not sure, I was just completely out of it.’

‘Nice. You even had a pierced eardrum, fucked balance and all. Good shot, good shot.’

Jorj cracks half a smile back at that crooked pair of white teeth that he remembers. He likes the habit that Umza still has. No matter what sponsor put whatever Claimant on him, he was still the man that repeated himself twice when seeing something that he fancies.

***

Over and into secret places within the crystal arena, through the holes, behind the broad shouldered guards and bouncers of more refined services for the spectators, the two Claimants symbolically dine on debased courses.

Human flesh is served as a spectacle that is not meant to be eaten. Courses that they discuss among themselves, looking alike to ancient ritualized artworks of bounty. As the ancient Shoguns and their host did in the past, not-feasting on the elaborate roasted and re-feathered birds of five colors, so does the pair of two now. Awaiting for social queues to not-eat in very specific manners, they remain admiring the excruciating artistic talent, the mindfulness beyond basic sight, smell and even hearing of a dish’s ambient bubbling heat and of its soft rising steam.

It all is as such on exclusive restaurants for the highest classes of this city. And human flesh, cut in thin, leathery strips, it is to both, a sorrowful display on speck-less ceramic plates. The blood spot that is actually beet-juice, condenses and clots identically to real blood. All materials have a characteristic unnatural, patterns of holes within the liquids, a molecular gastronomy should bind one dish to the other.

The man and the woman exchange words, almost inaudible.

One course gives way to another and they hold some binding meaning for the two who are to work in unison and yet so far apart from usual thought-streams. Shared experiences help do that and the extremity of this particular moment is but a common ground for the two to become as one. Or at least for the duration of the upcoming match. Bound by shared experience, beyond what the body craves and lost in the scents and would-be tastes that seduce them into ugly taboos, cerebral rules guide one Claimant to another.

From afar, one might look into the dark, small table between the two as a solitary, romantic dinner at the center of some art-gallery fused with a restaurant. One may imagine, the usual feelings that may rise in such moments between man and woman and forget that these two are not Commoners.

Such imaginations matter little, as their common thought-streams fasten tightly and the dinner soon reaches its end. To the two, it matters not where those bonds are manufactured and under what circumstances. These are only worries of the texture of each Claimant and the shape, heat and colours of their soul.

As such, the non-dinner finishes and they both leave to their respective places as the next program is about to begin.

Chapter 5

Elements

‘I smell oily musk. Did you dine on human? I am ready to barf, what the fuck is wrong with you?’

‘No. No, it was just an art piece dedicated to the people who died on that tungsten hail.’

‘Varhas, I swear, if that lingering I smell is burnt human, I am going to throw the match.’

‘It is not. Do not worry. Besides it is ethically harvested.’

Silence breaks on this exchange and then comes again with renewed hush. The scents become remnants, the Claimant’s memories are superimposed on Jorj’s implants.

His anger seeps backwards to become unwelcome light to where Varhas is submerged in fantasy. The Claimant reads these minute hints inside the man’s sacred place. Varhas understands that he is about to move his fingers to rip out the Jacobson paper-thin alloy-organ that is embedded inside the roof behind his nostrils.

Varhas forces himself to stillness. Thoughtless waiting creeps into him and the Inverse Dream becomes null and imperceptive peace. To that mismatch of emotions, where one man is hint and centimeter away from anger, the other silences his fantasy and everything stops.

Jorj’s hand remains close to his nose and then it falls down, waiting for something to open the gate ahead and for the match to begin.

***

Inside the arena, a background of rotating mirrors creates slideshows of moving Lanza blue, Flak Cannon explosive hues of fire and emerald radiation of Pike weaponry. Into the distance the borders of the arena are as such, self-folding geometry against rock walls and gray outlines of shadows.

The ground is sand, fine-grained glass that absorbs blood and clots into gemstones. White granite and specks of imperfections in the stone make up the features and texture of the arena’s blocks and platforms. The shadows here are peculiar. Dark lines reach ahead, shadows curve behind corners and over the dunes of glass.

A death match of teams, the score is an even two to two and the first team to gather six kills is the winner. With one death and respawn having happened to each of the four Contestants here, all of them have respawned to the peak of their physical abilities.

Jorj is lean again. His body is respawned back into his prime. And so is Umza too. The man appears accurate to Jorj’s memory, of muscular girth and weight woven over his bones.

In such accurate weave, so tightens a Claimant’s voice. Every one of them is a different fabric of voice in the ear of their Contestant. To where Varhas whispers in calculated gusts and darkness, others might belch their sermon in wild tongues of flames or torrents and their whirling pressures. Regardless, what the Contestants hear is but a whisper behind all sounds, behind the clatter or the sizzling choir of their weapons. A texture, a volume that is custom made and fashioned to bind soul and technology together.

And this language speaks to Jorj, describing their opponents, giving context to the ambience of their actions.

They are Arivet and Loque. As soon as one of them respawns, he finds a green Starzy Pike and steps around and over cover with a high leap, gaining elevation over both Umza and Jorj who are out in the open. At the same time, the other opponent runs on the ground level to gain sight and control around the corners of white granite.

Both of them hold Starzy Pikes. These emerald weapons are relatively light and capable producing irradiating, flaying rays of lights. An edged muzzle and two protruding handles allow for sustained accuracy as their target moves. Jorj and Umza are armed instead in blue Shock Lanzas and the places between all four, are coloured in respective emerald and cobalt hues. One above and three below, it appears as if the white pureness of the arena blends asymmetrically, favoring the blue team.

From where Arivet stands, the two blue figures underneath him make a dash for cover. As Loque peeks, their weapons fire green lines of cackling energy, creating a thin crossfire that touches and flickers in and out of shape as it is blocked by Umza’s running mass. Wherever this emerald beam touches, the skin, the muscle underneath burns and loses layers, leaving ripples of blood behind the Contestant.

The coordinated attack draws Umza to stop his advance and to tolerate the strain for the few seconds of life he has left. When he tries to aim for a Lanza shot, his eyes are burnt to blindness and his fingertip twitches by tormented instinct. As a result, the Lanza shot powers through the air, blue and intense, a thick torrent of fast energy that misses, passing a meter to the left of Loque.

The damage to the opponent is minimal, but the pressure vacuums bits and pieces off his body.

While the two green streams from the two Pikes reduce Umza to nothing, Jorj has jumped on the high ground where Arivet is and by stealthy, lunging approach he shoots him from point blank.

The man turns to an expanding void of crowning gore. Initially, the granite floor becomes a semicircle of flesh and blood as the Lanza’s shot forces an expansion around its blue light. Half a second later when the Lanza’s force turns to a vacuum, blood detaches from the stone, it rises, and becomes a light drizzle of red. The only thing that remains from Arivet is a golden glimpse, his brain, appearing only as a hint and blinking out into the resurrection pod.

Now on the high ground, Jorj sprints to the side of the block. The Pike’s radiance already expects him and the upwards-aimed beam flays him on the side of his face. At that initial pain, before the pike can cause serious damage, Jorj focuses through hints to point the Lanza against Loque. Fired from the hip, the recoil presses against him. At his closed eyes there is a hue of green, then blue, both flashing through the patterns on veins and nerves on his stretched eyelids.

Below, the man is reduced to a stain that ebbs and flows to the Lanza’s push and pull. The golden glimmer of his soul blinks out to resurrect itself in a new body.

The following seconds pass with the only action being of Jorj sticking his open palm to his flayed forehead. He looks at the blood on his fingers and tries to blink through the liquid that clots inside of his eye.

The score is three to four.

Umza is the first one out. To where he was last killed, his past body stands near a broken Lanza and the Contestant sprints away as hinted by his Claimant. Without words, the suggestion sways him away from the center of the arena and into one of the pickup teleporters where he can arm himself with a new weapon.

In the distance, Arivet and Loque move to do the same, opting to hide from the man in the vantage point.

Jorj remains in this high point, listening carefully to the three men as they become armed again. When a round passes half a meter to his right, he ducks and jumps down.

At ground level, Umza stands close-by. He is holding a bulky Flak Cannon in his hands.

In this lapse of action, Claimants and Contestants draw breath. The decisions that are to happen seconds later are plays of the mind, conversations in an immaterial world, an inverse momentum of fantasy that defines the outcome of events. In that momentum, Varhas machinates action.

However, Jorj does not listen. His index-finger rests in the shock Lanza’s trigger, while his thumb continuously flicks the weapon’s safety into its alternative firing mode. The engraved icon on the weapon’s metal is of a sphere and the Contestant plays with the switch a few more times to get its bearing, to carve the habit for his approaching performance.

Varhas notices this. He remembers how, the Lanza can fire, either a long fast line of blue, or a slow, straight-moving sphere of energy. This sphere explodes when it comes in contact against something solid and the area of destruction is broader than the first firing mode.

An idea passes through all four. It becomes revealed to the entire team that with a combination of the two modes, they are going to end this match in a great surprise.

Action begins anew as Umza rises out of cover first to draw their enemies out. Jorj follows.

Umza is struck by a bullet as he sprints ahead. The bullet bores through his upper left bicep, making a hole out of his shoulder. Tattered flesh now hangs there, limp and mutilated. Jorj fires a blue sphere that moves slightly faster than his sprint. Above Jorj, Umza’s flak cannon arches great explosive balls towards Loque and Arivet. The two opponents leave cover and try to move away from the trajectory of the blue spheres.

At that reaction, Jorj’s response is to fire a new sphere. The new projectile is fired ahead to cut one of the opponents off. Arivet fires his sniper rifle from the hip. The large bullet grazes Jorj. The Contestant runs behind the spheres, covered in their blue glow that obscures his form. Flak shots are fired ahead and the freedom of movement of the two opponents shrinks rapidly.

When a flak shot arches over the two, they hesitate to escape. Their momentum stops and one of the blue spheres is already there in-between their two bodies.

Jorj flicks the firing more of the Lanza and presses hard on the trigger.

A void, black with blue imperfections of an implosion fills the whiteness. The geometric shadows at the corners break. Sand flows outwards and then inwards, scraping against the white granite. Flayed to its force, the two opponents lose cohesion of their bodies and become unmade to strips pulled towards this void. Jorj also becomes torn from this implosion. The sand coalesces, changes to liquid and then becomes finely-grained gusts. It is as if a veil has been lifted over the ground, only for a moment, covering the violence, collecting underneath the void and then clattering outwards, a pounding energy bubble of force that holds such sandy, white texture amidst shadows of cobalt.

The score is three to six.

A hollow mound is the only thing that remains at the center where the Lanza shot met the sphere. A small cavity of white sand that ripples with air.

Beams of light from the sunlit dome, pass through uneven and jagged holes and as they shed themselves into the beautiful unevenness ahead, silence rules the moment and wrests from it whatever pain resides behind the eyes that witness it. The spectacle of pain is as such Jorj and Umza remain watching as they bleed away.

Chapter 6

Discovery Of Inner Peace

Inside the spires of Dur-Baqa, there is much vertically packed in tight spaces. Stairways and connected multi-floor rooms make a plan that demands from denizens and visitors alike to adapt to this tall, complicated design.

For the past thirty minutes, Varhas is going from elevator to elevator, from floor to floor, constantly unsuccessful on reaching his destination. Frustrated, he experiences unnatural, aesthetic choppiness as each floor holds a vastly different design on the other side of the elevator doors. When he exits on some new floor, to find that it is without a door, he thinks of how much of a maze this place is and how unfortunate he is to be stuck in this loop.

There were no instructions on how to find Jorj. Nobody had given him directions or coordinates. The Claimant-doctor that Varhas had communicated with cared little if he came to visit his Contestant.

On another iteration of the loop now, the elevator doors open to a floor of red and velvet. A high-class brothel of soft curiosities appears in-front of the Claimant.

Varhas takes a step out and then he turns around, Makkaras cloak of black flowing along as he re-enters the elevator. The booth remains silent for a moment as he makes another try on the elevator’s buttons.

The elevator whirs. There is certainty inside of the many modules that bring it to great acceleration. Certain, assured quality and services of security, overclocked solutions of engineering and even fateweaving cultural scrying, all these attributes make these places of high class, ordered and safe. This place here is rife with technology. Equally of kenophobic assortment, the fashion of the man is an imitation of the world around him. However, this assortment in the spire is concealed amidst the wallpapers, below the carpets and behind the chrome buttons of the elevator and also, this assortment wholly flows as waves of light and energy throughout. He is aware of heavy presence all around him. Other Claimants, perhaps even this planet’s Pantokrator keep a close watch in these rooms. Nobles or servants, the people inside of the wires, those that march in the vastnesses of machine logic, they are all nearby. But as hint has it, he is eager to believe that these people are preoccupied in the manifold pathways of every day life. Varhas breathes the quiet and peace of this place and the place responds back by complete absence of elevator music, or even a ping when it decelerates to reach its destination.

Once the elevator completes its movement, a hospital ward for the elites of this world appears in-front of him. White tiles are everywhere and every wall, floor and ceiling is a smooth and sterile surface of technological marvel. The Claimant knows that these places have a coating of nanomorphic blades, so that every microbe, cell, loose strand of hair and flake of skin begins to break down when it touches them. Before he reaches the lobby, he passes by a sign that warns all visitors to not enter if they are wearing leather-soled boots, or if they are barefoot and to not touch the white tiles without gloves.

The Claimant smells nothing here but sterile absence. A very light chemical scent that is otherwise pleasant. Many white staircases lead upwards and there is always another door that is shifting to close, nurse or doctor hand to hand with a patient leading them deeper into the ward. The borders of this ward are of glass, raindrop-speckled windows that stretch three or four floors in height. Outside, the setting is of fading. Sunlight and fog give way to a deeper blackness that radiates from the streets.

Before Varhas can speak to the nurse that performs lobby duties, a doctor enters the room and waves with two left arms for him to come near.

The short, but otherwise skin-concealed man is only a reminder of a human. Ever-thinking, of two extra grafted arms, two smaller limbs begin from his ribs, folding into his surgical pockets. His two other arms appear otherwise normal, spindly fingertips at the end of thin wrists. All of his limbs are pale yellow in the plastic wrapping of surgical gloves. He hides behind an apron and a mask of various spectacles and lenses. His ears are grafted with jacks and open sockets that can connect with wires to various modules around a surgical bed.

Memphis, this four-armed doctor takes Varhas by the shoulder. He gestures to the nurses and security staff to allow them through the ward. The pair walks for a while and then they enter another elevator, this one, wide enough to fit a bedridden person, or twenty standees.

‘I hope you understand dear and fellow Claimant.’

‘What?’

‘These elevators are only for medical personnel or emergencies. Did you get lost Varhas?’

‘Sort of. Maybe just a little bit.’

‘Yes. When I first started working in Dur-Baqa I had the same problems. Verticality isn’t really my forte. I thought Astral Claimants such as you were apt at calculating distances, architecture. That sort of logic.’

Varhas frowns at the public display of secrets. Equally quickly as this frown changes, he thinks privately of how it is best for others not to know the full picture, but instead only parts of it. Better for strangers to have the half-picture and feel confident, than to have them snoop around for hints and constantly pester with their presence and questions.

As Varhas completes this stream of thought, he opens his mouth to speak in a casual mannerism, as if unaffected by the doctor’s effort to expose his inner magic.

‘Would you consider a change of career Memphis?’

The doctor turns towards Varhas and then again focuses ahead. ‘Such as?’

‘The Contest. Have you thought of leaving medicine behind to, you know, go around dueling other Claimants and the sort?’

‘Oh... Never, never. I love my work that is. I am not particularly fond of the Contest anyways. I don’t even have a Tele-Stim device at my apartment.’

‘Really? Never seen a match?’

‘Not my cup of tea to be honest. I prefer the company of my six wives. They demand enough of my attention and energy when I am around. Don’t get me wrong, the work does too. I am sorry, I think we got off on the wrong foot here.’

The elevator arrives at one of the upper floors of the vertical hospital. The doors open to the life-expunging white of tiles on a densely packed corridor. Memphis leads the man through and into a small room. All throughout, Memphis’ attention is shared between greetings and pleasantries with the various people there.

The door closes behind Memphis. The tiny room is concealed in thinning darkness. On one wall there is a one-way mirror that floods the space with dull light. Memphis stops for a moment so that his eyes can adapt. Varhas does not need to wait however. He steps quickly into the darkness and takes a seat facing towards a mirror on the wall ahead.

Memphis whispers as he fumbles around for a seat. ‘As I was saying on the elevator, I owe you. You admitted a spectacular body to our research Varhas.’ The two sit shoulder to shoulder. ‘The man you call Jorj is a spectacle really. I have never had the opportunity to explore such a broad body, let alone snoop around a golden-layered brain.’

‘You are welcome?’

‘Yes, yes, of course. Please, when your visit is over, allow me to escort you out. It is the least I can do. Let’s go through the documents of what we found. But before that, why did you admit Jorj here?’

‘Had a hunch. When Claimant connects to a Contestant you feel things, you see oddities.’

‘Ah, of course. The ever curious bunch that we are.’

Varhas thinks that it truly is the least this man can do. After all, he had to pull a few strings with Orichalcum Corporation to pay the bill and he also had to reach out directly to Memphis for this opportunity, managing a discount for the entire operation on Jorj and his recovery, as well as exploring the Contestant. One such discount, leveraged by the endless curiosity of the Claimant besides him.

During this thought he only half focuses on the documents Memphis passes to him. Instead, he looks through the mirror to see Jorj laying on a bed, alone in the complete peace of that room. His stance of sleep appears uncomfortable. The man ahead lays, head stooped to shoulder, hand outstretched and the other folded close to his chest. A nurse enters to wake the man up.

The image strikes Varhas and he swallows a shard of pride that has since long gotten itself stuck at the back of his throat.

As that image fades, he returns to a doctor that speaks in a torrent of excitement. Still of low voice, the covered body of Memphis moves. At every ebb and flow, there is a surprise of discovery in his voice. One man passes documents to the other plastering his words into test results, cranial scans and imaging reports.

Varhas listens to these words eagerly and as soon as they hit his eardrum, they warp themselves into bitter realizations. The pride he has just swallowed only turned a hue more bitter.

***

As Memphis promised, Varhas was taken to the ground level. With a few minutes to spare, he decides to stay near as Jorj is soon to be released from the hospital.

He looks at the empty street both ways before crossing. A silly habit on such places that have no vehicles, but one that is common all across the galaxy.

Once on the other side of the street, a small, cozy coffee shop of wood and firelight, checkerboard floors, leather couches and emerald lamps, lures his eye. Through the drizzled window panels, the Claimant sees a long distance calling machine, next to the shop’s counter and bar.

He decides to enter and the doors open to a creak. Then comes wet sloshing sound of boots and thrashing over a muddied fiber mat. Inside there are faces that regard him in a sly manner, sounds of conversations that change in their volume. Things hiding behind full cups of coffee and untouched cups of tea.

Under normal circumstances, a Claimant would pick hints such as these of intrigue and plan accordingly. However, Varhas completely disregards the eyes that watch him with charged purpose.

One such pair, is a woman he does not know. A commoner that sits at the bar, regarding him only with the corner of her eye as her vision conceals itself behind the tufts of her black hair.

As Varhas strides through the coffee shop, this woman and another man in the distance get up and leave. As soon as Varhas reaches the calling machine, someone flicks their overcoat and wears it, someone else taps their glass and another begins some long-winded reply to a conversation.

The Claimant reaches the machine and then he parts his attention to a half-there entry of the Inverse Dream. Mind and machine bend together. In this microsecond of divided attention, the machine boots up and makes an outbound call.

Imperceptive, attuned only to his eardrum’s frequency and darkly hushed, the machine translates language from a far away place directly into him.

The voice on the other side is gruff and grueling as it refines itself from mineral to metal. ‘Hello? Who is this?’

Varhas makes no sound as he speaks. But the calling machine transmutes inaudible word to language anyways. ‘Anax? Its me Varhas.’

‘Oh! Varhas. How are you doing dog?’

‘Been better. I am currently on Dur-Baqa.’

The man on the other end thinks for a moment. Varhas is certain before he can respond, that he will put two and two together.

‘I watched a Contest match two days ago. You were on the blue team, weren’t you? You were the ones that fought two days ago on the crystal arena? It was you wasn’t it?’

‘For me, it was about five days ago. But yes, you are otherwise accurate as ever.’ Varhas lets out a singular laugh. ‘Its crazy how you Narrativist Claimants can distill such accuracy from random information.’

‘Random?’ Says the man surprised. He almost sounds as if he has taken offense and with a coarse voice he continues. ‘You are just fucking with me. You and every Claimant on planet or orbit knows that there is nothing random happening in the universe.’

‘Yeah... I know. I know. Let’s not argue with semantics and our magic and whatever.’ Varhas pauses. Memory and effort mingle and tangle in order to form one question and then another. ‘Where do I find you? Can you help me with something?’

The man sighs. Varhas’ eardrum pummels with heavy static. It is as if Anax is right there besides him, filtered by the speaker, but otherwise very near. ‘I can go anywhere. Give me a place and I’ll be there.’

‘Am I interrupting anything?’

‘Not really. Anywhere I am, as you know already, is but a momentary support to greater projects. I don’t have something that important going on to be chained by it. It is as you said, last time we met remember? I am but a patch, a minute fix of bigger and more important things than me.’

***

Varhas finishes the call. He looks outside to see Jorj standing in the streets and quickly becoming drenched by a drizzle that has just started. The Contestant is dressed in casual clothing and he is at least, with some sort of of cover, as a leather jacket wraps around his broad form.

Before the Claimant can exit the coffee shop, it appears that Jorj has already left. In the haze and humidity, raindrops give way to light fog. The spires above break through the gray atmosphere and there is a hint of sun-setting orange that reflects on their jagged peaks.

In the asphalt distance, the Claimant sees a few forms, depressing and slow, trudging through the streets. A tall one, appears to chase after another. There is perhaps, meeting of man and woman, the curves of a shape luring and going, as mere hint over another.

Varhas realizes that it might be Jorj. But he lets him go his own way. The Claimant smiles sadly in private and opts for a meeting some other time instead.

It is so after all, that they will meet soon, to go to the next planet, to fight the next match of the Contest. And even so, Varhas was well aware that Breaking the bad news was always a slow process and he knew not to rush it.

Chapter 7

The Gray

To say that the mind is sacred, that is correct. To say that it is sacred, because whatever happens inside of it must remain hidden, that is a mistake.

So is believed in these mystical times.

Some form or other way, most Claimancy schools, or independent recluse master-Claimants had a way to teach this lesson. Some, simply preach that the streams wherein the mind swims, they have a specific way of being understood and that if they can be put to words then it is simply a right of existence that makes them important enough to be revealed. If one can write the disjointed happening of thought, then that gives it right to be studied and illuminated. Others say that humans, commoners or other, are creatures of habit. That timed actions and stimuli rule us. If one rules the culture, one sows context and reaps predefined thoughts, narratives, theaters of war.

These concepts are general, long-accepted philosophies of how the mind works. They are to be respected, or even trotted upon, influenced and controlled, but the underlying machine, its gray matter, its inherent shape and uniqueness is to be strictly preserved.

In this uniqueness, many colours, many textures of thoughts occur in Claimants. So it has been for a good millennia and Varhas is well taught in such general, widely-adopted and respected ideals for life.

Instead of worrying of what words should come next, or how to control habits on Jorj with suggestions, he imagines the story that envelops the Contestant.

It has been only a day since they reached the planet of Tropicana. Along the way, Jorj brought a woman with him called Voliphoe.

As such they decided to stay close to each other but in different places. The Claimant wanted the Contestant to have his space. And now, Varhas sits alone in his wooden hut, focused towards Jorj, submerged in imagination and rational thought, seeing a moment in the present, unraveling right now.

Half a bottle of liquor. Some foot pushes and it rolls with a closed cap. The golden liquid sways, the gap between the wooden planks makes the movement uneven.

***

It had been a week since the news came out. Seven times a sunrise gave way to another sunrise on the oceanic planet of Tropicana.

Twenty five of the thirty two Pantokrators voted to dissolve the current Immaterial Contest rankings. A new season was announced. The Greens were dropped by the Inverse Dream Ecumenocorps and the entire ranking was reset just as Varhas believed.

News spread quickly. Changes become known fast on even the most technologically backwards places. If it is not a screen that speaks of these news, then it is a fisherman arriving one day and spreading rumors.

As such, Jorj and Varhas listened. They listened as people spoke of the four ex-champions that entered the Contest again. They listened as the fishermen that went from hut to hut, spoke of how defiant these Contestants were. How indifferent to the choices of Pantokrators and how they would prove the universe wrong for throwing them down from their glory.

On a small device where Varhas and Anax speak, the Narrativist said so on the flow of recent events. It took him over one hour’s worth of pondering to create a string of words, encrypted and delivered with utmost secrecy, that reached Varhas as such:

“With the disillusionment of past glories, champions return to the bottom and only the Gods that bless them follow their descent. They are fighting to prove the system wrong in a heroic shell that makes them doubly berserk and doubly righteous. That is their story Varhas. This is what foul decision resides in the sacred temples of their mind.”

***

The long legged woman relishes the sway.

Tropicana is a new sky that is always orange, green and teal, teal and green and golden again. Without a night, three suns make dizzying days, endlessly measured through closed blinds on a wooden hut. There is a forewarn of darkness, a general rumor from the locals, that night comes in randomness and leaves equally as quick.

Outside, a texture of glossy sea-shine on waves spreads as far as any eye can see. Inside is a straw double bed and a hollow place where the warm air can slip between the shadows.

The ferns are large. Hanging by reed rope, their pot is white and uneven. Their leaves cut over the horizontal lines of light. Creaking wood, the evening-to-dawn melody puts them both to sleep again and the woman puts her hopeless touch into the bearded Contestant. His blackness passes within her fingertips and neither person suits another but in their unique and unfortunate circumstances.

Jorj has witnessed the woman in all these various moments, without truly grasping any underlying roguery. She was, after all, just a random lover, without requests and demands. A fun nobody, following along from the moment he and the Claimant left Dur-Baqa.

***

As Varhas did not speak of how damp and depressing the swampy planet was, so he does not speak now of the tropical dizziness and wild waves of this planet. He does not want to tempt nature itself, the Pantokrator of this planet.

A Pantokrator now, is a something, perhaps once a someone and definitely not anything other than a Claimant, who has reached a peak. In this place called Tropicana, a far away island-hill of golden thrones and millions of tons of machinery and wires spans from mountaintop to seafloor. That is where a Pantokrator usually sits upon and the entire planet rests only a centimeter away from their eye. Everything on Tropicana sits on-top of this Pantokrator’s eardrum. Every vast sea is churned by his open hand and every slosh of seawater defines the wooden foundations of every hut and concrete shipyard.

It is hinted in the waters of this place, Varhas believes that the bygone champions have been wronged. The waves crash more often than they used to since the announcement was made. Where there was once a coastline, now the waters there are foaming. Constant breaking takes place where basalt meets strong tsunamis and the sandy beaches are only calm when the local Pantokrator gets his greedy sacrifices. This is how the sea behaves, but it tends to remain in a level-headed tantrum that does not topple entire cities or ripple through the sea huts.

By this natural observation and connection to recent events, Varhas believes this Pantokrator voted against the reset of The Immaterial Contest. He also believes that this Pantokrator feels as mistreated as the ex-champions of the Greens. Either him, or some expansion of his already vast ego.

The next match here is a Kingmaker where one person fights three at the same time. This is a rare type of match. Even more uncommon is the fact that the role of the King is played by a former champion. The one that has to fight the three, is not only supported by additional equipment and protection, but also by multiple weapons or Claimants working in unison inside of his equipment. In addition, as it seems to Varhas, the King is also divinely blessed by this Pantokrator. All that sourness, the bitterness of a God, it will be called forth by that man’s wrath for retribution and the turmoil of justified rebellion.

To any Claimant that would have to face this, these are impossible odds carefully resurfacing from deep politics, and personal whirlpooling grievances. Whatever way the match goes, it will prove many right and many others wrong. It will create a public spectacle and show who has a right to speak and who should keep it shut.

***

Other than straw platforms, sandy coves and log huts, there are a few concrete shipyards on this planet.

The water in these places is salty as all things, but rainbow swirls cover said bodies of water in a thin layer. So it is, even when the water is rowdy and foam has a tendency to break this chemical rainbow.

A stout old man with a gray, chinless beard, sits and smokes by such a concrete block that is softly beaten by the rabid sea. The block is high enough, but the sea is angrier still. Foam sprays and pores through hair and paper, but the tobacco is still burning, giving a red glow to a face that is tucked behind an overcoat’s pointy collar flaps. Leatherbound, leather behind leather, his eyes follow the liquid body that is thrashing against the fishing hook. Once out, the spotted trout flails around until it is squeezed by a swollen, stoneskinned hand. The man is surprised that the fish behave as if the sea is calm, that they still take the bait. Without friction, the man is able to hold the trout there, while with the other hand he removes the metal hook and then he puts the choking animal in a bucket.

Another old man draws near to the fisherman. He is short, only bones make up his slim body and he is held in the windy concrete deck more by his heavy steel boots and his grease-soaked winter coat, all heavy with filth giving him much needed extra mass and balance.

The tiny wooden chair underneath the bearded man, keeps his knees folded and high to his waist. He turns his head to see the man close in, turning from hazy figure to an entirely black texture over him.

When the thin man asks the fisherman if he eats what he catches, the other man looks at him idly and answers.

“Why? What is wrong with them?”

***

Jorj had to be convinced to leave his wooden sack. Once out into the open perpetual storm, where the clouds were slits of gray in a background of pale, he looked better than ever. Refreshed in the company of the woman from Dur-Baqa, Varhas thought him ready for the struggle ahead.

As for their sponsor, Orichalcum mega-industries has made an acquisition of a local fishing and underwater mining corporation. Vythos and their assets, old mines, beneath the ocean’s bedrock, were absorbed into the multi-planetary collection of assets.

Here, three Contestants and three Claimants met for the first time.

By its nature, the Immaterial Contest was almost impossible to be divined. Generally, nobody knew when or where the next matches would occur. It is mostly a collection of events and resources that collapsed into moments. Claimants, Contestants, corporations too, training time, strategy, it appears that all these variables come to a relative completion and it is only afterwards that chance itself begins to move. It is only after both sides feel confident that someone comes and invites the Contestants to a place and time. The matches begin irrespective of time and narrative. They just occur and many believe this is done in order for Claimants to be unable to divine what exactly is going to happen.

Varhas did pick Tropicana as their next destination, but he was not aware that a match was waiting for them here. To him, this place was just a stop to convince three potential Claimants to join him. Tropicana was also a short stop to pick up two old Contestants that were once great.

In this unclear belief that a match was closing in, Orichalcum upper management consulted many. They are aware that the local Pantokrator, a ruler of the seas, might stand against their sponsored Contestants. In the same irrational and mystical way that the world moves in, they made the quick buy-out of Vythos and their assets not only for profit, but also because they wanted their sponsored team to train underground and plan in some esoteric privacy deep between the abandoned mines. The corporation itself willed for the Claimants and Contestants to train in some places of this planet that are as far away as possible from the local Pantokrator’s attention.

Here, under the low, claustrophobic ceiling of old gneiss, the banded metamorphism had created patterns on the walls of many a solidified millennia. Brown and white time, the layers of rock had layers upon layers of material stacked on top of them. Frozen waves of static, the radio waves of some chthonic music before time, before the woes of man.

It is here that Varhas and Jorj meet two new Claimant ladies and their two Contestants.

Zanuvia and Mallat, two aged women in their late seventies are of a similar body to their two husbands Hab and Hippolus respectively. These two salt-eaten women, of white and black, worn by the breeze, straight of hair, are Claimants, companions and coordinators to their equally old Contestants. Old protruding bones and hunched backs, give an allure of an ocean-witch for Zanuvia, whereas on Mallat, the same wear of flesh gives her the spirit of a weathered deckhand on rusty diesel monstrosities. Both are equally folded by time, but appear ready to broaden themselves when any action requires their presence.

It had been so, that they had found ease, love perhaps, on these retired Contestants. A rare event for a Claimant to marry lower than themselves. And an even bigger rarity among the rarities of high life, to choose to live in relative hardship.

As for the skill set of these four, it became apparent just a few moments ago. The one person that had to respawn time and time again, was Jorj who appeared to be lacking in ability to the other two Contestants. Hab and Hippolus are as old as always but their aim has remained true. The hardship of married life had done nothing to ground these people. More than that, it appears that the shaky bonds of these two pairs, the often aggressive tone against their other half, or a complaint full of subtle bitterness, creates a deeper bond between Claimant and Contestant. In that contrast, therein is superior skill that Varhas understands and respects. On the other hand, Jorj witnessed the aim, maneuvering, speed within the training area as a testament to old age. He was born before the two men, but it seems that the time that they have spent in actual wisening of the gray matter and stiffening of the bones, it has done them well.

The three Claimants and the three Contestants sit in artificial light, huddled close to a glass table and conversing among themselves.

At every lapse of speech, when silence rushes in, there is a great void of underground nothingness. A droplet, in some other distant hallway, a wind that howls amidst the dense minerals. There is no debt here to some. To others there is no worry of their children. There are no fishes, or Sniper Rifles, or Shock Lanzas, Flak Cannons and Rocket Launchers. Just the underground silence, dampening to the very currents in-between their ears.

In this silence, Varhas, Zanuvia and Mallat, understand that there is common thoughstream, synchronization to their thoughts and they are certain that they are to do well on the upcoming match.

And once this certainty is felt, the match closes in quickly.

Chapter 8

Kingmaker

Tropicana is deep into its rare night. Outlines, the blur of downpour and darkness make up all shapes and texture. An apocalyptic sea thrashes, churned with a savage hand and at the center of this vastness, an ancient aircraft carrier floats and battles with the waves.

Xipe Totec stands naked. He is coloured red and he is wrapped in a second skin, a thin layered pelt of technological marvel. Something human lacking all its innards. Where there is the broad and tall, red-painted brute, with the many piercings of gold, obsidian and jade, there is also this flayed skin of brown latching and flailing around his form.

The ex-champion is drenched. The carrier’s lights gloss over his wet skin. Other than the sounds of the storm, there hangs a dark overhead hush. The ex-champion sits on the foreground of celestial light pollution, a sky full of bright lights that are not stars but orbiting satellites and stations poking through the clouds. Thunder reveals all, the broken clouds in the distance, blacker on the black background, arching, shattering and coalescing in their draw of vapor.

The lenses are following. Waters surge and slam against the dense hull.

This percussion of slamming water resounds all throughout the Nimitz class aircraft carrier. An exact replica, the once sailing ship on old Earth’s vast seas now stands amidst the raging seas of another planet, brought to as nothing but a symbol. Nuclear power runs through it and small modifications have made the entire ship functioning in this unmanned state. Red lights and pale white, speck across the bridge and the landing deck. The bridge is crowned in these little glimmers of attention. Inside, deeper orange hues are washed over by waterfalls of rain. There are open hangar doors and elevator doorways that once pulled fighter jets out from the innards of the ship. Rain makes these lights a texture glossy, on either solid or liquid a surface.

The match begins.

Jorj is glimpsed into the island of the carrier. This bulky spot on the ship is the control center, a collection of ancient radars, antennas and steel masts. At odd places, powerup modules, or empty weapon platforms remain as a reminder that some weapon may manifest there shortly. From up here, Jorj can overlook the deck, but nobody appears to be there. Perhaps a shadow has moved at the base of the island, but the rain on the glass windows makes it hard to see. The Contestant goes out into the rain and from there he goes into an open steel door that leads to a vertical ladder.

Sliding downwards, the sounds are muted by wide clattering. Pummeling and ironbound cracks resound followed by a careful hush. This rhythm enters Jorj as malevolent music. Long rhythm, conducting the place he is in, ruling the innards of the ship.

This rhythm never breaks. When an open red palm pummels the side of his head and his eardrum ruptures, he is already loose of fingertips without a weapon, wrestling against someone that he cannot see. Only outlines make a silhouette that has two odd shapes at his back. Two elongated shadows. One the familiar shape of a Shock Lanza and the other, a scoped rifle. On the red hand is a vibrating blade, a ceremonial dagger that cuts through chestplate and bone, leaving the other red hand to enter and pull away his still beating heart.

Moments pass as his gold layered brain is glimpsed out. His left fist stretches open and the same does his right hand. Jorj respawns outside in the rain. At the end of the runway, far away from the island, he begins to run across the three hundred meters of wet surface.

***

The hangar is open and the waters pour in as waterfalls. Many crates and one singular fighter plane are there. All untethered objects that showcase their past movements in light scratches on the hangar’s floor. Yellow and white beams flood the place with light, but still leave some corners dark and shapeless.

There are loose bullets rolling across the swaying flatness. Outside the circular window, the sea is tilted and the waves crash into the otherwise enclosed space.

Seawater, odd objects, the F/A-18 fighter jet, they move along to the slow sprinting of two old men, the two old Contestants. Hab and Hippolus have drawn their attention to the two cumbersome fuel tanks hanging underneath the plane’s wings.

Together the two push deeper into the hangar. Inside of a dark spot the ex-champion hides. Whispers fill the two Contestants. In homely warning they speak of foregone destruction just as a fifty caliber projectile whizzes past Hab’s head. The man loses his left ear to the air-pressure of the bullet.

As the blood trickles a path deeper to the hangar, the two weave behind the swaying objects.

At intervals without cover, Hippolus uses the alternative fire of his Lanza to shoot the slow moving balls of energy towards Xipe Totec.

***

Varhas is unable to communicate with the two Claimants. The storm rages behind the real and the circuitry, the wires and the space between the automation of the massive aircraft carrier, it is all hostile to their team. The networks are screaming back at every attempt to reveal the opponents armaments to the other two.

The moment that Jorj crosses half of the deck, the other two Contestants fall into a trap.

The deck caves in to only an uneven depression and then the blue void explodes into a radiance of azure, specked by flame and rain-drowned smog. Part of the deck becomes a massive hole now that leads directly into the hangar and Varhas understands exactly what has happened.

In this delayed communication, Xipe Totec baited a blue Lanza sphere to be fired. While the orb had barely left the barrel of Hippolus’ Lanza, Xipe Totec used his own Shock Lanza to shoot at it right away. The following implosion tore flesh, fuel and steel, tearing the deck open and killing Hab and Hippolus.

***

Jorj holds a quick glance over.

The flames underneath expand at the free flow of kerosene. Two streaks of blood become washed by a mixture of rain, saltwater and fuel. His two teammates have been obliterated. Two wide streaks, form a right angle at the center of a smoldering hole.

He does not hear the opponent sprint, but his shadow contrasts against the flames.

Xipe Totec runs across. His speed is great and there is but a moment to aim against him.

Jorj fires his Pike over the running form. The flaying beam connects to the second skin of the Contestant below, but no damage is done. As if simply absorbed, the flaying radiance appears to only pore through the ex-champion’s pelt.

As soon as the opponent disappears into a door, Jorj drops the Starzy Pike. Contestant and Claimant know that going down is death. Jorj takes a step back and glances at the dark outline of the island to his left. The powerups have not spawned yet and Varhas reminds him of a plan that is half manifesting as they go. The other half, is laid to the judgement of the other four teammates.

***

With a score of three to zero, there are only seven more deaths to go for defeat. The timer is also on the King’s side, with fifty more minutes to go.

Hab is lucky with his next spawn. Under the waterline, he spawns on the Third deck. Renewed in a youthful body, he understands a strategy that needs no communication.

They had to either bring Xipe Totec out into the open, or drown him.

Down here is but the brutal option of self sacrifice and so Hab is running now, in the tight steel corridors, clutching and turning steel wheels to open new pathways around. In that rush, the sound of foot against metal reflects in the tight space. Pipes and machines make up the innards of the ship and the twisting stairs bring Hab up a level, then down, then up again. The rails come and go and eventually Hab finds a weapon.

The Flak Cannon is just enough. The bulky instrument that hammers fragmentation shells is lifted by Hab and when he fires it the hot pellets ricochet off the steel hull. Any damage to the ship can cascade to greater problems and Hab is hoping that with the guidance of his Claimant, that he might cause enough damage to the ship’s engine, reactor or ammo belts.

So Hab fires the Flak Cannon again and again on the hull and machinery around him. The weapon pummels once per second and explosive shots and fragmentation bore through steel.

The ex-champion listens to this rhythmic noise. With nimble navigation, the crimson man falls, descends and turns around corridors. Where there is a closed door he shoots it open with his Lanza.

Soon, he arrives in a dimly lit and tight corridor. In this place below the sealine, the bored holes spray jets of seawater, pipes send pressurized steam into the dark, but there is a deep silence behind all. Xipe Totec creeps forwards and when part of him is exposed, Hab pokes through a corner and fires the flak cannon from the hip. The fragments web out and strike hard against the ex-champion. Patches of glowing heat dissipate on his body, but the damage is spread throughout the second skin.

With a quick response, Lanza blue parts this darkness and Hab’s body turns to an open wound plastered across metal veins and empty hallways.

***

Hippolus moves. His hand grabs a missile launcher at the third deck, two levels above the engine room. The rhythmic sound of a Flak Cannon underfoot makes him understand of what Hab is striking against. The man runs and with one hand he launches explosive rockets against the hull of the ship.

Concentrated pressure shatters the thick steel. Single missiles, or a pair, the chemical composition of these rockets is shattering and piercing. Shockwaves send air in twisting shapes, atmosphere compressed to razors and armor piercing uneven shapes that makes the ocean bore through the hull.

When another missile cracks the hull again, Hippolus shifts some of the settings on the rockets. With the guidance of Claimant technomancy, the next salvo is fired with different chemistry. Compressed metal turns to liquid and that too exits the other side of the hull.

So he runs on portside opening a great line of holes and cracks. When the damage is sufficient, he goes upwards a stair and waits for the ex-champion to appear.

Though vertical staircases, bored holes and open doors, the ex-champion’s eyes pierce through a canopy of pipes, rails and broken metal. With his rifle, Xipe Totec fires a bullet that goes up and through tight gaps, striking Hippolus in the elbow, severing his arm in two.

With that disarming blow the Contestant is pushed away. The force turns to a spin of unordered agility and then into a sprint for a blind chance at healing pickups that might return him whole again. As Hippolus moves, his wife apologizes. Along with him she suffers in her own ways and when the path leads to a dead end, the other person is already near, waiting on the other end, closing the watertight door behind the Contestant and welding it shut with a weak discharge from his Lanza.

The room is flooding fast and both Contestant and Claimant curse the waters, torrenting their way in.

***

The score is five to zero.

The aircraft carrier floods fast and it begins to capsize in a recurring swing. A to and fro, every repeat a little more crooked than before. The destruction also appears to be spreading by random caches left on the ship of archaic ammunition, such as magazines for simple anti aircraft guns, old warheads, and pockets of aircraft fuel.

Where Jorj sees luck, Varhas believes there is reason that their strategy was expected to be so. Hab and Hippolus believe themselves capable of wanton destruction. Their wives see it as a hidden play, to make their strategy work, perhaps they think, this is all spectacle on top of spectacle.

Their communications clear in that instant. Varhas takes this moment to rally their wills.

***

The ship is not capsizing evenly. Any time it levels itself flat to the gravity of the planet, the waves heave it further the other way.

On the open deck, Hab slides on such a heave. The rough floor thrashes against his back and naked elbow. The sniper rifle fires from his hip and misses by a small margin.

Xipe Totec dodges and weaves behind a breaking wave. The blanket of ocean falls as an invisible blackness in-front of his silhouette. When the water parts, it is the blue long shot of a Lanza that passes by Hab. When he stumbles behind the base of the island, a small glimpse beams pale light.

Hippolus respawns via teleportation next to Hab and he signals for him to go behind the island where there is a newly spawned rocket launcher.

Both Contestants peek to see if their enemy is still there on the wet deck. They run around the island for a pincer attack. A wave disrupts them. As the ship levels itself, a massive, black and soundless wall crashes against the two and pushes them forwards, dragging them against the rough terrain of the deck.

As the two men heave sea out of their bodies, Xipe Totec moves on all fours and lifts his flak cannon with one hand when he finds even footing. Around him, the waters drain.

A short, muted prayer, Claimant and red man press the trigger against the closest target and Hab is blown to bits and pieces that fly out into the swaying gravity.

Before Hippolus meets the same fate, a Lanza shot breaks from above and the straight beam of energy explodes against the second flayed skin. Light in patterns, roots and nerves become the surface of the ex-champion and the light drags him away from where he is, making him miss the shot against the Hippolus.

The ship reaches the furthest point of its tipping. The deck is a leaning wall now, where Hippolus and Xipe Totec stand with their knees folded against it. As if a great side of a cliff, things fall on them and one such object is the rocket launcher than Hippolus lost from his arms when the wave crashed.

The red man switches his weapon into a shock Lanza and he shoots the object before it reaches the Contestant. At that same line of aim, Jorj stands far above near one of the many radars of the island. Before the red man’s Lanza fires again, Hippolus throws himself into him. The red man’s Lanza shot misses widely, arching over and away breaking only cloud formations and creating a hovering geyser of collapsing rain.

The two struggle until the vibrating blade cuts Hippolus. The injury is not enough to kill him, but in that quick tackle and grab, his balance is off and he picks up speed as he collapses rapidly downwards and into the raging ocean.

***

The score is seven to zero. Anyone dying beyond this point is without a respawn. The last two glimpses occur inside of the island and Hab is once again besides Hippolus, in a place dry and muted of sound.

Now, the two once old men, are both in the enclosed space of the bridge. Underfoot are consoles, the decks and window panels. It is so that the entire carrier is almost horizontally leaning and the bridge is a collection of platforms welded to the side.

There is silence and the bridge now rotates into a sliding flatness. From the entrance to the bridge, two small missiles are launched into the room. Without propellant, they merely bounce, slipping across the room. When they explode, the windows shatter and Hab jumps on-top of a console.

Armed only with Arbiters, the pistols spew bullets towards the entrance where the red man slips in through a quick quadrupedal movement.

Xipe Totec skips past the room, passing by the two and exiting from a broken window. He is out into the railed platform.

The two Contestants jump out and follow to the second level of the bridge, where they use their low caliber weapons to punch through the windows and enter. An azure sphere slowly creeps near from the depths of this room. As it closes the distance the two Contestants jump out of the room again and the simple expectation of a collapsing Lanza implosion sends them dangerously grasping for anything, so that they may not fall towards the black nothingness.

Ship legs and other loose and closing hands, Hab and Hippolus both make it out of a explosion that never comes. Only one pair of eyes, follows the blue sphere as it floats away.

Xipe Totec glances upward to find Jorj who is hidden in-between the steel beams and antennas. He aims a rocket at him, trying to push him away from a powerup module that is close to manifesting.

Both Hab and Hippolus shoot their Arbiters at the flying rocket. As the bullets strike the flaming mass, the light radiates in the explosion and a thunder strikes near at the same time. The two sounds create a hush and their light is blinding. By the time Jorj opens his eyes, two things have happened.

The first is that Xipe Totec has foreseen this blinding moment. He has turned away, by his own Claimant’s careful divination, closing his eyes and shielding himself from the Pantokrator’s, random thunder. In this short moment, he holds two weapons to his hips. Open wide a distance from another, the one weapon is a Lanza and the other is a sniper rifle. The blue light obliterates Hab, while the large caliber bullet strikes Hippolus through the stomach and back out of his spine.

The second happening in this short moment, occurs right as the red man drops the two weapons and turns up to face Jorj. The module in-front of Jorj produces a symbol wreathed in purple.

A deep, malevolent purple, swirling within itself as a texture and shaped an arch of pure energy. The Quad-Damage module latches into Jorj’s Lanza as soon as the Contestant comes into contact with it.

***

It does not matter that Jorj has lost his footing as the ship leans to capsize. The way down is long and the waves far away.

Jorj returns to an absent aim, as if by itself, the muzzle of the Lanza turns towards Xipe Totec. There is only a surge of purple prickling across his body.

While the red man stands there, steel wall on his back and outlined by a deep red floodlight, Jorj is falling in the familiar pull of gravity.

Deep beyond, on the other side where Claimants hold domain, Varhas is burning. The tumulus within the wires, that space suddenly blows into wrath and flame that saps the life right out of the flesh. Ill-green tongues of fire and flaying winds, a god, a Claimant about twenty-five meters ahead, their wills thrash against the flow of information. There is nothing there but pain, hostile intent to miss and completely falter at the apex.

Varhas surrenders. His mind leaves and Jorj stands alone to press the trigger of his weapon.

The usual azure blast is not there. Instead, the long gun savagely kicks back. A thin, crimson light beams ahead, sharp, dead starlight, a color painful, carving to the eye-sockets that witness it, eardrum piercing to the flesh that listens to it. Before Xipe Totec is struck by the modified Lanza shot, both Contestants lose a thin layer of skin to that painful discharge of color. In quarters between seconds, they become flayed and such unstoppable death enters them both that it is as if their very soul ruptures and neither man is himself for only this pocket of time.

Where the red man was standing, there is a gaping hole, a black outline, exploded waves and a foaming background crowned by a molten bridge. The sea parts. A hole, boring and going, there is hollow air where there was a wall of ocean and then all comes in as vapour, foam and stormy blackness.

The cold waters envelop Jorj. A great wall of steel comes over and pushes him deeper where the pressure chokes everything out and he lets the burning embrace enter and the salt to pore through his skinless flesh.

Chapter 9

Downtime

All corporations are an extension of someone’s ego at their source. Whether it is the mad rambling of an incompetent CEO, or the wise leadership of another, by any extent of time, lost in the manifold labyrinths of social chaos, or grown beyond what tribal cohesion a manager can muster, the organization eventually collapses to the blind corners within the human ego. Rules, regulations, empty rhetoric and a grand illusion of an enemy, they only do so much as to keep the leadership collaborating, the workers going their usual routine of spending their lives for another. Symbols, mythical origins and magical culture, carefully crafted to prolong these systems, they do their earnest in this era. All seems another machine-perfected iteration of secret societies, as it once was on good old abandoned father Earth.

Varhas, Anax, Zanuvia, Laodike and every other Claimant is not spared of knowing the state of the universe as is. Corporations, upcoming failure, the self decaying nature of mankind, the culture derived from such failure and its shape, all is well known to them. To such concepts, they illuminate when light is required and conceal whenever darkness is longed for.

The old woman enters, she takes a calm look around the basalt cave and the many miniature ziggurats where the other three Delvers remain, half-there in their various poses, bending the space in-between the silicon binding seals, the highways of light and the central processing megaforums.

Varhas is in a kneeling position, the black stone is only a breath away from his face. Anax simply sits with his legs crossed and his eyes closed, while Laodike, the daughter of Zanuvia lies fall on her back.

Varhas opens his eyes. His forehead slowly unsticks from the rock as he pushes with both palms. Sitting thus, on-top of his two folded legs, the knees complain, while he turns to speak to the old woman. ‘I have just met with the Orichalcum CEO and her two Claimant-Narrativists.’

Zanuvia stops. Her gray clothes are dry and the basket on her hands is plentiful with mussels, deep green seaweed and the unsorted, twisted shape of all things aquatic. ‘Are they pleased?’

The man gets up and moves through the cave. He breathes, heaving away some weight off his thoughts. All the while, salty, peaceful breeze enters through the maw of the cave. ‘Very much so. Jorj’s debt was bought out. They have decided to free us completely. Us...’ Varhas frowns to regather his words. ‘Apologies. I meant as in, me and Jorj. You know how some people see spectacle. Too much ego makes a CEO say, that it is only me and Jorj that are the reason we won, when it is a team effort. I plead your case but...’

Varhas nears Zanuvia. Her old fingers inspect the black shells with dexterity, one casual and born out of decades of habit.

‘Don’t apologize. I thought it was going to be like this before I decided we should team up. You got untethered from debt. What did Hab and Hippolus get?’

‘Ten million credits each.’

‘That is barely enough for me to reach my husband’s age.’

‘Again...’

‘Don’t. This I expected too.’

‘Now you are just being harsh. I did not think you despaired so when you were urging your husband to throw himself against that red butcher.’

‘We do everything to win in this world. Squeeze ourselves through tight places for a chance to be praised by fat, moronic nobodies whose ownership extends across celestial bodies. Let it be Varhas, let it be.’

As the cold wind enters anew, in serene short breaths after a great tantrum, Varhas thinks of the other old Claimant, Mallat.

It was perhaps a day ago, that he saw Mallat and Hippolus. This time, one was a young Contestant and the other, a half withered woman in gray and purple. Both Claimant and Contestant entered their small boat and sailed away from this basalt cave.

Varhas thinks, how anyone’s price to the world of mankind, is always a custom-tailored sacrifice that is the most bitter and sweet. Mallat and Hippolus have spent a lifetime together already but they will each be separated by an unusual end. Perhaps, he imagines, that what they sacrificed to help them win the previous match, was is knowing which one of them will die first. Perhaps, their sacrifice is for one capable being to see his loved one decay in-front of his very eyes. Questioning every sunrise, if the common youth they shared was a lie.

‘Varhas. Varhas!’

‘Sorry I was lost in, you know.’

‘What is next now?’

‘We will build a team, I have a few names. Anax landed yesterday to help us with this task. Your daughter is gathering info on some Contestants now. I just hoped Mallat would reconsider before leaving. We three managed something very difficult.’

Zanuvia’s hands stop for a moment when Varhas mentions Anax. The old Claimant eases herself back into the conversation. ‘She is afraid. That is all.’

‘We all are, some mundane or serious way or another.’

Zanuvia slides the knife between the slit of a sea mollusk. The hard shell opens up and the soft innards of inordinate and slimy texture, slide to a flat stone.

‘Sure we do Varhas, but none of us is as tired of rolling the dice as her. Leave her be. We could just as easily lose the next fight and then forget all about retiring with ten million in the bank. Spiral down a slope of debt again, match after match trying to break even.’

‘You stood at exactly the same choice. What makes you want to continue?’

Her smile pushes deep into the wrinkles of her old face. Her eyes shine with the reflection of the open pale sky entering the cave. As the old sea witch bends her waist back to ease the pains in her bones, many trinkets underneath the gray fabric shuffle and clatter against eachother. Underneath her blouse, narwhals, driftwood and crystallized depictions of a half-fish boy and many other such women overlap and slide in a wave of hanging symbols. One such trinket escapes from the many folds at her chest. The lewd mermaid of yellowed-out bone hangs from a thin brown rope and it sways softly along to the playful yet stiff heave of the old woman’s body.

‘The rush. The rush keeps us going.’ Says the woman in an overflowing absence. With the hand holding the knife she points towards the general direction where Hab was last seen in. ‘Who would not want to spend eighty more years with that hunk?’

***

Back in their wooden huts, Varhas and Jorj separated. Both men had some idle time to spare until they were to board a ship and fly to their next destination. Varhas wanted to say something to Jorj, but fatigue rolled over him instead.

Voliphoe was waiting for Jorj. The woman was there to listen to the conversation between the two men. When Jorj asked Varhas as to why their next destination is the planet of Ulm, Varhas answered that it was Laodike who felt the need to go there.

Jorj is troubled by the irrational answer, but the man feels a wave of exhaustion wash over him and he decided to sit idly, gazing at the endless sea that stretches ahead. To the Contestant after all, the sit on Tropicana was quite busy and he knew that the planet they were heading towards was busier still. Jorj had only met Anax, the friend of Varhas, the three sea witches, Mallat, Zanuvia and young Laodike and the two Contestants, Hippolus and Hab, only as passing faces so far. And so many such men and women had glanced over him in the two or three lifetimes he had lived so far, that it all was as idle as the mirrored sea ahead.

When the Contestant nods for Voliphoe to come next to him, she only throws a glance at him. Then, she picks up her long distance device and begins a silent conversation.

Chapter 10

Disconnection

A Contestant and a Claimant must be on the same page for great things to happen. Whether that page is coated in cellular crimson, raven-feathered seithrbending, raw anomalous hatred, or some multicolored and ethereal, anxious mix of fear and self-loathing, or even nothing at all, so is required, for Claimant and Contestant to ebb in unison.

The pits of Ulm are just brutalism built on top of brutalism, layers upon layers of drab steel and concrete blocks, with an odd layer of brick and cobblestone in-between. The score is three to three and the other Contestant moves around the bulky steel open corridors and factory-sealed gates with ease.

Jorj fights against a man named Otto. Where Otto moves with relative ease and pokes through the angles, Jorj is sluggish at any distance.

Even so, Jorj manages to frag his opponent first. From a close range of three meters, his Flak Cannon fires with a small delay, anticipating where Otto is. As soon as the Ulmite opponent turns the concrete corner, the heated fragmentation tears him to shreds.

Jorj is sluggish to calibrate again. He drops his Flak Cannon for a Lanza and where the Lanza normally turns bright azure, there is but a microsecond where it turns lightless instead. The Lanza powers off and then back on.

Otto sprints far away, firing his Flak Cannon from afar and Jorj heaves his attention and bodyweight to fire his weapon.

In such a lapse of technical ability, what could have been the winning shot, is instead a wide floodlight of blue. Otto’s body becomes washed in azure. Other than a harmless sizzle of all his body’s hair, he is unharmed and ready to continue.

Where the Contestant gets angry, the Claimant turns to shame and Jorj picks up a Flak Cannon again, that seems much more certain than his Lanza.

The next time the two contestants stand face to face, a distance of twenty meters exists in-between them and Jorj scores the final blow with an arching Flak Cannon shot connecting on Otto’s back.

***

They would not speak to eachother for two days. When they happened to come close to one another, the Claimant would always say that he had no words to explain what is happening and the Contestant would remain silent.

Anax, Hab even Zanuvia had made small attempts to mend that gap between the two. Since they all were strangers to Jorj, nothing seemed to pierce through his thick skull. The man stubbornly walked away to become lost or he locked the door behind him, staying in the company of Voliphoe.

Similarly, Anax and Zanuvia tried to talk to Varhas. To each, their own Claimant ways that describe them. Where Anax gave his friend a solid, immovable argument that even ancient master-painters often became unsatisfied with their muses and so their work suffered, so did Zanuvia speak broadly of how time mended all wounds in a flowing way, as if the passages of water mend flesh and mental disconnection alike. Neither worked of course. Nobody knew exactly the source of this grievance but Varhas.

For Varhas, the only one that was remotely close, was the newest Claimant, Zanuvia’s’ daughter. She did not bother with him, except for one random moment where the two crossed paths.

Always of sly mockery, Laodike told Varhas that it would be perhaps the best of ideas, to let Jorj punch him in the head just in case that shock aligns his wits again.

At the present moment, Jorj and Varas are in underground places on the planet of Ulm. Between layers and layers of steel, earth and stone, the industrial and bureaucratic planet had always been a place where people got lost. Five layers of life, full of tall cities and factories. Gothic townhouse citadels, concrete apartment blocks that also function as pillars, meadows with cobblestone houses, post-modern streetways and Romanesque cathedrals and artificial light dominate the underground horizon. All layers kilometers apart in a drab, hybrid vastness of urban sprawl, hardcore night life and abandoned rooms.

At that same moment, Anax is petitioning the planet’s Pantokrator. Voliphoe smokes and speaks the day away in one of the many balcony-plazas. Hab and Zanuvia walk the long brick marketplaces and Laodike meets with a promising Contestant at the forge depths standing beach-side to seas of oil and skies of chemical thunderstorms.

Five times each person will listen to hints and small suggestions during this idle time.

One such a moment occurs when young Laodike meets up with a stout and tall man of blonde hair and blue eyes. She is telling him casually how she longs to feel lust, to be drowned in the pounding noise and to dance the night away.

A point in time is given to her and the two separate.

Chapter 11

Reconnection

A seer is waiting at the bus stop, hands coursing through her straight, jet black hair and half-there divining waters. The artificial rain pass through filters and ceiling grates. It becomes en-massed waterfalls and crashes with a constant stream on the glass dome of the station. The music is of tapping and the woman regards the humidity, the sound of translucent percussion as her own small pocket of ease.

A broad form passes by the street-lights. Shadow at his back, he makes his presence known to the woman with a soft knock on the glass. Then, four feet slosh about. Giggle and attention, to push away potential murderers or thieves that may stalk them. The couple makes their way to even darker alleyways, between whorehouses and warehouses, through old factories that have turned to hollow foundations and strange, empty agoras.

A Claimant mostly carries along their inherent strangeness of the mind. In the case of this woman, this strangeness takes the shape of her clothes, concealed only to those that do not pay close attention. Her brown overcoat hangs over her fashion, but at odd places one can see some sliver of light, holes and aggressive shapes. Her slim figure only appears at her naked wrists and thin shoulders that break apart her black curtain of hair. From the waist down, she is covered by a baggy fabric of underwater iron, a glossy metal that sways along in gleaming and patterns of waves crossed with navigating, measuring lines of a chart that coalesce and tighten around her ankles and hide behind her basalt boots.

Even in these dark alleyways, many eyes are drawn to her. But the details that describe her are not understood by any Commoner.

Ulmites in their home planet, Claimants or Commoners, are always in close proximity to the other. At night, either group goes out to feed their various vices. Simple sins, or complicated ones, the night offers all. Music, pounding, lust, robbery and murder, drug deliriums and awakenings, the prospect of a good or bad time is never guaranteed, but always rolled in the Ulmish wheel of chance.

Through the rain, a crowd appears. Red, neon-orange and warm, an entrance sign reads: ‘FLAME!’ in bright neon. Under this sign, a long line of human forms. People and fabric coil into a grand line that appears as a centipede made out of bald heads, latex-bound flesh underneath leather coats and Blacksteel metal spikes crown some select few.

Overhead bridges push the trickle of water around the crowd. The young woman and her broad companion wait silently and when it is the turn of the two to enter the beating nightclub, the bouncer of many Blacksteel piercings eyes them up and down carefully, in a half-there attention. After a few seconds he lets them pass.

With their overcoats given to the hosts, they both turn to where the sound is loudest. Flaming wooden beams and smooth stairways, utterdark that chokes the outlines of sight. The nightclub expands many rooms and floors. Balconies and rows stacked with different music on each level, the spectacle is beating, around a massive hole in the center and a hot current of underground wind carries along the many scents of human sweat, drugs and sex.

Deafening and loud, Laodike feels her senses lured. Otto becomes molded slowly to a common shape.

Laodike stops. She turns and grabs with one hand the back of Otto’s hair and then she lunges in, pushing the man against a wall.

As the two bodies press against eachother, skin to skin, her mind flows to the pounding beyond, merging with the man amidst the debauchery. And swift as thus, unstuck again, one follows another to get lost between the dancing crowds of young mercenaries, Claimants, Commoners and strangers.

***

On the second floor of the nightclub, Varhas is shifting along the many shadowy forms. Nostrils white and slithering at his foot, the man searches and searches.

With two thin lines of Pythium, nobody goes further than the breaking point. The user rests next to a cornerstone, not quite there at the center of the universe. Close but not quite, to the omphalos of old and distant mother Earth, the bellybutton of a faraway planet, the convergence of gravity, magnetospheres, winds and temperatures and all looming forces of reality. Varhas knows this, but he is eager to breathe the fumes. To become one, with what he feels within him, is an ancient relative, millennia in the past, where she would chew rosebay and laurels.

He stumbles against someone. The girl turns to fight and the Claimant disregards her, locked in his own misaligned stupor. A hand turns him around and he is now facing at the source of the industrial music, pounding and beating them whole.

Varhas wills it so, to spew bitterness, to speak of ill omens. Music and sweat, it all touches his largest organ. Skin to skin, hot air choking neurons and flesh. Curses, curses he images as the Pythium crystals evaporate into his lungs. The drug swirls back and forth, the membrane that separates air from blood coils around in the wet pockets. Varhas sees flat, two-dimensional pillars of fire, flickering in and out from the floodlights on the dance floor and he pulls at his own centimeter-long hair with closed fists. Out and in, closed and open fist at another’s habit. Opening the left, then tightening a fist on the right. Wide of eye, lost in the smoke, he is close to the center of the universe, but he willingly dances away from that intoxicating center.

At this imaginary pull away from a perfect state of mind, he manifests a string of thought.

‘Oh! Oh Claimants and your rituals, cursed to the likeness of you, you risk taker and void made human. Unfeeling lodestone and cradle of filth, holding all our moments within you. Bless me, bless me. Bless me.’

***

As soon as Varhas thinks of these words, only for a moment, the Claimant enters the Inverse Dream, the uncoiling of wires and optic highways, the hidden machines behind all walls and devices. The domain of Pantokrators and Claimants, the dream where their soul takes the shape of warriors, sorcerers, demons and even writhing masses of flesh, animated skeletons, divine lights, impossible geometry and cavalry of the tears.

Metals and walls part. Behind the solid shape of the nightclub, amidst the floodlights and the speakers, the light itself opens and behind the binding seals of stone-made-thought, the great nightclub is a prowling ground of Claimants, coming here to do, things even more unnatural.

Still in this moment, Varhas climbs with his fantasy. Many floors pass him by. Red on black background, a mismatch in the microcosm of soup-conciousness. Letters, numbers. Herein is one Claimant in the room numbered 2046. Somewhere within the nightclub, ideas, cultures and malign worship becomes this image. The machine, in its well developed understanding, in a well learned and outright recorded experience, it maps precisely this to the Claimant of Death. Standing at this concept, there is some man inside of this room, conversing with a ancient hero, two beyond nihil and maxim, flattening hate and embracing forbidden, impossible longing.

Remnants of the texture of his soul, tell Varhas to pay attention. But the man steps away from his Claimant certainty. He believes, that this short entry to the Inverse Dream is foul and full of Blood magic. As soon as he makes this realization, the man’s streams of thought turn full of malice. Torrents of blood, cannibals and orgies, blood-drinkers and Barons of Ulm assault him.

With fear, the Claimant is pushed back into familiar territory of the mind. He opens his eyes to the second floor of the club, exactly where he was.

And even so, the red lights ahead call him back into vengeful fantasy. Drawn to things he should not know, exhausted, ashamed and leaving fear aside, Varhas lapses again into the Inverse dream.

Breaking at the artificial beams, labyrinths of blood begin to talk to him. The walls explain all the mutations of the womb, asking only in return, that he might add another drop to this massive vortex that is humanity. And then, greedy as this texture of magic is, to tell the person he admires most, a terrible secret.

***

Grounded hands pull the Claimant out. The fingers that clutch around Varhas’ outfit are thick, working hands and yet so they still hold some royal stillness.

Claimant to Claimant, Anax notices that Varhas is about to vomit and he pushes the wrongly enlightened friend to an empty stall where he purges his stomach out in privacy. The sloshing happens all in one go. Anax understands it as is expected with meager Pythium dosages. Out and in a swirl, Varhas’ first words are of pleading. Pleading that Anax should be the one to tell him in his stead.

Anax refuses. Friends they are, but Varhas has not revealed what Anax should tell to Jorj. More a reflex than a rational thought, he denies to do the revelation himself. Years of being a Claimant, the experiences and stories always point to never letting a sober party take on the weight of a seer. A robber of joy, a middleman between words that are to be spoken. No matter how hard it is for a misaligned man to make things right, they have to bear that weight themselves.

Anax tells Varhas, that he is the one to bear this burden. He tells him that both will understand the consequences later.

Divination is an art-form. Sometimes, simply entertainment. Watching all questions answer themselves by displaying the moment they complete their manifestation.

This too is taught and known to both.

Out of the many substances that make a person dream, the users of Pythium have to recite this mantra many times, because it is the only way to their destination. Longest way around to their center of the universe.

***

Varhas fails for a while to reach that center. Using his Claimant powers, by lapsing again to the inverse dream, by consuming the rest of his Pythium powder, he converses with random people and asks for forgiveness of things that never mattered. After a while he finally musters up the courage. To him, it is not bravery, but duty. Duty so that he may be guided by fear that he so understands.

Any way is a pathway to Jorj and soon enough he sees the broad man in the club. A shape above the rest, spending a moment with some other half.

Voliphoe greets. Her eyes fasten with worry, a wide eyed look that she conceals and equally fast she turns away to get new drinks.

‘I exist. I exist. I have to reach my alignment.’ Speaks the Claimant. His hands cusp the Contestant’s ears as if his hands will muffle out his words. The lights blacken and the music leaves only pockets of sound between the pounding kicks. ‘I will exist and I have existed within the time you called wretched, when you mined for life.’ Jorj looks at the two eyes. The lights flash the two glimmers in an out of reality and there are only black as mirrors without an iris, reflecting nothing back. ‘First the jagged piece hanging from a nail. Then the flat pocket mirror when they pulled your teeth out and then...’ Jorj grabs the Claimant from the neck. The broad hands choke the breath out of Varhas and the hand strangles his language to almost a stop. But Varhas’ mouth continues only with traces of a breath. ‘...and every time you spun a wheel of known faces, to learn that they too had their dreams broken before their bodies...’ Jorj pushes Varhas. The Claimant stumbles backwards without falling. A glass breaks. Shards and ice slides away leaving traces of gleaming white. Swollen fingertips grab the Contestant’s clothes. Fingernails dig deeper and with whatever is left, three words are spoken.

‘You are dying’.

Shadows of security swarm the space between the two. No sound escapes between this exchange. Both men turn and leave on different directions.

Nothing has happened, nobody has noticed. The crowds within the club dance and suffer. If there are any traces of someone watching this happen, that is a scantly dressed woman with two drinks in her hands who is searching for someone. Her eyes fall on the wet shards of glass where once she stood with her partner.

Chapter 12

Cannon’s Fanfare

Jorj and Hab sit in the empty, whitewashed locker room.

‘Dying? As in final death? It’s over?’ Hab asks without really paying attention to his teammate. ‘Yes. I think so. I don’t think he lied.’

‘And you strangled him for it?’ Hab asks now, his Lanza in hand being polished in a mechanical, spearfishing reminisce.

‘Yes. He just dug in places he shouldn’t. Nobody should do that, reading your mind and all. Does your wife read your mind?’

Hab’s fingertips enter through the cover of fabric, deeper into the muzzle and the white handkerchief exits blackened, a chemical smudge that glistens blue in the light. ‘Just once. We used to just fuck our problems out. Always have. Question is, how are you even dying? Isn’t the golden layer supposed to filter things out, protect your brain from radiance, force, time and projectile?’

‘A tumor maybe?’ Wonders Jorj out-loud.

‘How come?’ Asks Hab and Jorj lifts his shoulders. For both, far as the invulnerable space underneath their skull was concerned, they never wondered about it except for now.

To that end, Jorj thinks it must be relevant to his recent performance. He thinks of how it is not random that his mind becomes accurately silent, or that his Lanza stops working sometimes.

A door opens on the other side of the locker room. A blond young man of long and wavy mane enters, unmistakable a Contestant by his broad and tall bodytype. But he is also broader at his facial features, a true Ulmite of false blue eyes, a straight and wide nose, in a package of barbaric nobleness. His face speaks of other things however and there is some hint of meekness, a hint of shy glimpses mostly towards Hab. Nobody speaks. Where the two find joy to the silence, the new entry is eager to look, nervously idle with an unpowered shredding minigun in his arm.

The door closes behind him. On the other side of the room two women’s voices close in, scream at eachother. Mother and daughter are fighting. Their voices become loud once more, then hushed.

‘Why are they fighting?’ Speaks Jorj.

‘No idea. Young lass found herself a man. But Zanuvia will not tell me who. She saw them at the club the four of us were in yesterday.’

‘And? Why is she angry?’

‘Must be a special type of man to get old Zanuvia foaming at the mouth. Who knows? Let me tell you, it is a real headache when you got two, three of them under the same roof.’

Otto the Ulmite opens his mouth to speak. Deep, not so formalized tongue, he grabs the other’s attention with a slightly audible breath.

‘She is not a child anymore. She can do what she wants.’

Hab turns his head to Otto. Hab’s auburn and black features deepen into a furious, bulging frown. His eyes do not move as they are focused there, at the person of interest.

‘Who the fuck are you?’

***

‘How are you Jorj?’

‘All good.’

The small lightless place was there, only a minute or less before opening to the arena.

Small and dark the place before the match was always silent and no sound entered. Contestant and Claimant awkwardly sat there, thinking.

Along the many Claimants that had come, Jorj remembers that one had told him thus. The cubicle before the match was a symbol of silence. A remnant of ancient times before the first ever Pantokrator, before the Great Silence, before the Great Thinking. A symbol of two men waiting together, while time outside went its usual one-way direction.

So Jorj recalls, but he wishes these images away, opting only for a cold apology thrown at Varhas’ direction. The words linger there a moment. Varhas returns a cold, thank you at the Contestant.

***

The cubicle opens.

The Contestants rush out and time grinds to a crawl. Sensory overload takes over the arena and to the illusions of the mind, so obeys their flesh.

Varhas recognizes the spell. A Pantokrator’s work, the machines, stimuli itself remains halted for a few seconds. A technique, to bring each side to familiarity with the arena, to test their ability to parse information, to test their spatial awareness by freezing them in place and overloading them with information.

The arena is a one by one recreation of another’s planet city center. The planet called Fodder has old cities built as thus. Tight spaces of concrete and brick, five storied buildings without glass windows make up the arena underneath the Contestants. Corners and tight spaces of rock on cobblestone streets that are barely wide enough for two people, they all interconnect to entrances, holes, hidden bridges between buildings, jumping spots from one gaping window frame to another. The rooftops are either flat or tiled with ceramic layers. The distinct feature here is the many cannons. Through balconies, at the topmost part of an oval rooftop, or just simply placed there on the flat squares, or even peeking their barrels out of the glassless windows, many metal cannons of bronze and steel, long, or broad shapes and caliber stand tall and proud. The space above the buildings is a forest of dark green, or metallic gray, thin anti-aircraft barrels and antennas, howitzers and chimneys, or the short cauldron of a mortar, bundled together, or solemnly smoking.

Around this place is a forcefield and the same pattern of cannon-crowned cityscape expands. Beyond, visual illusions hold a horizon of larger cannons, entire cities and bunkers displaying even greater weapons that once obliterated entire cityscapes in arching bombardment.

This arena is soot with gunpowder. A thin layer of blackness exists over all and as time begins to flow anew, all six Contestants understand that the arena itself moves. A cannon ahead turns slowly and when it stops, it fires a round over the forcefield, far beyond and into nothing.

In a momentary line of sight to their opponents, Jorj sees known faces in his opponents.

***

The score soon becomes one to zero. Hab is the first to die. A sniper round passes by balcony and open window, striking him in the head. The shot would have missed if the man’s flow, whispered so by his wife, was not disrupted. However, during that crucial dodge, Otto bumps into Hab. No accident, something between angst and urge, this mistake was pushed as such into reality by Laodike.

Following this mistake, the brick walls remain silent. Then, there is noise at the rooftops. Otto reveals himself. Faster, in an elusive Claimant timing, his weapon is already spinning and he catches an enemy in this aggressive initiative.

Sixteen barrels of a gun, spewing rapid fire of heavy needles. The Ulmite is covered to his side behind a small brick house at the rooftops. He is revealed to one enemy while hidden from the other two. As his minigun fires, the distance of the three-hundred meters between the two men is vibrating in invisible, wobbles and distortions of air, while the brick walls behind the opponent, ripple in a quake of shattering brown. Blood becomes mist around his sprinting body.

The opponent, a man named Omdrua takes the continuous attack and he falls downwards until he is out of sight from the Ulmite’s weapon.

Otto enters the brick house before the other turn their weapons against him.

***

‘One of them just tanked through five hundred needles.’ Varhas speaks to Jorj. The Claimant keeps his voice low enough so that the Contestant can follow along both words and other sounds in the arena.

‘Who is it?’

‘A man named Omdrua.’

The name is odd, but Jorj recalls a short while when they were together in a team. That man had extreme toughness. More than that, Jorj remembers Omdrua as too stubborn to give into death and respawn, holding onto missing limbs and aiming truer the more agony his body was in.

From that hidden spot overlooking the street below, Jorj pokes his head out. The idea was to call out to the injured man and taunt him.

As the breath enters him, before he can belch out a syllable, the same rifle that killed Hab aims directly at him and the shot connects true to his skull killing Jorj instantly.

Traces of words enter the infinitesimal seconds before death. ‘Good shot. Good shot.’

***

Two to zero, Varhas instructs Jorj to hide. So does Zanuvia to Hab.

Something is happening at the mindgames of Claimants and Laodike, Varhas and Zanuvia are trying to communicate rapidly. Through shared headspace, inside the Inverse Dream where language is unmade to its utmost efficiency. Where there is usually quickness, enough to resolve tactics and reiterate strategy in seconds, therein is now confusion and double-speech. Varhas soon realizes that he is nothing but a middleman between two Claimants, who are arguing in an endless, overflowing back and forth. Mother and daughter expand in the Inverse Dream and the fantasy that commands machines is rendered distracting.

As Varhas distances himself from the chaos in the immaterial world of Claimants, he speaks to his Contestant. ‘We are alone for now.’

And as Jorj runs aimlessly on the street level of the arena, he is killed again. Falling debris dislocates and falls from an explosion overhead, crushing him.

***

The wires are felt through again. Varhas expands his focus as soon as Jorj dies. With a finger, running along and as the recoil of a cannon shakes the virtual air, the Claimant sees sacraments and hints.

As such, Varhas feels, old friends of another, the white sands in traces, the coil of a Lanza shot on another planet, manifest as glimpses of the mind, lapsing to instincts and screaming at him that a bigger ploy here is played at their expense.

As soon as Jorj respawns, Varhas latches onto his form again. The walls of brick and the open windows where the cannons peek through, they all turn to a defined shape, a detailed texture seen through the Inverse Dream.

The Contestant runs and Varhas scours the narratives. Among the details and the white specks of sand, he recalls the Claimant, the starved Contestant and the non-dinner of human flesh that happened only recently. He recalls, the white arena on Dur-Baqa.

This is how the inverse dream appears to a Claimant and all the action taken within is puppeteered movements, dancing to the tune of this stream of thoughts.

At that stream, someone dies in the distance. A tiny shadow, some spirit expands and dissolves, over the cannons, yonder the bunkers and the concrete.

***

Jorj is passed by a nervous gust. The breeze of air that enters through the stone doorway is cold, but the Gymnete armor that envelops him is uncomfortably warm. His senses crawl as if fatigued and there are hints of human flesh, burnt oily musk lingering on the Jacobson allow deep inside his nose.

Byproducts of advanced chemistry, reflecting the Claimant on the other side. Yet here is calm, recollection for a moment.

The score is three to one. One enemy has bled out in the distance.

The discomfort wanes. Slowly the temperature becomes normal and silence remains as such, until a pair of far away footsteps draws the attention of both Claimant and Contestant.

These steps are confusing. Both Claimant and Contestant listen, they measure their weight, their rhythm, their familiarity and here is where a multi-layered attack becomes apparent.

Varhas realizes that since Jorj has spent time in his past with both opponents and allies, their footsteps become that much harder to distinguish to whom they belong. Even worse than that, the enemy team is compromised of two familiar Contestants and one that is unknown to Jorj. Likewise, his own team is made up of the Ulmite, whose sound is not well accustomed to and Hab, whose step is well mapped out by now.

The variables are tangled and their details cause uncertainty.

And uncertainty seems to be the name of this matchup.

Without that solid grasp of who is moving, Jorj and Varhas decide to stay where they are.

***

Young woman over her man, the two are wide awake and uplifted in a great synchronization of Contestant and Claimant.

Eparsis. The surging increase of a soul, is wholly felt in its uptake by Laodike.

Otto takes a breath. The large bodytype heaves gunpowder and air in and as the lungs go beyond their capacity, on the other side the young Claimant feels her chest press against the bones, the skin stretches thin and her veins constrict, nerves pounding, strangling the air that would be voice.

The gigantic barrel of a cannon is still hot behind the two. Otto stands amidst the one-way riffled tunnel of steel as the Eparsis continues, forcing muscle and bone, to continue their frenzy. To one another, the exit from the cannon’s mouth is a sprint. Each step is borderline close to a snap of the strained tendons, a slip to uneven ground. But constantly against these odds, guided true, rapid as ripple and certain to the surge of liquid changes, Otto and Laodike are one and the same. The Contestant jumps down from the gigantic cannon and into open balconies, sprinting across the wooden living rooms and steel pipes and coming out into the cobblestone streets.

In-between a moment of silence, sounds a sly pair of steps far away. Before the enemy has turned the corner, the two pairs of eyes grab the initiative.

Umza turns the corner and his Lanza fires. Umza hesitates.

In the Inverse Dream, all happens in an instant. Laodike in their berserk fury, crosses eyes with the female Claimant. She is able to see the Claimant latched onto Umza’s destroyed body. In that spot of time, whole dominion falls over the other. A savage imposement of will takes place and where one once feasted on the idea of human flesh, on the dark corners of a pierced planet called Dur-Baqa, now she stands against a tide, the surge of two and their pressure, their bloated waters howling against something ethereal and yet so very fleshly in texture.

The other Claimant hesitates as her Contestant did. The beguiling scents, the sadism imposed on her wanes and as the Lanza blue strikes Umza dead at his center, the world of the other Claimant frills and becomes, strips curled along to themselves, pain flayed and opened before collapsing to a great depression of void.

Otto sees only gore ahead. Splatters, around and about of where there was once an enemy. He continues the frenzied sprint away, leaving only a short exhale, deflating his and Laodike’s combined senses.

***

The mother chastises her husband. Contestant and Claimant are between pride and shame, equally gloating at their daughter’s achievements, but mostly staying at the background. A background that appears to one as a chaotic and unpredictable city of cannons, soot and cobblestone and what appears to the other as vast humidity and vapors sticking to the surfaces all around them.

This is the shape the Inverse Dream takes from Zanuvia. Her streams of thought are full of worry. Worry that they have raised a monster, while Hab instead is reinvigorated to hear his daughter doing just fine in this violence.

Even so, one thought occurs to both. In this great game that they have both played in the past, they have perhaps lost an edge. The edge of first-timers, the excitement, the urge, the mania and the stress, the forces of uncertain fun and shallow need to prove themselves.

Distracted by these thoughts, Hab imagines a version of himself, brave to stand at a close distance to the action and not the eagle-eyed man that he has become. Half-there both Contestant and Claimant, fear and awe conceal an immobile, but otherwise accurate enemy looming far behind.

A shot connects to Hab’s back. The bullet crashes against his first thoracic vertebrae, exiting through his chest and killing him after a short paralyzed hemorrhage.

***

Four to two, the match continues.

To Otto’s loud path, once Hab respawns, he decides to stalk behind in a safe distance.

Zanuvia and Hab understand that Umza draws out Otto in order to delay their team from scoring. As the Ulmite chases after that man, he and Jorj are picked apart by some unseen sniper. A simple tactic of distance and closeness, they stand at an uncomfortable middle.

Someone is killed by Otto again. Perhaps this tactic is not foul-proof the two think, but they can still not understand why Jorj is not acting.

Armed only with a Arbiter pistol, Hab decides to seize the initiative. He runs into a building, seeking high ground instead of a weapon pickup.

In the distance, Otto shoots the Lanza and the deep bass resounds along shrills of vacuuming air.

Through the wall a pair of known footsteps follow along to this sound. Hab recognizes these footsteps and then he focuses to listen to any other sound. However, nothing else moves. It is just Otto in the distance and Jorj nearby. These are the only sounds, broken apart every so often by a cannon firing and rhythmically quaking the solid walls around him.

The room he is currently in, is an apartment of many steel arches, wooden furniture and loose pipes. A kitchen counter top is of similar texture, open wooden cupboards and brass or black steel pipes going through the tight spaces. All cupboards and shelves have safety rails around them, so that the empty books and mundane items never fall when the house shakes.

The entrance to this apartment is closed behind two doors. One wooden and one wired steel mesh that leads to a circular staircase of smooth stone, encircling and rising around a hollow space. This space is lit by a dome on the flat roof of the building. Outside is a balcony of thick slabs. There is no visibility towards the streets underneath unless he goes outside.

Something hits the steel dome far above. Through the door resounds a deep metallic sound. Then comes silence and a light dripping sound echoes inside of this building.

Hab cautiously peeks through the doorway. He makes an effort to be silent.

Blood drips downwards from the dome. The droplets fall vertically along with the light and the dripping is heard hitting the floor on the lowest level.

Hab pushes the two doors open, looking towards the corners of the staircases. Someone is coming.

That someone is using the dripping sound to cover their steps as they ascend.

The opponent is checking his blind corners by turning their massive sniper rifle along to their ascent. He is of the usual massive build, a stranger in Gymnete armor, strong flesh displayed but also wrapped in plain fibre shoes. His steps are a gentle sound, naturally soft.

Hab turns through the doorway. His presence becomes known by the creaking sound of rusty metal hinges as the two doors open and close behind him. The Contestant fires his pistol twice. As the opponent sprints climbs the stairs, two streaks of blood run along his body and behind that space he occupied a second ago, two bullet holes are smashed through the concrete.

As the third shot is fired, the opponent fires his rifle from the hip and into to Hab’s right. Rock and metal shrapnel hit Hab in the head as the round explodes next to him. The third pistol round connects to a plate in the Gymnete armor, slightly putting the opponent off balance as Hab follows the man and he too sprints up the stairs.

Hab soon finds out that there stairs below him crack and explode as projectiles pass through them. Every step he makes presses against loose rock instead of solid stair and through that blind commotion, he comes directly opposed with a Contestant named Omdrua. The two pull their Arbiter pistols and aim against eachother. The ten meter distance between the two becomes a direct exchange of gunfire. Both Contestant have their right arm extended against the other. The pistols fire bullets that become more and more impossible to connect. Each Contestant reflectively pushes against wall and floor, weaving their body and head with erratic movements as the bullets rhythmically tear eachother apart.

Despite both Contestants entering this close fight lightly injured, the wounds begin to stack. Both of their right arm begins to relax from that solid extended form. Their feet slip on newly split blood and the air fills with dust and smoke.

This short contest of endurance and focus, of waning attributes, is won by Omdrua. Luck or perhaps raw domination over physical pain, make the shots connect to places that make movement unbearable. In a moment, exhaustion overtakes crippled flesh and as Hab loses consciousness, he finds himself respawning again.

***

Jorj follows the commotion. On the other side of a doorway, the bleeding out streaks and stepped over blood smudges appear and another, a familiar face, turns his Arbiter against him.

In this moment, were the odds are a bit more favorable, perhaps the two teammates, Hab and Jorj would have a short second to exchange their current understanding of the match. One could tell the other, of the strategy the opponents follow and in such a perfect perhaps future, Jorj would focus not on the gravelly injured man infront of him, but instead the one peeking through the staircase, behind Hab’s collapsing body, far deeper into the building.

All it would have taken was a second of survival, for Zanuvia to hint at the other man aiming the sniper rifle towards Jorj.

Thus, as soon as Jorj fires his Flak Cannon towards the almost dead Omdrua, deep into the depths of the building, a round slices through the air and connects to Jorj’s skull sending destructive force through him, cracking bone and face, making the muscles pull apart flesh all the way down into his upper chest. The projectile only stops at his golden layered brain and ricochets off into the ceiling.

***

The score is six to three.

Better bound at the source of all effort, the enemy team seems that much better prepared. One could even say, divinely forewarned, or simply a lucky counter to the first appearance of the other’s strategy.

When the bloating of courage and ability wanes and both Otto and Laodike heave themselves away from the agonizing allure of great ability, the rest of the match is played out in equally hopeless and confusing strategy. Otto finds himself at the sudden annoyance of a hidden opponent and the confusion of trying to understand the overall strategy and there is little time for coordination.

Too late and to each their own, the match ends at the score of ten to five.

Chapter13

Banquet

The parks of Ulm are on the planet’s surface level. Vast swathes of meadows, deep green, lush and freshly wet. All the while, great boreal forests make up the horizon far away. A natural collection of spruce, pine and birch, a pond, moss covered stones and deep gateways to natural silence.

Varhas sits next to Jorj. The stout Contestant feels an itch, a light prick between the folds of his clothes and he scratches that spot over his tunic.

‘Since when?’

‘Since that hospital visit. Since Dur-Baqa, right after Ohros.’

‘Damn it Varhas. You could have said anything.’

‘I tried. I really did, you have to believe me.’ Says Varhas, half his mind is here and the other half is scouring curses.

Evil words, he thinks. Curses of others, Proto-Claimants, schizophrenic bloodlines, magicians and older still, druid-kinds and shamans. Thoughts, nowhere near the wildfires on the nightclub called ‘FLAME!’, but still there, whispering in his mind. Heavy history and foreign languages, telling him that this too will pass.

‘Curse these thoughts Jorj. I really tried.’

‘I just thought I would have more time.’ The Contestant is relaxed as he speaks.

The Claimant notices and tries to draw himself away from his inner world. ‘Are you sure this is just it?’

‘What? You looking to argue? Are you going to violate my mind again?’

