-13-

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."

Proto-Claimants and their curses, schizophrenic bloodlines, magicians and backwards even, priest-kings and shamans, run through Varhas' mind. These curses speak through the sprinting voices of many, saying that this too shall pass. The Claimant is true to his Contestant, but in-between that, there lies this vast and heavy history, whereupon he absentmindedly is wrestled away from the current moment and he manifests odd sayings. "This too shall pass", thinks Varhas and he chases the odd saying away, letting pass through and out the other way.

"Curse these thoughts Jorj. I really tried."

"I just thought I would have more time."

"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. Some weird thing that happens, ever since you told me I am dying, I can feel the respawning pods graft the skin on top of me. Bones and all, they are painfully put together."

"That is weird. You are not supposed to feel that."

"Actually, it happened before. Before you told me I am dying. It happened on Ohros too. Last round, on my last respawn."

Varhas frowns. Half-there he quickly manifests another surge of thought, voices and suggestions, churning in that space between his ears.

"At first glance, I see two options. Either your... condition affects the way you perceive the world, or it is some other, outside doing. The growing tumor in your head may affect your senses and since it is not understood correctly by the machine, so this small error causes irregularities that reveal to you the grafting of a new body on your neurons. The other option I see, is that all this might be some other outside doing. Other Claimants perhaps may scour you during respawn to figure your body's irregularities. That digital invasion might influence the respawn pods, cause them to err. It is interesting though, how you said this happened way back. In the beginning. Before the new season, the vote."

"Interesting how?"

"Someone has been watching from the start maybe. At least, before we met."

"Who?"

"Considering how impossible it is for outsiders to influence matches, I would, perhaps, think it is a Pantokrator? I am not sure. Whoever it is, from whatever world, they noticed before I did. They were there before me. Remember the ocean planet?"

"Yes, what of it?"

"Not even that Pantokrator can access the respawn pods or influence the weapons. Not even he, so obviously aligned with that ex-champions, could tamper with the respawn pods, much less so, your Lanza. He caused the waves to crush Hab and Hippolus, the rain, the darkness, but the weapons are our Claimant domain. If he could, you would have never hit that shot, on top of the sinking aircraft carrier. And the respawn pods are impossible to access, no matter who."

"Not sure what any of that means. At the end of the day, it is you I frag with. Perhaps you shoo these Pantokrators and Claimants away?"

Varhas smiles at the simple attempt of a small compliment. He does not influence himself away from the friendly emotion and its joy.

"I don't know. I'm still tired from that disaster. The cannon arena was steeped in Noise and we have that banquet tonight. Come, let's grab breakfast."

-

The day passes uneventfully. 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 the 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 referred only as a minute part of a company. A refined hell, whose product is uniqueness in pieces, an eye catching moment in the vastness of fashion.

Two hours later, the fashion department finishes their work and exits. 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 feeling of irony that never manifests.

Lacata cannot mock how her mother looks and neither can a brute deny the perfected look of the person he fancies. To Jorj, hateful as he is usually to all corporate things, the result is simply aligned with a deeper sense of self. The layers of cloth are comfortable, baggy, ergonomic, revealing a potential within him for greatness, sating a hunger for more life, more violence, more of himself, who has been ongoing for the past century.

Jorj looks into the mirror to see himself as a version that he has always believed himself to be. This moment, he is aligned to the many versions of his self created fantasies that happened in various points across his life. Such heroic versions born from adolescent dreams, to adult hopes and he remembers the rave and how horrified Varhas was, in a moment of chasing for some other alignment during the influence of drugs.

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 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 blacksteel, engraved with twisting texture. The thick-soled boots are fastened in an industrial allure, specked with artificial grime that only adds to these twinned foundations. 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 together, Jorj goes at the back of the dressing room and he fumbles with his casual clothes laying there. He touches his garb from this morning and searches through the fabric by pressing against it with his hands and fumbling his old pockets.

Some overlooked regulation makes him stop, but only a moment and he pays no heed as he continues to search and then he 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.

-

At the mirrors of the banquet hall, the space 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 unorder.

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 colors matching, flowing to each other of contrasting in layers, enveloping and enhancing the human under the fashion.

Claimants and Contestants of tele-stim companies are enveloped in fiber optics and the colors are of true 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 details 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 patterns of swirls 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 hyper fixated detail and then made post-modern by going all the way through and out the other way.

And each part of the services that hold the world together, has such an image for itself, derived from an ancient, looping and vast pool of culture. For the tele-stim fashion alludes to messengers of the old Earth and the pharmaceuticals to the first and foremost mummifiers and mystics and the manufacturers to the perfect patterns of artisanship and geared movement, the learning institutions of light that illuminates uncertainty.

Zanuvia feels in place. 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 gray contrast with the exquisite 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 in a fatherly gesture, 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 you are 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. He can see his reflection with clarity even at places where many are walking.

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 Bur'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 the drink and he sips into the bitter salt, assaulting him with a fluctuation of flavors.

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.

"Cleiothyke."

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 the other piece. 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, thigh-long jet black hair sliding over her shoulder. It is as if, the hair strands do not touch skin. Instead they slide off the curves of soulless marble, imperceptive sound and all, deathly dexterous materials in contact.

"You belong to a locksmithing corporation?"

"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 metamorphic layers in your fabric. God forbid a miner sees the night sky in his work, if ever".

