-12-
Unlike the ocean world and so much alike inbetween the crystal spires, the next bout is fought the usual way. 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."
"Is that why you tried to strangle him?" Hab asks now, his Lanza in hand being polished in a mechanical motion, a reminisce of spearfishing, or that of smaller moments. "No. He just dug in places he shouldn't. I don't like when Claimants do that, reading your mind and all. Does your wife enters places she shouldn't?" 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. Usually we 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 and projectile?"
"A tumour maybe?" Wonders Jorj out-loud. "How come?" Asks Hab and Jorj lifts his shoulders. Perhaps he thought it was so, not really keen on how the body works other than it's destruction. And there he had seen himself of all things deadly and what not, but as far as the invulnerable space underneath his skull was concerned, he never wondered but now. Decades of taking thoughts as they come, without really managing them, or wondering which domain of the brain they belonged to.
To that end, he thinks it must be relevant, that inner peace and silence when he gets to pull the accurate trigger. Jorj feels it so, that recent habits, their changes and events are together as one.
A door opens on the other side of the waiting room. A blond young man of long and wavy mane enters, unmistakable a Contestant by his strong, even if short bodytype and even so, broader at his features, a true Ulmite of false brown eyes, a pointy and wide nose, in a solid package of barbaric nobleness. His face speaks of other things however and there is great meekness, a hint of shy glimpses at Hab and Jorj and a slow walk closer. 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.
On the other side of the room, behind the wall, two women's voices scream at eachother. Their fighting gradually takes distance. Noise becomes loud, then hushed, then nothing again.
"Why are they fighting?"
"No idea. Young lass found herself a man."
"So?"
"Must be a special type of man to get old Zanuvia foaming at the mouth. You know how Claimants are with common people like us. Always trying to one-up us, make our current actions part of their older plans. It's a real headache when you got two, three of them under the same roof. Whatever."
Otto the Ulmite opens his mouth to speak. Deep, not so formalised 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. With a solid face, his features remain in angry frowning. His eyes do not move and they are focused there, at the person of interest.
"Who the fuck are you?"
-
"How are you Jorj?"
"Hey. All good."
The small lightless place was there, only a minute or less before opening to the arena.
So long, Jorj always thought the tiny stool underneath him as odd. Unchanged for centuries, every Contestant has seen it, on even the weirdest of arenas and tight spaces before a fight. Excluding the teleporting instance, it had been a symbol, a certainty for so many like him.
A footstool, three legs, worn out the pillow and all the same of comfort to sit in while waiting in the dark. There it was, behind his heel as there stood no other sound besides them, voices of a Claimant and Contestant.
Along the many Claimants that had come, Jorj remembers that one had told him thus. It was but a symbol, to ancient times before the first ever Pantokrator, before the Great Silence, before the Great Thinking. A symbol of two men and the resting time between rounds. Standing and getting back up, gloves around their knuckles, a corner at their back, three ropes all around them in a square. A little call-out at history, now that spectacle had gone past extremity.
So Jorj recalls, but he wishes the complexity away, opting only for a cold apology thrown at Varhas' direction. The words linger there a moment and a thank you is returned 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 recognises 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.
The arena is a one by one recreation of another's planet city center. The planet called Fodder has cities built as thus. Tight spaces of concrete and brick, five stories buildings without glass windows make up the arena underneath the contestants. Corners and tight spaces of rock on cobblestone streets that are barely wide 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. However, the distinct feature, are the many cannons. Through balconies, at the topmost part of an oval rooftop, or just simply placed there on the flatness, or even peeking their barrels out of the glassless windows, many cannons of all metal, shapes and calibre hold themselves tall and proud. The emptiness and the space above the buildings is a forest of dark green, or metallic gray, thin anti-aircraft barrels and antennas, thick howitzers and chimneys, or the short cauldron of a mortar, either bundled together, or solemnly smoking at the circular end.
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 an arching motion.
The place 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 holds movement. A cannon ahead turns slowly and when it stops, it fires a round over the forcefield, far beyond and into nothing.
-
A multilayered attack.
In the momentary line of sight to their opponents, Jorj sees old comrades. They are a team of known faces, but otherwise painted as enemies.