‘No. Never again I promise. I do not know what came over me in that rave.’

‘You were high. It happens. Should have told me sooner. But does it matter?’

‘Of course it does.’ Says Varhas quickly. Then, he shakes his head, tumbling the words anew. ‘Does it not? Are you fine with it?’

‘Everyone dies at some point. I mean, I say that but I have never heard of a Contestant dying, as in final death, no respawn.’

‘Me neither. Must be a shock.’

‘A shock? Not really.’

‘You have just told me that you know of no Contestant dying before. You have never thought of it before...’

‘Yes. And? Ten thousand years, one year. It has to happen sometime. I mean, I have heard of gold-layered brains surviving the vacuum of space. Years later just blinking into a respawn pod again and the brain is as it was before. And we both know some Contestants are denied a respawn and locked forever. But that is not death. Maybe you Claimants will figure out ways to undo the golden-layering some day. I just thought that this might happen later.’

‘I suppose so. Death changes, but it is always there. The very end.’ Speaks Varhas, half-there still processing what Jorj has already said. To the Claimant, the Contestant speaks truth, but the very nature of this truth is all too personal to him. Too descriptive of a mantra, closely bound to his texture of his soul, his magic in the Inverse Dream. This thought gives way into the next as the Claimant reflects on some events that he knows are to happen. When Varhas remembers, his mouth parts to speak on its own. ‘Would you care to know, when? How?’

‘Not really.’ The Contestant frowns at the answer. ‘What kind of question is that? Do you know when or how you will die Varhas?’

The question catches him off guard. Instinct overrules the Claimant. He shakes his head and answers. ‘No.’

Jorj lets the moment pass. The two men sit, gazing at the forest ahead. The tall, ancient forest over the lake, rustles along a gentle gust.

‘You know Jorj, all these tall trees were brought here from my home planet.’

‘They planted them here? From where?’ Asks Jorj. As soon as he finishes, some half-naked Ulmite barbarian runs behind the broad tree trunks and the two men watch him closely.

‘Nidavangr. Even more savage than this place.’

‘I could go for more savage, more quiet. That last match was a disaster. I’ve had my fill of the city and the banquet we have to attend doesn’t help. Maybe we should go there.’

‘If only the path takes us there.’

‘I don’t know about any paths. Anyway. Voliphoe is waiting for me. We will catch up at that fashion thing.’

***

The rest of the day passes uneventfully, until it is time for the team to meet with a fashion team sent from Orichalcum corporation.

With equal idleness Claimants and Contestants dress to the attires that have been decided in their respective contracts. From a vast booklet of formal display, two basic rules are derived. The first, that Claimant and Contestant are to be dressed in matching uniforms. More than color and shape, they are to house an equivalent concept on their bodies so that it may be displayed as the pair that they are. Secondly, each conglomerate must display their function, history, culture and prestige through this fashion. Among the vast compartmentalized labyrinths and hierarchies of a corporation’s ecosystem, the lavish spending of their fashion department is an industry of its own, a gigantic department, referenced only as a tiny part of a whole. A refining hell, the product of which is uniqueness in pieces, an eye catching moment in the vastness of other fashion.

Two hours later, the fashion department finishes their work. Micro-surgeons, fleshweavers, fashionistas, their helpers and interns, their machines that align matter to cloth, the cobblers of heavy boots, the managers, the artists, the painters, the make-up experts and the irradiators, they all leave one by one.

Each Claimant stands next to their Contestant. And such is the quality of this process, that the absurdity of the moment cannot actually manifest into irony. The result is grand, more than that, utterly dominating to any negative feeling that never manifests.

Laodike finds herself unable to mock her mother’s looks and neither can a brute deny their own refined image. To Jorj, hateful as he is usually to all corporate things, the result is nevertheless aligned with a deeper sense of self. The layers of cloth are comfortable, baggy, ergonomic, revealing a potential within him for greatness. His own image reflected on a mirror, sates a hunger for more life. The Contestant sees himself as a version that he has always believed himself to be. Versions born from adolescent dreams, to adult hopes and even traces of himself that he has forgotten in the centuries of life.

His gaze falls low. His two feet are enveloped in obsidian-textured leather boots that reach up to his ankles. The fabric is tight and tough, elastic but hardening as he rotates his feet and shining with the blackness of volcanic glass. The shape is simple to its form without extravagance. Deep red laces are crisscrossing in hues of hematite and the studs wherein they go through are of a dark, almost black but barely orange alloy. The metal is engraved with twisting texture, branches, swirls of frost and dark sarmatic forests. The thick-soled boots are fastened in an industrial allure, specked with artificial grime. All black, of loose pants that vanish in the upmost part of the boots, Jorj feels slimmed down, stepping on sticks but steadier than ever.

As the team turns to leave, Jorj separates and goes at the back of the dressing room. There, he fumbles with his casual clothes. He touches his garb from this morning and searches through the fabric by pressing against it with his hands and fumbling his old pockets. Jorj remembers that corporate policies forbidden touching old clothes after wearing the new fashion, but he relaxes knowing that nobody has seen him.

Once he has found what he was looking for the man leaves. At the corridor, a familiar light prick itches on his forearm. With a casual motion he straightens his sleeves and the discomfort vanishes momentarily.

***

The banquet hall alludes not to a room, but an endless lake, pristine and glass, making of every attendee a perfect reflection underfoot. The ceiling is a setting sun, a sky that rotates at the exact approximation of celestial movement. Gold and blue peek through continents of clouds, rolling, expanding formations of gleaming white, depressing gray and playful chaos.

Fashion is extravagance. The shape of mankind however, the rounded or stout shoulders, the slim calves, the turned neck and folded wrist, the thin strap of fat under a chin, none of that is obscured by grand and floating attachments. Each man and woman in the hall is proudly displayed by clothes that fasten around their form, of colours matching, flowing to eachother, contrasting in layers, enveloping and enhancing the human underneath.

Claimants and Contestants of Tele-Stim companies are enveloped in fiber optics and rainbow colors of friendships forming at the end of a digital message. Their pants are loose, tightening in layers of modeled hierarchy, paper and chaotic patterns of folding make up underneath the softer corners of flesh. Those of pharmaceutical conglomerates are white instead, born to it in a sense, made in a laboratory of chemical mystery, plain, clean and holding some visible vapor that hovers around them in swirling patterns as they move. Of soft sandal or barefoot covered in an invisible protective layer, their long skirts allude to mysticism of the past. Said mysticism made modern in hyperfixated detail and then made post-modern by going all the way through to the ancient, out the other way.

This is the de facto way with which companies see themselves as. Via images derived from an ancient and vast pool of culture, companies construct their own culture. If Tele-Stim fashion alludes to messengers of the old Earth and digital highways of information, the pharmaceutical companies allude to the first and foremost mummifiers and mystics that healed a body in divine rituals. If manufacturing companies allude to the benevolence of hands-on craftsmanship, the learning institutions behave with their fashion as if they are a source of light illuminating a vast sea of ignorance.

Zanuvia feels in place as a member of Orichalcum. Dressed in obsidian black, with luster and sharpness, alluring in that mix of chaos found in the imperfections of all underground things. Her layers of deep black mix into formations of geology. Unordered, flowing, her jewelry is drab and seemingly flat at a glimpse, but so meticulously carved to reveal swirling patterns in the deep orange sunlight. And even if her nape, the back of her knees, her arms beneath the shoulder are covered in a second skin instead of being bare, the thin fabric feels nothing like hosiery. If anything, breathable and never unsticking from her, even at wide arches of her hands, when Hab touches her arm, the touch is that of cool stone. A texture of underground cavern, but not entirely cold. As if one another is there in the dark, someone that has warmed this piece of stone mere seconds ago with their touch and one is reminded of their presence.

Varhas leaves his usual company. Stepping away from Otto, he goes around the flat hall, marveling at the mirror underfoot as it expands in waves around his every step. Even when many walk around him, his image is clearly visible through the many ripples.

At a turn, one such reflection is familiar. That very same reflection stares back into his eyes through the mirror’s waters underneath.

She is the Claimant from Dur’Baqa, the one who went to that ritualized dinner with him, he remembers. The form nears and she speaks.

‘You never got my name and I never got yours either.’

‘It’s Varhas. May I?’

With a motion, a barely visible servant comes with a tray to serve. Varhas takes a tall drink, tasting the salty edges of the glass. The fluctuation of flavors is assaulting.

The woman holds her eyes for a second on Varhas, expecting a gesture, for him to offer her something off that very same tray. When the gesture never happens, she smiles and takes a crystal glass for herself.

‘Kleiothyke.’

Her dress is revealing. A doorway whose empty hall on the other side is her body. Two silvery and wooden-woven pieces cover her from armpit to breast, down to her thighs without touching. A thin line of her body, soft alabaster skin can be traced from her chin, to the bones of her chest and downwards to her bellybutton. Within the two pieces of fabric is starlight and gateways in the shadows. On her skin is certain shape, smoothed to perfection and contrasting to her straight, shoulder-long auburn and orange hair sliding over her shoulder. It is as if, the strands of hair do not touch skin. Instead they slide off curves of unliving marble, imperceptive sound and all, deathly dexterous materials barely in contact.

‘You belong to a locksmithing corporation?’ Says Varhas.

‘Locks, keys, encryption, decryption. There is great work in the cat and mouse game of privacy’.

‘You barely allude to that with what you wear.’

‘Oh do I now? And you? A miner. And yet you hold constellations in the details of your fabric. Gods forbid a miner sees the night sky in his work, if ever’.

It is true Varhas thinks. Beyond what the corporations decided they should wear, some details of their fashion were theirs. It was, after all, always a human that had to put the final touches to their wardrobe. It was always someone they could talk to during the two hours it took them to put these details together.

Her commend on miners and the night sky makes Varhas realize that Kleiothyke is talking about their magic. In bent words, she measures and calculates things that are known to them both.

‘Astrally attuned Claimants us both. Did you know I was of this sorcerous path back in Dur’Baqa?’ Speaks Kleiothyke.

‘Not really. I thought you were a blood Theurg. I thought you belonged to Blood sorcery’.

‘Is that why you took me to dinner on that place?’

‘It was an idea. You agreed to it. I did not want to go to a match without knowing my partner.’

‘And yet you never really did. You should have taken me stargazing.’ The woman laughs. ‘Not that it mattered of course. Your Contestant was phenomenal back then and he becomes better by each match.’

Varhas frowns. On that note, there is slight mockery and a hint of pride. The Claimant thinks for a moment and then he realizes something. It was her team that managed to beat them in the last match. Kleiothyke was right there.

‘What of it then? Were we to have gone stargazing in the depth of night, let’s say at the roof of one of Dur’Baqa’s largest crystal spires, what then?’

‘Who knows? I might had let you win.’

Kleiothyke nears Varhas. Her low brass heel lifts only a few centimeters off the ground and in a slow and hidden sway she moves that foot on-top of Varhas’ boot. She puts all of her weight into the bronze tipped edge and the metal digs into the obsidian leather. With a casual move, the woman holds his raven-black robe, straightening what is already straight, taking her time to witness any reaction of pain before she stays too close for comfort.

Sadism such as this, Varhas knows it to be a sign of Blood magic. Whereas Astral magic, his magic in the inverse dream bends things to autistic order, Blood performs acts of deviancy, an allistic effort at psychological strain by way of emotional manipulation. Then again, he thinks, she has both Astral and Blood sorcery within her. A taboo of contrast that is worse than the sum of each part. Both chaos and order. One that invites horrors and makes Kleiothyke that much more intimidating.

Hints of fear enter Varhas. At this entry, the man wrests away some control, a feeling of terminal certainty steadies his thoughts. No matter how great a Claimant, she cannot be fully aware of who he is. The magical, mystical abstractions of who he is are displayed in his fashion, the way he speaks, yes, but the woman is only trying to push him over the edge, for him to react and in the process, reveal his secrets.

‘If anything...’ Varhas smiles. ‘...this makes me await our next bout that much more.’

She smiles back, baring white teeth out into the open. Then, she performs a small toast between the two.

‘To our next match then.’

‘To a horrorless endeavor.’ Says Varhas and Kleiothyke glares at him.

‘Oh. I can promise you will witness horrors in our next bout’.

‘I look forward to it.’

With a bite of her lip, the woman turns to leave. Mere hint, she sways once more closer to Varhas and her eyes point to his ear. Varhas takes the hint and he turns his head to give ease to her whisper.

‘Take hint to match me. I am not the only one scheming. There is another within your team. Goodbye Varhas.’

***

The old sea witch sits close to her young husband, away from anyone else. The banquet is a marathon of standing and she is eager to leave and rest her aching bones on a sofa.

The conversation between the two lifts some of her fatigue.

‘What do you think of Jorj?’ Asks Zanuvia.

Hab thinks for a moment and then he leans in to whisper in her ear. Their forms, dressed in stone and a foaming cloud of details merge with eachother when one nears the other. From a distance, it looks as stone has found black pool in this mirage of a room.

‘Odd sharpshooter. It is strange how accurate he is. It is as if a one-legged man suddenly begins swimming better than those that are whole.’

‘That is what I think too. I cannot make sense of it. Should we stay, or should we leave?’

‘I do not know. Whatever way you choose I will follow. You know that.’ Says Hab, his young hand grabs hers, fresh supple flesh against old.

‘Varhas aims much higher. I thought our loss would result in us facing misfortune, or stop. But the man is here, mingling with other Claimants, perhaps carving our next match in the Qualifiers.’

‘Are you skeptical Zanuvia? You do not want us to enter the finals?’

‘Look at that man.’ She points towards Anax. The Claimant-Narrativist is dressed in the many textures of earth, granite and hematite, traces of a strange orange alloy, gleaming gold and multilayered plex, armor and strong, sharp metal. ‘He and Varhas just continue onward. Most times we do not see, or understand where we are going. The last match showed me that sometimes these two go ahead without actual plans. Jorj was useless. You and I also, while our daughter and her...’ The old sea witch pauses, a hint of disgust appears in her face. ‘...Contestant went around drunk in fury.’

‘So you are afraid.’

‘I am. Plotting and schemes are the domains of anyone who can think. Commoners, Claimants, even Pantokrators too. A Commoner is unable to understand the plans of a Claimant and a Claimant is unable to unravel the plans of a Pantokrator. Even so, one thing is certain. The closer we reach to the end of this Contest, the more others will close in on us, sending us off-course.’

‘Let them scheme.’

‘You say that too lightly Hab.’ Speaks Zanuvia. Her face surrenders into a frightened look. ‘I cannot lose the other half.’

Once Zanuvia speaks so, Hab realizes the risk. Not only an implication of death, but another, personal horror that may manifest in the future. A familiar horror.

The Contestant also notices, how Zanuvia stares not at their daughter, but at Anax instead.

‘I will make sure nothing like that happens again.’ Resurfacing bitterness chokes the broad man. ‘Our little Anax...’

‘Hush!’ Zanuvia replies sharply. ‘I will not have you speak of his name here. Not here, please. Not here.’

The old witch pleads and hushes, however, their wits already work in unison at the mention of his name. Man and woman remember and all the while they struggle to keep their faces steady. But the memories work in ebb and flow. Bitterness, lodged and drowning chokes Zanuvia’s throat. Hab’s chest fills with a weight that draws heavier at each breath. Solemn despair returns in the texture of old collections of hopes and dreams. A small face that would never grow past the age of eight.

For Zanuvia, the thoughts manifest as a dawning foreboding day. Deep blue that resounded with even deeper, darker languages.

For Hab, the thoughts manifest as his wife’s words, one sunny, clear morning. Some dream that she had seen, where their son was still alive. Her mouth curling to a smile, peculiar hope as sunlight passing over her. That and a moment later when he would see it all collapse on her face. Returning to reality of what had been and could not change. Zanuvia had screamed back then, a cry born out of depth and brooding, a guttural press between tears and sobs echoing in their cave. And Hab remembers how he grabbed at his young wife. Her fingernails dug deep into her face as the mouth parted to speak on its own.

‘You said back then. You said that beyond all of mankind’s efforts, there was nothing but chance. A thief in the night that only robbed the most precious of things in the house we call our life. A thief whose name we all know. A thief of many names, that once you call him onto you, he offers only a gust, a sunshine that is mockery, never truly bringing us what we lost back. You said of how the sea had lost its cold, of how the fish had lost their taste, of how the sun held no more warmth into his rays. You begged me to bring all of these things back. This I remember’.

Zanuvia covers her face with a hand and once again she pleads. ‘Please Hab. Not here. Not now.’

***

As the hours pass, the great banquet hall turns into a calm and sunless sky. There is a cyan glow at mountains in the distance. The great mirror of water underneath turns into pools and the pools of water evaporate into a flat plain of salt.

Anax watches the changes. He knows that the room that they are in, is made in the image of a planet far away. Perhaps, he thinks, it is a place that they will compete in next. Perhaps this is a message from a Pantokrator and he imagines to himself, that time will give context to all eventually. The thought calms him.

Absently there, he debates among a handful of Claimants on whether moments, memories and emotions hold material weight.

After a while, he decides to follow closely behind Varhas. As Anax walks the halls of endless white and crunching salt underfoot, a mere hint of weight, a mere error in the sound that his boot makes over crushed crystal, he turns to look beneath him.

At a drying pool, where the waters are but half-a-centimeter from evaporating into nothing, there is a tiny, half-cut black feather of a raven. Half submerged in wet crystals, its vane is mangled across the melanism of its rachis.

The Claimant becomes alarmed. His thoughts turn to Varhas and he realizes that this black feather should not be here. Anax puts his foot over the object and he stays there, an immobile guard over this peculiar detail.

Fashion, he repeats to himself, holds weight, meaning. Meaning that is cut from the cloth of culture and woven back together in the unique desires of man.

Chapter 14

References

After the banquet, Anax petitions Ulm’s Pantokrator again. The team is given spacefaring tickets to exit the planet.

The first thing that Varhas does inside of the spaceship, is to communicate to the Orichalcum headquarters. The corporation moves swiftly to buy out some of the space inside of the spaceship and the team ends up with unlimited access to four large rooms where they sleep in, as well as one big hall where they may train in.

From inside, the spaceship is vast in a delicate, layered labyrinth of systems and rooms. No weapons are allowed and the Claimants may only enter the Inverse Dream when the spacefaring ship is not glimpsing through space. More specifically, nobody, Commoner or Claimant is allowed to look outside while this Glimpse occurs.

Laodike and Varhas currently battle in the training hall. The two Claimants sit on-top of two black ziggurats, facing eachother while each is submerged in their Inverse Dream.

Every Claimant experiences the Inverse Dream, the space between all technology as something different from another. Even so, depending on their proximity the Inverse Dream, the fantasy blends and merges. The thoughts of these Claimants become common and converge.

Varhas has asked from Laodike to constantly harass him. As he broadens his awareness around the big hall, amidst the white, featureless floors that reach outwards into nothing, seafoam and speck of salty assault seeps and pores through his skin. Dividing in attention, needles strike and the water that pours through, burns and demands from the Claimant to be more concentrated, more accurate in his broadening.

The whiteness of the Inverse Dream parts. Varhas opens his eyes into reality.

The black ziggurat underneath hums and radiates slowly. Pinpoint radiation, malice in the shape that is familiar to Varhas, strikes and passes through him. The minor wounds he has sustained, every annoyance is remade into him. The man feels the stinging sensation of seawater into him. Through his clothes, more intense in his face and hands, in the places where no cloth covers him in the shared fantasy.

Laodike also exits the Inverse Dream. She opens her eyes, the deep blue within throws a drowsy glance towards Varhas, who has already gotten up to bring a piece of Gymnete armor In-between them. Once the plate of armor and technology stands between them, Varhas goes back into his ziggurat.

A nod after, the two begin their battle again. Varhas’ knees bend and with a careful motion of wintry pathfinding, the man reaches out towards the piece of armor. Whereas Laodike lunges forwards, collapsing in an ordered motion of silent wailing at the waves. Her stretched fingertips reach out.

The space under their half-closed eyes bends. Their focus sharpens and broadens and the two Claimants manifest in a white room without walls and expanding square tiles.

Their audiovisual characteristics pertaining to themselves, manifest in different hues. Timeless, a bleak shadow that covers Varhas, takes immaterial allure, evaporating into unordered shapes that define his silhouette. Laodike waves and ebbs, the flesh out and around her bones swells and empties while loosely keeping the shape of flesh, clothing and hanging trinkets.

Her hands press against eachother. The soft palms move away from eachother and the phalanges touch to light a release. As her arms flow around the shape of a sphere, that very same space fills with light. A radiating glow of white and bright cyan, imprisoned in the transparent layer of a bubble. In-fact, as Varhas notices, the sphere begins to not only move but it hovers with soft vibrations, stretching and returning it to its soapy form. The energy ball is the size of very large head and dissipation of light propels it forwards against him.

Other than the slow moving sphere, there is a pair of short darts on her waist. Varhas interlocks his hands and fingers into a shape with two extending thumbs. His body dries out, the suppleness of his flesh caves to hard, leathery folds beneath the enveloping shadow.

As a response, Laodike forms another sphere of energy with the same motion. Somewhat fatigued, sweat forms at her forehead while she breathes from her mouth. With a straight indexfinger, she sweeps the sweat away and cups it in her hand.

Astral magic, singular thought occurs in Varhas. Where there was once the shadow that described him, in a singular frame of time there is nothing there anymore. In a blink of space and time, Varhas appears closer and behind Laodike. Still however, he is too far to strike.

The energy spheres change direction towards Varhas. Laodike sees this change and she turns around. With her following spell, a great waterfall spills out from the once-cupped hands.

Varhas responds by stretching his arms ahead. Closed fists and two thumbs upwards, forming the closest he can to a right angle, necromancy seeps into the inverse dream. Where the flow of sorcery should be a creep, it flashes to a sprawl and Laodike is intimidated by such combination of Death and Astral sorcery.

Bones fly out of the ground and animate themselves, strung from invisible threads forming a skeleton directly in the path of one of the spheres.

As the sphere touches shambling bone, an explosion of pressurized water breaks apart the newly-animated skeleton, sending bone and salty drizzle everywhere.

Under the cover of this drizzle, Laodike throws one of her darts against Varhas and it successfully strikes true at the center of his chest.

The damage is minimal. Two centimeters deep, the dart only sticks for a second and then it falls down. The outpour of blood is a trickle that streaks downwards against his clothes. It gets lost in a twisting shadow of utterblack clothing.

Laodike begins to run sideways, building some distance between the two.

With the same hand motion from Varhas, another shape of bones rapidly manifests. His hands are aimed towards Laodike and this time the void of space where the bones should attach themselves to, is occupied by Laodike. Hollow as they are and of flat edges, a femur, two ribs and many wristbones, knuckles and other bullets of calcium barrage her shape. Most of them do not bounce away, or penetrate, but splash against her shoulder or fingers, as lightweight skipping stones. Her body bruises, light lesions form in her wavy flesh, but Laodike already draws a dart from her belt.

Varhas times her next dart throw with the same spell of instantaneous movement he casted before. This time however the spell manifests him four meters directly ahead and at an arm’s length away from the approaching sphere of energy.

The round shape explodes. The rush of wild seawater flays layers of his skin. The dried and leathery plex breaks into layers of muscle and blood, scraped through, cleansed and stung by seawater.

Immediately, the Inverse Dream is broken by both. Varhas falls backwards, his hands tighten with an expectation of chemical burning and a shattering, body-wide wave of pain that never comes.

‘Fucking idiot. Don’t use Blink. You are rolling a dice each time you cast that spell.’ Laodike holds no sympathy to her voice.

‘Could have been good.’ Replies Varhas.

‘But it was not. I make the spheres for the chance you manifest into them. Stop gambling your life away.’

‘Thanks for exploding that one so far away from me.’

‘Fuck you Varhas. Next time I am not holding the sphere back. You will die.’

‘You can only cast two of them anyways.’

‘Listen here. I will not be responsible if you die. I can listen to your mind cracking every time you are injured. You must reflect the damages back to you. Now.’ Laodike speaks. After she finishes, her eyes only lapse away for a moment. The ziggurat underneath her hums. Pull and pummeling, particle and bending technology strike against her. The ziggurat responds in pain and the woman finds her body bruising, her bones and muscles accepting the minor force of light objects skipping through water.

At the exact spot she was harmed in the Inverse Dream, the wounds begin to manifest. Through the gaps of her pants, along her arms and white skin, Varhas watches as light, bent gravity and particle, form her cells into lesions and blue patches.

Laodike’s features become calm. Something in the texture of her soul is back into place, but this ease is not for long. Her next glance is angry, thrown against Varhas and she speaks. ‘Now. Do it.’

‘I will hold on for a while.’

‘No you will not. A Claimant goes mad when his fantasy is further from his reality. Do it now.’

Varhas knows this is true, but he wants to plead his case for deeper mysteries within their abstractions of logic. When he opens his mouth, the man tithers between challenging himself an provoking the angry woman. ‘I am trying something. I need to test my wits while my body screams to make things whole again.’

‘You want to become phrenic? You want to go mad that’s it?’

‘It is complicated.’

‘How? Astral Claimants that we both are, you think your actions preset? Are you tempting fate, is that it? Are you paying a debt before it manifests?’

‘No. Maybe.’

‘So you are not even sure?’

‘Just fight me again.’ Says Varhas, the wounds caused by the sphere lightly annoy the Claimant. It is not exactly pain that he feels over his flesh that should be flayed by seawater, but a pinpoint, more malignant sensation that has voice of its own, commanding force that tries to sway both his nerves and thoughts.

Laodike nods. Hints of fear pass through her face. Her last thought before entering the Inverse Dream again, is that she can hold her own against the man, even if he unconsciously wills himself to murder.

They both close into the same piece of armor as before. The metal feels warm from a distance. Sight bends under their eyelids and both enter at the same time, quiet and with quick initiative.

Varhas enters a short distance away from Laodike. A quick sway of his fingers, brings a rusty Norse sword to his hand. Laodike parries the attack with one her darts. Then, she too vanishes within a singular frame of reference, leaving no trace behind but that instant change of positions, called a Blink. She is twenty meters ahead of Varhas and her hands are already cusped, drawing water.

Varhas casts an offensive spell from that same, signal-less path of astral sorcery. Overloaded, where Laodike ebbed and flowed within herself to conjure through intellect the weight of water, a sharp intrusion, a mental edge infuses her thoughtstream with celestial light. A pearly-lit garrote, its edge is made of rays of light and it tries to tie itself around Laodike’s thoughtstream. Without success, Varhas’ spell is resisted and the strain of scraping thoughts is felt as a momentary migraine.

A great wave gushes from her cusped hands. As the elemental force of water coalesces and swirls slowly within itself, Laodike grabs her temples with one of her arms and then she runs besides the now surging wave of water.

The response is that same handsign of manifesting bones. The only difference is an extension of Varhas’ little fingers and thirteen skeletons reanimate to a huddled position. With rotten shields and rusty weapons, they form a shieldwall that crashes against the elemental wave. The waters splash and break against iron, bone and wood and it appears that there is wide puddle now expanding across the ground and falling as light rain. Only one skeleton remains whole, a piece of wood is strapped to his arm.

Laodike is heard by the wet slosh of running steps as she nears. The remains of bone and wood crash against her wet form and they slow her down just enough for Varhas to crouch over the puddle of water. The sparks of air magic, twinned forks of thunder cross his fingertips and as he sends the current towards the water, Varhas thinks himself favored by chance, so that it is, that the puddle of water does not touch him.

***

Anax sits with Varhas in the empty training facility. They are alone, as most of the people have gone towards the outer layers of the ship in order to be as close as possible to the upcoming event.

This event called the Glimpse is a momentary, in-and-out lapse within space that allows for ships to manifest over other planets. There are few ways to travel through space, but the Glimpse is the only widely accepted way. A lightweight way, one that minimizes any obscenities that may come from diluted space and time, radiation and temporal madness, or even the simplest of inconveniences, such as a slow transit of months or even years in the innards of a spaceship.

The two Claimants don’t care about that spectacle however. As they both know, nothing can be seen. All sight outside of the ship is sealed shut and forbidden. Entry into the Inverse Dream is also prohibited during the Glimpse.

Varhas is in the process of slipping through himself. The man groans in pain, but his body is otherwise intact. ‘God. My soul is misaligned. Air passes through my open palm and not around it.’

‘Take it easy. Go to bed.’

Anax watches as the lure of Inverse Dream Psychosis is hooked deep inside of his friend. Varhas has trained for hours without stop. Against Laodike, Zanuvia, even a few moments ago against himself. And his magic was very strong, very aggressive.

‘I need one more entry.’ Speaks Varhas, his eyes are wide open, staring behind Anax.

‘You are going to bed after we reflect the injuries on you.’

‘Shit. You are right. You know... I’m in a body that has been flayed at its mind-to-movement connection. God. My head hurts from stem to tail and back to its frontal lobe again. Still...’

‘I know. I know. Relax.’

‘No, no. Augur me. We have to provide speech, and speak our way forwards.’

To experienced narrativist Claimants, any altered state of mind is a breeding ground for sublime augury. Some grab intoxicated strangers and speak to them of foreign things. In that slur of speech, hints of the real flow of out into the open and the madness that defines them houses some other logic, some genius, misunderstood viewpoint that is just what is needed to sway thoughts towards another direction.

Some, like Anax, are well versed into this form of divination. Instead of strangers however, they specialize in other Claimants, especially those who are suffering from Inverse Dream Psychosis, or Phrenia of Misaligned Injury. Varhas is suffering from both. His fantastical wounds are not aligned with his body and he has also entered the Inverse Dream too many times.

The Narrativist is slowly entering into the Inverse Dream. The ziggurat under Varhas hums and slowly radiates. Anax spreads his focus. His mouth speaks in such a way to ease his friend’s attention, while also drawing rhythm and wealth, to keep their delirious conversation going.

‘Overwork is the bane of all great men.’ Says Anax.

‘So is true, but I have to keep going.’

‘Is worry making you restless?’

‘Ye are of no worry? That banquet, the Old sea witch was sad in her Inverse Dream. It all has me thinking that we are heading towards Baal Moloch maybe.’

‘Mere place scares you? The Wars of Ascension on that planet happened a dozen more lifetimes ago.’

‘I am scared. That planet scares me. Too many foul things populate it. And now that you have mentioned the Wars of Ascension, I am more so terrified. Who knows where this spaceship will take us? Reality is self referential, prophetic recurrence. Whatever we speak of now, it only manifests tomorrow.’

‘Your eyes are doubly open. You speak of true things, just like the augurs and shamans of old, the first Claimants. But...’

‘Now there are so many of us. And we run it all. We run the world through the peculiar ways our tongues speak on their own.’

‘You know that is not true. A common man is to a Claimant what a Claimant is to a Pantokrator. Mere speck, we do not move humanity, Gods do. One God per planet. One Pantokrator to one dominion. We just navigate their currents of culture.’

“Their” currents. The ones commoners make, or the one’s Pantokrators do?’

Swift to find an alluring reply, Anax always enjoyed the self deprecating nature of a Claimant versed in Death sorcery. In the case of his dear friend, that ever more accurate, revealing thoughts that were buried.

‘Both perhaps.’

‘Aye. Both. Is this the reasoning with which I am to accept what will happen to Jorj?’

Varhas becomes stiff, whole of exhaling sadness. Underneath his clothes the wounds manifest. A deep surrender falls over his face and Anax registers this new expression. Never before he has seen his friend, expunged so rapidly of life. The thought weighs heavy on Varhas, but Anax has seen this man eagerly spend and exploit the fates of many others, seemingly more important Commoners and Claimants alike.

‘You need no reason.’

‘I do. It is the greatest shame for special people, to fall pray to such unchanging and cruel fate. I have been trying to divine solutions for his condition. I have to know why and if possible, avert his death.’

‘And? You see a way out for your Contestant?’

‘No.’ Says Varhas, his throat constricts. ‘Every time my thoughts pass lightly about him, the magic in the Inverse Dream blankets and becomes deadlier, darker. I only realize that the world thirsts for glory, but more than that, the world thirsts for tragedy. Imagine, to a bored CEO, to an uninspired nobody, the story of a champion who is to die right after their greatest success. This is to happen and you know it too. This is the culture that is craved by Commoner, Claimant and perhaps even Pantokrators. Jorj is to win the Contest, that is the outcome. But the outcome is bittersweet.’

‘You are too certain. Have you foreseen the future in your Astral ways of magic?’

‘I have. But this is not what I want to talk about. I need you to give me a reason. You have to tell me there is more to this story that we are weaving.’

‘I cannot do that.’

‘Then why are you even speaking to me?’

‘I am trying to heal you as best as I can, ease your IDP. I am almost done reflecting your injuries into you.’

‘Smokes and mirrors.’ Replies Varhas, the man suddenly becomes aware of the many injuries stacked on-top of him. Holes on his sternum, thrashed skin and bruises caused by the other Claimants. Inside his clothes, the blood streaks downwards and sticks to his black fabric. ‘Spare me.’

‘I don’t want you going more mad than you are already. You asked for my thoughts and I give you thus. I believe you need to man up. Be the Patroclus to your demigod champion.’

Anax watches as the Claimant returns to some sort of clarity. His Phrenia of Misaligned Injury seems to dissipate, the man’s eyes lessen in their mania. ‘That’s disgusting.’ Replies Varhas. ‘I don’t swing that way thank you very much. Besides you do not even believe those two ancient warriors were butt-buddies. We’ve had this talk before, no?’

Anax laughs and so does Varhas.

‘Yet you admire him.’

‘truly I do. That man’s stomach is a bottomless well. Would have turned into an Obesius by now.’

Varhas sits with folded knees, he presses the softness of his palms into his scalp.

Some time passes, Anax grabs the initiative of speech.

‘Do you know when you die Varhas?’

‘We’ve had this talk before.’

‘Humor me once again.’

‘I know of the time. The date, but most importantly, I’ve peeked into the moment, the one minute and two seconds that it happens in. I can tell you when.’

‘When then?’

‘Some sixty seven years from now.’

‘Can you describe the scene?’

‘No. This is my own secret to keep. This is the same secret all Death Claimants keep.’

‘All of them?’

‘Only if they are well versed in this sorcery. Prerequisite to manifest death in the Inverse Dream, is to be curious of the inevitable. One of the many prerequisites perhaps.’

The two men get up. Anax helps Varhas stand, while the other mumbles in the delirium of IDP that can only be healed with a long sleep. After a few steps, as the spaceship turns to a peculiar strain of Claimant magic, one celestial, wishful and navigating lapse of time and space, Varhas opens his mouth to speak one final sentence.

‘I wish I was back home.’

And the spaceship Glimpses through space.

Chapter 15

Seithr

Wishes are the domain of Astral magic. Even so, once the spaceship reaches its next stop on its voyage, Varhas turns delirious on a homely urge. For him, this urge is also a pull, textured as wanton and protective hands. Hands that fall over young eyes, shielding them in their shade so that they may not see, widespread pain closely following mankind.

The Claimant of Death, goes about the spaceship calling the rest of the team to disembark for a quick stop. Anax initially believes his friend a victim to full-blown IDP. He follows behind this crashout of cerebral fitness, thinking of sedating the man, or holding him down for the struggle of sleep. However, evidently conscious and easy to talk to, Varhas assured his friend that the planet that they orbit now is a necessary stop.

As Varhas puts it, a rest of good times, soft times, where time itself spins into strands of celestial wool that they are to be cloaked in.

***

The planet is covered in ice and snow. There are few people here. Most of them live around the one spaceport which also functions as a small city, but there are also others, living isolated in cobblestone and log houses, or in caves, frozen over swamps and perpetually dark Sarmatic forests. Deep and virgin woodland, that the locals call it, utter peace, death made manifest in a bridal gown. The name of this planet is Nidavangr.

There is sunlight only for a few hours and the nights here are long. With no light pollution whatsoever, the only interest this place has to humanity, is the clarity of celestial lights, stars and magnetic fields that gild the sky. Virgin woodland, lumber and the habit of wildlife study are secondary but also important to locals and rare offworlder alike.

Ever since Varhas landed here, it appears that the snowfall has subsided, the clouds have parted to complete celestial awe. More than that, currently, as the party travels through the deep snow on foot, savage beasts remain far away. Two days ago, Hab saw an Eurasian brown bear far out into the distance, regard their party and then disappear into the naked forest.

After five days of walking through the snow, one morning, the system’s deep orange sun peaked through a white ridge and the shape of two buildings appeared far into the distance. One cobblestone, the other wooden.

The party of nine enters into the cobblestone house and as soon as Varhas steps into his childhood home, he is swarmed by kin.

Zanuvia enters last, to see a dingy-lit room of stone, where the surfaces are covered by the fur of wolf and bear and the fireplace crowned with taxidermied corvids of all shapes and sizes. Young rooks, ravens frozen in the widest opening of their wings and pairs of black and white hooded crows. To the hue of these animals, the wooden beams above are painted brown, black and white.

A young child stares into the old sea-witch from above.

In total, Varhas has three sisters, of whom have given him three nieces and two nephews. Three girls and two boys, Varhas tries to count them one by one as they gather around him. The man buys some time by pretending to think, and then, he begins by calling them out by descending age. Dorotea, Astrun, Jaska, Heige and Agfast. The last nephew is the one sitting on-top of the wooden beams, above the heads of all strangers. Magga, the eldest sister of Varhas comes into the room, herding the children into one corner of the large room. Before she greets her brother, whom she has not seen in at least a decade, she stands on the tips of her deer-skin boots, reaching upwards and pulling little Agfast from his white gown, forcefully unsticking his clawing fingertips from the wooden beam.

Agfast flails around as Magga takes him into her arms. Varhas smiles and his first thought is of Hrungnir the old ancient maine coon cat that used to be part of their family.

‘Little Agfast has become the house cat now.’

‘Him?’ Replies Magga. ‘It’s another Hrungnir that one. That cat’s spirit went straight out his whiskered mouth and into the newborn.’

Odd words for the first words one might hear. The party’s Claimants are surprised without trying to show it, but the mere fact that all Contestants laugh at that sentence, reveals more than there should be. When Anax, Zanuvia, Laodike and Voliphoe express nothing, Jorj, Hab and Otto laugh and smile at this odd placement of words.

Varhas notices this. For now, he lets a hint pass by.

The older sister prepares a wooden table. No food is served but the many tools and wooden toys are pushed aside for the eight strangers. One corner of the house fills with their bags and Magga puts more firewood into the fireplace.

‘And you brother? Still haven’t found a wife?’ Says Magga and Varhas shrugs his shoulders. The conversations split soon after and the many people go over the pleasantries of exchanging names, news and speaking about the world around them, while the children marvel at their clothes, their bags and whatever other object lures their eye.

Daytime passes quickly. Soon, the night turns to deeper hues and the already tired strangers lay their sleeping bags on-top of the furred floors. Sleep comes easy to all except Varhas, who is merely laying there, holding a black feather into his hands, until he feels a familiar call, beckon him in dear ways.

Ways, of shape and in absence of light, inevitable. He walks the room and out the door he steps in light clothing. Barefoot, he walks the snow. There are only hints of light, in glimmers and the utterdark is to him, a mirror that reflects all the microscopic celestial splendor downwards, crowning the otherwise black smoothness of snow.

Without numbness and in a trance, the limbs stiffen to frostbite but the man is aware of safe wholeness. No wound will come over him, no pain but the inevitable silence of the other house, the other building right infront of him, with the sculpted wood and the patterns of Urnes, the tangled hounds made in black wood, consuming eachother in their fate-woven pattern.

In the presence of a Pantokrator, the trance one experiences dominates his synapses. As the door opens, the utterdark on the other side blankets all of Varhas, reducing thought to silence in the deepest parts, to places that make man forget habits and basic functions of his body.

Time passes. The Claimant is undone. And in every other case, this undoing would be a horrifying experience where someone else, penetrates the holiest sanctum of the mind, the pools of individuality and makes of one, a slave, a fanatic, a blank sheet to be written anew.

But the shadow recedes. In-fact, when Varhas becomes revealed, he feels earnestly that he is himself as whole as before the door and he is warm with motherly care, slowly becoming attuned to the silence and the traces of light.

The interior is wooden. A dark place with a staircase, a podium and an altar, without nails seemingly held together by that same celestial light that passes ethereally through oak wall and roof. The drapes are red and black, purple and brown with patterns of natural twist and supreme quality.

Varhas thinks, that this place is made by a greater being. Some indefinable power that turns blessed whatever it weaves and carves.

Someone gently grabs him and walks him deeper into the temple. Skin to skin, he instinctively passes a small black feather into his sister’s hand. The fake, manufactured oddity found by Anax during the banquet is taken by Varhas’ sister.

He feels the skin on his hands and ease overcomes him with the passage of childhood on the company of his older sisters. The thought is pleasant and with a few more steps, he is in another room of a short ceiling, where the source of utterdark becomes malleable in the air. The corner where the Pantokrator sits, stretches in a lacking geometry of light.

As the geriatric fingers poke through to sight, the loom infront of the shadow reveals itself and when her old hands push the breast beam, his mother comes in full view.

The Pantokrator ahead has no name. As if woven out of existence, culture or straight out of someone’s neuroplasticity and even language, Varhas struggles to form words to call her by.

As the Claimant struggles, he calls the form ahead by the only words he knows. The mother looks into the Claimant with a face softened by his mention.

‘My young Seithrbender. Come give your old bones a hug.’

Varhas walks the distance and he hugs his mother. The pillow on the floor is already there, placed decades ago for this very moment and Varhas knows it so, by the tapestry behind his mother, this very moment in reality, depicted in dyed wool. A black dressed woman, of silver straight hair, fading sunlight and the holiest strands crowning the head of a wrinkled woman, whose eyes are magnetic storms of swirling blue and the purity of white clouds.

‘How are you mother?’

‘Better now. The waiting for this moment was killing me. Are you eating well Varhas? Is life amongst the stars to your liking?’

‘Very much so. Yes, I have lost some weight unfortunately.’

‘Worried.’

‘Yes, I am worried. It is a stressful time out there.’

‘Oh I know.’

‘Then, forgive my peering into Pantokrator matters. Did you vote for or against the dissolution of the Contest?’

‘I voted for dissolution.’

‘Then...’

‘My son. Listen. I care about you my dear and you will not ease your fears by asking about politics. Tell me now, what has made you worried, seeking my advice?’

Varhas knows not to push into the domain of Pantokrators, asking about things that should not be known. Information such as this, is reason for great and expensive political and religious gossip, where entire armies of agents try to pry the secrets from another.

His mother can only offer him one thing. His sisters know, his mother does too. Even if he is in minute denial, Varhas has been certain of this from the first moment he stepped into Nidavangr.

‘There is this man.’

‘Are you in love with this man?’

‘No. But earnest part of me sees the shame in his passage through life. I see a great champion in the making, one of the greatest perhaps and I see his death made manifest in tragedy. Not a grand ending, but a silent snuff, so small perhaps that it makes me see reality as an error. I feel as if all the myths I know are manifesting infront of me, their hopeless and much foretold end nearing and...’

‘And you can do nothing about it.’

Varhas nods. His mother touches a few tight strands on the loom that remain aligned, pure light that is geometrically always straight. The hands move with dexterity, animated and holding pattern to their work, playing melancholic music with an object that produces nothing but light.

The woman speaks.

‘You say that you can do nothing, but you hold a man’s dreams in your fingerprints. My dear child, why do you not grab these pearly lines and weave this man’s fate to absolute joy?’

Varhas feels behind his eyes a throbbing pain. Then, under his eyes he feels a sharp, then warm sting as he blinks. The thoughts become random and ugly, following the trajectory of his tears.

‘Is this all there is to man? Is this all that we are, mere moments in vast seas of nothing?’

Her old arms touch the man’s face and with one thumb she wipes off the tears. Soft and holding, the enveloping gesture is done in complete silence parted by infinitesimal sobbing.

‘No my love. No.’

‘That man has seen hell and spent lifetimes on it. For what? Just a high at the end of his life. And he is not even to die there, but mellow this great memory out, die in its absence. Will he even be satisfied then? Or will he die bitter?’

‘Soft one. Listen to me. Fear not the strands that weave us and the tapestry we call fate. When we have options and these are set already in motion, we can do nothing more but our best. Give the man exaltation. Give him a moment where common man will dwarf all Pantokrators. And though I speak of heresy, of things the most horrid, this is the only work, inevitable, final and wholly yours.’

The words appear to work on Varhas. He no longer cries, even if the mind is still heavy with burden, some certainty passes through him, that things that are to untangle when their time is due.

The old mouth parts again, just in time as Varhas turns his worry towards her.

‘Do not worry about me either my gentle rook. Have I ever told you the story of your birth?’

‘No, mother. Please.’

‘Back when this planet was only nomads trudging through the snow, and the Wars of Ascension were in full swing, our family was having the toughest fight for survival. This was before you were born. From a family of fifty four, only ten remained. Without any actual way to fight, the only way to defeat the other Pretenders was to use our Claimant powers and battle great duels over the Inverse Dream. Winning meant control over hidden devices, over hills, mountains and forests too and this was our only way to dissuade and weaponize the wildlife. This is how we fought, because the inhospitable distances between us were too much to cross for normal warfare. Back then, I was going into the Inverse Dream while your father dragged us along with his snow dogs, going from one deadly fantasy to the next, fighting people whom I’d never meet. And all that too, pregnant with you, at the age of forty. I remember the final fight. Whatever Claimants were left in the family, joining me against the enemy Pretender and all the while you wanted out. Broken waters and my thought consumed by the delirium of the Inverse Dream, by a Pretender trying to drink the life out of me. If these people had succeeded, this planet would be nothing but a feeding ground for evil, blood-drinkers and baby-eaters, more witches would be around than trees in these forests. And imagine, no such moment would be here and now. My worried child without some ease to his burden. This is the world of man Varhas. We do everything for the people we love. Now go. Take the blessing of this old bag of bones and go, give into the universe just a little bit of gentleness.’

Chapter 16

Warfare Institutions

This pleasant stay caused some to think of how fortunate they had been. And these thoughts would remain, was it not for their beliefs that the world was much larger than their meager wishes. For Varhas and Anax, this realization arrived a bit earlier, when Magga came close to the two men one day and returned the black feather.

The sister told the two Claimants, that this feather was nothing but an imitation of a corvid feather found here. A message perhaps to people that could understand it. This is exactly what Anax and Varhas suspected, its odd appearance turning their attention both away and towards their team.

When the time came for the team to leave, they had to wait on the spaceport. Somewhere far away, a civil war was slowly lumbering onward. People got lost in newly-appearing shadows, the twisting seaside pathways grew cold and that far away place of sea-cultures had just lost its ordered dominion.

Nothing reached the orbit of that planet and the Claimants imagined that perhaps this was the reason why they reached Nidavangr, a planet that is otherwise rare to end up in, unless one had a purpose of trading lumber, divining the stars, or a boundless fascination for old Earth’s wintry beasts.

***

The journey was otherwise uneventful.

As soon as the spaceship Glimpsed into the next planet however, everybody on the team became alarmed. All, except for Anax, who appeared to already know of what was to happen.

The ship remained in orbit, but everyone was to disembark and make planetfall. Made to, by a royal decree imposed by the Tyrant council of Mecone. Enforced immediately, the team had barely any time to look into the planet from orbit.

When they reached the surface, the disembarking process began. Even if the packed crowds huddled together as a sea of bodies and heads, one could always see the native Meconians enforcing order and dominating the process. After all, the natives of this planet were not hard to distinguish. At an average height of three meters, these people towered over the crowds. They were not called humans, but Gigantes and the Meconian marines were clad in gleaming hauberks of Orichalcum, faceless helmets, greaves and chestplates of golden metal that covered them from ankle to wrist. Broad in their shoulders, of stout waists and covered in peculiar microscopic hands at their wrists and at their heels, these marines were both brutes and rogues, capable of extreme, or covert violence at any ground, any gravity or dominion.

Thus, nobody moved against the Meconian’s orders.

After all, everybody knew that the rule on Mecone is prowess and everything, real supple flesh, or fantastical ornament of bones is sacrificed to the same altar.

After a while, the many crowds break apart. Some return to orbit, while others remain and they are lead away. The landing site soon becomes an empty, vast flatness of uneven sandstone and granite. The nearest building is two kilometers meters ahead and the team has to walk that entire distance with two marines as an escort.

Colours of this world are orange and clay-red under a sky of coal-black clouds on a background of deep radiance. The grand cityscapes of brutalist buildings stretch ahead and yet there are no walls to this place, just squares built on top of squares, pillars that support roofs of specked marble and obscenely long staircases. Broad steps reach to the palaces high above and to the vacant alleyways of subdued roguery below.

The party splits on Meconian command. Before each person takes their own way, Anax turns to Zanuvia. The man gives the old woman the black feather and tells her to examine it.

***

A Krypteia officer takes Anax into the headquarters of Orichalcum mining megacorp. Then, the Gigante officer stays into the lobby while an agent, a normal sized, pale man who is also a Claimant from some other planet, welcomes Anax and shows him around.

The agent is slim, on his neck he wears a cast iron collar. However, the cybernetic enhancements on his face are of gleaming metal and there is a long steel bar surgically implanted from one eardrum to the other, passing through parts of his brain that may or may not have been replaced.

The man borders on blasphemy, Anax thinks. The crime of intruding into the sanctity of the gray matter, hints Anax into the concept of more horrifying things that rise from this taboo.

Still, the exchange is pleasant. Between the two there is a table, earth and water are arrayed on top of it. Anax consumes some of the brown powder, always eager to stimulants.

The agent speaks.

‘Your uniform will be ready shortly as to your instructions. Due to their weight we shall deliver it to your dwelling by sundown.’

‘Sounds good. That is all I wanted.’

‘That concludes our meeting. Let us check some of the manufacturing process. After you.’

The two Claimants get up and leave. The paths they walk take them along some of the manufactories and micro-forges of the mining corporation. The headquarters are mostly a place of bureaucracy and decision making, but company policy, or perhaps a bit of corporate culture, mandates that there should always be a working manufactory of Orichalcum at every different branch.

Ahead is one such room, visible through a wall of glass. See-through and steaming, the alloy is currently in the process of abstraction, a process where a deep mist covers the singular piece of metal in the middle. Two smiths are working on the alloy. Their eyes are replaced with a singular optic enhancement, a great tool of sight that focuses on the almost imperceptible world of particles and bonds. Currently, they are using tonsils to hold a slice of pure light. Moved along it’s sharp edge to the side, the slice passes through the metal and remains there, as a horizontal sheet of paper bypassing the laws of solid objects. Afterwards, the two smiths begin chipping away at the microscopic edges of the sheet that are outside of the alloy.

‘Do you know the process master Anax?’

‘This is the first time I see it. I was expecting us to be welcomed into a smaller branch of the corporation, not the headquarters and definitely not to see a forging demonstration.’

‘More luck to you then, Claimant of metals and minerals. Would you like an accompanying narration of this step?’

The smiths continue their work performing the exact same steps as before. The sheet of light is parsed through the alloy, mere speck away from the previous layer.

‘This phase is called layering and it is the most time consuming phase out of the entire process. Particle-thin tubes of bonded-energy are layered as sheets and they can phase through the solid metal without breaking its molecular consistency. Each sheet is placed in a point-one micrometer distance from the previous layer. Within the plex is logic and intelligence, a network that speaks to the metal and the other layers. This allows for dynamic material vibration, Inverse Dream access for cybernetic warfare, pan-universal stealth and an audiovisual platform for stimulation assault. Granted that the Claimant has the skill to wield that much input and output of course.’

‘You mentioned material vibration. Is this the same technology that Selective Rifles use? The same bullets?’

‘Indeed it is.’

Anax has followed closely on the arms race that is currently happening with this technology. These projectiles are not mere metal, but an alloy of phasing material, bullets that bypass all types of matter. If the first bullet does not penetrate the thickness of a powerarmor, then the second will. There is an additional network of communication to these bullets, where the first projectile connects and computes the material composition and vibrational frequency of the armor and rapidly communicates those specifications to the next bullet so that it may reduce or increase its frequency and completely bypass any and all solid armor. The arms race was simply a game of cat and mouse, the armor becoming layered with more and more material and applying the same logic as the bullet, throughout the armor. Its vibrational composition either increased or reduced, constantly calculating gigantic datasets for each bullet fired, at the rate of 1300 rounds per minute.

One could carefully code these bullets to strike through walls, or even entire crowds of people, where one shoots indiscriminately but only hits the intended target. Thankfully one may also grab one of these weapons and find himself firing bullets that harmlessly bounce on natural wood and this very same apparent safety has found many civilians of less war-happy cultures advocating for their use.

‘Armor-Bypassing Dynamically-Learning Antimatterial High Explosive Ammunition. ABDLAHEA for short.’

‘Correct. There is word that these bullets will be used on the Immaterial Contest. My guess would be for weapons that can support their use, such as the Sniper Rifle, the Enforcer pistol and perhaps the minigun or some other custom-licensed rapid-firing weapon.’

‘I thought the minigun already worked with these rounds.’

‘A prototype yes. But you had to manually overwrite the vibrational frequency. Rarely anyone used this feature, since it required too much focus from the Claimant within the wires. Usually they just let it rip, opting not to tangle their hands with its vast potential.’

Anax remembers, that in lower leagues there were hints that some used this weapon this way, but it seemed hard to believe.

The agent puts two fingers into the bar that runs through his ears. Then, he speaks. Anax looks at the agent with a face of light disgust.

‘The board wants to know. Who will be with Jorj in the next bout?’

‘Varhas if it is a duel. Me and Varhas if it is a Kingmaker.’

‘A pleasing answer. Two Claimants should be enough to heave the armor around.’

‘So the next game is a Kingmaker? Can you verify?’

The agent smiles. With a sly gesture, he shrugs his shoulders while his hands become open.

As that gesture completes, Anax realizes that they are at the source of their sponsor. Planet, Corporation and perhaps the Pantokrator himself here are aligned to their goal and all of them make things too obvious without spelling them out.

***

The Krypteia is the official bureau that focuses on intrigue. Locally, they focus on suppression of slave revolts that often rise on this planet. Equally square, of a complete lack of symbols and detail, the building of the Krypteia is a monument of terror. It is said that under the foundations of this building, are buried layers upon layers of slaves. Skeletal remains, hollowed skulls that remain gazing at their giant masters above.

Even so, it is not rare for the slave population of the planet to rise up against its oppressors.

Zanuvia walks through the Krypteia. Careful, but ever thinking, she imagines that if there ever was an act of compassion or even rarer, love between a human slave and a giant taskmaster, then perhaps those handful of files would be stashed away in the deepest parts of this building.

The old woman swats these thoughts away. Mere expression would be enough for her to find trouble with the Meconians. They were protected somewhat by the Contest, since many hands had interests in it, but if something was to happen, they could rot in a prison for a couple of years before any long negotiations resolved.

Time better spent on even the most backwards of planets. She thinks.

Even amidst these thoughts, someone still surprises her so.

It is a Meconian woman behind a glass panel. The giant is unusually expressive, biting her lip at discrepancies in the stacks of papers infront of her, frowning at the difficulty of her task. She is of curly brown hair gathered in a bun at the nape, a strong and broad build of shoulders that supports a muscular neck, a wide but pointy chin, a hooked but small nose, large eyes and two bushy black brows. Her eyes, Zanuvia thinks, are hazel, perhaps deeper brown and as the Meconian woman stares back into the Claimant, her big mouth blurts out an apology for the delay.

Uniformed in white pants, shoes and a white jacket, the woman’s uniform color is only broken by her black leather belt and the deep bronze color of her skin.

‘That way please.’

‘After you.’

‘What do people call you?’

‘Zanuvia. You?’

‘I am Phlegra. First time in the Krypteia?’

Zanuvia feels the urge to answer with a joke. She holds it in. After a few seconds, caution is thrown out of her body.

‘And last time I hope.’

The giant laughs with crooked teeth that quickly become hidden by her hand. Her sternum pounds with subdermal vibration. Zanuvia watches as the giant’s form appears as a peculiar shortening of the distance. To her, it is as if a normal-sized human stands closer, as a visual illusion.

‘Well said, little one. Through the door please.’

An adequate five meters high and wide, there is a peculiar device at the center of the room. A small screen sits horizontal to its side. The shell of the device is square and it reads the name of Tetrachromy, an ancient company that went bankrupt centuries ago. The important part however, and the main focus of Zanuvia, where she also puts her eye towards, is the needle where the instrument is centered around of.

The pinpoint speck of metal, is orange and gleaming and she knows it to be the answer to the strange riddle of the black feather. It takes her ten minutes realize that she is not starting at a real feather.

As the Claimant thinks on her way out of the Krypteia she feels a certain hint of ease. Her short research may never reach the ears of others.

Zanuvia understands, that gossip and true intrigue are the most difficult concepts for these people to grasp and most peculiar oddities of the world, pass them by in absence.

Chapter 17

Kingmaker II

Today is the first time any normal man has stepped into the source of Mecone’s power.

Legislative, political power is projected from the Gerousia, which is a council of old Meconians called Ephors. The Ephors listen to, enforce and translate the will of the Tyrannical Pantokrator directly. They live in the tallest building of the planet, directly under a colossal, twinned, Tyrant-Emperor who has a solid and yet grotesque humanoid body that has two coiling enormous snakes instead of legs.

Hidden, the Pantokrator is only visible to the Ephors who stand in the half-round senatorial floor of marble. These old Meconians orate, dressed in ceremonial Orichalcum, spear in hand and making sure to stare down the six kneeling human-sized forms at the center of focus.

The voices of the Tyrant echo in the vastness of the room. With complete domination, these six Claimants are emptied of thought, in a state of complete, receptive submission.

Varhas and Anax know the other four Claimants besides them, but they cannot move. The rules of the upcoming game are categorically laid out while they have to withstand the pains of kneeling. Rules upon rules of such minute details that do not matter. Their entry here is a ritual, a test to display who of these six Claimants was worthy in hindsight.

After an hour of kneeling, the six human-sized Claimants turn and leave.

As soon as they cross the threshold of the Gerousia, the enormous crowds outside scream out to them. A mixed echo of lauding, cheering and curses fills the massive distance to the ground level. In the magic-less atmosphere of Mecone, the deeper hues of language dissolve to mere uproar.

Varhas and Anax can now turn their head to the other Claimants. They remember their names as they look into their eyes.

Maras, Chilon, Varsov and Fenrika stand next to them. Maras the druid of life, Chilon the sage, Varsov the Machine and Fenrika the Orange-Sly are exceptional Claimants, with legends to their name and great track records in the Immaterial Contest. Fenrika specifically, as Anax knows, has been involved with two different championing teams and she is considered one of the most proven upstart Claimants in the Contest. Said victories had been recent and followed back to back, hinting at three in a row if she wins the current one.

Matter of fact, if she is here, Anax knows, the opponents have some advantage of intrigue. His realization is confirmed by Fenrika herself. When the orange-colored rogue turns to face them, she is waving with an open palm. In her hand, there is a black feather poking between her fingers.

Varhas and Anax try to remain idle as dwelling worry assaults them.

***

In the locker rooms, Jorj has finished wearing the Orichalcum powerarmor. His face is hidden behind a Corinthian type helmet that also covers the neck in an unobstructive automotive layering of Orichalcum. The powerarmor’s infinitesimal circuit of logic is sleek, folding into the metal. The breathing hole and eye sockets are covered with a mesh that filters and enriches air, while also offering protection to those weak points and enhancing the senses under the helmet. A cuirass covers Jorj’s chest, back, waist and groin. Engraved on it, are the sigils of Anax, the alchemical symbols of mythical Sol’s seven planetary metals imprisoned in zoomorphic patterns of Norse embroidery. His shoulders, biceps and down to his fingerprints, various plates adorn the Contestant, offering complete cover and modular flexibility. Likewise from the waist down, thin plates envelop his quads, knees and ankles. The sheets of alloy, fold along and in certain microscopic corners the patterns appear to ignore order, seemingly passing through each other. In softer parts, such as his palm of the hand, or the soles of his boots, there is no metal, but a black leather that attaches itself to the skin underneath. The material there is soft, capable of sweating or bleeding and changing depending on the need for a grip.

The man is otherwise gleaming, almost a muted purity of gold, the way the other Claimants and Contestants see him, is an awe-striking image. A hero among men perhaps, divine protection made manifest, in the shape of his body giving earnest description to nimble curve and stout strength alike.

Otto is the only one watching the scene from a distance. When Hab begins a game of dexterity with Jorj, Otto turns to leave.

Hab sends quick strikes towards Jorj and Jorj stops each advancing blow with his open palm.

Varhas sees Otto pass by him, then he enters and speaks.

‘How is the armor Jorj?’

‘Good. I just can’t make sense of all these glowing lights in my vision.’

‘Give me a moment to conceal them.’

Varhas closes his eyes to that half-there concentration and the moment passes.

‘Better now.’ Jorj replies.

‘I’ll keep your interface clean, you won’t see a thing. Anax have you gone over the plate? Any imperfections in the Orichalcum?’

Varhas missteps. A dizzying gust overcomes him, of equal length to his very short entry into the Inverse Dream.

‘Heavy isn’t it?’ Anax speaks.

‘Indeed. This armor has depth.’

‘I found only one misalignment in the layering. A one centimeter wide spot on the left heel. Other than that, we are working with an incredible piece. It will take a lot of beating before it is bypassed. There are so many layers to this alloy and a citadel of inverse Apto-security that should handle multiple incursions of foreign magic. This is truly divine work.’

***

‘Got a story for me?’

‘A few. What do you want to hear?’

‘I love a good story of powerarmor mayhem.’

‘Era?’

‘Hm... back when there were only five or seven planets. Speak to me of when mankind’s long sleep was just ending.’

Dark and silent, the pod before teleporting into the arena was in its usual way. But now, it seemed that the words of some cold wind, swirled around two other pairs of ears.

‘Once, these powerarmors had the faces of dogs, in underground labyrinths they held ax and sword, grappling against knights of zweihanders and abyssal horrors. Animated hauberks shifted, man within but moving in boneless crawl, a shambling skin, the Claimant inside equally without form, a grotesque flow of teeth and nails. And how fortunate, for these wars to be fought by divine heroes, for the silver spear to crash against the filth, to have built the world of today in such foundation, in such heroic expungement of malignant cultural pathways that were never taken. Sever Jorj. Sever and let the strands remain.’

***

The arena is a square pyramid with a flat top that extends forty meters in length. Jorj stands at this peak. The base is thrice wider.

Gigantic steps roll downwards over the pyramid’s edge and the other four Contestants are not yet visible to Jorj as they have spawned at the base of the pyramid. Around the construct is a wide plain of golden grain, a sea of wheat that turns to waves in the winds and bathes in the sunbeams passing through black clouds.

Nothing else is moving. The great Tyrant and Pantokrator of serpentine legs, somewhere out there, amidst the colossal flatness, is staring at the arena. In the palms of grander beings, flesh and the power it holds, remain as stiff rubber, waiting for the voice to begin the match, to tell men to butcher men and bring about boundless spectacle. And his voices resound, then rapidly echo out of existence. The air dissolves and becomes full of boundless options.

As such, Jorj sprints. A normal, unaided pace is only enough to bring him close to one side of the pyramid. An enemy Contestant is waiting, forewarned by another opponent behind Jorj who has already climbed to the top. However, Jorj’s Shock Lanza fires dead center before the opponent is able to fire back and the azure lance turns the pile of bones into a grotesque offering, an expanding red crescent of gore.

Two weapons fire on Jorj’s back. The initial barrage is of Armor-Bypassing Dynamically-Learning Antimatterial High Explosive bullets from a rapid firing machinegun. The second weapon that fires is a rifle that also fires a singular bullet of the same type, yet of larger caliber.

Eighteen bullets connect as Jorj spins around to face three Contestants. Seventeen of these bullets ricochet off, the last one with its larger caliber, manages to dig its tip one micrometer into the Orichalcum plate in the armor’s left shoulder. The explosive force dissipates and it remains only as a passing black cloud.

However, this cloud is enough to obscure sight for the microsecond it takes for Varhas to pierce through with infrared sight.

Ahead of Jorj is a Contestant of great proportions. The half-Meconian Contestant is clad as well in bright clay-crimson powerarmor and the charging shape crashes with full force against Jorj who is thrown backwards.

The score is one to zero.

***

The moment powerarmor to powerarmor connects, the Inverse Dream fills with conflict. Counter-aligned forces of logic crash against each other.

To both Claimants within the fantastical Orichalcum fortress, the sky turns initially to a white explosion, then bleak dark clouds that stand as a citadel of compressed shadow and finally, the shape parts to another, equally grand fortress of fire-clay rapidly descending.

As the massive shape nears, the walls of that other citadel appear, in layers of bricks, red granite and mortar, gray woven through crimson. Anax becomes momentarily of iron skin. His pink flesh is made lusterless alloy and he begins a long spell of circuitry logic, a manifestation of hardness. The floor underneath the two Claimants, the citadel of Orichalcum, gleams in sunlit glow, and it appears that the sudden surge of light sends Varhas to an underground retreat to hidden tunnels between the walls, deeper yet to the foundations of Cyclopean machinery, into the damp, wet waterfalls and cisterns of pale-glowing coolant.

On the armor’s surface, the two fortresses collide. A hail of bricks begins, then a torrent of buildings and finally entire cobblestone highways and cityscapes of armed concrete and brick come crashing down.

After this moment of contact, the Inverse Dream turns to a battlefield. The logic of both powerarmors clashes in this cerebral abstraction. One Orichalcum, of cyclopes and slave-militias, the other, a torrent of hounds with swollen bellies full of ravenous hunger, beasts that foam at their mouth, and breathe away maddened howls.

Around Anax there are many ruins. He rallies the many fantastical warriors to his side, keeping tight formations against the endless tide of rabid beasts.

When an enemy Claimant appears in the distant rubble, the formation charges through the bites and the howling, creating an opening for Anax.

Contestants kill other Contestants, but in the Inverse Dream, it is most often that Claimants can only dissuade other Claimants by inaccurate expressions of pain. As such, when Anax places his right arm on the gleaming floor, the two flattening slabs that manifest to both sides of Maras, they only close against each other with enough force and accuracy to shatter the invader’s femurs and shins, instead of his entire body.

***

Jorj backflips from the tackle and lands one level below the pyramid’s top. He runs, using the shoulder-high steps as cover, while the large and armored Claimant above fires his beam weapon to create an alarming increase of temperature on the plates of Orichalcum.

Varhas speaks to Jorj inside of the helmet. The voice speaks, that the opponents are trying to increase the powerarmor’s variable load, so that it becomes harder and harder to calculate against the bullets.

When Jorj turns to aim against the large Contestant, the enemy ducks in precognitive hint and the Lanza Blue misses him by half a meter, only scraping away parts of the half-giant’s armor.

In turn, Jorj runs again. While air bores through the armor and lightly cools down the parts struck by the beam, a bullet whizzes through the air and connects to Jorj’s helmet. The shot glances off in an arching noise.

Varhas focuses at this stray sound. The Claimant maps celestial strands of light that leave from the ricocheted bullet as it keeps flying far away. These light-thin strands of vast data, he bends and spins them towards the gleaming armor. The Claimant can see some of the light, becoming refined into information and it speaks of a tiny percentage of mapping. The enemy’s Armor Bypassing Pattern Recognition is only at a 2% of the required certainty to bypass the Orichalcum. For now, Jorj’s armor is vastly superior in its centralized calculations and it outweighs the combined computational power of three distributed weapons, their bullets and the four Claimants behind it all.

Two enemies appear. One stands above Jorj and one is far below, both holding machineguns.

Four bullets connect and glance off. Varhas calculates that the Contestant underneath must be newly re-spawned and that his Claimant is still around his armor and weapon. The Contestant above might house the Claimant that just got severely injured by Anax and within that rapid calculation, Jorj is hinted to turn towards the man underneath.

Thirty two bullets connect to Jorj. Twelve from above and twenty from below. It appears that Varhas has guessed correctly. The opponent below aims truer than the one above. As such, in-between microscopic decisions, azure, compressed energy strikes and kills the opponent at the base of the pyramid.

Nine more bullets connect as Jorj sprints to the side while turning upwards. The man above ducks before the Lanza can hit him.

The score is two to zero.

***

Maras has retreated, forced back by the crushing forces of earth and metal. His bestial manifestations are driven back by Anax and without a tight-reign from Claimant hands, their forms give way to unordered retreat. Soon, they hunted down by naked slave-hunters shooting arrows of gleaming metal.

Anax performs geomancy, his mind takes the form of all solid things. The mounds of brick and the ruins of foreign powerarmor are full of broken devices, complex and severed circuitry, antennas and weapons. The gigantic collision that took place when the opponent tackled Jorj, has made the surface of the armor into a vastness of rubble.

With that same wholeness of metal and stone, Anax speaks to Varhas in imperceptive vibrations through the walls.

Varhas’ hand scours over the darkness and deep underground, within the machine’s dream, he holds complete dominion over any and all shadows. The coolant pools ahead are evaporating in their glowing darkness. Deeper, the granular and microscopic cosmos of circuitry is beaming with strands of logic, binding concept to action, calculating and feeding said calculations back into their world, ordering the layers and walls to keep the flesh within safe.

And yet something is amiss, both Claimants realize. Deeper into this cosmos of circuitry, at the exact spot where machine meets the Contestant’s flesh, there is an utterdark corridor painted with a few droplets of blood.

Whatever causes these fantastical injuries, by the time Varhas turns his focus, it has already disappeared. Mere bite or nick, that something has commandeered the machine’s allegiance, ordering it to harm the pilot instead.

***

Jorj continues the sprint. A sharp pain now manifests in his sternum, whenever he draws breath.

Jorj attempts to climb upwards.

On the pyramid’s top, two Contestants stand very close to Jorj. The half-giant lunges to grab the man but the reflex is that of dodging in-between the two opponents, bringing at the same time the Lanza to aim and firing directly at the open hand, severing it from the bicep.

The other Contestant charges with his weapon first. The machinegun presses hard against Jorj’s right armpit and the bullets belch into the depression of Orichalcum. Fire and projectile become one superheated force that pushes Jorj to his back and sends him down the pyramid again.

As the Contestant rolls and rotates downwards, thirty bullets connect to him in total, from his shoulder blades to his heels, to the neck, head, wrist and chest, all glancing off, but forcing him away.

Jorj stops the momentum with his leg and free arm. Sideways, the Lanza turns upwards and misses the enemy Contestant by a small margin, causing some vacuuming damage to his head.

After Jorj stands, once again he goes upwards, this time by jumping.

He fires a slow moving sphere of blue. Two opponents are close and one is further back. The half-giant contestant fires his beam directly at the helmet of Jorj causing a blinding glow of burnt out synapses, a blue and patterned-in-neurons of radiant purple shadow that covers sight. The machinegun armed Contestant fires and five more bullets connect to Jorj’s body before his sight calibrates again.

All three opponents are moving away from the sphere while shooting. The half-giant is sprinting to the left while firing and the other Contestant is sprinting to the right, mostly missing. The shorter Contestant in the distance is running away from the sphere without regard for firing his sniper rifle and he reaches the end of the pyramid on the other side.

Now, better than never and with absolute certainty, Jorj fires his Lanza against the sphere.

***

In the Inverse Dream, Varhas steps out of the shadows, momentarily stopping his pursuit of a hidden invader. At the surface of the imaginary world of the powerarmor, Varhas sets to a wide focus of the mind, celestial sorcery without gestures, focused on the far away.

And that far away is but an abstraction of the vacuum, a reflection of the Lanza’s terrifying implosion of two firing modes used together.

In the Inverse Dream, the catastrophic force beckons an extreme distance far away, a voice that screams of obliteration, grasping and so ever-flaying. Two figures nearest to it, become broken at their shape. Metal and flesh stick together as they are pulled into the center of the blue force and then they are expunged outwards, made to, overwritten in their molecular function, needles against the greater distance.

Blood rain and rubble begins to fall onto the gleaming machine. The citadel of Orichalcum, the Inverse Dream is made suddenly into a hellscape of fear, bathed in a mirror of what has happened in the real. Anax and Varhas bask in the filth, taking the spectacle as is and finally Varhas achieves the focus that he wants. He sees threads of information, highways of light amidst the sticky rain, and he sees them bending ahead at the still radiant glow of dissipating blue. With a weaving motion, a slight curling of his fingertips, these strands are spun together and their data is funneled to the machine.

While this celestial sorcery occurs, Anax protects Varhas against the falling debris with his body. When he turns to look at the person behind him, Varhas has already vanished. A Blink, mere complete, sudden absence.

Varhas manifests into the left heel, exactly at the point where the tiniest imperfection in the powerarmor exists. This part of the armor is dimly lit. Stretched, vibrating layers barely light up this tight space in long, stretched patterns. There is indeed a gap on these layers far into the distance, a misalignment that appears as a geometric impossibility and manifests as a big vacuum. Not shadowy, to where Varhas can feel the absence of light, but an impossibility, the birthing place of horrors, the merging of Blood and Astral sorcery that any sane Claimant avoids.

But that warp of the flow, the impossibility, even glanced at, hints to oddities and Varhas believes that he will never find the invading Claimant, the one that hides and leaves only droplets of injury, by normal use of his shadows. Two paths then manifest within him. One, the usage of forbidden magic, the handful of horrors that he knows, the easy path of abuse and the second, an earnest try of his abilities, the path of effort that is bound in struggle and its repetition.

In these depths of the armor, Varhas presses lightly against one of the gleaming-white layers above him. Light floods into the hallways of the machine and everything is bathed in a pale, clear light that is easy to the eyes.

While flooding the armor with light, Varhas also quickly calculates the percentage of Armor Bypassing Pattern Recognition and the number is at an alarming 21%. The opponent’s weapons are almost a quarter there to completely ignoring all protection.

***

The score is four to zero. The two closest Contestants ahead have turned to blood, painted outwards from the epicenter of the Lanza explosion. The other Contestant has retreated, firing sniper rounds that connect twice in quick succession to Jorj’s thigh and head.

The first bullet glances off. A trail of invisible light follows the projectile and it calculates itself back into to the weapon. The second bullet fired however is not Armor Bypassing. Its consistency is that of archaic Armor Piercing with a soft squashing head that carries an explosive load.

As the powerarmor’s helmet absorbs the shock, Jorj loses cohesion for less than half a second. Two things then occur at the same instance. The first, is a new barrage of a machinegun to the side of Jorj. The enemy Contestant that has died twice is back and he is using the flatness of the pyramid as a firing stabilizer. The second event is felt in fragments. Microscopic shards of ceramic, machine logic itself, less than a centimeter in length have dislodged from the helmet’s mask and these crystals have lodged themselves into Jorj’s chin, nose and eyes.

With blood in his sight and the fresh scent of familiar filth, Jorj tightens, his body is instinctively led into the pathway of extreme violence.

To that end, the two Claimants within, leave the Contestant to the eager surrender of strategy. From now on, they know, begins frenzy and the violence escalates.

Jorj sprints with unexpected speed to his side, running directly towards the machinegun. As the bullets ricochet off him, their force is nullified by a wrathful stability that quickly approaches. The Orichalcum-clad Contestant slides with momentum and kicks the Gymnete-armored one.

When the decapitating kick connects, there is a loud roar from far into distance. The crowd yells and their voices boom, for the true meaning of the Immaterial Contest is quickly replacing strategical play. They yell, for violence and blood.

***

Whenever Fenrika moves, no matter the attention she has paid to complete silence, the avoidance of raven-blackness amidst the already colorless shadows, she leaves a small gust of wind, that swirls around her invisible movement.

Varhas is near the invader and in the well-lit hallways he is able to discern this flow of wind. The closest he is to Fenrika, the easier it is to discern the scraping noise that thoughts make within the neurons of her mind.

Even so, a professional of roguery, the foxy Claimant is already stalking her hunter. False sounds lure Varhas one way and she lunges behind him. The bright and bronze dagger of violet magical names and sigils, digs deep into the man’s right trapezius, carving downwards towards his spine. The hit has weight, the injury is deep, but Varhas turns around, dislodging the knife by rotating along its downwards force.

His flesh remains gaping along with the cut fabric on his back and as soon as the two come face to face, his back begins to bleed profusely, sending streaks of crimson down his waist.

The Claimant looks at the invader with a calm expression, as if this violent exchange means nothing. And yet, Fenrika is terrified by this silence. The man’s eyes are bleak and lifeless, while her’s are bright green emeralds in swirls of pale gray and her expression balances between happiness, mania and surprise.

With a raise of his hands, Varhas attempts to perform the spell, Horde of Skeletons. His right arm struggles to lift, but the fingers work and they form fists. The thumbs lock in their ninety degree angle, and the smallest fingers extend.

The second the bones break through the ground and they come surging directly at Fenrika’s position, she lunges again with a wild horizontal swing of her dagger.

Varhas loses four fingers in this attack. When his expression does not change, the woman becomes intimidated, focusing instead on running away, avoiding as best as she can, the many skeletons becoming reanimated all around her.

Her rapid retreat is struck plenty of times. Bullets of bone, edges of rusty metal find her limbs and face, but she escapes. The many skeletons chase after her, commanded to shamble and run if possible, while one stays behind to support the injured Claimant.

***

Five to zero. All five Contestants are in full view of another. There is only one machinegun and sniper rifle at play using Armor Bypassing projectiles. Without any indication on the arena that new pickups may appear, the likes of which secured the victory at Tropicana, all Contestants pile towards the violent struggle.

The Contestant armed with the sniper rifle takes cover behind the half-giant. The bullet phases through the large Gymnete-armored body but Jorj manages to swat it away with the back of his hand. Meanwhile, the blinding heat of the beam weapon connects to his neck and the back of his hand as he completes that swatting motion. The Contestant with the most deaths, has rearmed with a Flak Cannon and its heavy projectile flies true against Jorj. The last opponent, is sprinting close to Jorj, his machinegun firing rapidly and aiming to obstruct movement via the forces of glancing bullets.

All such forces affect Jorj, who heaves his weight towards the greatest force and he lunges diagonally. The maneuver is fast. The exhausted aim becomes misaligned for a moment and the Flak Cannon’s projectile explodes behind him, creating a cloud that conceals his advance momentarily.

Three sniper rounds and forty one machinegun rounds connect, two of which penetrate one centimeter deep into the armor. It appears to Jorj, that the places the bullets connect, the armor underneath struggles and actual bruising or cuts, shards of Orichalcum manifest into his body. Nevertheless, he closes into the half-giant and the covered sniper.

The Lanza fires and the straight line of energy misses between half-giant and sniper. The vacuum pulls both Contestants closer, flaying parts of their bodies and tearing them both, one to his right and the other to his left part of the body.

The half-giant Contestant steps ahead and grabs Jorj’s weapon, the second Lanza shot is fired out into the sky. Jorj then unclenches his weapon, letting himself be disarmed and with a downwards hammer fist, his hand connects to the side of a head, sending the half-giant to the ground. The opponent becomes unconscious but his hands still gasp around by instinct.

The Contestant with the rifle retreats while one more of his bullets connects to Jorj’s head. The blow is strong but otherwise easy to the senses and as Jorj tries to move closer to him. However, his right leg is instinctively grabbed by the semi-conscious half-giant. Before Jorj can sever the tightening hand with a downwards chop, another Contestant closes in and tackles him.

A shoulder slams against his ribs. The blow is insignificant, but it reinforces the throbbing pain deep within the armor. Jorj remains balanced, spun around, but otherwise standing with his two feet, one of which is held there.

***

The Gymnete armor has a lighter Inverse Dream of cybernetics and circuit vastness. Still however, relentless and desperate, Maras and Chilon enter to fight Anax. The close proximity of their circuits, beams a barrage of mental attacks that manifest as torrents of vitriol from one Claimant and from another, a blooming forest that becomes rooted in-between the brick rubble and gleaming fortress.

Anax is not intimidated by the attack. The commanding of the armor’s gleaming form is enough to hold back the assault and his connection to the solid alloy, is spent evenly.

A healed Maras rises from the roots and he sends out thorns. Chilon beckons water that dissolves metal and Anax all throughout understands that slowly, the Contest reaches the final moments of desperation and fatigue, where great errors and outcomes manifest.

Thus, he performs one last spell to harden the Orichalcum and retreats deeper, seeking his ally.

Varhas is wounded. With severe blood-loss comes feeblemindedness and a loss of mental focus and he can only command the hunt against Fenrika, whom he believes to be equally fatigued.

At a turn of an alleyway, she is there, amidst piles of broken bones, worn down and in a frenzy. When both pairs of eyes cross each other, the skeletons stop their attack and Fenrika puts one bloodied hand on her sweaty forehead, combing the mess that is her short hair back with her fingertips, while all the while heaving great air into her lungs and addressing Varhas.

‘Alas death-dealer. I’ve dealt my damage. All so without horrors.’

Spent focus and fantastical pains guide their speech.

‘None from me either Fenrika’.

‘I am glad. Before I slay you Varhas, were you tempted?’

‘You know how it is’.

The sly Claimant uses the response to conceal her very rapid charge. The woman weaves around the idle bones, knife in hand and becoming gust against the distance in-between the two.

Varhas pierces his fatigue. He merely hints at the spell of Mind Burn and the celestial garrote manifests within Fenrika’s thoughstream.

Successfully, the spell hits. The scraping intensifies within Fenrika’s brain and a fantastical cord, severs the subliminal connection between current and neuron, thought and muscle. The woman stiffens in place and all of her body’s function is flexed to its utmost, constricting stress as she falls to the floor.

***

The Contestant that tackled Jorj, turns for a wild haymaker. Jorj catches the blow by heaving his body closer to the attacker and he lifts the man over him, slamming him down into the half giant. The two opponents become a stack and Jorj begins anew the motion for a downwards chop.

A sniper round connects to his back, but the force does nothing. His gleaming hand comes down, and it passes through the two heaps of flesh. With enough force even a blunt hand slices through armor and ribcage and lodges itself deep into the half-giant’s shoulder.

Jorj feels his lodged hand unnaturally warm. With the other hand, he grabs his mangled Lanza.

One more sniper round connects to Jorj as he frees his hand and his leg becomes unclenched, then, ten machinegun rounds connect to Jorj as he sprints to the sniper’s last position. At the edge of the pyramid, Jorj heaves his Lanza and the blue vacuum passes by the opponent, the gravity flaying and swaying him to the side while the following shot completely annihilates the man.

The machinegun belches on Jorj’s back, but the man is scouring the space around the pyramid’s base instead, for the last respawning Contestant. With misaligned confidence, Jorj makes the error of ignoring the pummeling at his back and he sprints.

A rapid heat is slowly overwhelming the Orichalcum armor. Sudden and uncomfortable, Jorj feels the radiant glow lightly choke him, sweating becomes profuse and he begins to feel as if sun-sick, a dizzying ebb of light that looms over his senses.

The score is eight to zero.

***

The coolant pools underneath the armor are boiling. Fog rises over the abstracted dream that makes machine and mindflow a palpable fantasy.

Anax finds the space tightening and despite the now hostile space all around him, he tries to augur the earth under his feet.

Alarmed, the metal speaks of strain and the computational load has far exceeded the expected number. At a percentage of 91%, the pattern recognition of bypassing projectiles is almost complete. A few more bullets and then an instant bypass of explosive destruction will render all effort meaningless.

Anax understands that the wear of the match is making him do erratic decisions. It actually only takes a gaze above to see that the visible star-lit layers of armor are spazzing in and out of synchronization. A great plex of celestial fabric is crumpled like paper and it moves in digital, glitching patterns.

From the coolant mist, an enemy Claimant manifests directly ahead of Anax. From his cupping hands a water elemental rushes against Anax and the composition of liquid has an additional toxic property.

The battle between the two begins inside of the crumbling space.

As both Claimants are closer to their respective element, liquid for Chilon and the bowels of some earth for Anax, their sorcery booms into a raw infusion of their will. Cyclopean walls manifest against the coolant-waves, hardness is sliced by pinpoint pressure and the overarching destruction seems to play into the plans of the attacker.

***

The respawned Contestant manifests on top of the pyramid. Two opponents stand at its peak, one armed with the armor bypassing machinegun and the other, the one whom held the sniper rifle, armed now with an Arbiter pistol.

Drawn by bloodlust and dizzying fatigue, Jorj charges ahead.

The Lanza fires against a spray of bullets and where ten of them would connect to Jorj, they are instead pulled off course by the Lanza’s vacuum.

Two machinegun bullets connect, while the Arbiter misses and two blue spheres are fired by Jorj to cover his slight step to the side.

While the two opponents dodge away from the spheres expecting an implosion, Jorj closes into the man with the machinegun. The Lanza’s muzzle connects to the man’s neck and the full weight and speed is as such that the Lanza stabs through.

The opponent loses his bearing and the machinegun continues firing down at their feet. However, the man grabs the scalding Lanza to his painful end. When the blue manifests against him, the damage is minimal, a shattered light that seems to be unfocused, raw discharge passed through broken lenses. There is no implosion, but a violent chaotic press of various lights that shatters the man into unordered pieces.

Four Arbiter shots connect to Jorj. These bullets bypass far into the Orichalcum and the following explosions shatter the cuirass on his back, the plating on his thigh, right shoulder and knee, severely damaging muscles, bone and cartilage underneath.

***

Varhas and Anax are worn to their last specks of life and as such they exit. Once out, so fades away all of their magic and Fenrika, Maras and Chilon become free to ravage the immaterial realm of the Orichalcum.

All should be left to chance now, but to this small and celestial passage of fate, Varhas has fashioned a small bend of these odds, a final surprise planned on his exit.

***

The final seconds of the match are as such, Claimant-free moments where man to man see eye to eye.

Jorj sprints. The Lanza misfires once and the blue light disperses against the opponent. The blinding light staggers the man ahead and his two following shots miss.

The Lanza misfires again and the light coalesces on the ground, causing a long crack in the stone that also crudely amputates the opponents left leg. The next armor bypassing shots would normally connect to Jorj’s shape, but in-between the moment between moments, the Orichalcum armor disassembles with an outward explosion, sending all of its pieces away from the Contestant’s body. There, in one of these flying pieces, the arbiter shots become fused with the Orichalcum and their explosions occur ten to thirty centimeters away from Jorj, gravelly injuring the man, breaking muscle and bone, sending shrapnel that passes through flesh, but being just enough for a final action.

The third time that Jorj presses tightly on his Lanza, the blue glow manifests as widespread cracks in a cone of deep blue that is instantly crowned with gore.

To all spectators, it seems a Lanza-blue pattern of breaking, yet so familiar a shape, defined as the patterns within the golden-layered brain of the Contestant. It is as if his mind has taken the shape of the glow, the neurons within him, slashes in reality, dominating the opponent that is no longer there, by power of will alone, by power of one-way stream of unconscious thinking. And to that pattern, blotches of shadow amidst the blue light.

When the glow fades, there is only a man left there. A naked and injured being still drawing breath. Agonizing, pouring out life force in crimson and a rebel yell that resounds from his gullet. A dying King, held together by the vibrations of his howling voice.

Chapter 18

Debts

The Claimants feel that if a number was to appear in-front of them after the last fight, that sum that would exceed being a problem that few people could handle. It would stop being their worry and instead it would become a broader issue.

It was a usual occurrence that debt followed mankind. Everything has a price, but the meaning of debt was different for any person. To an immortal, debt meant little as going down deeper into that hole meant only cheap diners and mundane tastes. Cheap liquor and boring experiences. To a Claimant, the negative numbers were only a indication of misfortune.

And it is this very same belief that makes the team careful on where to go after their grand victory. The corporation provides and so does the Pantokrator on Mecone, but at the back of anyone’s head is a negative number that should be quite large after the outright destruction of that gleaming powerarmor. They owe some semblance of self control to those that influence fate. Some austerity that should flatten their bloated egos from the latest bout.

But Mecone provides even then. Cheap drinking with the slaves at the foundations of Meconian blocks. Through dark alleyways and over iron tables inside of brick rooms.

An odd giant might pass outside the brick bar. They may lean down for a good look through the wooden windows and continue their late night walk. Krypteia or not, such an image influences the Gigantes in different ways, now that more worrying events are taking shape.

Inside, Laodike stands on top of a table. Her boots step over glass and split drink and with two hands outstretched, reaching to the ceiling, she does an earnest copy of Jorj’s last howl during yesterday’s match. The various commoners yell and drum their limbs on any nearby surface.

All under the spinning bravery of alcohol and suddenly a bit too much for Laodike, her open pants flutter upwards as she steps at the edge of the table and everything underneath her becomes airborne. Empty glasses, ashtrays, a plate and the Claimant too become one moving wave of pieces moving across the floor and her legs arch around, hoisted upwards as she rolls.

Then, she gets up with someone’s help and the place resounds with laughter.

From where Varhas sits, he can hear one of the commoners turn to his friend to yell at him. ‘They are just like us’ the stranger speaks loudly and their faces smile in a diffusion of some greater fright.