It is true Varhas thinks. Beyond what the corporations plastered on their Claimants and Contestants, some details of their fashion were theirs. Put there by experts these details described personal things. No matter the rules, they had some say on what they wear.

"Astral attuned Claimants us both. Did you know I was of this sorcerous path back in Dur'Baqa?" Speaks Cleiothyke.

"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 dinner. 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. 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, because Cleiothyke was also in the latest match. It was her team that managed to beat them. And if not by fairness, at least with intrigue, with a mismatch of circumstances, habits and strategy.

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

"Who knows? I might had let you win."

Cleiothyke nears Varhas. Her brass low 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 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 between chaos and order. One that invites horrors and makes Cleiothyke that much more intimidating.

But then again, she is unaware of deeper secrets still and Varhas derives certainty from another mystical abstraction of consciousness, other sorceries that he has not displayed on his fashion.

"If anything, this makes me await our next bout that much more."

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

"To our next match then."

"To a horror-less endeavor."

"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."

-

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.

Any time her husband speaks and they begin describing the world around them, that strain is lifted and time passes that much quicker between the two. A healing balm of conversation that they are both aware of.

"What do you think of Jorj now that you know him?"

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 each other when one nears the other. From a distance, it looks as stone has found black pool and oftentimes the movement in-between is but a foreign crash of a wave against the solid.

"Perhaps the greatest sharpshooting I have seen. The problem is, that it does not befit him. It is as if a one-legged man suddenly begins swimming with quickness greater than even the most athletic of men."

"That is what I think too. And I cannot make sense of it. Do you think this is a boon to us? Or is this, some tragedy waiting to happen?"

"Both maybe. I do not know. You have spoken to me on Pantokrators and Claimants a long time ago. Back then, when we lost our little Anax. Do you remember? I do not understand why you said that, but I still remember those words".

The bitterness lodges itself in Zanuvia's throat. Those mourning years pass in an instant from her mind and all the weakness and despair, it ebbs within her, heavy, bitter and solemn.

Anax, their first born son named after the ancient word for a king, was the collection of hopes and dreams placed in a child that would never grow past the age of eight. The bleak reality passes silence in his remembrance and the silence between Hab and Zanuvia, parts at one of the mad ramblings that she had said back in the darkest of their mourning.

Some dawning day, back in the ocean planet that they settled, where the sky was overcast with blackened clouds over early a morning, she would wake up in a radiance. Some malignant idea had shown her in her dreams, that her son was still alive. In that waking moment Hab would wake too, worried at the peculiar hope glowing over his wife. And all would collapse in a few seconds. As the mind returned to the reality of what had been and could not change, Zanuvia would scream a cry born out of her depth. A guttural press between tears and sobs, bringing them all into a wail. And as Hab would grab at his young wife, her fingernails would dig 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 in his rays. You begged me to bring all of these things back. You spoke to so many names in your delirium. You called to Mort, you called to Urisc..."

At the mention of this second name, as the tears still well in her eyes, Zanuvia quickly pulls herself away from the sadness and hushes Hab with a hand over his mouth.

"Never speak of this name."

"Nobody hears us."

"Never. Not even when you wander alone amidst the animals and there is not another human in sight."

"I miss Anax too Zanuvia. I miss our little boy. But what has gotten you like this?"

"Hab. Every time we speak of Varhas, our conversations roam around the concept of death. That man slyly reeks of it. And everything that we discuss is an indication of what is happening around us. For us to speak of death and divination so often, sure, it tells us of what Varhas is. But, to bring about that name, that man who starts with a "U", I can only tell you that it hints at terrifying things to come. Death is the end yes, but that name alludes to fates worse than that. A death of meaning, an end to concepts, joy itself, an end to the fantastical soul behind every material thing. That name is an anathema of blood and starlight, a mixture of contrasting sorceries that should not be."

-

As the hours roll into one another, the great banquet hall passes from a setting sunlight to a midday one and then again to a cold, calm and sunless sky. There is a cyan glow and 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 and he understands the name of a planet that they will compete in. If not their next bout, at least an important future event. A risky and important moment in time that holds indefinite meaning.

He imagines to himself, that time will reveal all.

For now, dressed in stone, yet more along the lines of brass and copper, rubbing shoulders with many that he knows, Anax is working in his own way to spend the banquet. Absently there, he talks on the nature of culture, debating among a handful of Claimants, on whether moments, memories and emotions hold material weight. Oftentimes, he pauses, leaving the conversation to bring refreshments to old Zanuvia, attending an exchange of pleasantries with young Lacata, or to stalk behind Varhas.

In one such roaming motion, he follows the man in black whose details are of starlight. At a distance, he keeps an ear out to nothing in particular, almost missing the importance of the moment.

Weightless, from a stream of thought that lapses so often and invisibly passes to its own reflection of the mind, his feet crunch the salt underneath. As Anax walks the halls of endless white, 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 the rachis.

Anax sees the true form of Varhas and he is extremely alarmed, but outwardly without expression. A secret displayed, in the most public of spaces, where the eyes will not regard it as a mere happening.

He puts his foot over the feather, covering it in its entirety and remaining there. An immobile guard over a detail of fashion that unravels too much of his Claimant friend, to Claimant eyes that can derive its meaning.

Fashion, he repeats to himself, is that a grand weight of meaning, the experiences that describe us, cut from the cloth of culture and put back together in the manifold desires of man.