The score is one to zero. Hab is the first to die. A sniper round passes by balcony and open window, minute holes, through and out the other way. The shot would have missed by pre-calculated foresights into the complexity of the arena, given to Hab by his wife. However, Otto bumps into Hab during their entry into the dense cannon-city. No accident, but mere angst of revolution, mistake had been pushed as such to reality by Lacata.
The brick walls remain a moment silent and then there is noise at the rooftops. Otto reveals himself a moment sooner. Eluded from Claimant timing, his weapon is already spinning and he catches the enemy in an aggressive initiative.
Sixteen barrels of a gun, spewing rapid fire of supercondenced needles. The Ulmite is hidden behind a small brick house at the rooftops, effectivelly revealed to one enemy while hidden from the other two. Infront of the minigun are flames. 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 Omdrua ripple in a storm of destructive brown. Blood becomes mist and around his sprinting body, violence becomes spewed outwards by the many piercing rounds.
Omdrua takes the pierce of the attack as the bullets follow along his sprint and downwards until he is out of sight from the Ulmite's weapon.
Otto enters the brick house exiting downwards before the other two get to him.
-
"One of them is a mule. He just tanked through five hundred needles." Varhas informs Jorj, keeping his voice low enough so that the Contestant can follow along both words and ambient sound in the arena.
"Who is it? Burmal?"
"Omdrua."
Jorj runs along the many he has fought over the decades. The name is odd, but he recalls a short while when they were together in a team. That man had 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, but whatever attack had just occurred, it was within an expected flow of action.
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.
"Good shot. Good shot."
-
Two to zero, Varhas instructs Jorj and Zanuvia instructs Hab to hide.
Something is happening at the mindgames of Claimants and Lacata, Varhas and Zanuvia are trying to communicate rapidly. In that static Noise, where language is unmade to its utmost efficiency, where it usually should be quick to resolve tactics and reiterate strategy, therein is now confusion, doublespeech in simple orders and much back and forth where there is no time to argue. More accurately, Varhas is a middleman between two Claimants, using mere language with added meaning. Meaning that corrupts communication and implies emotional conflict between the daughter and mother.
As Varhas distances himself from the chaos in the immaterial world of Claimants, he tells Jorj that they are alone for now. Isolated by other means.
And as Jorj runs aimlessly on the street level of the arena, he is killed again by falling debris, a massive chunk of reinforced concrete, dislocated moment prior by a violent explosion.
-
The wires are felt through, with calm a finger ran along and as the recoil of a cannon shakes the virtual air, so does Varhas see, sacraments and hints.
On the other side, the world is inordinate narrative, pressed against narrative. The machine and its measure of rationality, they make and unmake of the basics hints within mankind, reducing all to whim and instinct.
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 screaming at him that a bigger ploy here is played at their expense.
As soon as Jorj respawns, Varhas latches onto his form. The empty beacons near, and the walls of brick and the open windows where the cannon's peek through, they all turn to a defined shape, a texture seen with new eyes, highly defined to the infinitesimal detail.
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. He recalls, the white arena on Dur-Baqa. He recalls, a Claimant past that was on Jorj's side, the lava pools and cyclopean walls in a black dome, the sweat and tears.
Hints, he is to unravel shortly.
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 and the world is overrun by 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 run fatigued as they did on the lava planetoid and there are hints of human flesh, burnt oily musk working against his focus.
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, leaving one such final breath.
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.
Without clarity, the steps appear of unknown properties. Both men, measure their weight, their rhythm, their familiarity and here is where the multiple layers of attack become apparent.
Varhas realises that since Jorj has spent much time with both these 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, who is well mapped out by now. This causes confusion within his memories.
The variables are tangled between eachother and these little 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 as they are.
-
Young woman over her man, the two are wide awake and uplifted in a great synchronization of Contestant and Claimant.
Eparsis. The blown increase of a soul, is wholly felt in its uptake by Lacata.
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 pound across her, strangling the air that would be voice.
The gigantic barrel is still hot. 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 slip, a snap of the strained tendons, a slip to uneven ground, but constantly against the odds, guided true to be of extreme athletic grace. Rapid as seawind and certain to the surge of barometric changes, Otto and Lacata are one and the same, jumping 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.
Inbetween a moment of silence, sounds a sly pair of steps far away. Before the enemy has turned the corner, the two pairs of eyes grace them afore the action.
Umza, form wholly unknown to the two, is trapped into the quick reaction.