For that very fright, the oppression here, Varhas knows absent in him. He sits alone in the wooden bar, watching the moments flow. From the blonde brute grabbing under Laodike, to the game of cards that Anax is leading up and down the losing streaks. To the sea witch doing impressions of the fish, heaving in clear air against the scalding evaporation of alcohol. As men all are, doing the things men of the past have done before them, performing the rounds of strangeness, in an even stranger intoxication, glued into the strangers of this place. Celebrating and learning of foreign pathways of life that they may only occasionally partake in.

But not him. Every man and woman that has thrown themselves near, they find husk, absently nowhere and the weightless conversation feels a hint unnatural, eventually swaying the stranger to leave Varhas as spectating fool, silent and on his own.

For that is the exact word all of his teammates have called him when their roundabouts of revelry bring them near. A fool that is lying on his back at the highest peak reached so far. A few precious centimeters shorter than anyone else’s elation. A misaligned center that is not in the present moment.

His confused bodyweight, sits unevenly on the stool. The thoughts gather and Varhas lets them in.

The trick at Mecone, is made of liquid seas of alcohol and swimming pools full of liquor. The commoners are inordinate shapes without flames. Jorj, Otto and Hab, demigods, only half out of man’s reach. Playful Laodike, wise Zanuvia and a king, universes away, sitting close-by to common blood, yet so diluted by the toxic seas. To the fool, it seems between each human in this room, the only effect they actually have on another, their words are only droplets of error. From the infinite strings of things a commoner can say, being drunk makes their sentences no more interesting, or important, or even fortunately meaningful to a Claimant.

The trick at Mecone is about power between gods and mortals. A dynamic that leans towards violence and in this case, a social violence of celebrating gods, unleashed to party around mere slaves.

He feels a certainty, that whenever one of his teammates looks outside the window, it is as if they are hoping for the Krypteia to come in and break this joy to pieces.

And nobody thinks as such, except for him and is there someone that could ever be right next to him?

***

Varhas has been in this moment many times throughout his life. Self loathing plastered on everything. The worst company in good times, the best one at the bottom. He is certain soon enough, perhaps after the next drink, he is bound to hit that bottom, the recoil of his mood sending him bouncing upwards again.

The Claimant reaches out for his glass. The hand that performs this movement is covered in bandages. There is a stump at the root of his indexfinger. His middlefinger is half of what it used to be and so is his thumb. There is straining pain at his back. Whatever was severed in the Inverse Dream, it was remade in his real flesh. His upper back is swollen, stitched and bruised, screaming for the duration it takes him to pick up his drink.

The liquid goes down his throat and it seems to him that even swallowing is a conspiracy between his body and physical pain.

Even these thoughts are painful. But to Varhas there is still a thankful side to him. A depressive mood conceals him and right at this very thought, he understands to have hit rock bottom. His drooping face is hanging just a hint lower than last time he was here.

Right in the damp darkness and so at home.

In this place, there is personal awareness. Woven for his personal texture of his soul, more future-seeing than a high seer, more accurate than machine.

Then and there it happens.

A Claimant nears him. The stranger woman has taken grand and meticulous leaps of logic and symbolism, a gigantic plex of intrigue with all its subtleties is being presented to him in her form. The woman has memorized vast scripts, pathways of conversation with the sole purpose of luring Varhas. She has also been trained in extensive simulations of this very moment, by psychosomatic agencies that have their own interest in bending fate. Perhaps the woman is an agent, trained from birth to slit throats under all manners of light, whether that be daylight, or its reflection on a celestial moon, or even at the artificial pale glow of fluorescence. Perhaps this woman is a queen, whose kingdom got trampled by the waves of an earthly mantle, a perpetually-without-the-other-crowned-half mistress that is archetypal fear of her own, powerful, horrible and seductive, disguised as random occurrence. Perhaps even, Varhas finally thinks, in the black awareness that crowns him, she is not even a woman and all the worldly systems and groups that brought her here, miscalculated which gender he is fond of, by his insistence on flat-chested partners that kept their hair short.

Either way, the woman stands directly in-front of him. Her body blocks movement and sight. Varhas toys with the idea of being wrong. Perfect in appearance, all are a grasp away, happiness that can be brought to bed, or soul-bound by a ring. Perhaps she is truly a stranger and not a product of a humanity, stretched and grown to universal proportions. Perhaps she is not borne of the culture, that comes with galactic dominion, the millions of competing agendas and the perfection that presents itself after all is pitted against eachother. Perhaps she is not a calculated lure, but she is a human, down here with him.

His last to final thought before the woman speaks is thus. If he guesses the sentence before her lips part to place it in his ear, then he is right. Else, he is wrong and she is perhaps someone he has long been drawn closer to.

Varhas thinks of a mantle, folded a million times, its fabric of night itself and yet enough to fall over and cover him.

‘A million-fold, the mantle that covers night master Varhas.’

‘Go fuck yourself.’

He heaves all the pain to his left with a sway and he shatters the empty glass against the stranger.

An all out brawl begins.

***

Laodike is chasing after Varhas. The two giggle and tumble around the dawn of Mecone’s rolling hills. Over fields of wheat, golden waves are broken by the two Claimants rolling over eachother. Nothing happens for a second and then one of them gets up to run in a drunk locomotive motion where one step is never aligned to the next.

‘Halt Laodike. My only love is thee!’

‘Fuck off. Go find yourself a proper wooden board.’

‘Alas they! They think me longing for proper masts.’

‘Sail and seamen?’

‘Degenerate!’

‘Me? You! I’ve got my own, you’ve got yourself dirty accusations.’

‘Is my soul in the wrong for well endowed women at only the right places?’

‘Which are?’

‘The rearmost!’

The top of the hill is barren. Large rocks make for seats of granite, where dried moss and wild weeds have made it into a throne of bejeweled details.

Behind the two, the others follow. The three large men are huddled together, arm against shoulder, a woven form of three, with Hab in the middle and half full bottles at each free hand. They are worn and proud, of the microscopic chaos outside of the bar. They imagine themselves invincible against the small force of Krypteia that came to control the brawl that occurred few moments ago.

Further back, the remaining two, Anax and Zanuvia are the only ones remotely worried by this event. Perhaps, they think, it was their victory that allowed them to get away. Perhaps it was the Pantokrator himself turning a blind eye into their disregard for the Gigantes in their own planet. Or, all they did was insignificant in a planet preparing for war. These are perhaps the reasons why the brawl went into the streets and evolved into a contest of who could throw the most accurate rocks against the Krypteian patrol.

‘I am actually quite proud Hab hit them with that stone.’ Zanuvia says to Anax.

‘Dead center on the officer’s helmet.’

The two Claimants take their time. It appears that the Contestants ahead have broken their woven form and they are competing on who will reach the top of the hill first.

‘How are you feeling? Got IDP?’

‘Me? No. Do I slur my words?’ Replies Anax, his every word indeed slurred, from a dry mouth that flicks its tongue at every syllable.

‘What about Varhas?’

‘Him? Apart from a few missing fingers, he is actually doing great can’t you see? This is how all Claimants with Death sorcery act. All moody weirdos. All of them. Greater moods, greater strength.’

‘How much have you drunk?’

‘A lot. I may not look like it, but I always keep two feet on the ground.’ Says Anax, fingers point down. ‘I derive my powers from the old mother herself. And the name of this power is balance. I walk with my head looking forwards!’

‘Surely.’

Anax stumbles right as Zanuvia speaks.

Both of them reach the top after a while and at the great distance over the farmland, pillars of smoke have become the early morning sky. Great vertical clouds are slowly drifting sideways to dissipation. At odd intervals light flashes from within that haze and the grumbling sound of a rocket follows along the warm glow going upwards to the heavens.

‘Rockets?’

‘Hundreds of them.’

‘Where are they going?’

‘To war.’

‘Is that so Anax?’

‘To some, our match was nothing but a technological exhibition. Show the world how good an alloy can protect its wearer. Show the world whether the spear is stronger than the shield. Show them if the war is to be won with ease, or perhaps show those covered in Orichalcum that their children will return home alive from this war.

Zanuvia stops to think a moment. She turns away from the rockets and focuses her words to Anax.

‘Is it on that planet we were supposed to reach, but never did? Sicela? The one spaceships skipped glimpsing through its orbit and instead went through to Nidavangr?’

‘I think so. Civil war often invites third parties for their own interest. I know of no other war currently ongoing, bar ritualistic warfare on other savage planets.’

‘Horrible. What horror, parts of themselves sent away forever.’

‘Aye. Younglings, they are to return to their mothers holding their gleaming shields, or laid dead on top of them.’

Zanuvia distresses at the image. Her face saddens when looking at Anax and the decay of his words, aimed at her perhaps with accurate intent. The man understands, but his exterior betrays no compassion, one that he should have perhaps expressed instead.

‘Stone-faced as ever.’

‘Excuse my... Directness.’

‘Your bluntness. It is no reason to be cruel. I did as you ordered me and here you a are, cold, in a moment of great joy.’

‘We can talk about this later. Let us enjoy the moment.’

‘We will talk about it now. That black feather has distinct, Semazeni, whirling woven patterns. Under the microscopic lens, I believe it is a fabrication of Mukal Dynastextyl.’

‘That is exactly how it is Zanuvia.’

‘Meaning? Who else knows where the feather was fabricated?’

‘Me and Varhas.’

‘What is this then? Why did I go to the Krypteia?’

‘To make sure that it is not you who fabricated this object. Were you a spy, there would be no such straight answer from you. Perhaps you would have lied, perhaps the answer would not be so direct.’

‘Perhaps not.’

‘And yet our suspicions never occurred to you.’

Zanuvia is visibly flustered, somewhere between this talk of espionage, or the tiring distance that they walked. The old woman stops for a breather and she speaks.

‘When did you find out? Was it true when you said that you found this feather on the banquet? Was it true that you stood over it so no other Claimant may see it and get hints into Varhas’ magic?’

‘It was.’

‘And you suspected me of all people?’

‘Your motive for the Contest appears to be the most easily exploited. You need money and espionage is the easiest path to that end. Your daughter is young and frivolous, seemingly unbound by the crippling necessity for money. There aren’t many things one could offer Laodike.’

‘And you think I brought her out of my loins this way? She sees no value in bribery because I taught her so. Anax, you have no children, have you?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Well then, mark these words. I love my husband and I would go to extreme debt, devaluing my quality of life, inviting misfortune forever if it meant more time with him. However, when little versions of you, exist in foreign bodies that you call your offspring, only then you will discover how far you would go to protect them. I cannot betray you not because I have need for money, but because I fear of what can happen to Laodike. I do no espionage work anymore because I am well aware of what invisible knives this invites in the dark and of the puddles of Bonemelter that await you right outside of your home’

As soon as Zanuvia mentions the invisible knives and the puddles of Bonemelter, the two Claimants freeze in place. The images are horrifying, so much so that their faces solemnly frown in focus.

‘Who else do you suspect?’

‘There is only one left. Voliphoe. That is why she is not here with us.’

‘But she is a Commoner. You suspect she is a Claimant playing a role?’

‘These things happen.’

‘But I have not witnessed her doing anything peculiar.’

‘You haven’t but Varhas has. Back in Nidavangr, when his sister said that weird thing about the cat’s spirit and his nephew. All the Commoners among us found it funny. The rest of us thought about it. Didn’t you see her reaction? Think about it. Who else could stick black feathers in someone’s clothes. I bet she did just that in Ulm. She stuck them some place where Jorj might search and then that very same feather would fall someplace where many could see it.

***

At the top of the hill, the team gathers to watch the pillars light up the morning sky.

Above, in the dome of pale, the receding stars become one with the sunlight. Clusters remain there, rotating along to the planet, in characteristic orange and ultraviolet specks of Orichalcum.

Battleships and frigates, a fleet gathers above Mecone. To the people versed in the history of the planet, this is just another display of their might. Not of their industrial or mineral capacity, but of a display domination and its funneling wealth. For this planet was not rich. But it was capable in conquest and suppression. All things here were provided by enslaved populations or in the rarest of cases, private organizations such as Orichalcum, who also work in some capacity of turning work and misery into bulletproof matter.

Varhas and Laodike sit on the barren dirt. The boulder on their backs provides a good place to lean on and watch the spectacle. Two hands are stretching to the sky. The dome and its clouds move in-between the missing digits and the woman watches the maimed man’s hands.

‘They are all leaving.’ Says Laodike.

‘Aye. Safe travels all. Good riddance. War is not our domain.’

‘Still. I cannot help but think that perhaps now is a chance.’

‘A chance?’

‘For the slaves. To revolt.’

‘I’d not tangle myself with such thoughts if I were you.’

‘If I were you. Is that a blood magic you speak of Varhas?’

‘Ew. Not me, not never. We have shown the universe in a little pyramid arena that the shield is mightier than the spear! We won’t have to care about debt anymore. That is of utmost importance! All triremes and galleys and frigates, Orichalcum covered. How many great gains has the company made, selling bulletproof ships? How much more credit can they funnel to themselves, with contracts for giants? That is, the power of divining events through the Immaterial Contest!’

‘Surely. Whatever you say Varhas.’ Speaks Laodike in a flat tone. ‘I’m gone.’

Otto appears in the distance. Alone, his presence invites Laodike to his side and as the young Claimant leaves, Varhas is eager to the silence. Whole of mind, the man watches as the artificial constellations above, are going to their doom. For as much as that Kingmaker victory displayed many things to the universe, as all events in reality, there was room for error, room for unwritten, misunderstood details that would always sway the course of history elsewhere.

Variables, entangled in-between his missing fingers.

Chapter 19

Philosophy

The buildings of Arhoscephale directly contrast those of Mecone. What should be brutal architecture, reductive to the human spirit by sheer mass, numbing to one’s mind by aggressive nothingness, it all is instead grandeur, full of natural movements and shapes.

One such building is the spaceport of Arhoscephale. For every one-hundred meter vertical wall, a waterfall flows to its side creating a misty lake that flows beneath the ground floor. The evaporation, lazily passes around the many people, creating an atmosphere of gray humidity that is broken through by the clear, penetrating messages on crystal screens of arrivals and departures. In other places, lush brush, short dry trees and limestone boulders obscure and separate different parts of the port. A natural and misty silence covers all. When a new announcement is made, the voice that resounds through the white haze and gray distance is a soft and articulate flow of words.

Sofia is waiting on the thirty-third cell. A loosely separated block of high vertical space defined only by projected light-barriers that are beamed downwards from the ceiling. Among the people waiting there, the many Arhoscephaleans make up a small crowd of twelve, all eagerly trying to peek through the mist to find the new arrivals, their friends or family and welcome them to the planet.

When the mist parts and the large shapes of Contestants near, wreathed in their damning silence of the gray, the many people retreat a few steps. Only Sofia remains, outweighed in place by her eagerness to see old friend.

When Varhas reveals himself, Sofia moves closer to the barrier of light and her hands grab his missing fingers. Her chubby fingers interlock with his severed ones, the verve within her supple flesh appears pink, flustered. The two Claimants stare at eachother for a moment and then Varhas completes their introductions.

Baggage in hand, the team exits the spaceport. Still concealed in the mists, Otto leans to Laodike and he whispers to her ear.

‘Who in their right mind keeps good relations with an ex?’

***

On humane, cordial architecture, it seems only appropriate that uniform design is everywhere. So is, the rest of the planet of Arhoscephale. Either on the shipyards, the clothing districts, the agricultural sectors, the many squares and interconnected cities and towns, there follows along, form and function of space in marble and fine clay. Streets and train tracks, weave around the impassable mountains and in the long valleys, they follow along to streams and short forests with non-invasive form, as close as possible to being usable and functional.

This is a planet of the “longest way around”. And yet, as good design has it, the “shortest way home” is also bare minimum and equally important requirement.

The team rests after delivering their baggage to their town house. A two-floor family house of whitewashed walls and square, beech wooden windows, fenced in by iron and oleander. In some parts a garden overflows with arching greenery that looks as the mane of a dryad, speckled in tiny bells of flowers. In other parts the garden stands tall to rosebushes of white and young olive trees that lazily, if ever, grow taller than a person.

The townhouse is separated into three buildings. The main building of two floors a small warehouse and an once occupied stable. A traditional layout is as such, for whatever family occupies the place, they must do their earnest share of chores here, before they can enjoy coffee on the lone iron table of swirling legs.

Everyone except for Anax sleeps in the main building. He is content sleeping instead on a bed at the empty stable.

Over the past two days an infinitesimal web of intrigue has been carefully crafted in the main building. Varhas, Anax and Zanuvia, with mundane movements and actions, they scry over every action of Voliphoe and listen to every hushed or loud sound that she makes. Through careful planning, there is always a Claimant on one of the neighboring rooms where she and Jorj reside.

As expected, Voliphoe is betrayed only by her competence. She is simply too aware, as any Claimant would be. Nothing she says gives hints of whom she is working for, or the purpose of her infiltration.

Later in a day, for this same reason, Varhas, Zanuvia, Anax and Sofia gather far away from the townhouse. In a coffee shop overlooking a town square, this place is open, somewhere between apartment blocks and a park. There is a greater warmth here, perhaps listening to this conversation.

‘The stress will eventually get to her. But we probably need months to start seeing her crack. I suggest you bring in devices to spy on her through the Inverse Dream.’ Says Sofia, one hand tapping on the glass surface of the table, the other underneath, resting on a knee belonging to Varhas.

Anax takes a breath and speaks. ‘Whatever our options, she is part of our team, no matter her allegiances. We may anger whoever influences her if we drive her out with violence. Considering the feather and its signature design, at least one corporation rests behind her. Textile conglomerates have resources to spend.’

‘It is too early to make a decision. Sofia’s suggestion seems safe enough.’ Says Varhas.

‘Middle paths between events showcase weakness. You are being cautious when you should be extreme. I too advise caution do not get me wrong, but be aware of a looming choice nevertheless as it may force your hand.’ Replies Anax. With both hands, he trembles to bring the clay teacup to his mouth.

Varhas notices the tremor. The Claimant thinks it is perhaps a lapse in his cerebral fitness, a byproduct of their latest match. ‘I need something more before I speak to her. There is the option of being honest with what we know and recruiting her. An extra Claimant would not hurt. We could find another Contestant and have a another pair in reserve.’

Both Zanuvia and Sofia part themselves to speak. Then Sofia pauses giving word to the older woman. ‘That window might be closing soon.’

Sofia speaks right after Zanuvia. ‘I was about to say the same.’

‘You both believe the Announcement of Colors is nearing?’ Anax asks.

‘Yes. If not on this planet, then in our next stop we will be assigned a color. So feels true. We cannot be less than four pairs of Contestants and Claimants by that time, or we will not compete in the finals.’ Zanuvia speaks and she looks towards Sofia. She in turn smiles widely at the old woman, naturally uneven teeth that makes her into a lazy girl of auburn curls, falling on a round shape broken by a hawk’s nose.

Momentarily, Zanuvia is wrestled away in the girl’s smile. She imagines mere hint, of young men carried off in their injuries and the plain girl a healer, nursing the wounded, appearing as the most beautiful face if only in those moments of vast suffering. She understands, in a moment such as this, they are very fortunate to be in her presence.

Anax begins a rehearsed, monotone string of words. ‘An accurate assessment, or instinct. If one takes the wide image of what is currently happening in the universe, it is only rational that the qualifiers are ending soon. As we are all aware, every match of the Contest carries narrative meaning. An invasion was launched on the whim of technological superiority, our latest match showcasing the supremacy of a planet dressed in gleaming armaments. It is expected that more meaning is stacked on-top of the next matches and as such, that the Contest is concluding soon, deciding the course of even more important events.’

Zanuvia replies, all the while staring into Anax, trying to erode the man’s solid exterior and peek into his thoughts. ‘Cursed, to think mere decision of an invasion is not taken at the finals of the Contest instead. What other more important decisions are there to be decided at the finals or semi-finals? Is the war to escalate by that time?’

‘Most likely, it is to happen as you fear so.’ Replies Sofia.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Last match that happened here, has also set a few things in motion.’

‘Which match? Who?’

‘Nebuzza’s team versus an Abyssian host. Instagib, rifles only and their Claimants could help via helmets and head implants. You should watch a replay. I think it happened at the same time as your Kingmaker match. One a slugfest, the other, a technical dance. Most first citizens said the same thing. The thinking man’s choice was the game on Arhoscephale, instead of whatever brutal, barbarian game you played on Mecone.”

‘And?’

‘Next day, there were oratory games on the Pagos. A great decision was discussed among the first citizens and twenty-thousand ships left orbit. A peacekeeping expedition on the planet of Sicela.’

***

Sofia lives in squalor and nothing has changed since Varhas last came into her apartment. The place is dank in low natural light, poking through the apartment block’s common air well, where the backsides of all balconies are stacked on-top of another. Hunter’s robes are hanging from every possible angle, broad of leaves, dark green, thriving in dim and humid places.

The floor is dirty, with black dirt stuck in-between boards. Wooden furniture is occupied either by potted plant or wool pillow and on the side of the room is a Tele-Stim assortment infront of a wide sofa. The sofa appears torn and without detail, yet, as Varhas knows, it is one of the most comfortable places to lay in.

The kitchen is as he remembers it. Somewhere in the back, is her bedroom where many have lived healing experiences and moments where easy breath washes away all stress.

‘Four years, Varhas?’ Sofia speaks as she leans for a kiss.

He instead keeps a small distance between the two and circles around her, sitting on the sofa’s edge, arched forwards towards the Tele-Stim devices. ‘I am not here for sex.’ He then lifts his maimed hand to point at the screen.

‘What about tea?’ The woman asks and the man stares her down, fully aware that she is still insisting on sex, in underhanded, non-consensual ways perhaps. ‘Fine, fine then. More for me and my date. Hurry up then, before he gets here.’

Varhas shakes his head. The woman goes into the kitchen for a minute and then she comes back.

Sofia speaks with sly sarcasm in her voice and then she falls on the sofa. ‘Anytime my dear little crow.’ Dust and residue fly into the air. Mundane chemicals and other potent, nose-assaulting scents fill the air. She drinks the tea with relish and with a lethargic half-there expression, her face melts into an uneven easy entry into the Inverse Dream.

Varhas follows her, keeping his uncomfortable stance. He lapses rapidly in concentration.

The Tele-Stim system boots up as the two Claimants access it. Even though unnecessary, the manifold colors and imperceptive sounds begin to seep across the floorboards of the room. The shadows become long and then their length reduces, to width that curves around the two humans. Between actual stimuli and unreal fantasy, reality bends to an intoxicating barrier, skipping along digital dreams. There is a rhythm to this skip, lapses so small that sound as a continuous press, a deep bass that fills the room.

After a while, the many curved shapes around the two have become a much re-winded and replayed spectacle of that match Sofia described recently on Arhoscephale. The two have gone over details and the spectacle itself and Varhas exits the Tele-Stim hallucinations by standing up.

Sofia remains in the Inverse Dream for a couple more minutes and Varhas spends these moments staring back at her idle form and the floorboards underneath. The light from the machine only curves for her and underfoot his body makes shadow, but he instead is covered in its unnatural light, part of the spectacle superimposed into his clothes.

Varhas parts the silence. ‘This is worrying Sofia.’ The woman returns to her senses and she eyes the man ahead of her with renewed zeal. ‘Why are you worried? Come to the bedroom’ She struggles to get up. A slow and heavy force moves her body.

Her hands struggle to find his, but she manages to pull Varhas inside of her bedroom where the atmosphere is even heavier and their many shared moments of the past, rush at them with surrendered weight.

The dripping length and supple flesh, beckon man and woman near, as the pillows on her unmade sheets appear woven with new stories.

And in truth, without lying to himself, Varhas imagines the time they could spend, speaking of themselves one on top of the other, in drug induced mornings where the hours go by in insomniac toil. Sex, to laying there and back again, reduced to machines of flesh, whose only purpose is to consume chemistry and water, becoming but endless work to please themselves and the other, whose only purpose is to lay and heal, wounds unreal and made of silence.

To that, Varhas sends the stream of thought away. The next thought that occurs is veiled and cold. It holds the voice of his sister, asking him a question.

He stops Sofia. Both sit on the floor.

Between the two stands her small respawning grafting pod. The device is a forest of needles, microscopic sprayers and flesh projectors, cupped all in circular base of metal, a wide and heavy curved block that contains circuits of logic and layered detail where they can both dive into its Inverse Dream.

Before any of them begin the healing process where flesh is grafted onto flesh and soul is woven back together, both Claimants speak at the same time but only one completes his sentence.

‘Remember when...’

‘You used to go out bare-chested each time the delivery man arrived at our door. If only one knows how angry that made me.’

‘You are the most evil person I know. Do you know that?’

‘Point me to one evil action I have done.’ Varhas says and Sofia instantly remembers.

‘None maybe. But all who know you are certain that inside that soul, that source where your thoughts make shade, there is no good.’

‘Actions define me. There is no weight to thoughts. There is no mass to good and evil. No substance.’

‘Not wholly Varhas. Parts of us are thoughts and even these streams of neural current, they too have infinitesimal weight, almost zero but not quite nothing. When you hate, you do so in extreme ways. Accurate and destructive, never-wrong words you use to hurt.’

‘I do not. I’ve never spoken as you say.’ Varhas speaks, in a strained tone. He too remembers.

The woman continues through his words.

‘It is as if, you gather malice, all the time and then you break at uneven moments, the gathered foulness just compresses and spews out instantly slaying everything that might happen to stand there. Four years ago, do you remember what was the last thing you told me before leaving?’

Varhas tries to sway the memory away, but instead, the image manifests as her face, contorting with obscene pain. Harmed at the very source of all pure things within her, he imagined back then, along with her real face, a blackened ray of foulness cutting across her innocence, her lust for life, her beckoning ability to heal others.

‘You said...’ She continues and her face appears shattered. ‘...that I was a disgusting error, some misaligned piece of ugly flesh, that came out of my mother to leech onto whoever laid in bed with me. You called me a maggot, whose teeth are my very kindness, my bloating body filling with blood and sustenance as I bring around new hosts every night to begin this degenerate cycle anew.’

‘That really hurt Varhas.’ Continues the woman without a hint of remorse in her voice, a speck of emotion, in cold, flattening, passing life, where all actions result in no meaningful changes. And just like that, Varhas will speak an unexpected string of three words. Once she listens to them, tears stream down her face. And whenever her teardrops fall on his missing fingers, the Inverse Dream creates. And unique cells engraved with his name begin to stitch themselves together.

Chapter 20

Lesser Horrors

The surveillance of Voliphoe continues over the next week. In order to shorten the time needed for Varhas’ decision, the team has imported a few devices that have been placed all over the town house.

Whether these devices are Tele-Stim systems, old consoles where Contestants can spend some time training their hand-eye coordination, or stimuli deprivation pods and other various devices for Claimant to Claimant contact training, all are accessible via the Inverse Dream. Commoners can use these devices as well, through their interface, buttons, switches and other physical means, but Claimants only need to think, or feel a certain way to enjoy some hidden, universal function in all machines.

This accessibility puts an extra strain to a Claimant that should not be using the Inverse Dream. At least to Voliphoe, this is how it all feels, hungry for the world she knows best, but constantly starved as her role demands it.

A quick call to Orichalcum upper brass confirms to Varhas that he has chosen the right path. With a careful collection of evidence, perhaps the potential of a double agent, Voliphoe appears as a great asset that can be exploited.

The only one to comfort her is Jorj. The Contestant listen to her woes, but the woman speaks in generalities that make it impossible for him to put two and two together. His only solution is to try and talk to Varhas or the other Claimants to plead her general case of discomfort. They in turn, reassure Jorj that it is for their best interest to lay low in the town house and they lie about their movements and their schedule.

The slow movement of these weeks is grinding only one person down. Just before Voliphoe breaks, a movement is made from outside forces and an obscene resolution forces itself upon the townhouse.

***

The circumstances are as such, that the Inverse Dream has enough security on its own to divert and help combat Claimants that enter with aggressive purposes. Normal circumstances and circumstances planned out by corporation and Claimant alike, any and all devices are secure, error-proof environments of relative safety.

This is achieved in many ways. Currently there are three layers of protection active on the town house.

The first layer are the Claimants themselves. Whether it is an experienced Claimant such as Varhas, or a newbie such as Laodike, it is widely considered a good habit to create small details on all Inverse Dreams. Whether these details are small hidden notes for navigation, or fantastical weapons, this is the simplest form of defense. Such details are applied and performed again and again with every new entry and passage of time. Eventually this amounts to a layer of security that constantly develops little by little over time, creating a vastly different environment of subconscious and personal familiarity.

In the case of armors worn by Contestants, this layer is often developed beforehand by the manufacturers.

The second layer is provided by either security contractors, either corporations or freelancers, depending on the contract. In this case, the town house complex is protected by a force of three other Claimants located in the local branch of Orichalcum corporation. These three Claimants are trained as normal security personnel performing tight regulatory checks in these machines. Faceless and focused on Claimant to Claimant battle, their magic is sought after for its raw destructive power, but also, the ability to patrol and arrive quickly to where their services are required.

This layer focuses both on intrusions by other Claimants and also horrors.

The last protection is a planetary dominion provided by the local Pantokrator. A common, planetary-wide ruleset of fairness that is specialized to the Pantokrator’s character and culture. Usually, this protection allows for Claimants to do with as they please and the instances where this set of rules actively stops murders, espionage or violence, are rare, unless they obey greater events, such as the Contest.

This layer instead focuses on cosmic horrors. Bygone, twisted thoughtstreams that exploit archetypes and the subconscious, artificial measurement of might within the Inverse Dream.

For every Pantokrator understands what the Inverse Dream is. The abstraction measures minds against eachother purely on the fantasies that they create. But there are, as in all human-made systems, exploits about what can and might happen. For the Inverse Dream understands that a man born in flames, should cast them upon the other. The Inverse Dream can also accurately understand anyone’s pain and limits. But the Inverse Dream also understands how one might manufacture the flesh of a man under extreme gravitational pull, or by invasive chemistry, maligned growth and metal intrusions, to create thoughtstreams tormented in pockets of many a millennia passed over in a day’s length. To abuse the sanctity of a mind. To stretch its natural flow of thought and tie it into closed loops of wanton destruction. The variety of such destruction, as diverse, as mindless or ingenious as its master’s wishes. The only known ways against horrors are either calling loudly to the local Pantokrator or knowing some of these horrors by their categorized name and hoping that one’s strength is serviceable in either fight or flight.

These are well known to Pantokrators and these options are available to the underlying logic of the Inverse Dream in the shape of horrors.

***

Water-basin full and contained in white ceramic, Laodike’s Inverse Dream is a room for rest in humid respiration. Here, there are many as such, clay, stone containers and few other metallic objects laid about. One such object is a mirror, the thin silver, becoming a greener texture on top of its reflection and Laodike spends what moments, personal and divining of the future, on this shorelit room of basins, sitting stones and the singular, celestial mirror amidst the many waters.

In vast headspace, Laodike is merely there, laying across the rocks, letting the thoughts pass by, in calm, unordered swirl.

Whenever her hand touches water, she stares at the translucent wave that reminds her of the many warnings that the sea witch once gave. Her mother is ever present. Her regrets about the man she married annoy Laodike and she questions solemnly if she is only repeating the same mistakes.

When she questions her closeness to Otto, water calls to water, but she turns away from being pulled towards Zanuvia. Her eyes turn away from the sea and into the Astral mirror.

Away and into the mirror, her reflection does not manifest until she blinks anew.

This lapse of reality shakes her flowing calm. The woman stands up, while her reflection on the mirror follows to her movement. The Claimant is aware that errors in the Inverse Dream can happen, but if they do, they are usually following a pattern, or they have a reason to occur. If the machine hosting the Inverse Dream is damaged, it would make sense that the mirror stopped working even for a second.

The room is otherwise normal however. The white or black stones, the light, the water and its surface tension are as they should be. Their finest details of physics are aligned to an accurate reflection of reality. The rocks glisten, the air is heavy and the clouded sunlight is flickering only at its source, letting the far away clouds remain in faded radiance.

But then the mirror manifests another error. This time the reflection on the silver surface is normal. But a mismatch of order manifests and speaks.

The third error occurs deeper in her. One as such, that passes imperceptive to a Claimant actively searching for it. Laodike does not understand that the rising of her worry is manipulated, as such, to conceal itself within the stream of thoughts she is wrestling with at the moment.

Within the mirror is a lesser horror, the shape of which is folded mirror within mirror, world of its own that can do no more than create its shape identical to the world around it. And yet, as all maligned beings, misaligned at such infinitesimal detail, it is there, but not quite true. All it copies is false.

Slowly, as Laodike focuses at the silver surface of the mirror, the lesser horror manifests in molecule thin, assaulting radiant lines that define it. This pattern makes of a winged, translucent-textured maw of hooked barbs whose uniformity breaks by deep holes that become darker. Born by an assault of light on her open eyes, chromatic, purple bruises manifest directly at Laodike’s sight. As the pain begins to boil from within her emotional response, Laodike closes her eyes.

The lesser horror is there, superimposed to her retinas. Laodike turns away, but that does nothing to stop the rising discomfort.

She steps backwards and in her erratic retreat, few water-basins are split. Between plea, command to herself to calm down and the familiar sound of spilling water, Laodike opens her eyes and the manifestation of pain initially cracks and then dissipates.

As that manifestation cracks, so does her body. From her left cheek to her clavicle, the skin breaks. The injury appears as a misalignment of solid matter that is dripping with blood. No bones are broken, no muscles or nerves are torn, but the pain returns in redoubled intensity with her movements. Such as is, that ever stretchy her flesh, is now full of jagged edges that dig in at every change and every heartthrob.

As the first drops of her blood mixes with the wet pebble, wild sea-waves begin to churn in the distance.

With minimal, fingertip movement she commands water to break the mirror. One water-basin explodes under the sudden force of a jet stream going out and into the silver surface.

The mirror shatters. Throughout all the broken pieces, the horror multiplies in their falling movement. Before Laodike registers the hundreds of new assaults, she closes her eyes and concentrates on using Blink to get as far away as possible. Even at that instantaneous lapse away from the mirror, the registry of light has struck her eyes. Now, whenever she closes them, there is that superimposed shape of the lesser horror and all around it are refractions of the lesser horror taking up a wider place within her sight.

The emotional turmoil begins anew. The already existing pain is enough to make Laodike collapse. That turmoil looms ever nearer and her emotions become sharp, accurate portraits of variables, rapidly advancing her mind to inhuman territories full of vast calculation. The thin stretch of pinpoint accuracy, human mind made to watch, particles and currents as they describe nothing but final, intimate moments, consumption of hope and feasting on dreams. A full understanding is given to Laodike, without cease, as if the object that is casting this attack, is nothing but a creature, born with no ability to deviate from its perfect task. Said task, inserted into her mind, causing it to accelerate in speeds beyond of what the mind can stand.

Laodike cannot resist this mental attack. Her body cracks more and more as she curls in a fetal position over shallow water. A torrent of blood dissolves around her folded arms and her mind is wrestled so, that there is no exit manifesting in her thinking.

Laodike feels the edges of her body tingle, the skin becoming cold. In a tiny lapse of luck, a random, foreign string of thought reassures her however. The ripples under her body are of an easier flow. It seems to her, that the lazy, diluting of her blood, of the pure waters and the comfort that her laying body has, they manifest a slowness. A calm washes over all. Her focus goes closer to herself, as she draws breath in and out.

The sea arrives. A salty ripple passes over her forehead and her nose. The scent is of home and Laodike makes the lazy effort to breathe it all in and out. Again and again until someone else pulls her away from the Inverse Dream.

***

Varhas arrives to the room Zanuvia should be in. Instead, at the midst of the sea worn, cloud-lit beach of round pebbles, a Maw Horror is crawling.

The horror is consuming the ground, its lower jaw is stuck across the earth and it heaves pebbles into itself in a plowing motion. Its mouth is a vastness, the hole of a universe of malignant space between all objects. The horror is of stubby short legs that connect to the maw, two severed arms at the shoulder, self consumed limbs and tentacles on its back that instinctively turn to Varhas. The texture of its skin is made in leathery green and there is an underlayer of mineral luster, the shine of which is both iron and basalt, leather, sand and Orichalcum, Blacksteel and even Gray Shielding, all chaotically blended together.

Varhas is aware, that striking a Maw Horror is only a result of blind luck. Nobody can know, whether the patch of flesh they strike, is going to be as soft as cotton, or as impenetrable as the Gray Shielding around a Contestant’s brain.

The other thing he is aware of, is that the injuries of its maw, any limb eaten by this horror, they are horrendously replicated in the real world, in such invasive cerebral foulness, that no healer can undo their harm. Every replacement of lost limbs from Maw Horrors fails, whether they are cybernetic or grafted flesh. Either cloned flesh or machine, the new hand, would be refused both in the psychology and biology of the person that has suffered its experience.

Varhas speaks to himself a reminder. ‘Such as if it is written, that where there is no soul, there may be nothing to remake it onto life.’

As soon as he finishes, Anax joins besides him and he wastes no moment to act. With a strong step and twist of his leg, pebbles swarm against the horror. The cackle is deafening, of stone striking midair against stone and strong flesh. In certain places, lead bullets rise from under the coast and they too strike hard against the ill-green horror.

The maw is barely affected as it stands up. The only change to its form is that it appears to breathe from the gaping mouth and that the tentacles on its back move with purpose.

Varhas puts both hands together. His fingers are whole again and he signals his magic forth. Two skeletal forms rise from the ground. These two skeletons are broader than usual, with round shields and axes, armored in chainmail, padded vests and caps. Then, he summons a long lance through the pebbles. The barred lance is two and a half meters tall. Its oak shaft is wide so that it bends only slightly and the tip houses a cold shimmer that appears as a cold stiffening, a magical aura that is only visible in the imperfections of the steel.

The lance is given to one of the skeletons who approaches the horror once the cyclone of stones stops. As a pair, one skeleton remains closer to the horror, parrying and blocking its tentacles and the other carefully lunges over, trying to strike at either the short legs or the edges of the maw. Simple weapons do not harm the horror, but a singular thrust of the lance digs deep. The horror does not respond to injury however.

The maw continues to breathe. The atmosphere becomes slightly consumed.

Varhas and Anax remain behind the two skeletons. Anax turns their bones into iron for extra protection with his Earth magic. Meanwhile, Varhas repeatedly tries to Mind Burn the horror, only to find all of his efforts wasted in a continuous effort to sever its strands of thought. He understands, that whence mind on man is as a river, so are horrors too, but their banks are made of cement, square, unnatural irrigation ditches, molded to complete immovability where all thought is a gushing torrent.

The fight continues as such with no clear advantage. A few minutes pass in the warped flow of time in the Inverse Dream. The air becomes lighter.

Fatigue begins to weigh on both Claimants. There is a lack of oxygen in the air and Varhas begins to swirl the winds towards their direction, so that they may breathe easier. The spell however comes after a long chain of other spells and the exertion is enough to make him lose balance and fall on his knees.

Varhas becomes touched by delirium as the fatigue sets in and he remains fallen, collecting his thoughts. Anax tries to cautiously assess the situation. In these mistakes of attention, neither Claimant sees one of the tentacles that is buried deep into the ground.

The other end of the horror’s appendage lunges from behind. Pebbles part and stone breaks as it runs through Anax. The Claimant stands a moment with the tentacle buried deep into his back. The tentacle struggles to exit from his torso as the man has hardened his flesh in Earth magic. Then, he turns to grab the squirming appendage, pulling it out and holding it in place, less so with force and more so with the weight of his own body. Anax bleeds.

Two skeletons hold enough for Varhas to rise anew. The air however becomes once again consumed by the maw. The oxygen is sparse again and all breath drawn is feeble and empty.

The worsening situation is made even more so, with the arrival of another lesser horror. Freshly bloodied, this one has consumed life. Zanuvia’s room of the beach and the sea waves, is violated by a tide of red. This flowing pump of flesh that is let outside of the confines of skin, merges, swirls and separates from the foamy waves, rising as a pillar. Inside of this moving column, the body of a woman is misaligned and grotesquely open. Both Claimants see the body, but more so, the long black hair, straight and wet, floating inside of this new lesser horror.

The Gore Tide rises and moves against the skeletons. Mere presence brings terror to the moment and the immaterial world becomes gloom and doom of the two Claimants as one of them accepts his fate.

In that earnest despair, the two of them pray. In hope, comes twinfold true protection as either Claimant makes a personal plea. Varhas prays for Anax to live, in quiet surrender. Anax prays for himself, a litany of metal, of man’s spirit and strength.

Someone arrives.

Greaves are heard, clacking and grinding on pebbles as they approach, of a man whom wields earth and its bounty for the sole purpose of hunting horrors. His walk is misaligned, that of a cripple. His full-body armor is of Orichalcum, a panoply of complete discomfort in thick and crude plates. Varhas witnesses his neckguard, a circular, engraved cannon-hole where his maimed head pokes out. The whiteness of his pupils holds three irises each, arrayed in equal, triangular distance from eachother. One pair of irises is blue, the other brown and the last one hazel and with each blink of the man’s eyelids, his irises swap around. This man has no lips, and his mouth is left as bare tooth and red gums.

Anax knows the Horror Hunter by his legend. A sacred warrior of a faith imported far away from Arhoscephale. A manifestation of an ancient war in Illion, at the surface of a bright star, bound to mortal body in deep prisons within some corporation. A man whose lips are pulled out by his own fingers, teeth and gums laid bare out in the open, to a straining expression. Six self-witnessing eyes, exposed to the stubborn elements of human malice, pride and duty.

With a wave of his hand, all the magic within the room unravels. The skeletons fall as useless bones and what horrible fascination the horrors brought into the Inverse Dream, it seeps away as the Hunter draws his double-headed axe of many colours. The Maw Horror lunges for Varhas, whereas the Gore Tide remains there growing in size.

The gravity shifts. All things, except for the Gore Tide begin to be attracted towards the Hunter. Varhas and Anax slide along with the many pebbles that shift beneath the Hunter and create a mound underneath him. The Maw Horror is drawn faster. It sprints and pulls with its tentacles to accelerate faster against the Hunter. Before the Maw crashes into him, his Orichalcum, golden fist pummels the Horror from above in a hammering motion. The force of the blow creates a deafening clap that ruptures the eardrums of everyone in the vicinity. For Varhas and Anax, the world becomes muted, but the Hunter’s axe makes sound as it rises for the second blow.

This sound is a grinding, horrible cackle of a razed city, of an earthquake violating earth, breaking apart in the many tectonic plates that move against eachother. There is maternal wailing in the distance, a howling silence before the axe connects to the horror and once the blow injures the green flesh of the Maw, there is only the sound of pebbles, constantly granulating and turning to finer sand.

The maw opens up and the vastness within spills outwards in a radiance that creates holes in the fantasy. Still, the maw stands, the tentacles thrash and strike against the Hunter, glancing against his armor.

When the Gore Tide grows into a bigger mass, it begins to flow against the two Claimants. As it flows to consume them, a radiant beam of light concentrates against it from beyond. Its temperature begins to increase, the blood boils, the sand and pebbles around the Gore Tide become glass, piercing in their heated glow.

From beyond, the might of Arhoscephale arrives as a woman of many arms, riding winged beast and wielding forty weapons and a sphere. A sacred champion of the faith descends, will of Pantokrator given form, a shadow in the backdrop of light. She and her winged horse crash towards the earth and splatters the liquid horror.

Varhas blinks to the spectacle. The bits and pieces of the horror remain airborne and stopped in motion. Some of these blobs are a few centimeters away from him and it appears that the only thing keeping them as such, is but the hundred-handed rider ahead, on her white stalion of wings. All of their limbs are stretched outwards, wings, hands and even hooves. Time stops and the woman of a hundred hands dismounts calmly to gather the pieces of the Gore Tide. One by one, her many hands collect the gore and gather it in a Tartarean sphere.

***

The horror assault ends. All the while, in the real world, Jorj and Hab are sitting idle of mind, playing boardgames in the courtyard, in the little world of the two iron chairs and the table.

From the many machines arrayed around the townhouse, one can faintly hear a choir, slowly whispering blessed words, out into the open.

Chapter 21

Recuperation

The blessed whispering breaks soon after.

Jorj sees Varhas run through the courtyard in a panicked sprint. He tries to follow the Claimant into the main building, but Anax falls directly into his two legs, grabbing them as tightly as possible, grounding the large Contestant there.

Voliphoe has already tried in her best efforts to mirror the damage done to her through the Inverse Dream. To that end, she has already taken her life. When Varhas enters her room, the scene is a grotesque sight mixed with an artistic uniqueness describing the dead woman’s plight as best as she could have mustered. The sight describes not only her, but the malice of being consumed by a horror. Frightening, intimate, of blackened wet and bloodcurled hair, left out dead and dreaming, open eyes and stiffened flesh, the image forces Varhas to close the door right after witnessing the horrifying image.

With his back on the room, the Claimant remains there, drawing breath that is disgusting in its every molecule. The man shrinks into himself as his fingertips dig into his arms.

***

Ten minutes later, armed Arhoscephalean hoplites arrive. Twenty-five minutes later an Arhoscephalean host of a priest and a sacred warrior along with their servants arrive with a cleaning crew following closely behind them. The hoplites quarantine the area around the townhouse. The cleaners bag Voliphoe, clean the room and afterwards expunge themselves of the memories. The sacred warrior commences continuous Inverse Dream entries to the affected machines and the priest begins investigating.

Lost in a trance, the priest speaks on behalf of the Pantokrator. His voice is wrestled away and he begins by talking to each Claimant involved, one by one.

First comes Anax. The Claimant suffers from extreme fantastical pains, loosely placed over the imaginary wounds that he had no time to replicate over in his body. He is suffering from Phrenia of Misaligned Injury and the priest steps behind the Claimant, holding in hand the tip of a rounded lance, green in colour and identical to the skin texture of the Maw Horror. Anax begs for the priest to stab him in the place the horror did in the Inverse Dream and the priest performs a mirroring of the injury in swift and accurate impalement.

‘The hands of a Pantokrator. Thank you. Thank you.’ Says Anax and the physical pain of the hole is without strain but comforting release instead. ‘May your path be soft in passage, son of iron.’ Replies the priest who is possessed by his own deity. However both priest and Pantokrator, choke their words, for the man ahead is closer to the one-way passage. They know it by its silent intrigue of things that they cannot reveal.

Afterwards, the priest prepares his hands with which he is to rupture the man’s eardrums, mirroring the final wound he has suffered in the Inverse Dream.

And once more, Anax thanks the possessed man as ringing fills his hearing.

***

When it is Zanuvia’s turn, the priest is more eager to speech.

‘You left your post. You were supposed to guard Voliphoe. Instead, you were drawn to motherly actions.’ Zanuvia does not answer. ‘Commendable. Reveal to me now, of how one resists Mirror Horrors.’

Zanuvia swallows and as the room becomes dry, the memories within her point to the first child that she lost. Tears begin to swell in her eyes. ‘Laodike is my second child. When I lost my firstborn son, there was one morning that I could not survive its passage. I remember waking up, as some other me, one in a future where my son was alive and I thought him there within my hands. For a few minutes I was happy. Some happiness that should not be and as I reminded myself of where and who I am, the emptiness came back to me tenfold. I could not bear it and I called out to Gods that never were. I called out to...’ The priest intercedes. ‘I know who you called out to. Proceed.’ Zanuvia wipes the tears and she continues. ‘Two days later, I saw one. In my Inverse Dream where I house only sea, pebbles and the gray sky. There was one such horror, hovering among the clouds, mirrored in their gray. I bled my soul away to its superimposed malice.’ The priest whispers softly. ‘How did you survive?’ Zanuvia, leans in and she whispers back. ‘It feeds on the one way stream of thoughts. As I bled out, the thoughts slowed down and I could only comb through the many dreams I made with Hab, slowing my thinking to a crawl and the horror remained only as throbbing pain.’ The priest nods in approval and Zanuvia continues. ‘This time, when I reached Laodike I held my own child in my arms, whispering lullabies and making her smile through the obscenity. I did what any mother would and stopped my child’s panicked mind. I eased her worries.’

The priest gets up. The man’s throat and the many muscles there are stiff and bitter, his jaw too is twitching. The words want out.

Before Pantokrator and priest exit their mouth parts and speaks to Zanuvia. ‘You did well sea witch. And now I will speak of Pantokrator matters that no mortal should know. Matter of fate and its ever-changing current, today you chose between Anax and your daughter. Perhaps once again. Know this, that there is nothing to sway that course. There is however a choice, on whether you should let that man know, that the precious first-born son of yours bears the same name as him.’

Zanuvia looks back at the priest. Her words become choked behind low sobbing. ‘Anax? Why?’

The priest replies before his exit. ‘Do not hope for long lost people. Arhoscephale is a place, to recuperate old and intimate injuries. You cannot change fate, but you can change how a person lives through it.’

***

The rest of the day passes with that alarmed, yet hard to believe silence of recent events. Most Claimants are as such, dissociating from the extreme occurrence. Anax rests in his room. Zanuvia has spoken to him already and the short talk was awkward, but if anything, earnest. The sea witch left with a great breath mellowing out strangled currents within her. Laodike remains with Otto in her room, the reflected injuries keep her bedridden. Varhas has kept himself besides the other two Contestants trying to explain the situation to them. He explains that someone moved against them and that they are lucky to be whole. At this last expression, Jorj gets angry at the half-truths the Claimant gives and Hab calms the Contestant by reiterating that these confusing matters are not their domain to understand.

No Contestant is let into the truth of what happened in the Inverse Dream. None except for Otto, who has to listen to Laodike’s delirious muttering as she sleeps. The young woman speaks of the pressing within her, intrusive, ugly bygones that she should never know.

When night arrives, by chance, Varhas sees the form of a shadow moving in the small courtyard of the town house. As he nears, through the shadows, Zanuvia comes close and they sit down at the small table.

The night is full of crickets and initially there is a silence between the two. The sacred warrior appears for a moment, making sure to see who is walking in the dead of night and then he returns to his patrolling duties. The man is heavily armed and armored in a ritualistic armor of old cast iron, but his body is absent of sound as he hovers around instead of walking. His greaves are crowned with a ring of wings and his back is fused with many metallic arms that sprout outwards in a wide fan of metallic limbs.

‘The sacred warriors of Arhoscephale are mute and deaf. Nevertheless, whatever plans we make Varhas, his Pantokrator knows. Did he reveal anything to you?’ Zanuvia asks.

‘Not the Pantokrator, but Orichalcum sent the information my way just a few minutes ago. Our invaders cast the spell from orbit. An Abyssian spaceship, glimpsed out of orbit right as their foul rituals completed.’

‘Who are these invaders’?

‘I have had no time to think. You say that Anax is to die and my only thought goes towards the fact that this may happen because we could not protect Voliphoe. This plex of intrigue, to which we are only its victims, this plex is still unraveling and soon enough it will claim Anax. I am not sure what to think of it, but when a Pantokrator says that someone is to die soon, that is only meant to happen. Did you speak of this to Anax?’

‘I did not have the heart Varhas. I felt only the need to... recuperate.’

‘Meaning?’

‘I spoke to him as if, we are in another future. One, when he is what grew up to be my first-born son.’

Varhas tenses himself. He puts both hands into his head and the burden of events is taking its toll.

‘It is gentle that you did that. Gods. I wish things were something... different.’

‘But things may never be. We have to live in history and all its engraved reality. We have to live amidst that engraved pathway, if such a pathway is revealed to us.’

‘I cannot spare any tears Zanuvia. I cannot cry for his death.’

The sea witch tries to search for words of comfort but nothing arrives in her thoughstream. All is blank and it is a bittersweet emotion stirring within her. She imagines the man ahead as an emotionless husk and yet his heart is in the correct place. He knows how to feel, even if his body refuses to act it out.

Before the two Claimants begin speaking anew, something occurs that is ways past their expectations.

Jorj arrives through the shadows and the surprise leaves both Varhas and Zanuvia speechless.

‘What is this? What are you two talking about? What is this garbage you two are cooking up?’

‘Jorj’. Pleads Varhas and with the other hand he stops Zanuvia from talking.

‘Where is Voliphoe?’

‘Dead’. Pronounces Varhas and continues with a half-truth. ‘Taken her own life’.

‘Lies.’

‘Why are you awake Jorj?’ Zanuvia points the words at Jorj with a simple strain.

‘First you answer mine, or none of you leave here in one piece. I ask again, what happened to Voliphoe?’

The Contestant is a large and inordinate shape of shadow looming over both sitting Claimants. The night makes of intimidation, a brute over two vastnesses, running out in scurried thoughts to make sense of how to save themselves and the engraved plans promised to them in fantastical futures.

To that end, Varhas is familiarized with the occurrence. He knows the only way out is truth. But the way to speak of it, is tangled in language too imperfect to describe it. On the one side rests the choice of language and on the other is the Contestant’s hatred for meaning in-between words, that which is never said but understood only later.

‘We tried to protect her and we failed. There are things, that I hide from you, that govern us in cruel and invasive ways. I can only speak in the way you hate Jorj, full of grand and unspecified narratives.’

Zanuvia keeps her sight on both men. One source of physical danger, the other speaking of things that should be secrets.

‘So she did not kill herself. Who did this?’

‘That is the problem Jorj. In my world there is no full truth and even responsibility has become gray areas. Voliphoe did indeed take her own life. But the way about that act, has been caused by many others.’

‘She could not take the isolation. Is this where you are getting at and there you blame yourself?’

‘Yes. If only, that ‘yes’ is given for a smaller part of the whole story. Only in hindsight I can say that was the wrong thing to do and if you believe this to be the cause of her death, then so be it and blame me and me alone.’

‘Why?’

‘She was a Claimant Jorj’ Interjects Zanuvia. She has, by now, understood that Varhas aims to ease the tension with truth and also by playing into Jorj’s kindness by way of personal weakness.

‘Zanuvia is right. She was a Claimant, she was a spy’.

‘You have proof of this?’

‘On Mecone, the team we were battling against knew of our tactics. Some way, some unnoticed itch, insignificant to you, misplaced object told them about me and the way I bend that Orichalcum armor to your will.’

‘What are you talking about? What proof do you have?’

To that end Varhas avoids the question. He cannot explain, hints irrational, such as Voliphoe’s reaction to the comment of his sister on his winter planet, or the imperfect black feather than should have never been there.

‘I cannot explain.’ Says Varhas and at that response, Jorj picks the table up with one hand and sends it far behind the the sitting figures. Zanuvia flinches, while Varhas steels his sight towards the Contestant and speaks. ‘The fault is mine. I am to blame for my indecisiveness.’

‘You did nothing. And she tried to reach out to you...’

‘She did. Through you, she tried to save herself but I did not listen. Every plea of hers to be let out of confinement, every effort for conversation and we did nothing but monitor her.’

‘I have said it once before and I will say it again. It is the easiest thing for me to break you. Right here. Now.’

Fear enters Varhas. But as usual, this fear steadies the Claimant.

‘What did you expect?’ The words are sharp and Zanuvia watches as Varhas becomes cold. Cold and calculated, Varhas is turning the conversation around. ‘You thought it would be simple? That playing in the peaks of the Contest was without secret plots and people coming after you?’

‘What?’

‘Jorj, there are interests in this world, moving along to dangerous narratives that you are no part of. And I tell you this. Of equal measure, I am to lose something as important as Voliphoe was to you.’ Zanuvia sees the two men become of one mind. Mere sentence that is finished by Varhas, the Claimant inserts a stream of longing, perhaps of sadness amidst the fury that governs Jorj. ‘It is a shame Jorj, that woman such as her is brought low by others, it is a shame that I cannot protect people you love or merely fancy. And I know that you only wish for more time. Between us three, tomorrow, there are going to be regrets of things that we never said and moments that we never thought would become real.’

‘What do you mean? What are you to lose?’

‘Tomorrow Anax dies.’

‘You speak as if it is a certainty.’

‘It is. The same way a known disease runs its course on certain symptoms, so does the narrative to which we swim in.’

Jorj stops. What way his mind goes, it slowly consumes the fury, giving entry to boundless regret. This regret in turn, invites fatigue within the Contestant and he quickly turns to leave. Going back into the empty room, clean as it has become, there is no scent, no residue left of Voliphoe. Jorj lays in his bed and there is a vast and vacant void consuming what remains of his anger. Before sleep takes the man, he imagines himself, reaching out and saving Anax, then Voliphoe from some indefinable evil.

The evil in his dreams, takes the form of a disease and its name is culture.

But things may never be different than the course that they are set in sometimes. Especially if such future is revealed. Fate, is bound alike to bonds of marriage. One fate, for one occurrence, so that it may only happen in one singular moment. And since only one thing occurs, that is Death and his mouth calls for Anax.

After Jorj has left, Zanuvia whispers with an absence to her lips.

‘How does one, go around explaining to normal people, that a secret sect of people created a new universe of their own and once again they turned that place foul, full of cruelty?’

Bitterly, the response comes equally absent.

‘We don’t. We keep on following along the same mistake that sent this table flying.’

Chapter 22

Death

The next very dry morning, the earth opened up and swallowed Anax. The only movement as the man sank, was a ripple of liquid in an otherwise impossible to perceive pool under his step. Bonemelter leaves no corpse behind to mourn. Only absence.

***

The cleaning crew came again, but no sacred warrior was there or priest. This time, everything seemed less of a surprise and more of a rehearsed void. There was nothing to be said. This ugly void sends Jorj out of the townhouse. The man roams the streets for the next two weeks, leaving a trail of barfights, wild spending and sleepless delirium.

This wild roaming is documented by reporters and other media. The story begins as a scandal, the scandal mellows out and eventually gives way to a grinding everyday mundanity.

In a gated graveyard, somewhere were tall cypress trees stand as spearheads among the marble blocks, Varhas sneaks and hides therein each time his mind darkens. Behind the only remnant of Anax, a marble tombstone that is to become of the only remnant of Anax, Varhas becomes a stranger, creeping around, touching the stone, leaving and coming back again. When the graveyard is empty, only then Varhas weeps. As his tears fall on the stone, the droplets only remind him of horrible, acidic pools and he constantly wipes them off.

After a week, Laodike is the one to find him there. Without arguing, the Claimant follows her back into the townhouse.

***

Hab leaves one day. The silence of the townhouse sends him into a bar where he randomly finds Jorj. The two Contestants exchange words, but the words soon become silence. Drinks follow, Hab watches as Jorj appears exhausted, his cheeks gaunt and body reeking with stench.

Jorj gets up, stumbling towards the bathroom. In there, the mirror mocks the Contestant. In that silence of the bathroom, he feels a collapse. Weight gathers in his shoulders and the head slouches forwards as his hands grab the flat water-basin to support the burden. When the door opens behind him, the weight lifts, the Contestant exits and takes his place back at the bar.

Hab drinks, the many hints Zanuvia has spoken to him only make him equally exhausted and Jorj watches his teammate as another reflection of himself. Some, if cleaner, burdened man by things that they should not understand and as soon as Jorj understands that, he stumbles away from the bar and leaves.

***

When Hab returns, Zanuvia does not speak to him. For these two, only a singular glance between him is enough to break even. The sea witch explains her feelings. The man listens and finds all recent events unravel.

‘I thought it was weird how man named right after our son came to be around us’.

‘There are too many things that stop being random once you notice them. Notice and then keep noticing.’

‘How do you Claimants do this. Two weeks my mind keeps thinking without end. I felt myself, slipping away, angry at everything...’

‘I am sorry Hab. This is what us Claimants do.’

‘...and once again there was nothing I could do.’

‘No more of that. Let’s focus on the Contest.’

‘Where’s the little one?’

‘Sleeping. Otto is out.’

‘Can you at least tell me what got Anax?’

‘Bonemelter. Nasty invisible pool of liquid right outside his doorstep. Step out and dissolve as fast as gravity can drop you downwards.’

‘Have ever used this Zanuvia? Before, or after we met?’

‘No. Never. But I’ve seen it twice. Quick death, but I wouldn’t wish this on anyone. Intrigue is dirty work. Sudden and sweeping us along. Out there, someone or something wanted Voliphoe dead and someone else wanted her alive and we stood directly at the intersection of their hidden plots. The closer we draw to the finals, the worse it will become. I can promise you however this. That whatever may happen, I will make sure our future is unknown. No more fateweaving, no spoilers for where we are going. It is just going to be us and our abilities, honed to their best and ready for everything’.

The Contestant nods. This is not the first time his wife speaks like this and by know he knows well when she is telling the truth. ‘I will go see the little one. Speak to us. No matter how hard it is for you Claimants, this is the only request Jorj and I have.’

Before he leaves, Zanuvia yearns for some indication that the man still loves her. But the Contestant feels wet in her presence. A light, dissipating drowning that he is well accustomed to. To make his request heard, he has to delay what both of them feel desperate to express to the other.

When Laodike’s door opens, the young woman looks at her approaching father with more surprise than ease.

‘Dad?’

‘How are you doing little one?’

‘I thought you would be with mom. How are you doing?’

‘I should be asking that. Is this a Claimant trick to get me to ask a certain thing?’

Laodike smiles. Her bloated face appears well rested but her eyes are exhausted. Her two deep pools appear drowsy, looking down and then they focus on Hab when she swats the remaining thoughts away.

‘It actually is. I learnt on my own, that if you want have people care for you, you have to care for them first. A potent way to speak, especially to those that care about you.’

‘That’s common sense is it not?’

‘What is common anymore I do not know. Back on our world of sea I would have told you I know everything, so long as I kept ear and eye to the crashing waves. With every new planet I feel a... weight over me.’

‘You are tired.’

‘I am. Are you?’

‘Of course. Every time we get on a spaceship to go another place, I just want to lay in a bed for a week. Just stay there, me and your mother.’

Laodike watches her father. It is strange to her that the man besides her is young, but the way he speaks is the same as always. He does indeed look like her father, but his nose and ears are not swollen by his age. The lack of his bushy gray beard does not help either. ‘It is a bit strange when you look like this.’

‘You don’t like my youth?’

‘That’s not it. You look as if, old picture of your earlier years, now moving infront of me yes, but when mom stands next to you its just, weird.’

‘Don’t worry. Its not going to be long for that. She should be getting a rejuvenation contract soon enough, if there is no change in budget. Then... I guess we are all going to be closer in age.’

‘Weird. How can I call you my dad when you are close to my age?’

Laodike invites his hand. The worn and masculine fingers are cusped in her pale embrace. When Hab takes a good look into her eyes, his daughter is at that manic expression, where the eyelids are more open than usual.

‘Want to talk about it little one?’

‘No dad. You know I cannot talk about these horrible images.’

‘Illusions of the mind, do not worry Laodike.’

The woman chokes the response and how much it hurts her to speak of the delusions that send people to their doom. More than that, Laodike becomes bitter at the fact that every time her dad tries to calm her down by talking about her fantasies as mere illusions, she gets the urge to treat her dad as a lesser being. When this emotion rises up and she feels the brute ahead as an ignorant man whom may never understand her, Laodike instead curls her body forwards and reaches out of a hug.

The two embrace and outside of the room, the sun is deepening in red, welcoming a half-blue dome of moist nightfall.

***

It had been a while since Jorj lost the two fans that brought him there. Under the deep night skies of Arhoscephale, these rural areas away from big cities were full of a tranquility that came with dry gusts of dirt. Small beasts roamed in these fields and hills, calling out with their many meek voices.

Whenever someone came out of the Skyladiko, the square and neon-lit nightclub of decadence, the door barged open and a belch of loud music came about. Afterwards, the sounds would hush a moment, giving space to the long drag of a cigarette.

Jorj enjoys this breaking of rural silence. As soon as someone speaks to him however, he turns around to enter the nightclub again. Before the door parts, Jorj looks into the neon sign above, to see the name Vietnam, written in bold, radiating lightbulbs. As the lightbulb yellow contrasts with the shifting red of the supporting neon light, the Contestant swings the door open to a host that regards him with a smile. In the host’s hands is a phone, and he looks outside, towards an old car that is closing in from further beyond the hills.

Inside the music is loud. The stringed instruments give in to winged ones, at the hands of bored musicians whom have played these songs a thousandfold of ways, equally inebriated, or equally dipped in all emotions that may govern a patron. As such, the place is steeped in assaulting lights, the musicians and the gold-toothed singer are on a platform at the center of the building. The tables and the few remaining patrons are laid about, some flirting with the prostitutes, other’s keeping themselves company with a half-empty glass and some, dancing alone near the band.

Crushed flowers are as a carpet on-top of the platform. The kicks make them fly away, but a constant war of thrown fresh bulbs never ceases and so remains the band, covered up to their ankles, with all colors of white, red and purple. When there are no more flowers to throw, the patrons throw white plates, glasses, porcelain shards and chunks are laid about falling and cracking even further underfoot.

The Contestant sits on the table closest to the band. There are many broken pieces, flowers and ice on his table.

The moment passes when a new host circles behind him. A packet opens and Jorj takes the cigarette, bringing it close to the offered flame and dragging it’s smoke.

The man is of orange hair. A deep ginger hue on sly characteristics, the man looks boyish, many years younger than the two hazel eyes that are dug inwards and engraved with wrinkles. His small button nose is a contrast to his sleekness and he of many features packed in one, is a peculiar being.

‘Not satisfied with anything boss? You have ordered every single plate we have here broken, even the toilets. Every woman we bring here you just look at her without saying a word. What else boss?’ His voice is sharp and the accent is a salty slither, the one found in inhospitable worlds, places where vowels are spoken in closed lips and their consonants with harmful movements.

Jorj is away. In the fog governing his mind, the new host is piercing through, but his mind is elsewhere, taking in the sound of a trembling voice, hitting notes In-between the music. And the music speaks of pain, the great immortal spectacle that has long since passed into instrument and mouth alike.

The host smiles at the Contestant, gleaming pink in the peculiar lights of the decadent club.

A new song begins. After the first lyrics, the Space Cattivelli singer nears the Contestant’s ear.

Slowly, the singer appears equally worn. The words that come out of his mouth are only told into the Contestant’s ear. ‘Death will never have us Jorj’.

Jorj gets up. His large body contorts to a dance, slow and heavy, the Contestant’s arms go up, the palms of his hands open as if to worship the singer. All the while, the host watches through the smoke, a mirror becomes of him and harm is pressed, intimate and identical over stranger.

Then, Jorj looks at the host. As if signaled, the young orange-haired man gets up to the center of the noise and he lends his ear.

‘How much for this place?’ Says the Contestant and the look on the man is serious, half-broken mess that needs only a nudge. The host hesitates and after the microscopic space of time is spent he speaks through the noise, parting music in savage ways of accent. ‘One million.’ Without an expression, the Contestant answers. ‘Done.’ The host then grabs the Contestant and there is strength behind his gentle fingers. ‘You are going to work this place Jorj?’ Replies the stranger. The Contestant pushes him away. ‘What are you talking about? I’m going to demolish it’.

***

Outside of Vietnam,. the day begins anew. A first light, falls over the coldness of the night which is still fresh, piercing trouser and long coat alike.

An old excavator awaits right besides the entry to Vietnam. The band, the singer, some of the inebriated patrons and the entire staff is waiting for Jorj to give the signal. Varhas is also there, having just recently arrived to the scene, he lets the events play out on their own.

Once the man has drawn blood for his fingerprint, binding him to the written contract, he gives the piece of paper to the host who folds it and puts it into his chest pocket. The host then, walks away and stands beside Varhas.

The band begins its music. Jorj takes a deep breath of the cold wind muttering something to himself and then turning, stumbling and letting his arm fall, signaling at the excavator to begin.

As the building is torn down, wall and brick become cloud and the music supports Jorj’s movements that are now inordinate steps of languish, made masculine in earnest ebb of life. He walks and spins, in a dancing delirium. The delirium gives way to a bottle of hard liquor on one hand and a lighter on the other. Jorj pours it all over him and a fire begins on his broad shoulders.

Varhas and the host called Rhesusgon, watch. And so do the people, until everything is over and fire, cloud of dust and dirt give way into the early morning, minutes before the sun pokes through. Jorj dances with the flames on his back, until these too are spent and the pain over the Contestant comes in, then it snuffs out and Jorj’s mind opens broadly to the pain.

As everyone else leaves, three stand there, well aware of some greater misfortune in their life.

Varhas closes in to Jorj and the Contestant closes the black fabric in his fists.

‘This isn’t even the first time Varhas. This isn’t even the first time I lose someone, just, gone like that. Every time it feels less and less real. It never hurts as much as it should twice. But today. Today is different. Pieces of my soul.’

And the Claimant knows exactly what the Contestant speaks of. Forehead to chest, the two men remain there without expression, breathing air that barely pokes through the great plastic membrane, the antimagic shell that dampens pain and joy like.

Two men wallow in their despair, while the third one has a wide smile plastered all across his fair and curly-flamed head.

Chapter 23

Budgeting

The local Orichalcum offices are packed in a tiny corner on Arhoscephale. The building is otherwise ugly, too crude for the planet it is in.

Zanuvia storms out of the building and she comes out into the street. A payphone booth stands as speck amidst the colossal metropolis blocks. When the glass door opens, the operator tries to speak, but Zanuvia overpowers the welcome, instantly dialing at the townhouse. The machine performs its functions, wholly rushed by the Claimant’s emotional turmoil and a person on the other side replies.

‘Varhas. They denied my request for rejuvenation.’

‘Why?’

‘Why do you think that is?’

‘Does Orichalcum think you are more able to compete in your old age...’?

‘Listen here Varhas. Vain, wasteful man, you play it stupid when you know why. We must be careful with our spending. That building in the middle of nowhere that Jorj bought. Did you think before writing it up directly on the company’s tab? For what? Just to tear it down seconds after? What is he doing? What are you doing?’

Varhas silences his reply. The woman is angry, more than that justified and he, ashamed that she found out about Jorj’s desperate spending through others.

‘You stupid, slothful man. You absolute moron. Do you have any idea what my body is going through? How much I need to turn the clock backwards for my flesh? This is why I am loyally going through with this misery that we call the Contest and you spit on the very reasons I follow. Gods, I was just standing in the middle of a room for two hours and the management just laid it on me. One million Varhas. One million reasons as to why I have to endure this further.’

‘Did you tell them we were attacked by horrors’?

‘Do you think they care? For them, paying a Horror Hunter to protect us is costly, it means that we are weak.’

‘One million credits for a building is not even one percent of the suit on the last Kingmaker match.’

‘Yes Varhas, but the suit served a purpose. They got a whole planet to make contracts for new armaments from that spectacle. By having to spend money on demolishing nightclubs, to scrape off videos of drunk Jorj fighting random people, to pay for external protection, the company cannot justify these actions. If anything, when we cannot protect ourselves against horrors in our very owned machines, we appear as easy prey. When a Contestant goes out on a tantrum, we appear immature, as if we are spenders of fortunes without thinking of what sacrifices have gone into creating them.’

‘Did you tell their Claimant consultants of how cruel, fighting horrors can be? How close we came to dying, all of us?’

‘Again. They do not care. These people are spineless, pushing pencils, they have never even seen a horror.’

Both Claimants remain hushed. A few seconds later, Varhas struggles a few words out.

‘How are you doing otherwise?’

‘I am not even sure why I came all the way here. I am not doing well Varhas, my body struggles from the age. You should be the one here. You should take his role, not me.’

‘Did you try to leverage the fact that we need a new Claimant for our team? We will disqualify if we do not find a fourth pair soon.’

‘Yes. I told them about Anax and how we could merge or acquire a some smaller company, how we could expand into new planets, say, if we find some Claimant representing said company in the Contest. Yes, I spoke of our record and feats and how other companies should be reaching out for the open spot soon.’

‘And? How did they respond?’

‘They let me conclude my point. Then, they simply said that nobody reached out to them.’

‘It is because of the war? I thought companies made gains during this time.’

‘Perhaps. But the war has not started yet. Mecone has not even made planetfall. Arhoscephale has been joining orbit since yesterday and both are locked there while the planet underneath is escalating in unrest. All the while, the Contest should be declaring the colored teams for the final brackets and that too is constantly delayed. The management just wants to wait. Without a fourth Contestant and Claimant pair, I am not sure we may even compete after all.’

‘I know you feel this way, rational and all, but we are fated to...’

‘Stop. Just, stop with this fated certainty Varhas. I don’t know why you feel so certain, but this certainty is ruining us. I don’t know what Astral promise you follow, but the road there makes it unbearable. Just because your Pantokrator mother said you are to win and that you are destined for something, it does not mean there is no wiggle room in such divinations. Language has a cunning way of being bent. Actors such as us, the pawns living amidst these certainties, get what was promised but never quite that.’

‘We shouldn’t speak of these things on public channels. And I do not mean to demean your security machine-bending abilities as a Claimant.’

‘I know. Just remember this. You said that you see a great champion in the making and that your mother told you to go and make it all a better place. Why are you so sure we are to be victorious here? How can you feel confident when these horrible things have just happened to us. Your prophecy only speaks for Jorj, the way I see it. This prophecy could be true to every single word said, but this does not even define if Hab, Laodike, Otto and me are to make it there.’

‘This alarms you.’

‘Of course it does. Are you stupid?’ The woman says. ‘Anyways. We need a new Claimant as soon as possible. Then, we will find a Contestant, somewhere. Pray both are good at what they do.’

‘I am actively searching.’

‘What about that orange haired man. Otto talked to me this morning about yesterday. He said that Jorj was followed by a weird pair of eyes.’

‘No. That man is a Blood Theurg. I already spoke to him yesterday, right after demolishing Vietnam.’

‘What does it matter what magic a Claimant uses?’

‘I am just not certain.’

‘What good is that certainty anyways? Time presses us. There. There is enough certainty in being forced to a choice.’

‘That man is off planet anyways.’

‘To where Varhas?’ Zanuvia insists and the silence remains until she repeats the question, this time with a more serious tone to her voice. ‘To where?’

‘Baal Moloch. He is a native going home.’

The sea witch restrains her response. No matter how positive she was about that stranger, a cultural weight reduces that one-way sprint towards him. The woman thinks this through the many outright evil superstitions and history that follow that place.

‘Alright. Tell you what then. We board the next spaceship out of here. We leave it to greater, divining chance, that so it may be, that the stops taken through the void of space, take us into orbit of Baal Moloch...’

‘...and if they do, we disembark and try to find him.’

‘So we do. Start packing.’ Says the old sea witch and she hangs up.

She exits into the streets and with a strained step she puts herself into one of the wooden benches overlooking a clearing amidst the buildings. Beneath her, low bridges and streets, intertwine with vegetation and gardens that should hang, in the sides of long and serpentine stairways. Instead, the gardens are trimmed, forcefully stopped at the edges of their granite or pumice basins.

The porous rocks make her uncomfortable. She understands that this new fear of holes is perhaps the result of the horrors and the traumas that they cause to anyone’s soul.

Nevertheless, in that very same understanding, Zanuvia breathes calmly, regarding the passing strangers and their faces.

Different people roam every planet she thinks and she imagines the Meconian giants, the sea people’s of her world and the cold people of Nidavangr, in their dark forests and perpetual winters. Wholly different shapes of human, so much so that their eyes speak of stranger stories and bring about, to some, excitement of a constant change that is always new and of many opportunities. To others, endless noise and such volume of life, with its many details and vast personality, a struggle without end. One tries to understand the human, only to be mocked constantly on how much he has yet to unravel.

Far into the distance, In-between the tall buildings, space columns break the cyan sky and Zanuvia is reminded that the world is always heading towards change, violent, diverse and sudden.

Chapter 24

Baal Moloch

As chance would have it, the team would reach their next uncomfortable destination almost immediately.

Into Baal Moloch, the planet is named after an ancient lord of storms of fertile lands, of an ever-in-conflict origin of culture, where promised is the wasteland of antiquity, as planetary jewels lightyears away from its origin. Here is a place, seemingly desolate, where vast inhospitable seas leak into extreme flatness that only breaks apart to dry mountain ranges and jagged earth. There is no other nature on this planet, but saltplains, stretching out as far the eye can see, clouds of manifold formations that rarely break into storms and a gigantic fissure that is the landmark of Baal Moloch.

Pockets of people live in the mountains. In the past, these people lived underground in cruel, reductive labyrinths. Some of these labyrinths were bored through the stone by machines while humanity slept, or the very spaceships that brought them here fused with the earth and were incorporated into this underground maze. This great complex is no more and all of its remnants exist at the depth of a flooded fissure which stands at the center of a vast expanse of salt. When the waters recede, at rare times, one can see, the tips of four colossal ruins. The first appears as a pillar of great circumference, the topmost part supporting what was once, the underground ceiling and some of its bored passages through the black stone. The second appears, as a spire of gleaming gray, an ancient spaceship turned to skyscraper where the rocks and sea all around it, softly boil in some underground source of heat. The third ruin appears as the flat top of a Mesoamerican-type pyramid, belching waters outwards as the waves pass over and through its cavernous holes. The fourth ruin is a mound, drowned in the texture of deep rocks.

Much delving has been done into these ruins. Claimants and commoners alike, are aware that this forbidden world was destroyed long ago and piecing history together they realize that this happened long ago in a War of Ascension that took place here.

Culturally however, there are many theories and stories about this place. Different theories, the most prevalent being, that malice itself manifested in the form of one man. For if each planet has a culture that is carefully manufactured to some texture of old mankind and the terraformed surface of that place, on Baal Moloch this culture is a mix with common source a great deviation from reason. Conflicting ideas came into this place. When mankind awoke, it woke up prematurely, perhaps first out of all after the Long Silence. The machines whispered that these people’s misery would be generational, cruel and on a timer.

Some believe, that this place tested the very source of culture. Humanity and tradition was constantly stressed along its incessant will to survive.

When this texture of mankind woke up, it settled into the broken spaceships and the pillar-cities and resumed to the usual, fighting themselves with human Pretenders that wanted to be Pantokrators, in order to see which conflicting ideas should be pruned or kept. The luckiest and blessed few, were those that kept climbing, with no knowledge of what was out there, settling on the planet’s surface. Poor, but otherwise peacefully oblivious, having reached a safe haven away from an arriving earthquake that was to doom all those that stayed in the comfort of buried technology.

Even so, the natives of Baal Moloch are an oddity in the expanded world of mankind. This is the one place where Pantokrators become slaves to their worshipers. The Claimants here used to have another name, their powers delving and surfacing from pools of Blood, an abstraction of something entirely humane and soft but always chaotic. For as much was buried here to be forgotten, so is culture, slippery and virulently replicating. The underground stories remain, mixed in the myths of the locals, into their very bloodlines. Reborn and tossed anew into the soup of culture, the people here know well the borderland of misery and how much the human soul can endure.

This magic, this texture of a soul stands completely opposed to that accurate abstraction of logic that defines parts of Varhas and Laodike. If Astral sorcery exists in one place, then Blood magic always stands diametrically opposed to it as these two Claimants understand.

***

The team makes planetfall. A small shuttle lands on a flat plain of salt and a local guide dressed in airy white, welcomes them.

Two days pass in relative peace. On day three, some locals pull their knives out, ready to stab Varhas, but Jorj and Otto dissuade them.

The houses of stone and straw are uncomfortable. The bread is stale and tasteless, but after the first day passes there is some inner hunger that brings out a feverish flavor. Houses turn into homes and the straw beds twist into the most comfortable place in the universe.

To Jorj, the rocks and caves here remind him of his planet. Matter of fact, there are many moments within the days where the Contestant has to remind himself that he is nowhere near his birthplace.

Otto feels that this planet is answering a riddle of steel that he has long since heard on Ulm.

Balancing between lost and found. As if between being both timeless and ephemeral. Rumors quickly spread that these strangers seek out the orange-haired man. This peculiar stretch of time passes, until one day, Rhesusgon arrives. A solitary form breaks apart the shimmering illusions on the horizon and walks through the saltland.

***

Varhas is the first to see the man. Rhesusgon appears aged. A great stress has ran through the man, or perhaps, it is mere play of the sun that showcases his face in deepened ripples, dried skin, or a faded out coloring of his hair.

This change wrests the initiative of speech and Rhesusgon greets Varhas first.

‘Good day.’

As nothing, the man continues ahead and upwards into the rocky pathways that lead towards monasteries at the peaks of the mountains.

‘Hello. Do you not remember me? Where are you going?’

‘I do. Friend of the big man. Man who helped me break my debt.’

‘Hold on then. A moment of your time.’

‘A moment. A moment? That is a heavy load of time, master...’ Rhesusgon appears to focus at the mention of time and moments.

‘Varhas. I am Varhas.’

‘Alright’?

‘I require you to stop a moment. I have serious business to speak about.’

‘If it is about the money on the nightclub’ The man continues walking over the rocks. ‘I have it no more. You should know better than to come about your own decisions eh?’

‘Just a moment, please.’

The man is visibly annoyed. Varhas stumbles a few times, but the man ahead stops his ascent.

‘You know, a moment might not be the longest stretch of time, but it sure is the heaviest. And you have asked me of it a few times already.’

‘Allow me to make this weight meaningful then. Claimant to Claimant.’

‘Yes. truly. Give meaning to this stretch of time, artificially, as you Claimants do.’

‘Don’t you consider yourself a Claimant?’

‘I’d rather not.’

‘Culture annoys you?’

‘I have better things to do than argue why things happen. Matter of fact, I have better things to do than dig around for our past. Or the future.’

‘You disarm me before I speak.’

‘What are you here to do Varhas? You want to dig around the ruins? Be anyone’s guest, but there is still lurking despair down there, deteriorating and festering.’

‘Really? I thought the underworlders either all died in that foretold earthquake or they survived and decided to stay on the surface.’

‘I am not sure either. Just don’t go there if you are not prepared to sleep in the cement hallways, to feel a boot stumble in your ankles, to sense a lunge and teeth and shivs gnawing against you in the complete absence of light.’

‘Yeah no. This is not why I am here. I am well aware that this is the place where Horrors appeared for the first time.’

‘Then you know that the only exports of this planet are whatever twisted thoughstreams become experiences, moments that one gets infected with into their very being. You know that the only people coming here are Claimants, seeking a thrill, a fright, a success, an overwrite of who they are, so that they may weaponize that in the Inverse Dream?’

‘I am well aware of the weight of culture.’ Varhas thinks that this is not why he is here, but these peculiar words pull him into a long argument.

Rhesusgon breathes deeply. With his silence he gives way into the fool ahead, so that he may let out some grand speech, or whatever other planned string of words he has strung together to sway him.

‘I am not here to dig around those wounds. All that is long over. And I am not here to praise those that came from far away to solve your War of Ascension. I abhor culture as much as you. Under my breath, I curse the first actor, the first musician that put emotion into spectacle, for that very spectacle made those around them mindless, consumers. I will not defend that culture has become too heavy, since way before we left old father Earth.’

‘Okay? You abhor it, but you yourself is steeped in it Death Claimant. Don’t you think?’

‘I...’ Varhas struggles as he himself is not certain where they are going with this conversation. ‘...had no choice. If culture influences commoners, I suppose we are at the point us Claimants suffers its whims also.’

‘And somehow that is better than simply giving into hopes, lingering framerates on a projector, putting light into whatever dreams have long since been dead? Is that where this speech is going? I’ve heard it all before. You can stop trying so hard.’

These words disarm Varhas. The other man is mocking him and he only gets it now. ‘You are wiser than the man I met on Arhoscephale.’

‘Wiser how?’

‘Eloquent. Direct. Mocking.’

Rhesusgon looks at the skies above. The air is dry and what evaporating pools of seawater far away are as mirrors, he regards them gently. Easy and calming, it is as if the man barely touches into this influence from nature itself.

‘Do I intimidate you?’

‘Blood Theurgs are not the easiest people to be around. Natives of this planet, doubly so.’

‘I’ve only just recently returned. I’ve been away for so long, you could make a case that I am a foreigner here.’

‘No, you definitely are. I can argue about this both with logic and gut feeling. These two are aligned in me.’

Rhesusgon smiles at the answer. He motions to a boulder nearby and both Claimants sit.

‘Where do you come from Varhas? What does your Pantokrator do?’

‘I am from a planet called Nidavangr. Perpetually dark and white, the many forests are naked, giving way only to animals. The Pantokrator of that planet is my mother. One could say, that the culture of that planet is as I am to my mother. A slow, poor place of danger, but nurturing as hearths and cobblestone and wooden wall, surrounded by harsh night.’

‘A good place. I’d guess your fantasies take a finality in you, a scent of Death, ultimate and cold. Not quite bad. I’d wear less black when I will be you.’

‘Blood magic. You speak in terms of blood magic.’

‘Well, you have described yours and now I will do mine. As for mine, you have seen all that there is to this place. Baal Moloch is the worst place where humans went. It is a mirror, a hell, a silver globe. The absolute worst part about this planet is the shame you feel when you call it a shithole. My very soul shrinks, the cells that make me tighten.’

‘And your Pantokrator?’

‘Who knows anymore. He has been Pantokrator for a millennia? Nobody cares about him here. Perhaps there is worship for Pantokrators underneath, perhaps that willpower is hidden, or my ancestors lobotomized them and dampened their minds in sealed chambers. I am content with being ignorant. Are you?’

‘Never.’

‘There then. You are able of Astral magic too Varhas?’ Speaks the man and the revealing accuracy of this stranger surprises Varhas. However this surprise comes hand in hand with a jealous hint.

‘I am.’

‘Good. A good magic to have, even if yours always opposes mine. And how has that Astral logic helped you so far?’

‘Badly. I turn to prophecies and the people around me suffer.’

‘Of course they do. All prophecies are built on languages so that they have wiggling space to fail, but still be somewhat correct on what was promised.’

‘I know that. But don’t act like your sorcery is any better.’

‘Ho ho! You have a spine. I thought perhaps you came here to bawl your eyes out. Tell me, if your mother was here would you kneel to cry on her lap?’

This man should not know that. But it is this realization that manifests in-between his mocking voice. Varhas, makes no thought as he lunges for a punch and then the two fall over the other as a fistfight begins.

***

Back at the village, the team gathers as the day settles into night.

With the setting sun, the sky barely sheds enough light to the two Claimants that arrive side by side. Both men have bruised eyes, leaking noses and swollen bumps around their body. Oddly, these injuries appear to be almost mirrored on both men.

Rhesusgon speaks once they are seated. He eyes Claimant and Contestant alike and then he gets up to introduce himself.

‘I am Rhesusgon. Call me Gon for shortness. Blood Theurg with some minor abilities in Earth magic.’

Laodike replies first amidst a barrage of noises from all the Claimants there.

‘Woah woah, hey! Why are you revealing your magic like that?’

‘What do you mean? Nobody is listening.’

‘We do? Hello? The commoners here?’

Gon shrugs his shoulders. Zanuvia speaks.

‘He is honest at least.’

‘How is this man honest mother? What were you doing in Arhoscephale Gon?’

The orange haired man enjoys the chaos, visibly, in a grin that presses against his swollen cheek.

‘Healing.’

‘From what?’

‘Limb loss. Lost my leg.’

Varhas suddenly becomes interested in that answer and he speaks after Gon pulls his robe over his left thigh and reveals a misscoloured leg surgically grafted in place. The man is tanned from the thigh up, but the leg is pristinely white and the scar speaks of a crude work with no regard of blending the severed point.

‘Where did you heal your fantastical wounds Gon?’ Asks Varhas.

‘A healer called Sofia.’

The black dressed Claimant becomes visibly angry. His swollen fists tense. Meanwhile, Gon stares at Zanuvia and his eyes remain there for a moment longer.

‘I know this man.’ Says Jorj. Gon turns to look at the Contestant and he greets him. ‘You were there, at my darkest hour’.

‘He was there too.’ Gon points at Varhas.

‘He seems a bit off. You might have hit him too hard.’ Jorj replies and Gon gives a nice smile, wide and of an open of mouth. Zanuvia smiles while Laodike finds the joke in bad taste.

‘I tried to fix him.’ Says Gon and crosses his heart in earnest showcase of truth.

‘Not hard enough maybe.’ Finishes Zanuvia and she stops Varhas before he can reply. ‘Are you in at least? Have you come here for us to convince you or..?’

‘No, I am in, whatever that is. Are you here for inspiration? As in, looking to put together a group for painting grapho-grams, compiling unrealisms? Or is it some other heavy-duty artistic endeavor, that requires muscular slaves like these?’

‘He is duller than he looks.’ Replies Laodike. ‘These are Contestants, gladiators, killers, flesh-interfaces to the greatest spectacle in history. We are competitors in the one thing that truly matters. The Contest?’

‘Well, I’ve never met anyone that thought it important.’

Chapter 25

Space Cattivelli

Five more days would pass until the next spaceship came into orbit and a shuttle could come to pick the team up. Day by day, the simple way of life here would ease the worries of the team, but their looming anxiety to find a final, fourth Contestant to pair with Gon, made the team peer into the stranger constantly.

In these five days, the team would listen to Gon’s stories. They would learn about his well traveled lifestyle, one that seemed much deeper than anyone else’s. Not only had the man been in so many planets, but he had a casual, interesting way of speaking about those places. Through casual references, blending with rumors and long, slow storytelling the man would blend events and his emotions to what had happened long ago.

Some story would start and everyone would imagine the Blood Theurg as a deckhand. Manipulating captain, rabble and Claimant navigator or machine-bender, Gon always seemed to be a spectator who had witnessed pirate boardings, close fly-bys and long-winded mercantile operations. A man, who had seen dingy brothels and remote hideouts alike.

Early each morning began with a short introduction of a place and by night, around their campfire, it would end with some lesson learnt in the emotions and decisions of another. Had the man witnessed bucaneeresses play the violin for landlubbers? Had he watched fiery Claimants in their spaceships, kneel down and pray to whatever red dwarf they orbited? Nobody was sure.

But more than that, Zanuvia, Laodike and Varhas felt his strange magic, appear as if he himself was not there, but instead some intimate reflection over other’s emotions.

The man was not shy to hard work. He had been Commoner and Claimant alike, on nightclubs, remote jungle planets and he had even hiked the tallest mountain allegedly. He had spent years just farming some land and even fighting against savage Claimants that had no idea they could enter into the Inverse Dream.

Gon ever said, that this new adventure Varhas invited him into, was the one he mostly wanted to refuse. But as many things had been, he still does not have his fill. It is simply this that made him want to follow. It was not Varhas’ pleading, or that peculiar moment where he saw Jorj pierce through his muting, plastic membrane.

The man had desire and it was this that made him say yes at every turn.

By the fifth day, the other three Claimants had become drowsy, somewhat exhausted by their inability to enter the Inverse Dream. There were almost no machines on Baal Moloch and it seemed that their minds had slowed down enough, that the conversations were mostly carried by the three Contestants instead.

By this point, the team had planned some of their next steps. Gon knew that they would find a Contestant soon, but he had always insisted on someone weird that would come their way eventually.

One night, Hab asked the man. ‘You hang around a lot of lowlifes. Is a Space Cattivelli really our best choice here?’

‘Why what is wrong with them?’

***

Soon after boarding the next spaceship, Hab took Jorj on the side to speak.

‘I’ve seen my share of Claimants, but this one is weird.’

‘What do you mean Hab?’

‘The little man makes more sense than all the others combined. Yes, but he speaks of things he should not know.’

‘Don’t they all?’

‘Sure, but when you told me that Varhas was somewhat aware of your mining world origin, one could assume he took a peek into your records or something. But Gon? He knows of mundane details. Things that were said... In places nobody records. Just little things.’

Jorj shrugs his shoulders. ‘That is good, no? He talks like a Commoner. That is closer to us.’

‘Sure. He looks and acts like us. Gods know he had the same difficult early life as we did.’

‘Difficult is an understatement. Things became much easier and less exciting after I got my brain layered in Gray Shielding. Same as you.’

Otto comes close to the two. Jorj watches as the Ulmite joins the conversation.

‘Same as Otto.’ Says Jorj and nods to the blond man.

‘Say Otto.’ Continues Hab. ‘How is Ulm for a younger version of yourself?’

‘If a young boy is weak, he works in the forges. If one is tall and broad like me, they take them out into the outer layers of Ulm. They make them survive in the forested wilderness, they put them into a Wheel of Pain where they keep pushing around a heavy grinding stone and then one day, if they make it, they tell them there is a Riddle of Steel that they need to solve and take them to be free men in the city.’

‘A Riddle of Steel?’

‘Just some old saying. I thought I would figure things out as I went to fight into the Contest. I thought, I would have more chances to figure it out if I was immortal. But then again, I always used violence to solve hard problems also. You Hab?’

‘I thought I was to make money this way. It was either this, or hunting whales around Tropicana till my bones gave up. One day I met a young sea witch and she told me I chose right. If I never became a Contestant, my life was to be a vengeful hunt. Dooming people along with me.’

Otto and Hab turn to Jorj. The Contestant shakes his head and speaks.

‘I had no choice. It was either that, or dying young in the mines of Capadoccia. One day a merchant came by and he spoke of how young people kill eachother out there for a chance to be immortal. His words felt true. I left. I found the arenas he was talking about and then I fought some unofficial matches without respawns, or Golden Layering in the brain. It was dangerous, but those fights were exciting. One brain injury and immortality was off the table.’

‘Lucky man.’ Says Otto.

‘Lucky, unlucky. I do not know. Before I left the mining cave-city I imagined that I was choosing between two types of silence. One young, buried in a cave-in with the roaches. The other, far away, following some fat bull towards some comfortable bed.

***

At the depths of the spaceship, the squalor here moves, writhing on its own as tightly knit masses of people moving about. The crowd is circling around a platform where people are being auctioned off. A large bronze-gilded round clock, of two iron hands stands on top of everyone and the seconds pass in a relative rhythm.

‘Slaves?’ Exclaims Jorj. Laodike grabs his face to turn it towards a pair of two men standing close to the platform. These two men, gesture towards a slave trader to come near them.

Once the trader crouches, he listens to them with an ear and then he shakes his head to refuse. One by one, the slave trader goes around the people underneath him, refusing them all.

‘Not any slaves. Space Cattivelli.’ Replies Laodike.

‘So? How is having no racial origin make someone special?’

‘You have only half the image father. In a few minutes there will be an official announcement. We have to find our final Contestant, just in time for the announcement of Colours.

‘And the slave trader has spare Contestants?’

‘Apparently so. Look, Varhas is calling the trader again.’

The slave trader crouches again. Gon whispers in one ear while in the other, Varhas is shouting an offer. When the slave trader rises, he looks around and then he gives a thumbs-up to the two Claimants.

The largest man is brought before the Claimants, bound in chains. He is as an object, standing, walking, remaining idle as the others pull him. Jorj notices, how more of an object the man appears, when Varhas turns away from the commotion to speak into a device, half-there, completely absent to the fact that flesh was exchanged in money spent.

However, Jorj also notices Gon, dressed indistinguishably from the commoners around him. He is only betrayed by the look in his eyes. The stranger to Gon, is compassionate in all the right ways but the most intimate ones. When he offers his hand to the Contestant-slave, the large black-haired man crushes it in his palm. Instead of expressing pain, or yelling, or trying to set himself free, Gon reaches around with his other free hand supporting the slave from his shoulder.

Here, Jorj understands something. That man is a monster, in all non-perceivable ways. He looks innocent, he speaks innocent words and he refuses his pain. Or perhaps he lets it pass through him in a perfect, all-too-human way.

Jorj understands this perfection in the face of Gon. Neither Laodike, Varhas, or Zanuvia have made him feel as if they are perfect. If anything Claimants they may be, they make mistakes still. They can be hurt and saddened, they react when something crushes their hand.

As soon as Jorj completes this realization, Gon turns his head to stare directly at him. Even now, the Blood Theurg is listening.

The bronze clock lapses in its rhythm. The hands appear to rotate backwards only for a click, a second and then continue their normal, clockwise rhythm.

Those that notice, understand that the spaceship around them Glimpsed into a new position amidst the vastness of the stars.

***

In the dim light, the form becomes many. Through a hidden keyhole, as if pressed the living wood, one man’s emotions become a deep reflection.

Varhas speaks to that form. ‘How is Scaramucc?’

‘Eager. He is willing to fight for his freedom.’

‘Good. He agrees to the terms of Orichalcum then.’ Varhas mutters to himself. ‘We have made it. Just in time.’ And then, he thinks silently, in a mental hush that they are fortunate that events have turned out this way.

And Gon replies. ‘Luck has nothing to do with it.’

The Claimant of Death, Astral sorcery and Air, listens to the response and it makes him furious. ‘I will not lend my ears to your Blood magic.’

‘And yet you are curious of what I speak of.’

‘You speak of nothing. Delusions. What else is this, but chance? Gross abstraction of colossal variables that work for us?’

‘I only speak only of what I feel.’

‘Your emotions cannot calculate so many things. So many, to guess what comes next.’

‘That I can. The Theurg puts his head into the heavens, while you try to calculate and fit heaven into yours. In your silly effort to fit it all in, it is only your head that splits.’

‘Fuck you Gon.’ Says Varhas. In-between the shadows, where the Claimant should pierce ahead into the man’s expressions, Gon is not there, but someone else, wrestling control of the orange haired man. This is the usual madness that overruns every Blood Theurg and confuses every other Claimant.

‘No more of this.’

‘You care not to find the baseline? The common source of every human, Commoner, Claimant, Pantokrator’?

‘Shut it Gon.’

‘Alright then, friend. Since you always move with such certainty about. Why not tell me how you are so certain that you will win the Contest?’

‘Something greater then you has told me so.’

‘Your mother? A prophecy?’

‘None so. Just a certainty, that out here I am to make things better. If not for many, then for one. A Commoner. This should satisfy you.’

Gon remains in the shapeshifting shadow, whose absence is only a play of the mind. After this lack of man steps to the side, his face is revealed into the dim industrial lights of the hallways. It is a bored, indignant face that speaks idly.

‘Bah. The weight of one man outweighing many.

‘What do you speak of?’

‘No idea. Long ago, I found an old spinstress...’

‘Another story. My luck.’

‘...Bitter. Tired and cold. She would tell me how much she only wanted to see her only son. She would whisper to herself how much she wanted so, to bend the highways in the stars, to bring him near. And as the decades passed, more often than not, the clothes, the scarves she wove were not cloth anymore, but instruments to strangle others. Tell me, if a ship went off course in your perfectly predicted Astral navigation, should you not seek out the reason why such a thing happened?’ Isn’t this oddity only causing problems down your fantastical lines?’

Varhas listens, but some part of him curses language. Every word out of this man’s mouth is as a curse and he does not know why. But more importantly he does not want to find out.

‘Curse your words, demon.’

‘Curse me? Curse the Astral Claimants, or priests of old that made language such imperfect tool with which to speak our minds!’

Before Varhas can grab Gon by his white rags, the speakers announce the arrival of a boarding party. Golden hints manifest in the sound.

PART B

Chapter 26

The Announcement Of Colours

A Meconian ship takes the team away and they are now walking the innards of this gleaming frigate.

Before any Meconian Ephor comes to talk to them, before Orichalcum corporation sends an employee to guide them, the team notices itself walking among the giant marines and soon after lose themselves in deep parts of the ship that should not be. People search out for them in vain, but it is as if they have vanished out of moment and attention.

Beguiled, wall speaking and floor whispering a mix of dominions gathers ahead and then the team arrives into a white room, square and without features. The walls radiate pale light inwards and the corners remain invisible in this lack of eye-catching details.

In here the Announcement of Colours is to take place. Sixteen finalists. A Left and Right pathway towards the finals. A single elimination bracket where half the finalists have no idea what is happening on the other side. Soon, in this specific place the eyes of trillions will gather. Commoners and Claimants, will shortly gaze with intent into their Tele-Stim devices, to watch as colours plaster themselves to faces. Others will shortly find that the wool under their fingertips turns black and white.

Without warning, the wall ahead shifts to colours and shapes. Most of the team sits, except for Otto, who proudly stands as his whole body reflects the bending lights. His skin, only for a flash, takes the texture of Blacksteel, glossy, pliable metal.

Light forms in the shape of eight figures. At the screen there are three large and one massive Contestant and four normal sized people dressed in kenophobic attire. The Contestants sit behind the Claimants in a room with no background.

One of them, the familiar face of Fenrika points at the screen in a wide and excited face, masterfully swaying any awkwardness away from the moment. With a lively lift of her arm, she points at the screen ahead turning her infectious gleam to the others around her. Unaware, seemingly oblivious to the fact that this broadcast reaches into all, she opens her white palm to a greeting, waving everyone and everything closer, into her innocent allure.

Fenrika begins to introduce everyone. On her leftmost, Maras, a wild, unkempt, bearded man who initially appears as such, only to reveal infinitesimal rarities of thistle and roses tangled into his hair and stuck into his body. He is broad, dressed in furs and the hematite branches, twist to become noses of wild animals along the natural shadows of his body. Behind him is one of the Contestants on the last Kingmaker match and Jorj points that out. Next, is Chilon, an ancient man and sage, whom is respected by the Meconian giants despite his racial difference. His tunic is white, but the folds hang in extreme weight and there are muted charts of starlight woven into the fabric. Behind him, is the half-Meconian Contestant, who puts a fist on the man’s shoulder, in a way familiar or perhaps that of family. The next Claimant is Varsov, who is more machine than man, the steel plex underneath is uneven bumps on his ebony cloak and the Contestant behind him is a new person, whose facial features betray more sinister origins. Last, as Fenrika introduces herself, she makes a broad reveal of her left arm. The bronze and white, orange and hidden compartmentalized leather cloaks and broad sleeves glimmer with hidden objects. The gravity of these pockets betrays their weight, but the eye is drawn to a ring in her left finger. A round and black gemstone in the empty color of the galaxy, with a singular star in its center.

The moment she finishes introducing her team, the colors behind Fenrika and her team, swap to a bright green and warm orange. Both colours separated by a thin line of white.

These three colours remains for a few seconds. Equally fast, the lights swap and the next team presents itself.

Eight more appear. Claimants behind Contestants, of which, the larger men squat in a line and the two kenophobic-dressed men and two women behind them, all stand strong to their touching heels. The men are dressed in long and heavy fur coats reaching to their thighs and the midmost part of their attire reveals light blue and silver, sashes of bright copper silk underneath. Their caps are black and silver and the patterns are of mirrored depth, reminding Laodike of horrifying shapes in the mirrors. As the men are twins, so are the women, who are instead dressed in bright red and black. Their garments are equally heavy but without furs. Patterns circle around the edges of the flapping fabric concealing their crimson sleeves. Slashes of brown give the women their feminine form, but their caps sit on their heads with equal weight, supporting a veil that flows behind their backs. This veil is white yet very dark on the inside, while on the outside, patterns of gold and red, silk and bronze-interlinked trinkets, horses and discs, give this contrast a semblance of mystical allure. A dark background behind celestial movement and animal.

Both men introduce the women, both women introduce the men. That includes the Contestants too, from left to right, back to front, Aigiarn, Khutughtu, Aibak, Tuya and their four Contestants, Strand, Scourge-Marked, Ray and Arrow-Scar.

The colours flashing are of translucent cyan, sunlight white speckled with gold and deep auburn.

Then comes white and the eight following shapes are of Abyssians of various skin colours. Their order, is by racial purity. From left to right, mixed Contestants of pinker skin leading to purebred Claimants of dark and vivid crimson.

One can see the sheer heat produced by these humans that are on the verge of being an entirely new species. The air on the screen shimmers as that of a desert, vibrating with extreme heat that exhausts verdant places into wastelands. However, the eight humanoids are unaffected, dressed in metal and black or crimson cloth, their red skin of gray veins is uncovered by sweat. The sclera of their eyes is wholly black, as is their short hair, but their irises are of the normal blue, or hazel and brown colours that are common to many. The humanbred stock, the four Contestants are of pinker skin, racially mixed, the men are broad and tall as is Contestant standard, wearing iron plate on their entire body, except for their knees, elbow and heads. Nameless, they are referred only as battleborn.

Out of the four racially pure Abyssian Claimants, the one standing in the middle is of lesser red skin. Instead of being diluted in pink however, he is darker so, of hairy forearms and actual horns of black keratin that become one with his skull. His name is Zhar and he is the only one dressed in utterblack robes that only leave his arms exposed. He has bracelets of cast iron on his wrists and the imperfections in the iron, glimmer with muted celestial splendor. The man on his right is wearing robes of crimson, fabric that is woven in square patterns and a great necklace of bronze and rubies falls to his shoulders and chest. His head is bare, but his ears are complete with rings, so much so, that one barely sees the red flesh underneath. He is Mahraspand the Listener. On his right is a royal man, he wears the same garment as the man to his right, but the crown on his shoulders is towering and his black beard is broad and square, waving as it reaches his necklace. He holds a scepter of gold, summer lions and mountains are engraved to it. He proclaims his name as Zhar-i Shahpur. The last Claimant is the deepest red, cruel pigmentation of rabid crimson. He is a comely otherwise man, younger than the ones before him, of blue eyes, in the same garments as the priest and king before him. However, two pairs of wings can be seen to his side, what could be new limbs as these move on their own accord. He has scars on his open palms and he introduces himself with a weak voice, calling himself Doom.

The colors flashing are of red, red and red again, marginally of different hue from eachother.

Zanuvia speaks softly once their display is over. Her daughter tries to hush her by trying to grab her wrist as both women flail away from each-other’s grasp. ‘Worse than animals. I curse them like the wageslave curses the early morning rain. Stupid races that make themselves in the image of natural forces.’ Hab looms over the two women and calms them down, just as the white light shifts to eight more figures.

Machakans, of ebony or brown skin are next, arrayed by order of descending age. With Nilotic or Igbo features, some are tall and thin of long limbs and narrow shins, others are kettle-headed with broad jaws, foreheads and temples, bare-chested with mere wood, straw, Savannah furs of various creatures, bone piercings and scarified flesh in swirling, or ordered patterns of lines and corners. Their hair is either braided, or a short black and fuzzy brush.

Three Claimants from left to right wear face masks, the sides of these masks produce curtains of straw that cover their bodies. Each one is a different animal or ancestor spirit. Medicine, winged beast, or prowler in the brush, savage belief blends with the currency of yams and slash-and-burn toil. The men are perhaps equal parts savages, nobles, builders, hunters and priests all the same, Machakan broad way of life.

‘I don’t get it’ Says Laodike. ‘Why do the Abyssians and Machakans field a uniform team? Is a whole planet supplying them Contestants and tech or what?’

Varhas replies. His gaze is stuck ahead while he speaks. ‘There are racial teams such as those two you mentioned and then there are corporate owned ones such as us and Fenrika’s team. Usually, if a planet is industrious enough, or they have the population and cultural weight, they can field a planetary team, armed with local technology and whatever breed of flesh they have made themselves as such in their labyrinths of blood. In some cases, two planets may pool their options. The Cyan and gold nomads might be such a team, a mix of two planets, a pair of twins. We did not fight a racial team in the qualifiers, apart maybe from the first Kingmaker match. I’m only guessing. Now that we speak of Kingmaker, look at that man’s pelt’.

The fourth Claimant and the next four Contestants on his left, all wear a lion’s pelt draped around their otherwise naked chests. Varhas continues. ‘Kithaironic Lion pelts, indestructible by any weapons, only way to harm that tech is by magical means.’

Zanuvia replies. ‘This reminds me of what that manic ex-champion had on himself during your sea battle. These pelts are different in function, no?’

Varhas shrugs as he is uncertain. The screen ahead radiates yellow and black for the Machakan team and then the screen changes.

Four Claimants stand behind four sitting Contestants. The air shambles and if any texture looms near silence, that is of wailing winds, horrible, natural concepts. From left to right, these people are arranged in a decrease of violence. The first Contestant-Claimant pair is that of a two pale men. The Contestant is plastered in white chalk, draped in furs of exotic felines and his eyes are steadied upwards, while the Claimant behind is equally muscular, in royal cyan and white, with a crown of gold and the familiar bumps of fabric covering sheathed weaponry. His eyes are steadied ahead, piercing the crystal veil of the screen and staring directly at the spectators. The next pair is of red headed women, both of which are twitching in place. The Contestant is a woman of a grand form of long and wavy auburn, her skin is pink and visibly hot, perhaps a diluted mixture of Abyssian with some other race. The Claimant is of the same colour of hair, wavy and long, muscular in a nimble manner, naked from the waist up. Alarm guides their eyes, mostly on the side for the Contestant and mainly ahead for the Claimant. Next is a pair of shadowy men. A Contestant anemic, of flesh that appears rotten deep inside, blackened in unevenness over himself, he too with a sideways look heaving air steadily as if battling for a grip to life. Of equal, yet focused ahead allure is the Claimant behind him. He is of rotten clothes, old and with depressed features, his breath is struggling, the lips of his mouth are brittle and dry. The final pair is dressed in white. Robes that have lost their luster, they fall over Claimant and Contestant. It appears that the form behind the fabric is that of two women with no fat or muscle. Bones make them and such, both appear drained of strength, with minimal balancing movement to gaze an upwards, hopeful glance at the sky.

And their names are Zelos, Bane, Limos and Mora. Centipedes crawl across their feet as this team becomes bathed in the light of Tyrian purple, red and pink.

The screen swaps colours and texture.

The next team is of various sizes, arrayed in a line of Contestant-Claimant pairs. Two Claimants are short, dressed in steel doughboy helmets, heavy shrapnel and firefighting coats that start from their ears and reach to their marching boots. They are only reaching up to their Contestant’s shoulders, but both pairs are in such military uniforms, proudly displaying layers of silver medals, ribbons of red and blue that belong to a world familiar to the team. A place of cannons and artillery becoming one with a city, these two pairs are from a planet far away, one that was simulated as an arena on the surface of Ulm during the qualifier. These four people are covered in the fine dusts of gunpowder, cement, coal and sulfur. The pair on their left is a woman Contestant and Claimant man. Covered in sand, of pale sunlit yellow and specks of granular shine, they appear both as dry, slit eyed people that are deeply aware of sunlight’s danger. Gently, they introduce themselves.

‘That’s Kalyfax.’ Says Varhas. When Gon turns to gesture for more, Zanuvia replies instead. ‘A friend of Anax. Once a colleague.’ Then, she points to Varhas. ‘That man right there should hope we don’t match against this team.’

These Contestants have their face concealed. Even so, names are given to them and they are nothing but categorizations of a difficult and foreign way of life. ZACH-44, ZA-56, ZB-101, KLFX-68 are names of machines, but these Contestants are alive, perhaps angry behind their masks. 44 has a mask of cast iron, one of crude round holes for eyes, mouth and slits for his ears and nostrils. 56 has a ceramic mask, smooth and featureless. 101 has aluminum curtains and his face is a worn, battered mess of scars and misaligned flesh. 68 has two sulfur plaques that hang infront of his helmet and align themselves to his broad cheeks. His face has a familiar stubble and when his name is spoken, he tightens one fist and then the other in a minute and nervous detail that passes unseen.

Their colours are of faded, pale sulfuric yellow and copper brown.

A brief silence later, the next team displayed is of strangers. The eight forms are sitting cross-legged in a semicircle. Eagle kings, raven callers and priestesses of Airiya. There is racial uniformity only on the Claimant side and that is of spindly human flesh, pale, lightweight and winged. There are two kings and two queens. One pair is of white angelic wings, blue and cyan robes that are gilded with sapphires and diamonds, whereas the other pair is dressed in the whiteness of snow, bronze and their wings are severed.

This airy, short appearance gives the impression that these people are not cut out for the violence of the Contest. Laodike, Varhas and Zanuvia smile at this thought, whereas Gon remains idle, trying to control an irrational feat.

As such, with this confident expression, the pale blue and white colours of that team pass almost unnoticed. Suddenly, the team watches themselves displayed ahead. The plastered confident smiles remain only for a moment, so that when they shift to their normal expression, this reaction appears accidental.

What appears ahead is unordered. Laodike, Zanuvia and Hab sit closely together as a triangle of a family, gathered to the left of the screen. Otto sits nearby, but he appears isolated from the rest. Infront of him, both sitting, Jorj and Varhas are idle, side by side in a position of prominence, the same place where the smallest of children are placed in family photographs. To their side and almost as close as they are, there is a misaligned isolation on the side, of Gon and the space Cattivelli Contestant named Scaramucc.

Laodike and Zanuvia are dressed similarly. Black brine made of slate, their deep blue dresses hold wave and chart and there are specks and adornments of pure white fabric on themselves. Where the mother wears a modest display of the sea, entangled in ivory, the daughter is lively displaying her pale neck and straight black hair. Pearls, pebbles and specks break between the obsidian and pale. Hab is plainly dressed in comfortable clothing for a fisherman, a loose tunic that leaves his body out for any eye to scour. Contrasting him, Otto is formal, in the austere attire of Ulm, in old wood and clear cloud, somewhere between military formality, officer bravado and noble blonde savagery. Varhas is wearing complete black only with a trace of white. A suit, of feathered pattern, celestial points and muted swirls of air. Jorj next to him is dressed in everyday clothes and he remains without much focus to his face as he introduces himself. Finally, Gon is wrapped in his clothes. Mismatched, the white that covers him gives the allure of a fool. Without jewelry, of the extreme precision of evenness in the cut of his fabric, he is as random man, mismatched even to his flesh and at his side is a tanned, black-haired slave that seems equally out of place.

And here is a moment, that twists what is shown. As the team witnesses Gon’s nose lightly gush and drip crimson over his crude apparel, the other seven stare at the screen ahead not with embarrassment, but with a newfound seriousness. The blood creates glossy lines and blotches on Gon before their time is over, but mere spectacle of complete chance, it showcases something strange. What that is, nobody is certain as this image flows outwards into the worlds of man, but to those closest to Gon, it is a brutal, mocking and confident display.

The colours that flood the room are black and white and white again. Afterwards only for a few frames that last merely a second, the massive word “LEFT” is plastered in deep colours of swirling textures, and the screen returns to silence, lightless, unpowered nothing.

Thus are, the Eight teams on the left pathway. For as was the Contest before the announcement, so remains a hidden pathway of eight other teams, that will produce one singular finalist.

Chapter 27

Sicela

A Glimpse forwards, the Meconian frigate reaches its destination along with its precious, newly-colored cargo.

Somewhere between alarm and complete fatherly protection, there is a pendulum swinging for the black and white team, one whose swinging points are realized as soon as they reach the orbit of the next planet.

The planet underneath them is that of Sicela. The place where a War for Ascension moves as civil unrest. This is the place where foreigners and strangers loom closer to intervention, where Mecone, Arhoscephale and others wait until the time is right. This is what exists on the one side of the pendulum.

On the other side is their belief. The universal, fickle care of Pantokrators. As finalists of the Contests there should be an official, spoiling protection. Belief in this security pushes the pendulum away from worry and invites into a relative ease.

Some, like Zanuvia, Otto and Laodike find themselves staring outside of the frigate. They look towards the gathering fleets stuck in the orit of the blue and dry planet. Some, find themselves close to screens, telling them of what happens in the coasts and mountains below.

Orichalcum cruisers and battleships float into formation every day. A great cluster of smaller Arhoscephalean ships does the same. Neither side moves, to close the curve of distance and to attack. Around this stalemate, it is only gleaming objects, stars given space-faring shape, other foreign factions that watch from a safe distance.

Underneath this orbital commotion, the planet is curving in white and the night that falls over the surface is but a speckled jewel of midnight cities, sprawling as webs and getting cut off at the long beaches that crown its black oceans. Shorelines and mountain ranges, they only hold hints of light. So do the many gulfs and isthmuses, the little islands of forts, the slave colonies and trade centers on this Syrian-Sea, Green-Sea, Great-Sea planet.

A few days pass like this. Nobody makes planetfall, except for one faction that creates riddles in buried machines of steel. As nobody sees them, everyone waits in orbit.

This idle time invites the team to notice. The happenings take meaning and the Claimants are first to notice that in every rotation of the celestial body, the two armies perform a battle ritual. When morning comes over Sicela, the Arhoscephaleans boot their fleet from sleep. In cyan and silver they close into the golden Meconian fleet, which in turn forms up to meet the provocation in equal readiness. Hulks rise from their hovering awareness, and white glow or red aura of giant stars, seeps outwards from the many devices, antennas, weapons, cockpits and command centers.

The frigate where the black an white team rests in, also performs this back and forth. Even if it stays on the rear-guard, the many helots and giant Meconians circulate themselves across each deck, HVLS system or naval gun.

At the ebb of this ritual, the people funnel themselves out of readiness and into the cantina of the ship.

Here, what rest can come over these sailors, becomes nothing but the many channels lighting up a Tele-Stim screen bolted over a doorway.

These channels are only from Sicela. In the dawning skies, local astrologers on the screen speak of a red constellation of Followers, closing in to a sisterhood of cyan specks. The next channel on the telestim screen speaks of unrest, war and political strife.

Jorj holds the device that controls this change. He shifts over the channels now, looking for combat footage. The Tele-Stim crystals change to a news station. A face on the left describes the action on the right. Jorj wishes the spectacle to only focus on footage and so it happens. The people in the cantina watch to his wishes.

Now the screen is of a broken city. An oval of painted blue, a steel and ceramic covered powerarmor, of two bulky legs and long arms that reach to its feet. The armor dashes through smoke. It picks up a giant industrial mining laser and places it over a welded steel claw welded to its shoulder. The rectangular machine has two spinning discs at its center, rotating and heating up the coiled object that becomes ready to fire. Spasmodic, flickering deep orange, a welding glow belches against the floor in rapid succession. Once a hole has been bored through, blue-headed rebels jump in.

Once these people are through, the oval powerarmor uncoils at the limbs and it extends upwards. Arms and legs become of very long biceps or thighs and shins, that grab on open windows and broken apartments. As the machine climbs, some of its lengthy parts break into new ligaments and joins, allowing for unorthodox support of its weight and movement through the broken cityscape.

Varhas creeps into the cantina. He sits next to Jorj and watches for a few seconds before speaking. ‘Live footage?’

‘Seems so. They don’t say why they are fighting. They just do.’

‘You have to do the guesswork. It has always been like this.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Broadly, one can look at economic factors to understand why a war picks up momentum. People, organizations, populations want something that grows, or is mined far away. In this wide focus one can understand how demand moves someone’s will to impose their own idea of order elsewhere. Pinpoint however, one can say that all of this started in a very specific moment in time. One can just isolate the spark that started this fire, in say, some random assassination, some idea that sprang into a martyr’s mind and then spread around like an infection. Two such focuses help clear the image. Both types of focus overtake one another, or they happen in parallel in a long stretch of time, history.’

‘You just explained how you do your guesswork. Not what is actually happening.’

‘Yes, because I am also guessing there. Perhaps the unrest down there is not as widespread as they want us to believe. Perhaps the people are not even sure if their Pantokrator is dead, or gone, or even if they have entered into a War of Ascension. My mother used to tell me, that wherever many speak of war, things are at best, foggy. People speak about the extreme event happening around them more than they understand it.’

‘So you don’t know.’

‘Nope. But, I am not downplaying this. We are heading into a warzone.’

‘Matters little to me.’

Varhas shakes his head in agreement.

Jorj grabs the initiative, not letting Varhas reply. ‘So why are you here? Why are you actively following me on a warzone, knowing you put yourself in such danger?’

‘It’s my job.’

‘Sure. As much as any job can be your job. You could just leave today and find some other magical event that falls on your lap. And what is that job anyways?’

‘I serve.’ The response catches Jorj off guard. Varhas speaks these words casually. Jorj stops looking at the screen and turns towards the Claimant with a frown in his face.

‘You. You are the one that serves?’

‘Aye.’

‘Whom?’

‘You. I serve you. Not Orichalcum, not the team, definitely not the Black and White hooligans or die-hard fans. The job of a Claimant is to serve.’

The Contestant finds the way Varhas speaks pleasing. His casual tone is true. ‘What do you mean?’

‘The same way that the slaves of Mecone serve and think themselves the underlying masters of the Giants, so do many Claimants see themselves as. Except, we don’t undermine the people we serve, we do not weave webs of intrigue against them. We serve deep desires, the momentary experiences that should be, of whomever we are called to.’

‘When Anax was still around, he used to tell me that you control culture. You see where you should go by its flow and change.’

‘Of course. We make art, sound, we bend machines to will, all of this ties to culture. All culture is desire. Culture is giving shape to what man wants and feels. Words, colours, sounds, narratives, timing, fear, all.’

‘It is best to desire nothing is it not?’

‘Everything can be better or worse in their little pocket of time, or the minute scope of their performer. Circumstances make of context, circumstances make results and we judge things based on either.’

‘You speak in riddles again.’

‘Okay then. I don’t think it is best to desire nothing. There will be times where you have to measure and decide what you want. There will be times where you must come to terms with what you feel and long to have. My point is that I dislike that rigid, set way.’

‘It is easier to be consistent. Say, I can just speak of my desire to desire nothing again and again.’ Jorj frowns in his contradiction. Varhas smiles. ‘Oh well. I suppose I am fickle now.’

A moment passes. Varhas is the one in turn who frowns.

‘But is this thought yours Jorj?’

‘Why does this matter?’

‘It matters because if this desire to desire nothing, is not something you have believed in first, then you are just repeating another man’s culture. I am sure, half the rebels down there aren’t even fighting for themselves. I think this is important. Did you read this in a book? Did some stranger tell you of this?’

The Contestant thinks. After a while, he shakes his head as if he has taken a wrong turn within himself and then he half reminisces as he replies.

‘I don’t remember where I heard that. It might had been never. When I was still small, down the mineshafts, when I was starving, I ate. Nothing crossed my mind then and after a while, I thought myself fortunate to not be hungry anymore. I didn’t want for anything until way later when I was out and had already become a Contestant.’

‘That is very interesting. Blessed too.’

‘Blessed?’

‘Yes. I mean, think about it. The whole analysis of desires has been written to death and back and dead again over many a millennia. So many have come and gone arguing about the nature of such things and yet, you, are fortunate enough to experience these thoughts first hand. To realize them without influence. There is novelty in your minute scope. Good things can be again. Do I make sense?’

Jorj stands idle. Then, as he grinds these words to meaning, he nods, eyes unfocused and a light realization passing over him, happy and earnest.

‘I suppose so. It wasn’t all good though. I’m sure you understand.’

‘What is the spice of life but misery?’

‘Yeah. Well you did just say it as if I am supposed to remember this. Am I to repeat your words later on? Bastard.’

Varhas widens his eyes. ‘Apologies. Didn’t... Oh, you are joking.’ His face flattens. ‘This things are serious you know.’

‘To you a Claimant perhaps. To me? I don’t know. What if the people who say these things only want the best for us? As in, trying to save us time from figuring these things on our own?’

‘It is best to experience something yourself. But I get what you mean. It is just... that you can never be certain with what a Claimant tells you.’

‘Because you are all mad bastards trying to influence others yes. I get that.’

‘Not only that. All these things, we know. How to bend culture, how to infect ideas and pass them on. More than that, this is the reason why Claimants go into the Inverse Dream. It is the only way to measure our willpower, our philosophies, our unconscious weight. And in this measuring, I truly tell you, that it does not lean towards good or evil. It just is.’

‘That’s...’ Jorj thinks. ‘...well, that is just like anything.’

Varhas is ready to blurt out a long monologue on the nature of the Inverse Dream, but this short sentence stops him. The Claimant looks down, he thinks and then he replies.

‘Yeah. True. Foggy if anything. I just cannot see either a broad or pinpoint reasoning as to how the Inverse Dream works. Or why. The machines move to our emotional outpour and they know which Claimant is superior to another. Which culture is heavier than another.’

‘Do you think that is fair Varhas?’

The Claimant lights up. ‘Yes. Yes. Fair. That is the word. It feels fair, as if well calculated. The way everyone’s fantasy clashes with another’s. How archetypes, abstractions of humanity can be measured.’

‘No, I meant as in, fair that you people control machines instead of anyone, like me, a Commoner.’

‘Oh.’ Says Varhas. The whiplash sends him back into himself, grounded away from a sermon that does not manifest. ‘Maybe it is all a plot to bring Claimants and Commoners together. You want to pilot a powerarmor on your own?’

‘Of course I do. Or maybe it is just fun for the average nobody to wed himself some Claimant priestess.’

‘Who knows what problem this is solving. Anyways.’

Silence comes around for another moment. Then, Jorj breathes, in an outward display of his chest, the breath is visibly drawn in. A growing of his chest, then he forms a fist to pound it steadily to the rhythm of his heart underneath.

‘Do you know what is the first thing a man learns on a mining world?’

‘What is it?’ Asks the Claimant in deep awe.

‘That man runs on breath. More than water or food, man runs on breath. By the time you walk, one has to know that oxygen and its absence kill and one barely notices. More than cave-ins, more than gasses suddenly catching fire, or black lungs. By the time you speak, you must know that being human is beating to a rhythm. Breathing to it, crawling for it. Watch Varhas. Pom, pom, pom. Watch. This is what being human is. Automated flesh, breath and pound to life.’

Varhas watches as the man ahead becomes image. In the insides of a gleaming ship that could, at any moment, implode and send them all to a horrible death, he is instead there. Immortal, fearless drum that beats for him. Heap of flesh that reflects back into him conversation, sound and influence that he himself lets in with ease.

He does not resist this amusing image. He too tightens his fist and pounds it over his chest as somehow magical the moment passes into gust and the gust enters into the folding space of his mind, clear and refreshing.

Chapter 28

Blood Magic

A notice of landing was given by an Ephor. With three hours to planetfall, Gon has decided to kill time with Scaramucc.

Inside of the Contestant’s quarters, the space is small with only a steel bed, a stool and a tiny table between the two men. Scaramucc holds two glasses with his fingers and with the other hand he pulls a half-full bottle of clear liquid from underneath the mattress.

As the two glasses clatter in the surface of the table, Gon mocks Scaramucc. In his effort to make fun of the man’s peculiar accent, he waves his bandaged hand around making sure that the Contestant sees it.

‘I didn’t know you were full of spunk little man. The hand will heal.’

‘Bah! Who cares about a stupid hand anyways? I am here to listen about space gypsies. I want your stories!’ With the vigor of a child that meets a hero, Gon is wide of eye and even wider a mouth.

‘No. No. Cattivelli. We are Cattivelli, not gypsies. Big difference there.’ Scaramucc continues, cutting the Claimant off before he can reply. With his free hand he opens the bottle of clear alcohol and pours it into the two glasses. ‘Don’t ask how we are different. If you, a Claimant doesn’t know, there is no point in speaking. Just drink. Where I come from, it is better that a man figures these things out on his own.’

Gon takes an emptying swig and the liquid melts its way down to his stomach. When he speaks again, his voice is language between the dry coughs. ‘And what has...’ He coughs. ‘...great Scaramucc seen in the vast...’ he lets a gruff exhale out ‘...and detailed space?’

‘Anything you imagine, I have been there. Whatever you machinate I have performed it. From deathmatches on weddings, to solo mercenary work. Minefield disarmament, battlefield and war. I’ve taken part in the Contest too. Like, fifty, forty-five years ago?’

‘Really? It is my first time in the Contest.’

‘Well then little one, listen here and learn. Have a guess at my age.’

‘Two hundred.’

‘Twice so.’

Gon’s features widen. In whatever ironic display, or perhaps a truly earnest one covered in boyish mannerism, the Contestant on the other side smiles and takes an equally deep swig of his drink.

‘You are four hundred years old? How come I know nothing about you? You have lived longer then some Pantokrators out there! I should have stumbled into knowing you. What rarity of such long life in human form.’

‘Well... for one thing Gon, you talk the Claimant talk that is certain.’ In a self servicing move of the man’s features, Scaramucc gloats with arching hand, puffed chest and face alike. ‘You do not know me because I’ve changed this face a few times. There are ways to retake your BRM license. Have someone graft and change your anatomy and go at it again. Of course, such things are only possible in places where Claimants such as you don’t slack off.’

Gon’s eyes light up. To him, every sentence out of this man is a new fantasy. He brings to image the things that he has never seen, in the speech of another. Through a doorway, he grabs at the rims of the corridor and he eagerly listens to the Contestant, revealing the cosmos, one experience after the other. The way his mind consumes Scaramucc’s stories is eager blood-play, honest reflection on the ancient man ahead.

The half-light that makes the Claimant returns, but Scaramucc can only perceive it through hints of bygones.

When Scaramucc speaks of how marines board the great vessels in the sky, when he reminisces of underground miners and their yoke, when he curses the damned course a gold-layered man takes in life, or of how lava feels on skin and of how there is a dark patch in his life of forty nine years without a body, Gon holds the words dear.

By the third drink, Gon is awestruck and his half-light intensifies even further.

‘Amazing. Who are you Scaramucc and who are you to have seen so many things?’

The Contestant frowns, then he pours another glass and he proudly bows his head, open palms to the sky and elbows touching the table In-between them.

‘A convict, a pirate. Someone hidden from reality in a jail for fifty year’s time.’ He pauses. Suddenly his face becomes a steadied expression. Sly and crude, he aims and fires something that should not be revealed. ‘Gon, you think I do not know of Blood magic? I am commoner by anyone’s standards, but I know of how Claimants like you think.’

Gon’s exalted half-light stops suddenly. In equal speed, he becomes saddened for a moment. Outwardly so while also equally recoiling inside, at the spirit.

There is silence for a minute. ‘I am sorry Scaramucc. Actually, I am sorry and ashamed for being a Claimant of Blood sorcery. Its just how my body works.’

Gon appears beaten. In some common ground between the two, the Claimant feels an intimate, teenage shame and great tragedy. Whereas, not by chance alone, Scaramucc is reminded of someone dear to him who is no longer out there.

‘I know what you mean.’ Replies the Contestant. The two next swigs of alcohol drown out this common sadness between both of the men, only for a moment.

‘I have to ask, even if I bring back memories that may kill me by your hand. How are you aware of Claimant magic. How do you know of the shape that my thoughts take within me?’

‘Well... I don’t know what you think. But I do know that ever since... someone died that I held very dear to me, I have only been paired with Claimants similar to you. Call me a superstitious man. Do you know of the Cattivelli story about the donkey?’

Gon shakes his head.

In a low tone the Contestant begins. ‘There was once a baby whose mother divined his course through life just as he was birthed. This was the usual custom on his small village. Every boy and girl and every man and woman had such a story for how their life would unravel. However, for this boy, his mother hid his prophecy for many years. Deathly afraid, it was always the same chastisements. Never ride any animal for it will be your undoing. And even so, the first animal the young boy rode was his father’s donkey in secret. Every morning once they got out of the village, his father would prop the boy into the donkey’s back and they would go to do their usual work. Every evening, the man would return to the village with himself on top of the animal instead and the boy walking besides him. The boy grew up to be a striking young man and soon enough, nobody remembered of the hidden prophecy. Tired as all parents become after a while, the chastisements skipped a day, then they remained unsaid for years.’

Scaramucc reaches out for the bottle. He pauses and after glancing to Gon’s focused look, he continues his story. ‘One day a princess rode out into the village with two horses. She boasted on how she was going from place to place seeking for a husband and how she had already passed through three other villages. She exclaimed that she would offer herself to the first man that could beat her in a race. Along with herself, the woman boasted riches and a chance for any peasant to become the son-in-law of the local count. Naturally, the village’s elders talked it over themselves and realized that no man had ever riden a horse. Still, the potential gain was too much for them and they thought that instead, as courtesy, fate and stories often have it, that the prettiest man in the village should be the one to compete. After all, it was always the pretty ones that won a princess’ hand, it was always the heroes of tall and broad statue that came up victorious. That is how, the race began. Man and woman rode the two horses and by the time it was all over, the prophecy had turned its course and the young man fell and died as was promised. It is only in such moments that all grief returned and all worries flash themselves back into the mother’s, anyone’s minds. And it is only then, that the mother cast her curses. Not towards the animals, not towards the elders, or the father who took the son secretly and put confidence into him. Not even towards the princess, or the local count. But aimed true, against those older stories that made heroes only of those beautiful, broad, brave men, while so many had paved this way with their coprses.’

The Blood Theurg listens and knows exactly how this Contestant unveils him. Exactly as he hates language, the cut-and-measure way of other Claimants, so does Scaramucc.

He purses his lips and nods. The man ahead is his best fit. The story calls him by name and meaning.

‘The mother called her curses accurately.’ Says Gon.

‘I think so too. And to that I curse this story also!’ Toasts Scaramucc.

The two drink again. The room spins.

‘What is the deal with the man you call Jorj?’

‘What of him?’

‘You are a weird man, but as all Claimants go, I’ve seen you kind. But Jorj? What is he?’

‘He is like you. A Contestant.’

‘A Contestant?’ Scaramucc frowns in thought and then a hint of surprise glosses over. ‘Second guessing myself. You would ask me what he is and I would doubt he is a Commoner.’

‘Why?’

‘No idea. He moves as if... he is content.’

‘Can a Contestant not be content with his life?’

‘Of course not. Things are dulled when you get the gold-layers in your brain. If that does not dull you enough, then immortality will. Put me into a fire for twenty years and after a while it will all feel like nothing. We Contestants are meant to move from extremity to extremity. To appreciate how these are the only things we can feel. It is all a cat and mouse, piercing the plastic, meaningless membrane coating all. Perhaps he has not suffered long enough.’

‘He is quite old from what I hear. But he is soon to pass anyways.’

‘Is that so little man? I don’t believe it.’

‘It is.’

‘How?’

‘Varhas said it was some imperfection before the golden-layering process. Mere particle, toxic, rare, from mining planets, dormant for so many years? He said it got triggered by rare neuroplasticity and released into his gray matter. Inoperable, but mostly because nobody actually wants to try. There is neither money in treating him, nor a living elusive genius to perform such a miracle of surgery for noble reasons. Bad timing. Bad era.’

‘Damn. Lucky guy. Got my hopes up for final rest. At least it can happen. Cheers to that.’

Chapter 29

Lecture

During planetfall, the shuttle rattled and dove into black clouds. Through the windows, Claimants and Contestants saw only gray, pulled raindrops, flare and fanning in the distance. Far away, bombers and fighter planes clashed against eachother above some dimly lit city by a coast.

This descent lasted forty six minutes and ten seconds of which Laodike held her mother in tight, nervous grips.

This felt like no spectacle. At least to everyone but Gon. The war even if distant, passed over them as foreign cloth that refused to sit rightly on their bodies.

On the surface, they disembarked rapidly. A bunker with a barracks, rows of bunkbeds and lockers were arranged for them and their baggage. An underground strategy room, was their safehouse, their place of quasi diplomatic and religious asylum in a planet that had not yet decided who would be their next Pantokrator.

***

At night, when all the Contestants sleep, the Claimants gather in the strategy room to discuss.

There are no windows here, only a large circular desk, a chalkboard and lamps that give conical light to whatever is underneath. The place is otherwise dark and the devices here are isolated and unpowered so that no foreign C may intrude on their secrets.

Laodike aims her sharp words against Varhas. Her throat is pressed to keep her voice calm, but she is otherwise straining all across her vocal chords and each fiber of her body. Under the cones of light, the cracking scar of the horror becomes a visible patch on her side of the neck that moves along to her mouth.

‘Why can we not just leave this cursed place?’

Varhas replies in a dead manner. ‘There are no options to the path we are into.’

‘Fuck your options. I listen to the bombs falling across the sea. I lapse to the Inverse Dream for a moment and I hear the wailing of a hundred women churning in the wires. Gods! Mother tell him. You can hear them all the same can’t you?’

Zanuvia casts her face low, in a desperate tone she barely forms language to what she wants to say. ‘Dear. We are set in carved ditches. We can do nothing but flow in them, follow the stream of history.’

Laodike closes her eyes. Defeat rules her over as she balances the cold mantras of Claimancy with her earnest worries.

Varhas seems torn for a moment. He thinks himself a cruel man to say what he believes in, but he opens his mouth anyways to speak this mantra, jammed between experience, old stories and personal understanding of the universe. ‘This is the only way through a War of Ascension. We have to tiptoe around the various Dominions of Pretenders here. We have to hold tight to the narrative that rules us and also be gentle towards those that fight here. Please Laodike. Believe me if you may, that by experience I speak. No harm will overcome us. We should not tempt fate but rest in it as it is manufactured by many other Pantokrators.’

Gon interjects as soon as Varhas finishes. He is unusually calm and so is his delivery. ‘Its not like a bomb will find us. Little odds are skewed so that it may never blow up and harm us. Every Claimant knows this. It is by minute imperfections that Pantokrators weave circumstances and events. An imperfection in the alloy here, a missing bolt on a chair there.’

Laodike twitches. She picks up a chair with both hands and throws it against Gon. The man steps to the side and the tumbling object bounces stiff on the unoccupied floor and then the concrete wall.

Then, he continues in that flatness. ‘See? Even if you wanted you can’t hurt me. It is divine will that makes things impossible.’ Gon fumbles the words around in a short pause. ‘And safe. Try again. I won’t dodge this time.’

Laodike lifts the next chair and throws it again. This time Gon does not dodge. The steel chair flies and one of its legs touches the Claimant. However, the force becomes mitigated as the chair breaks and folds. The legs of the chair give in and break at their joints where a miraculous error has long since never placed the bolts there. The brunt of the force that hits him is of the chair’s soft leather back.

‘See?’ Gon then turns into Zanuvia and and Varhas.

The old woman gets up. ‘Stop it. Both of you.’ She turns to Gon first. ‘She knows. She is just young. Do not test chance.’ Then she turns to Laodike. ‘Do not question fate.’

‘Mother. I have accepted your teachings many times, never doubting you. But why. Tell me why the Contest has been decided to take place in an active battlefield? This is madness.’

The black-dressed Claimant rises after a deep breath. He appears beaten for a moment before his voice comes out with renewed strength. ‘Each of our matches is a way for Pantokrators to see into probabilities and pathways of the future. Whatever we do in the arena, it holds some vast meaning that we cannot grasp. So we must compete. Just like our match in Mecone showed that the Orichalcum shield is more powerful than the spear and made one God’s omens superior to another’s, so we must do now.’ The room fills with his serious tone. Zanuvia walks closer to her mother and sits at an empty chair next to her.

‘I cannot sleep at night Varhas.’ Whispers the young woman.

‘I cannot teach you how to worship Pantokrators and how to summon their lull. These things happen in moments.’ He sighs and turns to the blackboard. ‘Speaking of moments. I had a dream last night. Vivid, dark, celestially woven, I do not want to speak out loud about it. All of you who followed me to my home should understand some of its divine origin. So...’

Further defeated, the woman gets up to leave. Varhas turns to her and commands her. ‘You have to stay.’

‘Please Varhas. I feel like I am in the middle of an IDP episode.’

‘No. You will stay. No matter how heavy the meaning, you have to listen.’

Stiff, as if the thoughts inside of her scrape the walls as they flow, Zanuvia freezes and returns next to her mother.

The Claimant on the board pinches a white chalk with his fingertips and begins to draw an image.

It is a vision of the next match. With capital letters on the board’s top left corner, ABRAXAS appears as many architectural incisions of that place. It is a compilation of plans in white lines on a deep-green chalkboard background. The floors, ceilings and walls weave and corner, rise and coalesce in very strict and straight lines. The form of that place is a post-modern design of the 20th century. A tall multi-floored plan fit for giants, packaged in a classical motif. Varhas’ drawings showcase colossal round windows without glass, a square obelisk, corridors and arches in the vast innards of the otherwise drab building.

Gon speaks first after the long silence of studying the design. ‘Is this the tall building far to the East of our bunker?’

‘It should be. Looks a lot like it.’

‘So how do we get in? When are we summoned to participate?’ Asks Gon.

‘That I do not know, but someone is bound to come here and bring us our entry devices and schedule a shuttle to lift Jorj, Otto, Hab and Scaramucc to the arena. I got no confirmation from Orichalcum since we have been here, so I doubt the next match is going to be a Kingmaker or a Royalty match, or anything involving powerarmors. It is most like a four versus four, first to reach ten kills.’

‘What about weapons. What should we start with?’

‘I was thinking a Lanza for Jorj, a flak cannon for Hab to shoot behind corners and over floors. What do you want Otto to carry?’

‘What if we went with a sniper rifle? You said the place is tall. Otto could provide overwatch over the obelisk and the floors around it.’

‘No argument from me. Gon?’

The blond Claimant shrugs his shoulders. ‘I cannot choose. During transit I saw your match on Dur-Baqa, I thought that the Lanza is amazing. But I haven’t even fought with it. No idea how I could make it work.’

Varhas frowns. Some sudden exhaustion comes over him and Laodike wrests the flow of speech.

‘See what I mean? We are working here with a newbie. How are we even crowned by divine help if we are only three here that have competed in the Contest? This is unfair no matter how much I like to believe in irrational things.’

Gon bows his head. Only half of him ashamed he speaks in an annoying to others apology. ‘Sorry.’

Zanuvia speaks. ‘What does Scaramucc want to wield?’

‘Oh. Well he said anything. I wanted to try the Biosludger.’

‘Really? You are going in with the worst weapon in the Contest?’

‘Worst?’

‘Yes Gon, that gun takes forever to charge a big blob. Even if you use the smaller blobs to stick into an opponent it still takes time to kill someone. The flak cannon, the Lanza and the rifle all can kill someone instantly.’

Gon doesn’t seem to answer. Varhas on the other hand watches the man’s sly insistence conceal itself from everyone and he speaks.

‘It is fine. Let the man pick his own weapons. It doesn’t make much difference. The arena is big, so there might be little time to go back to where someone died. We will most likely play with the guns we pick up. Keep your eyes out for any powerups too. Don’t forget. You may not be able to watch any matches in the meanwhile but Scaramucc should tell you a few stories from his experiences. Get to know him better.’

Gon smiles.

As Varhas sits back to his seat, Zanuvia points at the board again. ‘What about the name? Are we just going to leave this Gnostic reference there?’

‘Oh that one. Yes.’ Varhas purses his lips. The pause gives way to silence that is well understood by the two women. This is the domain of somebody else and before Varhas speaks he clears his throat. ‘Narrative meaning perhaps, that as is the Archon, snake-legged Pantokrator of Mecone, some meaning binds this place to him. I am not sure if the arena is a water tank, or an outpost, or some shrine to foreign gods of Sicela. From my understanding, every War of Ascension is fought between many Pretenders over a planet. Only one of them may ascend to Pantokrator. Our match there may be in the closed halls of one of them, or a contested territory of their influence. If we win, some action, something will move in the grand scheme of this war. What that is, I do not know.’

‘I think it is pretty obvious.’ Speaks Laodike.

‘What am I missing?’

‘You were the one that said that the Pantokrator of Mecone was a great serpent giant. Here, we are fighting in an arena of something made in the image of Gnosticism. This foreign influence might as well be the one from Mecone. They are, after all, similar concepts and pantheons.’

‘You are correct Laodike. I just was just not thinking of the bigger picture. I sound daft, but I didn’t make this connection.’

‘What were you thinking about then?’

‘That... when I did a brief Inverse Dream entry yesterday, just before bed, I heard no wailing as you did. I just saw nothing. I held my eyes open and it was so dark that there was no difference if I kept them wide open.’

‘What do you make out of that moment Varhas?’ Replies Gon in a serious tone, his smile fading into the half-light grimace In-between uncertain malice and earnest innocence.

‘There is more to this planet than Mecone and Arhoscephale, invading for their interests. Whatever man could connect the dots he is no longer here to guide us with his skill. There is horror hidden in the shadows and I fear that each day we close in on an ever tightening gap from which we have to squeeze through.’

***

Outside of the bunker, the dawn paints flat pebble and black hills into a hue of sleek, white radiance. The planet appears as a cloudless flatness, an otherwise cold and inhospitable place, that is now becoming warmer by each passing second.

Hab wakes up first. When he notices that Laodike is not in her bed, he walks outside to find her wrapped in a blanket, leaning and sleeping on a concrete wall. Her head balances on the slightly diagonal wall and she still draws breath. Hab is glad to see her, idle and alive after a brief press of what stress has been swung too hard in comfort. This reminder of false security sends him tripping over the flat earth outside. The sound wakes the Claimant up.

‘Dad?’

‘What are you doing here?’

‘I just couldn’t sleep.’

‘And you had to do it here? I could have carried the mattress for you at least.’

‘No. It is just. I had to sleep here, face my fears.’

Far into the distance, where the horizon is both parts submerged in dawn and the turning of the night, a solitary half-lit speck rests on both sides of the new and older day.

Hab sits next to Laodike. The young woman remains focused on the speck of a building far away.

‘War got you scared?’

‘Come on dad. Seriously? Me and mom are one bullet away from... You don’t know.’

Hab smiles and at that, Laodike glances at him. She tries to hide behind a fake frown.

‘I know. I know. I’m not that stupid enough to forget you two can die. But when your mom says that we should not worry, I tend to trust her.

‘Blindly?’

‘Always. I don’t have any other way to trust her. You know me, when she starts telling her stories and that other Claimant stuff, I close my ears.’

‘How do you understand these things then?’

‘I just do. All my years on Tropicana your mother has never been wrong on where to fish, on where to throw my line, where to put our crab pots and what waters to avoid. Do you remember the first time you ate lobster?’ Hab hovers his hand a short height infront of him. ‘You were this little, couldn’t use the cracker, had me sitting there like a factory snapper, breaking shell and handing you over the crabmeat.’

The woman smiles brightly. Teeth out into the open, some colour returns to her cheeks as she turns to her father.

‘You are right. I should not doubt her. You must have told me a hundred times over how she always saved your life with her omens of storms and currents and how the knots of a patch of sea change in a minute.’

‘Aye. That she did.’

‘But...’

‘Come on Laodike. You have been fussing over her since Ulm. Don’t you think its time you mend things between you?’

Doubly, from smile to surrender, Laodike swallows her pride. Her facial scars itch and she reminds herself that she would not be here if it wasn’t for her. She also reminds herself that even after all of these moments, she is perhaps doing the same mistakes as both of them.

‘I just thought things would be different.’

‘With who? Otto?’

She struggles to answer. ‘No.’

‘With us?’

‘No. I mean. I’ve seen how sad she was on Tropicana. I remember her pulling away from reality to deep periods of longing and I saw that. How much you two have talked about my brother that was never meant to be. I remember all of these moments. I feel, that despite all of these divinations and beliefs, that I might be doing the same mistakes as you.’

‘Do you love him?’

‘I know what I don’t love about him that is certain. But honestly, I feel glad that he is a commoner. Not some Claimant with whom I have to deal with complicated bullshit all the time. I am glad you are a commoner.’

‘Then you aren’t making a mistake.’

Hab brings one hand over Laodike. The Claimant leans into him, ear to shoulder. The woman listens to his heartbeat and the flow inside the man.

‘How did you even manage back then?’

‘Patience. I knew that your mother loved me even at her darkest moments. I had to be patient when she screamed that she hated me, that she hated how simple of mind I was, or how I ruined her life. I kept it together each time she called me stupid. All we have is time. Time is... I don’t know. It mends all wounds.’

‘Did someone tell you this?’

‘No. I just remember returning home one evening years after we lost your little brother, calm and thinking, that all it took was time.

As the sky turns to morning and the building far ahead becomes well lit in all its concrete speck of glory, Laodike leans away from her father. Her eyes are drawn to his young features.

Before both of them get up, she fashions herself a thought of fortune. That no matter the years, the long immortal time that is there for her father, it is all fortunate to her. She will always have him at least. Him and Otto. Perhaps she thinks before entering the bunker, that once they win all this, there will be time for calming down. In the seas Tropicana, or some mountain in ancient Valkanea.

Chapter 30

Preparations

Jerk and drown of dream is much alike to the inverse, but Varhas is struggling in a natural lack of control.

Isolated in his own lapses of the mind, the darkness ebbs and wanes like a sludge. Currents crawl in a whorl and within this chaos Varhas is drowning.

A pair of hands draws the man out. The sludge leaves him dry. The dream fashions spindly, starved fingertips full of blisters and eczema patches. They reach out to him only to pull his Makkaras fabric. It doesn’t tear. The black curtains on the man stretch and fold into his back, over the shoulders and the designer clothes dig into his neck. His jewelry falls, the mica curtains clatter into the dirt and shatter as they lose their otherwise real plasticity.

In a frenzy, the man lunges through his clothing. Naked and sprinting, he exits the darkness of the dream into an open space.

The monument far away appears to flow on the land. Great ship or walking behemoth it beckons the man closer. Varhas shuts his ears. His palms have holes in them that bleed and he can feel both trickle and wind caressing his earlobes. Deadly intent exists in the trickle as well as the moving mass far away.

An invisible force reanimates him. Before his eyes are forced open, an immaterial voice whispers from beyond. It’s language is frozen, black and with a hint of home.

The Claimant opens his eyes to Jorj. At the top of the bunkbed both of their eyes are at equal level.

‘Morning Varhas.’

‘Mo... Morning Jorj.’

‘You were gasping. Trembling too.’

Varhas gets up. The barracks around him is relatively silent. Hab and Laodike are gone, while the rest are just waking up, dressing, massaging the lull of sleep away from their eyes.

‘Just a nightmare. Where is Laodike? Hab?’

The door to the barracks opens. Jorj points. Varhas blinks his eyes as he falls off the bunkbed to the side. He lands on his feet and the tiled floor sends jolts of pain up and away to his chest and hands.

Hab and Laodike split. The woman stays at the entrance. With a quick glance she focuses on Varhas who appears confused and also somewhat stuck into her eyes. She closes the distance.

‘You want to talk.’

‘Morning Laodike. Nightmares?’

‘Not today.’

‘Really? That is good.’

‘What is wrong?’

‘Just... Nightmares.’

‘You were snoring too.’ Says Zanuvia from the other side of the room. Laodike and Varhas turn to her for a moment. She is over at the charcoal stove boiling water for coffee.

‘Was I?’ Varhas asks Laodike.

‘No idea. I slept outside. Don’t you think its a bit early to start picking apart our dreams and other Claimant hints?’

Varhas nods and turns to leave. As he glances underneath himself one of the tiles is cracked, yet held in place by some mortar or glue on the other side. The earth below holds patterns of smooth, wavy details of stone, slices and waves of formations.

‘I can’t let any detail pass us by. Not again. Stay a while.’

Laodike knows already what drives the man and she doesn’t have to look at the signs of stone all around them. Whatever thoughstreams occur in the man, she is well aware of their nature and hidden meaning that point to someone who is no longer there.

She leans on the bunkbed.

‘What did you dream of?’

‘Drowning. Gasping for air in a sludge. I have also never felt the dead drag me down as they did. These are bad omens.’

‘If it makes you feel any better, I had similar dreams. It is the death of this planet. All the dead are crawling up, heaving their despair out into the oceans and the machines of this planet.’

‘You are correct. In my case both the dark and windy currents lacked their usual... comfort’

‘So did the waters in my dreams. What do you think about it?’

‘Perhaps both of us need to avoid some of our magic in the next match. You should avoid using water. I should avoid using air magic and death sorcery.’

‘Are you not empowered in all the looming despair of this place? I thought your skeleton-making and dark movement might be even stronger here.’

‘Perhaps. But it feels to familiar of an event that is too early to happen to me. Bad omens.’

‘Okay. Okay Varhas. I’ll keep it in mind.’

‘What did you see in your nightmares?’

‘I saw a sea, calm as a mirror, yet I could not float in it. I had weights on my body and all I could do was sink.’

***

By noon, the baracks fills with the usual. Gon sleeps, the Contestants play cards and Varhas helps Zanuvia and Laodike tp prepare a meal.

Over a cauldron, the hearty soup shimmers and the scents of herbs and ration-proteins fill the room.

The cards are of gypsy queens and swarthy buccaneers stacked one on top of the other. Scaramucc wins with ease and the other three became increasingly baffled at his obscene luck.

The Blood Theurg twitches every so often as he consumes other people’s agony.

Lost in the scents, the ambience of annoyed grumbles and a Theurg’s brain working in quiet, Varhas takes to his thoughts, combing them over in a easy pass. In this peace, Zanuvia nears the Claimant without him noticing.

‘Word of a mother, your story is missing something. You didn’t tell the whole thing to my daughter.’

Still in combing, the man rests in a half-there attention that lapses back into parts of the nightmare that he dared not think about.

‘You are right. I forgot something.’

‘What then?’

‘My nightmares had a... texture. They were of cheap fabric. And even at this cheap quality, they were identically warm to my mother. It was as if behind the things I felt and saw, there was this tightened rag.’ The man puts his fingers on his eyes, massaging the place In-between his eyebrows.

‘Perhaps these nightmares have a malevolent meaning. Meant to tire you and my daughter out. Do you believe this a work of some other Astral Claimant? Sending you, some signal, or message?’

The outside doors open. Everyone stops what they are doing and Gon wakes up. His lazy eyes to the entrance following the many strangers that enter. In their shoulders they carry wide ziggurats of wide platforms and various thick cables wrapped in plastic membranes.

They ask where to put these machines and Laodike walks over. The Contestants break their card game to push the bunkbeds out of the way and create space. These gestures please the strangers. They are mostly local young men dressed in military uniforms and some of them sit idle and strange.

Large batteries, four ziggurats and black, coiling rivers of plastic and golden wires now cover the floor. The inside of the bunker quickly becomes a den for Claimants. Accelerated whispering, machine language taking esoteric form and uncommon lull suddenly comes back into the world.

Invited, Varhas retreats into himself in his half-there concentration while touching one of the ziggurats.

While this mess becomes connected and power, Zanuvia, with the help of Otto and Hab, carries the large cauldron in the middle of the room. Before the team sits on-top of the wires to eat, she turns to some of the young strangers.

‘Would you like to join us?’

The question is a surprise. In awkward silence, the young strangers smile and try to diffuse the good manners with equally well meaning manners of their own. One of their officers takes initiative and speaks on behalf of the strangers.

‘Thank you, but we cannot stay with you for long. A shuttle should arrive in the afternoon for the Contestants. Have you performed your magic on the machines? Are they to your specifications?’

‘That bleak man over there should be checking shortly. Oh please, do stay. I’ve made enough for fifteen people.’

The officer smiles at the gesture. He insists on behalf of his orders coming from above.

However before he leaves, he turns around towards the team.

‘I hope you win this. Me and the boys are die-hard Black and White.’

They turn to leave. However, during exit they all seem to be drawn, sight only, towards that one Claimant who has gone deep into the Inverse Dream of these new machines. Many eyes fall towards Varhas and the strangers bow, or cross over their eyes in superstitious ticks.

***

Inside the machines Varhas is not alone for long. The sky is gray and the land is but an absent focus giving weight to the far away concrete building.

Varhas stands on the black top of a short ziggurat. Intense heat precedes the first guest as he manifests in the sky. On the red hands of Doom is a scimitar of silver. The blade is thick and engraved in tongues of flames. It is both parts functional, heavy and sharp enough to cut through bone, but also adorned with such craftsmanship that it can equally channel through itself rituals of religion, warfare and kingly prestige.

The Abyssian lands with grace into the Inverse Dream. Bare feet tiptoe in contrast to his broad figure of long leathery wings.

Varhas reacts by manifesting his Norse sword through the ground and he prepares to cast a spell. However, the Abyssian Claimant points his sword low and the heat around him dissipates to a dry, summer draft of wind.

‘You are the one they call Varhas. I come in the manners of summer. I come in earnest welcome.’

‘So you say. But last time it horrors you sent to speak in your stead.’

‘In Abyssia, it is a great honor to be backstabbed by powerful blades. Where I come from, it is the greatest of honor to be hunted down by powerful opponents, tied malice.’

On the red face of the half-bred demon, Varhas watches as the words leave his mouth in a dry, eloquent lapping of his black lips. He speaks truly of how things are as if simple honor guides this short introduction, instead of some sick lust or the mania of sadism. Even so, he does not let go of his sword.

‘Come you here for a word of caution? Sabotage before our match? Speak.’

The Abyssian smiles. His teeth are white, sharpened to fangs, a sign of Blood Theurgs that find it convenient for their sadistic nature.

There is a light glow when he lets the vowels out, there is deep shadow when he hisses the consonants.

‘Sultry Varhas. It would be so, where you few seconds late. You’d be fighting your next match in uncomfortably hot machines. Instead, I come to offer you pleasantries. Offspring of the Sultana of Darkness, cold and raven one may we clash against eachother until there is nothing left but ashes of your soul.’

The moment Doom finishes. Before Varhas can respond, Gon enters. Mere hint, he is standing next to the winged Claimant, awkwardly looking at both of them. Then, he walks towards Varhas and sits at the base of the ziggurat.

The Abyssian’s eyes follow his white form. His expression changes to a worry and his wings begin to spasm lightly, as if some foreign signal has entered him and wrest away, hints of control. He opens his mouth to form a curse, but the language halts at the entry of another.

The man that enters is a Claimant of Earth through and through. Layers make up his fashion, metamorphic rocks and solidified waves over a gray suit of such heavy fabric, that he appears as a short, but broad pawn of great, unmovable mass balancing on-top of his steel boots. Kalyfax wears a doughboy helmet with a mask underneath.

As if resounding, from behind the mask Kalyfax speaks in a powerful voice.

‘Are you Varhas?’

‘I am.’

‘You feel no shame?’

‘About what?’

‘You call a friend, away from sacred work. You have him follow and feel no shame when he dies?’

‘You mean Anax? I tried...’

‘I care not for try. Answer. Do your sins weigh you down?’

Gon replies back instead. ‘He paid the price. Blood Theurg, says I to you, he paid in tears.’

Doom’s fiery aura belches to a furnace for a moment. But Kalyfax’s vibration in his yell shakes him and everything solid instead.

‘TEARS?!’

The voice is gruff and deafening. He speaks in such strength and yet, it commands no movement from the rest of his body, no deeper breath or other subdermal strain to bring out such power.

‘There is a demon here and even so you two are greater evils. A dark spawn of a murderess and another, mistake playing the role of a human from a planet that tried to make mistakes as Pantokrators. Know this, that as ground quakes, covers and topples filthy covenants and cities of sin, so will I be. I will erase the memories that make you both out of reality. No living thing may ever exume you or listen to your sermon.’ Kalyfax raises an arm to the horizon and he points at the building far away. ‘Face me so that I will make that place your tomb and raze it after.’

Chapter 31

ABRAXAS

‘You are shivering again. I can smell your fear. I can listen to your heart pounding.’

‘Our opponents.’

‘What about them? Are you afraid of some cookie-cutter Geology Corpos? You are not gonna start losing fingers like in Arhoscephale? Are you?’

‘Maybe it is so. Maybe it is that nightmare. I don’t know. Focus.’ Varhas audibly exhales into Jorj’s earpiece from the other side. ‘Maybe it is the Abyssians I fear later down the line.’

‘You really are scared. Worry when the time is due.’

‘Easy for you. You just pop back out in death. Nothing is hunting you.’

‘That very thing does.’

These words silence Varhas as he thinks them through. The Claimant exhales again, this time less constrained. ‘You are right. It’s just, that if I die in there, I have to die in reality. Or go senile.’

‘Don’t worry. I’ll come into the... that place and beat the Claimants for you.’

Varhas laughs. ‘Yeah, I’d like to see that. First in the universe.’

***

On the square floor of the arena, Jorj and Scaramucc spawn into two corners. Directly opposed are two opponents of the Yellow and Copper team. In their two corners, the sulfur-colored Contestants are dressed in Gymnete armor. Blueish and deep orange copper exists on-top of the patchy, bright yellow of their skin. Their bodies and armor contrast with the gray concrete of the grand building. Thick walls enclose the floor from all sides and the two arching exits to the sides are enclosed in steel, wired fences.

Outside this mesh, there is a small patch of a garden around the tall tower. Dry shrubs and naked trees form the foreground infront of late evening hours where the sky is still deep and radiant, a hint of turning slowly into night.

This very same light floods the interior of the towering arena. At the mid level, elevators come up and down, stopping into open corridors that envelop the space around a large obelisk at the center. Sharp corners, with thick walls and wide staircases lead upwards and around this level.

At the top of the arena, the same architecture follows. Open space in the center that can overlook below, a domed ceiling with a hole, large arching windows that showcase the splendor of Sicela’s dry flatlands.

And at the midst of all this, the colossal Obelisk stands. Square, pointy at its peak, standing with no other concrete floor or wall around it. The Obelisk is smooth, going from the highest point in the building down to its foundations. Everything revolves around it, but there is no circular flow. Only brutal, square and enveloping architecture that seems to venerate the object by being a wide, respectful distance away from it.

The match begins.

Surprisingly, the Lanza lacks it azure core, the flak cannon holds no shells on its magazine. The first one to realize this is Scaramucc who tries to fire his Bio Rifle into a wall and the weapon produces only a springing sound, extending and recoiling back into place.

Everyone runs around the concrete map searching for ammunition.

Hab is at the middlemost level. At the turn of a corner, the central room appears infront of him. He is six meters away from the Obelisk. Underneath he catches a glimpse of two forms moving below, quickly vanishing behind thick walls. On the same level an opponent appears behind the Obelisk. The Contestant ahead, a man named KLFX-68 notices him and both men exchange glances. The opponent holds with his left arm an empty sniper Rifle by its scope.

There is a lure in 68’s eyes. In that lapse of Hab’s attention, a magazine flies from below and 68 grabs it. With a quick reload, the opponent sends three bullets towards Hab, who retreats behind cover.

On the highest level, Otto engages an opponent whose name is also numbers and letters. ZACH-44 stands at a distance of 10 meters. His rocket launcher sends explosive projectile, one after the other. Otto dodges and fires his Flak Cannon. From this distance, the heated shrapnel webs outwards but loses some of its momentum and temperature. Either Contestant is unable to gain an edge, until one explosion forces Otto to dodge to his right.

Standing at the edge, KLFX-68 fires his rifle from underneath. The bullet enters through Otto’s right hip and exits through his upper left ribcage. The Gymnete breastplate has slowed the projectile down, but severe bleeding saps the Contestant’s strength in seconds. When the next rocket homes into him, Otto braces for death.

The score is one to zero.

Jorj has no ammunition still. Scaramucc stands further ahead, covering Jorj as he takes one of the elevator platforms to go up. Jorj falls prone on one of them, chest to platform and he is completely covered from below.

As soon as Jorj leaves, Gon and Scaramucc remain idle. Once this idleness breaks, man and Claimant smile. Their face is contorted. Bare teeth and sharpening senses, if one was to feel the aura around the man, boundless malice appears to seep outwards from his every pore. If one was to sense the Claimant’s urges, those take the shape of a child, unaware of cruelty, endlessly curious and exploring.

With these urges, Scaramucc begins to sprint. His muscle memory guides Gon, who in turn circulates into the Bio Rifle.

The weapon is crude when compared to others. Even to the bulky Flak Cannon, or the industrious tubes of a Rocket Launcher, the Bio Rifle is makeshift and crude. The weapon of a poor man, just a metal tube with a handle and inside of it is a spring that throws blobs of acid.

Its magazine is just a vial. A glass object protruding from the side that enters the weapon’s almost non-existent handguard. When the trigger is held down, green liquid enters into the wide barrel. There it collects, expands and takes its globular form, constantly expanding until the trigger is let go. Once that happens, the spring extends and the blob flies ahead. The shorter the trigger is held, the smaller blobs form and fly, also allowing for a rapid-firing mode.

And this is what Scaramucc has been doing. His aim however is towards inanimate objects. Some blobs arch as they fly, some stick to the concrete, while others remain further ahead on the floor. When Scaramucc has laid twenty small blobs around the lowest level, he holds the trigger and reveals himself.

With him, there two others. An opponent named ZA-56, who holds a sniper rifle and ZB-101 who holds a minigun. ZA-56 turns and fires twice. The first bullet grazes Scaramucc. The second one dissolves. Between the two rounds, Scaramucc has launched a great blob directly ahead of himself. The blob expands mid air and consumes the second bullet, which enters the soft acidic mucus and exits only as traces of metal.

Scaramucc runs to the side so as to put ZA-56 infront of ZB-101. With another step, Scaramucc leans low and the next round misses. With a quick flick of his index, the Bio Rifle spews a tiny globule and the spring lets it fly. The tiny blob flies fast and hits ZA-56 on his leg.

The initial burning sensation sends the opponent’s focus to a strain. In these precious seconds, Scaramucc retreats and hides.

Here is where Gon takes over. As Claimant powers peer through, his focus cuts into the rifle’s blobs. Weapons, tech and mind, hidden purposes and magic, it is so that the Bio Rifle has another function. As old Scaramucc has told the young Claimant, in earnest and slow conversation, some equal slowness begins to move the green globules around them. Gon homes into that small injury caused on ZA-56. Big or small, the various discharges from the Bio Rifle begin to roll and crawl, some fall from the high walls. And they all begin to gather towards to ZA-56.

At the middlemost level, Jorj finds Hab and his opponent locked in combat. Hab’s Lanza fires true against 68. The opponent’s body becomes a patch of gore and his gold-layered brain glimpses away to respawn. Hab is however bleeding out from his chest. Before he dies, Hab unloads his Lanza and gives the azure core to Jorj.

The score is two to one.

Both Hab and Otto respawn on the highest floor. Otto first, he dodges away from where the rockets are coming. While he keeps ZACH-44 busy, Hab runs around the floor and he finds himself a Flak Cannon.

ZACH-44 presses the unarmed Contestant by coming closer. Otto is forced to jump from the high floor. He lands on the Obelisk and kicks the object with his legs, propelling him into the middlemost level.

Hab takes over and he keeps ZACH-44 engaged.

As this takes place. Luck sways in favor of the Black and White team. 68 respawns on the lower level where the arena has become a shifting mass of rapid and chaotic movement.

Scaramucc sprints behind cover. The two armed opponents try to surround him, but at the same time the blobs underneath them chase after. Every step is measured, but nevertheless this pressure of battle makes ZA-56 misstep. The Contestant’s foot presses hard against a globule. The man slips and stops, while the green blob dissolves his flesh. Without escape, he falls down and the rest of the green globules rush towards him.

The man becomes covered and soon there is nothing of him left. No bones or flesh, only decayed traces of carbon.

And as soon as that happens, Scaramucc once again fires and hits ZB-101.

The green masses swerve off the dead Contestant and they crawl again. When ZB-101 understands this change, he focuses on the approaching mass and Scaramucc takes this chance to hit him with newly launched globules.

The score is two to three.

ZA-56 spawns first and ZB-101 follows. The two opponents are at the same level as Jorj and Otto. Instead of searching for a weapon, ZA-56 dodges and closes into Jorj.

The man avoids a Lanza blast. His body becomes flayed by the great pressure. Before Jorj can fire again to end him, a rocket closes in from above and explodes a couple of meters infront of him. The explosion and cloud of smoke obscures Jorj’s aim. ZA-56 charges through. His body reaches out to Jorj while he puts the Lanza In-between them. The azure weapon fires from his hip, obliterating ZA-56.

However, breastplate to breastplate, machine to machine, contact is made.

The score is two to four.

Blast for blast. Shrapnel for rocket, the distance between Hab and ZACH-44 shortens. As the opponent’s ammunition runs low, he and his Claimant pull magic to change their odds.

At a distance of four meters, the rocket launcher becomes irrational in its function. The rockets leave the weapon not as propelled objects, but instead as spinning tubes. With incredible rotation, three rockets are launched together. They bounce on the concrete floor and then they stabilize on their round tips. Three rockets are as such, dancing and moving in a curving orbits that have no central point.

Hab is already moving through them. Noticing this, the opponent’s response is to not retreat, but instead to also charge ahead. Hab’s flak cannon webs out and strikes the opponent from a distance of two meters. The heated shrapnel bores deep into the man’s right thigh and his right arm is also injured.

However, before he can fire another shot to kill him, the spinning rockets behind and around him curve towards him, as if magical pull navigates them there and they explode. The force sends him forward. Bones break, his legs become mangled, but the opponent is at a striking distance.

Both Hab and ZACH-44 lunge into melee. For every punch, there is a Claimant behind the choice of attack.

The score becomes three to five.

Scaramucc ends the other opponent with the same flesh-eating strategy. However, No opponent respawns into the trap he has created at this lowest level and Gon notices this new change of fortunes. Then, both turn their attention upwards, riding an elevator up.

The score is three to six.

Jorj complains that his Lanza is not working. The trigger appears solidified, as if the mechanisms are fused together. And all the while he complains, another’s walls close in.

In the Inverse Dream, its light version where there is only Gymnete machinery and the deep azure hue of Jorj’s Lanza, Varhas watches as another Claimant manifests against him. Intent rules this place. Dreams of murder and violence manifest as Kalyfax. Words are only noise.

It is indeed so, Varhas understands, that perhaps their opponents are not even here to win this, but they are here for him instead.

And unfortunately, as is the swing of fortune in the match, the noise around him is too familiar, too promised.

Clad in steel, boots that connect to the ground’s steady forces, Kalyfax pulls out a warhammer. With only summoned dead between them and their weapons, fear manifests around both Claimants but it affects none.

Unnaturally heavy and demolishing in his momentum, the dead shatter at swings of his hammer.

The Claimant of geomancy twists his left ankle and where Varhas stands, the earth becomes sharp pebble, unstable and rolling. And where Varhas balances himself, the other continues slowly onward.

Away, the score becomes four to seven when Otto is killed for Scaramucc to find an opportunity. Laodike communicates to Jorj, that he needs to come to Otto once he respawns. In the middlemost level, the two Contestants close in. As their machinery comes into contact, Laodike divides her attention from the match an inwards he flows to the Inverse Dream.

Now shared between the three, Laodike manifests a long distance away from the two men. Kalyfax is forceful in his assault. His iron helmet and mask appear to not obstruct his breathing. The two sulfur plates on his face hang and move as crude curtains that make strange noises. His footing is certain and the technique of his warhammer is careless for good reason. Masterfully delicate in the armor’s cover, when the Norse sword is plunged into the Claimant’s armpit, its edge only slides across and the point becomes stuck into steel depressions.

It does not take long for Kalyfax to accept a strike with the intent of countering immediately. Varhas is not quick enough to strike and dodge at the same time and the warhammer’s pointy tip is thrust deep into his face. The force of the blow jerks Varhas’ head back in a whipping motion. The spurt of blood that follows as the warhammer pulls back, falls and splatters at their feet.

As the sword dislodges itself from the armor and falls, Laodike yells. She manifests a sphere while running towards the two. Varhas makes a desperate effort as he steps back. Blood following his retreat, his mind unravels at the dripping sound. Celestial magic appears in threadbare hints and he tries to overload Kalyfax’s brain.

But the spell of Mind Burn falls completely flat. Grounded in square willpower and simple, lodestone musings of the ground, the opponent feels the garrote tighten over his streams of thought, sharp, steel wire against rare earth and the mental garrote simply snaps. Kalyfax shrugs the spell off, only stopping in place for a second.

As Laodike runs, she too casts the same spell. Kalyfax notices the woman approaching, but once again the spell occurs without him becoming injured. Instead, the opponent stubbornly steps forward.

All the while, it appears that the opponents cannot gain an advantage. Scaramucc and Hab stand on the middle level, weaving around the Obelisk, plastering the concrete with their enemies. Green globules and Lanza blue, one scores from the distance and the other restricts those that come near. This way, two more kills are scored.

The score becomes four to nine. Only one kill remains for the Black and White team to win.

In the Inverse Dream, the charged sphere touches Kalyfax and explodes violently in its salty discharge. Salty rain falls for a second and the Claimant of Earth reels from the blow. The man is in pain, but his feet shamble onward. Varhas falls on his back, shaken to thoughts of weightlessness. As stale wind enters through his bleeding eye socket, he musters a weak spell of Air.

Electricity jumps between his fingers. Once the salty rain settles, he presses the forks of lightning towards the floor and the current strikes both him and Kalyfax. The electrical discharge is painful but only enough to stun them.

Laodike is now only two meters away from the opponent.

While she stops to gather water in her arms, Kalyfax stomps with his right foot. The ground quakes and thick walls manifest infront of Laodike. As a response, she tries to turn around the wall, only to find that another wall rises to another stomp. Again and again, until Varhas and Kalyfax are enclosed into thick ramparts of earth.

Between sprint and summon, only a lesser water elemental manifests. The mass of water is only that of a large dog. The current itself begins to surge up the wall and then it crashes against Kalyfax. Desperate, Laodike begins to cast Blink just in the random chance that she finds herself next to Varhas.

Fortune sways once gain and as it is, the match approaches its final moment.

Otto, with the bare minimum of Laodike’s attention guiding his weapon, is able to peek through a corner. With sniper rifle in hand, he aims long and in relative quiet. The scope follows ZA-56. The opponent is sluggish, as if the Claimant within is elsewhere, grasping at flimsy things such as revenge, instead of serving that which is closer. When Otto fires, the bullet strikes the man at the base of the skull. The force severs the man’s head, damaging the spine just right for the brain’s golden layers to trigger their respawn.

The score is four to ten. As soon as that last point happens, time is forced to a stop. There is divine humming in the concrete, hymn for someone dead. The Obelisk begins to vibrate in some irrational blur that holds time and space hostage.

Indeed it is so, that not only the Contestants find themselves frozen in time as the match settles down in ways that they cannot perceive. But also, in the Inverse Dream, fate has it so that Kalyfax is only centimeters away from forcing actions into certainty. An overhead swing of steel that will never connect, the only possible way forward is to leave by way of accepting things that may never be and exit the Inverse Dream.

Chapter 32

Crater

‘So great was their hate, it seeped its way into those fighting far away . Who knows why a soldier turned his piece towards this place and who knows if he is still alive?’

None of the Claimants felt the clatter of an explosion nearby. They were more focused into Varhas, who came out first to gouge his eye out.

Together they stopped the bleeding and stabilized Varhas who came into strength after a quick blood transfusion from Gon and a night’s rest.

The next morning, the Contestants return. Their shuttle flies over the nearby open crater and the Claimants gather along with some random soldiers to welcome them. Clouded sunlight breaks the earth in an uneven pattern of blurs around the exploded earth. The radiance of early morning is faded light across the flat gray.

The crater is large enough for a grown person to stand at its center, their head aligning with where there was once flat earth. Perhaps some artillery shell, or a guided missile or even perhaps an orbital strike it appears to matter little to the people there. A sublime calm is ever-present on everyone. Pilot and Contestant, soldiers below and even the Claimants, one of whom, dressed in white, soon tumbles and falls down at the depression becoming a dirtied form of soot and wet mud.

The shuttle circles the crater once more and then it lands between the bunker and the crowd of people. As its doors open, Scaramucc glances at Jorj who is still glued into the windows of the shuttle.

‘Aren’t you coming out?’ Speaks Scaramucc.

Jorj does not answer. Matter of fact, he does not even listen to the language thrown at him. For him, crater and early morning earth become superimposed into memories. The man is lost and as Otto and Hab disembark, Scaramucc instead turns around and stands near the isolated Contestant.

Outside the shuttle, the pilot passes by Jorj’s sight. Scaramucc watches as Jorj ignores the walking form and he understands that there is nothing there behind his eyes. With a hand he touches his shoulder.

‘Hey. Hey! Jorj?’ Crouching, he looks at the man’s eyes as they are drawn back to reality. ‘What’s going on big man?’

‘Nothing. Nothing. I...’ Jorj purses his lips. ‘...I...’ The words are strained to come out, even if there is a calm flow to the way they are spoken.

‘Banged your head? Got CTE? What’s the problem?’

‘Just looking at the... morning. I feel... alive.’

‘That’s great. Come on big man, they are waiting for us.’

Jorj does not move. He takes a big, long breath and that small gesture becomes reflected on Scaramucc who feels this same earnest relief wash over him.

‘Just a few more minutes.’

The words send the other Contestant far away into his mind. It seems to him that these words are of older times, of little pockets of memories where the same was said back to him by some son or daughter as he pulled the blankets off from their beds.

‘Last time someone said that to me, I carried them on my shoulder. Put them on a breakfast table before I sent them off.’

‘You have a family?’

‘Many. I’ve done this a few times. I recall them all. Just a few more minutes they all say. Nobody wants to go to school, nobody wants to get up early and go work the fields, work the mines.’

‘Aye. Had the same problem.’

‘Have you raised a family in the long time you’ve been alive Jorj?’

Puzzled, the man breaks contact with the window. He strains to remember and no matter how much the urge makes him want to say yes, he fumbles around as to why he would say so.

‘I don’t... remember.’

‘Its alright big man. A hundred years, two hundred years is too long to remember. Unbound by laws, we are immortal beings anyways...’ As Scaramucc says that, he purses his lips. Mistake as it is, he stops talking for the man is an exception. ‘Apologies.’ He blurts out quickly, but the man ahead has already gotten up.

And as if nothing has happened, Jorj walks away, turning around for a final reply. ‘What for?’

***

The artillery shell missed the bunker by about one hundred and ten meters. Gon climbs out of the crater and in a filthy allure of a peasant-priest he raises his arms out, praising luck itself. The soldiers around him start their usual superstitious gestures and nods, paying close attention to his sermon.

To where the Claimant of Blood speaks of chance and luck, Varhas and Laodike rolls their eyes in the man’s esoteric reference to greater powers. Their gestures of irony however are soon concealed by their own hands and Claimant posterity to another’s sermon. Part effort to not be sacrilegious against the many Pantokrators out there, part respect for the soldiers and the Pretenders of this planet, they remain listening.

Gon grabs a soldier by the ear. The young man protests but remains in the Claimant’s pinch. Some laugh, some see the Claimant as a raving madman, but everyone understands that Gon is a victorious man, fortunate and exalted in the right pathway of events.