A beam of Lanza blue strikes at the center of Umza. The microseconds between the two Contestants are not discernible, yet a focused insight shows restraint of surprise at the trigger finger of Umza.
On the Claimant's side, the time is not compressed and all happens in an instant. Lacata crosses eyes with the female Claimant, dripping all over the immaterial space of her Contestant. 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 air and waters howling in all things ethereal and very so tangible.
The other Claimant hesitates. The beguiling scents, the sadism imposed on her Contestant 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 their 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 a vast, ungrounded humidity, a sphere of vapours sprinting across whose presence is only understood by looking at the virtual waters sticking to the surfaces all around them.
And the mother thinks, that they have raised a monster. While the father follows suit via the alleyways, thinking back to many such moments, seemingly to him in a past life.
One thing occurs to both. In this great game that they have both played lifetimes of time away, that 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 paralysed bleedout.
-
Four to two, the match continues.
To Otto's loud path, Hab decides to stalk behind in a safe distance, keeping his back against the sound. The previous shot has put him back into a careful mindset. Without Jorj anywhere visible, it is only he that understands the layers of the enemy's strategy.
An enduring Contestant draws out the furious one. The enduring enemy, nicknamed the Mule, takes the brunt of these attacks, delaying the scoring of points. As the furious one is lead away, perhaps ultimately to crippling fatigue, the gap between the teams is kept tight by an unseen sniper. The last opponent is always near, supporting this flight and fight tactic.
Not without error this strategy, as one of the supporting enemies got killed by Otto, but Hab does not know the reason as to why Jorj is not moving along. To Hab, the opponents are strangers, their footing has distinct, unknown sound.
Armed only with a Arbiter pistol, Hab decides to seize the initiative. He runs into the buildings, 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 the sound. Jorj is there, Hab understands and then he strains to listen to any other sound. However, nothing else moves. It is just Otto in the distance. A short silence breaking only from a clattering sound of cannon fire, rhythmically quaking all 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 quakes.
The entrance to this apartment is closed behind two doors. One wooden, 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, thick slabs make it and there is no easy visibility towards the streets underneath.
Something hits the steel dome far above. Through the door resounds a deep metallic sound. Then comes silence and a light dripping of blood.
Hab cautiously peeks through the doorway, holding both wood and metal mesh open with his back.
Blood drips downwards from the dome. The droplets fall vertically along with the light and the dripping is heard from the lowest level.
Hab pushes the two doors to a slight opening and he keeps one eye steadied between the corners of the staircases. Someone nears, either from the building's highest or lowest point.
They are using the dripping sound to cover their steps. Sight is the first display of who it is.
The enemy contestant is checking the 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, their sound gentle and naturally soft.
Jorj turns through the doorway. His presence is forewarned by the creaking sound of rusty metal hinges as the two doors open and close around his back. The Arbiter pistol connects twice to the armed figure. As the opponent moves, two streaks of blood run along his body and in that space he occupied a second ago, two bullet holes are smashed through the concrete behind him.
As the third shot is fired, the sniper rifle fires to Jorj's right, sending rock and metal shrapnel against him. The third pistol round connects to a plate in the Gymnete armor, slightly putting the opponent off balance as Jorj sprints up the stairs.
Underfoot he soon finds that the stairs are shot through from underneath and they break apart in that hail of other weaponry. Every step presses against loose rock instead of solid stair and through that blind commotion, he comes directly opposed with the Mule. Omdrua aims his own Arbiter against him and the ten meter distance between the two becomes a direct exchange of gunfire.
The two Contestants have their right arm extended against the other. The Arbiters fire unceasing bullets that become more and more impossible to connect. Each Contestant reflectively pushes against wall and floor, weaving their bodies and heads with erratic movements as the bullets tear them 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 spilt blood and the air fills with dust and smoke.
This short contest of endurance and focus, of waning attributes, is won by the Mule. 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 a bit more favourable, 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 into the distance.
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, the sniper rifle fires 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, only stopping at his golden layered brain and ricochetting off into the ceiling.
-
The score is six to three.
Nibbed 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 Lacata heave themselves away from the agonising allure of great ability, the rest of the match is played out in equally hopeless and confusing strategy. Otto finds himself at the sudden horror of a hidden opponent and the confusion of trying to understand the overall strategy and there is little time for coordination as each one of them is picked apart one at a time.
Too late and to each their own, the match ends at the score of ten to five.