‘Hear me!. Hear all! Lend ear to my whisper! Friend or other, evil or natural force, the black and white shall triumph! Look at how their hatred makes simple artilleryman turn his cannon against us. Look at how far away their shells fall, how far away their foul influence misses us by! Whom but men set in wrong pathways of history would try to shell us who are set in peaceful entertainment!’

His elation sells the spectacle. Machines, prosthetics, weapons and even the shuttle itself, they whir along to the soldiers who cheer the Claimant. Blessed through the Inverse Dream or real stupor of success both crown Gon a moment. The moment gives way to many congratulations passed around, the congratulations give way to goodbyes and the goodbyes give way to an afternoon solitude where the team returns to the bunker to rest.

***

Three uneventful days pass. Some of the team members cook, the Contestants roam around doing nothing, the Claimants tend to their reflected wounds.

Varhas sleeps most of the time with a bandage over his right eye, the nightmares continue. Laodike and Zanuvia discuss their internal wounds in hushed conversations. Gon appears animated in his pains and the other Claimants treat his new energy with ignored attention. After all, Claimants versed in Blood magic are oddities and when Gon challenges Scaramucc to a game of darts, it is as if the Blood Theurg’s depth awareness is completely off and the Contestant wins easily.

At the dawn of the fourth day, as Varhas gets up from another pair of nightmares, he and Laodike find themselves outside for some fresh air. A glimmering group appears far into the distance and the two stand side to side as they welcome the four strangers.

Three agents of Krypteia, accompany an old form.

The old man is wholly covered in the essence of war. Mud, blackened mix of soot and golden chemicals, golden, trampled silk underneath his wooden chair. He is a Pretender. Under the golden fabrics, his throne is a machine that walks in his stead.

The Meconians appear unarmored under their raggedy cloaks. However, underneath the fabric, their armors are skin and texture. Manifold circuits and machines, hidden mechanical limbs that are thin as paper and highways of information stretch around their form. Their faces are concealed by a strange blur. Covert tech that flows over them, it makes strange sounds, as if their very bodies are a bastion of hundreds of Claimants, all of them working, training, fighting, performing logistical tasks far away and religious ceremonies nearby. Both Varhas and Laodike know, that were they to enter the Inverse Dream in these Krypteia agents, they would find temple-fortresses, compressed space and geometry where magic coalesces and controls many things near and far. There is nothing to fear from strange and maligned Claimants far away in the presence of such machines. Equally, there is nothing to fear from forces in reality in the presence of such three mighty bodyguards.

The old man’s voice is deep. The early morning sunlight bends around him, making him as faceless as the Meconians around him.

‘Varhas. Comely Laodike. I am pleased to be in your presence.’

The two Claimants bow.

‘Ask and I shall provide. What do you wish from the next Pantokrator of Sicela?’

The two remain silent. There is no reaction on their faces and the old man continues.

‘You are too humble for such a victory. Tell me Varhas. Do you not desire a new eye? Laodike, do you not wish for an artifact? Something to ease your next match?’

Laodike speaks. Her voice is steady, but a few notes of anxiety poke through her effort. ‘I may ask of only one thing. Back in Arhoscephale we were assaulted by horrors beyond cruelty. My colleague here has spoken of a winged Hunter of Horrors that used an artifact of great power to defeat a Gore...’

Before she can finish the old man’s canopy of warlike despair cracks. Golden curtains unfurl and through the bending light, his pale, spindly arm holds a sphere that is identical to the one held by that hunter of forty arms. The Tartarean prison is held in his palm. His long fingernails appear to slide off the object as it falls to the ground. The object rolls unnaturally on the ground, pushed by some invisible force towards Laodike.

As she leans over to pick it up, she sphere almost jumps to her grasp in a reversed momentum. The action catches her off-guard. Swirling with meaning, pondering manifestations, waters and invisible light give it texture and detail beyond its glossy surface as soon as the sphere meets her skin.

Laodike almost thanks the Pretender, but he cuts her off.

‘And you Claimant of Air magic, Death and Astral sorcery, you will ask of nothing.’

‘Indeed I will not.’

‘Then a fool you are. You think the concept of debt exists in divinity? You believe that if you withhold a request, that I may come tomorrow to help Jorj in the impossible task of preventing his death?’

The Pretender reads the Claimant’s mind. It is exactly as he says and Varhas does not hide it.

‘Speak, or forever forget you had this option here and now.’

But Varhas has nothing to think off. Laodike glares at him.

‘Nothing. I am as empty and as final as my strongest sorcery.’

Laodike nudges Varhas and she speaks. ‘Varhas! Are you mad?’

‘I would listen to your colleague young raven.’

‘Then... this. I ask for what can be measured. Astral domain, domain of dreams and abstract way to speak of need that is to solve. A divination of my dreams. What do my nightmares speak of? Why do I see myself tormented every night and why did this nightmare jump from her to me?’

The Pretender laughs. Equally futile and comical in its own desperation the trampled fabrics and dirty surface of his body, the no-man’s-land over him sloshes and cracks to his empty laughter.

‘Why don’t you ask that very question to your mother? Matter of fact, why don’t you go closer than a deep shadow, to that monster who calls himself a Blood Theurg.’

Hellscape, drowned soldiers under battlefields and filthy trenches, whispers and gossip resounds from magical metal and internal fantasy alike. The thoughts on the three Meconians, the two Claimants and the Pretender alike, forcefully align to some hidden truth.

‘Fool. Fool. Fool. You are such a blind man, a child that covers his eye and ears to not see the bigger picture. Begone from my sight.’

Varhas obeys. Behind this divine chastisement, he imagines a corporate disdain of hidden machinations inside of the company he serves. He opens the door to the barracks and he retreats to where there is silence.

Laodike turns to the Pretender as he pulls out another artifact. This time, his hands tighten around a long ever-sapphire robe with basalt edges and a superimposed image of various forms of water. Whirls, shallows, basins of salty pools and the wrath of waves make up this robe, not only at its visual spectacle, but also at its texture, at its shadowy folds and at the patterns between the strands that make it.

‘For your mother, a Robe of the Sea, so that it may empower her Water magic in the Inverse Dream.’

The Claimant bows and grabs the robe from its hanging end. She feels her left hand instantly drenched but as she swaps it to her other right hand her skin is dry. The sensation of wetness and moisture even seeps through her clothes as she folds the fabric over her shoulder.

Mere thought changes the atmosphere for an infinitesimal moment. When she tries to speak, the Pretender answers before she can speak the first word.

‘For the mongrel, nothing.’ Says the Pretender.

‘I beg thee then, if it pleases you. What was this about Varhas and his mother?’

‘You want to learn? What if the burden of learning this secret is too much to bear?’

Laodike nods in a certainty that the Pretender enjoys. There is no laughter now. Instead, there is a malice to his voice, one that Laodike knows well. There is a hue of disdain, the cruelty of older generations against the young. A high-and-mighty, know-it-all reveal that aims to pummel those eager for life into their surrendered fatigue.

‘You will find in due time. In a world were Gods rule men, it is only their personal passions that move history. What cruelty do you think you know, when a mother sends a planet to its chaos only so that she may see her son once again? What do your plans for the future matter when Pantokrators choose to destroy their own children for events that are to happen centuries later? Stupid young Claimant, you only have to find out how the previous Pantokrator of Sicela died.’

Chapter 33

Eryx

The next base of operations for the Black and White team is a large metropolis by the name or Eryx. Flowing down a mountain called Erice, the city sprawls downwards into the mountain’s base and it only stops near the coastline. Tall buildings, flat terraces, winding streets, Mediterranean trees, brush, brick and cement create an urban jungle that leads to a gigantic shipyard that covers the entirety of the city’s access to the sea.

A safehouse awaits the team in one of the richest parts of the city. The gated community has been spared most of the civil war that is still raging both inside as well as outside of the city. The three-storied townhouse is at the top of a hill that overlooks Eryx. At night, air sirens and flaming streaks of missiles, debris falling from intercepted projectiles creates a chaos of sound that contrasts with the day’s relative calm.

“Relative calm” as Zanuvia had put it when the team was smuggled into the city. Early morning to afternoons are usually filled with protesting bustle in the streets. Hundred-thousands of people swarm to protest. Roads are full of old cars, bonfires in garbage bins, voices of large crowds and makeshift weapons that fire in the air. An eternal voice fills the days with pleas to stop the war, pleas for the Meconians to never make planetfall, pleas for the Immaterial Contest to leave and never return.

Sleepless, agitated pleas rule here and Varhas knows them too well. One sleep deprived morning, Varhas tells Gon his earnest, aligned feeling. Mirror of emotion, Gon listens to these words and to the Blood Theurg it is as if hundreds-thousands speak through the man from Nidavangr.

‘It is horrifying. Horrifying to realize, that these people pray to the same gods as us. And that the only difference, is that we are getting a better response.’

***

Later that day, Laodike, Zanuvia and Otto sit on the balcony of the townhouse. The two women are drinking coffee, sphere in Laodike’s hands and the Robe of the Sea sitting into Zanuvia’s lap. Otto is reading a newspaper. Hot air passes them by as the two women speak about their artifacts.

Their conversation breaks after a while. Laodike gets up and walks to the side of the balcony. From above she watches the cobblestone staircase that leads to the ground level. A tall fence of decorated iron spears, protects this place and the security here is tight, always alert about strangers that might come about. And even so, as Laodike stands tall on the balcony, a strange commoner exchanges a glance with her through the iron bars. Quickly, the stranger leaves and the warm wind vanishes.

She returns to the table, Tartarean Prison in hand but now she puts the sphere on the floor.

‘Mom.’ Zanuvia does not answer. She is lost in thoughts that occur only when she touches the Robe of the Sea. ‘Mom!’ yells Laodike and Zanuvia returns to the present.

‘What dear?’

‘Enough with the stupid artifacts.’ Laodike pulls the blue robe from her mother’s hands. She puts it over the sphere at the base of the chair and stays silent.

Otto speaks. ‘It is just a robe, what is it Laodike?’

Laodike tries to answer that nothing is wrong. However, one glance at the images on the newspaper showcases makeshift powerarmors, vehicles and rebels, dark corridors and diplomats speaking of things far away that make her nervous. When Otto shifts one page and Laodike sees an open casket with a Meconian hoplite standing on top of it, she gets up to leave.

Inside of the townhouse, Gon and Varhas sit next to an open window, a chessboard standing between then. The curtains fan around the two men as they move the black and white pieces against eachother. Lacking depth perception, Varhas often pushes pieces to their rolling side and Gon has to help him pick them up and set them again to their black or white square.

Laodike nears the two Claimants and Gon begins to speak. Varhas remains silent in his thoughts.

‘Ready for tonight Laodike?’

‘Are you?’

‘Always. If I stay in this place for one more day I am going to kill myself.’

***

As all things have machines behind their function, it is easy for the three Claimants to leave the townhouse. Under the cover of night, the power of Claimancy to overwrite camera feeds, to flip information on command and a timing of guards changing their shift, Laodike, Gon and Varhas are out on the streets.

After midnight, the sky above is unusually peaceful. No fires guild the rooftops as no rocket or artillery barrage came for the city, however, there are curious strangers on the streets going about in ways that are ominous. The three Claimants hide as they move around and soon enough they are in dingy streets and places where the only sounds are those of far away footsteps and wooden pergolas creaking in the nightly winds.

The sounds become those of taverns, little squares and fountains that are tucked between old brick walls. The people here stand around, listening to old makeshift radios and arguing over oil lamps.

A group of four people leaves a table open. The three Claimants sit on the already-full table of meager empty plates and glasses. An old woman cleans it up and they order.

Here, enveloped by revolutionaries of all ages, the clatter of argument is only about the current events mixed with political hope for the future. Ideologies are thrown around in an endless, distributed back and forth. The makeshift radios speak of atrocities, names of heroes and president-kings that perform speeches condemning or supporting recent events. One such event, is the martyrdom of some young man, who was shot by some sniper on a rooftop on a protest two days ago. When an old, aristocratic and formal voice speaks of the need for calm, the many revolutionaries jeer. They curse him and call out the name of the hero. When an equally old, but full of fervor voice calls out the need for societal reforms and the need for everliving memory for those that die in the altar of freedom, the people of the tavern cheer.

Gon finds himself taking in the voices as a funnel. Varhas remains silent. There is some intent as he briefly enters the Inverse Dream and Laodike notices, quickly stepping on his foot to draw him out.

Then, he speaks to her. ‘Sorry.’ But his lapse has already influenced the makeshift device in the distance. Without a press of any button, the speakers of the machine change to a religious channel. The sermon of the man therein is of a grand plea, broad and outreaching in notes of ironbound steadiness, that which is found in long memorized texts woven with all-knowing priestly worry.

The people listen. A minute passes in this religious channel before a man rises in the distance and he begins to speak, as if animated in his own texture of fervor. He instead, perhaps a sacred warrior of his own ideology, thrashes about with long gestures around his gentle voice. With a glass in hand, he toasts to the revolution, he breathes the air of the room in as if in full control of the atmosphere here. As he speaks on the worries of war, the penetrating passage of life’s martyrs and the need to break the systems that rule them, the radio changes again.

Varhas looks at Laodike and then Gon. ‘Wasn’t me.’

Laodike eyes the stranger and then she leans into both men. ‘A Claimant?’

However, before Varhas can think of their next action, Gon gets up and closes into the stranger. Laodike tries to grab him, but he slips away.

By the time Gon reaches the man, his sermon has stopped and the radio is back to cataloging horrible and heroic news. He is able to pass through most of the people before the stranger’s eye is drawn to him. Cautious, the man grabs some weapon in his jacket but Gon doesn’t stop walking until he is a speaking distance away from him.

A woman enters between the two, ready to draw an assassin’s bullet. But the stranger grabs her gently by the shoulder and sits her down.

‘You are either a fool, or a man with no idea of what he is about to do.’ Says the stranger. His accent is foreign.

‘That would be both and the same, no?’ Replies Gon and he holds a gentle expression that the man ahead disassembles instantly.

‘Takes a Blood Theurg to know a Blood Theurg. Who sent you?’

‘I sent myself. May I have a moment of your time?’

The revolutionaries around Gon stare at him with murderous intent. Underneath their cloaks, in hidden compartments of their trousers and shirts, they are readying their fists and knives.

‘You are an outworlder. Journalist? War tourist?’

‘Neither. May I?’

At that response the man is intrigued. Gon gestures towards the general direction of the table where Laodike and Varhas are waiting. The two men leave after the stranger whispers something in the young woman’s ear next to him.

In a romantic, befitting gesture of revolutionary bravado, the stranger introduces himself as Magon, slightly bowing and kissing Laodike’s hand. He appears to completely ignore Varhas and Gon opting instead to sit next to the woman.

Up close, his pronouncement of consonants is wholly of classical Berytian. Varhas knows the guttural Semetic accent that frequently uses the back of the throat in sharp syllables. ‘Are you Meconian spies? Or perhaps you are Arhoscephalean diplomats? No, you are too small, too bold and free to be Meconian helot-Claimants and I have no divination of your arrival if you are native Berytians. To which faction do you swear allegiance?’

As the man pronounces ‘Arhoscephaleans’, or ‘helots’, the ‘h’ resounds to a gargling yet dry gather of spit. Gon and Laodike glance at eachother in an idle face that tries to not showcase their disgust.

Then, other puzzled glances jump from each one to the other and Magon understands that they have little idea of what he speaks of.

‘Outworlders with no grasp of what is happening in Sicela? Well then, if you are war tourists, let us drink.’ He arches backwards and gestures at the kitchen. The old waitress arrives with wine and meager offerings of food. Varhas breaks the silence of standing around as the plates and glasses are laid out.

‘We are all Claimants here. We may speak freely.’

‘You changed the station didn’t you? I can smell a Claimant of Death by the miserable stench that follows them.’ Magon replies to Varhas in dismissal and he instead turns to Laodike. ‘Ask away.’

Laodike continues. ‘We are aware that Arhoscephaleans and Meconians are looking to make planetfall, but you spoke of Berytians? Who else is in this...’

‘Planetfall? These two have been here for a while. Sicela is home to four different groups of people. Ancient bloodlines of Arhoscephalean settlers, humans that believe themselves to be descendants of Meconians, Berytian traders and small pockets of Ermorians in the northern isolas. All of these groups have called for aid. They prayed to their far away Gods of their ancestors for stability and it is offered to them only in outside intervention. There are of course others too. Exiled Machakan royalty and sub-currents of Abyssian culture that live near the volcanoes of this planet. Each group looks out for its own back, each one huddles closer to a Pretender hoping they will win this war.’

‘Which group do you belong to?’

‘Born and bred Berytian. My people have raised cities in Sicela as did the Arhoscephaleans and even those that believe themselves Meconian. But we raised cities for all mind you. Our fight is universal and includes all the people who want change and stability no matter their origin and history.’

The man is elevated in his effort. He speaks with vigor that appears to go silent for the moment he glances towards Varhas. There is a memory, perhaps some hint waiting to manifest into a realization and hiding in the singular, uninjured eye of that man.

‘You are oblivious and yet you ask nothing of the suffering of the common people here. If you are not war tourists who bleed their eyes out for the horrible things that happen here, then what are you?’

Gon replies before the others think of something to conceal themselves. ‘We are Claimants of the Contest’.

Magon spits on the ground. Laodike’s face contorts to sour disgust. ‘The Contest! Cursed opium of the masses. Worse yet, opium and bay leaf for priests and Gods to make their irrational choices in its influence. Blasted fools.’ The man takes a breath and then he asks calmly. ‘Which team?’

Varhas replies. ‘The Black and White.’

Magon thinks for a moment. ‘The Black and White... Meconian scum and...’ The man stops.

‘And?’

‘It is easy to find where a Meconian agent went by the trail of dead bodies they leave, or the intimidated faces they press for their cause. But then, the Black and White team is supposed to be the team of the wretches, of the people. If, of course, said people were the beggars, the workers and meat fodder of the front lines. Few weeks ago, one such deserter fell into the grasp of some of my comrades. I was not there, but they, did a poor job once they found out they were people of the same spectacle, that is, black and white.’ There is a short pause. ‘It turns out that it is harder for a man to convince another to lay out their secrets when both of them have common joys.’ Magon stops talking. Where there is the usual stream of language, that which is perfected by ideologues, for a moment there is hesitation, as if there is a contradiction in his inner arguments.

Everyone on the table understands his lapse in fervor. Laodike thinks, that perhaps this man is no simple-minded rebel. He is capable of doubt. However, Magon soon speaks to make his position clear.

‘A simple spectacle is not going to bring peace to this planet. You are corporate owned parasites, sucking away not only the willpower of the common man to act, but also the life of the Contestants that you support. Bourgeois parasites, coming here to enslave men and build your Orichalcum factories, safely hiding behind your...’ He glances at Varhas who stares back at him with only one eye. Another hesitation rises within Magon.

Varhas replies in this stop. ‘You are right.’

hiding his surprise, the man replies. ‘That I am. But can I stop you? Perhaps I am to take you three for ransom. The Claimant in me knows however, that you would make bail, escape, or by some other overarching bend of chances you will be out just in time for your next match. It is how it is. The Contest commands more narrative than the war does.’ Magon becomes frustrated for a moment and then he continues. ‘Mark my words, there will come a day when nothing in the galaxy is ruled by such invasive bend of narratives. There will come a day where nothing is held in the universal grasp of Pantokrators.’

Laodike speaks. ‘How can you say these things? You serve a Pretender yourself. Have you no fear of being struck down in hubris?’

As if having answered that question himself, the man boasts in a heroic mannerism. ‘What is a human but an everlasting fight against all the chains that hold him down? Of all the misery and horrid things, the narratives that rule us, I fear no death.’

In that last sentence. Varhas immediately jumps in. ‘You only measure the misery of the world. We serve. A Claimant serves.’

Magon gets up. ‘You have no idea of what you serve. Come and see then. We shall be back shortly, safe and sound.’ With a sly smile, the Claimant bids farewell to Laodike and motions for Varhas to follow him.

As the two men run along the dark alleyways and cobbled streets, Magon speaks to Varhas. ‘I hope for the sake of everyone here that you lose your next match.’

‘Why is that?’

‘If the Pantokrators and the invaders make decisions based on a game of violence, I fear that your victories only open doors to violent resolutions.’

‘I fear that too, but we have no choice. You would rather that the Abyssians win the Contest? What happens then? Sicela will be a fiery hell, chaos and violence will rage for centuries. If the porphyry team wins, with their four horsemen then maybe your planet will be nothing buy an Apocalypse. Old narratives remade into the future.’

‘You do know the previous Pantokrator of this place was an Abyssian. You think you are better than them? You think what you serve is a better change?’

‘I came out here tonight to find out.’

Ahead, the corridors and dead ends become impenetrably dark. Both Claimants stop as if compelled. When either tries to draw willpower to go further, their legs freeze in place. This fantastical fear that manifests as stiffening is well understood by Varhas and Magon remains focused on the other man’s features. Cold, Sarmatic winds pass through both of them.

‘Feels familiar doesn’t it?’

Varhas glares at the man. ‘What is the meaning of this?’

‘You tell me.’

‘What is causing this darkness?’

‘That is your magic, your specialty. Not mine.’

The darkness whispers. Faint scent of decay looms close to the two.

‘Since when have oddities such as this been happening? Is this planet-wide?’

‘It is. Nobody comes out alive from these dead ends. Other Death Claimants such as you have gone in and we never see them again. We have tried shedding light into them, but the machines break as soon as we turn them on. Speak to me in Claimancy, why are you here?’

Rotting thoughtstream manifests within Varhas. He obeys to a sermon.

‘I am the spawn of a dark Pantokrator. To where I call home, there is only dark and deep forests of complete quiet. I follow only in the Contest, as preordained to win it. There are other dark Pantokrators out there in the cosmos, this has to be their doing. The one I know best, is a weaver, a...’

The thoughts within Varhas lapse in error. Whether some signal of his brain misfiring, or some random fumble of words, Varhas stops talking. Pinpoint, forced, foreign influence stops the Claimant, or it is perhaps a inner friendly compassion that makes him copy another’s mannerism. A dwelling fear begins to manifest.

‘A weaver you say? Varhas, do you know by any chance how the previous Pantokrator died? Do you know how this War of Ascension began?’

Half submerged in low light and whispering, numb utterdark, Varhas begins to feel an inner misalignment. Lightly off-center the next words that Magon will speak are about to send a pounding that is to completely shatter what he has rebuilt over. His thoughts accelerate. He imagines lashing against Magon and strangling him. He imagines running straight ahead into the dead end and facing whatever invasive realization claims these natives therein. All these thoughts demand from him to do actions that only stop him, the other Claimants too from serving. And when he thinks about who he serves, his mind runs along to not only his Contestant, but the others and that one man whose only remnants are in memories.

Horrible visions of the future assault him. All of them command him to listen and Magon speaks.

‘Malchus, old sovereign of Sicela, wheel of flame, sea-born general, slayer of Smouldercore and deacon of Abraxas, he died by another’s intrigue. Friend was I to him, sacred warrior in his band. Varhas, it was I that found my God lurched over in his throne of flame and flow. It was I that crossed his burning and salty presence to see him as mere mortal form, strangled and broken. I saw a celestial cape wrapped around him, a wide skin of stars, constellations crowned of hands, a folding, pressing, jagged curtain of darkness that dug into his divine flesh. And I remember nothing else but numbing and cold, sharp enough to carve my bones with messages of what I am saying to you now.’

And Varhas is certain that not one of these words are from this man.

Chapter 34

Pressure

Difficulty settles in on the next day. Protests outside create a far away ambience of uproar, emboldened by the lack of nighttime bombardments.

Inside of the townhouse things are no different.

‘What if you were killed, or worse? What if rebels had you strung up to torture and turned you into horror-makers?’

‘Mom. Relax. Nothing happened.’

‘Nothing happened? Varhas is delirious, nobody but Gon and Jorj can see him in his room. What were you even searching for out there?’

‘Answers. We have to learn the context of what we do to this planet.’

‘Do you? Since when do you care?’

‘What about the nightmares of Varhas? What about the woman he keeps seeing, the hands that choke him out? Is he even fit to enter the Inverse Dream?’

Hab interjects between the two yelling women. ‘Zanuvia, she is grown woman, she can take care of herself.’

Laodike tries to put some gentleness into her voice, but the two words come out pressed and angry. ‘Thank you!’

‘And so? What did you find out? That the factions on a War of Ascension kill eachother for noble causes? That each of them searches for peace while they decapitate their enemies? Did you find noble rebels, rogues, thieves? What is it? Did you realize that Meconians, Arhoscephaleans, locals and the rest are here to see whose dominion will dominate the other? What? What does any of it matter?’

‘Are you so shallow to think none of this affects us?’

‘It shouldn’t!’ Yells Zanuvia. The two words are wild, loud enough and shard to resound a coarseness of her throat. Hab and Laodike recoil in silence. Neither wants to reply back.

After this pause. The old woman continues. ‘None of this is your path. None of their woes should influence you. Gods are keeping membranes and events and systems and people out so that you never have to step into civil wars, Wars of Ascension. We are here only for the Contest. Can you understand how it makes me feel to find out that you are not only in danger, but in disregard of the narrative we are in? What if this little excursion, we have to pay in some divine curse? What if you challenged these odds and you are to die just like Anax?’

As soon as she speaks of the name, the old woman’s lip quakes. She recoils back too and her animated body falls stiff on the chair behind her.

Doubly, the meaning passes to Claimant and commoner alike. Any response that should come out is instead swallowed in a bitter reflex.

***

In his bed Varhas is covered in three layers of blankets. Despite the warmth of the room, he is clattering his teeth, cursing at whatever exists behind his closed window. The room is dark with lines of light passing through the blinders and casting themselves on Gon’s white tunic as he is sitting, leaned over Varhas.

Sweating profusely, the laying man speaks in divinating babble. ‘We are evil. Evil coursing through me, evil making onto reality. Whatever. Evil. Fear. Terror we make. White gravestone and black frostbite.’

In half-light Gon speaks in unnatural intimacy, as if himself is not man but deeper hue of humanity altogether in a featureless mix.

‘You are not evil because of your origin.’

‘Am evil for the magic woven in me. Made evil by my sisters and my mothers, all praising Death’.

‘Death magic is not evil Varhas. It is just a final destination everyone goes to.’

‘Curse the machines that understand this. Curse us all to know of fear and death and superimpose it to artificial logic.’

Jorj enters, but the two Claimants do not notice him.

‘We are all evil, treading plans of misery and... and...’

‘The plans of Pantokrators do not define us Varhas.’

‘You should have been there with me on the dead end. There was madness in reality, dead people lying in the gutters and nobody could even see them. The War of Ascension was started by my mother.’ Varhas wails. His voice comes out pressed and choked by every fiber in his gullet. ‘She strangled another Pantokrator, for what?’

Gon realizes Jorj is there, but he keeps his back turned towards him.’ With his bandaged hand he holds the other Claimant’s sweaty palm. The man is burning.

‘Gods! Frozen is the hand that grabs me. Begone demon of blood. Where is my friend? Where is he?’

Varhas calls for Anax. Twice loudly and then many times in silence.

‘I killed him. She killed him.’

‘You did not such thing Varhas.’

He clutches the arm hard. Some of Gon’s bones break again and his mauve flesh becomes compressed and straining.

The tight grip suddenly opens and Varhas appears lucid, if only for a second. He has felt his grip causing the damage.

‘Gon, your hand...’

But before he can apologize, the rapid thoughts return and they assault him anew.

‘Blood Theurg, why do you cast your foul magic of empathy on me? Stupid man that deals in bloodlines and emotions.’

‘It is the only thing I can do. The only way to make the world that much gentler.’

‘Demon worshiper and summoner. Sign that we are the bane of the world. Wherever we go we sow misery and reap suffering.’

‘You misunderstand us. In your lowest moment, who would you have besides but the wretches?’

The words stop Varhas. His mind appears steadied for a moment again. Gon continues.

‘Demons spare a man the shame of being seen in such a state by his loved ones. Fiery imps, corruptors of souls are only in the depths of hell because they wait for men to reach out to them. Men brought low, searching for long lost hopes given a second chance, far away from those that would judge them. Satanic bodies, charcoal and flame, are only there for the destitute ones to find themselves anew. Blessed are the men who hug the demons, for they are reminded of the virtues within them, they are reminded of the warmth of a foreign body and they are spared of the shame that comes with absolution.’

The short sermon reinvigorates Varhas. He lets go of Gon’s hand. True to the words just spoken, lightly absolved of his paranoid weight, Varhas looks at the man without a hint of regret for his behavior, without shame for the irrational thoughts that have defined him since last night.

‘How did you do this?’

‘You have your Astral future-proof magic Varhas, you have your inevitable sorcery of Death and the youthful momentum of Air. I have my Blood Theurgy and that is about all of it.’

‘This is Blood magic?’

‘Yes.’

‘Stay with me a moment please. Continue talking. Please.’

Breath by breath, Varhas returns to a normal temperature. Whereas, the Blood Theurg slowly begins to shiver, drawing one of the blankets to himself.

‘Blood magic is nothing but a mirror. All that Blood Claimants do, is but hold that pristine silver infront of someone. Reminding them of both their good and bad in true reflection. I just had to show you why I am here and yes, I won’t deny that I believe myself a horrible man. But in the depth of bloodlines that make us, in the breadth of new oddities that appear to define peculiar people, we are watching and making sure that humanity goes the distance. We make sure to be the ones that lift the weight from someone when he can bear it no longer. This is what I am made of.’

Gon is in pain. As Varhas rises the other Claimant seems to lurch forwards, his temperature increasing and his words becoming increasingly complex. When he is to begin another sermon, Gon instead hushes and Varhas glances into the back of the room where Jorj is watching the scene unfold in a horrified expression.

***

‘Jorj, someone told me last night that my mother strangled the Pantokrator of this world.’

‘This is bothering you why Varhas?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You are not the man to care so much for others. By now I’ve realized you care a lot about me because you can’t change my death. You have this sick fixation on things you cannot change. You aren’t in control of yourself most of the time.’

‘I am not in control because I have to serve, even if I am not sure how many. But, please, I am not only your Claimant because I am fixated on your death.’

Jorj shrugs. ‘Does it matter? If you asked me, I would tell you that you are the same as everyone else. We live in a prison. The bars of a prison are the same for all. What differs is anyone’s limits. You hit your limits last night, but it is that usual way you go about it that brought us here.’

The Claimant lets the words in without filter. Who he is, his reason for being here, limits and prisons, they all blend together to the point that he does not want to clear them out.

Oddly, this mess pleases him. So much so, that the images of the future unravel as if some looming event has been lessened significantly, untied from its constantly strained knot.

‘Thank you Jorj.’

‘Are you good?’

‘Much better now.’

‘Alright. While you were out last night Zanuvia got a call from Orichalcum.’

‘And?’

‘Royalty match, best of four, no respawns. Four custom-made powerarmors are waiting for us.’

Chapter 35

Downtown Eryx

The team got separated at morning, but it took all of daylight for them to reach their destination

At the dockyard, four powerarmors come from the sea and four Contestants are wheeled into from the city. Custom-tailored, custom-smithed and logic-bound the armors are of identical form, metal and function to the one Jorj wore on Mecone. Little details have been added on the armors, covering what few weakpoints and disadvantages of dexterity were showcased in that previous match. Orichalcum layers have been added to the neck and armpit, leather fingerprints fill the inner parts of the hand, as well as the sole of the boot. Where there was Orichalcum beneath the Contestant’s foot, there is now black leather.

Armor-Bypassing ammunition is available to the Contestants.

On the townhouse, the four Claimants enter the Inverse Dream to oversee the process from a distance. Equally long, the Claimants have to pass by much turmoil in the machines. As were the nightmares of Varhas, the fantastical journey is full eczematic limbs and breathlessness scraping and filling gaps between brick and wooden arch. The miserable wailing of the people coalesces in every single input across Eryx. Their rage and despairs gathers, it fans and thrashes close and further to the four Claimants and by the time their reach the four vast fortresses of Orichalcum, they are all silent in respect for the terrible spectacle that is to soon happen.

***

There is a problem that both teams understand quite well. The match has started four hours ago.

Glimpsed in place, from their hiding places in empty rooms of locked doors and glass windows, in dark sewer tunnels, in derelict furnaces where the keys have long been lost, the Black and White Contestants, the Abyssians too, wait idly.

Above and around them, there are crowds gathered in protest. People have taken to going outside since the bombardments have stopped. Here, in the downtown of Eryx the peaceful protest gave way to dispersed skirmishes of rocks and pebbles, diesel cocktails and plastic riot shields. And even through the fighting, the crowds gathered again as one, marching and yelling mass of heads.

Underneath the marble statues of ancient sages, in the broad steps of a gigantic agora, In-between the alleyways of historic brick houses and in the flat rooftops, those that skirmished lick their wounds and heal rapidly, preparing to break the crowds again.

The Inverse Dream is loud. Extremely dense and boiling. By chance, foreign Claimants arrive at the fantastical space of the powerarmors. In the case of the Orichalcum fortresses, these strangers find the places idle, locked down and impenetrable, barely touching them, or trying some fantastical lockpick that finds no keyhole. They arrive in bird-like flight and they soon twitch into leaving.

In the case of the Abyssian powerarmors however, any Claimant that reaches there gets lost. Into their citadels of drab metal, black corridors of edges and into the firepit cores of cackling white-gray the Abyssians revel as souls are funneled into them, fueling their rituals.

Often, some wailing reaches the Black and White team. Hab often hears the earpiece and his powerarmor cry, as if the alloys screech over eachother. Otto understands that the voices mix with sounds in his helmet and errors in the silence.

When the afternoon gives way to a dimly lit dusk, a horrible thing occurs.

A building explodes. The roof collapses to an expanding fireball. Flames consume human flesh and stone alike, belching outwards from the breaking windows, swirling into the crowds and funneling into the many.

As the turmoil escalates, neither team moves. While the crowds break, the Abyssian Contestant who has caused the explosion remains covered by the rubble. Stone, heat and flame swirl and intensify around him.

‘They are trying to draw us out.’

‘It might just be an unrelated terrorist, or rebel attack.’

‘What if it was an orbital strike?’

The voices of the Claimants mix with background noise. Outside the violence escalates. Laodike, sphere in hand, reaches out into the chaos. Away from the Inverse Dream of the powerarmor, she witnesses an opponent’s fortress out in the churning chaos.

At a quick glance, the fantasy creates a shape of blackened cathedrals. Both fortress and temple, the far away shape is a shadowy outline of many sharp towers, bridges of metal thorns, colossal boulders and cast iron gates. Streaks of molten matter roll as tongues, bonfires cast moving shapes behind glass-less gothic windows. Laodike witnesses the entire imaginary shape of the opponent’s powerarmor shimmer in the heat as a malignant mirage.

Concealed by the shimmering illusion, a winged creature flies out to get her. She however, is quicker in her retreat.

As absence calls to act, Otto is the first one to reveal himself. The others follow one by one. He takes a shot at the Abyssian who comes out of the rubble. His suit is a very bulky design of wrought iron. With a diameter of fifty centimeters his large Persian and pointed helmet is tucked between two equally broad and extremely thick shoulderpads. Layers of chainmail hang from what should be a beard on an engraved, half-spherical face. The armor’s pistoned body is hidden behind more linked curtains that overlap and cover its lower body like a skirt. Two shapes walk slowly underneath, revealing their toe caps and pushing the folds to a shiny stretch. Studded and spiked, thick plates of metal, two heavy boots solemnly support the entire mass. When the bullet strikes on metal, the spot becomes scarred in a deep and straight glancing crevasse.

Both Laodike and Otto opt to not fire their sniper rifle again. They instead look at the magazine to make sure that they are indeed firing Armor-Bypassing bullets. As soon as they confirm their suspicion, Otto falls back into the building, barely avoiding the impact of a missile that is launched against him.

Nearby, Scaramucc lifts pushes a sewer disk and his head comes out. The Contestant steadies the Armor Bypassing machinegun between the cobblestones of the street and he fires against the same powerarmor.

From its hidden body and the space behind its shoulderpads, great radiating heat becomes orange and red. The air around the armor shimmers even more intensely. All of the bullets glance off, or they melt and strike as piercing whips, digging deep into the armor. Few of the bullets that dig in explode, but the malleable yet hard armor is simply too thick for any damage to go through.

The opponent turns his head. At his glace, Scaramucc’s weapons misfires as it overheats. Chainmail curtains flow away from a Lanza that aims against Scaramucc and the vacuuming weapon shoots him in the head. The Orichalcum helmet holds, but bits and pieces become warped. The inner part of the helmet bends slightly and it becomes uneven, tightening to his forehead and loosening around the cranium.

Scaramucc falls back to the sewer.

The team realizes that their opponents have figured out an easy way to counter their advanced ammunition. Scaramucc reloads a belt of normal bullets while Gon manipulates the weapon’s performance. The machinegun cools down faster now that it doesn’t have to calculate extra variables from the bypassing bullets. Abysmal, intense heat, the Abyssians have solved the bypassing of the armor through simple means. Furnaces and fantastical magic, thicker plates and more distance that can burn away delicate circuitry at its most infinitesimal level.

The sounds of weapons, bright violence and flames break the crowds. People fall into eachother, their packed forms collect of disperse into the many alleyways around, or they funnel across into the wide streets. In one such street, where the people are the densest in rivers of pushed bodies, an Abyssian powerarmor breaks through a building and enters into the many. Debris kills some lucky few. Most however, instantly burst into flames around the powerarmor. Melting and pressed, the forms move and weave around that powerarmor whose pilot slowly raises its arms high. A sermon in a cruel tongue resounds through the howling horrors. Smoke and languish erupt from the machine in a barometric change. That change expands around as malignant, brown shadow and a second later a reversed movement crosses into reality, coursing backwards where the crowd tried to escape.

And into the square the miserable expansion of magic coalesces, just where Jorj is.

With his Lanza two spheres are shot against the already damaged Abyssian. In accurate response, both spheres are shot by the opponent’s Lanza. Two successive vacuuming implosions of azure break the space between Jorj and the Abyssian. Both suffer minimal damage.

Neither form backs down however and it appears as if they are the sole occupants of the square. They fight from a distance, each using their Lanza to predict the other’s shot, mitigating the damage as azure vacuum blends and cancels the opponent’s shot. For the following minute, infinitesimal structural damage stacks on both armors in a game of long distance jousting where blue flash gives way to wane of light and the forces of reality swirl in sudden and violent compressions.

On the Inverse Dream, predictive hint and overarching duel, become a world of warring fantasy. Varhas sees and hears the winged Claimant far into the distance standing on top of his black temple. Doom stretches his black curtains, his demon-forged sword clutched by both hilt and edge. In full dominating command, he yells out his Contestant’s actions In-between curses and taunts.

***

Buildings collapse. Otto slides on a leaning wall and the stone barely supports his weight as he jumps off. The tight streets between the buildings weave in cobblestone and a sound of glamorous ring-clatter fills the already dense cacophony of souls trying to escape.

Midair a flak cannon strikes him all over his body from a short distance away. The force jerks him out of balance and he barely manages to land and run for cover.

Wherever the pellets strike him, the Orichalcum burns. Worse yet, he is able to feel the sizzle of the impact manifest as light burning on his skin. The flak cannon arches over his cover. He sprints away from the impact and in a quick glance his opponent is revealed. Laodike manages to peer through the information into additional insight.

The powerarmor ahead is not as bulky as the other two. In patterns of lamellar, silver and blackened iron squares, revealed pistons, bronze signets of earlobes, streaks of blood and engraved braziers filled with rings, the form is of equal mass to the Orichalcum armors. Human-sized, it is a pawn-like, yet nimble sprinting design whose legs are Running Blades hiding behind thick curtains of lamellar. The purebred Abyssian within is assaulted by sped up sermons, overlapping commands and fiery urges that come out of the mouth of Mahraspand the Listener. Laodike can hear the rhythm of their language lose its cohesion and become a slithering trickle, molten metal and blood, flow an merge into a river.

Where the bulky armors rely on heat, this Abyssian is able to predict the sniper rifle’s bullets and defend himself with his speed. The Abyssian dodges in a springing rhythm, but when one round connects, his armor glances the blow off with minimal damage.

***

Gon and Scaramucc break an iron grate and enter an old vault. Dark, this place is both mortuary and necropolis where fresh and ancient dead lay to rest in close proximity.

Footsteps sound in the distance. Taken from another’s memories, Gon is assaulted by a maligned reminisce that he has not experienced.

Suddenly a hand reaches out to grab Gon. From the shadows, an ex-champion’s red arm forms a fist that hammers a knife into the chest of Scaramucc. However, Claimant sorcery is only as such, an assault on the senses. They both flinch at a strike that never manifests in reality.

Following this mistake, an accurate Lanza shot floods the room with damage and blue. The Orichalcum armor crunches further, tightening around Scaramucc’s limbs.

Machinegun flame floods the room in a rapid fire of flashing. One can only hear the walls parts from the projectiles, the empty casings of bullets offering crowning noises as they fall.

Zhar’s shadow overtakes the room despite the flashing lights. In this concealment Gon finds himself as solitary orange glow amidst enveloping darkness. The opponents are nowhere. Their powerarmor reveals itself only in invasive memories that are available to blood magic. For now, Gon can only loosely point at the thin armor plates and quick fleeting feet that scurry away behind the pillars of the catacomb and its underground depressions.

***

Hab and Zanuvia are running across the first level of an apartment. From the windows a missile enters and curves near them exploding two meters away from Hab.

In the Inverse Dream, the heat speaks of the Abyssian that binds its temperature. Shahpur is nearby. However, the golden Abyssian’s assaults are covered in heavy illusions that carry twinfold meaning. Zanuvia notices that as soon as an explosion occurs, the damage is disproportionate on the Orichalcum. Smoke, shards, chemicals within the missiles carry hints of foreign Claimancy that claws and attaches itself in pouncing momentum.

Armed with a Starzy Pike, Hab slams both feet in the center of the damaged floor. It gives in and as he collapses to the surface of the building, the opponent appears directly ahead.

The bulky armor begins to belch heat. Stone and glass melts. Hab’s Pike passes through the wavy atmosphere digging through to the Abyssian within.

Great evaporating tongues burst from the Orichalcum, swirling geysers that are visible over the gleaming alloy. In water magic, current and wash keep Hab resistant to the temperature. But as the Abyssian charges, the geysers explode in intensity as if to announce his arrival.

Hab dodges to the side. The Abyssian tackles the wall behind Hab, but on the pushback of the hard surface, his iron hand extends and grabs Hab’s leg. Then, Hab is thrown through a wall, smashing through into the street.

A moment of pause follows. The Abyssian slowly turns to face Hab and in that moment Laodike sees the Orichalcum shin that the Abyssian grabbed, somewhat warped as freshly burnt skin.

***

Away from Varhas, Laodike’s berserk cry fills the distance. The Orichalcum fortress is breaking in such broad and demanding detail that there is no way out but escalation.

The duel of Lanzas has given the open square a trypophobic assortment of random holes that are vacuumed out of cohesion. The ground has turned from cobble to pebble, the apartments are hollow tunnels of broken doorways.

It appears that the Abyssian powerarmor has the upper hand, but Varhas understands this is only taunting and demonic confidence. In equal measure of some half-there light, confidence surges into him. He decides to invade the Abyssian’s fortress.

Jorj also closes in. The Abyssian fires a sphere but before he can cause a vacuuming implosion, Jorj slams his body into it. The force is great and so is the damage, but the Contestant keeps his forwards momentum. When both of them fire their Lanzas next, the two long azure blasts clash and cancel eachother. What follows is a shoulder tackle that sends the Abyssian powerarmor slightly off balance. The mass holds, but the Abyssian has to take a step back. In that opening, Jorj grabs the chainmail curtains and tries to throw the Abyssian without success. Instead, the chainmail tears and Jorj manages a Lanza shot deep into the armor’s center as he jumps back.

In the Inverse Dream, with physical contact comes a barrage of clashing magic. Cold wind surges against the radiating hell and a blanket of darkness appears to fall over the black citadel of Abyssia. Thunder clashes against braziers and black blood begins to rain over the fantastical battlefield.

Dead bodies burn and undying armies emerge to fight off hordes of demon spawn. Blackened claws and winged flesh of sinner’s depth slams against the gold-armored undead.

Source of magic, Doom stands alone at the gates of his temple and citadel. Willpower calls to will. Varhas pushes his armies to the flanks and as the unordered chaos of fiend and longdead parts, a duel begins.

Direct, aimed at the other’s vitals, their swords clash and overturn the extreme music of the battlefield. At each wild strike the magical metals sing in either voices of gloating torment or hushing press. Doom’s blade, engraved and chipping, reveals its mettle in a folding silvery glow that howls in agony. Whereas Varhas’ holds celestial splendor that refuses to vibrate and each parry is muted. Each stroke, each thrust brings the two to frenzy. One growls and huffs, the other remains one-eyed spectator, coldly away, but still calculated in his murderous intent. After a shove, Doom opens his mouth to an Abyssian language and flame crowns his body. His black wings become fanned, burning coals as if within a furnace that overflows with oxygen. His blade howls in a maddening scream. Murderous texture contrasts with his own and even so, Varhas holds amidst the temperature. His blade beckons the atmosphere nearer still and darkness swirls around him to conceal all and every detail of his body. He becomes a silhouette of black, unbreaking against the radiance of fire and both Claimants clash anew.

And true as all Abyssian things, some creature’s claws betray the solitude of the duel. Brass claws dig into Varhas. The Abyssian’s blade strikes at iron, then again suddenly at nothing. Shadow parts into air.

As Varhas disappears back from where he came, an azure light fills the fantastical battlefield. In the Inverse Dream, the azure glow washes through hellish brown, utterdark and the pockets between demon-corpses and piles of bones. Shadows creep in the folds of gothic architecture and a spiral force violently thrashes fantasy, objects, ground itself and the black citadel, coalescing in a vast implosion.

***

Scaramucc’s powerarmor is compromised. In complete, underground silence, blood streams out of the folds of his armor and trickles into tiny pathways between the bricks. The powerarmor is even more malformed and its inner workings pierce the Contestant’s flesh in many places. His press of breath is inaudible and the earpiece speaks of thoughtless hush.

In this inner retrospect, quiet and solitary, Gon gently presses his own abstraction of esoteric functions to movement. Blood magic, non-deliberate, cordial and slow his Inverse Dream becomes hints on Scaramucc. In the underground mortuary, the Contestant begins to leave his cover in an equally slow, sneaking walk. The Contestant lets his weapon hang and Gon takes to pushing his magic further.

Blood Theurg to Blood Theurg, Zhar’s magic of Death and Blood, lapses in great error. Despite his Contestant’s nocturnal eyesight and the lenses of nightvision on his helmet, Gon approaches the fantastical space between the two as wholly unarmed, only covered in complete innocence. And in that lack of bloodlust or logic, Zhar looks at the opponent with earnest reflective understanding. Between the two Claimants their minds merge into momentary emotional flow. In a second’s passage nothing manifests but an outreach to foreign moments that belong to neither man. In that nothingness, one man commands the other to pass and when Gon pulls away, Scaramucc raises his weapon and fires it a hint, far into the dark and silent distance.

The bullets connect and the Abyssian’s powerarmor flashes into reality as it is gravelly sundered. The Contestant within bleeds scalding crimson blood that radiates pale and warm within the mortuary.

***

On the surface, Hab and Zanuvia are being torn to pieces. Just before a crippling injury connects, Zanuvia torrents away leaving her husband without a Claimant.

Hab’s powerarmor is held down by the weight of the Abyssian and his Orichalcum is torn by an iron hand. Inside the Orichalcum, Hab is burning in the machine’s overwhelmed heat. As Zanuvia has already retreated, Shahpur quickly commands the Orichalcum powerarmor to overheat from within. Metal and plex, skin, ceramic and edges of optic highways melt together in an excruciating press against the Contestant. As the Abyssian’s powerarmor tears his arm from the shoulder, Hab feels only a passing thankfulness as his horrible torment is soon to be over.

***

Otto follows closely to his opponent. Out into the streets and back again in through a window, he wrestles the opponent to a stop. As he throws the cataphracted powerarmor underneath him, he puts a bullet into the Abyssian’s leg crippling him in place.

The Contestant has the advantage, but Laodike is unable to withstand Zhar’s assault. When their Inverse Dreams merge, the assault that follows from the Abyssian armor is broad, multilayered and strategic. The water elementals are pinned down by pincer attacks of fantastical Abyssian horsemen that ride demonbred stallions. Wherever her attention wanes, flames curve and enter the Orichalcum fortress. Even if better engineered, in this ebb and flow of attack, Laodike finds herself trapped within the dwindling resources of her Inverse Dream.

Soon enough, she will be exhausted to a hint of life. The difference of experience is too grand and she places all of her hope into Otto.

She watches from the other side as Otto curbstomps the enemy’s powearmor. With each catastrophic blow to the opponent’s head, more fantastical fire elementals animate out of thin air around her. She calls out for a duel, but Zhar refuses to answer.

By the time the enemy Contestant lies dead, Otto breathes hell and everywhere within him is a fanning of great pain that chokes him in the smog of his own burning flesh.

As Laodike cannot find the Zhar, she begins to disassemble the armor in hopes to save Otto. However fused within him and further pushed by Zhar, parts of the armor have dug themselves into his muscles and refuse to detach.

With no other options, she urges Otto to run.

***

The Lanza duel in the square shows signs of advantage. Jorj and Varhas become lighter in their senses, able to push, dodge and plan ahead further than the Abyssian pair. In such increase of minute cerebral and physical performance, it only takes a mistake.

And that mistake soon happens. The Abyssian’s hand is slow in following the opponent, his head is huffing breath in growling and tired streaks. When Jorj aims his Lanza at the opponent’s head, the Abyssian turns to fire his own weapon but his elbows open instead of tightening and he fires towards the floor. Jorj’s blast is not canceled out and the thick iron twists inward.

The Abyssian reels. His pointy helmet falls low and it appears as if he is ready to perform an attack, that which is seen in bulls and other ancient skewering beasts done so in their final breaths. Varhas pulls Jorj out of going close to the man in a suggestion. In his mind, reindeer, or perhaps colossal moose lies in a feverish last change between disease and absolution.

Thus, Jorj fires the Lanza a few more times and the Abyssian drops his weapon. His hands curl against his chest, his head hides behind a shoulder.

Three shots become four and then seven. During that time there is only a faint bleak absence of sound that is parted by faraway running.

Other than the radiant-red blood falling from the opponent’s engraved armor, there is only a trickle of a fast approaching shape.

Gleaming Orichalcum, Otto appears without a weapon, sprinting into a walk and then collapsing a distance of ten meters away from Jorj.

Overbearing scent of burnt human fills the atmosphere. The once blond Ulmite is reduced into a grotesque body, half gleaming alloy and burnt flesh. His body convulses in a tremulous shock. Jorj fires his Lanza again and again into the Abyssian, while running closer to Otto.

When the two Orichalcum armors come into contact, Varhas manifests in a swift coalescence of shadows, next to what appears as a mound of wet rags. His hands pulls gently on a veil. Laodike is in a state of burden, dried and torn at the soul, she is covered in fresh burns, parched lips and a bonelike consistency of flesh that makes her almost weightless. So much so, that when Varhas embraces her, he only has to put so much effort so as to lift her to himself.

Laodike whispers to nobody, asking only for water and Varhas opens his mouth against hers sharing his spit.

Water to water, she meekly opens her eyes and her expression slowly changes into tearless crying. Man and woman stand there for a moment as the exhaustion within her manifests into excruciating malaise.

‘Oh Gods Varhas, please.’

‘Its alright Laodike. You are doing fine.’

‘I cannot do this anymore. Please. I cannot take these pains anymore.’

Varhas begins to shake. His chest becomes heavy and his breaths are tightening. Sweat rolls off him and into the woman’s face. Any foreign droplet, the filtered essence that is felt through as water, curving over her cheeks and it gives life into the woman. If only in vacant, reanimating ways of Death.

‘Make exit Laodike. You have to go.’

‘I can’t. The pains. The pains await me out there in the real. Oh Gods, I have to take these pains again.’

As the woman’s thoughts try to collect themselves within her dimming annals of memory, both Claimants suddenly become aware of an object standing between their bodies. The spherical shape rolls out of Laodike’s clothes and the Tartarean prison reveals only a small curve of its kenophobic beauty.

‘The prison?’

‘Take it. Take it Varhas. You have felt them too. They never wrote themselves into this match, but they are there. The Horrors Varhas. They are here.’

The man softly puts the woman down. Her crying face has now become much at ease as she has seen him holding the sphere. Varhas shuts his eyes and when he blinks them open, Laodike is no longer there. There is only a trace of a humid absence and Varhas quickly returns to Jorj.

Both watch as through the mismatched iron, the broken machine opens. Out from the folds something steps out. A crimson skin, bones and all wrapped in thin Abyssian flesh. Of five fingers and toes, straight hair, covered in black, branching veins of even redder blood. The Abyssian steps and runs against Jorj, his eyes are yellow, the sclera around his irises is of deep asphalt-gray.

As Jorj shoots the naked Abyssian Contestant, a horrible broadness emanates from the broken powerarmor ahead.

Let loose, the many miserable experience coalescing here break on Doom’s command and the broadness unravels.

Chapter 36

Five Minutes Remaining

Horrors unleashed, the loops of human malice seek out anything that uses magic around them. Drawn to any and all things, the waves of manifesting horrors seek out both the living beings that can think and imagine, but also all silicone machines that work in some model of language. Contestants, machines and powerarmor alike, every wall and every silicone highway is instantly struck.

Maligned stars, glowing shadows, bottomless gullets, soultorn bodies, tides of gore and matchsticks of void flame infest sky and earth alike. Demonic hordes inside of the broken powerarmors defend against the invasion of horrors without any influence from a Claimant. From the remnants of Otto’s and Hab’s armor their gleaming crucibles of metal become a crossroad of apocalyptic survival where machines and roaming Claimants stand back to back against complete obliteration. Cybernetic phantasms of Orichalcum, hunters and local Claimants who are at the wrong place at the wrong time, demonic sergeants and pools of sweet and salty waters perform a last stand on remnants of events that they know little of their context. Lifeless machine and human obey to the hopeless play unraveling infront of them.

And at that wailing, something humid holds Varhas together. The Claimant understands that he has to end this match, before anyone can pray for help.

A sound of explosions and machinegun fire resounds nearby. The source appears to be behind a long horizontal building. At a height of thirty meters, the nine-story hospital is almost all of broken glass windows, except for its first floor that holds a square balcony.

Jorj leaps into this balcony, but before he can enter into the hospital, caution stops him.

Direct conversation opens in Jorj’s ear.

‘The floor on the other side. Its nanomorphic. This fucking armor has leather soles. Your feet with begin to disolve if you step on it.’

‘What about the lobby?’

‘Let me check. Lobby is full of white tiles too. The upper floors also.’

Hesitant, both remain only for a few seconds planning courses and measuring actions. Inside the hospital something beckons near and it is written in the shadows plastered at the corners of lowly-lit patient wards and surgical rooms.

‘We have to go in. Now.’ realization glitches into their minds at the same time.

Jorj enters slowly. Long tightened steps arch over and creak over the broken glass and then their sound is lost on the smooth white. The Contestant sees with extreme clarity and he peeks through corners, out of rooms and into corridors that stretch ahead or lead to equally unwinding staircases.

A minutes passes in this search. Jorj stops walking after a while to check the soles on his boots. There are only a couple centimeters of thickness on them. The vision on his helmet becomes filled with burnt out specks. Pixels, cracks and points appear as static noise over odd intervals. The earpiece sings with sounds of bygone eras, serenades and poems of mirrors obstruct Jorj’s ears.

‘What the fuck is happening Varhas?’

‘Horrors. I am trying to keep them off but they... Change of plans, you have to find him now!’

Jorj sprints. Sizzling footsteps follow behind the Contestant as he frantically begins to turn left and right, down and over with rapid glances. In the inner part of his helmet, the alloy presses against the cheeks of Jorj, the left side of his face slightly warms up. At the next left turn, the inner heat swaps to his right cheek and he turns that same way forwards.

At complete absence of light, there is something lukewarm a short distance ahead and Jorj clearly sees it. The Abyssian is of lighter armor than the one he fought. The iron is riddled with bullets and there is some natural light over the shape by the Abyssian’s blood pouring out.

The Lanza strikes ahead flooding everything with blue destruction. The walls cave inwards on the hallway, the doors break from their hinges. The Abyssian retreats reeling with a limp and Jorj quickly chases after him.

The horrors latch themselves faster on the density of their Inverse Dream. The songs of many a bygone millennia and fried optics intensify. The blue colour invites them in another wave.

Sloshing sound follows his every step. Seconds later, Varhas begins to speak to Jorj. He presses his teeth together in a tightened focus.

‘Gods! We have no time, we must kill him now and pray that Gon slays the last one.’

‘I am on it.’ Jorj clears his throat in a tingling, intensifying growl. ‘Every step is like I leave a layer of flesh behind.’

And that is exactly what is happening. Behind the Contestant there is a trail of bloody footprints. At every press and soft plasticity of pressure, the nanomorphic blades dig in and latch into muscle, fat and bone breaking all cells apart and detaching them from Jorj with almost no force or pull.

The Abyssian waits in ambush. He fires his azure vacuum prematurely but it still strikes a short distance infront of Jorj. The Orichalcum cracks on his chest, right arm and right leg. It appears that the shot was aimed low and greater damage manifests there.

The second shot is canceled out by Jorj’s. The Lanza shots blend together and the damage mainly manifests on the walls around them as they shatter and fill the space In-between them.

On the Inverse Dream every shot of a Lanza is an open malignant invitation for the horrors. Varhas watches as the Orichalcum is overrun by Soultorn horrors and Maws. At the highest point of the armor, the Claimant parts his mouth into a sermon, sphere in hand and preaching in the vastness of the Inverse Dream. It is raining and the battlefield is a fading golden city overrun by some protesting, self-consuming mass. Orichalcum hoplites press their wall of spears against humanoids of open jaws and knife-long teeth. Slingers whip bullets that part tides of Gore.

And suddenly, despite nobody in reality firing another Lanza shot, the grayness of the raining sky is pulled apart into a painting. The streaks of gray clouds, what little stars glimmer in the Inverse Dream, they form lines and points, their colour is drawn and wrought into a bare mettle of well-defined calligraphy. Celestial language manifests, but Varhas understands it to hold no meaning. It is instead something far greater, denser than the looping logic of any horror he has seen so far.

The thing up there is no lesser horror. It is no singular loop of misery but an entire choir. In the face that forms there is such sealed and pressure-proof weight of human horror that Varhas understands it is already invading his mind. No ego stands against it, no individual soul holds enough weight to influence it.

In a fortunate reminisce, Varhas remembers the night on Nidavangr where he met his mother. The darkness. The unraveling he felt when entering his mother’s temple and throne of power, is similar.

That memory helps him navigate to himself only for a moment. He raises the Tartarean sphere. The sphere glows and the Doom Horror by the name of Hu’Azburash’Na’Gil devourer of Dreams fades momentarily.

Varhas takes this moment to breathe. Laodike, Zanuvia and even Gon too pass him by. Even the words of the locals become swirls within his thoughts of gusts and shadows. In this embrace where the texture of his heart takes steadiness in all of the pains that they have gathered and all the evils that they have cast away, Varhas becomes angry. His mind sharpens violently and all of his magical abstraction coalesces and focuses.

On the other side, Jorj sees the burnt screen interface, his ears and his nostrils become accurate hunters of their own regard. With mind of their own, to that he can say with certainty is Varhas, the Contestant watches a bleeding streak on the floor that homes in on the Abyssian.

One Lanza shot connects, then another. Then, the opponent tries to blend with the shadows again and Varhas commands Jorj to touch him. With two long steps Jorj hammers a fist into the Abyssian’s back of the neck. The blow is shattering in strength. Cackle of thunder beats in everyone’s eardrums and the opponent’s body shatters the floor as he bounces violently against it.

In the Inverse Dream, Varhas stands as a speck of order against a vast sea of chaotic obliteration. The Doom Horror returns, but he focuses away from it. Instead, with one eye he measures some Astral, celestial heat that all universal bodies radiate. As he measures, one red star reveals itself. barely a glimmer and in that Astral calculation of space, Varhas summons his great lance. He arches backwards, sphere on one hand, lance in the other and he puts every ounce of his being into the throw. With Air magic, the lance powers through in friendly updraft. With Astral magic there is precalculated aim that will strike Mahraspand as if by circumstance of prophecy. And with Death, final, ending blow will forever set this feat in archetypal myth.

The lance crosses the space between Claimants. The devastating throw strikes the Abyssian’s chest and shoulder pinning him to the ground.

As soon as that happens Jorj manages to remove the opponent’s helmet. As if by miracle of chance the locks unclench and it opens to the dizzied face of a bearded Abyssian. The opponent locks eyes with Jorj and as he lifts his fist to strike, the Abyssian nods in approval.

Jorj freezes. The Abyssian grabs the arm that is not raised and in his infernal pronouncement of words, he speaks.

‘You heard the music too, miner of earth. Now all you have to do is serve it to action.’

The Abyssian dies with one blow. Varhas watches this moment from the other side as he gathers his sanity. Centered, stopped, he thinks that somehow what has happened between the two Contestants is no different than that moment when he was bedridden with Gon on his side. This is the last hopeful moment he can muster before the Horrors descend in incomprehensible weight and density.

In complete alignment with his soul, his exhausted body also, Varhas leans his head to pray.

His single eye closes and two Pantokrators arrive.

Chapter 37

The Painting

The first person that Varhas sees when he wakes up from a hospital bed is Gon.

The man’s bug-eyed look is helped by a happy grin.

‘Why are you smiling?’

‘Morning Varhas.’

Varhas groans himself forwards. For about a minute he massages his head and breathes deeply.’

‘How long?’

‘Two days. Forty nine hours and some minutes.’

‘What?’

‘Don’t believe me?’

‘Of course not. I’ve never been knocked out for more than eight or nine hours.’

Gon becomes serious. ‘No Varhas. You were in the Inverse Dream in the presence of two Pantokrators and something without name.’

The one-eyed Claimant loses cohesion of his face. Vacant of thought he turns his head around to see himself in a Meconian-style hospital. The place is clean and sterile, with militaristic wooden design, iron containers and a general grandness of space that fits giants instead of men.

‘Gon this is not funny.’

‘I am not laughing. You were at the presence of the Meconian Pantokrator and to his side was the Arhoscephalean Pantokrator. Claimants say that the battle that happened was too much to the senses. Maybe this is why you don’t remember it. Some that tried, say that the snake-footed Archon, the gigantic being that holds flail and shield was there spinning his weapon and thrashing the seas of horrors in his wake. As a great field of wheat being reaped they say it was. As...’ Gon stops. ‘What do you remember?’

Varhas closes his eye and momentarily only hints return. ‘Choirs.’

‘What?’

‘Choirs I remember. I just...’ Varhas arches his hand trying to paint sound around him. ‘Music Gon, music. There was singing and melodies, epics and operas told in seconds. I... I...’ Varhas frowns.

‘Hey. Relax. Don’t push yourself. It is over now.’

Varhas dismisses Gon. ‘What are the other’s doing. Laodike? Zanuvia?’

‘Both are well.’

The Claimant breathes out in comforting release. His shoulders slouch back and he falls back on the pillow.

‘Laodike saved my life back there.’

‘Did she now? She said the exact the same thing about you.’

‘She was almost dead when I found her. Her eyes were so pained. I had hopes it would have been easier.’

‘We served as best as we could.’

‘Who exactly?’ Says Varhas, annoyed. ‘The people that got ritually sacrificed? The Claimants who lost their life after exiting the Inverse?’

‘The Gods. The spectacle?’

‘Fuck off Gon. You don’t believe this either.’

‘Our Contestants then. We served them better than the Abyssians did.’

Varhas lets a sharp breath out. ‘Go and say that to Laodike or Zanuvia who had to watch their Contestants suffer through it. Anyways.’ Varhas lets his eye fall into a veiled, rectangular object. ‘What is that? From Orichalcum?’

‘No no. This was uh... made in Mecone surprisingly enough. I never knew they had such good artisanship. But the surprise was that an Arhoscephalean diplomat brought it here.’

‘Really? That’s good. Maybe the two factions can mend things over now that their Pantokrators fought side by side.’

‘Who knows.’

‘If Orichalcum calls, tell them that I will speak with them shortly.’

‘What do you plan on saying?’

‘Nothing good. Want to unveil the gift?’

Gon leans back. Then he grabs at the veil and pulls it off.

Despite being only a slab, with no other colours than the marble’s white gleam and its natural imperfections, the spectacle on the surface appear vivid and powerful. The natural light of the room sheds itself over minutiae, cliffs, lakes, dark clouds, even skin, serpentine or divine metal, all is defined by engraving only.

From wherever anyone stares at the slab, these details mix and merge together to form shapes. On the left, a colossal Pantokrator, flail and shield in his hands, gleaming breastplate and awe, merges with the manifold details of horrible creatures. The grand form leans downwards in the pose of a smith striking hot metal. His limbs are stiff and his snake legs coil against the horrors. And even these, horrible abbe rations and grotesque beings are superimposed to the stone with accuracy. Immaterial or stiff, ethereal or pliable, their bodies merge into waves without losing their gaping expressions. Even natural light and Arhoscephalean radiance glosses in the marble as the other Pantokrator stands, spear in hand and bronze helmet underneath her armpit. Her long gown falls over her shoulders, warm, cloudy, gray and buoyant like the early arrival of autumn and the first rains. Her spear guides something to the sky, her vision is focused on a small speck on the other side of the slab. In that right half of the artwork, a tiny black shape commands various giant warriors and a golden bastion against chaos. The speck of darkness has just thrown a spear to the heavens. Its trajectory arches and reaches far as a curve that touches the stars and becomes one of them.

‘Oh Gods. Is the Abyssian Claimant alive? I remember throwing a spear and...’

‘He is fine Varhas. Gravely injured but Mahraspand is fine. I believe the reflected injuries sent him for a thirty-hour surgery. Ugly, but he is fine.’

‘We are lucky. Had he died, we would have a vendetta on us.’

‘I doubt that. For all the brutality of Abyssians, they are people of honor. Even if that is a cruel type of honor. Mind you, I had a chance to speak to Jorj. He told me that when the Abyssian Contestant saw him remove his helmet, he nodded in approval.’

‘Yeah, I saw that too. How is he doing?’

‘Fine.’

Varhas takes a deep breath. ‘Great. Great. Two more matches then.’ Then the Claimant looks around the room but Gon makes no movement to leave. The Blood Theurg seems far from done. His next words remind Varhas of someone. More accurately, they remind him of himself, in a diner over Ohros, proding Jorj for something strange to say. Something interesting.

‘I heard your prayer you know.’

‘What prayer? In the Inverse Dream?’

‘Yes.’

With newfound interest Varhas leans close to Gon and his voice becomes a whisper. Trying to escape this strangeness, he tries to sway the conversation.

‘How did you defeat the last Abyssian?’

‘With your help. I told you, I heard your prayer. I turned inwards and heard you put all of your hope in me.’

‘Yes, but your opponent?’

‘Turns out he was a very skilled Blood Theurg. So we did what Blood sorcerers do best and we talked it out. Are you sure you want to learn about Blood?’

Varhas thinks. The hesitation passes to curiosity and then he nods.

‘In the battles between Blood Theurgs, Blood Claimancy, both parties measure themselves based on seniority, lets say. Of course Shahpur is much, much older than I, but age is not what we measure. What our seniority denotes is simply how much we can traverse backwards in depth, the tree that we call our family, blood and kin. We measure how far down we can go on the branches of a tree that is our fathers’ fathers, our mothers and all the pairs that came together to birth us over many a millennia. In a helix, we scour their memories in momentary empathy and we simply rob a few specks of that pocket of emotion to draw our powers. We had a long and focused discussion as our Contestants fought eachother. The moment you called out to me I recall reaching further back than ever before and this distance humbled the other Claimant. I remember then, standing right infront of Shahpur and reaching out for a handshake. His hands were neither hot or cold, just another human. I felt as if I touched the royal hand of a great Persian king and in his eyes was only a reflection of pride. True and earnest happiness that I am the one to go ahead, not him.’

Gon’s hands are neither burnt or scarred. However, his face contorts in complete shame.

‘Are you telling me this to calm my worries for a vendetta? That they are human too, deep down? Why are you sad? There is no shame in what you did. Is there?’

‘Blood sorcery comes with debt. Even if all of it goes to the Abyssians, I cannot feel at ease. They are me as much as I am them. But this is not what scares me and brings me low. It is you. I reveal these secrets to an Astral Claimant and I fear what you may do with this knowledge.’

‘Why Gon? What am I to do with this insight?’

‘That I can never know. It is your domain to predict the future, not mine. Blood Theurgs learn to envy and fear Astral Claimants. We may traverse the tree backwards only, to reach its roots is to remember the first human. But you, you have the choice to traverse it up its branches and into the leaves, of people that you should not know, people that are not real yet. Combining both the back and forth is the domain of horrors.’

‘But I am not versed in Blood sorcery. I cannot combine what I do not know.’

‘Perhaps. I am the one in the wrong here. I speak of Blood as I initiate you into it. All for myself feeling the load shared. Promise me Varhas.’

‘Anything.’

‘Promise me that you will not go searching in the intimate memories of those that came before you. Promise that you will never use Blood sorcery.’

Varhas nods. The moment now, is similar to that on Mecone, when the Inverse Dream held hidden horrors in the layers and Fenrika had also asked him if he was tempted. Varhas understands, that so long as there is someone like Anax, or Gon nearby, there are still chances to reject their lull. Is it him, or the strangers that come and go that make him careful? The Claimant asks himself and perhaps, there is something around their team that passes into others and swerves them off.

Chapter 38

Meeting

Varhas lapses in the Inverse Dream. Inside, fantasy parts to flat liminal space. The domain of Orichalcum Megacorporation is a vast and imposing megastructure of metal and stone with subterranean details that overarch as beautiful imperfections in the far away ceiling.

In this space, the room soon fills with people. Claimants of all shapes and fashion enter and pleasantries are exchanged between them. The Claimant of Death however remains silent.

When the meeting begins, Varhas takes the initiative cutting another Claimant off.

‘What happened in the last match was unacceptable.’

Sharp, his voice cuts directly at their facial expressions and everybody in the room changes from a loaded, easy and self-congratulating gleam to a puzzled frown.

‘This is not what our metrics speak of.’ Says someone. ‘Are you mad?’ Speaks another.

‘Listen to my words all of you here. Upper management, Claimant and Commoner that may see this recording. Our esteemed Board of Directors, our CEO and the Claimants that support them.’

A meek figure rises from his seat. This old Claimant raises a finger towards the voice of dissent. However, Varhas tightens his fist and a pillar of shadow covers the man. No sound penetrates that barrier and no light defines anything within it.

‘Despite what your supporting Claimants might tell you, the decision to perform changes on the powerarmors with no concent or regard from us is simply unacceptable. In your self-satisfying goals you have set great risk on our performance. The choice of replacing the boots with leather is a decision that should have never been taken by the board alone.’

‘How dare you!’ A well dressed Claimant of fabrication and manufacturing yells. ‘Do you have any idea how long we have tested these designs? How much work...’

‘Work? You will speak to me of work?’ Varhas says calmly, but in deep aggressive tone. ‘In every planet there are hospitals with nanomorphic tiles and yet you forget that one such Contestant as Jorj may be called to fight in such circumstances? Have you ever felt how it is to run on these tiles?’

The man becomes more aggravated. Before he can reply however, Varhas takes out and reveals a small white shard that was enveloped in synthetic cloth. ‘Would you like to find out?’

The Claimant of fabrication nervously freezes. His hands stand awkwardly to the side before recoiling back and then Varhas turns towards the Board of Directors. From their shadowy conceal, a person breaks their blurry appearance and closes in.

‘May I?’ Her hand reaches out. Old and calloused, her plain appearance and shallow aura denote perhaps a very weak, one dimensional Claimant as Varhas thinks. Despite this stream of thoughts, Varhas remains steadied without mockery. Her expression is solid, quite prideful and calculating. When Varhas offers the white piece, the woman puts her index on it and she quickly flinches. In a flailing motion there is discomfort and pain, but she remains steadfast.

She presses her thumb to the flayed fingerprint and in this pinch of her two fingers, she turns towards a group of shapes and speaks.

‘Did the manufacturing department not plan for nanomorphic tiles?’

A meek voice responds. ‘Of course! But the data of Eryx...’

Another director cuts the voice off. ‘Our data was accurate. The information department was never provided with architectural plans of...’

In that same replying and cutting off rhythm another responds. ‘The department of espionage gave you the plans seven months ago! What about the filing process?’ Someone in the distance yells. ‘What about QA? Who gave the approvals?’

The CEO looks at Varhas as the many voices become endless back and forth in the background.

She speaks softly. ‘Have we payed your price Varhas? We will restructure as soon as possible. What else would you have us do?’

‘I am not here to put the corporation under. Just reach out to us next time. There are no threats to my words.’

‘Apologies. Its just that Anax was the dedicated mediator. We should have reached out earlier. Accept our apology on behalf of everyone here. I promise this will not happen again.’ The woman’s face becomes troubled.

‘I have your word then.’

Before he can go, she opens her mouth again, but this time softly and her speech is concealed among the many voices. ‘How did Jorj manage... this pain?’

‘He just does. It’s what he is made for.’ In the CEO’s face is an expression of something more than discomfort at the pain. This expression makes Varhas ask. ‘How come you care?’

‘Varhas. I was only eight when I saw the tungsten hail over Dur-Baqa. I know what it is for commoners to go mad. Again. We will make sure to support you in any way we can.’

Striking at her sentimentality, Varhas leans to say something harsh, but he instead bites the words and bows for the CEO’s compassionate understanding. Then, he thinks it again and leans closer to make sure nobody else listens.

‘You think such platitudes of gentleness might save you from the masses?’

‘I can only try.’

Varhas nods. As he leaves, he flutters his hand outwards and the concealing darkness that hid someone disperses. The once angry Claimant now appears frightened, frozen in place by fear and Varhas exits the Inverse Dream without looking back.

***

From the hospital window, Jorj watches the small courtyard below. A veil covers Laodike as she solemnly sits on a marble bench. The short square bushes on her side hold primroses at their base. Violet and pink, the core of each bud is fading yellow and it appears that from time to time each flower moves in a bouncing motion. The Claimant waves her hand in the air, somewhat trying to swat the bees away.

Jorj takes a packet of cigarettes and lights one up. Hab comes near and he joins in smoking.

‘Is your kid alright?’

Hab chokes after the first pull. He coughs once, then twice and he snuffs the cigarette on the metal ashtray.

‘Eugh. Tastes like... like...’

‘Burnt flesh.’

Hab nods. This is the exact thing he wants to say.

‘I can’t speak to her. At least for a while. She has things to resolve. Up there.’ Hab points at his head. ‘What is wrong with these cigarettes?’

‘Is it us, or are the cigarettes to blame?’

‘I don’t know. The closer we are to winning this thing, the weirder things get. And all they do is self harm and isolating into themselves.’ Hab massages his face with a hand and takes a deep breath.

‘She will be fine.’

‘I know. She knows. But I don’t want to talk about it now.’

The other Contestant walks away. The door closes behind him.

Few minutes pass, when time comes around for another to enter the room. Varhas finds Jorj at that same, window gazing pose.

‘Smoking like a chimney Jorj?’ Varhas comes near and lights a cigarette for himself.

‘Can’t kick the habit.’

‘Weird. Should be able to do that easily.’

‘How come?’

‘Every time you respawn, there shouldn’t be some nicotine addiction written in your cells.’ Varhas pauses, then he thinks anew. ‘Actually I might be wrong. Not sure if addiction is written inside of your brain or outside. I don’t know.’

‘I do. There is nothing like a good cigarette after victory.’

The Claimant pulls the cigarette, his face contorts in disgust and he breathes the fumes out through his nose. ‘Weird taste, these ones.’

‘Smells like that time on Dur-Baqa. Human.’

Varhas looks at the cigarette and then at Jorj. ‘That it does... Disgusting.’

‘Hab said the same thing.’

‘Saw him on the way in. Is this why he was blue? Don’t worry its all that overstimulation from the powerarmor. The things you saw, heard and felt on your skin.’

‘I know, I know. I just said she should be fine. He knows. Why worry? She has no burn marks does she?’

The Claimant knows that the wounds on Laodike are not severe, or even minor enough to make her hideous. Her skin appears unburnt, if only it is the entirety of her body that is aged, a decade or so. Her features are not contorted or burnt off, just exhausted.

The deeper part that got charred is infinite as the Claimant knows and it is this that makes her walk along the garden underneath them.

‘She is stronger than she looks. Just don’t mock her for it, or bring it about too often.’

‘Sure. I am not that callous. But, after the bunker match you came to me with one eye and I wanted to make fun of you.’

Varhas breathes deeply. However he has no need to steady himself to hit that fine point In-between two extremes.

‘You see this?’ He holds the lit cigarette with his thumb and index. ‘You said it yourself that it tastes like burnt human.’

‘So?’

‘Imagine if you may, that whatever weight the powerarmors put on your senses, we have to take that assault hundred-fold. We stand between you and the machines so that you don’t have to go mad afterwards. What you see on Laodike is the result of her protecting Otto and by extension you.’

Jorj remains silent for a moment. He puts his words together In-between a puff of his cigarette.

‘Suppose you did not do your job well. What would I be doing now? You tell me to imagine something, now its your turn.’

‘If I had to guess, you’d jump off the window, start running around, beating people up. Maybe you’d beat us instead. Whatever thoughts would make you do that, they would be of ugly streams.’

‘Just like on Arhoscephale?’

‘Just like that.’

‘But I wasn’t near any machine then.’

‘Near, far, doesn’t matter. These things work in such precise, universal accuracy that they can influence people’s thoughts from half a planet away. They speak in languages that overwrite and their sound is so imperceptive you’d think there’s only silence.’

Jorj looks at Varhas. The Claimant appears tired for a second and then he shakes his head as if to diffuse these thoughts.

‘How are your legs?’ Asks Varhas.

‘They itch. Do I got to blame you for that?’

Both men laugh. The Claimant replies. ‘Guilty as charged. Don’t worry I went into Orichalcum and teared them a new one. No more leather shoes.’

‘So there are more powerarmor matches coming?’

‘Possibly. Why?’

Jorj exhales loudly. His cigarette is spent and he snuffs it out in a downward motion.

‘Every time I fight in a powerarmor...’ He stops. Another’s words enter him. ‘...afterwards I feel pieces of soul missing.’

The Claimant frowns and focuses. ‘Damn it Jorj. Did you feel that way after the match on Mecone too?’

‘I did. And I, you know. Get these ideas as you say. These thoughts. I remember walking up that cliff on Mecone, piss drunk but it was as if I had returned for a moment to my planet. Just before I woke up today, I thought I was back in the mines. Little me, digging through rock and candlelight. I felt the skin around me tighten and it was as if I went out of a cave and into the light. But it did not feel good. I was out, but plastic wrapping tightened around my form and as soon as it became one with me, everything became muted, dull. I was a kid again, but as I am right now, coarse and unfeeling.’

Chapter 39

The Rebels

The Black and White team spends its time idly on the private clinic. Their stay is without much noise as the building rests on the outskirts of Eryx. Away from the city and on the side of a low, barren hill the place appears as a patch of flowery contrast. Tall, thin trees conceal a nearby spring of fresh waters. The iron gates are barred open and the team usually takes long walks around the clinic without much worry.

When the early morning comes, the first one up is Varhas and Gon, who appear to share a burden. Both have nightmares, but Varhas feels that they are halved in their intensity.

In that easy, yawning trudge where both men almost drag their legs, the carrot-topped trees and tall cypresses become comfortable places to sit at their shade. The air is clean and faraway sunlight is only a blue and teal refraction over the horizon.

At an outward gaze, almost lazy notice appears as something moving. A cloud of dust cuts through the flat terrain of dry brush.

Gon gets up to alert the others in a slow walk. Varhas finds his recline too welcoming and he continues to observe the approaching shape as the first sunlight pokes over the horizon and reveals it in colour.

From where he sits, the object takes the shape of a large camping van. Crowned with safety grills, of great wheels and a powerful diesel engine, the machine is ancient and loud, but it is neither some technologically dense relic from bygone times, or a new machine made in the image of a vehicle. It is simply a wheeled old thing, the rapid-fire of igniting cylinders presses it onward.

When the time comes for the vehicle to pass infront of Varhas, he greets it in an open raised hand. From its many windows, three faces stare at him and then the great van brakes hard on the dirtroad, producing a brown and white smokescreen.

Waiting a few seconds for the vehicle’s shape to appear again, its engine stops. A door opens and Magon comes out through the dirty air. These three rebels are lightly dressed. Swimsuits under light tunics and only their heavy boots appear uncomfortable, fastened around their naked shins and ankles.

Varhas speaks in a voice that is casual but loud enough to resound over the silence.

‘A bit dangerous for you to be out of the city, is it not?’

Magon replies. ‘Not really.’ He walks closer. ‘Master Varhas? That is you right?’

‘I am. I am. What are you doing here?’

Magon is now a few meters away from Varhas. The man is wearing a white tunic that falls and reaches to his knees. Underneath he is wearing nylon, uneven shorts that are fit for swimming. The tunic’s short sleeves and square nape are gilded with Southern patterns of swirling winds, warm ecru over gray and white.

‘Going to the beach.’

‘The beach? Lucky you. Coastal Sicela is another world of its own.’

‘So they say. Only if you have good company.’

‘Well... Can we be that company?’

Magon turns around to his companions. Then he turns to Varhas and speaks.

‘I think we can fit eight more. More like ten, considering your Contestants. There is space on the roof. And bars so you don’t fall off.’

***

On the other side of the hill a long stretch of gravel gives into rocks and layers of sand.

The sun is now up and the vehicle strolls along the ground in straight cruising.

Inside, the four rebels party and talk like there is no tomorrow. They offer cigarettes and crushed pills to their guests who try to be casual on their refusal. Hab, Laodike and Zanuvia sit at the middle part of the vehicle, conversing with any curious rebel that tinkers around the tight living space that is all mattress, a table and old acoustic boxes. Gon is glued next to Magon who is the driver and he keeps the conversation constantly moving.

‘Honestly Gon, you weren’t there on Mecone were you?’

‘No, I came to the team later.’

‘Back on Eryx when you came to us during the night, I could not believe what was happening.’

‘How come?’

‘I mean. We saw videos of Claimants going on the place of slavery and rousing up the locals to fight men double their size. That was hardcore man. Hardcore. The man up there? Laodike on the back? Mad.’

Magon continues describing the event on Mecone to Gon. A rebel woman, the same person who got In-between Varhas and Magon to protect him, is leaning back in drugged up recline. As soon as she hears about Mecone, she becomes full of vigor and she speaks.

‘I have an ex on Mecone. Whole planet heard about that brawl. The balls to fight the Krypteia in their own planet.’

The woman offers a mirror with stimulants arrayed in lines. Gon completely ignores the offering opting instead to stare deeply into her dreaming eyes.

‘Talk to me about you ex.’

‘What? That guy? I don’t know, some Claimant freak, had a thing for piercings. Fucker had a rod going from one ear through his head to the other side. Anyways. Hardcore as Magon said. Hardcore.’

Magon speaks. ‘Yeah Gon, when Varhas approached me on Eryx I thought I was dreaming. Lo and behold, a pale white man for whom his reputation follows closely behind.’

‘What did you feel when you saw him?’

‘Varhas? I am not sure Gon. Fear? Maybe. But then again take any underworld-worshiping Claimant of Death and they all feel the very same.’

‘What about jealousy?’

‘Man, fuck you Gon.’ The other rebels laugh. Magon focuses on driving if only for a second and then he speaks. ‘You did well on Eryx. Those Abyssians would have burned the city to the ground. Anguish would speak loudly and all it would have said was, come. Come who? Foreigners, fleet and saviors that care little for the...’

The rebel woman cuts him off. ‘I’d pilot my powerarmor and...’ Before she completes her sentence, from the back of the vehicle, one of the speakers begins vibrating with sound. The large box begins to increase in volume and soon, hard techno fills the space. Magon presses harder on the pedal and as the deep kicks are overtaken by droning ambience, Magon points through the windshield and into the distance.

Glimmering and endless, horizon and light mix. Colorless, yet focused, universal trance wrests away all of their attention towards the natural wonder.

***

At the foothills of a short mountain, flat land curves into an open cove. Flattened sand gives way into low vegetation and a dried out brook has become a low crevasse that enters into the ocean. Dunes mark the beginning of the small coastline and in the distance, sandstone cliffs form some boundaries.

The rebels are the first to take their clothes off and run towards the water. Salty, blanketing foam, the water is cool and almost whispering in its low waves. Zanuvia turns the speakers off and the team draws closer to the beach.

Jorj, Scaramucc, Otto and Gon undress and jump in naked. Zanuvia and veiled Laodike only pull their dresses up to their knees and tiptoe their way around. Varhas sinks into the sand and watches.

His one eye takes the moments in and they pass through him without becoming memories.

Glittering sea, specks of water and sunlight, he remains alone for a while and sleep arrives twice, then thrice and he wakes by distant laughter and uneventful cries of joy.

In one such moment, Varhas wakes up to Hab sitting next to him. Both men remain without exchanging words and side by side they witness the two forms ahead. Laodike unveils herself and it appears that her smile is wide. Whatever new imperfections of old age exist on it, they are hardly visible.

Chapter 40

Battleground

This time, Claimants and Contestants are not anxious to be in the thick of battle. Reassured by the circular, schizophrenic logic of reality they all feel in some capacity that they are invincible.

Laodike is sitting on a straw, dilapidated chair at the side of a hill that overlooks an expanse of trenches, mudfields, ruins and barbwire reaching out far into the distance. The land is ugly, torn from life and drowning in the aesthetic of Death. Charred trees, black pools and corpses of powerarmors and vehicles, radiating flames that produce neither heat or colour. Nearby, a broken city and columns of megastructures expand seemingly forever, hinted at by the thick fog. All of these structures and gray conceal the enemy, for the battleground is not only a split between two sides, but also a living, moving ecosystem of scavengers, Claimant-piloted machines and scouts from either side, that carefully scavenge around it.

From where she sits, from left to right, the horizontal stretch of the battleground is a plain that rolls into a village, then suburbs, factories, the broken city and mirrored again on the right side, factories, a village and plains. Along this long horizon colossal support columns are arrayed, eight hundred meters in height and arching to the column besides it. Only recently, instant acceleration trains were going back and forth in that height. The city underneath feeding a logistical network of trains lifted into these heights.

Now, at odd intervals weapons are heard instead of screeching rails. Cackle and bullets, some explosions too, echo from the megastructure. Artillery pounds the city underneath at odd times, deep into the midnight and early in the morning.

Despite the common feeling of safety on the Black and White team, not everybody enjoys their proximity to the battlefield. From their bunker and base of operations, Jorj, Zanuvia and Gon are absent. Riding trucks or shuttles, they often leave for a nearby city to pass their time there instead. Varhas and Laodike are the ones who stay close to the action, spectating natural and cultural sign alike, pulling the heavier load of divination. Day by day, Scaramucc, Otto and Hab go closer to the ruined city, certain of their immortality but careful enough to not risk temporary damaging their brain.

‘How’s our beautiful Pantalika? Still smoldering?’ Says Scaramucc.

Laodike laughs without getting up or taking her eyes away from the early morning spectacle. She found the Contestant in good humor most of the time. To Gon’s suggestion, the more she peered into this Cattivelli man, the more he produced peculiar sayings and strange fun. ‘They gave her a good pounding last night. Tyrant cannons kept going at it for two hours without stop.’

‘Ah yes. I remember a small hill over there yesterday, don’t I now?’

‘Good eye for a dirty slave. There was a necropolis there, gone now. Varhas might have even heard as all the dead spirits vacated it. Flew away.’ Her right hand goes up, her waving fingertips simulate these fantasies.

‘Ah. Gone to their final destination. Where I come from, they say its better to kick a man awake then to let him rest for one hundred years.’

Laodike snorts half a laugh. ‘Is that why your kind always goes graverobbing?’

Scaramucc feigns outrage. ‘That is such a racist thing to say! Better yet, that is such a privileged thing for a Claimant to say!’ His mocking voice reveals his intentions. Always sharp however, the next sentence is well aimed and easily breathed out into language. ‘One would think Claimants such as you would be able to remove this bad habit from others no?’

Laodike finally breaks eye contact with the city. ‘Its too early for mocking bouts don’t you think? Besides...’ She stops.

The Contestant’s face is plastered with a smirk. ‘Besides...?’

‘Oh fuck off. Weren’t you telling me yesterday that it is only the wisest choice to pick a Cattivelli graverobber?’

Scaramucc laughs. ‘Indeed that was me. It is fun in all honesty. Look what I found last night.’ He pulls a golden wedding ring from his pocket. The diamond shines on the early muted light. On the inside of the ring, the metal is blackened, a sure sign that it was taken from some long decayed finger.

Laodike frowns and rolls her eyes. Then, she gazes far into the distance.

Scaramucc pockets the ring and speaks. ‘Is Varhas up yet?’

‘No, why?’

‘Its his spoil. Gotta give it to him.’ The Contestant pats the ring over his pocket.

‘Tell him, I think that what he does is disgusting.’

‘Alright.’

‘A wedding ring though?’

‘Yes indeed maam. He asked specifically for a ring. He said he was compelled to find one.’

‘Why? He plans to get married soon? He doesn’t even have anyone at the moment.’

The Contestant shrugs his shoulders. ‘At the present moment, in a week, in ten years time, better come prepared for these things.’

The woman smiles before speaking. ‘Imagine he takes the ring and proposes to Jorj.’

Wheezing comes from both. Short for breath between their laughing both Claimant and Contestant curl up at the joke.

‘Oh. Damn you Laodike, got my abs in a twist. Gay little Varhas yes. But his signs and suggestions were pretty accurate.’

‘Were they now? What did he tell you? Where to search?’

‘Aye. Told me what paths to avoid and where to go. He told me I would find the ring in an utterdark hole. Told me not to put my face in it, to just search around with my hand, and there it was. Ring, some golden chains, coins. Pretty accurate for a man such a long distance from the city. Anyways, you probably know all of this. I’m going to get something to eat.’

Before Scaramucc leaves, Laodike speaks to him. ‘Is Gon back?’

‘No. Little man needs his time. All of this death got him upset.’ The Contestant walks away, then he stops and turns around for a final and quick joke. ‘Maybe the ring is for him?’

***

At noon, one can hear the whistles hanging from the necks of many sergeants, pierce through the radiating fog in their shrill. Two Claimants, Varhas and Laodike listen closely to the archaic tactics of mass-ritual soldier sacrifice. Waves upon waves of barely armed men are sent over the trenches to assault a barren field of mud. The machineguns pummel rhythmic music in the haze and the foggy silence overtakes the distance, only to be broken apart by another whistle.

Varhas talks. ‘Why do you think they still do that?’

Laodike replies. ‘What God or Claimant compels them to do so, is not something I understand. Its just another ritual. Ritual I do not feel anything about, nor one I manifest thoughts for.’

‘Neither can I.’

‘How come? Death, grand and wholesale should move you. No thoughts manifest for what happens out there?’

‘Hardly.’

‘What about Astral sorcery? What about that abstraction of logic? Does this texture push thoughts into you?’

‘That one does. I am sure it does for you too. And you know, it speaks of strategy and of mathematical calculation as to why such events occur. Astral to Astral Claimant, you understand that it is interesting to think of the overarching designs far away from the trenches.’

‘I do. That I do. I feel that a great plot of rational, future-seeking calculation takes place there. Who lives, who dies, who returns home ten years down the line to become, some governor, some general, some king or nobody. But I don’t want to think about that right now.’

‘Sounds about right. Gods, Pretenders plan for the future by setting men in their path. What unique mind ends up where. Severed from the future, or just surviving to become walls in the labyrinth of forwards-going time.’

‘And we enable that...’ Laodike says as she shakes her head away from these realizations. ‘Anyways. I don’t divine anything relevant there. Its just spectacle that does not concern us.’

Varhas nods. It is the usual to him. He stretches himself as the first sunbeams of the day parse through. Gray retreats, the far away archaic sounds of warfare die down.

‘Finally, some quiet.’ Speaks Varhas and he yawns.

‘Perhaps, death such as this is to your magic’s advantage?’

‘Didn’t you just say that you don’t want to think about it?’

Laodike nods. Annoyed she cuts to the thing that turns mostly around her mind. ‘What about the ring you got Scaramucc to rob for you?’

‘So you spoke to Scaramucc. Yes, I...’ Varhas pauses to think. ‘My dreams. I serve someone else’s wishes.’

‘Interesting. Let’s divine that instead. I don’t think we have much to look at now anyways.’

‘Where do I start? You saw nightmares too about two matches ago. They just keep happening, despite Gon working his Blood magic to share some of the burden. Some empathy or whatever it is that Theurgs do. Anyways, I just keep seeing archetypal signs of my strongest abstraction. Death. Skeletons, decaying flesh, darkness, pools of still water, lack of air, dampening of celestial logic by way of penultimate nihilism. I see many such signs and where I should feel nothing in my dreams, I get a... fright whose gender is female.’

‘Yes, is it uncommon for Death Claimants to feel fear in the dark. What about that female form?’

‘I have seen her before, but it is as if every time she is a different person.’

‘Is she relevant to our next match?’

‘I don’t think so, unless she has disguised herself into one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. It is perhaps some manifestation of all the things my sisters and my mother want of me. To marry, or... something like that. I do not think this specific part has anything to do with the four Contestants we are facing next.’

‘Who is she?’

‘Kleio-something. That one from the banquet, with the slim waist and the naked back’

‘Yes, I may recall. Straight hair? Stuck up look?’

‘That one yes. Kleiothyke was her name.’

‘Well, I will say the obvious. If you dream about her you are going to meet her.’ Laodike pauses to think. ‘We did not see her in the Announcement of Colours and I am not sure if she could even hide herself by changing her form. You think perhaps you two are to meet in the finals? That she is on the other bracket of the Contest?’

‘We can’t know for certain. Anyways, there is nothing malicious when I see her in my dream. She just stands there. I give her something.’

With a half laugh and an equally flat tone of playful mockery, Laodike speaks. ‘Such a romantic!’

‘What do you think it all means?’

Laodike closes her eyes and in a slow, undulating rhythm of breath, she arches forwards and then back.

‘Considering the shock you must have gone through when Magon told you that this civil war is your mother’s fault, I believe you are searching for some substitute for a motherly figure. In a sense you might be doing this right now. But I suppose deeper yet, you feel ready to move on but struggle at it. From an infant and into adulthood maybe? Or perhaps you are looking to tread lightly between comfort and self-punishment chasing after a woman who yourself called peculiar. You are lured by this woman and in that lure you see escape, a shift of archetypes within you, just enough to keep your ego intact.’

The man holds his reply for a moment. He knows that this process of change, this deconstruction and rebuild of one’s inner world strengthens a Claimant. This is a process he has gone through many times and each time was followed by greater insights into the finite but vast truths of reality.

‘I am not even seeking to become stronger.’

‘Honestly Varhas, I have never seen a more capable Claimant. Short a life I’ve lived, but ability-wise you are at the very peak. And yet, your path continues.’

‘For some life continues and for some... I don’t know who is more fortunate.’

‘You are still brooding over Jorj.’

‘unfortunately.’

‘If I was you I would be angry not at the circumstances of Gods and events, but at rich and able men that can do anything. I would be mad that they show little care to save his life.’

‘They do not care. Gold-layered brains are impossible to get into. There is no pull out there strong enough to make people try and do the impossible, that is, find some new way to break through the layering. There is no time either for me to go around and find this solution.’

Varhas becomes saddened. Dominated by the tightness of time and without meticulous preparation, he is simply here, in this moment, once again at the borders of reality accepting how many future options are sealed shut. And it is all his fault. The world tells Claimants that it is they who should be able to pull miracles out of fantasy and into reality. To him however, this could not be further away from the truth.

Right at this lowest of moments, a man nears the two.

Gon, in his white gown, stepping along the uneven ground comes as preordained priest and emotional support animal alike. Laodike makes this thought and she waves the man close.

As the Blood Claimant said, it is in this depressive need that the two see him for what he truly is. Just a gentle soul, arriving to take his share of Varhas’ burden. A demon wreathed in human flesh, a wretch that can be held in an strangling hug.

When both of them ask Gon what is wrong, their own woes feel lighter.

‘I took your mother swimming last night. Had a great night talk in the pichine of our hotel. I think the vaporwave calm did her good. She loved the marble and the ferns and the lifeless statues looking at us, yes. Fascinating woman.’ When Laodike glares at the man playfully, he shrinks comically. ‘I mean that with utmost respect.’

‘Was something bothering her?’ Speaks Laodike.

‘Yes. She told me she is actually jealous that your father can turn young in an instant. Did you know that these pods are only usable by people who have their brains covered in golden layers? Makes sense why nobody normal does it, no?’

‘Well yes of course. The process of rebuilding a body is not easy. No unprotected brain would survive that. Still, are there not some Claimants that live for centuries?’

‘Considering the pains we go through, our bloated super-egos, bloating further after each fight in the Inverse...’ Gon shakes his head. ‘If the process of rebuilding a body is excruciating, it might be because it hurts the spirit, or that soul, or it scribbles something violently on its surface. Just like what causes Inverse Dream Psychosis, or the fantastical pains. It is not like our brains are that undefended.’

‘Metaphorically.’ Notes Varhas.

‘I am pretty sure humanity merged metaphors and reality long ago master Varhas.’ Replies Gon in a very condescending way. ‘Anyways. How goes the divination?’

Varhas replies. ‘Not much. We find no occurring thoughts for what happens out there. At least nothing relevant to the Contest. So we turned inwards and we divinated some of my dreams.’

Gon frowns. His slightly open mouth displays a hint of disgust.

‘Astral Claimants, poking places you shouldn’t.’

‘There is nothing wrong with analyzing dreams.’

‘Leave those old-school practices to Proto-Claimants like Jung maybe. It is silly to believe that the brain is sacred and at the same time disregarding the sanctity of thoughts. Or at least the sanctity of dreaming, how these thoughts are dumped out at night to make space for the next day’s information.’

Laodike touches Varhas on the shoulder. The Claimant opens his mouth in an angry reply, but it hushes to a deep exhale. Wrestling the conversation away, she speaks. ‘What do you think of the battlefield Gon?’

‘Horrible place. Any time I hear gunfire or I see some powersuit cracked open, I can only imagine how it feels to be the killer and the victim. I just imagine myself as holding the lance, or the weapon, staring into the other person’s eyes and at the same time I think of myself close to death, impaled or struck and staring right into the other man’s eyes. Horrible! Horrible!’ Gon shudders, his smile presses into a tight purse.

‘Yeah right.’ Varhas mocks him. ‘Next thing you Blood Theurgs are gonna tell us, is that you...’ A light punch breaks Varhas’ speech as it strikes him on his cheek. Closed fists arch and grab fabric. The two Claimants begin fistfighting and Laodike tries to dislodge them from their tight grips.

***

When midnight comes only two people notice the fascinating event that takes place.

Otto and Hab, were getting ready to sneak into the ruined city when a flashing, cloud-less and black sky began losing its natural cohesion.

During the civil war, it was normal for the people on the surface of Eryx to see foreign constellations above. Where there should be stars in their universal order, there were instead foreign formations, the orbiting spaceships of the many powers that kept watch over the planet. The two main fleets, the Meconians and Arhoscephaleans kept going over their dance of preparedness. One could watch as the many battleships and cruises came forth each morning to array themselves in battle lines, without firing a single space-torpedo or closing in for ramming actions, or boarding assaults and close-ranged Gastraphete warfare.

That was true until this midnight, where an Orichalcum hinted celestial body broke formation and appeared to close into the cyan-colored constellation of Arhoscephalean ships. At a first glance, the Meconian speck appeared as if it had closed the distance uninterrupted and caught the enemy by surprise. However, as soon as the ship closed in enough to begin boarding, two minute specks in the sky suddenly broke out of reality and rammed the object on both sides.

An explosion broke apart the blackness of night. In glimpsing, rhythmically uneven blinks, the many celestial bodies began to rapidly advance in an outwardly stretching formation. The heavens looked as if pulled and placed, by hands that heaved entire suns out of place to succeed in their strategy.

The Meconians were slower, resulting in a half-completed encirclement by the Arhoscephaleans. In the three-dimensional space of low-orbit warfare, the golden ships became a column that stretched high and low, whereas the cyan ships remained mostly in a cloudy and curved, half-moon arch.

Naval battles are chaotic. The only way this becomes apparent to the people on the surface is the maddening in and out of lights. One speck closes in to another. Thin, silk-thread like Gastraphete shots pass through from one ship’s hull to the other. Invisible boarding barges tunnel deep into a ship’s innards or they get intercepted by point-defense systems. A trail of explosions marks their trajectory.

After a minute, the sky begins to fill with falling, burning shapes that enter the stratosphere and vanish as claws of brown smoke. Every broken piece, broken barge and dislocated part of a spaceship becomes fully revealed every so often. A ship’s core explodes. Light floods reality as the blast is forceless. Only a radiating shape of a star hovers for ten seconds as it loses energy and reveals all as foreground shadows. One explosion follows the other and soon, there are three fading shapes beyond wherein maneuvering ships arch to make planetfall.

The battle continues and every single person that can see it, remains in unmoving, dominated control of their bodies. Their awe is too great to function and they all gaze at the spectacle as the battle continues deeper into a night that has lost its natural, black and mysterious cohesion.

As fate has it, the great distance between the battle protects most of the eyes staring into the horrifying technology.

Chapter 41

Ex Champion

In the surrounding cities, further away from the battleground of Pantalika, people rarely leave their homes if they have chosen to stay. The uncertainty of stray bombardment and inaccurate shells creates a depressing environment. Mostly commoners, those that have nowhere to go are hushed in the illusion of safety inside their homes.

Jorj understands that the only people roaming the streets are either peculiar commoners like him, or drunk Claimants intoxicated both by belief and substance.

Often, such Claimants would come and find him as he went outside the hotel. They would begin to talk and talk, speaking about things that made an effort to confuse the man and he would push them violently away. It only took a shove for these Claimants to wake up from their intoxication. Suddenly they would remember that they were close enough to the battlefield, death looming closer at the end of a stray shell, or perhaps the strong hands of a stranger.

Still, Jorj thought as he strolled a little after midnight, they are all Claimants, but they are different than Varhas, or Gon, the two ladies too. More than the battlefield’s ugly gray, it bothered him how everyone in the team appears unbroken in their certainty. The Contestants cannot die, but it is the Claimants who are strolling in irrational safety.

The pavement underneath Jorj is lit by yellow floodlights. He keeps on walking through one village, then another.

Nobody passes by. Still, the lampposts and lights try to speak. The Contestant ignores their noise and after a while, he listens to something real up ahead. At a crossroad, two shops are open. Light spews out from a market and on the other corner rests a bar that appears almost lightless. White and yellow, the lights mix on the asphalt streets and concrete pavement. Jorj looks at his legs, he feels the muted pain of his pelvis and lower back and he decides that he needs to sit down.

Wooden and with a bell tied to its top, the door makes a warm rotating shrill and tingle. It appears that from the window-less windows the two outside lights flood in and give a dull definition on the tables and chairs. Everything is made of wood. Dark, sarmatic cut planks and screws. Every single detail is as such except for the many bottles on the shelves behind the bar, or the low lamps of molten glass in the shapes of various sealife.

There are seven people here. barely enough to fill the otherwise small space. A company of four sits on a table in the distance and by their lurid language they are doubly intoxicated. Jorj instantly shifts his view to the other two in the bar. One is the barman, an old and weathered deckhand whose strong hands hold a bottle as if trying to tighten it just a bit further than they should and breaking it into pieces. The other is a colossal form. His back arching bloated underneath a brown leather overcoat.

From the massive body, Jorj understands that this man is either of two things. He is either a Contestant or a boarding action marine. The man is not a Meconian. He is only a bit taller than him perhaps. He has a stubble, short black and white hair that appear wholly intermixed on his scalp. The face is familiar but not in experienced memory. Weathered in expression, but young, with an aquiline nose, bushy eyebrows of two colours and cauliflower ears. He stares at the wooden bar, glass of clear liquor in hand.

The barman taps Jorj’s attention and he orders.

‘Name?’

‘Jorj. You?’

‘Sidon.’

At the reference of his name, the man besides him throws a quick glance. However, Jorj does not notice. His attention is focused on the bottles on the shelf and he quickly glances to his left, towards the missing windows and then back at the barman.

‘Aren’t you afraid any bombs might fall? Shatter the bottles? You’ve taken the windows out, why have the bottles up there?’

‘See those four back there?’ Sidon and Jorj turn. As Jorj turns to his right, he notices the broad man besides him staring at him for a moment. ‘Claimants. They tell me when and where the bombs will fall. Took the windows out because they take time to put back in. Heavy too.’ Barman and Contestant turn towards eachother. I give them the first round for free, the market owner on the other side of the street gives them... cigarettes, cooked rats or hoof, glue soup. You look familiar.’

‘What are they doing here?’

The barman leans in. Before he can reply, in a half laugh the stranger on Jorj’s side replies instead. ‘They are fucking killers, what else are they doing? Flying drones, wrestling inside of powerarmors and defending or assaulting cyberspace.’

Jorj takes a final glance at the four Claimants. They appear simply dressed, their faces are young, one has thick black rods that go in and out of his face as a scaffolding of obsidian or slate piercings. The other is a bald woman whose scalp is heavily tattooed in the jagged patterns of extreme metal music. Her eyes are two targets, yellow with black rings inviting a dart or bullet to their iris.

‘I don’t know them.’ Thinks Jorj outloud.

‘Well, if you had your Claimant with you, he would reveal who these four are. They would connect the dots eventually.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Nothing. Nothing.’ The man slumps back into his drink. He toasts to nothing and Jorj obliges by drinking the entire thing.

‘You remind me of someone.’ Says Jorj and points at his glass for a refill.

‘Hey Sidon, guy says I remind him of someone.’ The men laugh. Jorj focuses, the face speaks in hints, but Jorj finds it impossible to remember.

‘Season twelve? Doesn’t it remind you of anything?’

‘That was way before my time.’

‘How old are you Jorj?’

‘Somewhere around two-hundred, not sure if I crossed that point. Could be around one-eighty.’

The barman strikes a wide eye and tilts his head in surprise. He leaves a bottle between the two men and he walks a bit to the side to sit on an empty stool.

‘People don’t like hearing that we live four times as much.’

‘Four? You are around four hundred years?’

‘Make that six hundred and twenty four.’

Now pinpointed in time, the face finally speaks to him and the thoughts coalesce accurately enough. ‘Ah... You fought in the gold era then? You look very much like Ajax, used to play for the Black and White.’

‘Well, I am that man.’

Surprise becomes of Jorj. Awe and disbelief in the moment manifest on his face as he twitches and shakes his head.

The reaction surprises Ajax equally and he continues to speak.

‘Quite a surprise for a Contestant. We are supposed to be beasts of burden you and I, seen all, felt all. I’m surprised you can still feel hard enough to make faces.’

Jorj thinks for a moment. The ex-champions eyes the man with renewed interest.

‘Yeah. This isn’t supposed to happen. Feels foreign to move my face unless it is me losing half my lower body. Frankly I almost forgot I could be surprised. Anyways, why does this matter?’

‘Honestly. It should not, but it does. Haven’t the pains removed enough of your soul to forget the little things?’

‘Of course. But, they just came back recently.’

‘Well, no worries. Around your third century alive you will most likely forget how to walk. Those are some difficult years, you tend to forget how to breathe, emotions become unrecognizable. It gets ugly before it gets good again.’

Jorj takes the bottle, he drinks his glass and pours another in quick succession. Ajax drinks also and he too gets a refill.

‘I won’t be there for that.’

‘What?’

‘My Claimant says I am closing to death. Final, no respawns. He says so and I also know it is true. Perhaps it is a tumor in my brain, something else, I don’t know. I don’t really care how it got there.’

‘That’s interesting. Had my hopes up for a moment there. I thought you figured out how to die permanently. By other means I mean. Lucky you.’

‘Yeah, so it is. So they say it is. Just lucky. I wondered though, if there have been any other Contestants like this?’

‘You mean dying? Dead ones?’

‘Yes.’

‘No. Not that I know off. All of the old ones like me are still alive. Ah!’ Ajax proclaims in a sudden flash of reminisce. ‘Remember that one guy you fought on Tropicana? Xipe Totec is from my time. He is still alive and well.’

‘I remember. What of him?’

‘That man has tried everything. And I mean everything. Used to call him from time to time. That is, like once every decade. The guy would tell me about how he vacuumed himself into space, how he thought that his mind would freeze or rot and die from the inside while out in the void. He told me that he hurled himself into a star and was sure that it would fry his brain from the inside, kill him for good.’

‘And...’

‘And what? You fought the man. Nothing worked.’

‘You think he actually tried those things?’

‘Of course. We’d talk on the phone and he had that dead hue to his voice, as if some plastic, membrane thing, remained tightly sticking to his neurons. There is no reason for us to lie. I mean, think it this way, if a Contestant finds a way out, out of life, he would simply say that the plastic membrane is gone. That he can feel, or act surprised like you did just now.’

‘Not sure if I ever talked to any teammates about this.’

‘You are still young.’

‘Yes, but...’ Jorj thinks he presses his fingers into his temples. The pause remains for a few seconds. Ajax looks at the man’s peaceful expression that lasts only for two, then three seconds before changing into he usual sturdy, compressed face. ‘...I think I did just that. Not today, just a bit after our match on Eryx. Same thing happened on the shuttle on our way back from that Abraxas building.’

‘Fascinating matches.’

‘Sure. I just stood there for a moment. Empty, as if nothing in the world saw, or thought about me. Then came in, surging all. And when I say all, I mean everything I have ever experienced.’

‘Sounds excruciating.’

‘Yes!’ Jorj says loudly. He is excited and this pulls Ajax to closer focus. ‘The pain. The pain was real. I felt alive. You know? Even in the matches now, the pain is different. Less muted. Less plastic as if thinning.’

Ajax smiles and nods. ‘Just like before the gold layering?’

‘Yes, exactly.’ Jorj appears happy. Ajax smiles back at the man and then he tells the bartender to pour them a drink from one of the bottles at the highest shelves.

‘You were a miner? Before the gold layering?’

‘Born in the mines, grew there. By the time I saw sunlight I had almost grown to a full man. Took a while to get used to sunlight, but the skin followed in colour. That’s why I am not alabaster or anything.’

‘Yeah, takes a while. Good stock comes from mining planets. Hellish, but that makes good Contestants.’

‘You say that, but you are not from a resource-rich planet right?’

‘No, no. Just like your Otto, I come from a planet where people do other kinds of work to throw difficulty into their life. Otto is from Ulm, an industrial giant where they fight with bureaucracy and factories, whereas in Khanza-Rum, where I am from, we just grow up in martial focus. You toiled in natural difficulty, whereas me and Otto toiled in manufactured kinds. There is little difference but I’ve always preferred fighting with teammates like you.’

‘You and Larissaeus made a good duo.’

‘Piece of shit that one. But yes. He is still around... Here and there.’

‘How is Khanza-Rum? Is it nice growing there?’

‘Not really. Well, it depends. If you had asked me this question two hundred years ago I would tell you it is the best way to start in the universe. You get to grow in a martial caste, you are taught every single martial art and way your body functions, not to mention that your brain can mend itself properly, even heal CTE. Childhood is grueling yes. You spent most of your time under a long stone slab carrying the school and your master at your back, you and the rest of your classmates. Once in a while you were called to ride the slab and fight someone. It was great, come out the other way in adulthood as a fully realized human, able, strong, brave, unmatched. It is easy to become a Contestant if you are from Khanza-Rum. Nowadays, it is better to be a high-end prostitute from there. Don’t want to go back.’

‘Why?’

‘Doesn’t sit right with me. Whenever I go back, the hills, the rocks, the shrubs and dry earth, it all seems like it is not enough to fit me. The children glare at me. My school’s master is a stranger. I guess this is what it takes to survive that training, but they all have no concept of legacy, respect. No idea that I was once one of them. Then, I take a good look around and think that all of this was never worth it.’

Ajax drinks. This new liquor is stronger, but it goes down smoother. Both men stare at the label for a few seconds. Tequila, everclear, agave, orange. Very old and slightly crooked in its lettering as if manufactured by hands and not machine. So the men think.

‘And you?’ The man besides Jorj pauses, trying to dig around the name of his origin. ‘How is Cappadocia Taurica?’

‘Well... The underground is hell. In caves and inside mountains, the spaces are tight, the air is never clean, there are always people around you and when you are alone, you feel the walls close in. I would be better off never going back there.’ Jorj returns to his place of origin for a moment. ‘But outside, where most successful people roam, it is truly beautiful. Peaks, monoliths everywhere that are carved cities of Erionite and soft stone. Valleys stretching from one mountain range to the other, dry, some places wet. Honestly, I remember the sky mostly. After they took me overground I couldn’t open my eyes to the brightness. It hurt, I was vomiting most of the time, but some early morning I opened my eyes to splendor and... that’s what stayed with me.’

‘Must have been hard growing there.’

‘It was for a while. Little bodies fit tighter places better than adults. Little minds learn faster to survive where there is no oxygen and where the stone might soon collapse. Gene wise, our eyes adapt to both darkness and where there is plenty of light. It is not much. We did not win the lotery on genetic anomalies.’

‘And yet you have Rum blood in your veins. Of course, no Contestant is without brain-healing genes. But where did you get that?’

‘No idea. Grandpa’s grandmother? They must have left Khanza-Rum for a reason. Perhaps they thought living in caves was better than training in martial arts since birth.’

‘Can’t blame them. Every place has its own hardship. The grass is always greener on a foreign planet.’ Ajax curls for a second. Over his drink the man stretches inwards as if about to hug his glass and then he inhales deeply unwinding his back in an arching motion. ‘Jorj, Jorj. A name for an ancient saint I believe.’

‘That’s Claimant talk.’

‘It was one that told me so. Some soldier holding a lance, skewering a beast that spewed flames? Something like that.’

‘How did he die?’

‘Tortured for his beliefs. The usual. Men kill men for what wrong way their mind flows as. Must feel grateful.’

‘Grateful? Why?’

‘You won’t die that way. You get to be named after something horrible, but your path in life is different.’

‘Drink to that?’

‘Aye.’

The two men drink. As the alcohol burns what appears inflammable within, Ajax is suddenly struck with renewed wisdom. Ajax speaks.

‘Speaking of Claimants, Varhas is a Death Claimant isn’t he? Saw him on the Announcement of Colours. Recognized that black outfit.’

‘Well, you’ve been through hundreds by now. You tell me.’

‘Fitting. Sad, pale-skinned weirdos and exhausted looking ones are good when you fight in dark places.’

‘Feels that way yes. Even when I have no device over my eyes. When I hit that shot on Tropicana, I could honestly see as clear as daylight. Usually can. My previous Claimant kept on speaking in my ears. Anyways. It is us doing most of the work in the arena, not them.’

‘Along with Athena, move also your hand.’

‘Dunno who that is, but if you say so, must be true.’

Ajax laughs.

‘Back in my day we made offerings to our Claimants. Pay was much better. I could buy a calf for almost nothing out of my paycheck and roast the entire thing for my team and our Claimants. Do you have fun with you team too?’

‘At any chance we get. Mecone was fun.’

Ajax laughs heartily, the empty bar fills with his booming voice. ‘I saw that!’

‘We went around throwing rocks at giants, Varhas kept yelling that his name was nobody. The others too. I remember on Tropicana...’

‘...ah, wine coloured seas of Tropicana...’

‘We ate at basalt tables like a family. Mussels and fish and...’

As Jorj describes these moments, the Claimants on the back of the bar get up and leave. They walk behind the two men and the barman nods. When the door opens and they leave, he makes a small nod to the two, that their time to leave is also near.

Time, so pinpoint matched to either man, that they feel no hint of misfortune. Just in time for one spectacular moment to flow into the next.

Ajax gets the tab. He gives more than needed, a pair of golden earrings. They are darkened at their hooked edges, pilfered, but the barman accepts them anyways.

Visibly drunk, stumbling their way out, the two Contestants are out in the streets. The market on the other side is closing down as well and each man stays silent for a moment.

Ajax stares at the four Claimants who are now further away, certain that they cannot listen to them. Then, he leans closer to Jorj and whispers.

‘Just a hint. When you go back to... Calchas, Varhas? Whatever is his name, tell him that it is very wise for teams to dress up and change their appearance for the Announcement of Colours. Such stupid and simple roguery is seen as a joke. Gods laugh at these simple ploys, they do not care to punish if anyone falls for such tricks.’

A singular star appears to break formation in the dark sky. Soon, the night sky slowly breaks into light. In low-orbit, the stars become misaligned and the battle between Arhoscephalean and Meconian fleets begins.

Chapter 42

Confidence

As the early dawn manifests into light over the battlefield, too many good decisions collect into boons for the black and white team.

Lacking signs, all four Claimants have turned deeper into themselves. Last night’s spectacle of orbital battle has given them much stimuli and almost no sleep. In mental places where language twists harder to make sense of the world, all four of them have turned to denser thinking.

Laodike, Varhas, Zanuvia and Gon hide further away behind an outcrop of rock, completely focused into conversing in Claimancy and putting fantasy into strategy.

Meanwhile, Orichalcum corporation has once again delivered four powerarmor suits and four entry devices for the Claimants. Orichalcum-soled with an extra pair of rubbery boots for good measure, new additions of anti-friction epidermis over the Orichalcum and better heat dissipation systems, the corporate machine has followed closely to Varhas’ chastisement. The four armors belch and hum with increased splendor in the early dawn.

Every Contestant except for Jorj is in the process of wearing their powerarmor. While the men enter, hushed conversation often breaks over the rock from where the Claimants think in complicated unison.

Varhas speaks in booming, sharpness.

‘Forward drives the wheel of time. At war, we ride forth in our chariots of Orichalcum, holding each fortress by their reigns. Thus I have divined our course of action, when the night was breaking.’

‘Pray tell’. Speaks Zanuvia.

‘Pray you say and I reply, with such design that one might call me Pantokrator of fate himself. Hear me three, hear me as I lay down the archetypes we are to fight today. Hear me as I divine future, as I grasp the threads of tomorrow, of mere hours ahead and I weave them into a cloth that we can touch. Hear me Laodike of the gentle waters, Zanuvia of the raging sea that parts bounty and thrashes as a strong bearer of even stronger Claimants! Hear me Gon, mirror at the depths of soul, bloodline profane and yet so sacred in compassion.’

The words animate the other three. Never before have they seen this man with such fervor in his speech, belch out such powerful Claimancy that moves both spirit and flesh. For it is so, that the man’s body flexes with grandiose vigor and his voice resounds with divine boom. To them, his ego is not only bloating but also well fitting to the upcoming task.

‘The four horsemen we are to fight. Claimants that have so done and experienced things beyond our wildest imagination. Death, War, Famine and Disease, we are to meet head first with such ancient forces that have been given human form. I say do not fear. Do not flinch against these Claimants who have gathered the powerful abstractions of Death, Life, Fire, Blood and Astral magic. In the Inverse Dream we are soon to come head to head with the Apocalypse itself. As the war between Meconians and Arhoscephaleans takes ground, we will step into an environment that only empowers our opponents. And yet I say, do not fear. For we are preordained to victory, beyond language and its double meanings, we are blessed by Tyrants and Pretenders, to see our way through.’

‘What say you of our strategy wise Varhas?’ Speaks Laodike. In a serious tone, the woman’s voice is not her usual, dismissive self.

‘I say the signs will be clear. In the chaos of battle, search for the powerarmors, the fortresses in the Inverse that are populated by these four. You will know the Claimant of War, by his red horse, by his gilded blade glistening in fresh blood, by the fiery disposition of his ego and how he knows himself. You will know Famine by his black steed, a thin and starved man with scales on his hands measuring and drawing power by the hungry men inside of their machines. You will know Death by his paleness, no doubt a Death Claimant like me, wielding a scythe that summons power from those closing into their final moments. You will know Disease by his heavenly horse, by his bow, by the stench of all those that left the battlefield only to die later. You have also seen them with your real eyes in the Announcement of Colours. You know who they are, you have them on your mark already.’

The sermon stops. In common understanding all four have very clear images within their minds of how their opponents look, of how the texture of their soul will appear in the Inverse Dream.

‘Go now. Prepare our Orichalcum armors, bless your Contestants by your presence and remember, we can only pass through this match by tight reign of your selves.’

And it is this very boon of confidence that ravages their chances.

***

Minutes pass. The four Claimants come out of their hiding place and close into the rest of the Contestants.

Jorj is not in his powerarmor. Instead, the Contestant stares at Varhas, who to him, appears different.

Far and away the battleground wakes up amidst his tumulus of circumstances. Crashlanded cruises of gleaming metal, giants in their powerarmors and helot slave-warriors swarm out into a battleground. The many soldiers funnel into broken buildings and tunnels like ants.

In this ambience of far away violence, Varhas closes his eyes. In his mind, the Gastraphetes, the chest and belly fastened cannons that fire against some other army, speak and sing. He wanders around in a thought of blinking in and out. The light on his eyes vanishes behind his eyelids and Jorj witnesses the man lapse into the Inverse Dream.

The Contestant does something that no commoner may do. He perceives the soul of the man, as a thin line, extending into, through and around the moving soldiery and their machines.

The Claimant appears horrifying. More horrifying to the commoner is how there appears to be order to the peculiar event he witnesses. Jorj is horrified from its mundanity and more so from how easily he seems to understand it at this very moment. For Jorj is not only watching a man he calls his friend, but also, some other overarching power come onto him, malevolent and wrong in a way he does not know how to describe.

As the four Claimants close into the rest of the team, Jorj glances back into Hab, then Otto and Scaramucc. The men understand that something is wrong.

Then, at hearing distance, Jorj finds the horrible realization within him, press him to speech.

‘Varhas...’ Jorj softly says. ‘You will listen to me. And you will do so as a friend. Not for worry, not because I do not trust you.’ At these words Varhas turns to Jorj. He is pulled away from his lapse into the Inverse Dream. His face shows interest and at a quick glance towards Gon, the Claimant becomes uncertain, slightly eased away from the overarching strategy and course of thoughts that the Claimants just imposed on eachother. ‘You will listen because I have a strange feeling’.

Zanuvia watches this event unfold and she is quicker than usual to reply. ‘The strange feelings of commoners are insignificant to the plots of Claimants. For the Claimants ride on waves, whereas commoners do so in ripples and...’ Varhas hesitates. He lets the woman finish. However, his does not support the woman either with words or a nod.

His lack of action reminds her of indecision and errors, recent and old. She tries to speak again, urged by fear of what is to come if they stray away from their designs.

‘Hold it Zanuvia.’ Speaks Varhas. There is a random silence in his inner streams, he nods for Jorj to continue.

‘Few hours ago, just before the two fleets clashed, I met with Ajax, the ex champion of old.’

‘By what nature did you meet the man?’

‘Randomly’

The reply draws the attention of Gon and Laodike who did not listen to the discussion initially. A promise of wordly, fateful encounters lulls them into the conversation.

‘Randomly? Chance then? What happened between the two of you?’

‘We spoke. But he told me to warn you of something.’

‘The opinions of outsiders are of no concern. We do not know if the man means well or not. He is uncertain value in well laid out plans. Wear you powerarmor.’

Naturally dismissive, the sharp reply not only angers Jorj, but also the other Contestants. Everyone stops to pay attention at the newly forming rift.

‘You must listen. The words I speak are friendly. Both mine and his. In the bar where we drank, there were four Claimants. Four, weak, childlike bodies. Perhaps mercenaries, or cybernetic warriors, whatever shape Claimants take. He urged me to caution. Ajax said, that men may dress to fool others in their appearance. He said, that this is what they did in the Announcement of Colours.’

‘The Gods would not allow such foolishness.’

‘They would. Only because it is such foolish effort. An innocent plot. Something small...’

‘That would never happen. When have you even heard of Claimants in the Contest pulling such tricks?’

Jorj recoils. ‘Never. But one such ancient Contestant may have.’

‘And you trust that man more than me?’

‘Look. Varhas. I am just saying that perhaps it is wise to think on such advice. Reconsider.’

‘Our thoughtstreams are set. We have strategized already and we have no time to redo our sermons and synchronize our... magic.’

‘We can wait.’

‘No, we cannot. Initiative can be lost in a second of hesitation. The match is imminent. Our fervor is at its highest point. We are prepared.’

Jorj grabs the man by his arm. The difference between the two makes for an easy imposement of one man’s will into the other. However, Varhas twists one of Jorj’s fingers and his grip opens. Hab comes between the two.

‘What is this certainty that makes you so sure Varhas?’

‘Fate.’ Replies the man. He threatens the Contestant with a single glaring eye.

‘Fate is what you call being fucked by things that you do not perceive.’

‘How speak a commoner as a Claimant?!’ Screeches Laodike. The anger in her voice is aimed at Jorj, but Otto comes between the two, carefully watching over his lover. Then, her words are aimed to Otto. ‘How dare you take his side? Does his flimsy word count more than mine? Does it hold more weight?’

Otto speaks. ‘He may not be a Claimant, but I feel his worry true.’

‘Stupid, stupid man! We are the ones who make sense of feelings.’

Gon and Scaramucc watch the tension unfold. Commoner and Claimant watch eachother as they reflect worry at eachother’s faces. Then, in an easy movement Gon takes Varhas and Laodike to the side, while Scaramucc does the same with Otto and Jorj.

‘Just give us a minute.’

***

Promises are exchanged. Jorj promises to his Contestants to not harm Varhas and Varhas promises to the other three that he will try to ease the tension and put their minds at some sort of universal agreement.

After the minute passes, Jorj sits on the ground and Varhas comes near him, a short distance away, enough for the two to speak in relative privacy.

The Claimant speaks first. There is an annoyed hint to his voice.

‘I cannot help but think Jorj, that there is depth to your hesitation. Is there strategy behind what you are doing now or are you simply confused?’

‘I am not sure Varhas.’

Varhas tightens his fists. ‘You see, what you are doing is not too dissimilar to what the two fleets have been doing ever since we made planetfall.’

‘Meaning?’

‘You want to wait. Just like the Arhoscephaleans did. You wait, not showing your hand, pressing an event that is going to happen anyways into its utmost moment. They waited. Every day arraying their fleet for battle but pulling out. Lulling the Meconians into doing the same until one shows lack of initiative.’

Jorj thinks. He remembers how, hours ago, he saw that one Meconian ship engage alone the formation of Arhoscephaleans in orbit. The dots connect and he understands what the Claimant speaks of. ‘Yes. Perhaps I do so. I did not realize that this is what I wanted to do until you spoke about it.’

‘Jorj. These are higher functions. These are ways of Claimancy. You watch events unfold, measuring them by how randomly they occur in your mind. You act wisely on these random streams of thoughts. No commoner does that. And even if any commoner does, we tend to disregard these weak divinations. We tend to think nothing of these moments of emotion.’

‘You tend to.’

‘All I’ve learnt throughout my life, speaks to me now as I speak to you. It tells me, not to trust your judgement. My mind speaks that we should rush into the match ahead.’

‘What is wrong with trusting me for a change? The caution I speak of is rational.’

‘Rational, but wrong. Logic does not guide the universe. You are neither prophet, nor diviner. No philosopher to think your mind’s weight heavier than another’s. You are not trained this way.’

‘And yet you choose to speak to me.’

‘Indeed.’ Varhas remains silent for a moment. His mind rushes and accelerates. He watches the cut-and-measure pinpoint accuracy of his Astral magic, manifest as random thoughts that belittle the Contestant infront of him. His Deathly thoughtstreams beckon him slowly to accept a finality where he hushes over the Contestant’s worries, concealing them into nothing.

Still, Varhas frowns and he battles within himself. To him, the very texture of his thinking is wrong in a microscopic way that he does not understand.

The Claimant speaks. ‘Damn you Jorj. Damn you to hell and back.’

‘I come with information that you do not know. There is no reason to be angry.’

‘But I am!’ Yells Varhas. The rising of his voice surprises Jorj, who recoils back. After all, Jorj himself is not certain that Ajax was correct, or well-meaning.

Jorj speaks. ‘I will follow you whatever you choose.’

‘Oh! Don’t throw this weight back at me. What if you are wrong?’

‘I will make amends with myself. I will work for your forgiveness.’

‘My forgiveness? What about Zanuvia? Do you have the balls to tell her that everything we have worked for may end in failure? Do you have the regret to tell her that her dreams of long life with her husband will never happen? Do you have what it takes to watch as Laodike and Otto drift away because they failed at their common task? You stand to break five people, just by a stranger’s hints?’

Jorj tests the mettle of his thoughts as soon as Varhas finishes talking. Almost reduced to nothing, the Contestant understands that the Claimant ahead has been correct on everything so far. Everything, but one singular moment where he chose poorly. He remembers Voliphoe. He remembers how there is no logical explanation in this maddened world that they live in, where gods are men and human dominates human only by abstractions within language, form, culture and thoughts.

In that tiny, almost imperceivable pain, the Contestant’s heart begins to pound in excruciating harm. He feels defeated, powerless, but when his mouth parts to speak again, Jorj only doubles down on his doubts.

‘I have trusted you in everything. When you told me that Voliphoe was a spy, that there was no other way through but her death, whenever you spoke of things I do not understand offering me religious, complicated logic, I always followed.’ Jorj stops for a second. Varhas closes his eye, his head falls low, knowing that a singular word comes next. A three letter word that pounds it all away. ‘But...’

And the word is enough. For as the Contestant speaks it, so it is powerful enough to shatter the complicated works of Claimancy.

***

Thirty one minutes pass. Idle, the team kicks the earth beneath their feet.

The Claimants feel that they have lost a great advantage. Many in-fact. They imagine themselves far away from their Contestants, unsynchronized, strange and thrown back into uncertainty that they themselves had worked diligently to sway away.

The battle far away pulls their attention at quick intervals. Explosions, giant brutish language and the ambience of moving mechanisms within the powerarmors, becomes more and more inviting. As each minute passes, the team listens to the spectacle arguing within themselves.

Had they made a mistake? Should each one of them rush to their suits, or their Claimant pods? Should they enter the Inverse Dream, or should they rebuild their texture of action with another hue?

The questions stack on top of themselves. Ten more minutes pass. Then five.

And as the wheel turns. Varhas nods to Jorj that the moment has come. Jorj obliges and after a few minutes the Contestants begin to walk the distance towards the battlefield.

Chapter 43

Beasthunt

It instantly becomes obvious to all that Jorj was right in his concerns.

The battlefield is not only separated between the Meconians and Arhoscephaleans that are easy to discern by their armaments, the cybernetic dominions of their deities and Claimants. There are also others inside of the violent chaos. Abyssians, Machakans and various other groups of mercenaries roam the endless cackle of fire and storm of bullets and beam weaponry.

In both real and fantastical form, it is impossible to figure out where the opposing team is.

Where a Claimant sees a giant Meconian hoplite crowned by the fervor and fanning flames of his sacred Tyrant, one sees besides him an Arhoscephalean hoplite stand with his weapons full of deathly hues and the serene texture of a planet of gentle healing. The mercenaries are equally full of Noise. Sound, manifold colours and patterns of mythical beasts and engraved heroic deeds, their every fabric of enveloping machinery is aggressively confusing, constantly wrestling attention towards it or away from it.

Bullets scrape alloys, Blacksteel armor glances blows that would otherwise demolish buildings. Beams from Gastraphete navel-cannons bend around invisible shields.

The battleground is a place where only by extravagant and impossibly large collection of information one may find himself safe. In this dense chaos the soldiery is only a victim, a servant of Pantokrators who can make sense of it all and sparingly donate safety to some select few.

Everyone inside of the battlefield listens to hundreds of thousands of voices, pleas and prayers stacked on top of eachother. Soldiers make promises of grand sacrifices, commanders swear that they will erect monuments to their Gods, only so that they may survive this cataclysmic pounding.

By delaying their entry, the team has survived the initial brunt of combat. They have not fired their Lanzas yet. They run from place to place, struck at random intervals, but focusing on conserving the hardness of their powerarmor.

‘You were right.’ Varhas’ voice cuts through the voices of the many. Jorj can listen to him with ease. ‘It would have been foolish to enter so confident and start killing soldiers irrelevant to us.’

‘Screw if I was right. Can’t you silence them?’

Varhas follows Jorj’s command by diverting focus. The channels of armor hush ever so slightly, but in the labyrinthian logic of machinery so does the visor. Jorj sees the world darken for a moment. The same effect happens on the powerarmors of Hab, Otto and Scaramucc.

The light returns almost instantly. The team understands that the chaos of information makes technology cumbersome and hard to control.

‘Found them yet?’

‘Gon is working on it.’

Otto speaks. ‘Laodike, what is the name of the match? Are we in a Kingmaker?’

Where there should be a lapse of attention, the young woman aptly connects signs that she had ignored. ‘No, its not a Kingmaker match. The hints speak of a Beasthunt. What is this?’

Nobody knows. The reason is that in the recorded history of the Contest such a match has never happened before. Not only the type of this match, but also the place are unprecedented. It is often in ritual, controlled environments that the Contest happens in, so that the spectators can derive something out of it. Here is only spectacle.

‘It was foolish to plan, when nothing makes sense!’ Says Varhas.

‘No. We need your fervor. You planned wisely, broadly.’ Reminds him Zanuvia who seems the one holding closer to the strategy that they fashioned.

Soon enough, it becomes apparent that both Jorj and Varhas were wise in their conflict. When a gigantic machine fills reality with its shadow, it is only that stubborn set of willpower that makes the team understand their purpose.

Megastructure-parting, from above, solid blocks of stone break at the weight on a beast that coils downwards. Through the gaps of buildings falling down, the hundred-legged giant centipede appears to fall, but also hover over the battlefield. Its body is made of Blacksteel, lusterless alloy and overlapping scales that give reveal to imperceptive lights of circuitry and moving machinery. Its sharp legs dig and expand over the tall buildings, seemingly supporting its tonnage with unnatural ease. The mouth is of grinding knives that drip with some viscous liquid. Some foul wind leaves the insectoid mouth and the poison becomes a light drizzle that falls over the urban battlefield.

Flood of fear fills the communication channels. Sound becomes visual stimuli as the interfaces of the many underneath it, become infested with a crawling errors at the liquid screens of their visors.

Panic manifests into action. Men run. Others fight with increased intensity. Prayers become howls of language and Meconians, Arhoscephaleans and mercenaries are shaken in their convictions. Most choose to continue their pathway of violence. Those that are broken by panic, soon die. Either their companions turn on them or projectiles become attracted to their armors. It is as if all divine protection shifts to those still eager to see it through instead of the cowards.

Many Claimants are not spared either. At the hint of fear, so unravels the magic that keeps their souls intact. Their souls become flimsy and foreign magic strikes them down.

But the team passes through the panic. Hab and Otto feel their lovers clutch their armor tightly. Their napes of their neck suddenly become warm. Their breath becomes filled with the scent of their Claimant. Gon begins to laugh with Scaramucc. Varhas retreats, spectating Jorj as darkness fills the man and silence gives him a weightless courage, a surrendered will to action.

***

From the fourth floor of a half-standing ruin, Otto watches as the centipede crawls in a flowing motion in and out of rubble, around corners and sometimes back up into the foundations of the megastructure. Much like the Abyssians, in whatever sacrificial magic exists within the Claimants inside of it, the beast is very eager to devour powerarmors and soldiers. Slowly, the Blacksteel alloy becomes drenched in oil and blood, the sounds that come from its horrible shape appear to speak in the tongues of the slain.

When the beast coils around a street and rushes below Otto, he takes aim. At that intent, the centipede’s head arches backwards and up and then it lunges.

Otto dodges in time. Mid air, his jump pushes him far away into another building where he chooses to hide.

Then, the man speaks. The entire team listens to the conversation.

‘The thing is clad in Blacksteel. We need break it piece by piece or hit it with Orichalcum.’

‘There are Contestants in this thing?’ Asks Laodike.

An azure glow fills the world outside. The Lanza shot from Jorj connects at the centipede but the damage appears minimal.

Through the dense noise of the battlefield the beast turns directly towards his position, seemingly focused on pinpointing his Lanza shot amidst the many other projectiles and blasts of energy. It still tramples and slams against random soldiers, but only if they are in its path.

‘I know that Ulmish Blacksteel cannot be wielded by machine alone. So it is said on Ulm, metal and man are one and the same. There are Contestants in this thing. In powerarmors of tight design, the pilots fit into the machine by way of Liquefaction.’

With ordered, synchronized remembrance, the entire team becomes flooded with thoughts of equal texture and information. Among the eight, mere hint from Laodike sends them into a trance of memory that lasts only a second. In that lapse, they become aware, that perhaps the four enemy Contestants inside of the beast, are piloting it in a grotesque amalgamation of body horror.

In their shared imagination, they understand that bone, nerves and muscle has turned into soup or mere strings, branching across the great length of the centipede. At the deepest innards of the colossal machine, four Contestants have been unmade and remade in order to pilot this inhuman design.

As soon as this image concludes, the centipede thrashes and slams its body and tail against the ruins. Anger now seeps through the centipede and the fantastical space in the Inverse Dream begins to fill with foreign magic.

Varhas lets this anger within and with a loud voice he feels an earnest press of circumstances bless him in certainty. Jorj runs around the destruction. Clouds of debris and broken cement cover him as Varhas’ otherworldly taunt lulls the centipede into him.

The Contestant shoots at the head of the beast and in his retreat, the centipede lunges. The floor caves in at the tremor of approaching mass. Jorj falls underground and the beast misses.

Through the broken ceiling, Jorj watches as the Blacksteel carapace surges above, folds and legs almost flying straight like the passage of a long train.

As the Contestant stands up, he notices a powerarmor staring at him through the darkness. In the underground pathways another powerarmor stands, club in hand cackling with electricity. The Machakan mercenary remains staring at him, broad-shouldered and in covered in a plate that appears cheap, however seemingly tattooed in ancient gazelles, crude eyes and foreign spirits and animals that he does not recognize.

The mercenary does not move. Neither man makes a movement as they share a glance and then the beast’s tail collapses from the ceiling directly on top of Jorj. Surrounded in a prison of jagged legs, Jorj finds himself staring at two long antennas of sharp edges. These two antennas close against eachother in a scissoring motion, trying to cut him in half.

He blocks each sharp end with his forearms. The force produces a shattering strain of metals, but it appears that the Orichalcum holds. Little by little however, the powerarmor tightens and Jorj struggles.

In this short moment, Jorj and Varhas speak unfocused into the underground, warning the stranger to run away. The mercenary however charges closer and with his club he strikes at the beast.

The blunt strike gives the Contestant only a moment to escape, which he takes by ducking under the closing antennas. Rapidly at aim, the Contestant fires his Lanza point blank at the beast and it begins to retreat back into the surface.

Claimant and Contestant wonder for a moment why the Machakan has helped them. In this pinpoint of shared question, the Claimant within the Machakan’s machinery answers. ‘Fear not the powerful medicine Meconian. Consider the Machakan debt repaid, for you showed the Abyssians true defeat.’

Before they can respond, the Machakan sprints away. With few minutes for both to regain their bearing, from demonic noises in the underground and great heat, they understand that Abyssians are fighting underground. Mercenaries fight against eachother here and if they were to cross into an Abyssian, they too would have to fight them.

Thus, Jorj climbs the rubble out into the surface.

Above, the battlefield rages and many glancing blows fall on the Orichalcum powerarmor before Jorj finds cover.

Varhas speaks. ‘Your arms.’

‘The armor held. I am fine.’

‘Far from it. Life magic courses through the machine. Poison.’

It is as the Claimant speaks of. Jorj opens and closes his fists. A tingling sensation of numbness is there in microscopic hints, just at the spots where the armor blocked the centipede’s antennas.

On the Inverse Dream, the opponents’ sway of technological influence is as he described. Toxins, self-replicating logic has been injected into the armor. Both men understand this and Jorj opts to take higher ground by climbing a broken staircase.

***

For a moment, the beast is simply nowhere to be seen.

Varhas speaks to the others that poison runs through Jorj. The longer they delay victory, the quicker one of them is taken out of action.

Sprinting In-between giants and hoplites, through flames and javelins that pass by with alarming speed, Otto tackles walls in order to pass through into safer spaces. Still, the many projectiles narrowly miss, or in the case of Gastraphetes that are strapped in the chests of marines, particles strike minute holes in the Orichalcum. Thin as a string of silk, sharper than a blade and pointier than the thinnest needle, the Contestant finds himself lightly bleeding under the Orichalcum.

These injuries are microscopic. The Ulmite breathes air that appears to pass through his lungs and into his bloodstream. Anger pores through the pain. Berserk, ancient urge, Laodike presses inwards, letting the same fury override the machine. Bound together, the legs pump and step, the arms shove solid matter, doorway and soldier out of the way and Otto soon finds himself in a ruin that stands on top of a small hill.

There is silence here. Uneven, curved walls that are held together by the exposed steel between the cracks. The floor is swollen, the dust freshly settled.

Here, the two of them sense that something is hiding. Laodike searches. The man steadies his body in focus and after five seconds, they both smell it. After one more second their ears pick up a heartbeat, a flowing of blood, pumped and slowed down to hibernation.

But if it is so, that the words flow as their thoughts, Claimant and Contestant know that there is more.

In that hint, the Contestant begins lifting chunks of the ruins. Otto breaks woven lines of steel and when he digs further into the concrete, a Blacksteel object is exposed.

The beast’s leg is as large as the man. Curled into the shape of a wing, its sharpness is made to bore through in a swimming motion. As soon as the air hits the leg, it appears to uncurl searching to steady itself, but the Orichalcum hands close tightly around it.

With such a grip it appears that the Blacksteel caves. Otto’s fingers dig in and the metal creaks. Then, he puts a leg against it and he begins to pull.

The ground moves, the beast thrashes. The ruin bloats upwards as its walls collapse. However, the Ulmite does not let go.

Little by little as a second passes, solid Blacksteel pumps and hidden metal tendons snap. The Contestant yells and in an accelerating flow of wrath and strength, the Blacksteel snaps and the leg comes off.

Red blood spurts from a recoiling machine. A thin string of nerve endings flaps in the quaking wind and as Otto falls back with the giant leg in his embrace, Claimant magic takes full force and momentum.

For as the man pulled, Laodike worked her magic. In the hidden absence of opponents, the contact of machine to machine was without defense by their opponents. She finds herself flooding the beast’s Inverse Dream, the circuits and silicon endings bloat with water, commanding all liquids closer to the wound to thin.

As the beast retreats under more foundations, there is now a black and crimson streak of blood and machine fluids marking its passage.

***

Hab feels the ground lift underneath him. Around him, squads scatter while the Contestant closes his eyes.

To the man, he is ridding a wave. At the ebb and flow of cracking, but still whole earth, he latches into a serene thought. Zanuvia obliges and both become as if sealegged at a deck, perfectly standing as many around them lose their balance.

Hab begins to run. The tremors and turning of the underground beast do nothing to his sprint. He is perfectly running above it, looking for an opportunity to strike. And that opportunity soon arrives.

When the ground parts and the Blacksteel carapace reveals its mouth, he is waiting there two meters away from a form that arches and increases in height.

His Lanza fires twice. The two azure columns slam against the form and it flinches. The alloy bends and twists, trying to coil around him, trapping him in its many sharp legs.

At that reaction, Hab jumps into the beast, gaining elevation at each coil of flowing carapace. Once, then again, his shoots the Lanza at the head, while Zanuvia works her magic through their point of contact, his legs.

Metals sing. Blacksteel sliding over Blacksteel the reverberation of shrill becomes the cacophony that descries this fight. Hab feels his eardrums almost break at the noise, but he keeps shooting.

Ten seconds pass. The dance between the two appears as a coiling and trashing form, broken by azure and gleaming gold. The man jumps, the beast follows and after a while the man becomes swatted out of the air by a sudden twitch of the grand body.

Falling at the ground, Hab is disorientated. A train of legs clatters rapidly towards him and the edges rain down on his Orichalcum.

Out of the Forty blows he takes before he rolls away, two break his armor. Two blows dig deep and fast, in and out of his body piercing thigh and lower belly.

A blood streak follows his retreat and it appears that in that red line, the tail of the beast becomes attracted. As if navigated by a contrast of colours, or scents. The tail feints an attack and then it lunges as the Contestant dodges in error.

Hab’s Lanza breaks. The Contestant uses the weapon to block between the two snapping antennas, however, part of his back, his left forearm come in contact with the beast’s tail and they press hard as the azure glow of the weapon discharges.

Fading of light, Hab groans and strains as the force is too much to bear. Zanuvia on the other side is assaulted by waves of toxins, flowing further into her Orichalcum fort at every twitch of both machines.

A minute passes in this clutch. Every second becomes more impossible to bear. The beast lifts the Orichalcum man upwards and thrashes him against walls, continuing its movement at the same time.

Moments before this grip becomes too much bear, Hab and Zanuvia plea for help and their daughter answers. Otto has taken the high ground jumping, shooting and stomping at the centipede, which is just enough to disorient it.

Hab is thrown. His body slides on the ground stopping at a pile of rubble. It appears that he stumbles initially, then as he sprints his legs wobble but still manage to find their bearing.

A laughter from the man quickly turns Otto’s attention away. There is still time and Scaramucc appears to lead the head of the beast away.

Chapter 44

Anavasis

Twenty seven floors higher, Jorj is taking a breather on a winding staircase.

‘Can’t I just take the armor off?’ The man is audibly panting. His breath seems choked by the helmet, his limbs tremble.

‘Can’t risk it Jorj. It is only protecting us from the others.’ Varhas sounds equally exhausted.

Both breaths follow eachother, the Claimant is knee deep in paralyzing circuits.

Sluggish, the Contestant pushes himself standing. His legs are heavy, the hands tighten somewhere between grip and weak open palms and the Lanza is held under the armpit,.

‘Gods. What have I done to deserve this.’ Says the Contestant and his knees arch up, up and in pushing, climbing each step with increasing difficulty. His heart pounds steadily, but at each palpitation he feels the blood within him stiffen.

‘If only they would answer.’

‘So they did in Eryx. Why not now?’

Flashes of horrors pass through Varhas. The machine obliges in this sway of emotions and fear. Nausea overtakes Jorj and he arches forwards to vomit. The helmet opens only for a moment to let the liquids out.

‘For they are cruel Gods, they are also kind. But only where there is more than cruelty they answer, to set the world straight.’

‘So they are? Measuring where they act and where they only spectate.’

‘Aye Jorj. This they do.’

The breath after is cool. The exhale equally reinvigorating. Then comes the twenty eight floor, then the one after and on and on he goes, until a spectacle disrupts them.

There is a hole to where there should be steps. From this high point, the battleground is visible underneath and the opening in the walls speaks in deafening firefight and colours. Closer, Meconian and Arhoscephalean marines float in the void. They jump to graceful motions, four limbs reaching out to rotate their bodies that ignore gravity and planetary orientation. From this distance, both men can see the Gastraphetes weapons strapped into their center of mass. Belly cannons of thin and sharp barrels aim and fire almost on their own. The recoil slowly pushing the marines into another orbit, another hovering movement that dodges and recalibrates.

Changing and floating, the dance of spaceship-boarders and low-orbit warriors appears graceful, contrasting what is happening below. White and gleaming forms, sometimes human when they curl their limbs and sometimes arachnoid when their extra calf-and-wrist limbs to reach out into the vertical structures.

The action is far away, but few seconds later, a giant Meconian sprints the vertical side of the building. He touches the stone with his left hand, legs and lower body rotating in fast floating agility. Almost detaching, he turns to fire his Gastraphete cannon. A wrist-hand holds him attached to the wall and when the projectile fires from his chest, he arches backwards, touching the wall behind him with both feet and hands.

‘What graceful agility!’ Speaks the Claimant.

‘Bah! Unnatural. Gay.’ Laughs the Contestant. ‘Real men fight hand to hand, dropkick to dropkick where it matters!’ Says he and then climbs with heavy lifting, heaving his increasing weight over broken concrete and into the next floor.

Varhas laughs too. ‘Just a few more. Come on Jorj.’

‘How are the others doing?’

‘Hab is out. Gon is poisoned, but he returns the damage. Little by little.’

‘Otto?’

‘Otto is killing it. Oh, if you would only see his Ulmite fury!’

Jotj stumbles and falls on all fours. The Lanza is left behind as he crawls into the next level. Then, he tenses his muscles. A thought of pride lifts him up and he begins to stomp at each step. Swollen feet become animated for a moment and Varhas continues to inspire the Contestant.

‘How come we’ve never watched a match together?’ Says Jorj.

‘A match?’ Wonders the Claimant. His response is strained as if in great pain, but he still replies casually. ‘Never thought about it. Sure. Of course! What am I saying?’

‘Are you in pain?’

‘Yes. My limbs are in flames. Worse than Abyssian smolder. It is sharp within me, alive. Writhing.’ Varhas lets out a groan.

‘Let me share it.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes come on. I need to wake up from this nightmare.’

The Claimant aims his attention away from the sensory binds within the armor. The annals of Orichalcum flood with light, his attention switches to a slow ebb of no control. Ease comes into the Claimant and horrid paid begins to stimulate Jorj’s flesh. Both subdermal and on its surface, light, ceramic needles, mechanic nerve endings and heat washes through Jorj.

‘Is this enough?’

‘Finally.’

‘Finally?’

‘You said it feels alive. Now, I feel me as such.’

The Contestant begins to sprint. The floors come and pass and the Orichalcum armor appears to steadily pace five, ten floors beyond.

To keep the man occupied, Varhas tries to satisfy his curiosity.

‘The pain makes you feel alive?’ He knows the answer. Jorj does not reply. ‘You do not feel it muted?’ Again the Contestant does not answer.

Lost in a trance, heavy overarching malice pumps rapidly through both. One wonders, the other acts and in a semblance of supernatural vigor either person feels the other closer. Bound and tightened together, the pain becomes a bridge where in its middle point the two meet.

As the floors give way to open sky, there is nothing more to climb. Open and savage gusts of air fly through the men. Up here, the dilapidated ruin has opened to boundless light, invited through the broken walls by many artillery shells fired over in the past days.

The two men walk the distance deeper into building. Broken floors and holes pass them by. Straining still, moving one leg slower than the one before it, Jorj walks and walks until there is nothing infront of them but empty space.

The battleground appears below, dust and flames, blue, green, gleaming and savage. For a moment there is only hell far away. As Jorj lifts his head with maximum effort, he feels his jugulars bulge, pumping with venom and toxin, pain that goes up at heartbeat. Still, through the man’s eyes he watches beyond the chaos. Where the sky is blue and the endless mud stretches to the horizon, white clouds turn into fortresses and castles.

The wrath ebbs away. Swirling pain seems to both of them, nothing but a medicine that forces their minds in easy certainty.

‘You know Varhas, first time I saw clouds...’ Jorj struggles to breathe in. His mouth stays without air to press the words through. Just as this happens, Varhas concentrates into folding the powerarmor’s lungs open. The Orichalcum vacuums the paralyzed flesh, the Contestant’s lungs fill with air. ‘...I felt free.’

In a final preparation, Varhas senses the celestial odds converge. The voices behind the numbness are of their allies. Gon’s innermost voice gives only the hint of a nod. Swollen limbs swirl as if beguiled by Water magic. And then, Varhas gives a soft push to the Contestant by speaking.

‘One more step Jorj. To freedom. Can you follow me there?’

‘I’d follow you anywhere.’

Chapter 45

Teutons

Broad-shouldered Otto is hailed as the penultimate hero of the match.

Blond, blue-eyed with a beautiful Claimant to his side, sole survivor against a never seen before monstrosity, the following days are a constant influx of praise for the man. Such praise, is artwork, trinkets and gifts, offerings and messages of support that have as centerpiece the Ulmite himself.

Otto in turn is ecstatic to be on the receiving end of this. As is Laodike. Where the rest of the team takes it easy by resting after their wounds manifest, the two of them parade themselves around the nearby cities. Almost intact Orichalcum armor, the Ulmite’s head is without a helmet for all to see. Locals of Sicela, soldiers and commoners follow him as an ecstatic crowd, often leaving their duties to see this new hero. From this crowd, outworlders, journalists or Claimants, war-tourists and mysterious individuals break through for a word from him or his Claimant.

Ancient spectacle, heroic in a classical sense, there is always a pedestal for Otto to stand in, or some branch around his head, some flag that bears the colours of the Black and White team behind him.

Arhoscephalean diplomats come to the man for congratulations. Priests of the local Claimants shake his hands for a picture. The local Orichalcum metallurgists union lines up in Forty-man lineup for a picture and so do random villages and city folk. The ones that do not humor Otto are the Meconians. The giants glance at the Ulmite, calling him a barbarian under their breath, annoyed by the sudden influx of a truce that he may or may not have caused.

After all, as the Contest moves the wheel of events, things have calmed down in the battlegrounds nearby. A truce was made minutes after the match ended. Divinely funneled down from Pantokrators to priests, to politicians, to commanders, to sergeants, soldiery and mercenary alike.

In this relative calm, the two landed factions opt to lick their wounds. The crashlanded cruisers are picked apart and rebuilt, becoming forts and bastions for the two armies to hide behind.

One day, Otto and Laodike return to the rest of the team. The bunker is quiet, full of random gifts, paintings and woven tapestries.

The steel blast doors are wide open. Cool air flows as both enter. Hab is staying besides Zanuvia who appears exhausted by the fantastical passage of toxins through her body. Varhas is also ailing. He is mostly limited to slow walking around the room. Gon and Scaramucc discuss and exchange old sayings, Jorj prepares foam infront of the mirror as his days-old stubble is due for a shave.

After a while, Laodike goes near Jorj to wash herself. She stares at the Contestant for a few seconds before he steps to the side to let her use the running water.

Laodike washes her face and dries it with a clean towel. Jorj speaks.

‘Good work out there.’

‘Yeah. Otto needed this. Back on that match in Mecone he was actually mad.’

‘Mad? Why?’

‘He thought he should have been the one to wear a powerarmor first. Just, men things. You know.’

‘I thought I caught an angry glance back then.’ The water flows. Jorj’s hand appears somewhat worried.

‘Hand’s trembling?’

‘A little.’

‘Are you in pain?’

‘A little.’

Laodike tries to dismiss the conversation. However, she notices. Respawned and remade into the wholess of his flesh, Jorj should not be feeling any aftereffects of the toxins. Certainly not real, but more so, not even their fantastical aftereffects that are only true in the mind.

‘It is weird Jorj. You appear wiser by the day.’

‘Wiser? I know nothing about that.’

‘Want to come with us tomorrow? A group picture would be nice, show yourself to the world. Scaramucc is coming.’

‘Nope. Let Ajax have his due. Didn’t fall on his sword, so let him have the spotlight.’

These words are certainly not something a commoner would say. Curiosity sways Laodike to keep the conversation going.

‘Are you sure? Wouldn’t have killed the beast if you didn’t crash on it and bored through the carapace.’

‘I am alright.’

Laodike leaves. She goes towards her parents who are talking to Otto. The Contestants laugh and smile at their achievements. Otto compliments Hab on his impossible coordination of balance despite his injuries. The man replies that it is all about his sealegs and that one can pick a lot of useful things on an uneven deck.

Then, Zanuvia turns to Otto as soon as Laodike is close enough to listen.

‘You should come to Tropicana after the Contest is over.’

Otto thinks. ‘Sure. Why not? Me and Laodike were thinking of touring for a while. If we win.’

Zanuvia turns to her daughter. ‘Is that so? Where are you planning to go?’

‘Ulm, then maybe Dur-Baqa too and Valkanea.’

Smirking with that side of her face that is only visible to her daughter and not the two men, Zanuvia feigns surprise.

‘Ah Valkanea? Planning to see the Dalmatic coasts? Hike the black mountains, Rhodope, Rila and Aemus? They are very beautiful places.’ Both Claimants know that there is something more to this. The places of Valkanea are romantic. In a natural, memorable way that creates a widely known habit. That habit being, that many who go there, return married. A comely and important blend that makes two come together in vows and old rituals of long lasting companionship.

Laodike stares at Zanuvia and the mother does so back at her daughter. Neither of them lets out a hint in their faces and the first one to speak is old Zanuvia again. ‘Well, would have been nice to see these places once in my life at least. But the old dog over here is too bored to lift his ass from the boat.’

Zanuvia glares playfully at her husband and the four of them smile.

***

Afternoon arrives. The team enjoys the silence. Some of them are outside, watching over a world that has paused, just like them.

The sky is clear and as the sun leans closer to horizon, the team watches as there are now fewer false stars above.

Even so, minutes later, when a Blacksteel speck appears to slowly drift closer and closer, it is not a worrying spectacle. The spaceship’s descent is easy, one made by a civilian pilot perhaps, one made neither in hurry or grandiose maneuvering.

The Blacksteel shape hovers closer and closer by each minute. The speck becomes a long, upright and round column that is wholly engraved and thinner at both its bow and stern. Dragon heads and winged tails guild its front and back. Its hull is of a layered texture. Steel boards overlap with steel, in what appears now as a clinker-built outer shell.

As if ignoring gravity, the dreki-type carrier lands softly on a patch of even earth nearby. Three humans exit from a hatch at the base of the bow. The three forms drop one by one and then they begin walking towards the bunker.

Otto realizes that these three are Ulmites. Stern and unmoving, the man does not make a gesture until the three strangers are an arm’s length away from eachother.

Up close, the rest of the team, who has just come outside, notices that they are two men and a woman. Tall, broadshouldered and pale-skinned, a noble barbaric aura flows In-between the folds of their heavy garments. One of them is of blonde hair and a thick auburn mustache under his short nose. The other is of a golden mane, clean shaved and of a powerful jaw that bulges from his thick cheekbones. The woman is young. Unnaturally so, as if time has stopped at the prime of her life. Almost silver, her hair is straight, long and braided to contain a length that goes well past her ankles. Wolf and bear pelts, iron studs and Norse embroidery weaves in and out of their wear. Black gives way to deep auburn, silver details, bronze and Blacksteel mix and match in the different baubles and trinkets hanging from these three. Swords and axes point downwards in their scabbards and initially Varhas thinks that these men are perhaps from Nidavangr.

In a peculiar language, Otto exchanges few words with the three. Then, each one introduces themselves by name.

The men are, Friedrich and Bjorn, the woman refuses to speak, opting for sign-language. She has white eyes, translucent like Sunstone polarizing in an illusion of optical calcite or more accurately, Iceland crystals.

Otto and Varhas are the only ones that know her name. Both turning memories within their minds, imagine perhaps that she is Hallgerðr, a navigator Claimant older than even Ajax himself. An ancient woman turned young again and again bound to this fate both by choice and grand ability.

At that realization Varhas turns his eyes elsewhere. The Claimant feels an embarrassing flush. His cheeks redden as he accurately imagines his soul stolen by the woman’s beauty. More then that, he knows that among Astral Claimants, this woman is well beyond his depth. Her magic, he thinks, is vast and able to scry further into the future than him. But in that rush of lust he quickly finds himself wondering whether she has seen him in in the past, divined and prophesized in the scouring of celestial pathways and the astral flow of time and moments.

He looks back at her. The woman appears as if she knows the inner workings of his mind. When his eyes cross hers, the white-haired woman slowly shakes her head left and right, as if to say ‘no’, replying directly into his thoughts. A sharp negation to all his wrong imagination, unwitnessed by anyone else.

Friedrich speaks. ‘Otto, for your great efforts in the Contest, the planet of Ulm and the Germani peoples offer you this.’ Bjorn lifts a scabbard and unsheathes a Norse-type blade. The blade is of Blacksteel, sharp and heavy, engraved with the word “VLFBERHT” over a swirling texture of smooth metal. ‘With the blade, comes your initiation into the order of steel.’

Nobody knows whether to clap or celebrate. Silence fills this moment, but as Otto picks up the sword in his arm, it appears that the moment hangs there.

Friedrich speaks again. ‘What say you, answering the riddle of steel?’

Otto seems surprised by the question, but his heroic steadiness does not falter. He breathes in and speaks a single word. ‘Strength’.

Friedrich and Bjorn stare at the man. In what little facial expression exists in their faces, the two of them appear disappointing. Friedrich speaks. ‘You may try again in a year’s time. You know where to find me.’

Otto feels anger course through him. However, the first one to speak after is Bjorn.

‘Alright. With that gone out of the way, you must be Jorj, the dark-skinned man would be Scaramucc and of course a captain, Hab. Zanuvia, Laodike, Gon and Varhas.’ He speaks as his eyes jump to each person. Then, he leans his head towards the bunker and the men enter along with the team.

‘If we had known you’d come we would have prepared dinner.’ Says Zanuvia.

‘An Ulmite that doesn’t sneak himself uninvited into a place is no Ulmite at all.’ Speaks Bjorn and Friedrich lets a loud hum.

While everyone gathers around the room, following the blunt expressions of the two Ulmites, the white-haired Claimant appears to solemnly walk in a trance. Discussions begin far away from her mind and nobody notices her. In her preordained way of life, she paces, as if preordained, near the kitchen in the back of the bunker. Zanuvia walks near her, wanting to search for anything to cook and offer at the strangers.

The two Claimant women stare at eachother. Old and weathered, Zanuvia appears as a mundane object next to a statue and both women fasten their thoughts around this image. Zanuvia feels a hint of shame.

Still however, the navigator Claimant stares through her with her blind eyesight, scouring far into the future instead of what is near in reality. Then, her young hand grabs the old woman’s and she leads it closer to her. Both of their hands touch an object hanging around her neck at the same time and Zanuvia understands that this is an invitation to enter the Inverse Dream together.

In the domain of a navigator, or that of great Astral magic, space appears to fold and stretch in mathematical vastness. Bereft of any other form and shape other than points, straight or curved lines thin as a strand of hair, all is a black background, a simulated void where two Claimants stand at mere hints of light.

The Inverse Dream writes directly into Zanuvia’s mind. Guided by the navigator, quick and with no pleasantries the blond woman shows things to Zanuvia. Choices part at the old woman’s fingertips. She watches as the flow of information slows down to the texture of water, gently trying to bridge communication and language between the two.

As Zanuvia stands, she watches the woman introduce herself. Images of her past pass her by. Men die infront of her, previous and bygone husbands clutching her white gown. One of these images remains, of a man who asks for a strand of hair to repair a bow with which he will defend himself. Then come images of Ulm, machinery and fine, infinitesimal details inside of a factory. Human bodies, as well as lifeless steel blends together in a flow of moments. Their movements happen and all around their walk or fall, both the future and past are transcribed around them as shadows that follow seconds in both the past and future.

‘Why are you showing me this?’ Whispers Zanuvia.

At the lapse of language, as the words are formed in soft lip and tongue, the images begin to liquefy. The domain of the Inverse Dream slows down to a crawl and Zanuvia begins to ripple through it with easy passages of her hands.

Faces manifest. First comes Hab sitting and gazing towards a foggy horizon. The Contestant, in his middle-aged form rests on the side deck, slightly worn. One hand is grazing the sea over the side, the other is clutching Zanuvia’s. Both Claimants see that the woman is pregnant, they feel the salty specks touch her cheek, the uneven sway of the boat, absent dreams within the calm and empty journey.

The women watch as reversed waves guild the sky. They watch the sea become alive in a natural force that seems to hold their weight, their character superimposed into a deeper plex of human experience. They drown, they rise again, they choose not to breathe for a minute and so slow is this passage of time that the Claimants feel the great relief of time reverse itself, the sorrows retreat, they turn ephemeral and vaporizing slowly in a shimmer of wet dissipation.

Nothing remains after a while. Dry stones guild the shores of glass. Foam is only there in a bed of bubbles that pops itself out of existence.

When Zanuvia exits the Inverse Dream, she looks at her hands. Her mind tells her that the skin is young again, the muscles underneath alive and her dryness returned to youth. Even if in reality, her body is still old as always, she knows deep within her that there is an intimate vigor within, a lust and youthful urge that is as solid as a promise.

Hallgerðr puts her hands close to her chest. With sign language she tells Zanuvia that the passage of time can now be healed.

***

On an empty stomach, alcohol strikes harder than usual. The Ulmites are loosened. They speak and speak without end, their voices become heavier and heavier in their strange accents. It is as if tongue or lip, deeper down their gullets, their stomachs press hard to send the sound out and they care little to refine it on its exit.

The three Ulmites are as such and what they say is wholly different from who they were moments before. They speak about their freezing asses and old fairies of the woods, of how both boys and men get lost in thick forests and dense slums. To them, there is little difference from the natural world and the world of a city. Matter of fact, as Gon notices, he realizes that this is no different in Hab or even Jorj perhaps. They too after all, exist in a world where cities have a natural force within them. Miserable critters or stupid gray birds moving with the same kind of grace that a wild fawn or woodpecker does.

Only Laodike has noticed that Zanuvia left a while back. Along with the blonde stranger, they exited the bunker some time ago.

She did not bother to worry. Neither does she now, as Otto begins to tell tall tales of his life. She has heard these stories before. Under blankets or at moments where they shared some natural spectacle nearby.

As Otto begins to talk about the Wheel of Pain and how children like him trained in cold, barren environments, she thought herself lucky to never be part of any education system. When most children became glued into their desks, learning about new mythology blended with the old, or about the cut-and-measure nature of science, Ulmites had a small minority of people undergoing toughening of both mind and spirit in other savage ways. Still, Otto speaks about those years with pride. A sense of happiness exists in his words and the two strangers humor him at every turn.

Not in bad taste, but earnest camaraderie.

One speaks of heaving stone and logs. Learning how to use both carving knife and sword. But they also talk extensively about skiing.

All but one understand this as a second-hand spectacle. Gon and Scaramucc, Hab, Laodike and Jorj imagine the long pathways in fresh white snow, the tall mountains as they become rapid lessons in this ancient art of sliding. For Varhas, these tales bring memories of Nidavangr. He thinks back on the frozen planet, how similar it is to the multi-layered industrial labyrinth of Ulm, but yet so different.

‘Their cold is to be overcome. Ours is to bear in silence.’ He thinks into himself. And so it is strange that they go out of their way to learn how to survive in it, action leading learning. In contrast, he has only gone skiing once with one of his older sisters. In Nidavangr, nobody goes out into nature without kin. It is a matter of trust, careful respect by way of fear. And, Varhas thinks, how can anyone trust a stranger to save them from a hungry bear, if they are not your own family?

In that thought Varhas tries to hide a hint of shame. All Ulmites are a family. What does he have? It only takes a glance around for him to see that he has a large family now if not of blood. This family has been there for a while. They walked the bleak whiteness together, they came so close to his mother.

‘That man over there knows.’ Speaks Friedrich and points at Varhas.

‘What do I know?’

‘The way of the forest.’

‘Oh. I thought you were going to say I know the Riddle of Steel.’

The Ulmites laugh.

‘Well I can tell you, you are closer to that answer than Otto.’

Otto stops laughing. His mouth forms an insult that goes inaudible.

Varhas speaks before anyone notices. ‘I don’t think so. Nidavangr is nothing like Ulm. No disrespect meant.’

‘Gentle speaker, yet his words can creep in like frostbite. A classic Nidavanger. Too northern for north folk.’

‘Nidavangr is a nice planet.’ Speaks Laodike.

The Ulmites frown. ‘Nice? That place is dark and brooding. You compare the bleakness of deep Ulmish forests with a clearing on Nidavangr and it appears like a beach on Tropicana! Hah! Anyways. No more of that place.’

‘Why does it bother you?’ Asks Varhas. ‘You know all your Ulmish forests come from Nidavangr?’

‘That they do?’

‘Every planet was given something. There are trees in Nidavangr older than Ulm.’

‘You speak of times I know little of, Claimant.’ Friedrich leans his head, as if to turn the thought around and accept it. ‘Perhaps you are right. Ulm was given the secrets of Blacksteel and the furnaces to make it, Nidavangr was given... wood.’

Before Varhas can respond, Gon takes initiative to ask his question. ‘How is Blacksteel made? What is it?’

‘Well... we do not ask Orichalcum how it makes its gleaming metal, you should not ask an Ulmite how Blacksteel is made. But then again, how should I know? All I have seen is pounding.’ Friedrich curls his fist. Then, in a beating rhythm he pounds his chest. ‘This is how. Deep into the first layer of Ulm, they pound and pound and pound, folding thin starlight into steel and steel into itself. The first layer of Ulm pounds, close to the planet’s core. The second layer listens and the third layer dances to the kick. So it is said.’

Those that have been to Ulm and that are present, Laodike and Varhas understand something. Back then, they were close to that layer perhaps. In whatever way culture flows, they heard its result. They listened to the refinement of factory sound into industrial music.

Laodike and Varhas are pleased with this answer. Gon is pleased only after watching his teammates become interested in the story and by avoiding some misunderstanding between the two parties.

Jorj speaks. Shrugging his shoulders, he points at the tipping point in the last fight. ‘Blacksteel, Orichalcum, what does it matter? I still bored through solid layers just by dropping.’

Chapter 46

Young Sea Witch

To undo the ravages of time, in the world of monsters and gods one has to give something of equal value back. So it is said, but if anything, mankind is so proficient in creating loopholes of debt and payment.

This is what the white-haired Claimant whispered to Zanuvia minutes before entering the Ulmite spaceship. The old woman did not know back then if it was another short lapse into the Inverse Dream or the stranger’s soft voice. Perhaps, she thought, it was her own mind that spoke. Some realization she had made decades ago, or perhaps something she read on an old piece of paper.

But that did not matter. She went into the ship, both confident and surrendered. She understood that these two sentences, held both horror and hope in equal measure. And so she felt, that this has been her life ever since other people put the tag of a Claimant on her.

The de-aging process takes all night. Zanuvia cannot see outside of the ship and she can neither feel anything while she is submerged into a pod full of liquid. Time crawls sometimes, then it rushes forwards. Zanuvia forgets how to breathe at times. At other moments she understands that there is nothing beyond her neck, nothing beyond her jaw or ears.

In sensory deprivation, the woman does not understand the horrifying changes that her flesh undergoes. With every ounce of consciousness she has to pull her mind away from wondering about this. Thankfully, at times where she makes mistakes and her brain lunges outwardly to see, or to listen, or to formulate sense beyond the pod, a guardian angel manifests for a precious second. Of bleached features and an aura of concentrated light, the celestial being approaches and eases whatever signal fires within Zanuvia.

At daybreak, the woman has been unwoven and knitted back, cell by cell, hairstrand and gland.

The pod opens inside of the spaceship. Fluids flush outwards and drain on the grated floor.

Zanuvia however wakes up halfway before she falls. Her arms and legs hold her steady and she falls on all fours. The first thoughts are of crawling. She thinks she is back to the beginning, but the guardian angel flashes only for a frame in her streams of thought. In that flash, the memories flood back into her. She remembers walking, running, laughing and boring, mundane actions in her life. Fishes and scents, lumbering rocks and foreign flesh that once held her.

The white-haired Claimant approaches. In her white gown, she approaches softly, holding Zanuvia’s old clothes.

The young sea witch stands up. Her eyes adjust to the metallic interior of the ship that is lined with wood, tapestries and skins of wolves and bears. Every pump, hydraulic mechanism and module on the ship beats in deep bass. At a steady rhythm the industrial music is calm and energetic, every sound is as an enveloping heartthrob.

The woman dresses under the scouring eye of the of other Claimant and then she is escorted outside.

***

At first light, the young sea witch struggles with the changes. She cannot believe that her forearms are tightly bound to young skin and that her walk is unbearably easy. The body is weightless, her limbs can move with speed and so she goes running towards the bunker as soon as she steps on ground.

‘Hab!’ She yells. ‘Laodike!’ She cries out In-between her breaths. ‘Come see. Come out!’

By the door she takes a moment to feel the burning air swirl inside her lungs. With a heave of the door she puts her entire weight forwards and the steel open wildly, crashing on the walls behind its hinges.

The sound wakes everyone up.

The two Ulmites are already awake and they prepare themselves to fight the intruder. Hands at the hilts of their Blacksteel swords, they let their cloaks fall over themselves as they retreat their attention.

Zanuvia speaks to the two infront of her. ‘Getting ready to leave? Already?’

Friedrich answers. ‘We were getting ready to fight. It is meant that we fight someone on this planet, we just don’t know who yet. No matter.’ The Ulmite walks towards Zanuvia. In a gentle motion he takes her hand and kisses it. ‘I take it that Life magic returned the ravages of time.’

‘Life magic? I thought your friend only practiced Astral sorcery.’

‘Who am I to know? I am not a Claimant’, speaks Friedrich and quietly leaves the room as the rest of the people there wake up.

The first to notice is Laodike. She falls from the bed and she runs closer to her mother who is slowly leaning backwards and out of the bunker. ‘Come, come!’ She speaks and the Black and White team funnels at the entrance rubbing their eyes at the early morning sunlight.

And the sunlight is even gentler to her. Zanuvia’s black and straight hair is glossy, curtains to the radiance and falling over her old clothes blending with the basalt. There is a wide smile at her face, the thin features stand besides white teeth, stretchy and without wrinkles. Her ears are smaller, her nose is sharp, the eyebrows are bushy and forming an unibrow that contrasts heavily with the paleness at their base. Centimeters taller, her back arches in renewed and steady vigor, her gestures for the team to come near are rippling, full waves of beckoning.

Laodike runs to touch her hands. The fingers intertwine to comfortable temperature. Neither woman feels the cold, but a soft even-tempered mirroring of touch and emotion. For it is so, that tears fill their eyes.

Both feel that time has flowed out of place, leaving only traces of hopes and love. One sees her child smile, the other runs along thoughts of something greater than a mother, perhaps something new that she never had before. A sister, a friend.

So goes the moment of synchronized thoughts made real, that something within Zanuvia finally heals. He who is missing has never arrived, but in their absence, something better manifests.

The two hug. Hab walks the distance and he watches as the face on top of his daughter’s back is that of a person he knows.

She smiles. He replies back in awe and carefully he approaches some person that is a wish made real.

***

Gon’s thoughts are far apart. Odd and misaligned by nature, he shakes his head. However respectful, he waits until the embrace between father, daughter and wife is over before he speaks.

‘Miracles come at a hefty price.’ Speaks Gon.

Varhas pushes the man with his arm and yells at him. ‘Can’t you let them enjoy just one moment? What is wrong with you?’

The young sea witch replies without a hint of bitterness. ‘No worries Gon. Varhas leave him be, I have been told that heavy a price yes, unbalanced in gold or credit, or even horrible things to come. But humans we are, loopholes we make. Perhaps I have already paid the price, oh dearest killer of moments?’

Gon shrugs his arms in a surrender, there is a certain charm in young Zanuvia that makes it so. The rest of the team walks into the bunker. A yawn comes over him. He waits. A minute passes as the sounds around him fall to silence.

Alone, the man’s eyes are drawn into the only shapes further away. Where there was that Blacksteel spaceship, a few forms are gathered. The two broad Ulmites are surrounded by four gleaming giants. Friedrich and Bjorn converse with four Meconians who appear armed in full powerarmor, hoplon and spear. Both parties are stern, exchanging few words and measuring responses.

From this distance he cannot hear the conversation, but the stances of the men speak trouble.

He watches as Friedrich and Bjorn swiftly unsheathe their swords and strike at the giants. The difference in size favors the Ulmites in close combat and soon it all becomes a mess of half wresting, half striking and stepping over bodies that have fallen on their back.

The violent outburst is short. Two giants lay injured. The sharp way the Blacksteel swords cut and the quick disengagement showcase that the blond woman is there perhaps, helping the two Ulmites escape into the ship. When the four Meconians grab their helmets of their powerarmor as if an excruciating headache is manifesting within their Orichalcum, Gon knows that the blonde Claimant is working her art from somewhere nearby.

In a few seconds, the ship begins to float steadily, picking up elevation and accelerating towards the sky.

One of the Meconians grabs his spear. The gleaming weapon is arched over his shoulder. The right hand holds it steady, while the left hand reaches out into the sky, aligning itself with the black object.

The throw is powerful. Perhaps there is a Claimant behind it. The spear flies true as if powered by strength unnatural and wind-piercing.

Gon will soon regret spectating this short event. For as the spear almost touches the spaceship, the entire Blacksteel mass blinks in and out of reality, shifting a few meters to the side.

Gon averts his eyes, but it is too late. In this microscopic blink, the Claimant’s eyes watch as on the texture of the ship, horrors manifest. Engraved, superimposed light and shadows form mirror horrors. Lesser or greater, he knows not of their severity, but he is aware that this is how Varhas has described them to him.

Gon understands that he should not have seen this perversion of natural law. He thinks, that he may not himself understand Astral magic, or why space-travel is always done is secrecy but he knows that nobody should witness space-bending technology happen. There is capacity to understand it all, now that he has consumed it with his senses, but he should not linger on it.

His head falls low. The innermost part of hidden thought, the streams within his mind speak. The words are not his. The words are neither from God or human.

And they say.

‘Behold is man, who would turn back time. What extremity does he fasten to blackened chains and how often he uses it to solve mundane problems.’

Chapter 47

Inner Alchemy

Tomorrow is another escape. The team leaves the battlefield to another destination.

Once they arrive at Syracuse, the shuttle that carried them opens to a grand procession. Fans, peasantry, citizens and city-folk, merchants and aristocrats gather in massive crowds. Waves upon waves of white rose pedals fall on their heads. Black and deep green beds of laurels are thrown at their feet.

People. One can go through their life, never before witnessing so many humans gathered in a single place. The balconies are overflowing, the street lamps are full of hanging people. People sit everywhere, the uproar of their voices mixes with so much music and speech that one cannot speak to the person besides them. Walls and labyrinths of chairs support rows of old men. The children sit on the backs of their parents as if in columns of flesh, stacked and stacked further, giants and strangers, pigments of skin that are of foreign places and clothing that becomes a mosaic of unsorted colour.

It takes the team two hours to go through the main square of Syracuse. The soldiers escorting them have to stop every ten minutes to coordinate the crowd into paths that they can cross through.

The crowd is wild. At one point, a woman that stands on the shoulders of somebody, lifts her shirt and reveals her bare chest. On her skin the word “Daddy” is painted in ink and she is reaching out towards Hab.

Zanuvia notices. She grabs a flask that is strapped into one of the soldier’s belt. The leather-wrapped and empty container fits the palm of her hand and she throws it. As the object strikes the young woman at her head, there is an uproar of laughter and the soldiers panic to a stop, trying to assess the situation. However, nothing changes.

The merriment of the moment continues. Slow paced and careful, a pathway is made and the Black and White team leaves the square by way of an open highway.

Walking for another thirty minutes, the Claimants and Contestants reach a marble building. The soldier make themselves into a barrier behind the team. Grandiose, with elevated steps of white stone, hotel staff now becomes arrayed infront of the entrance, with their red and deep green suits, white gloves and statue-like demeanor, passing through the team and fastening around their bodies, luggage and sack.

The entrance is equally stiff and grandiose. In a way, that makes hotels and other establishments, awe inducing places of pampering. For it is so, that there is nobody else inside of the Grand Sicela hotel, other than the various hues of staff.

Green and crimson, the luggage carriers and logisticians are comely young men and women who quickly vanish into the hallways of marble. Gray and black, guides stand at every corner, contrasting with the luster on the walls, ready and waiting for any curious guest to ask them questions. Behind a front wooden desk, the bronze attendants smile at the team, beckoning them to come near where they can accommodate them with swift responses.

Varhas is the one to close that distance while the rest sit on the lobby.

Before he can speak, he makes sure to breathe in and calm himself from the recent turmoil of gigantic crowds. He eases his throat, but he delays the question in order to focus on the objects ahead.

His hands slide over the wooden surface. Punched into the wood, are swirling bronze decorations. Under his fingerprint is an uneven texture, metal blending with lacquered wood, stopping only after he reaches out and over a white doily. Cotton perhaps he thinks, the fabric is holed and embroided into patterns of rolling waves. Such roll and foamy white, deep and overlayered in its weave.

His eyes break from the dolly. In a wholly gentle demeanor, a hostess lets the Claimant take the moment in without disruption. Varhas glances at the bronze skin of the woman. Both flesh and machine, more accurately, both cell and alloy, her body is some sort of armor that if touched would perhaps be soft and stretchy, equally pliable and solid. As he drives his eyes over her intertwined fingers that are sharp as the pointy ends of an estoc type sword, he understands that the woman’s form is bare. As if without clothes, nothing obscures the curves on her, or the thin columns tendons holding her neck upright.

This long awkward silence would have moved most people into speaking by now. However the hostess remains silent.

And Varhas understands that this woman serves. So much so, that he only turns around to see the rest of the team sitting at the lobby, wholly free to let him leer, in not so respectful manners.

Varhas then leans over the desk. On the tips of his feet, he looms over the attendant that remains motionless and he focuses downwards on her body. Her bellybutton is a supple, umbilical remnant which is still bronze-skinned and armored. Her hips are wide, still uniform to her slim stature and as he draws his head upwards to meet her eyes, he remains for a moment at her bosom that is almost flat.

In a mix of shame and attraction, he is slowly pulled by a morose sadness towards her face. The hostess is even more alluring there, he finds. But before he can consume her face, he watches the two green eyes steeled into their job. She is simply staring into him, as if nothing he has done is unkind or degenerate. Just another guest, another person lured deeply into the thicket around her black pupils.

At that, something urges him to speak. He almost fumbles the words out. ‘Apologies. Varhas. Black and White team of the Contest. Rooms for eight?’

The attendant replies in a gentle almost melodical voice. ‘The Palici twins welcome you. Rooms have been arranged as per Contestant and Claimant pairings.’ Her fingers move behind the desk. Four objects rattle and each bronze key is passed through a ring of the same metal. Each ring hangs from her sharp edges of her four fingertips. The keys remain for a moment in the air, each one hanging, drawn by gravity. ‘Your rooms are at the fifth floor. At the fourth floor you will find the hot springs and pools. We have access to sulfur pools and geysers drawn directly from mount Etna. At the third floor you may find the gymnasiums, massage parlors and herbalists. The second floor is where breakfast is served, or lunch and dinner to your preferences. First floor is the lobby. Behind the end of that hallway you can find the bar, which is only open after sundown.’ The woman points somewhere in the back. The Claimant follows her sharp point and then she raises another finger to point at a black-dressed staff member. ‘For any other questions you may ask our staff members in black.’

Varhas takes the keys. One by one, taking his time to gloss over her facial features. As he does so, he watches the woman’s hand become unresponsive to the change of mass as the objects leave her hanging grasp.

He watches as her hand recoils back into its intertwined position. He becomes flustered again. Before he can speak however, the attendant opens her mouth in that calm voice, as if what she is about to speak of, is also another service to be offered here.

‘I will be at the bar in the after-hours. We can converse to you liking and afterwards have sex together if you so desire.’

The Claimant is surprised at the directness. Half visibly flustered, his blood pumping harder to his cheeks and half breathing calmness into himself, he thanks the woman and walks towards the team.

Laodike beckons him near to where they sit. The team is drinking coffee from limestone cups over a short glass table.

As Varhas comes next to them, Laodike speaks.

‘What got you all red Varhas?’

‘If I speak of it, I am afraid your mother is gonna cave my head in with another throw.’

***

For the rest of the day, the team does not do much. The beds are comfortable, the many possessions that Otto gained over the last week are flown via small shuttles on the roof of the hotel and they are hidden somewhere in the vast building.

By night, an equal lack of action continues. The team rests, only coming out of their rooms for a short dinner. As they come out to eat, it appears that their personal preferences are already expected and each one eats exactly what they wished, either feast, or meal of poverty.

Otto dines on wild game. Laodike, Hab and Zanuvia eat fish and seaweed salad. Scaramucc dines on overspiced dishes and so does Gon. Varhas eats a hearty soup of roots and meager meat and Jorj eats slop. When Varhas asks him if that is what he wanted, Jorj replies that he does not really mind and that it is actually rather tasty.

By nightfall everyone is fast asleep. Except for Varhas, who remains wide awake. In his mind, the bronze woman appears as if placed inside of him, a statue that is unmoving and impossible to throw away. She simply stands into his fantasy, beckoning him near by doing nothing and speaking with her eyes, telling him to come down on the first floor.

The Claimant resists this desire. After a few hours of turning around in his white bedsheets, sleep finally comes.

However, even that pause is short. The Claimant’s mind is able to go into deep, rapid-eye movement rest, thirty minutes after he passes the threshold of sleep. It is often so, that Claimants are able to dive into paradoxical sleep, quicker than many commoners.

Quick and in waves, the dreams arrive as expected and they turn into the usual nightmares.

Something is thrown towards Varhas. The object misses and when he turns towards the person that threw it, he sees only bleak shadows, plastered into the marble walls around him. The stone’s imperfections, the gray branches and waves reach out and about, twisting in hallways and corridors that make him feel lost.

In that confusion, he remains standing and idle. Looking, smelling and feeling the press of dying and damp air. There is no life here. Thus, he takes to walking the empty building of his nightmare.

Varhas expects the dream to turn hostile. At every corner he walks into some offense, or some pointy end of a warhammer reaching towards his head. However, due to Gon’s magic out there in the real, he knows that the nightmare should not be that intense. He should be stabbed or pulled into drowning, but nevertheless pass.

This time as the hostility around him escalates, this certainty quickly vanishes. In a blink, the hallways rotate and lapse. Sulfur fills his nostrils and the stinking sensation goes down his throat.

Details begin to move. In a swirling motion, the branching imperfections in the marble slowly reach out into the air. Out and towards him, he tries to run only to find that his legs are wrapped around solid roots that hold him in place.

Something is very wrong. Varhas understands this by watching himself trying to use magic. He is not in the Inverse Dream, that he knows. He is also away that no Claimant uses magic in normal sleep and soon in becomes evident why.

The branching earth digs into him. The spell he is trying to use is Blink, as if to bend time and space to go elsewhere. As soon as his eye closes, the spell is successful and the space around him changes. Now, standing into pure white nothingness that stretches forever, Varhas watches as the dream actively dissolves his form. He falls to his knees, numbness encroaching, legs and hands become stiff and unresponsive.

The white nothingness above him turns into a familiar shape. Lines part in infinitesimal detail, the colorless details break into geometry that should not be.

The Claimant is shaking. His teeth clatter and grind themselves, he feels them break apart, soft as plaster, breaking and filling his mouth, dry pieces that he spits out.

In his panic, the Claimant misses this hint of an exit. The encroaching horror is too much for him to make a symbolic interpretation of anxiety and make a logical choice of waking himself from sleep.

Instead, he gurgles a sound. From the depths of his chest, the groaning wants to ask for help, but language has unraveled. Now choking in his own noise, he tries to grab a spear that is not there, he tries to stand up but his feet do not follow. Crawling on his back, the man is helpless, losing the ability to make sense of what he sees and all he witnesses are horrors.

Crawling, foreign and familiar shapes. One of them becomes a heap of flesh. Blood oozes and then reverses back into the holes that spew it out. Then, the liquids pump backwards, the flesh calms down and slowly transforms into a woman that he knows.

Kleiothyke. Beauty in a sea of horrible faces, walking towards him. The woman is dressed in pearly white. The shimmering texture of her gown glitters as she leans over him. The knees bend, she comes close and when her hands touch his face, Varhas wakes up.

Jorj is standing over him at the exact place she was. He lightly slaps the Claimant awake who is drenched in sweat.

‘Jorj? What happened?’

‘Just another nightmare Varhas.’

A flood of realization washes over the Claimant. The memories return and they sweep away all irrational fears that occur from evil dreams. He takes a deep breath, sinking back into the soft mattress. Easy ebb and flow, both men lift their thumbs as a sign that all is well.

But Varhas cannot help the doubts. Something is off.

Chapter 48

Eros And Agape

Next morning, the first person Varhas crosses paths with is Gon. Both of them have woken up earlier than the others. On the second floor of the hotel, they sit at a table, bread and butter In-between them.

‘How did you sleep?’ Asks Varhas.

‘Soundly. Rare night yesterday. No nightmares.’

Gon takes a bite of his bread, but he knows that he can only delay himself for so long.

‘Let me guess. You had trouble in your dreams last night?’

‘Gods. Gon you have no idea.’

‘I am sure I do. After all, I’ve been sharing your burden.’

‘I don’t know if I can believe that. If any Claimant of other magic said that, I would just cuss them out. But you, your Blood magic. How do you even understand dreams?’

‘How I understand dreams? That is an easy question. Rapid Eye Movement sleep, your brain is a flesh computer and in your dreams you sweep away all unnecessary information of the day.’

‘Yes, I suppose that is what everyone knows. But what do you say as a Claimant?’

‘If I was an astral Claimant, I would say that someone whispers in a machine next to your bed and that whisper guides your nightmares. Light comes out of the machine to strike the signals In-between the neurons? Is that how you people rationalize it?’

‘This should be a safe place. Things like this should not be happening here, nevermind that this is a foul crime’,

‘Of course. And as I am not an Astral Claimant, I won’t say such wrong things. Instead, I’ll speak as a Blood Theurg and tell you, that some deep part of you knows that there is another one suffering besides you. Suffering reflected is not double the pain, but half. When you go to bed, your mind empties all the horrible worries you feel during your wake. But it cannot unshackle itself from this truth. Intimate, human truths of blood as we like to call them.’

‘Do you like saying things like this? Do you like being a Blood Theurg and making me worry so?’

‘Why are you asking me this?’

‘I feel that if I had to constantly attach myself into others, just to ease this burden, I would go mad.’

‘I have never been asked that before. I do not mind being what I am. For personal reason that nobody should know, I have my own way of coming to terms with this. Blood Claimants are the dumpsters of mankind and there is nothing wrong with that. I keep gobbling up other people’s nightmares and rubbish, watching people get executed and stare at them in the eye, telling them that someone cares and watches to the very end. This is what I do.’

Varhas is pained by how casually Gon says this. Other people would try to act, bargain or outright protest when seeing horrible events happen. This man? There is something so wrong inside of him, so wrong that ends up being right. This is what he thinks and during this thought, Gon has eaten his bite and he is eager to continue the conversation.

‘You said something interesting. Attach yourself. Constantly. This is how Blood Theurgs speak about others when they meet in the Inverse Dream. Actually, this is exactly what I said to that Abyssian on Eryx.’

‘So Blood Theurgs talk shit about others?’

‘Oh. Constantly. We call you parasites, leeches. Greedy children that bite down on the tit until it bleeds.’

‘But...’

‘But what? You also do this. Astral Claimants try to divine fortune against another, they try to bind logically what is happening with its effects on the future and it all goes bad anyways. So many of you. Crying in the dark where nobody can see them. Fire, Earth, Water and Air Claimants do that too, but they keep on crying for how the world works, as if their pleas will change natural order. Death Claimants weep for what eventually happens to all, Life Claimants weep for birth itself. You are all contradicting yourselves at many turns and twists, oh yes. What else is this?’

‘What else? What do you mean?’

‘This is humanity after all.’

‘You Blood Theurgs don’t cry, you don’t feel sad is this what you are telling me? What, you are not proud when your abilities take you only so far?’

Gon changes. Something smaller than the muscles in his face, or the branches of neurons therein shifts. No more a half-light, the texture of his very soul becomes palpable in the air. The Blood Theurg is not himself, but someone else. A truth so uniform and dominating that in its wake, the buildup of a lifetime stops and it comes to replace it.

‘We only weep for others. That is why we are given the ability to take that pain and place it elsewhere. All of this can be over if you want. We can chuck the memories of horrors and your worries. Throw them back in time into another Theurg. Want to throw all of your pain into me? Or perhaps further back, do you want to lift the weight of your sins and place them into the man on the cross, or some other Blood Theurg that almost rose to be a Pantokrator?’

‘Gon what the fuck are you talking about? How can...’ Varhas does not know how to respond to this. The man is implying that the pains and worries he feels, they could perhaps ignore time and space and chuck them into someone else, as if these emotions and memories have actual physical weight. As if they can ignore space and time and have someone else experience them instead. ‘...no. Let’s just keep things... rational. I do not want to deal with so much esotericism so early... you know. I... I am not sure this is right.’

At that moment, the rest of the team enters the room. Laodike leads the others and she waves towards both Claimants. Varhas gets up to leave. Before he is outside of hearing distance, Gon speaks.

‘You are a strong man Varhas. You have no idea how many would have taken that offer. I am glad you believe that this is not right to do.’

Varhas does not reply, opting instead to quicken his step. Laodike is the first one infront of him. On her hands is a plate of cake. Behind her, Zanuvia leans over to overhear the conversation between Varhas and her daughter. While she does so, Varhas notices and motions them to come to an empty table.

Zanuvia, Laodike and Varhas sit. Laodike is the first one to speak while she leaves her breakfast into the white cloth.

‘Didn’t sleep did you?’

‘Not much. Nightmares. Jorj woke me up once or twice.’

Young Zanuvia speaks. Her voice is strange on how identical it is to her daughter’s. ‘Jorj told us all about it on the way down. You don’t have a fever do you?’

‘I don’t think so. I just need to speak Claimant to Claimant.’

‘Its too early for that Varhas.’ Speaks Laodike. Her mother lifts a hand as if to make space for Varhas to speak.

‘I talked to Gon, but his hints on dreams are... horrifying. Strangely horrible.’

‘Alright. Describe what you saw, we will try to help.’

Varhas begins to describe his dreams. He makes a conscious effort to speak of every detail he remembers and he actually succeeds into presenting almost all of it. Specifically, he describes the dream of the marble hallways that ended with Kleiothyke’s appearance. He also describes how he manifested actual Inverse Dream Astral sorcery and how he saw horrors enter his normal dreams. Strange things that have never happened before.

The two women think for a while. After that while passes in silence, Zanuvia gets up to the buffet and then she pours herself a cup of tea. Five minutes pass in silence as the two young women enjoy their breakfast in deep thought.

Then, the first one to speak is Laodike.

‘I believe that dreams are just another tide. Both of them I mean. If the Inverse dream is a rapid sea that floods the mind, then normal sleep is the ebb of that tide. In Astral terms, the Inverse dream floods a Claimant with information, foreign and strange. Sleep then empties that space and lets our minds calm down. Still, this has been going on since we first landed here no?’

‘Yes, so it is. You were the first one to suffer from nightmares however.’

‘I am frightened to speak about it. Perhaps all of this is a byproduct of coming into contact with lesser horrors in Arhoscephale?’

‘Alright. Let’s say that you suffer nightmares because of this. Why does your mother have easy sleep then? I thought both of you suffered the presence of a horror.’

Zanuvia replies. ‘That might have to do with the fact that I have felt a horror’s assault before. Decades ago. I used to suffer nightmares then. It took time to mend this deep source of worry.’

Varhas is disappointed in this answer. What they speak about is true. It perhaps is simply their proximity to horrors and he has suffered far greater contact with the foul magic. This he understands and when Zanuvia speaks of time, she hints at a very long stretch of it needed for him to be free of such torment.

‘And yet Zanuvia stopped having nightmares soon after.’

‘I don’t know what to tell you. Sleep outside the hotel? What worked for me, won’t work for you most likely.’

‘Yeah, yeah. I know, I know.’

Zanuvia speaks next. ‘We could find a dream interpreting Claimant. Perhaps you need someone that is aligned with your magic. A strong Death Claimant maybe?’

‘That is a good idea. But we cannot risk such contact. The stranger could put anything in me and our next match may go to hell. Could be a spy.’ Says Varhas, but in his mind he has already thought of that one singular person in the world that could help. Someone dear and close, someone much stronger in Death magic and one that would certainly not harm him.

‘Mother?’ Speaks Laodike. In all three of their minds, the same thought flows, but they speak of it only in close proximity. Context rules this moment and they know not to mention her name.

‘Yes?’ Replies Zanuvia.

‘Can you get me a cup too?’ Speaks the daughter and she points at the buffet.

‘Of course dear.’

Once Zanuvia leaves, Laodike turns towards Varhas. ‘There is something else on your mind. Other than the nightmares.’

‘Oh that’s nothing. Just kept thinking about... someone.’

‘The hostess? The bronze woman behind the desk?’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Varhas...’ Says Laodike and she presses two fingers in her temples, massaging away the early morning fatigue. ‘I watched you lean over the counter to get a good look.’

The man smiles. His cheeks redden with a hint of embarrassment. ‘No, I... You know. She just told me that I could sleep with her if I wanted.’

‘Lucky you. Maybe you just need a good lay.’

‘I don’t know. What if she is a spy for someone. Or...’

‘Gods! Just do it, release some stress. Who cares?’

Varhas recoils. He tries to complete his sentence but Zanuvia is back. A full cup of tea rests infront of Laodike now.

Somewhere between second-hand embarrassment of her mother listening to what she says and also, the calm beginning of a new calm day, she remains silent. What is to unravel, is so to do later and she knows not to rush fate.

Chapter 49

Work

Days pass.

The rhythm of life inside of the hotel is of much idle time, broken only by the usual work of meetings with Orichalcum and the negative replies to journalists that search for comments. Other strangers come and go into the lobby of the hotel, but they are told that there are no available rooms at this time.

Other than those who work here and those that enter the hotel only to be turned away, the only people inside of this building are the Black an White team. By choice, there is little contact with the world outside. So little in-fact, that Scaramucc and Gon usually open the blinds of a window staring down towards the wide street and they wave at the Black and White fans that have camped at the pavement. That’s all. Photographs are taken when the team appears, but there is seemingly nothing happening outside the hotel’s walls.

Zanuvia and Laodike are often found at the pools or the massage parlors. Varhas uses the gym or some of the meditation facilities, isolating and trying to avoid the roundabout invitation of the bar. Jorj spends a lot of time with Scaramucc, Otto and Hab, who explore and prepare by tiring their bodies in various activities. The Contestants fight eachother in sports, they measure the speed and agility of their bodies, or in other cases such as Scaramucc, enduring long and varied whoring sessions with the staff. Gon is pacing up and down the building trying to converse with as many of the staff members as he can, collecting experiences and earnestly wondering who they are and what they do.

In one such excursion, Gon walks into the basement of the building where the staff sleeps and spends its idle time. For some reason nobody tries to escort him away, so he stays there, watching card games, men and women ironing their shirts, cooking the predestined meals of the day and conversing with the two mythical owners of the building.

For it is so, as he notices, that most decisions and plans of the day, come in the form of personalized messages. There are no managers or intermediaries. The top brass is the two twins, who give orders directly and the flow of work is direct, in the similar manner of how Pantokrators trickle down their decisions to their priests and the priests to the men of influence and power.

At one point, he walks too close to a red and deep green bell boy that stands near a phone, speaker in hand. The short man looks at him, trying to withhold his annoyance from showing. The boy is actively trying to consume the words of his superiors and he does not know if the guest should be listening. So, the voice on the other end tells the boy to put the guest in line instead and the young man leaves.

‘Hello? This is Gon.’

The voice is of airy, almost ethereal breath, as if the woman on the other side is exhausted as well as only half awake. ‘Greetings esteemed guest. On your right there is a wooden door. Open it and head down the stairs there. After that, give a good push at the slab at the end of the corridor.’

The line shuts. Gon turns to his right and there is indeed a wooden door that he has never seen before. Perhaps, he imagines, something has revealed it now and he takes a quick step towards its mysterious form. Mysterious in how it manifested outside of his notice, but otherwise bland. Light to the push, the Claimant makes his way down finding the place as it was described. A long corridor leads into a marl door. The form is of a square, blocking entry and it takes a good shove for the white and clay-like texture to rotate around its hinges.

At entry, the Claimant finds himself inside of a cozy office. Wooden bookcases cover the walls at both the room’s end ahead, as well as to his right. The wall on the left is of limestone, shallow erosion makes it appear as a spot of many holes and natural scars, all lit by a warm orange glow from the ceiling. The glow itself is radiating from the ceiling, in a dispersion of natural sunlight that makes the furniture glossy. The sofa, the twisting wooden chairs and the large desk ahead hold a luster under this light that makes their edges rounded and bright.

Gon’s face holds a smile as he closes the distance towards the desk. The two owners wait there, sitting in their large office chairs.

Twins and Claimants, they are dressed identically in kenophobic attire. The waves of earth, limestone and marble, veins of gold and blackened coal, intermix and remind that all solid matter is layers upon layers of material. Beautiful solidified soup of material that is woven into the robes that they wear, jewelry of silver and bronze hangs by their earlobes. Yhey both have a septum at the long underside of their noses and their fingers hide behind white silk gloves that hold celestial strands withing their weave, pearly white and cyan that hides itself under the fake sunlight.

Gon cannot understand their gender as both owners are of fair features, black, shoulder-long bob hair that also forms bangs, which end just above their black eyelashes. Either could be anything and they regard him with their black eyes as if expecting him to speak first.

‘I did not know the Palici twins were so beautiful. In your own...’ He thinks swiftly. ‘...mirrored way.’

‘Hear that Polux? Our guest finds us pretty.’ Speaks the person on the left. ‘Leave them here for a month and they will be having sex with the entire hotel.’

The person on the right speaks. His voice is just a tone lower. ‘Please do ignore my sister’s dirty manner of speech.’

‘I do not mind.’ Says Gon. His eyes fall on a pair of objects lying on the wooden desk. There are stacks of papers and two counterweights in the shape of horses, one black, the other white. ‘I am just glad to meet out hosts.’

The sister speaks. ‘We are glad to have you here. I am Castor, Polux on my left. Is there anything we can do for you Gon?’

‘I am not sure of that myself. I was just going around...’

‘...doing Blood Theurg activities. Asking the staff where they are from and what they do. Right?’

‘Exactly so. I do hope I did not overstay my welcome.’

Polux speaks. ‘None at all. We have had Claimants of your type here before. Did our staff members please your human to human interactions?’

Gon lights up at this question. He nods in approval. The wide smile on his face appears earnest. The brother finds it silly, but the sister does well to hide her surprise. ‘Yes, yes. I talked to this young bell boy yesterday. Quite interesting. He is from Machaka. He told me of the savannas and their tall baobab trees. Lions too. Fascinating. I talked to this half-Abyssian laundry man just today. Had to keep my distance yes. Isn’t it interesting how he has to keep that woolen overcoat on him at all times? He must have been cold, while I was sweating bullets in the laundry room.’

‘Yes, yes. Very exciting stuff.’ Says the sister. A half smirk on her face remains long enough for Gon to notice it. The Blood Claimant smiles back.

Polux speaks. ‘It is our pride and joy to offer complete services to our guests. Nobody must leave the Grand Sicela hotel without feeling his experience was to his very personalized liking.’

‘Of course. A sure sign of quality!’ Says Gon and before he finishes, Castor slowly gets up and walks behind her brother, going towards one of the bookcases.

‘I am glad you see it so.’

‘Though, I cannot help but think. This quality is universal.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Well... Back when we stayed at Eryx, on that townhouse, I still felt this... quality.’

‘Of course. We have extended some of our services for this very reason. For the Black and White. But then again, you lowered your standards, that place was to your liking anyways.’

‘I have also felt this way inside of the two bunkers, I have to say.’

‘My point still stands. If anything, that tells us you can enjoy both the poverty of life as much as its pampering nature. Yes?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Thought in your case Gon, you just care to only have interesting people around you. So long as Scaramucc is there, you could find a ramshackle shack as comfortable as our finest suite. Have I guessed correctly?’

Gon smiles. ‘Indeed. I wonder if that works for the rest of my teammates.’

‘My guess is that is true so long as Zanuvia is with Laodike. Likewise for the two men that follow them. Scaramucc is pleased so long as we have enough decadent joys for him.’

‘It seems I have nothing to say. You know us better than ourselves. What about Jorj and Varhas?’

‘That is a tough one. I don’t think there is a place in this universe where these two can be satisfied. For Jorj I would guess that will not matter shortly. For Varhas? There is nothing we can do. We cannot bring Nidavangr into a room.’

The sister speaks on the background. ‘Man is dead inside. He is doomed to wander and nothing may be done for his nightmares of his. Time heals all wounds, but unfortunately we do not have the ability to sell time in this hotel.’

‘It is possible though. There must be a machine out there, to heal his worries.’

The brother replies. ‘Machine? Yes. But you would have to get it, along with the Claimants that operate it, at an exorbitant price. A single win in the Contest will not cover it, unless of course these operators did this out of the pureness of their heart. Personally I know nothing of the short. It would have to be some acceleration of time, some experience that would make him understand some other truth that is so foreign to his very soul.’

‘Bummer.’ Speaks Gon. However, at that response, both brother and sister glance at eachother. The sister nods for the brother to push further.

‘Yes. Regarding that “healing” of Varhas. You however know of a way. You spoke of it a few days ago during breakfast. We heard.’

Gon sinks into the chair. He feels a wave of anxiety wash over him and earnest embarrassment move his fingers into an anxious cusp.

‘Sorry. Won’t happen again.’

‘It is not for us to know how Blood magic works. Matter of fact, we do not want to know how you can influence other people into ease. Frankly, we fear the costs of your magic and we know first hand how it is your magic that gives birth to horrors and just plain misfortune. We do not want out establishment to invite such things. So you will never make that offering again.’

‘No. Yes, you are right. I expressed my weakness.’

‘Weakness?’ Speaks Castor. ‘The machines drummed in such grand and powerful magic when you spoke of this... heaving of pain into others. You think this type of magic is weak?’

Gon thinks. He wants to reveal exactly the sacrifices one makes with Blood magic, but so to remain indefinable, to not reveal any secrets that might eventually turn into curses for the twins.

‘I cannot speak of it, but foul magic is mine to bear. Many search for ways to take advantage of this, but it never ends well. And all the loopholes man makes with his rational invention of logic, they never work with Blood magic. I...’

The sister is back from the bookcase. She stands right besides Gon and her left arm coils around his shoulder. Weightless, the touch is felt in earnest, but Gon tries to steady his speech and he only finds a singular memory, pressing its way out of his brain and into language.

‘...Just before we came here, some Ulmites joined us for a night. They came in, bearing gifts of steel. A sword for Otto and rejuvenation for Zanuvia. When they were leaving some Meconians attacked their ship. A spear was thrown during their ascend and I had to witness a... jump.’

‘You mean a space-time folding jump? A glimpse?’

‘Yes.’

Polux breathes deeply. His head falls forwards and two hands cup over his face, covering it in its entirety.

‘Gods.’ Says Castor. ‘How are you doing?’

‘I am doing well. Nothing horrible has happened yet and you are the first to find out about this.’

The twins are dying to ask about what the Claimant has seen. They know however that testing their luck with forbidden knowledge only leads to one thing. Misfortune. Divine and fated, unbroken promise of very bad things to happen. If not tomorrow, then ten years down the line, perhaps a lifetime later maybe, but certain.

‘Every captain and every Claimant knows to not stare into the abyssal depths of such technology. But what actually happens to those that break this rule?’

The sister speaks. ‘There are no recorded happenings. Perhaps the Pantokrators themselves expunge records such as these. Perhaps you may find yourself turned into a... horror. If not tomorrow, years down the line. Who is to say? And who is that person that has seen such misfortune and wrote it down for others to take caution. That we do not know Gon.’

Her hand softly massages the Claimant on his back.

‘Maybe a Pantokrator can help?’ Asks Gon.

‘I honestly doubt that the Tyrant of Mecone would be of any help. And neither would Varhas’ mother help you. f I had to guess, they are greatly offended by this. The Gods slay horrors and horrible futures, they do not mend them or return them to normalcy. Matter of fact, the thing you said about the Ulmites and the Meconians.’

‘What of it?’

‘Five giants were ritualistically sacrificed two days ago. With what you said, I am certain it was those that threw the spear against the ship. They saw the glimpse too. Their lives are already forfeit. And I can only imagine how painfully they died. Of equal magnitude must have been the torment in their final moments, so as to somehow balance out the grave misdeed that they did.’

‘But they did not know.’

‘Does it matter? A man gazes at the mystery of space travel and it is the same type of misdeed as the kinslayer of old Earth. I heard they were killed by...’

The sister stops her brother from speaking. She frowns and becomes visibly angry at what her brother was about to say.

Gon however wants to know. And in this knowing need, he puts a hand out towards the sister.

‘How?’

‘Scaphism.’

The word cuts deep. Gon recoils as pain actually manifests into his chest. There are horrible images that manifest in his fantasy and his face contorts in effort. An earnest try to sway himself away from imagining the horrible torment of Scaphism. The boats, the insects and the vermin.

‘Enough.’ Speaks Castor. ‘Gon is our guest. We shall treat him as it pleases him. No more of this.’

‘Apologies dear sister. I hope, I did not ruin your day Gon.’

‘No.’ Speaks Gon. In a steady voice and a surrender, he manages to pull a thin layer of merriment over his manners. ‘It is best that I know. This is my burden to bear, my ass is made to sit on donkeys as a friend told me.’

The twins do not laugh at his awkward joke. After all, who but Scaramucc knows the meaning of this joke?

Nobody, thinks Gon. Nobody. And perhaps it is so that nobody must ever know of the weight that has been placed into his shoulders.

The sister makes a motion to speak. Her mouth hangs open only for a moment, before her brother can look at her and put a stop.

‘Well...’ Speaks Gon to break the silence. ‘I suppose our tabs are in otherwise good order?’

‘Yes. The tyrant of Mecone and Orichalcum has covered the costs for everything in the premises. You know, Varhas should really take any offer that comes his way.’

‘I don’t think I understand.’

Castor speaks. ‘The bronze girl.’

‘Who?’

‘Just tell him to go to bar at night. He knows. Our sex providers are more than skilled. He should take the offering.’

‘I have no idea what you are talking about.’ Says Gon with a smile. ‘Varhas was offered sex? By who?’

‘I think you spoke to her a few days ago. Bronze-skinned woman. She was there when you were given the keys.’

‘Way to go! Sure. I will tell him that. Oh. Before it slips my mind. Varhas has a nice ring in his pockets. I think he is looking for a special someone. You think that the desk attendant and him are a good match?’

The easy swap on Gon’s happy attitude catches the twins off guard. They both frown in earnest curiosity, wholly unaware that Varhas has someone on his mind, if he is to carry some jewelry with him. From what they know, there isn’t anyone around for him to marry. From what they know, Varhas has nobody in his life other than the team.

Gon expects the awkward silence. But he notices that the twins look at eachother with something more. A hidden plot that seems to have just been shaken.

Then, the sister takes initiative and speaks. Gon however has already stood up and he bows a farewel to the twins. ‘Just be careful Gon. I will be here if you need to talk.’

The brother frowns at the offering. Gon smiles earnestly as he walks closer towards the white door. Then, in a sly mannerism he smirks as he makes a joke.

‘Is that an offering of sensual pleasures Castor?’

The woman blushes. Where Gon jokes, she feels the sentence hit her hard as an accurate see-through of her intentions.

Before she can speak again, Gon replies in a wide smile as he pushes the door open. ‘Farewell. Castor, perhaps you should know beforehand that Blood Claimants can only offer elegant experiences of doomed romance.’

***

The door closes and the twins remain alone. After a few seconds of complete silence, Polux looks at Castor and the woman shyes away from his eyes.

In the silence of the room, there are no eyes or ears listening anymore. The twins are certain, that in this underground and tiny dominion, they are in complete isolation. As they choose it.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Me? I did nothing. He is the one that offered himself.’

‘Castor, we are playing both sides. We cannot risk any more contact with the team.’

‘I know. I know. I promise I won’t see Gon.’

‘We are walking a thin line. You must not feel sorry for these people.’

‘I know!’ Says Castor and she slams the desk with her hand.

‘Varhas must meet with the bronze woman.’ Says Polux, but Castor is overtaken by the Blood Theurg’s last sentence, on doomed romances and some deeper human hue that paints her soul in a bitter passage.

Chapter 50

Movie Night

Any desire can be quickly satisfied on the premises of Grand Sicela hotel.

To that end, some moment happens where Varhas looks at Jorj and he remembers the promise they made on the previous match.

It does not take him long to find a room that has a brand new Tele-Stim device. Wireless and without antennas or a controller, it appears that the device can only be operated by a Claimant. The big, translucent screen is as large and wide as a man and one could easily mistake it for a mirror left there inside of a room with no furniture.

By the time it takes for Varhas to go back to Jorj and tell him to follow him, the Tele-Stim room changes. From empty, it becomes full of floor pillows, a sofa, a dark red carpet and a small fridge.

The Claimant imagines that he wasn’t gone for less than a few minutes. The thought that someone always watches comes back into him, but he has known this from the start. Matter of fact, he realizes, it has been so since... since when?

Certainly on Arhoscephale, even if the sacred warriors and horror hunters came in just a moment too late. Definitely on Mecone, even when they roused the helots. Perhaps, the further back he remembers, they weren’t watched so intensely. Or those that kept an eye on them were fewer. Someone always kept watch, prepared the ground for their arrival. But in such swiftness?

Before he sits down into the pillows, he thinks that they are at the mercy of their host and the thought rouses up a hint of discontent.

Jorj lies on the pillows. He watches as Varhas remains idle, lost in thought, but his body is otherwise tense. The Claimant leans forwards, as a hunchback that has no idea how to operate the machine ahead.

‘Varhas. Sit right. Don’t strain your back, lean down.’

The Claimant wakes up. ‘Spoken like old Zanuvia. Just need to turn this thing on.’

Half there, a short jump into the Inverse Dream operates the machine. The translucent surface dims, almost losing its natural texture under a pressing shadow. Then, swirls begin to manifest on its surface and the machine hums with a low ambience, fans and crystals barely filling with movement and energy.

The Tele-Stim device floods the room with shadows. In a stretch of light, bending and hiding shapes become it and soon, there is a first person viewpoint, an image of a Contestant running in a concrete and seemingly empty arena.

Varhas leans back. The two men watch as the action picks up pace and texture. Through the machine they both watch the innards of some foreign powerarmor.

Nobody from the team has kept up with the matches that happened before them. Only in name, the Claimants took a look into who won, without actually going through the matches themselves. Even so, Varhas and Jorj remember the Announcement of Colours and they understand who they are following.

They are watching one of the first matches of the Contest. From the viewpoint of the Teal and White team, they understand that the powerarmor they follow, has an aesthetic of steppe-like peoples and their patterns. The eyes of the Contestant are always gazing into the armor’s visor, as if a great and flat horizon stretches ahead. And indeed it is so, that the machine presses and stretches the light coming into the Contestant’s eyes. This man’s field of view is great, he can move his eyes to stare behind him without needing to turn his head. Inside the machine and around him, there is a repeating pattern. Squares and flowery shapes, they too stretching, latching onto his face and radiating when the man fires his weapon.

On the other side, the opponent is a familiar Contestant. Both men know that they have faced the half-Meconian during their Kingmaker match on Mecone. It is the Orange and Green team against them. Fenrika and her sly way of fighting.

The two teams battle for a while and strange things occur during this replay. As it was on Mecone, it appears that the same type of Claimant magic happens against the Steppe people. The Teal and White machinery bleeds from within. The sly fox works her roguery and soon the match turns into long skirmishes. No matter how accurate and all-seeing the Teal and White Contestants are with their slim and oval powerarmors, the opponents are always a step ahead, threading dangerous needles whenever fatigue creeps in.

Soon the match is over. Jorj seems pleased and then he talks.

‘The way they pulled back and then attacked again and again seemed familiar. Reminded me of the match on Mecone.’

‘Of course. The Orange and Green team was Fenrika’s. Remember the half-Meconian Contestant?’

‘I do, I do. Guy felt like a truck had smashed into me.’

Someone knocks at the door. The two men stare away from the machine and while Varhas gets up to see who it is on the other side, Jorj walks towards the fridge to get beer. When Otto and Laodike come in, Jorj decides to take four.

‘What are you watching?’

‘One of the first matches. The Teal and White versus the Orange and Green.’ Replies Varhas. ‘Wanna join?’

All four of them sit down. Cold beverage in hand, they begin to talk as the Tele-Stim device recalibrates.

‘One thing I never understood.’ Says Otto. ‘Is why we didn’t look at the matches before we fought those teams. Would have gotten us prepared.’

‘Or fooled.’ Says Varhas. ‘Besides, their names and races and colours reveal all there is to know about them beforehand. The Teal and White team was made of nomads and steppe cultured people. They gazed far and shot more accurately. Speed was their game also, hunting tactics. Things like that.’

‘I guess the Orange and Green game was a difficult hunt then.’ Speaks Jorj.

Otto replies to Varhas. ‘I am talking about the Purple and Red team. The one we fought in the big centipede.’

‘Yes. That was a mistake perhaps. Speaking about them, let’s see how they did.’

With two Claimants focusing, this time the Tele-Stim surface ebbs and flows in greater lengths of colour. As flowing depth, mixed with dark undertones and layers, the image changes again. This time however, they are not inside of a powerarmor, but their eye follows a top-down view. The spectacle flows from within hidden cameras and the various Contestants jump and sprint behind cover, around corners and over large gaps. In the arena, there is little light by way of flashing. A thunderstorm in the distance gives texture to the ground, light plastered into wooden beams and propped blocks of desert granite.

Flanked by dungeon and darkness, two teams appear, both of them in Gymnete light armor. One is pearly white, the texture of clouds and clear blue skies appears on both their clothes as well as skin. The other, is a mismatched set of four Contestants, white, red, brown and pale, they appear unique, but only uniform in their utterblack light armor. The Airyan team can be distinguished by the very pale hue of skin on their Contestants and the thin, weightless shape of body. It is as if they hold little muscle over their bones and their movements are gentle, rapid and agile, opting heavily to dodge and gain advantage via their swiftness. Whereas, the Purple and Red team that appeared as the Four Apocalyptic Horsemen, is a mismatch of Contestants. Hard to predict and even harder to distinguish who the Contestants are, they play around the fights by exchanging positions, feigning attacks and giving strategic openings to lure the opponents into traps.

Since the Gymnete armors offer little technological depth, there is almost no grand Claimant magic bending the wires and lights, self-harming of boosting a Contestant’s ability.

In its purest, almost naked form of the Contest, the spectacle continues for the next twenty minutes. The kills rack up and as expected, the team of mercenaries, the Purple and Red team is victorious. Still, the match is close. At eight to ten kills, the final stretch of minutes is a very tight set of odds. The mercenaries barely manage the win, butchered and missing limbs by the various clatter of flak cannons and heavy bullets, they endure through the extreme agility and accuracy of the Airyans. The only discernible detail of superiority is on the fact that their Contestants cling harder onto life. Seconds of crippled aim and delirious effort give then what little tenacity they need to push further than the other team.

‘Hardy bunch those mercenaries.’ Says Otto.

‘Yeah. Even when they were all fused inside of the centipede, they still hanged to life after Jorj fell through them.’ Replies Laodike.

Before anyone else can comment, the Tele-Stim screen swaps into a different kind of match. Still, they are watching the same team, the Purple and Red, at their second match against the team of Orange and Green that Varhas and Jorj previously watched. Again from the viewpoint inside of a powerarmor, the screens, enveloping circuitry, levers and metal tubes arch around the visual spectacle. They are inside of the Orange and Green team, as perhaps hinted by the surrounding hues of bright colour. Scents of forestry and animal musk fill the gap from Contestant to machine and into the man’s eyes they follow, watching the violence happen ahead.

Where in the Steppe people the visual stimuli was stretched, here it is compacted, superimposing itself ahead. With Claimant magic now working in full, illusions invade the Contestant’s sights. In true alignment to the Purple and Red’s tactics, this match is decided by how many underhanded tricks the mercenaries can pull.

Amidst the flat length of an old hippodrome, where Fenrika’s’ team should be able to work their own blench of sabotage, the powerarmors instead fight in a rhythm of caution. Most shots from either side are off by a small margin. Lanzas misfire often and their blue light strikes towards fake silhouettes. Where one team tries to sabotage the functions of the powerarmors, the others are already there, messing with what the Contestants see, hear or smell.

At odd intervals, the Claimants speak out of turn. Their voices are mimicked by the mercenaries and Fenrika is heard speaking in loud commands that they appear out of place for the foxy Claimant.

Forty minutes later, the slow breakdown of powerarmors under heavy fire takes its toll. The mercenaries struggle to move, but their aim becomes more accurate by the shot. Whatever cybernetic battles are fought, they are evidently won by those that disguised themselves in apocalyptic shapes. Desperate, in a reminisce of the battle on Mecone, a Contestant removes his helmet. Jorj thinks that the man is trying to replicate what he did on that match against them. He is right, but the outcome is very different. One of the mercenaries has never fired his rifle in this match. When such unarmored opportunity appears, he shoots his opponent on the head and a mocking voice resounds on the machinery of the Orange and Green team. The illusions worked. The frustrated Contestants disobey their Claimants and soon, one by one the Purple and Red team scores kill after kill, ending the match.

‘They tried it.’ Says Jorj.

‘Aye. This is why Contestants and Claimants should trust eachother.’ Replies Varhas.

‘Tried to pull off what we did on Mecone. Got his head shot right off.’

‘Of course. Back then, Anax thought of this tactic well in advance. Your powerarmor blew off not a moment sooner. Me and him had that worked out well before the match began.’

‘And you knew it was gonna protect me against the Arbiter pistol?’

‘Anax knew. Anax was certain, even when I had my doubts.’ Says Varhas. Hollow of voice, he sounds however neither empty or sad. A moment of silence follows as he takes a deep drink out of his can.

Breaking this moment, Laodike speaks. ‘Now that I think about it, the mercenaries didn’t use any illusions against us. I do not remember Otto’s armor showing me things that weren’t true.’

‘Yes.’ Says Varhas. ‘Not sure if they had to focus their magic on making the centipede work. Strange form of a machine, even stranger their magic. My guess is that they worked their magic in another way. More... Overarching illusions. More... narrative illusions instead, just hinting us into rushing into the match. If I had to guess, we would perhaps see and feel their magic in the random soldiers around us if we went in earlier.’

‘You mean to say that if we didn’t listen to Jorj, we would go in fighting random warriors and wearing our suits down against them.’

‘Perhaps. Most likely so. Then a giant centipede would lunge at us after we had taken care of the random bystanders and devoured us one by one.’

‘Blame your certainty for that.’

‘They almost played us. What can I say. Illusions go well beyond what one can see or hear.’

Otto speaks and jokes. ‘We should rub Jorj’s head before our last match. Man is lucky.’

The four of them raise their cans to toast Jorj. However, another knock at the door turns their heads and Laodike gets up to see who it is.

Who else but her mother and father? Scaramucc is also there. The three of them enter and sit down on the pillows. Scaramucc takes his place at the sofa which sits further back.

‘Gon? Where is Gon?’ Says Laodike.

‘No idea.’ Replies Scaramucc. ‘Maybe he got the balls to chase after some tail... Unlike someone else in this room.

Varhas straightens his lips, half-drooping eyes becoming idle and bored at what is coming. ‘Everybody knows? Really?’

‘I didn’t say anything. Mom figured it out on her own.’

‘Oh please. I’ve seen plenty of young men tormented by the woes of lust. You think I haven’t seen Varhas peek through the corners on the lobby? He is always looking out for someone. My guess would be that bronze and naked...’

‘Gods. Stop. Okay, we get it.’ Varhas says in a desperate protest.

Jorj turns towards Laodike, asking inaudibly who they are talking about. Then, he turns to Varhas, but the Claimant waves his hand to diffuse his curiosity.

‘Are we gonna watch or? Speaks Varhas.

In concentrated silence, whoever is in the room turns towards the screen and the colours begin to swirl again, now with greater intensity and fill since three Claimants work in unison to control the Tele-Stim device. Light floods the room, in intense devouring of texture the images spin and crash towards Claimants and Contestants.

The room becomes hot. Vapors almost become real in the air and the screen deepens into a bizarre, superimposed frame of a powerarmor without a helmet. From the view of a Machakan Contestant, it appears that there is no alloy enveloping the man’s eyes. Instead, colours, scents and sounds are more intense, as if directly in contact with the world around them, uncovered and scouring a barren and uneven valley. Their opponents are the Abyssians, who are in their familiar powerarmors of steel and bulky design. Flaming forms, shimmering air covers their blackened shape and they contrast clearly with the hilly earth.

The match is short. The Machakans fight in very inaccurate, but tenacious plan of battle. They fall on their bellies, roll and dodge the assaults of the Abyssians, seemingly dancing around them. The Abyssians appear to work their foul magic, withstanding the skirmish and ravaging what barebone armor covers the Machakans with temperature fluctuations. Soon, the ebony-skinned Contestants become fatigued and their assault crawls into an even rhythm that favors the Abyssians. Lanza shots find their mark, flak cannons pound flesh and the light Kithaironic pelt powerarmors soon collapse and reveal vulnerable flesh that parts and paints the dirt in red.

‘That was one-sided.’ Says Zanuvia.

The team agrees silently and soon it becomes apparent that they have gone through every match of the Left pathway.

‘Can we watch the Right bracket now?’ Speaks Otto. The three Claimants that are present, focus their attention into scouring the wires. The Tele-Stim machine swaps colours, showing random images of incoherent violence. There are hints that these images are infact grounded in reality, that is, that they are of the other bracket and pathway of matches, but they never seem to manifest for longer than halves of a second. In that flashing rhythm, nobody can make sense of what they are watching and soon enough Varhas, Laodike and Zanuvia, give up. The three Claimants rub their faces and they frown.

‘It appears not. At least, I... we can’t.’ Replies Varhas. The Claimants know that the mysteries concealing the records of the matches fought on the other side of the ladder, are larger than them and the curtains or chains that hold them as such, are strong and of manifold density.

‘Oh well. Anything else on the screen?’

Varhas replies to Jorj. ‘Sure, what do you want to see?’

‘Let us go... for... Sicela news broadcasts?’

‘Oh fuck off Jorj.’

***

A few rooms nearby, there is a single wall that separates two people. Thick and tiled, there is a damp silence in either room and the two forms sit idle. Both have their back on the wall and neither is making any sound, wholly contained into their own thoughts that are so very loud.

Minute by minute, these thoughts become unbearable. In such inability, the emotions spew out and tears begin to form. The face presses itself into a silent wailing and one may listen to nothing, not even the tears flowing down and hitting the floor.

Gon struggles. Without any stimuli, the man only runs along to his wild imagination. He thinks that perhaps right next door, on another such silent room, there is Castor, sitting frozen in time, scouring her mind too for little moments that are better left unfulfilled. For it is him that is in pain. Worry mixed with a longing that he knows well to be momentary and passionate latching. Gon is aware, that what he feels is true, but more true than that is the misfortune that is to happen. And it will happen. Not only to him, but also the people around him. He is cursed and if pain shared is half the pain, misfortune is only as such, immovable and indivisible. He knows in equal turn, that sudden love is doubly made so and nullified in absence.

The Blood Theurg asks himself. Who is he to close the distance with Castor? But he finds himself answering the question as if split apart. The mind wants her as much as it scorns their meeting. The body abhors her as much as it attracts itself to her form by way of romantic guilt. Simply, he imagines, what if more than that, she is right besides him, less than a meter in distance. Is she too, thinking as such?

Gon runs out of tears. He feels the droplets dry out and crack as he throws a desperate smile. The Claimant smiles, for throughout this pain, he imagines that it is all human. Neither he, or his magic begs to throw this wanton lust away. He simply gets up.

Nerves and soft tissue sits on his bones as a rag thrown over a pole. In a slow momentum, his legs reach towards the wooden door and he struggles to push it open.

A sharp fear slices through him. Just as he closes the door behind him, Castor exits the room next to his.

The two stare at eachother for a second and the second gives way to a smile. The muscles on both of their faces tense and stretch as if they have just remembered their function. The man’s eyes seem to look through the woman’s silk and luster dress. Her’s blink once, then twice and in every short lapse, it is as if her mind surrenders to the moment that is happening infront of them.

‘Castor.’

‘Gon.’

‘I was going for a walk.’

Castor does not reply. She remains stiff and silent as the man picks up pace. There is a distance of a few centimeters between the two and that distance remains for as long as they walk towards the end of the corridor. Gon’s pace is slow. The woman’s is even slower, but neither rushes ahead.

As the corridor turns, so do the man’s eyes. The glance is met by Castor who quickly turns ahead as if her emotion fades. And fading still, the two walk as such, bearing the common unspoken burden until one can bear it no longer.

Infront of room 2046, Castor’s legs refuse to continue. Her fingers latch into his robes and the man reaches out into the handle of the room to open it.

Chapter 51

Horror Marks

Slow and waning, the light in this room is a hue that makes two naked bodies blend in warm diffusion. If either of them was to make a move, it would be done under this design, an embracing, warm and romantic spot in time and space.

But neither of them takes their clothes off. Castor leans on the bed, putting her legs into the blankets without taking her shoes off. Gon sits on the edge.

Either Claimant opts instead to stare at other objects. A red lamp, old wooden decor and patters with soft lines copied in rows and linoleum over every surface. The desk besides Gon has a packet of cigarettes. The ashtray is of black glass and the lighter is bronze.

Lost in thought, he picks up the cigarettes and lighter as if he has never seen them before. Indeed, he realizes, that all the mundane things around them, even the press of the mattress, are wholly uncovered. Things revealed as if he sees them for the first time in his life.

Sinking, neither talks but only with their fingers. The packet opens, Castor takes a cigarette that Gon lights as soon as it reaches her lips.

And how long he watches, it seems more like drawn out time, ebbing and flowing, sinking and delving. She has crimson lips, either, of a slightly different hue. The lower lip is red, pink at the edges, gently detailing the creases. The upper lip is darker, smooth and supple with a darkening shadow that blends on the colour of the skin. As she pulls the cigarette, her lips unfurl, her neck tenses and relaxes.

But her eyes never regard Gon.

That only happens after he turns around to light his cigarette and leave the lighter on the desk. Castor’s eyes watch the back of his neck. How his curls of orange float and arch over his nape. The whiteness underneath broken by strands of hair. She follows his ears as the lobes twist and turn, their form frozen in flesh and still beating with infinitesimal heartbeat. Pink and red life.

Both of them become drawn by lust. An assault begins on them that only lasts a few seconds. One wants to lean in closer to the woman, to enjoy as the heart throbs in agony while he closes the distance for a kiss. The other wants to creep forwards and bite the man. They want their fingers to touch the other’s texture, to dig deep into wherever is soft.

‘Touch me.’ Thinks Castor. Gon listens as the very same words manifest at the bottom of his soul.

The man turns his head and as his eyes stare at the ceiling, Castor retreats her gaze, focusing on the nothing ahead.

Gon lays down. The woman flicks the ashes on the floor. Curtains of blue smoke rise up, up and passing infront of the room’s light. The swirls break apart in agonizing ease, the air ripples closer and closer to a full stop.

This slow agony continues. Neither man or woman moves. They simply stand there, shimmering on top of a burning sensation in their chests, drowning in the pressure of their bloodstream.

At that little thread that binds them into nothing, it seems to both that it is made of pure celestial light. A thread, thinner than silk, sharper than sword, holds them in place. Gon and Castor realize what it is.

Castor thinks to herself that she has to betray the man perhaps. Even if he is never to understand, she owes him half as much to be gentle about it. She owes herself the pleasure of being faithful, virtuous to the ideas that she fashioned, the plans, the wanton lusts themselves, the Gods that judge them all, but most importantly, the man besides her. For it is not only the ill fate that makes her pity him, but the fact that she wants to share it, binds her tighter yet. If she is to make a move now, she will regret it forever.

And to where the woman stays, so does Gon. For him, there is a weird mix of satiety in these moments. Little beggar of life, as someone has called him in the past, so he tries to consume that which is happening now. His body is boiling, but he is so close that he can almost taste the coolness. He stands at a thin line where fates meet and he knows that what he feels is true. He knows also, that the woman is to suffer on his behalf. The best course of action is to do nothing. To stand at the tipping point and to take the pain in.

What neither of them thinks however, is about tomorrow. The day after that, the months, the years down the line. If either could witness that future, they would jump at eachother. But none may do so, if they themselves are not made of celestial light. For this shimmering agony that they feel, is going to be there for ever.

Time passes. In this time Castor can only muster the courage to make her fingers pass through Gon’s hair, softly touching, almost petting. And Gon can do nothing more than lay on the woman’s thigh. Gently laying over her dress, listening to her inaudible noise, dreaming of a time where this agony will leave.

***

Softly, the door closes behind Varhas. The voices of the rest of the team become hushed and he creeps ahead. Then come stairs and hallways and the man is at the lobby. Nobody seems to be around. From the glass windows orange and white light passes from the streetlamps and into the marble interior.

He did not speak of excuses that he was going to look for Gon. They would not believe him and he would not believe himself either.

Foreign voices fill his head. Once comes Scaramucc and his light jokes, another comes Laodike with her slight disgust. It is not like he has no voice, but whenever possible, at times of calmness, Varhas loved this silence.

And equally at such lack of noise, the hotel follows diligently.

When he crosses the lobby and passes under the doorway of the bar, he notices the place holding this diligent quality. There is welcoming, knowing that all is as expected. Welcoming and safe.

The Bronze woman is waiting. Just as he prefers, guessed or calculated, she is now dressed, in a white dress that leaves her metallic back uncovered in a V shape. Her shoulders are elegantly ahead, resting at the wooden surface and she turns her head sideways, glancing at Varhas. She has sharp lines at the end of her eyelids, these aggressive shapes follow towards her sideburns where they blend in with straight hair that binds in two grandiose, but otherwise small buns behind her ears. Auburn mixes with black, her strands have depth of colours and puff, the texture is both wavy and straight.

Varhas goes near. He sits on the bar stool, as high as he was in walking, as certain as he has never been before, drawing any anxious thought away by choosing to not think.

There is no barman. Only a bottle of whiskey and a pair of glasses with ice blocks inside.

‘I never quite got your name.’

‘Dorothea.’

‘Dorothea. Gift of god, I have a niece with the same name.’

‘Weird name for a Nidavanger.’

Varhas is surprised by this. She is correct, that names like this are not usually given to peoples who have little to no connection to the planets of Mecone, or that of Arhoscephale. In some other language, where the name derives a deeper meaning, he knows of that origin.

‘Never got around to asking my sister why she chose that one. You are proficient in the origins of cultures?’

‘It is a fun little activity. Mistress Castor teaches us from time to time, she says it helps good hosts to understand their guests.’

In his lack of deeper thought, Varhas does not decide if the woman is versed in Claimancy. He does not care if she is commoner or otherwise.

Dorothea nods towards the bottle. Varhas picks the bottle up and pours two drinks that are almost full. The woman softly rolls her eyes at this very generous gesture.

‘Quite the non-gentleman.’

‘It bothers you?’

‘Greatly.’ Says the woman and there is evident change that the Claimant sees. Her attitude slowly changes to a bossy indignation, as if she understands more and more of him and replies in mannerism, custom-tailored to his preference. And indeed it is so, that as soon as Varhas has seen her roll her eyes, or he has heard the flatness in her last word, she becomes that much more exciting.

‘I like a conversation that is hard to crack.’

‘You are a man of difficulties Varhas?’

‘Not by choice.’

‘Really? Do you think you lack action, or that it simply does not matter?’

‘The latter. Whichever way I act, the outcome is the same.’

‘That is a bleak way to think. For a man that pours half-full glasses.’

‘It is my way.’

‘It is bleak and imprisoning.’

This reply makes Varhas smile. Two out of three magics within him are so. The bleak and certain way of Death magic, the imprisoning cut-and-measure chase of the future of Astral magic. He wants to see if she is so good with speech that she can also see the free and moving hue of Air magic within him.

‘And yet I feel so free in my choices.’

The woman blinks. Her eyes search and search for a reply to humor him, but she ony draws a smirk on her lips.

‘Free. Well I suppose you were free to come to the bar earlier. You kept me waiting, I kept looking at the swirls of smoke.’

She takes a cassetine of cigarettes from a small bag to her side. The lighter is shiny and the sticks are slim. As she puffs on one, she makes a conscious effort to blow the smoke away, but almost directly besides Varhas.

‘You are very good at this.’

‘What? Smoking?’ Says Dorothea, but she smiles through, revealing a hint that she can also be playful. At choice. ‘I am glad this is to your liking.’

‘Liking? This goes beyond that. Immaculate perhaps. Just like the services here.’

‘So I am just service to you?’

‘No, no. That is not what I meant.’

‘But I am that. You are aware this is my job.’

Varhas leans over his drink. He eyes the woman once more and then his face becomes idle. Joy and problem mix inside of him.

Dorothea grabs the initiative and she continues. ‘What exactly are you searching for Varhas? A woman?’

‘I have a feeling our definition of that word is a little bit different.’ Says the Claimant. The wedding ring inside of his pocket suddenly grows heavy, as if just now he understands that it has weight and it touches his skin through the fabric. His hand goes over the pocket as if to make sure that it is actually there.

‘What do you have there?’ Says the woman and she reaches out into the man. Her sharp fingertips touch the ring over the pocket and she feels the golden metal, twist into a circle. ‘A ring?’ She laughs. ‘You mean to propose to me? Not even a meeting after?’ The laughter becomes louder, the woman’s facade drops for this instant, as her howling breaths and giggles fill the empty bar. ‘Gods! You are...’

Varhas tightens in a passage of shame. ‘...pathetic?’

‘No, I was going to say cute. You are way too good looking to say that.’

The Claimant however seems to still struggle with his thoughts. Seeing as he does not reply, Dorotea leans closer to him, sharp fingers passing over his shoulder. Strangely, both of them are flustered. Under her bronze skin, the woman is deepening in colours around her cheeks and eyes. Varhas’ red change appears equally distributed, but deeper underneath his face, wholly visible around his ears and his one remaining, tired eye.

Dorothea watches as his face replies in kind. With a slow lift of her hand, it arches over his shoulder and her cold edges slowly close around one of his ears, softly massaging it.

‘It is funny to say, but many have come and went, few have thrown themselves at me... so surrendered. So weak and yet they are anything but that.’

‘Many?’

‘There is no shame in what I do. You have been with priestesses before? You’ve been with women of the night?’

‘I have.’

‘Then you know. Fortnight or years, there can be devotion given, if only asked for. I can be yours if only you say it.’

‘You would leave this place for me?’

‘We could work something out. Is this a problem?’

‘Hardly. But I think you misunderstand me. Or what I feel right now.’

‘You are looking for something permanent. I understand.’

‘Yes, but beyond that. Something deeper. Something that I can say I will not go against, years, months down the line.’

‘Meaning?’

‘I am not a stable man. I would hide my feelings at every turn, only to see them come out violent and foul. It always ends this way. Minor things stack up inside of me and when I speak them out, the words cut, they hurt. This is who I am.’

‘You worry too much. There is no need to marry me. We can be together, rest your soul with me for a while.’

But Varhas’ mind returns not to anyone, but that priestess on Arhoscephale. The man blinks a few times, his hands cusp against eachother and he remembers of that woman’s tears falling on them and healing him.

Shame ravages his excitement. The thoughts become annoying, as he remembers how much capable he is of harming others. If not only by words, by his fantastical violence in the Inverse Dream and his weakness to decide when the world becomes confusing. This too he feels right now. Wide confusion, so far away from the confidence he had only minutes ago when he walked in this place.

‘I am not sure about this anymore. I speak honestly Dorothea, but it has been so long and so confusing I don’t really understand what it means to love someone.’

‘Perhaps you have only forgotten.’

‘Perhaps. I want to be reminded, but...’

‘I can try with words.’

‘I do not doubt that. But is this what you want?’

The bronze woman smiles at the question. Then her face calms down into an idle expression and she recalls a few memories before speaking. ‘It is. I do my mistress’ will, I am one with the hotel. You should not worry about me. I offer myself with no second thoughts.’ She thinks again for a moment. ‘You should worry for Gon however.’

The mention of his name shakes Varhas. The Claimant imagines the moment part to clarity. ‘Gon? Why?’

‘It appears that he has found that type of love that you do not remember. Just now, before I came here, I watched as he and my mistress followed eachother into a room. One could see from afar how bonded they were. How much tension existed between them, even if they never touched.’ Slowly submerging in this recent memory and now wholly there, Dorothea speaks without focusing on anything. ‘The way each other refused to stare, the way they went into the room as if doomed. I held my ear on their door, just to listen to their whispers and they talked about nothing. Just two people sharing a moment, knowing that they may never touch another, no matter how much they want it. I don’t know why they would do that. I just know that whatever happened between the two, it was true longing. The type you cannot escape from or find peace.’

Varhas realizes that this was her effort to describe that something he has forgotten. And the effort is very true as he finds himself saddened, eyes suddenly tired and his body growing heavier by each passing second.

The man’s throat dries out. He knows the answer to the question he is about to ask.

‘This is not something you can give me, is it?’

The woman struggles to remain with a cheerful expression. Her eyes however jump around as if there is dwelling sadness within her, pushing softly to come out.

‘We... will not have what they have. That I...’ The woman struggles to say it, the words come in a whisper. ‘...I can promise.’

Silence follows. Nobody talks for a while as either body remains in their own type of sadness. Varhas feels wave after wave of anger crash against his shell. As if brittle bone has become of his skin, the man stiffens and bitterness fills his throat. Dorothea watches him and then her eyes glance away. Drawn between duty and emerging emotion, she finds herself struggling to walk the thin line. Part of her stares into Varhas as if that emotion of her mistress, is somehow here and now, right ahead.

Some other thing within her reminds her she has to come close to him, just with enough emotionless distance to betray him.

And as the seconds pass, only one of them acts. Dorothea understands that she has failed. All the emotionless past collapses and her hand stands on his shoulder as a real reminder of what she has only spoken of. When the man responds in kind by putting his hand over her sharp digits, the woman’s thoat fills with bitterness and her body walks away in very quick steps.

Varhas slumps over the bar. His two fists tighten to the point that the tendons would explode. His fingernails dig deep into his soft palms and every mistake, washes over the past. And all these foreign words remind him that he is worthless and that other people get easily, what comes to him in difficulty.

Chapter 52

Alleyways

Unmarked asphalt, sidewalk and stone twists and turns below Varhas.

In the deep night of Syracuse, there is almost nobody on the streets. No cars, no pedestrians, just endless white and orange, lamps buzzing in the silence, empty bus stops and hollow parks where even the animals refuse to walk.

It must have been hours since he started walking. No matter how much he tried to diffuse his anger, there was always just a hint remaining there, stuck deep and pricking at his soul. Somewhere between his legs groaning in pain, knees and calves burning and becoming stiff, he knew that he had to keep going. Going until there was no more anger left inside of him. Going until the stranger that followed him stopped.

Mad at the world, mad at the stranger and mad at himself, Varhas thinks of too many things that loosely turn within him. He feels the need to kill, to strangle the first person that comes infront of him. He wants to kick and punch, to break things along his endless walk, to call the universe foul names.

‘Bitch.’ He says. ‘Worthless.’ He calls himself. At a bus stop he punches the glass, producing nothing but a small crack while his flesh swells and blackens.

A great distance from the hotel, further than the square, a few winding alleyways and through a park, he has walked far enough. Far enough, he thinks, to be in actual danger, to be so close to endangering everything himself and others have worked for. He wants a fight that he does not care if he loses. If death is to find him at the knife of a street thug, then so be it. So be it, to surprise the world with his anger, to spit even at the face of his teammates.

Once Varhas completes this last thought. More shame flows within him. Cursing his own teammates makes him stop. The pain in his legs rises and he looks around him, as if suddenly descending from the peak of his anger. Lost and without anything to guide him, the shame becomes a hint of desperation and he begins to walk again, slowly, leaning and heaving his body to the rhythm of a cripple.

Around him is a park. He does not walk in the pathways along the bushes. He is lost somewhere dark where the grass is short and the low trees cover him with their branches.

A pair of two passes in the distance. They do not see him, but he recognizes one female form. Man and woman, he cannot make them out, but he watches as there is silver hidden under her robes. They too are looking for something or someone. Their hushed voices filling the park with a sense of hidden dread.

Varhas feels the urge to chase after them, violent intent on his hands. The moment passes however as silence soon returns and he takes into walking through the grass and exiting the park.

At a street corner, a small alleyway opens between two buildings. He feels there is something else following him, but where he goes next, it certainly cannot follow. For it is so, that deeper into the alleyway, past a garbage bin and rusty doors, the deep night appears to deepen yet. As he slowly walks into the absence of light, the shadows become.

The Claimant knows where he is. With almost no regard for his own safety, he has stepped into one of those mystical and impenetrable hues of darkness that he has seen before on Eryx. As that rebel Claimant spoke and showed him, he now enters a place where nobody should come out of. Emotion driving him on, mix and match of what brings him into motion.

In an angry stream of thought, he finds himself drawn deeper. The half-there concentration of his Inverse Dream is foreign. Cold seeps into him, the limbs are concealed and soon, everything past his neck is not there. Numb, Varhas is not certain if he collapses onto the dirty ground, or he simply dives head first into something without solid form, edge, or substance. His breathing becomes hard, he is unable to feel whether his eye is open or closed shut.

There, the man closes in on death. The emotions remain and turn to his self. ‘Worthless’ he calls himself, voice drowned out in nightmare, immaterial and without reason.

The Claimant weeps and thrashes. But little by little, drop and half-breath fills him, the eyes define shapes in the utterdark, his fingertips touch something.

Inverted, from beyond, the mother’s voice resounds. She is here.

‘Varhas child. What are you doing here?’

The Claimant puts his hands on his ears. Maddening inner voice, the Pantokrator whispers, but in him, the voice pummels and throbs. In one such wave of pain, the Claimant imagines himself lunging against the woman. Naked clawing hands reaching out into the darkness, but the Pantokrator is simply too far. Too concealed in her dark nothingness, a distance of vast space In-between them that only makes the intent known.

‘You would strike at your own mother?’

The Inverse dream deepens and the Claimant remakes himself of flesh and bone, his body stands unbroken in this foreign domain. No matter how much fear and motherly care fills him, he remains angry and desperate.

When the Pantokrator manifests, she does so next to him. The old woman kneels besides him, her rosy hands close around his wrists so that he may not strike her. Even so, such great despair rests within him, that he stares at her in her eyes, malignant Astral magic trying to slay her very soul.

The woman resists the spell with ease. Glimmers, disconnected and celestial in their solitude gloss over their eyes. She retreats a step back, while the man falls on his hands and clenches his teeth.

‘You would Soul Slay your own mother?’ Says the woman, angry.

‘I would Soul Slay a Pantokrator. I would dive into the darkness she manifests in places that eat men and women. I would curse you a hundred times.’

‘Why would you do that to me Varhas?’

‘All is your fault. All. Everything. Every dying person on this planet. Every nightmare and every moment that the world stops making sense. It is all your fault. Gods! I am a slave. I am worse than slave, for I do not even know the master that commands me.’

The Pantokrator thinks. Specks of humanity within her turn to such turmoil that slowly obliterates the vastness that is the powers of a Pantokrator.

The hue of her voice is true, pained and also greatly struggling with her inner world. ‘It is as you say my son.’

The Claimant gets on his knees, his body turns and with a hand he strikes against the woman. She in turn takes the blow and her old body flinches.

‘Murderer! You are the one that caused this War of Ascension.’

‘Indeed so. I am the reason all this began. You should know by now that the previous Pantokrator of this planet was strangled by my doing.’

‘All this death is on you.’

‘On me? If you could only hear how much these people longed for death. Prayers upon prayers, entire cities wailing and sobbing for release from the previous Pantokrator. They asked and wished. I only did as I was begged to. You are not the only one serving.’

Varhas tries to exit the Inverse Dream. His body is crawling in reality, but his mother deepens the magic all around him, pulling him back to where they can be alone.

‘It is not safe to leave yet. You have to suffer this.’

In the Inverse Dream, the Claimant’s body sticks to the ground. Decaying hands pull him through the ground and the fantasy becomes heavier, harder to move around.

‘Why are you doing this? Let me go! You claim to serve, but you do not tell me what. I serve who? Why must I always be on the receiving end, teased with what my body craves, lost in confusion and ruled by general ideas where nothing can be pointed at to blame? So much death. I am tired of drowning in it. Everybody hates me and I hate them all. The little things that make them, the circumstances that bring their actions out.’

The Pantokrator weeps. Her magic falters dangerously as the shadows lose cohesion and the celestial details become shaken at their laws.

‘I know. I’ve always known how much hatred poured into you when you were still in me.’

‘You should have tossed me to the wolves.’

The Pantokrator’s body aches. Her heart strains to almost a stop. ‘Varhas...’

‘What is this universe we are in, that mocks us. Tells us that we are loved by all, only to spend the rest of our time connecting with those little few that hate us most intensely. What do you serve mother, what?

‘Myself. And in that self, everyone. Mankind must always be ruled by greater things. If not people, than the emotions within that take the hold and ascend them.’

When she speaks of these words, Varhas’ head throbs in pain. The journey here, the wish he made in a spaceship, the longing for a mother to see him back home, even for a day, they all connect, they all become a plan that was formed at set in place for a moment’s worth of motherly love.

The Claimant curls as his body strains itself to its limit. So great is the sorrow of simple things that collapse to greater misery, that some of his muscles snap at the tension. The fingernails dig so deep into his palms that he draws blood.

‘I’ve asked nothing of this life but to be alone. I’ve asked nothing but to have either that, or a friend, a lover. And I have both and neither. Soon, or in my memory. Why must I be ruled by this?’

‘Why must we all? And why have we built everything on such?’ Replies Varhas’ mother. Her hand touches his head and she takes him into her arms. ‘I am sorry my child. I wish I was a stronger person, that I never claimed a throne on frozen forests and that all the machines around us left long ago. I am sorry that our very souls are out in the open making sound and I am sorry the universe is what it is. I am sorry.’

Her tears streak down from thick darkness and they fall on the man’s nape. Then, the droplets arch around his neck and Varhas feels their trickle unravel his anger.

‘I am sorry mother. No parent should see their children like this.’

‘My sweet child. All the plans, all of the things that you have achieved. Remember what I told you.’

‘To make the world a better place. However small. But who will do this for me?’

‘Please Varhas. Do not give up now. There will come a time where all these things make sense. There will come a time for you to feel as if you’ve changed and fate does not repeat itself against you.’

Varhas grasps at the shadows. His hands drip with blood and it seems that he has painted the very hue of darkness with red.

‘My passions took hold of me. Forgive me.’

‘I will always forgive you. Passions are good. Human is that which feels. Be proud my son. Be human.’

The Inverse Dream slowly fills with light. The Pantokrator’s form dissipates and the change through the deep collection of dark magic fades in a dull absence.

‘Farewell mother.’

The Inverse Dream ebbs and wanes. As flood of air and sudden passage of light, the utterdark around Varhas vanishes.

Someone is pulling him out of the alleyway. Gon is there, speaking to him.

‘Varhas. Varhas hey. Are you alright?’

Blood Theurg and Claimant stand there for a moment as the real world around them begins to fill with form and shape. Varhas stands up and he looks into Gon who appears worried.

‘There are people looking for you.’

‘Who?’

‘I have never seen them before. They...’

Gon responds, but his words remain unfinished. Four strangers stand a distance of ten meters ahead. From a quick glance, the two can make out that they are Claimants. Their faces stare back at them with intent and something metallic gleams under their kenophobic clothing.

Chapter 53

The Opponents

Four other Claimants stand in the middle of the street. Silhouettes barely textured by the light, it is as if only outlines of shadows and hidden glimmers make up their bodies.

Two women and two men stand in a line and they appear to hesitate closing the distance.

One of these Claimants is a broad man, standing at two meters tall, his overcoat is a black curtain and hood that conceals everything in the wavy straightness of his clothes. His face is covered in metal tubes and his eyes are two goggles of cybernetics that project a wavy plex of bright green neon lines. The other man is average of height and width, his clothing is nebulous gray. Depth and light refracts in odd, heavenly but otherwise muted movement of space. What is clearly visible on him however, is a long estoc type sword that pokes through the illusions. The weapon is Blacksteel and almost slicing the very shadows apart, creating long straight floods of electric lights that follow his slow step. The two women are concealed. But Varhas can understand from her stance, height and curious eyes, that she is Kleiothyke. Her neck is bare, the silver underneath layers of wool and gray silk, bejewels her form and gives it an outline of white reflection. The other woman hides herself behind the Claimant who is closing to Gon and Varhas.

Gon’s hands tighten around Varhas. He makes an effort to walk ahead, but he needs a second to gather his courage. In that lapse of time, Varhas lowers his body, his knees bend slightly, just enough to open up whatever options exist in the upcoming fight.

In this response the nebulous Claimant stops and he too changes his stance, lifting the pointy end against Varhas and leaning forwards.

‘You would rather fight us in the street then? Facing us in the Contest scares you?’ Says Gon with no hint of fear in his voice.

‘The circumstances changed.’ Replies Kleiothyke. She sounds aloof, almost as if what is to happen is not going to. The two Claimants think it a plot to catch them off guard and Gon walks to the side assuming a stance, one that is wholly passive, straight, broad-chested, that of a martyr awaiting his punishment.

‘And what has changed exactly dear Kleiothyke?’ Asks Varhas.

‘We meant for the bronze woman to keep you occupied. Nothing more. A bit of innocent espionage. Her little flimsy heart could not pull through.’

‘So now we are at this.’

‘I don’t know what kind of magic you pulled off, but words will do little to help you here.’

The estoc hovers up and down between the three men. Varhas deliberately hides his left hand behind his back, feigning holding a weapon that does not exist.

The tall man with the cybernetic eyes speaks. ‘He does not have a weapon Byzas, I do not see it and the traitor saw both of them leave without one. Strike him down.’

Even so, Byzas hesitates, but after a feign that goes without reply, he lunges towards Varhas. The Blacksteel point pierces the deep shadow of Makkaras cloth. Varhas takes the hit and then he steps forwards as if to strike with his left hand. The empty attack makes Byzas step back, pulling the estoc out of the wound and he carefully dodges a strike that does not happen.

Once he steps back, another lunge aims his sword towards Varhas, but Gon steps between the two. His left hand falls infront of the blade, tightening around the alloy as it slices his palm open. Gon’s right hand closes around the rest of the blade. As Byzas pulls it out of his grip, everyone sees that Gon’s hands are bloodied.

The Blood Theurg’s face however remains without expression. The Blacksteel blade loses much of its magical potency.

In what few seconds this display of endurance buys, there is running heard behind Gon and Varhas. Rapid footsteps become loud and six people suddenly close in.

The four Contestants run in alarming speed that makes the four opponents quickly reconsider. With a nod from Kleiothyke, the four Claimants disperse as the odds against the Contestants are impossible to overcome.

Before Jorj can give chase, Varhas calls him by his name and tells him to not bother.

Zanuvia and Laodike are there, Their faces immediately close into the wounds of the two men, evaluating the damage and using their own clothes to patch them up.

‘Gods! Varhas!’ Says Laodike.

‘Don’t shout. I am well. Are they gone?’

Jorj speaks. ‘I can still go after them.’

‘No, no. They will blend in, there is no catching them. Just take us back.’

Chapter 54

Slow Shimmer

Around a bed, the Black and White team gathers over Varhas. He lies covered in bandages. Stable and visibly pale, he is otherwise sharp of mind. The Contestants think it peculiar, whereas the three other Claimants understand that the man works better in this condition.

In this understanding, Zanuvia and Laodike tell the Contestants to exit the room for a moment while they attend Varhas’ wound. Once the commoners are out, Zanuvia pulls out a small mechanical cube from underneath the bed. The device is identical to the one used by Sophia on the planet of Arhoscephale. Its many sockets are carefully examined by the three and heavy cables enter its open ports.

When the machine whirs with power, Laodike talks to her mother. ‘I have never healed a body before.’

‘Just follow along. We cannot do it as well as the healers on Arhoscephale, but it will do enough to stabilize him.’

Varhas relaxes as the two women enter the machine’s Inverse Dream. Gon watches closely but he gently declines to help. His hands are bandaged and the only effort he can provide, is that of sitting by the injured Claimant and staring into his incoming pains.

Slowly, the cube opens. Underneath its unraveling maw, flesh, bandage and clotted blood lose all texture, vanishing under bright and universal radiance.

Laodike and Zanuvia focus, the machine produces a stitching, flowing sound and a sizzling dissipation of foam, soft tissue and liquid humors. Varhas breathes in short sharp breaths as the pain flows and ebbs in great pushes and retreats. After a minute, the two women wake up from their concentration. They appear fatigued and unstable, a dizzying movement pushes them to and fro as they steady themselves ver the edges of the bed.

Gon picks up the cube. He removes all of the wires and places it on the floor. Once that is done, his injured hands struggle to unravel Varhas’ bandages. The white and soft fabric has turned almost solid. There are no more traces of clotted blood on it, just solidified bandages that break apart with ease.

Under the bandage, Varhas’ skin is a pale and uneven topography. The wound is not open anymore. However, the skin there is of various hues. Deep pink keloid streaks, dark yellow in some parts and wholly intermixing with his paleness. The flesh mixes with itself in a whirling pattern.

Varhas looks at the wound and he speaks. ‘My liver feels weird. Or is it my kidney? Damn it. It itches.’

‘Don’t worry everything is in place. Best we can do, untrained we are.’ Replies Zanuvia.

‘At least it left a good mark.’ Says Laodike and Varhas notices the swirling patterns with earnest surprise.

He thinks that it looks good, even if it feels wrong. At least to that, there is a new story into him and for once, he feels glad that this healing is not done under saddened eyes.

***

‘Is Varhas stable? Will he survive?’

‘He will. Given a day or two. He just lost a lot of blood that is all.’

‘I can arrange for transfusions if need be.’

‘No need Castor. Varhas wants to ride the wave and be close to what he believes. You know how Death Claimants are.’

Castor makes little efforts to not look at Gon. Even so, a hint of shame compels her to ask Gon.

‘You would trust me with secrets of who Varhas is? You speak of his Claimant magic in the open.’

‘I have nothing to fear of you.’ Replies Gon and Castor’s face surrenders slightly. Open as he is, so she becomes and there is little pushback when she reveals her self.

‘What a naive man you are Gon. How should we punish Dorothea?’

‘Punish? Don’t get me wrong Castor, I feel pain for a friend, but I also feel pain for the traitor. Please. Do not punish her in any way. No matter what Laodike or Zanuvia may suggest.’

‘Sure. It will be as you say. But...’ Castor struggles. She is aware that the power that compels her is the man’s naive and wholesome ease with which he forgives. From the moment that she and Polux learned who their guests were going to be three months ago, she expected a demonic Gon, a man who is eager to sacrifice flesh, memories, moments and emotions for his shallow desires. Instead, she realizes, this is what appears infront of her and she throws her inhibitions away to this unexpected image infront of her.

This turmoil presses Castor into revealing herself. ‘But... You must know that I had a hand in this.’

‘I wasn’t born yesterday Castor. I know. I might be new to the Contest but everything else is not so different after all. Bookkeeping dark nightclubs, even serving at a temple is not unlike these past events. There are plots and backstabs everywhere in the world. Part of me feels that it is ony fair, that wherever human goes, so he makes a mess.’

‘And you live with this? You choose to believe this and forgive after all?’

‘Everyone has to bear some burden. I am nobody. I cannot decide who should be punished, who should suffer and bear even more burden. This is how I am.’

Bitterness fills Castor. She understands that there are no consequences to their plot. This gives her an ease, one that she believes grateful for. The woman nods at Gon, she smiles lightly and then she bids him farewell.

***

A day passes. During this time Varhas has taken many tasks, from communicating with Orichalcum, to talking with the council of Mecone and reassuring them of an upcoming victory, to even having a small, uneventful chat with Polux. Mostly in the presence of the other three Claimants, Varhas controls his teammates in a general attitude of letting things go.

To those that come in contact with Varhas while he is bedridden, in real space or in the Inverse Dream, they all understand that the Claimant who was close to death, is clear minded, wiser and more accurate in his assessments. So much so, that they almost understand that something else has also happened, perhaps in the minutes Varhas spent in that dark alleyway where nobody else returns alive from.

In honest bargaining, with almost no need for threats, the short chat with Polux ends up in new influx of information. The twins have decided to become wholly loyal to the Black and White team and they present them with many recordings and past discussions on how their plan came to be.

From this information, the four Claimants discuss and realize that Kleiothyke set things in motion way before their arrival on Sicela. Going back into Dur-Baqa, she willed herself almost imperceptibly so as to not occur in Varhas’ mind. Up to the point when the banquet happened on Ulm, nobody else had seen her. And those that did, had died suddenly in the guise of preventing another plot. Indeed, the Claimants realize, that when Kleiothyke spoke of Fenrika’s plot on Mecone, she was drawing also attention away from herself. Perhaps, the Abyssians and her team had cooperated into their assault of horrors, timing it just at their most vulnerable moment, when they had won greatly on Mecone, when they had trumped over plots and when they let their guard down on Arhoscephale.

After all, Zanuvia notes, that from how Varhas describes the celestial and yet so crimson woman, there are cultural hints that she perhaps is a Claimant of both Astral and Blood sorcery. The two necessary paths for sending and creating horrors.

‘If that is the case, then I am afraid our final match is not going to be easy.’

‘They have the bloodlust of Abyssians, the smarts of a fox and the wild willpower of barbarians.’ Says Laodike.

For that last, barbarian detail she speaks of, the team has tried to define what culture the opponents represent. If they are lackeys of a tyrant planet, golden and divine, the opponents represent some other dominion of the universe, some other finite culture of the past. As such, when Varhas describes the bleak colours and the lack of details on the uniform of the man who pierced him, they decide that there is simply not enough to make sense of their origin.

However, what they do know, is that the corporation behind the opponents is related to locks and keys, locksmithing perhaps and further into the world of cybersecurity and other manners of access control in the Inverse Dream. If anything, fighting the Claimants in their own devices is going to be difficult. Chasing after them in the fantastical world may be an ordeal of breaking through gates and hidden doors. Or perhaps, they divinate, it is all smokes and mirrors. Much alike to the mercenaries, their opponents are equally good at fake displays, as well as honest face to face combat.

The discussion settles nowhere solid. But that does not mean that the Claimants haven’t derived anything useful. On the contrary, how they imagine Kleiothyke, how they imagine their opponents and their magic is a wealth of information that will help them later down the line, when logic parts to details and details into thoughtless action.

***

The Contestants are not alarmed by the recent change of events. Their common sentiment is that there is no difference between the first match of the Contest and the last.

If there is one thing that they made sure to make their Claimants understand, daughter, wife, lover and friend, is this. That they are together as one, calm and self-confident team.

After an easy afternoon, Jorj finds himself besides Varhas. The Claimant is still in bed, but he usually moves around to stretch his limbs, or he simply lays upright, back arched forwards as he makes quick entries into the Inverse Dream.

‘Hey Varhas. Are you sure you aren’t overworking yourself?’ Says the Contestant.

The Claimant smiles. ‘I am not tired at all. Hanging close to death does that to a man. Things have a new luster, every breath is rejuvenating.’

‘Funny. This is also how I’ve been feeling recently.’

‘It is a great feeling isn’t it?’

The Contestant thinks. A smile hangs at one side of his face. ‘Honestly. I wasn’t even sure I had that feeling in me anymore. Even since I got my brain golden-layered its been like this. Plastic. Muted.’

‘The price of immortality.’

‘You think?’

‘I would not know, but judging on how destructive and free some Contestants can be without a good Claimant by their side...’ The Claimant notices Jorj’s head nod in disapproval. ‘...eternity can be torment.’

‘Sure, but it wasn’t like that. All I recall are muted memories. As if I was only there as a spectator, you know? I barely remember the fight on Tropicana. Just barely, all the broken bones and missing limbs they are just boring and without pain. I have good memories of the fight after Ulm though. After you told me I am dying.’

‘I am truly glad you can feel that. I mean it Jorj.’

‘Thanks. I am not sure anyone else gets it. Hab and Otto do, Scaramucc you can just never be sure with that man. But for a Claimant, I think you are the only one that gets it.’

Varhas smiles. ‘You’d think any Claimant would understand this right?’

Jorj replies in a laughter. ‘Fucking idiot.’

The Claimant falls back on the pillow. His chest sits upright propped against the frame of the bed.

‘Aren’t you scared of death?’

‘Scared? I am having the time of my life here, how many times do I have to tell you. You understand this too.’

‘I would be lying if I told you that I do not fear dying. That sword went deep in me, had me reconsider for a few seconds. Still, I feel weightless. Things are less muted around me as you put it. Did I make you worry?’

‘No, I was just certain you would not die.’

‘Certain? Certain how, can you describe it?’

Jorj thinks. With one hand he scratches his chin, the other softly massages his knee. Either sensation on his body seems to dig deep.

‘I got this stubborn idea in me that you will do fine no matter what. Most of the times I watch you, I get a sense that you tiptoe on coordinates. It is like you think ahead and all your thoughts become you, it is like death is a familiar face to you and you dance around it with ease. Sometimes I look at you and I think of my childhood. Back in Cappadocia, a miner has to have a certainty whenever he digs. Some sort of empty courage, already dead and wholly calculated. I remember that all of the old miners were like this. Hardened nobodies that went into the earth ready to die. Yes. This is how you move around and most of the times when you don’t speak like a lunatic, you even have their simple manners. Lost. Continuing. Sad maybe, but looking towards the next day.’

Varhas listens without reply. Nobody has spoken to him like this. Few and far In-between have been the men and women over his life that grounded him so, but did it with honesty. Fewer if none, have been those that saw further than all of his errors and called him a good man.

‘Thank you.’ Is the only thing that he can say. Nothing else needs to added.

‘Well, I just hoped you’d give into women more often. You are missing out on the simple joys of life.’

‘Oh come on. We had our moment here. I’m just waiting for the one that is all. You’ve had a wife before?’

‘And children too. I just, you know, Contestants and normal people don’t mix well. Especially when you aren’t sure if you care about what happens to them, or yourself. I’ve tried honestly, but then again I never had what Hab and Zanuvia have. I don’t mind either, those romances are long gone and I don’t care much about them anyways. It really hurt to lose Voliphoe, but... I don’t know, that too faded.’ Jorj remains silent for a moment. Then his face lights up. ‘Maybe after I am gone you might meet some great grandchild of mine.’

Varhas nods. ‘I think that would be wonderful. Some part of you will always exist out there.’

‘Well if you find any of them, just tell them not to become Contestants.’

Chapter 55

The Mess

The next day Varhas gets up and walks around the hotel. Laodike is the first one to find him and the two of them decide to spend some time together.

He tries to not complain, but the remnant of pain on the healed wound makes him talk about it. The itching, he says, is even more annoying and Laodike apologizes.

‘You can always get it fixed later.’

Before they can discuss further, Gon arrives on the lobby and closes in. Bearing good news, he speaks of how time is rapidly advancing and how his last entry to the Inverse Dream was swiftly lulled by their tyrant. Sharply, as is the dialect of Meconians, he speaks that tomorrow is the next match.

The team understands that they have little control and choice. The finals are here and any circumstances are laid out in stone, rather than the branching pathways of things that can be influenced.

‘I got a feeling the tyrant of Mecone moved many circumstances to our favor.’ Says Gon.

‘What do you mean?’

‘When I made entry, earlier today, Orichalcum kept suggesting delaying the match. I tried to argue that we would like to keep things in their current rhythm, but it was only after the Meconian Pantokrator came to the meeting, that they changed their mind. He thinks that your magic is at its peak now. No reason to waste such a boon of chances. At least that is what I understood.’

‘Sounds about right. So tomorrow it is then. Early morning?’

‘Afternoon. They will pick us up then. Powerarmors are waiting for us on the arena.’

‘Great. What about our artifacts?’

Zanuvia makes a motion of pulling a piece of blue fabric underneath her basalt robes. There is that undercoat of moving sea below her hyper-detailed wear. The gift given to her on after the first match of the finals, the Robe of the Sea is there, hidden amidst the folds, singing with light sapphire hint as it is shown to Gon and Varhas. Then, Zanuvia talks.

‘Laodike will have her sphere at hand. Just like the match with the Abyssians, if Horrors start manifesting, you should both search her out. If not her, at least the Tartarean Sphere.’

Varhas talks. ‘What about other artifacts? All the gifts Otto brought, even the painting the Tyrant gave me. Do they have any value? Some special meaning or ability that affects us?’

Gon lights up. He is the one that has undertaken the task of going over the many paintings, scepters, jewelry and other gifts that were brought to them after the Beasthunter match. He speaks with interest, even if all of them already know that there is nothing there for them.

‘Oh! Yes, I’ve gone through them, but they cannot be used. At least not by us. That painting that was given to you where you throw the spear, it is an artifact for Earth Claimants unfortunately. The same way Water Claimants can bond with the Robe of the Sea and use it and the same way Astral Claimants like you and Laodike can use the Tartarean Sphere, so it is with most of those objects. Thistle Maces for Nature Claimants, Golden Visors and Boots of Antaeus for Earth Claimants. None to our magic oddly enough.’

‘That is fine. Nothing for your sorcery Gon?’

‘There is a contract-betyl for summoning a Pazuzu in the Inverse Dream. I can study the words and manifest them in the fantasy, but that requires both knowledge in Air magic and other demonic prices. To which I have none.’

‘What about Otto’s sword?’

‘That is Earth magic too. Laodike can’t bring out its true edge. At the end of the day its a sharp Blacksteel sword, even if Laodike cannot push it further.

Varhas passes a hand over his fresh scar. ‘It hurt all the same. Iron to flesh.’

‘Perhaps it only works against other alloys? The centipede was made from Blacksteel and it tore through Orichalcum with relative ease. I am not even sure if those mercenary Claimants could use Earth magic either.’

‘I don’t think any of us know. I guess we will never find out.’

The three of them stay in silence for a while. Either man or woman, it appears that they have few things to say.

‘I suppose this is it then.’

***

Idle time can be quite the annoying ordeal. With the deadline of tomorrow, the rest of the day passes restlessly, the Claimants pace up and down the hotel trying to find things to do, whereas all of the Contestants except for Jorj are resting in complete ennui.

Jorj’s body feels an excitement, that of adrenaline pumping before its time, the exhausting surge of action that is premature and demanding of his body. As such, the Contestant moves around each room of the hotel, searching for something to keep himself occupied.

Late at night he follows a bell boy somewhere deep in the hotel and when the staff member vanishes without a trace, he takes to exploring the nearby rooms one by one. Down a set of stairs, through a wooden, tightly closed door, their luggage appears arrayed on the floor. Rummaged, open suitcases and various gifts that Otto brought, they are laid in a chaos, thrown and tossed as if they are worthless.

Without anything else to do, Jorj spends the hours packing things up. Illustrious dresses, heavy, metallic coats and trinkets are thrown randomly into whatever container.

About half way through the ordeal, Gon enters the room.

‘Can’t sleep Jorj?’

‘Never had it happen before. I just keep thinking.’

‘Thinking about what?’

The Contestant wants to say nothing, but the same unstoppable stream picks up speed and lapse. In rhythm, the man fumbles inside of his head. ‘Everything.’

Gon walks towards him. He too starts picking things up. ‘I make a mess when I search around. Bad habit I know, but it only makes sense that way for me. Let the bell boys handle these.’

‘So you say, but you are picking things up also. What are you doing here Gon?’

‘No idea. I wanted to be alone. I am cursed.’

‘Cursed?’ Speaks Jorj, his face hangs in serious idleness.

Gon tries to defuse the heavy words. He notices how Jorj’s reaction is that of someone who has spent too much time next to Claimants. Believing curses and magic to be real, when his reaction should be grounded.

‘I am just... You know. Just need to be away from people. Wherever I go I run into someone. Even myself.’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Yeah. That’s fair.’

‘But if you say so. However long I’ve been with Claimants the only thing I realize is that you have troubles of your own. I suppose everyone does, I just mean that yours are more... deep. More human sometimes, other times, machine like, but just overall deeper.’

‘Well. Do you know why that is so?’

‘Not really. Something to do with the machines.’

Gon looks at the pile of clothes infront of him. The multicolored stretches of cotton, hyperwoven red and natural porphyry become folded in his hands. Without looking at the man besides him, the Blood Theurg begins to speak. His mouth hangs between someone else’s words and his own, half possessed, half animated.

‘Before mankind migrated to the stars, there was a period where we made a conscious effort to lose ourselves in thought. As any great task we went in with some help. Some say this ordeal frightened us, the possibility of straightening out all of our human errors, but humans went and did it anyway with some form of assistance from machines. Before the spaceships, before the first migration, Earth was nothing but a silver globe. Wholly covered in machines, white rooms and skyscrapers, power plants and vast stretches of mirrors and dams. People lived in rooms, machines recorded every movement of our body, every thought within our heads. Some remained killers, others remained merchants and priests, but no matter how small or large, unnatural that existence, people kept going the same way as yesterdays. Somewhere in that time man merged with machine, or more accurately, artificial intelligence mapped every thoughtstream and deeper hue of our minds. Time passed in this silver globe, to mankind’s passions, races separated, natural mysteries became technology and then, one day, the machine let go of us. We just boarded the vessels we, or it, made and went away.’

‘And we all come from there. Is this what you mean?’

‘All yes. Crimson skinned Abyssians, giant Meconians, all. This is probably where all of the technology comes from. Some ancient human had dreams of layers of gold in his brain. The machine listened, bended language and hallucination to natural laws and now we are here, just barely hinting on understanding how these things work and making them real. Via the Inverse Dream that is.’

‘And what is it?’

‘The Inverse Dream? Ask a Blood Theurg like me and I will tell you its foul. No different than Contestants killing eachother to prove who is stronger, luckier, more agile, more accurate, smarter. The Inverse Dream measures many things to decide whose magic works and whose doesn’t. But that is not the point. That place is nothing more but humanity’s necessity to prove who is better than another. Who should pass and who should die.’ The Claimant sighs. The pile of clothes infront of him is now ordered by colour and one by one he puts the clothes back into their bags.

‘That seems complicated. For no reason. Claimants can always just kill other Claimants if they want to prove themselves. Isn’t reality offering the exact same option? Since you also measure luck and skill and all as you say.’

‘Exactly. That’s what I ask myself sometimes too.’ Gon shakes his head as if confused by the lack of a solid answer. ‘Man just likes to think. Man likes to think and he wants to know if his thoughts are better than another’s. Beyond language, on the one hand and on the other, still keeping some magical realism, to make things exciting? I don’t know.’

‘Well if you don’t, then I certainly don’t either.’ Jorj closes a suitcase. Then, he turns into a stack of paintings, where the colours blend into mechanized armors, gold fields of wheat and cocrete megastructures infront of blue skies. ‘But you said, that mankind separated back in that silver planet. That the machines, or us, had made the spaceships. Was there some plan? Are all the planets and Pantokrators of today, thought to be in place beforehand or what?’

‘Perhaps. I am not sure. If a whole planet planned for this, then I wouldn’t doubt it. Astral Claimants, seers or just generals and farmers foresee the future by planning. It is human to worry about what might happen and it is human to want to control it. A general longs for victory, the farmer longs to not starve. But then again, splitting mankind into different versions of itself, demons, giants, pale-skinned Nidavangers, splitting them by culture, Meconians, Arhoscephaleans, Ulmites, Machakans, makes no sense does it?’

‘I guess. It would be easier to plan ahead if we were all the same.’

‘Yes! There are so many diverse variables, it feels like the early humans wanted to sabotage themselves. Sabotage the plan they made, or the machine, or both? Or even sabotage this mental union between the two.’

‘You sound like you really don’t know.’

‘And I don’t.’

‘Then speak by heart. How does this make you feel then?’

‘Good.’ Says Gon. He nods his head forwards, neither memory or worry of the future run through him at this moment. He is present, here and now in the small room of so many different objects. ‘Great actually. Isn’t it fascinating, how many different things there are out there and how, even now, there are just the two of us here?’

‘I feel the same way. I am just glad I have someone to speak to. Claimant, Commoner, doesn’t matter.’

‘Isn’t it fascinating how much all of it feels like it has been preserved? All the little details of ancient cultures are here.’

‘Not sure about that one Gon. Maybe some of them should have remained forgotten.’ Says Jorj as he pulls out a large canvas where bleak smog, brown and flame fan around agonizing shapes.

‘There can only be heroes if there are monsters out there.’

Jorj lets out a half-laugh. ‘Heh. You should try that with Otto. I do not much care about fame.’

Gon clenches his teeth. His head leans forwards, his face darkens for a second as his eyebrows merge and his eyes hide behind his hair. Jorj notices the change on the Claimant, but he makes no effort to apologize. Instead, he thinks for a moment, grabbing a thought that should not be there.

‘You are angry Gon.’ The Claimant shakes his head. ‘Since you know that I am dying anyways, this only makes it fair.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Crass, uncaring Contestant. Just a crude piece of meat that is not really aware of innocents. Oblivious. I am to die soon. Whatever plans are out into the world you get to feel good about it.’

Gon thinks about it. It is as Jorj says, because this is what he feels right now. The violent brute infront of him, the one who he has seen tear a building down for some empty, personal discharge of his emotions, he is to meet gloom for a fate. He is not a good person, but what he does now, absolving him of guilt for enjoying this even for a second, makes Gon lose his bearing.

The Blood Theurg becomes dizzy, but he is able to calm himself down by simply sitting on the floor and breathing deeply.

‘Are you alright?’

‘Yeah, I just got up too fast. It is such a shame Jorj.’ Speaks Gon without a hint of guilt. His words are flat, true and without a hue of magic. ‘You would make a great Blood Theurg. But there is no time. Perhaps it is too soon in the Iron, still newborn age that we live in, that no such things happen yet.’

Chapter 56

Thracians

Once again in the streets of Syracuse, grand and blaring noise becomes of every surface and vibration in the air.

The processions of both teams move without effort through the crowds this time. As caravans of rare and caged beasts, the containers where the powerarmors lie within, appear as if they float along the hundreds of thousands of faces. For the Black and White team the sea of fashion and flesh parts at the gentle gestures of giant Meconian hoplites, whereas their opponents are escorted by powerarmors on mechanical steeds.

One procession moves on its own, whereas the other is pulled by mechanized beasts of burden. The Orichalcum floats, strung in its motion as if an invisible hand ties it to its course. Machines and beasts of burden for the other team, clack their metal hooves, their bodies swing at every step and their noses heave hot air, in and out.

After an hour of this movement, the streets of Syracuse become hushed as two colossal wooden doors close behind the two processions. Inside of a large museum, the marble floods extend, illustrious and gleaming in the many scars of black mineral imperfection. Deep blue carpets stretch ahead and make up the various pathways deeper into the building. Smooth corners, curves in the walls, arches and podiums, hold deep underwater darkness to their texture. From the domed ceiling a great, round sphere hangs from many chains. It appears heavy and glossy as it reflects soft sea-colors of blackened blue and curves of white light. It is so massive, that were it to break free from its suspension, it could easily roll through the walls and demolish half of Syracuse before reaching to a stop at the distant sea.

‘That looks just like your sphere Laodike.’ Says Varhas, pointing at the dome above. In the hues of the museum, Laodike appears in a melancholic hue, crowning the folds of his face and wear in wave.

‘It looks like it, because it is the same object.’ Replies a voice from nearby. The sounds the man makes are apt, autistic in focus. He is one of the opponents, the tall and broad man of cybernetic eyes and a hooded head who grabs the initiative to interject into their conversation. The distance between the two teams is not large, but it is also unnatural for any person to reply and listen from so far away. Still, the Claimant walks slowly through both parties of soldiers and he closes in to Varhas and Laodike.

Between the three Claimants, a Meconian hoplite remains to the side, hands at both Orichalcum shield and short, sheathed sword.

The opponent offers his hand as well as his name. ‘Juohan.’

Laodike replies only with words. ‘I would rather not.’ Juohan’s hand remains extended for a second and then it falls besides him. ‘Who knows what peculiar blade hides under those robes. What needles you may hold between your fingers. One can only be so careful.’

‘Well put.’ Says Juohan as he removes his hood to reveal the rest of his head. Pale yellow and straight, thin hairstrands fall over his forehead. If the man had a face, he would appear in a constant state of sickness, drained of life, of droopy ears, thin, dry lips and caved-in cheekbones. However, despite those traits around his cybernetic eyes, his eyebrows are frowned on-top of the metallic cylinders, his temples bulge along the metal. Bronze-amethyst tubes, enter his nostrils, creating a man who appears somewhat worn down by the strain of his focus, someone whose own face wraps around the machines and moves with some difficulty. ‘Afraid now are we?’

Laodike scoffs before she replies. ‘Me and every person who looks at your face.’

‘Low blow. But I can say the same about him.’ He points towards Varhas and his one wounded eye that hides behind a black eyepatch.

‘Different wounds. Different misalignment of flesh.’

‘Same freak though. If you looked at his maimed eye, you too would flinch. But I suppose your skill only took you so far as to heal anything but that one eye.’

Laodike frowns. She knows the man is right. Healing an eye is far more difficult that healing a pierced organ that flows with liquids. The delicate complexity of eyesight, the fine point of sight to stimuli eludes her.

Understanding that the Claimant is only trying to disrupt her thoughtstreams, she scoffs again, dispersing the foreign thoughts in the process.

‘You spoke of the sphere to grab our attention. What of it?’

‘I did no such thing.’ The man lies casually. ‘Perhaps you should look into the sphere, see what is inside of it. Have your delusional voices hushed.’

As the man is trying anew to disrupt their thoughstreams, Laodike glances towards the Meconian on the side and nods. The giant walks towards Juohan and the Claimant steps back, returning to his team.

‘Asshole.’ Says Laodike.

Varhas finally speaks. ‘I’d tell him to take his meds, but you told him good nevertheless. Anyways. I heard that too, about the sphere that is. Do you think your artifact is similar to that massive thing above us?’

‘Sure looks like it. I can’t know unless I touch it. The point here is that inside of these spheres are imprisoned horrors. What if the sphere on the ceiling is just that, but grander?’

‘Then we now know why this match is going to be hard.’

***

In broad sight of eachother, both teams open up the containers and the powerarmors appear under the dark hue of the museum. Pale outlines crown each surface and even so, the colours and texture of alloy, paint and material are clear enough to see from a short distance away.

From outside, in the material shell of the machines, the Orichalcum powerarmors appear in splendor and awe. This orange gleam contrasts with the armor that the Meconian giants wear. Wherever their greaves and breastplates hold light and luster in golden texture, the powerarmors hold that same type of gleam in manifold depth and intensity instead. Where one may look at the details of the alloy, he may find himself lured in by extreme precision, engraved, fingerprint-weaving patterns and detail that has purpose and function in the powerarmors. Whereas the Meconian’s Orichalcum is smooth and otherwise plain.

The powerarmors are identical to the previous matches, with only one difference present on Jorj’s and Otto’s armors. In that microscopic world of detail, Blacksteel bodyhair, smaller than what is visible to the naked eye, twist and blanket on-top of eachother, forming a layer above the Orichalcum as the follicles of human skin. Sensory in nature, but also made of hard Ulmish alloy, they allow for even greater neural stimulation on the surface of the Orichalcum and some dispersion of energy.

This addition, made by Varhas himself on his recent moment of injured clarity, lingers between novelty, and risk. This is also why, only him and Laodike have agreed to apply it to their powerarmors.

Other than this small change, the powerarmors are as they were. Heavy Orichalcum covering microscopic pumps and mechanical sinews, coolant pools, highways and corridors of circuitry, rural curvatures, alloy, crystal and steel almost touching, almost merging with neurons, bending deep, twisting and becoming a helmet without exits, a breastplate that flows and overlaps with its darker subdermis of machinery.

Opposed to these gleaming forms, four powerarmors stand upright.

Of Valkanean design, shoulders, broad, folding backs are carved in metal. Their weight is measured in manifold detail, layers of alloy and ceramic logic, much alike to the Orichalcum. White metal twists and overlaps, plates dig in corners that are perplexing in their geometry so that there is rotation, flexibility and a plethora of options in movement. As naked flesh, supple and able to curl into itself, bulging on command and stretching when wished for, the white alloy blends into the metal, the space around the knees, and the broad back. Indeed it is so, that hydraulics, metal plate and muscles are as one on the Valkanean powerarmors.

This does not mean however that the armors are not bulky. Under the blue lights of the museum, these armors appear mostly as a second layer over any human form that enters them. The shoulders are broad yes, but there are also bulky plates that overlap over the hydraulic plex, oxidized copper lines and pearly protrusions that reveal the armor’s sinews in cyan metal and their kneecaps or elbows in gleaming, faded white. On the inside of their hands, the soft palm of the armor is a faded green, deep moss that also holds same hairy texture of some thin alloy. Finally, much like the Blacksteel hairstrands on the Orichalcum, one can make out infinitesimal purple on swathes of air over the supple surface of white. Amethyst follicles, barely revealing themselves in blackened pink.

The light refracts on the Valkanean armors. Mist is woven around the machines as if it absorbs and turns into an aura, all the little beams of light inside of the vast room.

Every armor from the opponents appears so. However, each one has different additions. Two of them have Phrygian caps on their helmeted heads. One has a Corinthian type helmet and another has nothing but a mask. The caps are metallic, in warm bronze that twists into a cone with its apex bent forwards. Below the caps is a mask. A hard white material that is the same supple consistency as the rest of the body, however much more detailed. As if the helmet itself is a face, but the skin and subdermal muscles that can make it smile, are a thousand times smaller and better overlapping than the muscles of the rest of the powerarmor. This smaller detail creates shadows and features. A nose, caved cheeks and ears that appear half as illusions and actual material texture. On the suit of Larissaeus, the Corinthian helmet covers this helmet-head of the machine and it is without engraved facial hair. For it is so, that in the other three armors have beards or mustaches growing from the metallic faces. Black in the light, with auburn patches, illuminating white and fiery orange each head is of a different hairstyle and complexion.

What the Black and White team sees clearly, is that these armors also carry six javelins in total. On the inside of a wicker and leather shield, two, long, Blacksteel-tipped javelins are there for the powerarmors of all the Contestants except for Larissaeus. It seems that their tactics are suited to pinpoint skirmishes, dexterous advance and retreat on swift legs along with the usual weapons of the Contest.

By chance, or greater planning, the team understands that their opponents are prepared to punch through the Orichalcum with Blacksteel. They, on the other end, have only brought a Blacksteel blade and two artifacts to aid them in the Inverse Dream. On that notice, the Black and White team glances over their opponents, watching as their Claimants do not hold any artifacts and they think that they perhaps hold some form of advantage in the fantastical part of the match instead.

As for an entry into the Inverse Dream, all eight Claimants feel a passage of fear over them. Divine attention that looms closer and they can only watch with their normal eyes, listen with their ears, or other devices grafted on them, things that are of their own body and nobody else’s.

***

Both teams see eachother, thus they know that the time to fight will come when they both choose it. And so, neither rush ahead. The museum is quite large, the rooms within are many. The Contestants remain close to their armors until their bodies yearn for the enclosure of metal. The Claimants opt instead to walk until they feel, or know that they are ready.

Equally blue, damp in some underwater sanctity of stone and mineral, the museum quickly turns curved and erratic the further one is from the main room.

The exhibits are of paleolithic bones, obsidian spearheads, scraps of rusted iron and calcified remains of humans. Dead animals give way to the first traces of mankind and soon enough it becomes apparent that everything on the other side of a glass panel, are objects from the deepest reaches of the past and of old planet Earth. The Claimants that walk through the museum, find themselves in a one-way narrative that showcases to them, diverse cultures, pockets of mankind that branch out on different twists and turns.

For Zanuvia and Laodike, the two women remain close as their path starts from a soup of colour, to Cretaceous era fossils and ammonites and a journey through water and into breathing. Then comes language, then comes sailing and the secrets of the olive tree, explorations over the waves and underwater returns that reveal in stunning blue and darkness, the many hues of silver, gray, red and jade creatures that used to swim an ocean a long, long time ago.

Zanuvia states lovingly, that this is why she chose Tropicana. Some intimate connection with this spectacle is what made her the witch she is today, speaks mother to daughter and the two of them continue and return towards the room of the powerarmors.

Some Claimants go through this journey without meeting another, but for Varhas he finds himself at another’s company. When the man passes through early exhibits of broken skulls, statues of wind gods, thunderbolts and tombs, golden swords and signs of written languages, he finds a woman walking to his side. Her form breaks through the low lights, curving in her own path and meeting with him out of calculated or random chance.

In such a mix of understanding, she freezes in place, eyebrows frowning and taking a minute to gather the strength to go near him. She too, is unsure if this is calculated or random.

From where Kleiothyke stands, the man’s shape is horrible. Cloaked in the very shadows of the exhibits behind him, she watches as the bones scattered in the glass panel, hover by invisible strings. Varhas is only a hint of a shape in the dark and the only lights that reveal him are the weak reflections of lights in the bleached bones and that singular glimmer in his one eye.

‘A very disturbing entry Varhas.’

‘Kleiothyke.’ Says the man and he walks forwards, light barely grazing his silhouette. ‘What did you see in your path?’

The woman thinks for a moment. Some part of her hesitates as she thinks that Varhas might choose violence. When she speaks, she finds it impossible to restrain her words, to stop the flow of awful imagery that Blood Theurgs like her see, when they are presented with exhibits closer to their inner texture.

‘Just a lot of violence. Temples under the starlight, desperate, incestual, nasty moments I suppose. Queens and kings, some ancient bloodlines maybe? Few moments ago I saw something written on a clay tablet.’

‘And what do you think that means?’

‘Just random streams. Made me think about twisted origins, bringing ever weirder things to reality, like language, or writing.’ The woman gives way to an awkward smile. She feels an ease pass over her as the man responds with a calm face, half a smile but earnest enough to make her feel a hint of safety. ‘What about you?’

‘Lots of bones.’

‘Sounds scary.’

‘Hardly so. The dead can’t move.’ Says Varhas in a light voice, his legs move towards a corridor that is better lit.

‘Well... they can’t move but they have us moving for them. They have us carrying them around from old Earth.’

From Varhas’ perspective, something has told him since the moment the two met, that Kleiothyke is not dangerous. Under low white light mixed with hues of warmth, she appears wholly different than all three of the times he has seen her before. Neither the forgotten blur on Dur-Baqa when they not-feasted on human flesh, neither the awestriking, slim figure of glamour and thin, tiptoeing slyness, nor the recent cloaked shape, clutching some hilt of a blade.

She is simply Kleiothyke. Two hazel irises, orange specks in focused eyes, thin eyebrows, hints of wrinkles and slightly puffy cheeks that surround a pointy jaw. Her straight hair is auburn-black, falling over her ears in tiny braids that reach down into her clavicles. The pointy shape of her long, straight nose makes a sharp shadow over the rest of her face. Her features have a habit of twitching so often and she appears like a different person from the one who bared her teeth out, eager to use seduction, bronze heel and blade against him.

Varhas speaks. ‘I’ve never thought about it that way. They are dead but we carry them along with us. People used to dig around for old things back then. Its fascinating to think that human hands went around discovering what was there.’

Some thought that passes through her, makes her face contort. Her nostrils open up as the bridge of her nose curls and pulls her face towards the quick expression that vanishes as if it never happened. The wrinkles on her face deepen.

‘Humans, machine. Some say that the machine let us go the moment it discovered a human earring made of bone.’

‘Let us go?’

‘You know. The story about the Silver Globe, how we spent... a thousand years in rooms, being studied by the machine, playing in screens all day, loving, reading, killing from a distance, packed like sardines in white, silver cans of cement?’

‘I’ve heard that story. That doesn’t mean it is true. Last I checked this is the story most Blood Theurgs believe.’

‘What story do you believe then?’ Asks Kleiothyke.

On the tight corridor both of them have chosen to follow, the glass panel on their right reveals an ancient mechanism. The large, rusted gears have almost become stone and the analog, early computer is one among many. Infront of the one that is worn out is a name of where it was found, “Antikythera”, some island in the middle of nowhere. The four other mechanisms also have names infront of them, but the other four also have a small sentence that says, “Found by machine”.

‘I believe.’ Speaks Varhas. ‘That the early humans saw where technology was going and they decided that the only logical step was to trust machines to do the thinking for them. They willingly stepped into the prison of the Silver Globe and it took the machine one thousand years to figure out every intricacy, every unique detail, pattern of thought, emotion, genetic difference, ancestry, labyrinth of blood, emotional barrier, ego, well... everything that makes a human. It gave people back then choices and saw good and evil, how and why they make their choices. It fastened ships from mankind’s delirious imagination, it separated cultures and men this way, it served us and we obeyed.’

‘Is that so? So the machine served us and sent us to the stars with a plan?’

‘Plan or thought, it just required a lot of thinking that is all. I am not sure if the machine ever felt anything. If it felt pity on us and let us go from its dominion. And certainly I do not think that it made this decision after excavating some bone earring.’

Kleiothyke shrugs her shoulders. ‘I’ve also heard that it measured us all in a grand set of scales. It served us so much that it allowed humanity judge and execute itself to perfection.’ She makes a sharp exhaling sound as she runs her indexfinger across her neck. ‘Pruning eachother from far away. After one thousand years of applying numbers to our sins and calculating and giving people the ability to do bad deeds to others from afar and digging to realize all that happened in humanity’s past, the scales tipped to good. By a tiny margin. That is why it let us go. It measured and let us continue? Does that sound good?’

‘That is good to hear I suppose.’

‘And yet I said by a small margin that these scales tipped.’

‘For every sin, I suppose there is an act of kindness of equal measure. So it is now. Perhaps it was so back then. Doesn’t that make you feel...’

‘Good? Not really. We were judged and barely passed.’

‘Still we were judged. Perhaps that was the debt we had to pay before spreading out into the cosmos.’

Kleiothyke moves her head. Her lower lip rolls over itself, her chin curling behind it and the fleshy, red inner part of her lip reaches her nose. Varhas looks at the woman and he is stricken. Some part of him is greatly surprised that the women besides him is so different than both what he expected. The silly expression on her reminds him of Gon and that peculiar, contradicting charm. After her thought concludes, Kleiothyke’s face returns to a normal. Her new expression fits a woman rather than a child who can’t understand the severity of moments.

‘Makes sense. Better to think the debt was repaid no? Makes one feel lightweight. Glad that they are not living at those times.’

‘So let us just, enjoy the museum for now?’

‘Yeah. I can do that.’ Says Kleiothyke. Varhas walks ahead without noticing that the woman has remained idle behind him. When he turns to look if she is following, she breaks through some loop of thinking, her face returns to a normal expression and she smiles as she closes the distance.

***

For some others, this small walk is much more difficult.

Alone, Gon notices how each exhibit assaults him. At the old engravings of childbirth he remembers the spongy pains of his own birth, at faded pictures of the old world and its illnesses he is back at the fevers and the fears he had when he had contracted an illness when he was five years of age. The bullets pass through him at the installations of war and he knows that each life lived, is one and the same. Endless stream of immortality, soul passing on to a new body, the many different bones behind the panels mock him. The animals too, butcher and eater he fastens himself and no matter what path he chooses, the next exhibit is worse than the one before it.

Shaken by all of the experiences around him. Ten times he has asked himself to heave this weight to someone else and ten times he has rejected himself.

Deeply evil, the history of mankind is too much to bear and Gon watches as his body crawls, his flesh agonizing as if trying to detach from himself.

Full of sweat, the Blood Theurg walks until the corridors are spent and there is nothing but a tiny exhibit infront of him. A faded out album cover, jagged letters make up a name that he cannot read in red and black. On its cover is a Greater Mirror Horror and underneath the horror lies a labyrinth with the word ‘RETRIBUTION’. Each golden letter stretched apart from the one next to it.

At a center, a man is drawing near.

Chapter 57

The Finals Part I

Higher into the building, the last floor is mostly empty. There are no exhibits there, only dark rooms with glass windows, square empty spaces that sometimes span the entire half of the floor, or twist and corner into smaller divisions of space. Setting light floods through the windows from the west, while the east side of the floor is a blue, of long blocky shadows on open doorways.

The roof is a flat square of exits and doorways that lead into cabins and stair shafts. The floor of the rooftop is mostly cut blocks of stone that give way into thick, bulletproof glass panels. Their arrangement is of a checkerboard pattern, stone to glass with metal details that bind all squares together. Floodlights arch above, lamps over the exits and rails hang over the sides. The shadows here are also drawn, seemingly doubled by the white lights that fall and are made weaker by the light of sunset.

Aligned in odd order, roof and highest floor do not always lead to eachother. Not only the exits and stair shafts hold this uneven navigation, but also, one may see through the glass panels into the lowest floors of the museum, directly into the first floor. From the roof, one is able to stare down, only to find the images on the other side being that of the second, or third floor, of the various exhibits resting in their own red or orange glow and on their next step, to see underneath deep and blue hallway darkness.

This is no technological marvel hiding below the glass panels, but smart architecture and ordering of space. Where the formation of the building makes it impossible, vertical tunnels In-between the walls, mirrors and windows create this choppy illusion of connection with all levels of the museum.

In its entirety, the museum is seven floors tall. But its density, warping and playing with the senses makes of it a labyrinth.

As such, the two teams understand it when one of them steps into the roof.

With no visible crowd, entry into the final bout of the Contest is only hints of grandeur, hiding in the still lit sky. Seconds in, four Contestants take their first step and the thin place between beginning has been crossed, some part of them barely hanging into uncertainty.

Otto is on the rooftop, whereas the other three Black and White Contestants are a distance away on the empty seventh floor. Their opponents are arrayed in groups of two. Nina and Belis are on the roof, while Larissaeus and Thalassinos are on the seventh floor.

Otto is armed with a rifle, magazines of both Armor Bypassing bullets and normal bullets to his side. Jorj holds his usual Lanza, Scaramucc is armed with a Bio-Rifle and Hab is holding a Flak Cannon. Nina, the only female Contestant in the match is armed with a Lanza. Belis is armed with a Flak Cannon, Thalassinos with a Starzy Pike and Larissaeus is also holding a Lanza.

In non-aligned, soup of detail, stimuli, reality and bend of machine logic, Inverse Dream and far away attention, all slowly merge in this arena. Spectators, Claimants, Commoners and Pantokrators, an impalpable weight gathers. For the eight Claimants inside of their machines are safe underground. To where their perception imagines further than the walls and earth that surrounds them, it moves, it swirls, it beckons with a background noise that could be that of trillions of souls. When one Claimant enters the Inverse Dream for his last time, it is his hands that reach out into the cold metal, only to find that behind the solid surface expands the Inverse Dream of this match, radiant and scalding, enveloping and cloaking, ready to measure fantasy against fantasy. Ready to beam out into the cosmos, to serve a result in every living thing watches.

For the Black and White team, the Orichalcum fortresses hum and gleam with renewed intensity. The Claimants understand that it is the gathering of such vast attention that causes the Inverse Dream to fill with energy. The spectators may not be able to influence any matches, but by attendance alone, the logical abstraction of magic gains wieght. The Claimants here are stronger, but more importantly, they are more of themselves.

Waterfalls bend, foam gathers into waves, the darkness in a suit becomes sharp and consuming of all detail and to Gon, the world is that much more vibrant in fleshly, guttural, horrible intonations. For the opposing powers of will, the curves and mechanical muscles, the enveloping Thracian fold of powerarmor is map and pinpoint, brown and black moles on skin, celestial maps in genes and metal for Kleiothyke. A byzantine rolling fiefdom, where the hills are fresh tilled earth and hidden caches of Greek Fire, an Ulmish factory, at the deeper innards is but a wheel where pain itself is inscibed into wood and metal. Gon understands one last stretch of another Claimant’s fantasy. As if he is back home, endless flat plain, cracking under the slow walk of Zerynthia Alatine, prayer for rain, permanently parched lips that are broken as the dry mountaintops in the distance, the Blood Theurg feels so from far away.

As their minds manifest into order and real merges with fantasy at the center of vast pull of attention, the Contestants wake up to action and the match begins.

***

First one to fire their weapon is Otto. At a long distance the bullet grazes Nina. With ample time in the microseconds it takes for the projectile to home into her form, Nina bends her shape. Machine plex and the flesh underneath obey in uniform decision, changing her form into a pre-defined shape. The bullet passes centimeters under her arched armpit. Air pressure tears the Valkanean powerarmor, but it remains whole in its durable design.

The first person to take a direct hit is Otto. The reply comes from a flanking Belis who is also at the roof. Still at a distance, the man fires multiple shots of gathered flak. Many in number, chaotically bouncing around corners, the shards crash with heat against the Orichalcum causing minimal damage.

As soon as the attacks are witnessed by the two opponents on the roof, Nina and Belis change tactics, retreating behind cover and trying to circle around so that Otto stands In-between them.

Otto and Belis exchange shots. Either man only engages with as little focus as possible, waiting for an opportunity and focusing on cover.

At this lapse of attention, Otto notices soon enough that Nina is nowhere near him.

***

On the seventh floor, broken tile and piece, chase what precious seconds exist before Nina comes to support the two opponents. Jorj, Hab and Scaramucc stomp on the solid floors, the Orichalcum weighs down on solid matter, cracking it at each of their aggressive step.

Jorj’s Lanza vacuums a wall ahead. The solid pieces coalesce and grind themselves into dust, revealing only a white afterimage behind what was solid. Hab fires his flak cannon where the image should be moving next. The superheated shrapnel webs outwards and bores through, but there is no opponent behind the smoldering holes.

Instead, what both Contestants hear in the silence following this short aggression, is a singular pair of footsteps. Moving away, that sound is to the right of Jorj in such a way that Hab cannot fire at it, but only through his own teammate.

As both of them turn towards it, from behind a white blur becomes the shape of Larissaeus. Lined up, Blacksteel javelin in his armored fist, the Contestant is preordained by Kleiothyke’s magic to hold his shot. In this second of lost initiative, the Claimant of Astral and Blood, pokes her star-lit eye through the two lined up doorways of her two opponents. With Blood magic, she scours the two Orichalcum forms and the flesh within, to spy on a microscopic urge. Doorway staring at the doorway ahead, to her, Hab and Jorj are as such.

This magic is understood by both Zanuvia and Varhas. At the nape of the Orichalcum armor, at that place behind the head and In-between the ears, the blind spot of the soul and origin of being, both Claimants feel Kleiothyke. It calls in labyrinths of blood that the two of them do not understand, but feel its malevolent aggression.

Larissaeus tip toes to fleeting speed. The javelin that is not fired still makes its intent known. Jorj dodges the strike that never comes to his right and behind him, Hab dodges equally fast to the left.

As the positions swap, Thalassinos’ footsteps appear to close in. Scaramucc, closely behind Larissaeus breaks his pursuit to put himself behind these loud steps. However, Thalassinos is not there. Instead, the person that appears to the side of Scaramucc is his own teammate Hab.

In that small error of attention, Thalassinos appears with his Pike. In a distance of thirty meters, the ray of green connects to the gleaming orange of the powerarmors. It connects to both Scaramucc and Hab’s powerarmor as the light refracts and reflects through and around the Orichalcum. Thin rays break around the two forms. Where the green light touches, the men feel heat and a sensation of light pain that is identical to light grazing.

A shot from Hab’s flak cannon makes Thalassinos vanish again behind cover. The broad web of shrapnel appears to connects to nothing again.

Being this close, allows for both the Contestants and Claimants to converse rapidly. In accelerated speech, only half a second passes.

‘They are toying with us.’ Says Hab.

‘They have an advantage in dexterity.’ Replies Zanuvia.

‘More to that, Kleiothyke is avoiding me.’ Speaks Gon.

‘Their suits. Laodike speaks to me through light, that their bodies bend to dodge.’ Varhas talks while half of him is away, exchanging information with the member furthest away from them.

‘What do we do?’ Asks Jorj, as all the voices are heard before they come out of their mouth.

‘Spread.’ Replies Varhas.

In swift blur, the thee of them separate.

***

To an outsider, to any commoner spectator, it appears as if there is no conversation happening between anyone. Bits and microscopic glitches of sound do manifest as they follow the action. To a Claimant that is watching the match however, it is in these jitters that give insight into what is happening.

In the football fields of ancient times, just as a reader of lips can understand what a coach says to their players, so does a Claimant with the flow of language in the minuscule sounds that crown the chaos of spectacle.

‘One of them has no footsteps. Just like in Ulm.’ Says Jorj.

The Contestant’s language is choppy. Not even the second word is said before the Claimant replies.

‘I know Jorj. It’s Larissaeus. Swift, soundless, untouched by his enemies.’ Varhas’ sped up reply is understood by the Contestant.

‘Trap?’ Says Jorj, but only the sound of the first consonant escapes his mouth.

‘No. We just need Gon to touch him and dissolve the magic. Or to base ourselves in chance.’

As soon as the design is put into the man, he starts sprinting. Turning left, then right, through a wall and then stopping to turn around and backtrack his movement, Jorj is moving erratically. However, when one notices the sounds all around him, it is as if the Contestant is actively avoiding whatever is making noise. When a pair of steps lands closeby to his left, he instead turns to his right.

When that very same pair of steps twists in place to turn against him, it is only Claimant instinct and feeling that guides his next move.

From that keyhole of blood magic, the one that spies through the source of life, this time, Varhas feels a warm ebb instead. He and by extension Jorj, know that the man behind them is Scaramucc and Gon. As this certainty of senses happens rapidly, Jorj does not hesitate to move straight ahead.

With this erratic speed Jorj is fast enough to catch up with the sprinting blur ahead.

Through an open doorway, Larissaeus’ form appears. Jorj lifts his Lanza and the azure glow floods the room with light.

As Zanuvia said, the white Thracian powerarmor moves out of the Lanza’s shot. In the few frames that Jorj watches Larissaeus, his body dislocates out of the way. The Lanza shot passes a meter from Larissaeus’ body. He however holds his closest arm arched upwards, in such a stance that minimizes the Lanza’s vacuuming damage. The powerarmor pulls cartilage, dislocates bone, curves ligament and arches muscle the furthest possible away from harm. The moment the Lanza shot passes, the Thracian powerarmor flexes and relocates itself back. The body underneath returns to its normal order of bone and ligament and the opponent sprints as if the damage caused him is almost non existent.

‘A perfect dodge.’ Says both Varhas and Jorj in one voice.

Half there, Varhas spreads his attention to communicate with the others. He tries to reveal the secrets of their opponents, while also keeping enough attention to Jorj’s erratic movement.

A few seconds later, Larissaeus appears again. This time, the man seems in place, stopped in his tracks. As Jorj aims his Lanza, a blue sphere appears from his left. The round object closes into him and he decides to dodge instead.

A Lanza shot from a distance connects to the sphere. The implosion floods the world with light. Grand, pummeling pull and push, the combined Lanza shot shatters wall, floor and ceiling. A short distance away from the implosion, cracks Jorj’s powerarmor, but he has dodged in time. As the blue, begins to dissipate, he watches a black silhouette rush towards him.

Larissaeus uses the pull of the implosion to propel himself close to Jorj. His acceleration is almost instantaneous.

Preparing for a strike, Jorj holds the Lanza to his side with his right arm, while he lifts his right fist to prepare to deflect an incoming blow. That blow does not come. Instead, Larissaeus feints a thrust with his javelin and then he steps over Jorj.

The powerarmors touch. A graze of the white Thracian plex glances over the Orichalcum and both machines fill with each Claimant’s foreign magic.

In that short, close distance moment of hand to hand combat, Jorj turns to strike Larissaeus, while Larissaeus lands behind Jorj. The Blacksteel javelin is thrust low this time, but Varhas’ magic makes the opponent’s arm stiff. The Blacksteel tip grazes Jorj’s right heel. The Orichalcum plating there becomes pierced, but not deeply enough to wound the man’s flesh. Jorj’s wild, left backhand passes over Larissaeus’ helmet. The sound of Thracian metal against Orichalcum produces a glancing shrill that fills the room.

The opponent dodges low and to Jorj’s right, opting for a rapid retreat. Jorj rotates sluggishly to find Larissaeus, but the man has already fallen to all fours, crawling backwards and out of sight.

When Jorj fires his Lanza, it appears that he is aiming at nothing.

In the silence that follows, Jorj steps back and backwards again to assess what has just happened.

‘Varhas?’ Speaks Jorj. But there is no answer. The magic in the powerarmors swings and it swings into the fantasy, where attention is spent on more urgent matters.

***

‘Jorj? Jorj are you there?’ Yells Varhas into his fantasy. There is no reply here also.

The short intrusion by Kleiothyke is nothing like the poisonous infection of the centipede match. It is nothing like the all out assault on Mecone and Fenrika’s intrusion. Varhas knows the Orichalcum powerarmor behaves as it did few seconds ago, but there is a change in the machine. Something foreign, has severed the most important connection between Claimant and Contestant. Something exists in the wires and silicon highways beneath the gleaming metal. Something stirs, but not in the coolant pools. That something exists behind the very concept of form and shape around him.

Automated, Jorj retreats and behaves as if he is actively guided by Varhas. The damage he caused in the short contact with the Thracian machine has to be severe, but he is unable to confirm this action with himself or anyone else for that matter.

Varhas understands it so and he remains in the Inverse Dream, concentrating for his next move.

***

Scaramucc and Gon notice the change. Where communication between the Orichalcum armors seemed like specks in the chaos of the match, they now feel Jorj as a fanning warmth in the distance. Where the Contestant moves, he leaves a signs and trails of heat. A source of temperature without light, an open, fleshly hole in reality that Gon is drawn to look towards.

In correct decision making sway, Gon turns his attention away from his teammate. Following closely to the strategy at hand, Scaramucc begins to also move erratically, focusing less on stimuli around him.

At the turn of a corner, a white powerarmor reveals its back to the man.

It is Nina. She has arrived to the seventh floor.

Scaramucc holds the trigger of his Bio Rifle. The weapons gathers its mucous projectile on barrel. Precious second before Nina turns to face Scaramucc, the Bio Rifle coalesces a blob twenty centimeters in diameter and its coiled end propels the flesh-eating acid against her.

Alarmed, the opponent watches as the slow projectile flies through the air and Juohan, the Claimant within Nina, calculates the best course for the Thracian armor to dodge.

Nina’s body bends in unison with the armor’s mechanical musculature. Her left shoulder presses inwards, bending to where her heart should be. Her neck arches to her right, arteries and spinal disks bend out of the way while the rest of her body breaks further from the flying blob.

Even at this rapid dodge however, the green blob sticks to her shoulder. If not whole, small parts break up and stick to her powerarmor while the biggest part of the blob flies behind her.

Equally fast as she was bent, her powerarmor returns her body to its original shape.

Gon can hear all of the flesh and bone underneath clack back into place. Nina growls at the pains that surge within her, but her Lanza aims true and fires directly at Scaramucc.

The azure glow connects and the force pushes Scaramucc back. His Orichalcum powerarmor pounds and cracks, but the man does not flinch.

The next blob Scaramucc launches is smaller. The blob is followed by another, in a rapid fire of green, radiating globules that stick around the concrete room.

Every globule that should connect to the Thracian powerarmor misses by smaller dislocated dodges. Nina opts to move out of the way instead and her dexterity allows her to retreat into a staircase that into the sixth floor.

Scaramucc gives chase. Gon focuses his attention away from all his teammates. In gravitating pull, the Claimant focuses on the green globules as they attract towards Nina. Now infected, the globules are commanded by the Claimant to home into her. Some separating pieces funnel themselves into cracks, some of them follow Nina down the staircase, rolling and following her retreat.

‘We have her.’

***

Hab and Zanuvia notice that the two teammates on the floor with them have gone silent.

In this isolated change, both Claimant and Contestant begin to surge within their own flesh and metal. This time however, this merging of Claimant and Contestant is savage, torrenting.

Foaming within emotion and mounting pressure, it only takes a deep breath for Hab to plan for his next movement.

Erratic flak cannon fire fills the floor. Hab fires his Flak Cannon at every hint of an opponent. In a state of flowing, leg, hand and trigger merge as a unceasing rhythm that breaks apart everything infront of Hab.

Even if neither Contestant or Claimant are certain on whether they are causing damage to their opponents, they know that they are limiting their movements. And in this scouring for clear signs of an enemy, it is done so that Jorj is never there to be hit or limited. For Zanuvia knows, in some elemental, expanded and basic understanding of simple things that they are actively going towards the right direction.

Such confident and accurate pathway of destruction Hab carves, that soon enough an opponent appears in the distance, staring directly at them.

Hab charges. In a singular overflowing closing of the distance, Thalassinos fires his Pike at the Contestant, while Hab pounds the man with shrapnel. The green light flays the Orichalcum, while the shrapnel forces the opponent to dodge and at rare times, get grazed by the bouncing projectiles.

Despite the Thracian dexterity, the two Contestants approach eachother. Hab is able to stay a meter’s distance from his opponent. The Flak Cannon’s projectiles web outwards, ahead to where Thalassinos should be. This forces him to stand his ground, which makes both men come face to face.

Then, both of them in unison drop their weapons and their hands reach out against the other.

Chapter 58

The Finals Part II

Meanwhile, on the roof, Otto and Laodike understand their disadvantage.

Clean shots from the rifle miss by small margins, while Belis is constantly able to counterattack.

Once again, the frustrating back and forth makes frothing at the mouth easy. Otto tightens and his Claimant follows. deep wild breath enters their lungs and the Ulmite listens to his own growling.

At every pounding heartbeat, the two of them diligently tank the hits. When a Flak Cannon shot of heated shrapnel closes in to his head, the Ulmite shifts his head towards the projectile. He headbutts the explosive load with his gleaming helmet and then he sprints through the smoke. The smoke swirls around him as he charges.

This berserk response sends a hint of great caution towards Belis. The opponent hesitates for a moment as he and his Claimant are surprised by the brutish spectacle.

At a distance of four meters, Otto and Belis stare at eachother readying their few actions.

Rifle on his right arm and Blacksteel sword on his left, it appears to Belis that on either direction a dodge would be dangerous. Still, the opponent dodges to his left. Otto notices the movement and he opts to extend the rifle away from the opponent, using this change at his center of weight to pivot closer to Belis.

With a wild and yet fluid motion, the Ulmite throws his Blacksteel sword. The spinning weapon appears as if bending mid air, a black disk of curved edge that flies true towards Belis’ right bicep.

The Thracian powerarmor folds his exposed limb. The radius and ulna bones of his forearm snap in half. His wrist bends inwards almost reaching the elbow. His humerus also snaps trying to pull the vulnerable limb as close as possible to his body.

However, the bending motion is not enough. The Blacksteel blade passes through his open hand, severing four fingers and part of his metacarpus. The hand splits horizontally in two, the opponent loses all of his fingers except for his thumb.

Unfazed by the injury, when the moment continues into the automated reaction of the white powerarmor to fix the limbs back into place, Belis instead extends his injured arm towards Otto. As the white plex of mechanical muscle flexes the limbs straight, a spurt of blood gushes forwards. From the severed palm of the hand, the spurt is aimed directly towards the charging Ulmite and the splatter sticks to his Orichalcum helmet.

Normally, the different optics behind the visor should be enough to pierce through the liquid. However, Laodike is surprised and the Orichalcum reacts in kind.

Otto becomes blinded for a moment. When the moment passes and the Ulmite continues blindly ahead, Belis has already brought his Flak Cannon in both of his arms. Steadying the weapon with his maimed left hand. The Flak Cannon pounds Otto from a this close distance.

The force is great. Taking the entire brunt of the weapon, Otto is pushed back and he loses his footing.

***

The merge between Zanuvia and Alatine Zerynthia becomes deeper and closer as Hab and Thalassinos exchange blows.

Pound for pound, shift of weight to parry and block, fists and kicks become a drum of metals grazing and clattering.

Hab’s hand to hand combat is of wild, unrefined strikes. Arching hammer fists, stomps on exposed feet, headbutts and elbows, create a close flurry of blows that takes advantage of his heavy powerarmor.

For every movement of the seaman, the Thracian savagery of Thalassinos is that of a measured response. Every Orichalcum blow is met by two, or three quick strikes. Bending, dexterous uppercuts that use the entire lower body musculature of the white powerarmor. Kicks to the knees, backfists and crouched blows to the body make up a deconstructing strategy of violence.

Neither Contestant moves away. Every flinch of a bodypart is the other’s gain. Their bodies move in a mixing unison and their Claimants become pushed to a stretched out limit.

For it is so, that for every vast wave of the sea, there is a swirling blowback. Broad in consciousness, reaching out to both the powerarmor of ally and enemy, Zanuvia and Alatine Zerynthia battle in a open stretch of landless mass.

Waves animated in elemental fury, merge and split. The measure of each Claimant is the very consistency of water and it becomes apparent to both that they are fighting a master of this respective magic. The Orichalcum fortress becomes submerged. The Thracian plex of moving parts, dissolves into a colossal city of salt.

Abstract and formless, reality and fantasy converge at what mind and machine can perceive.

***

On the sixth floor, for Gon and Scaramucc, the walls around them are relatively hushed. There is that ambience of Lanzas and Flak Cannons from the floors above, but they are tightly focused on sounds closer to them.

Ear and Claimancy, working in their respective scouring of detail, it seems to both men that they are searching for some source of pain. In is not easy for Gon still, as Varhas’ peculiar influence of his Inverse Dream, whispers ever so often in a luring lapse of attention.

Within each passing pair of seconds, the friend begs for clarity from a Claimant who has to focus elsewhere.

Low, blue light dissipates in the distance. Many locked doors stand left and right on this hallway. Riveted steel beams and wooden boards arch around them. In here, Gon and Scaramucc try their hardest to sway their attention away from the museum’s personalized pull. The culture around them is strong, but Gon refuses to tap into the schizophrenic outreach of Claimant logic.

He only listens to the throbbing pain. He watches as the green blobs around him slowly creep forwards into a slightly ajar door.

Scaramucc enters with a slight push. The room floods with blue light from the corridor and a mixture of bright city lights from the outside give this place a light diffusion of colorless ebb. The floor slowly becomes more and more green as the globules enter around the Contestant’s boots.

Gon spends his attention guiding the globules. Part of him feels the opponent closeby.

When the moment passes in compete silence, Scaramucc watches as the light in the room remains as it is. Unchanged, the green lights underneath him stop moving and he quickly glances underneath.

The small blobs appear to not stick properly to the floor. Their shape slowly becomes taller and taller as they are stopped in place. From a round shape they become oval, growing upwards, becoming thinner at their base. Many of these blobs bend slightly towards Scaramucc’s legs and they crawl towards his Orichalcum boots.

Nina lets go of the steel beam. She falls into Scaramucc’s back, her injured shoulder bends, her left elbow tightens around his neck, while her right hand reaches over and into the nape of his neck, digging deep into the exposed part of his helmet.

Scaramucc drops his weapon to free his hand. His legs open up to a wide stance that allows him to support their combined weight. Nina’s response is to latch her body around her opponent’s back and to lock herself in place with her two legs.

The two powerarmors begin to have their circuitry invaded by the other’s Claimancy.

A tiny moment passes where Scaramucc opts to remain idle. The Orichalcum’s black plex of pumps and circuitry underneath the gleaming alloy groans in a metallic bend. His airways tighten, but the Contestant follows exactly at Gon’s response. The nape of his neck buckles and clacks and when Gon has peered the deepest he can against Nina’s Claimant, a course of action is taken.

With his left arm Scaramucc reaches over the tightening forearm. He presses his left thumb into Nina’s fist. Then he wedges his fingers into the gaps between her grip. His right arm arches upwards and grabs the opponent’s arm by the wrist.

Both powerarmors begin to pull. Since Nina has not locked the headlock with both arms, Scaramucc is able to strain her fingertips open. Little by little, mechanical click by mechanical click, her two arms open up. Breaking sounds are heard from both the Thracian plex of machine-muscle and the black pumps underneath the Orichalcum.

Nina’s Thracian helmet opens at the mouth. What appeared to be an engraved face, becomes two rows of steel teeth. White and stainless they bite into the exposed opening at the nape of his neck.

As soon as that happens, Gon commands the coolant pools within the armor to burst open around the fresh wound. The liquid explodes into a cloud of cyan mist as soon as it comes to contact with air. Acid and malevolent chemistry enter and burn the insides of the Thracian helmet.

Gon’s split of attention comes with another cost however. The green globules underneath have picked up speed as they home in to Nina through Scaramucc’s body. The Bio Rifle discharges crawl up into the Orichalcum boots, burning their way through the alloy plates at the shins, separating and digging into the infinitesimal openings in the powerarmor.

Excruciating pain surges in both Contestants. unnaturally fantastical, by way of Blood sorcery, Gon reflects this intimate sensation into the Thracian powerarmor. When Nina’s fingers cave into Scaramucc’s grip, a squashing sound fills the room.

Nina’s grapple breaks.

The Contestant curls her body, her legs shove Scaramucc’s back, moments before the globules traveling up his body reach her. Nina falls to the floor and her arms are free.

Scaramucc turns around, a distance of two meters exists between the two of them.

***

And as the action picks up for every other Contestant of the Black and White team, another begins to lapse. Silence and complete lack of awareness fills Jorj.

Or so many believe it to be, while the man himself relaxes in place behind a corner. For him, the world suddenly holds clarity and the powerarmor becomes immaterial. There is no tightening of the armor, no huff behind his faceless mask. Just sudden, abrupt expansion that soon makes the ground underneath his feet empty.

Normally, the Claimant within would be there. To watch, to understand what the Contestant feels and blend the gap between the technology.

But Varhas is lost. All the while the others fight, he is now severed from what happens around him. The Claimant is there in complete darkness, lost in his memories. The things that cross his mind are of the past. Moments with his mother as she spoke of spirits and ancient magicians in poetry, their Maine Coon cat Agfast on his lap. Dreams of a turbulent sea, aircraft carriers and dingy apartments on a marble planet. Little by little, good memories lapse into evil ones. And this lapse is full of odd shapes, edges and acute angles that stab themselves into his streams of thought.

When one image becomes that of a horrifying fantasy, Gods and greater things that were never meant to be, both merge in battle. Varhas struggles as his breath and heartbeat accelerates. These horrible beings are not here, but the man is still assaulted in memory.

Suddenly, the struggle hushes and a voice is heard.

‘I will be invading you in one minute.’

It is the voice of Kleiothyke. Flat, almost cordial in how normal she speaks, the Claimant from afar holds the hues of many in her sound. It is a blend of a calm ex, a warm motherly sentence and that of a cruel stranger’s warning.

‘Come. And bring your horrors.’

From above, unnatural light breaks the black isolation. Red dusk, celestial lines and a texture of a fleshly dome become the sky of the Inverse Dream. Born anew, the Claimant manifests in a spun. Kleiothyke enters through hints and her shape takes the form of a body that is both flesh and imperceptive radiation.

As Varhas turns to her, the woman evokes all those that he knows. His mother, his sisters, Laodike and Zanuvia too, even the textures of men like Scaramucc, Hab, Varhas and Anax. Commoners become her in a flurry, Contestants and Claimants too. She is one out of many and everyone but two.

Varhas musters up hints of himself to reply. ‘You said a minute’s time.’

‘That is when it follows me here. You appear surprised. Didn’t Gon teach you the ways of Blood?’

‘That he did not. We speak to eachother with fists more than words.’

‘How crude. But I can promise you our fight will not be as such.’

‘It will be much worse. Tell me, our machines are not in contact and yet you are here.’ Varhas talks and little by little some of his self returns. With that self-centered focus the darkness underneath him takes the form of his magic lance, surfacing up from its tip and falling into his hands.

Kleiothyke smiles. Her mouth is that of Sophia, gleefully unaware in better times together. ‘Memories dear Varhas. I come through those. If you had kept your mind away from your past I would not be able to find you.’ The woman manifests completely as soon as she finishes this sentence. Her body and face still warp to the shape of others, but now, she stands in a long dress of celestial splendor, her uncovered hands and neck are crimson and glossy in an uncomfortable texture of flayed flesh.

Within this assault of memories, Varhas feels the discomfort of gazing at her. The skinless woman makes his own body shudder as if he himself is some exposed reflection of her.

‘Foul magic.’

‘Foul? It is by your own past choices that I am here. Surely, you must understand by now that every time you have met me in the past, I’ve played a different Kleiothyke. From the mysterious teammate on Dur-Baqa, to the sadistic courtesan on the mirror banquet. Or, from the strategist on Ulm, to the potential and gentle interest here in the museum. All to better understand you, to close the distance In-between us. You could have acted rationally at every turn and yet here we are now. I doubt there is any other person who has seen as far into you as I.’

These words alarm Varhas. He had not thought about it and the Claimant understands that his focus went into those closeby. People that now seemed extremely far away.

Bad choices echo in his head. ‘Bad choices’. Says Kleiothyke in a mocking voice.

‘Choices nevertheless.’ Replies Varhas.

‘A fool’s strategy. You let chance and fate, greater things than you decide your course of action.’ Her words are sharp, chastising as if his mother stands infront of him instead.

A hint gathers around Varhas. His mind lapses into two men, Jorj and Gon. ‘So you say. But these bad choices put us in the finals. Contestants past their prime, Claimants that had forgotten their own strengths, or have never discovered them.’

The reply seems to move into Kleiothyke’s blind spot. She is all but two and as chance has it, Varhas draws this confident reply from them.

Kleiothyke continues in her chastisement. ‘Luck, faith, blind coursing. We will soon find out if your confidence in things that you dont know is greater. The horrors will be here soon, summoned by my promises of certain despair, summoned by despair offered to as a feast.’

Varhas’ fears ebb nearer. And yet along with this increase of his alertness, so surges newfound confidence. ‘You believe yourself cut from the same cloth as horrors? Is this why or how you command them?’

‘Command them? I do nothing of the sort. You will soon find out. When they come, you will not have the time to raise your spear against me.’ These last words, as Varhas understands, are the only words the woman has said in her voice. Endlessly cordial, reflecting part of his fears the Claimant feels a certain type of sorcery. A familiar pull of innocence that he has seen in Gon.

Kleiothyke turns towards the sky, she walks backwards towards Varhas, her back is open and vulnerable, but Varhas hesitates. The woman offers to stand with him, instead of against him.

Varhas expands his magic and armies of bone and skull begin to rise.

Chapter 59

The Finals Part III

Otto and Laodike do not manage to overpower Belis and Byzas.

Little by little, the berserk Ulmite becomes worn out. Both find it impossible to score that one decisive blow as their rifle makes it impossible to connect that pinpoint strike on an opponent that is well suited to avoid such precision.

Still however, the fight between the two Contestants is slow. Belis’ Flak Cannon has struck so many times that the Orichalcum armor caves and buckles, its surface is hot and malleable to outside forces, but Otto holds through the excruciating pain. More than that, it has become clear to the Black and White team, that every time the Thracian powerarmor dislocates the Contestant underneath, it causes minimal damage that keeps mounting up. Both Contestants are now sluggish.

Otto has already tried to recollect the Blacksteel blade many times, always denied by his opponent. In this desperate deceleration, it only takes another loss of his footing to fall on his knees.

From where Otto crawls, directly underneath is a glass slab. In his exhausted form, he cannot break through the slab to escape, but his eyes still wander on the spectacle below.

As the fury in both Claimant and Contestant wanes, Laodike urges Otto to reload the rifle with the armor bypassing bullets.

Byzas stands behind the man pummeling him with the flak cannon. Otto loads three bullets during this time. The rest of the bullets fall and scatter underneath Otto, sticking to the floor that becomes covered in his blood.

Gathering their last focus, hand to hand, Claimant and Contestant aim the rifle to the glass panel. Between force and fatigue, they take aim and fire two shots as fast as they can.

Before Otto’s powerarmor completely shatters on his back, he turns the rifle’s muzzle towards the center of his chest.

From this position, Byzas cannot see. He fires another volley of his Flak Cannon and the Orichalcum shape ahead shatters.

Otto’s rifle is fired in a suicidal aim. The bullet barely phases through him. Behind the Contestant, Byzas feels an explosion that occurs inside of the Thracian powerarmor. On his left elbow, the bypassing bullet manifests directly at the bone, exploding and severing the limb.

In the few seconds that follow, Byzas thinks of what has just happened. Blood dripping from his missing limb, he instantly takes to sprinting towards the staircase.

Otto and Laodike hang into life, just enough to watch the opponent sprint away. As the white shape becomes a blur, Otto gathers few thoughts before death. Crippled and confused, it is only her voice that soothes him into rest. Gently, the weight over his eyelids becomes heavy and the man dies.

***

Twin seas, one saltier than the other, for Zanuvia the opponent is not only as skilled as she is in Water magic, but also some Earth. To where the machines blend and flow, there are hints of something solid, corroding and eating away at the very Inverse Dream itself.

Salt. Alatine Zerynthia can command the very crystals between the currents.

Their back and forth burns at the young sea witch. In the underwater places where the Orichalcum is bent, the fabric of fantastical material scratches and stings.

It becomes evident to her, that each blow stimulates extra pain within Hab’s wounds.

But unfortunately for their opponent, this only send both her and Hab into a renewed frenzy.

Letting some of this invasive magic enter deeper into the powerarmor, Hab can smell the dry salty water. Whether it is his sweat behind the gleaming helmet, or some strange chemical leaking from the machine, or even an illusion casted by the Claimant, he has no time to care. For both of them, a feedback loop is made. A loop of seaside struggle, where all of their past, easy way of life coalesces here. To them, they are fishing in an endless sea. The man ahead is but an animal. They are chasing it around, like any man has done before. Foam, blood and struggle, all become one.

As such, one Contestant wanes, while the other pushes ahead.

There is no trap set for him. Made for conquering nature itself, Hab’s fists strike without response. Thalassinos finds himself losing his bearing. A combo begins against him as the flurry of wild haymakers and hammer fists strikes and strikes.

So great and one sided is this exchange that there comes a moment of complete and divine awe. Laodike and Hab breathe the salty illusion in and just before they strike their last blow, a projectile comes from above. The bypassing bullet from Otto’s rifle strikes Thalassinos in the shoulder. His white powerarmor gapes open to a wound where it takes only one hard hammer fist to pummel and break the man’s heart.

Hab watches as all of what happens ahead appears like a miracle and he, closed fist to bleeding wound, some great harpooner unmaking the white beast.

So great is this moment of pride, that as the world of tomorrow remakes the stories of the past, both Hab and Zanuvia watch as their triumph soon turns into a reference of old things that were once written down. As some hint of the future, one Blacksteel javelin bores through the floor underneath them. The Blacksteel tip flies with force from below, passing through and out the Orichalcum of his right leg, piercing his limb just below the knee.

***

Scaramucc stands with his fist aimed towards Nina. The green blobs burn their way through the man’s biceps and his wrists as they collect in his knuckles.

Nina turns away for a moment, picking up one of the Blacksteel javelins that she had hidden in the room.

A moment passes as both Contestants stare at eachother. Then, as one, the two charge against the other. Fists against Blacksteel tip.

The fight is slow and careful. With a reach disadvantage Scaramucc is unable to connect a strike. Gon manages to resist all of Juohan’s entries into the Inverse Dream. Despite the great contact of their machines, Juohan constantly finds himself swayed away by some innocent purity. Weaponized blood sorcery reduces the magic exchange of the machines into its bare minimum. And all of the potential shame of malice, is heaved from Gon and thrown into the Contestant instead.

Nina uses the javelin to strike at the man’s limbs. The Blacksteel tip finds its target many times, but it appears that Scaramucc makes each blow slightly miss. When the javelin strikes at his wrist, it barely goes through the layers of Orichalcum, only grazing the Contestant underneath.

Scaramucc can only fight back with feints. Nina appears to be wary of the green blobs in the opponent’s fists.

The fight continues for long. Scaramucc finds himself cornered many times, but he manages to move away by feinting sideways movements.

After a while, Gon makes a movement. Breaking his distance from the fight and closing onto Scaramucc, he resumes their strategy. The green blobs on their fists have eaten through the powerarmor and the excruciating pain manifests on both Contestant and Claimant. Using this pain to focus, Gon and Scaramucc flick their left hand against Nina.

The Bio Rifle blobs detach into a spray of smaller spheres. Some remain into the Contestant’s hand, while others fly.

Nina dodges as many as she can, but some latch into her helmet. In that downward dodge however, Scaramucc has already stepped forwards. Imposing, foreseeing his opponent dodge, Scaramucc throws himself into the Blacksteel javelin. The tip bores through his ribcage, but he prepares a downwards strike with his right hand.

The strike connects into Nina’s helmet. Force and metal-eating green bore through the Thracian helmet. A gaping wound of shattered metal and sizzling green opens up. It appears that some part of the opponent’s neck has dangerously dislocated into an unnatural bounce by the force of the blow.

Nina is crippled. Normally, such a fierce force would be enough to kill a Contestant. However, the great and painful stimulation from the flesh-eating green blobs in her face, keep both Nina and Juohan conscious.

In this short moment of awareness, their willpower spikes. Nina may not be able to control her body, but Juohan can control the Thracian plex of machinery around her. All it takes is for the commoner to surrender herself to her Claimant.

Nina’s left hand tightens. The Blacksteel javelin is gripped hard and it pulls out from Scaramucc’s body. Her back arches in a throwing position. By mere bend of the machine, her body twists and flexes. The Thracian powerarmor is heaved by Juohan and he launches the Blacksteel javelin towards the ceiling in a throwing motion.

So powerful is this throw that the Thracian powerarmor snaps in many places. Its mechanical muscles on its shoulder, lower back and elbow break in a whiplike clap.

The javelin is thrown and the one struck by it, is Hab on the floor above them.

***

Music reflects the space.

And when that space parts to give focus into the Horrors, Varhas and Kleiothyke listen to dancing sharp notes, vibrate the very soul of all immaterial objects. Noise, acoustic chaos. The skeletons rattle in vast conversations as if the armies that Varhas has raised are crowds with their own worries, neither lifeless, nor dead. Pipes, leather bags, strained air that massages the eardrum deeply and with force. Drums that pound the very flesh, some stranger musical scale passes through the Inverse Dream.

‘Bagpipes?’ Asks Varhas.

‘Your Contestant moves.’ Replies Kleiothyke.

But Varhas cannot understand what is happening in reality anymore. He is focused only into the changes of the Inverse Dream sky.

Piecemeal the horrors land. Severed hermit crabs, half-skulls and droplets of artificial light. Coalesced and mucous, severed hands that have lost their way, fingers of things that should not be, they all become a drizzle. The armies of the dead slash and pierce at the tiny horrors. As farmers to an endless field, or scavengers in a dark forest, they bend forwards, tilling with axes, swords and spears.

Reaping and breaking, the initial assault begins. Varhas watches the work from a distance. He takes a moment to rest from his summoning spell and Kleiothyke steps forward to cast her magic. With a silver needle she pricks her five fingers. She opens her palm towards the sky, slightly curling her pinky and ring finger. Blood extends from the fingers disregarding gravity and following a straight line up, as if the liquid climbs very thin, gleaming threads of silk.

The bloodied threads weave themselves. Light and blood merge and lock into the shape of human. He is of average height, bearded with a black tunic and a crimson belt just below his ribcage. His hands are extended as if welcoming.

‘Sabazein, Sabazein!’ Is heard from beyond. The words become lyrics to the music.

Varhas watches, meaning scouring his mind. ‘Your father?’

‘Grandfather. Beware, the more magic we use, the more the horrors come near us.’

‘Then we have to hold back.’

‘No. It is your team that has broken the Tartarean prison with a bullet. Just let me do my best to save you.’

‘What?’ Speaks Varhas. Surprised by her response. He remembers how it was her teammate that pointed towards the sphere, the Tartarean Prison while they were in the lobby of the museum. ‘It wasn’t your team’s plan to let them loose?’

‘Was. But it happened too early. The Blacksteel javelins were meant to strike through the walls and into the sphere as a last and desperate effort. But you went and did it first anyways. Accident or not, hinted at or misunderstood, it matters little now.’

‘And what if you helping me makes you lose the Contest? Why not leave me to this place?’

‘At the very center of your being is some idea. I too am making the world just a tiny bit gentler. I move to this language, even if it is not my own. Focus Varhas. Focus.’

One moment Kleiothyke is a friend, the next an opponent. Varhas knows this, but all his feelings call him next to her. She is simply there, tiptoeing around ideas that he has never spoken to anyone before.

The tiny horrors become rain. Among them, the first lesser horror lands from the sky.

Where the Maw Horror lands, there is a thick wall of spears waiting for it. Pinned down, its appendages try to swing but they quickly become struck. For every ten normal swords, there is one magical weapon hiding in the skeletal army. The Horror reels and loses balance often. Sabazein, Kleiothyke’s summon, runs towards the maw horror and he pummels it with force. Suppressed, the Horror’s open mouth bends little by little into shutting. After a few seconds, it appears as if the horrible void in its shape, has become only a small hole in fantasy, surrounded by its ill-green flesh.

Confidence ebbs within the two Claimants. As Varhas’ usual pushback of character calls to caution, he speaks.

‘I have to invite Gon here.’

‘If you do that, then I will not be able to help you any longer.’

‘Why?’

‘You and him carry many Horror Marks. You have been in their presence, many times in the past and they seek you out now. If he comes here, the horrors will be too many to manage.’

‘Then it is just you and me.’

More lesser Horrors manifest. Back turned to back, the two Claimants give themselves to the struggle. In the music, the world is filtered. The bagpipes hold a barrier where the Inverse Dream, the sentiments of the Claimants become null, thoughtless action.

***

Jorj listens to the world around him sing. He can hear, not only the imperceptive music, but also Larissaeus.

His steps resound as drums, there is a light hint of sandalwood to where he once was.

Running with purpose and at the same time half-there in that absentminded joy of the world, Jorj sprints and aims successfully. The Lanza fires true, and the azure glow strikes very close to the opponent.

Larissaeus’ feet slide across the rough concrete. His Lanza aims and fires directly at Jorj who tanks the blow.

In the distance, both men can hear as their teammates struggle. Byzas is on the same floor as them, Hab is limping closer to fight him and Scaramucc is frantically running to join them.

Footsteps, scents and dripping sounds fill the room. Growls between the muted pain. The Lanzas fire, again and again, boring holes through the collapsing walls, creating cover that is only there for a moment and then another clatter of vacuuming implosion.

At a faulty dodge, Larissaeus heaves his shape towards Jorj. He closes the distance with extreme speed, Blacksteel javelin in hand.

Jorj does not understand that the Orichalcum armor is empty. Sole mover of the machine’s will, he is able to move in spikes of synchronization. With even greater speed than the fastest Contestant who has ever competed, his body turns, his arm parries Larissaeus’ wrist, dodging the Blacksteel tip.

With his left hand, the opponent fires the Lanza low, striking Jorj on his right leg. The Orichalcum cracks and Jorj is struck by obscene, unfiltered pain.

Joy. Joy moves him. Jorj drops the Lanza and grabs the man by the throat. The grab is followed by a vicious knee to the sternum.

Surprisingly, Larissaeus laughs. He too drops both Lanza and Blacksteel javelin.

The two men grapple and Larissaeus speaks.

‘Human speed. You are a Contestant no longer. This I know of you Jorj. I see Ajax in you. You have what that man seeked out but never got.’ Replies Larissaeus and he flexes the powerarmor to a limit. The shift of strength changes for a moment and Jorj finds that his right hand is slowly crushed under the opponent’s grip.

Elbows, uppercuts and stomps, either Contestant throws and parries many blows.

For Jorj, the music is horrible. The pain great. His hands throb, his chest is stabbed and the legs buckle. What exactly it is that he has, he does not know. But his eyes turn red. His sight deepens in colour. Hue by hue, crimson and deep dark, he moves his body that appears only half-there. As if he is covered in half-light and a lesser version of himself.

Nothing like the perfect reflection of himself in a mirror, talking about what-ifs and perfect versions of his face. Nothing like an exalted champion. Just a naked man, grabbing against the violence of an ancient hero.

Only red. Red colour In-between the light of his visor. Horrible music and struggle.

***

Two men die in the distance. Two great shadows reach out from the background of the Inverse Dream and they conceal the incoming horrors for a few seconds.

The Death magic fades, Kleiothyke and Varhas evoke spell after spell in the blend of abstract space and emotion-bound logic.

Maw horrors, Soultorn dregs and hints of far away mirrors open their eyes. Wherever both Claimants look, there is another horrifying spectacle. Their ears bleed, their magic rushes wilder from their fingers.

Armed bones, forks of lightning, the pummeling of some forgotten deity and the fateweaving strands of celestial splendor, all work against the tide.

As Kleiothyke implied, amidst the chaos of fantastical battle, most of the Horrors seek out Varhas instead of her. Still, the opponent stays close to him, placing her hands into the fatigued Claimant from Nidavangr, sharing the burden in her own way.

For Varhas, his mind has shattered not so long ago. Horrible sensations, the burning fatigue of magic and the stranger nearby make him mad. He is not exalted like before, he knows the Gods are not listening. Not until reality has been decided they will make entry and every precious second, excruciating and slow, passes with waning hope that has just left him.

Not long after, the only one holding them both to sanity is also shaken. Kleiothyke loses cohesion of her magic. Sabazein, the construct of memories and blood, is overwhelmed in the distance and where this humanoid of conflicting magic pushes the horrors away as a last effort, something spectacular moves anew against them.

In the Inverse Dream, a grand malevolent creation blinks directly on-top of Sabazein. A Doom Horror, wide as the horizon, tall as a man, with overarching wings of leather and bone, begins to envelop Kleiothyke’s summon. Bone and raw magic are consumed by a vertical maw at the center of this thing. With a name as long as all of mankind’s languages put together, it is oddly mirrored on both of its sides, up and down goes its shape at the height and dive of letters. Brass claw and seven fingered torn hand, its body curves away form the vertical gap in its middle. Its head is but a jewel of symmetrical sharpness at the crown of a black gate.

Within the Doom Horror, shape and Inverse Dream turn to its will. The things within it turn darker and darker and once they are gone inside of this hole, half-light, traces of deep red fall over the shape of a naked man. This humanoid construct moves.

‘Gon is coming.’ Speaks Kleiothyke. She is afraid.

And Varhas knows that it is true out there. But in here, they are without power, without self. Unmade wholly infront of impending death, so horrible and unreal that he tells Kleiothyke to leave.

She falls to her knees. Her hands grab Varhas. Through the fabric she touches the golden ring the man has pilfered. As their options become nothing, both Claimants understand that they are bound to eachother. There, written in fear, complete surrender and lack of options, hand touches hand, forced and in every way real.

The Doom Horror’s construct walks. In its wake, magic becomes severed and lost forever. The Inverse Dream unravels. Fantasy and real world blend without clear barrier. Half-there, some deep throb shakes this tearing space. And as the shape nears, another empty, membrane-torn, golden-crowned lost form of a man manifests against it.

Jorj enters the Inverse Dream.

***

The Contestant is not there. As if will and muscle have long lost their connection, his arms dig into Larissaeus’ powerarmor. For Jorj, the man ahead is without texture. Only a deep red shadow that conceals him. Sound and sight have collapsed.

The Orichalcum on him is brittle. Layer and machine logic decay to golden dust that sticks to the black layers underneath and they too break apart.

Flesh to Thracian powerarmor, something unreal becomes reality. Jorj’s fingers dig into the metallic muscles on Larissaeus’ neck. The fingers of bone and flesh, pull and snap the powerarmor. When he headbutts the hard helmet and it shatters.

The opponent steps back. In all of Larissaeus’ time, there has never been such deep compel, fear and emotion past the numbing membrane of his Contestant mind.

With a strike, the opponent mortally wounds Jorj. The maddening turn of events seems over. As things return to a hue of normalcy, Larissaeus is still absent of mind, looking at the opponent underneath him as his crippled head lays full of life on the concrete floor, staring back at him and still holding him in place by that very same hue of emotions.

That is all it takes. Scaramucc has closed the distance without Larissaeus hearing him. Gon and Scaramucc become one, two strikes land on Larissaeus. The first slicing arm severs the opponent’s heel and as he falls backwards, the second downward strike comes to sever him at the neck.

The match is over and divine intervention takes over reality.

Chapter 60

Away

The only words that Jorj and Varhas exchanged after their victory was one question and one answer. Varhas asked Jorj where he would like to go and the Contestant answered far away.

After the Contest every wish the Black and White team had could be satisfied. But all of them found their wishes answered well before the finals. Neither the sea witches, nor the Blood Theurg, neither their commoner partners had anything to ask for.

Wherever these eight people went, for the rest of their days, there was no price to pay, no sacrifice, no argument against what they wanted. Concepts, such as money, or favors were never there again if they desired something. Even so, their way through the Contest broke the very source of desire. For these eight people, this is what became of reality after their victory.

In that passage of long years, the worlds of tomorrow turned in their usual way. Claimants, Pantokrators and Commoners all tried to make sense of the world by watching these champions do nothing. In that normal, uneventful, seemingly empty return to their lives, the world took some time to pause. The people rested, by waking up, going to work, warring with eachother over domains and dominions, controlling or letting nature loose. Wars paused for a while, some even returned to a life closer to their seas. For a while it was as such, until the spectators slowly stopped following these Black and White champions.

And as most things appeared to return to normal, strangely enough, this became a period of great push against the horrors of tomorrow.

But is anything strange in a future where mankind has remanufactured gods? So would some Claimants ask from time to time. In the Inverse Dream, or out in the open where the grass is still green in many planets and the concrete rooms are vast cities of old Earth, there was only reflection of what happened in the Contest.

Vast gods, or moments of detail blend to culture. Great things, small things are one and the same. Microcosm and macrocosm, the random person feels Otto’s berserk fury when his boss acts with the fervor of a blessed Claimant. The boss tries to find inspiration in grand moment in his Tele-Stim device and the priests write articles on how desire is the bane of all things. Arhoscephalean philosophers argue the nature of sacrifice and how it is personal in texture and size for Hab, Jorj, Otto too. Meconian warriors only nod for the little while they remember these Claimants and Contestants that passed through their culture.

For a while, it is as such. Until humanity is pushed anew into another season of the Contest and culture is moved forwards, rotating around itself as a great wheel that only goes clockwise.

***

Somewhere in the edges of humanity there is a sanitarium in a quiet place. Planets such as this, have Pantokrators of their own, whom barely know the nature of their abilities and care even less about history. Minds that fashion themselves as Lunar Bulls, or simple snakes.

Such a silence exists here, that the men don’t know and they do little to find out.

A black-dressed Claimant walks the endless plain. The day is damp, fog is ever-present and the woman that follows him holds a little baby in her arms.

At the wooden doors of the sanitarium, the two Claimants enter with care. They are the ony ones making noise.

White staff and lunatics inside are indistinguishable. Neither patients or caretakers make sound. So much so, that one could stand and listen carefully, to almost nothing happening in either thinking glimmers of the eyes or that place In-between the ears at the back of their heads.

Silence. Absence and stealthy walking exists on every form inside of the sanitarium.

The walls are white, the wood is worn and faded paint is unevenly plastered across it.

The two glance at eachother. The black-dressed man pushes another door open and the woman watches him through a glass panel.

In this room there is only a handful of shapes. Beds, white desks and wet windows that are barred against the fog outside.

At the end of the room is the man who the Claimant searches for. Far from a search however, the thinking man stands at a wide distance from him, as if he has already found what he asked for. Perhaps it isn’t what he wants and he remains there, staring at him.

Or perhaps it is pull that he seeks, for the Contestant to call him closer.

The moment hangs. Saddened, the Claimant watches as the once powerful man has long been reduced. He is not old, but he hangs at a bed which has caved in place a long time ago.

The one who searches for signs waits. As if the Contestant’s gaze will sway fate away, one that he knows has already taken its course.

And when that gaze does not pull him close, he does it himself, walking the long distance and making sound as the boards creak.

Others in the room turn to look at him. Their gazes are lost, yet tranquil. But the worn out Contestant still does not turn until Varhas is next to him.

‘Magician of my mind.’ Speaks Jorj. The words catch Varhas in deep surprise. No matter how much he has tried to expect the words of this moment, he has failed.

‘Hey... Do you...’

‘Of course Varhas. I know you.’

Even as Jorj speaks these words, Varhas thinks the haze from the man has not lifted properly. Is he half-there, or wholly? Is he perhaps more than a commoner, like him, split in his attention, or perhaps merely lost a bit? The Contestant’s eyes speak of nothing that the Claimant knows and in this weird and unfamiliar moment, Varhas stops thinking. He instead comes closer to the man, sitting at the other edge of the bed.

‘You always were a bit cold hearted. Come here.’

Jorj slowly hugs the man. Varhas awkwardly reciprocates. And then his hug changes into a surrendered embrace. The Claimant can feel the bones on the Contestant, bumps on a spine, lumps of a shoulder under his chin.

‘How have you been Jorj?’

‘Oh fine. Great actually.’ Replies Jorj with a smile. ‘Just some time ago something strange happened. I couldn’t breathe at night and then for some reason I was back into a strange machine. I woke up in some hill far away from here and wandered around. My body was full again, I followed this big white bull that guided me here again. Weird stuff. Fun stuff.’

‘Yes, that sounds fun indeed.’ Varhas sends the words out, he too smiling. Underneath his expression however, lies the memory of what happened. It was a year ago, give or take the universe’s peculiar compression of time. Jorj died in his sleep, but oddly enough that death was not final. His brain glimpsed into some half-buried resurrection pod that nobody knew was on this isolated planet, his body was made anew while his brain continued to degenerate. He was the first to be contacted. The first one to seek him out was the Pantokrator of this place, a man who believed himself a bull and then the phonecalls from the sanitarium staff kept ringing into his machine.

Word got out not long after that event. Some worried and pushed to reverse Jorj’s condition. Some criticized Varhas for not trying.

The truth was that it would not be too long either. But Varhas had to try anyways. After all, that event seemed to move many, despite what Varhas believed.

‘You know Jorj.’ Varhas speaks, his mouth is dry. ‘I used to think the world cared more for dramatic endings to someone’s story. There might be a way to... cure you.’

‘Cure me? Cure me of what?’

‘You know. Whatever is left underneath the layering.’

‘Who would want that?’ Replies Jorj. The Contestant’s words hold double meaning that Varhas understands too well. He speaks of themselves, not others, but he still forces himself away from the answer. One by one, he will plead his case to both these meanings.

‘There are people who want and think that they can try and succeed to do surgery...’

‘I do not know these people...’

‘Then the man who wants it is me.’ Speaks Varhas in a sharp reply. The dry mouth that speaks these words holds a hint of bitter strain.

‘No Varhas. No. Let me be the first man... To achieve something.’

‘Yes. Final death, the first Contestant ever.’ Varhas knows. The few times he has been here it is always the same. And soon after this conversation the Claimant will think if next time the machine is going to let the man go. Neither the Bull of this planet, or any other Pantokrator holds that universal of a sway to order the machine to leave this man to rest. It is their Dominion yes, but the machines appear to work in some unchangeable, natural, even more universal concepts. Varhas knows that even if they scoured the planet to remove all of the resurrection pods here, even those buried and forgotten relics, Jorj’s death had to come twofold. One for his body and the other for the gray matter underneath the layers of gold. Twofold and at the same time, lest the gold layering pauses the brain in a suspended state.

‘I told you not to think about it too much. And even when you do, just don’t talk to me about it.’ Jorj is not angry. His face smiles. ‘You are worried.’

‘Of course I am. You are just standing here, degenerating until the moment is right.’

‘Blame time then. I like it here. Every day I count the droplets on my window, every night I try to poke holes through the fog.’

Varhas clears his throat. The bitterness at the back of throat has become strain. ‘Yes. I’ve been blaming time since I was born. Or is it timing? At least I’ve learnt not to blame others.’

‘Mad at things greater than you. That is no way to live.’

‘Why is it always that dead men speak of life better than the living. You know what? Fuck you Jorj.’

‘Me? It seems like you have been doing that.’ Jorj points at the other side of the room. Through the glass panel, the woman stands there staring at the two men. The baby in her arms makes some joyful cry that reminds her to look at it and smile. ‘Who is that?’

‘You have met her. Three, four times before?’

‘Wife?’

‘Wife, girlfriend and mistress. Mother of my daughter. Were you to ask me what I feel for her and I would need all of the written things humanity made to say it. And I...’

‘Why are you babbling again?’ Speaks Jorj and one of his fists comes up to Varhas’ chin. ‘I told you before. All that talking and you will take a beating.’ His closed fist hovers around In-between them, the wrist that supports it is thin, the arm is almost without muscle, all skin and bone.

Varhas laughs. Jorj follows soon with a powerful howl.

‘And I was afraid I’d find you drooling.’

‘Oh well. I do that sometimes. Thinking about nothing and then I’m glad I can do just that.’

‘Does it happen often?’

‘Sure. But the world turns all that much more beautiful. You should not worry about me. Aren’t there bigger things happening out there?’

‘More than anyone can understand, more than anybody can digest, predict and put them down to words. Everything is as fast and always new as you left them.’

‘Well. You were never one to find it difficult there were you?’

‘Now that is a lie. We could have done it much smoother. We could have foreseen a few things, saved a few more people, have both eyes at the end of the day. Sided with...’ Varhas shakes his head. ‘Who cares. Do you remember the splendor after we won the Contest?’

‘Sometimes. But the image is blurry. There are better things to remember. Like that night on your home, or the seas, or... What happened to Hab? Scaramucc? Otto?’

‘The same as before. I talked to Zanuvia not long ago. They are back to where they came from. Sailing the sea. Otto and Laodike are going around too, they are still enjoying traveling. As for Scaramucc, I heard he vanished somewhere out there. Hint within his character tell me that he got influenced by us in some strange way. Settled down for however long that is.’

‘And that other guy? The one you fought all the time?’

‘Gon? Gon is strange. I haven’t talked to him since the Contest. I heard rumors that he saw things he shouldn’t, he was burdened with weights in our stead, but I have no way of knowing if that is real. Judging by the silence, I’d say he does bear some weight, same as before perhaps, but now greater? I don’t know.’

‘Well then, what are you doing here?’ Asks Jorj.

Varhas replies. ‘Yeah. You are right. True as a Claimant.’ He speaks of what happened in their last match, it seems that the moment gradually fades away and leaves only a hint. Jorj’s eyes wander around and the time for him to ask how he came to rescue him in the Inverse Dream as a commoner, slips away.

An idle smile appears on Jorj. He is half-there again, lost, dreaming perhaps and as Varhas takes a look at him one last time, the moment lapses again, showing him that the man on the bed is watching reality with a soul that has spent all of its violence, all of its malice and satisfied all of its desires.

And it is so that neither man will see the other again. Tomorrow, both real and immaterial death will come for Jorj.

Behind foggy windows and barebone remnants of mankind, moment to moment they trudge along to time, only for one to stay behind and take a hard long look at all the seconds that erase themselves from his sacred, gray place.